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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7607154" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is highly contingent on (i) system and (ii) ingame situation. To give one example, based on Burning Wheel: I stride down the hall sounds like a Conspicuous test, while I move cautiously down the hall looking carefully for anything out of place looks like a Perception check, perhaps also Stealth and/or Inconspicuous.In Prince Valiant the first might be a check on Presence, the second on Brawn.The consequences for failure on either check is also likely to be quite different. It's certainly not a given that all that matters is that the PC moves from A to B. And if that's all that is at stake, ie if nothing turns on the description of how the character moves, if it's mere colour, then maybe we're getting a bit of establishment of character. That can be done whether the character is said to stride down the hall, walk purposefully down it, or walk down it at a steady pace with an imposing look.Whereas what I see as central to RPGing is the capacity of the referee to respond to the players, and frame situations in response, that engage with a focus, specificity and degree of particularity that non-human interactions can't deliver.My take on this is the same as  [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION]'s - it sounds to me like the situation is not interesting enough! As I've already posted in this thread, my advice to that GM would be to work on situation, not to work on voice modulation.I'm probably qualified to say what I meant by literary in the OP:Literary quality of the narration means - as  [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] posted at post 19 - quality of form:The notion of how is too expansive. Speaking with sufficient volume to be heard, sufficient crispness of enunciation to be understood - these all go to how, but don't show that we're engaged in a literary endeavour.I made some comments on literary devices in post 40, replying to  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] :As far as the use of tropes is concerned - that's typically not about quality of form or beauty in composition at all. This has absolutely zero to do with what I'm talking about. For instance, you seem to be the only poster in this thread who has said anything to imply that action resolution = "crunch", because you seem to think that additional fictional context in action declaration - such as striding vs walking cautiously - makes no difference to resolution.The role of the fiction in framing, declaration and resolution is one of the fundamental differences between RPGing and boardgaming and much wargamin. The distinctive first-person protagonist role of most of the participants is the other. And obviously the OP in this thread takes these features of RPGing for granted, as not even needing to be stated.It's precisely because of these features of RPGing that it is possible for it to be an activity which (to quote again from the OP) is based on the players feeling the significance of the situations the GM describes - feeling the pull to action, and the threats of inaction. That has nothing to do with "fluff vs crunch".That Evard is a demon-summoner; that he might be my grandfather; that my family's claim to honour might rest on such poor foundations; that my fidelity to the Lord of Battle might be so fundamentally compromised: how would anyone think that those things are about "crunch"?</blockquote>

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