Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5718775" data-attributes="member: 957">OKSo far so good.I can't say I would use these words.  You are not a million miles off, but the spin here seems to be stuck in a mechanics first perspective.  Forget mechanics completely for a second.  Now, what does your character do in situation X?  Once that choice is made, now let the mechanics model that and establish an outcome, and a selecting from a range of the possible outcomes is part of that.Now, of COURSE, a player (or character, if you will) is going to be informed on his choice by mechanics.  A 10th level fighter will much more readily charge a hill giant than a 1st level fighter.  And the mechanics, and the player's knowledge of them  define why that is.But that is no problem.  Think about LotR.  Aragorn knows he can kick an orc's ass.  He knows he can probably hold off the Ring Wraiths for brief time.  He knows the Cave Troll is a serious problem.  And he knows that all he can do with the Balrog is carry hobbits, run like hell and hope Gandalf can buy enough time.  And he knows that for each of those (with the possible exception of the Balrag) that luck can make things go better or worse that he expected, possibly dramatically so.  When I read the books or watch the movies, I see all of that as understood knowledge.  And it has nothing to do with mechanics.  It is just an understanding of the narrative definitions of those various entities.  And a player running a 10th level fighter doesn't need to think 10th level to simply think "bad ass guy who can charge a hill giant, even though that hill giant could take out a team of 25 commoners".  The mechanics PURELY come later as a reliable, consistent model for backing up that narrative definition.Edit: I'd certainly loathe the idea of Aragorn's actions and results being defined not by a quality story but instead by concerns over how Frodo felt about the pacing.Again, I'm not really feeling the whole "mechanics require" me to "step out of my role".  I can do whatever the hell I want.  The mechanics can not EVER REQUIRE anything.  GOOD mechanics may prohibit things.I think it can be said simply.Anything that would make me declare a novel completely stupid and stop reading needs to be avoided.Conan never receiving any wound that he couldn't make never require any further attention just by wishing it so would be on a list of things that would make me move on to something better to read.</blockquote>

Verification