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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8215646" data-attributes="member: 42582">100% right.This is why barbs like "martial mind control" (for Come and Get It) or "shouting limbs back on" (for Inspiring Word) seem so inane and inapt.CaGI means that the GM isn't able to unilaterally control how the NPCs move. In the fiction, why did they move as they did? Maybe they were tricked or lured. Maybe they were wrong-footed or feinted (that's how I normally imagined it when the polearm fighter in our game used CaGI). To get to martial mind control you have to put in some extra premise - along the lines of the only time a player can affect what a NPC does is if the player's character has gained the ability to control the mind of the NPC - which is not a necessary truth of RPGing, obviously not self-evident, and in the context of many RPG, including 4e, obviously false.An obvious implication of Inspiring Word being part of the ruleset is that hit point restoration is not a correlate of limbs regrowing in the fiction. Which further entails that hit point loss does not necessarily correlate, in the fiction, to maiming or other severe physical injury. This evident truth is reinforced by the fact that hit points can be restored by getting one's second wind or taking a short rest. It does not follow that sword fights never cause serious injury. Rather, it follows that whether a fight in which PCs participate causes serious injury can't be established, as part of the shared fiction, until subsequent matters, including the use of healing abilities, are determined. This is only a problem if one adopts, as an additional premise, the full content of the fiction associated with some moment of mechanical resolution must be established at the moment of resolution. This premise is not a necessary truth of RPGing. It is obviously not self-evident. Gygax denied its truth, in the context of AD&D, in his DMG (in his explanations of how hit points and saving throws work). Robin Law's HeroWars/Quest is a modern system that expressly rejects the premise, and that pretty clearly had an influence on 4e D&D.If we can't talk about how fiction is established, by whom, in relation to what mechanical procedures, then we can't talk coherently about how RPGing works. At best we can talk about minor variations of play within the parameters established by the assumed and unanalysed premises taken for granted in mainstream RPG culture.</blockquote>

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