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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6223408" data-attributes="member: 42582">I was using "fictional positioning" in the way I learned from <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/690" target="_blank">Vincent Baker's blog</a>, or maybe a slightly expansive version of that. Here's "positioning":if I want to shoot your character with a gun, I have to first establish that there is a gun present, that it is loaded etc. . . Here, Emily's talking about the player's position: what gameplay options do I, as a player, have available to me right now? Over the course of the game, my legitimate moves change; what are my legitimate moves at this moment of play?"Fictional positioning", then, is moves available on account of the state of the ingame fiction.The relevant fiction can both be part of the PC ("I am able to bully the shopkeeper because I'm a 6'-something 200 lb hafl orc") or external to the PC ("I will have trouble climbing that wall because it is very slippery") or relational between PC and external gameworld ("I am able to defeat those enemies in combat because they are not as tough as me").Not all mechanics establish fictional positioniong in and of themselves: for instance, that a cleric starts with N skill slots doesn't tell us much about the fictional position of the cleric PC until we know how those slots can be filled; that a fighter starts with X hit points doesn't tell us much about the fictional position of the fighter (is he comaratively tough, or comparatively vulnerable?) outside the broader context of the combat mechanics.But a class's abilities need to tell us something about the fictional positioning of PCs of that class: are they (on the whole) tough or vulnerable? Educated or not? Capable in the wilderness, or capable in the city? Beloved by the gods and their servants, or spurned by others and reliant upon their own resources?If, after building a PC, none of these questions have been answered, then I'm not sure that the PC build rules have done their job, of telling me what sort of PC I've built. In a class system, some of these answers are going to have to be provided by class options (in D&Dnext, others will come from race and background). Hence my reason for saying that I don't think classes can be devoid of flavour.Agreed. The default flavour of the cleric is heavy warrior who is not quite as tough as a fighter but who hates undead and who heals his/her friends.Agreed.</blockquote>

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