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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5766043" data-attributes="member: 54877">It is simple, but it is not easy.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />&nbsp; The players should rarely, if ever, even care.&nbsp; The DM should only grasp the distinction well enough to have a good flow to his game--and most of that will arise intuitively in a good system, without necessarily thinking in design terms.&nbsp;One of the reasons that it can be this way is that often in D&amp;D, the distinction does not matter.&nbsp; In Red Box, if your starting fighter swings his sword at an orc, you can easily treat that check and described action as all three at once:&nbsp; process, result, and drama/narrative.&nbsp; This is because in this case, the process of swinging the sword, the likely results, and the described action are highly in sync.&nbsp; You might be a bit put off when you miss and the orc kills you the next round, but you'll quickly adapt the presumed narrative to, &quot;Oh, this isn't exactly a story.&nbsp; This is D&amp;D, where Joe Fighter goes into the dungeon and dies in the first 15 minutes.&quot;&nbsp; Or your DM might have fudged the process or the results so that the narrative was more what you had in mind.&nbsp; (That is, the DM had at least intuited these disconnects.&nbsp; So the player need not.)&nbsp;The problems are all in the edge cases--even if some of the edge cases are fairly prominent in certain playstyles.&nbsp; People have been leaving D&amp;D for other pastures since their were other pastures for this very reason.&nbsp; Heck, often people were building those other pastures because of these kind of problems.&nbsp; When you hit one of these problem cases, the answer is often tricky.&nbsp; One can't get beyond &quot;just model what the character does&quot; as the default answer until one accepts that there might be limits to that method.&nbsp; And in fairness, we've already seen the same thing on the other side.&nbsp; &quot;Just narrate it&quot; is not always a good answer, either.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5766043, member: 54877"] It is simple, but it is not easy. :D The players should rarely, if ever, even care. The DM should only grasp the distinction well enough to have a good flow to his game--and most of that will arise intuitively in a good system, without necessarily thinking in design terms. One of the reasons that it can be this way is that often in D&D, the distinction does not matter. In Red Box, if your starting fighter swings his sword at an orc, you can easily treat that check and described action as all three at once: process, result, and drama/narrative. This is because in this case, the process of swinging the sword, the likely results, and the described action are highly in sync. You might be a bit put off when you miss and the orc kills you the next round, but you'll quickly adapt the presumed narrative to, "Oh, this isn't exactly a story. This is D&D, where Joe Fighter goes into the dungeon and dies in the first 15 minutes." Or your DM might have fudged the process or the results so that the narrative was more what you had in mind. (That is, the DM had at least intuited these disconnects. So the player need not.) The problems are all in the edge cases--even if some of the edge cases are fairly prominent in certain playstyles. People have been leaving D&D for other pastures since their were other pastures for this very reason. Heck, often people were building those other pastures because of these kind of problems. When you hit one of these problem cases, the answer is often tricky. One can't get beyond "just model what the character does" as the default answer until one accepts that there might be limits to that method. And in fairness, we've already seen the same thing on the other side. "Just narrate it" is not always a good answer, either. [/QUOTE]

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