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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9867420" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here's an example, from the last Torchbearer 2e game that I GMed:The PCs are in a room which has many weapons, of various sorts and degrees of quality, on its walls. Player of the Elven Dreamwalker, who is proficient only in the use of the half-moon glaive, and who lost her half-moon glaive many sessions ago: "I look to see if there's a half-moon glaive on the wall." GM: It's possible. <Pointing to map> You'd agree that Megloss [a now-dead NPC Dreamwalker, who was the PC's enemy] might have come here? *Player": "Yes, absolutely." GM: "OK, test Scavenger against Ob 3.We start with a situation. Then an action declaration, with some stakes established: the player (and the PC) hope to find a half-moon glaive, which might be there because Megloss might have travelled to this place. There's a difficulty, that sums up the likelihood of finding a glaive without complication; and the framework/context for complications - Megloss might have travelled to this place - has been established.That's the establishment of a fiction, with an inner logic and some possible trajectories. There's a lot of representation.Then the dice pool is assembled - based on the PC's Scavenger skill, and possible other buffs (I can't recall if any were used for this roll). That's representational: the skill rating represents the PC's ability to forage, gather, scavenge, and otherwise find the stuff that they want even in unlikely places.Then the dice are thrown. This doesn't represent anything. It's a decision procedure: it tells us - the game participants - how and what we are to go on imagining. On this particular occasion, the roll was a success, and so we all agree the PC finds a half-moon glaive on the wall, undoubtedly left behind by Megloss, for some reason. Had the roll failed, as GM I would have narrated some appropriate consequence consistent with the rules, and drawing on the established fiction with its established inner logic.The significance lies in the fiction, and its inner logic and possible trajectories, which the dice choose between and contribute to by forcing one or another sort of narration and agreement. The roll of the dice itself doesn't represent anything in the fiction.</blockquote>

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