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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UngainlyTitan" data-source="post: 9214951" data-attributes="member: 28487">D&D has been reluctant to talk about the fictional meaning of mechanics because there is no consensus and it has been ambiguous from the get go. [USER=7023840]@Snarf Zagyg[/USER] has a recent post somewhere about the different views on hit points between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson at the very beginning. Someone else in this or another thread (I think it was [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] ) held the view that the shield spell unwound time in the narrative. To me, that is not the way I envision it working. Mainly I do not think the fiction is completely resolved until the combat round is compete. This means that when the topic is brought up there is endless back and forth about what a specific mechanic means and those conversations are unproductive as each side dig in to defend their interpretation. The end result is that Finn McCool or Cuchulainn or Sun Wu Kong or Goku cannot be D&D fighters. On the other hand it does allow people with slightly differing view as to what the corner cases are to sit around a table and play the same game as long as no one points out the said sticking points. Which, I think has contributed to D&D's success.In other words the ambiguities in D&D mechanics has allowed the game to work, even if the designers have no clue about sword fighting, how much armour weighs or rock climbing.</blockquote>