Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
D&D Combat is fictionless
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8418537" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I see it all as heavily NARRATIVE. So, imagine a narrative description of this brutal sword fight. Its dark, smelly, frightening, and people are hacking away at each other, going down, getting up again, etc. Who the heck knows why the fighter is down? Did the orc just slam him to the ground and he's at zero hit points because he is so stunned and intimidated by this crazy orc that he just can't will himself to stand up again, or does he have a gaping chest wound? In a 40x40 torchlit room filled with 10 combatants there's no knowing. Heck, even the FIGHTER probably doesn't know if he's dying or not! </p><p></p><p>So, that's my general view of things. I mean, yes, it means that any specific description of action, such as "The orc plunges her axe into the fighter, who goes down in a spray of blood." is PROVISIONAL. That's the perception of the narrator at that instant in time, but it isn't necessary going to turn out to have been the actual situation. Maybe the blood was imagined, or already on the blade, or it was a shred of the fighter's armor seen in dim light, whatever. I equate this more to CINEMATIC action than LITERARY action. That is, if you are watching some movie with a certain type of cinematography you see a kind of crazy frenzy of action and motion and sound and fury, with the characters reacting in split seconds to things they barely even saw. At the end the dust clears, and it turns out the fighter slipped on some blood and the warlord telling him she was pissed because she was looking forward to hooking up with him got his butt back in action! Poor guy now has bigger problems than before! lol.</p><p></p><p>It just felt quite frustrating back in the day to hear the endless casual dismissal of 4e based on "I refuse to entertain the possibility that my fixation on this interpretation is really because it lets me not analyze what actually troubles me about this game." Not saying that is the case here, just that its an Edition War Legacy thing, it triggers people.</p><p></p><p>So, how is this not a perfectly good explanation of 4e warlords? I mean, Martial IS a POWER SOURCE, not just "the ordinary mundane non-magical world." IMHO this is why 'Chi' was not really an acceptable concept for a power source, and was rejected by the developers (I understand the cultural part too, not getting into that). Martial IS CHI. It is just a less stereotyped and 'Asian' presentation. In my own game, which uses pretty similar power source concepts, this is explicitly spelled out, "Martial is also sometimes known by terms such as Qi/Chi, ..." I mean, maybe there really isn't a perfectly good mapping there, but its at least a solidly supportable position. Nobody would argue with a description of a hero mustering his Chi and magically bolstering an ally with it. Heck, this kind of thing is practically stock-in-trade in half of all shows on Chinese TV in the last 20 years. You cannot even throw a rock online and not hit some video filled with that stuff.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8418537, member: 82106"] I see it all as heavily NARRATIVE. So, imagine a narrative description of this brutal sword fight. Its dark, smelly, frightening, and people are hacking away at each other, going down, getting up again, etc. Who the heck knows why the fighter is down? Did the orc just slam him to the ground and he's at zero hit points because he is so stunned and intimidated by this crazy orc that he just can't will himself to stand up again, or does he have a gaping chest wound? In a 40x40 torchlit room filled with 10 combatants there's no knowing. Heck, even the FIGHTER probably doesn't know if he's dying or not! So, that's my general view of things. I mean, yes, it means that any specific description of action, such as "The orc plunges her axe into the fighter, who goes down in a spray of blood." is PROVISIONAL. That's the perception of the narrator at that instant in time, but it isn't necessary going to turn out to have been the actual situation. Maybe the blood was imagined, or already on the blade, or it was a shred of the fighter's armor seen in dim light, whatever. I equate this more to CINEMATIC action than LITERARY action. That is, if you are watching some movie with a certain type of cinematography you see a kind of crazy frenzy of action and motion and sound and fury, with the characters reacting in split seconds to things they barely even saw. At the end the dust clears, and it turns out the fighter slipped on some blood and the warlord telling him she was pissed because she was looking forward to hooking up with him got his butt back in action! Poor guy now has bigger problems than before! lol. It just felt quite frustrating back in the day to hear the endless casual dismissal of 4e based on "I refuse to entertain the possibility that my fixation on this interpretation is really because it lets me not analyze what actually troubles me about this game." Not saying that is the case here, just that its an Edition War Legacy thing, it triggers people. So, how is this not a perfectly good explanation of 4e warlords? I mean, Martial IS a POWER SOURCE, not just "the ordinary mundane non-magical world." IMHO this is why 'Chi' was not really an acceptable concept for a power source, and was rejected by the developers (I understand the cultural part too, not getting into that). Martial IS CHI. It is just a less stereotyped and 'Asian' presentation. In my own game, which uses pretty similar power source concepts, this is explicitly spelled out, "Martial is also sometimes known by terms such as Qi/Chi, ..." I mean, maybe there really isn't a perfectly good mapping there, but its at least a solidly supportable position. Nobody would argue with a description of a hero mustering his Chi and magically bolstering an ally with it. Heck, this kind of thing is practically stock-in-trade in half of all shows on Chinese TV in the last 20 years. You cannot even throw a rock online and not hit some video filled with that stuff. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
D&D Combat is fictionless
Top