NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yesway Jose" data-source="post: 5624242" data-attributes="member: 6679265">For some reason, explaining this feel painstakingly obvious to me, so I'm still not conscious of where the disconnect is. Of course, such mechanics contribute to the narrative. I *assume* there are very few (if any at all?) mechanics that never contribute directly or indirectly the narrative. I was asking ThirdWizard: why certain mechanics (like 1xday) *encourage* the player to announce *more* narrative (on top of the narrative already implied by stating the action itself). Let me clarify what I mean by *more* (in this example, I believe the 1xday power was defined and/or flavored as "Trip opponent"):1) "I trip the opponent" = (minimum?) contribution to narrative2) "I trip the opponent with a leg sweep, bringing him crashing down to the tiles" = contributing *more* narrative Let me clarify what I mean by *encourage*:A) some people (hereby defined as "Storytelling Joe") are inclined to #2 for its own sakeB) most people (hereby defined as "Average Roleplaying Joe") are inclined to #1C) Average Roleplaying Joe may do #2 with extrinsic motivation to do soD) C (above) is usually NOT true if #1 and #2 are perceived to result in the same (mechanical or non-mechanical) outcome *from the viewpoint of Average Roleplaying Joe* (and NOT how YOU define to be a different outcome, because I don't define YOU as Average Roleplaying Joe)E) a mechanic that *encourages* *more* narrative is one that provides the motivation that makes C to be true and D to be false To summarize (but not to be taken out of context from the above anally obvious statements), Average Roleplaying Joe is always inclined to do #1 instead of #2 if he perceives that the outcome is the same either way (in this case, the target is prone is the outcome that's relevant to him and not the narrative process that resulted in said outcome). Or to put it another way, #1 is the easiest most efficient 'shortcut' to achieving the said outcome.As above, I agree that Trick Strike contributes to the narrative, but who has been arguing otherwise? Maybe it's your definition of "contributes" that you're not seeing eye-to-eye with me and/ others. I'm reading it literally. Do you mean contributing to the narrative in a certain way, or just in an absolute sense? Like if the power is "Purple Teddybear Strike". The rogue throws purple stuffed teddybears at the opponent and pushes them back 1 square. Technically, that power DOES contribute to the narrative. Before, an opponent was standing in one spot. Rogue uses Purple Teddybear Strike. Opponent is now 10 feet away from his original position. The narrative has changed, and the use of Purple Teddybear Strike contributed to that change in narrative. Did I missing some key factor here? I don't understand this. I think Page 42 is a great example of E (above). But "standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42" and the rest -- I don't know what that means! I must also insist that, in this framework, we are restricting our discussion to an average game with Average Roleplaying Joe, so that you do not wander off to corner cases or new "contextualizations" which does not represent common gameplay.</blockquote>

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