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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8064344" data-attributes="member: 16814">This thread keeps running away when I'm not at the keyboard, so I'm late here, but I'd like to weigh in.  The issue here, to me, isn't that the player asks for an F-14, but rather how the GM decides to operate on that.  It is literal?  Is the GM forced to only consider the request as a literal ask for a literal F-14 (metaphorically within the fiction of the game, of course)?  I contend no.  The ask is based on the reference frame of the player, and, like many asks, needs to be translated into the game.  We do this all the time in play -- turn "I move 25' towards the Giant to get in range and swing my axe at it."  This is similar to what's happening in the fiction, but filtered through the player's understanding and frame of reference.  The character doesn't move exactly 25' and swing the axe, the character moves, likely dodging around, and then swings the axe.  We automatically translate between frames here to achieve the goals of play.So, then, what's the difference?  Magnitude.  Asking for an F-14 is a pretty big departure from the game fiction so it confounds our normal translation because of this and because we haven't trained ourselves in translating F-14s the way we have the more common statements.  So, we evaluate it not in need of translation into the fiction, but as something that breaks the fiction.  And, in most fantasy games, I'll agree a literal F-14 breaks the fiction to a greater or lesser degree.  What to do about it?  Declare that impossible and demand a different action, or work harder to translate?  I say work harder.The ask for an F-14 is almost never going to be for the physical reality of an F-14, but for what that represents.  You can talk with the player and find out what they're actually asking for in terms of abilities that they initially presented as an F-14 because that was their understood frame of reference.  Once you do that, you can find a way to implement that into the fiction in a way that doesn't break the fiction -- and, usually, it requires very little change!  For example, you could implement an F-14 in the fiction as something with a very similar form factor but powered not by electronics and aviation kerosene, but magictech.  The effect achieves what the player is asking for, via their reference frame, but now translated into the fiction in a way that doesn't break the fiction.The only real questions, then, as if the ask is commiserate with the power of the effect granting it, and also if this is the kind of game you want to play.  The former is a rules question, adjudicated within the framework of the game, the latter is a table question, adjudicated at the table as to what genre expectations the table wants to entertain.</blockquote>

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