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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9053864" data-attributes="member: 42582">But obviously this does make a difference in some circumstances - if it's the vase of exploding and doing 5d6 damage to everyone within 5' when smashed, for instance.It's also an issue of how the game works and what sort of fiction it cares about. D&D, for instance, doesn't generally care whether a player is walking on tippy toes or on flat feet; some versions treat walking vs running as important, because these are different things according to the movement rules, but this pertains to action economy, not the movements of the characters feet, ankles, knees etc.But D&D often does care about where a character is in a room (rules for triggering traps, for taking cover, for having line of sight, etc) or how much noise a character is making (this is a feature of the current version of the Knock spell, and is a consideration in the use of Stealth).D&D generally doesn't care about a character's feelings towards someone when that player's character declares an action to affect that someone. Other RPGs do (eg In A Wicked Age distinguishes between actions done For Love or For Myself). On the other hand, D&D is oddly obsessive and complicated about what sort of weapon is used to make an attack (this affects mechanical aspects, like attack stat and damage, as well as interacting in quite precise ways with fictional minutiae like separation between opponents - eg attacking at reach with a pike is handled quite differently from closing and stabbing with a dagger). The discussion about the vase seems to me to be taking place against a backdrop of assumptions about the ways in which D&D has often cared about details of architecture and furniture, going way back to classic modules like Castle Amber, KotB, ToH and White Plume Mountain, and reinforced by mapping conventions, expectations about what should be covered in a GM's notes, etc.There's nothing "magical" about a RPG caring about some aspects of the shared fiction and not others. But I don't think there's anything wrong with a table having a reasonably clear sense of what is cared about, and expecting action declarations to respect that.Like some tables playing modern RPGs will expect players to specify whether transactions happen via cash or credit card, whether phone calls are made on land lines or from "burner" phones, etc - because these are all relevant to being traced - whereas others will not, or will bundle such things into a "Covert Action" check or ability rather than looking to the details of the player's action declaration, etc.One might prefer one or the other approach, but the logic of each is not particularly mysterious! It's not "making excuses" to express a preference for how one prefers to approach the game.You don't mind figuring things out in the moment. Others find that that is not conducive to how they adjudicate play, in part because they put more emphasis on the distinction between player and GM roles in relation to how actions are declared and adjudicated. Those others are not "making excuses" any more than you are.</blockquote>

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