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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8619183" data-attributes="member: 71699">Oh right, and yes I agree with your intuition that we elide. Where I resist the intuitions of some other posters, is that I work from a certainty that we always elide. We lean on our human ability to gloss, to ignore missing details, to say that a narrative is close enough for us to be carried along with it as if it were right.You probably know about the many mechanisms in our brain to helps sustain such elisions. A few include filling in colour, prioritising only a few objects for processing, reordering the time sequence, scanning forward and revising backward (in reading written words), and adjusting edge-contrast. We humans are amazing at drawing upon a few cues and weaving an impressionistic narrative just good enough to persuade us.All RPG systems rely on elisions, reframings, overlookings, summarisings, subconscious revisions. There are no exceptions. It's all spackle over inconsistencies.That's exactly what I'm saying. Both are causal chains. Both articulate some but not all change along the timeline. The difference is a matter of granularity, where in all cases the count of change omitted is far vaster than the count of change articulated. A short example, just for the parry. Did it deflect downward, or upward? Does it leave the foes closer, or further apart. Are they both still centered, or is either off-balance? If off-balance, in what direction? How are feet moving to maintain or recover balance? If the parry is blade against blade, do both weapons have guards to catch the possible finger-slicing slides of sharp edges? If the parry is blade against lucerne hammer, is there a check for a break? What if the sword wielder has specifically faced hammer wielders many times? Do they have any better chance to avoid or mitigate that check? What level of exhaustion does the parry result in for each foe: how much longer can they fight just based on stamina alone, even if they are not hit? Does the parry slightly decrement each sides stamina? After the fight, how much time does it take to hone the blade? What sound did the clashing weapons make? How far did it carry? Does it carry further along a hall than in a windy forest?There are so many details that could be articulated. It's just a matter of degree.</blockquote>

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