Provide an example of when FLUFF overrided > Crunch

[Aberzanzorax]

ANY EDITION...ANY GAME!

Give us some examples for when the fluff either made sense to override the crunch, or maybe was just too cool to not override the crunch, or perhaps some other reason.



In my case:
1. Lothar, a pc I was DMing, had "indestructible armor". He was crushed by a series of huge stone cubes on railroad tracks....they were insta-death to any pc (given the situation and lots of warnings etc etc).

But! These stones crashed into him, as well as his indestructible plate. He made the argument that the plate wasn't flattened, and I agreed. I rolled 30d6 (which should have killed him anyway) and rolled very low. He lived, protected by his indestructible armor.


Fluff won.


Your stories?

 

[Niccodaemus]

IMO "Fluff" always trumps "crunch". The rules are there to quantify abstract ideas. If they don't apply to a specific situation, ditch them.

As for the most absurd instance, I was playing in Tomb of Horrors. We had activated as I recall, a giant stone elephant that was hurdling down a ramp towards us to crush us into pulp. The DM was kind enough to "slow things down" so that we had time to think over our options. I looked through my list of inventory and saw I had a portable hole. I threw it on the floor in front of the elephant, and it fell in.

Now, but the rules of the adventure we shouldn't have had the extra time. I believe the DM was supposed to count steadily... basically... real time seconds mirrored game world seconds.

Secondly, it was a 10 foot wide hallway, and the Elephant was 10 feet wide. The portable hole was only 10 feet wide at the widest point. No way the entire elephant could fall in the hole. But it was a cool idea in an absurd situation, so the DM ruled it world. It was also quite a memorable save which we talked about for years.

 

[DEFCON 1]

We were being chased by some monsters through a dungeon a long time ago... and as we ran we were trying to figure out how block our path behind us to escape. A friend of mine who was playing the wizard came up with the idea of using one of the higher-level Monster Summoning spells to summon a whale... which magically appeared behind us stuffed within the passageway and neatly blocking everything off.

We players and the DM never bothered to check to see if this should or shouldn't have been possible within the spellcasting rules... if for no other reason than this 'Wall of Orca' spell was just too funny to not use.

 

[Niccodaemus]

We were being chased by some monsters through a dungeon a long time ago... and as we ran we were trying to figure out how block our path behind us to escape. A friend of mine who was playing the wizard came up with the idea of using one of the higher-level Monster Summoning spells to summon a whale... which magically appeared behind us stuffed within the passageway and neatly blocking everything off.

We players and the DM never bothered to check to see if this should or shouldn't have been possible within the spellcasting rules... if for no other reason than this 'Wall of Orca' spell was just too funny to not use.

Whale Killer!

LOL... that's awesome!

 

[Nagol]

Vampire: The Masquerade has all the typical fluff of Stoker-style vampires, hard to kill sunlight, stakes through the heart, etc.

And the best and easiest way to kill them was with a submachine gun. (Critical hits became aggravated damage which would kill a vampire and high-dex vampires could pretty much guarantee critical hits).

 

[TheYeti1775]

We have a Birthday Cinematic Rule.
For your birthday, you get a move so blatantly crazy it belongs on the big screen.

Example popping two gernades and jumping down the dino's thoart with them and surviving.

Sometimes its just makes for good fun.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

In one game I was playing, as a swashbuckling rogue-fighter, the DM decided that when an ogre hit me with its club for a substantial, but non-lethal, portion of my hit points, that meant that I got flung across the room and into the wall on the other side.

The damage from hitting the wall was enough to knock me unconscious, so I got to sit out the rest of the combat.

So, yeah, not a huge fan of "fluff over crunch."

[EDIT: To be clear:

Crunch: My character took XXhp of damage. This reduced him from A/B hitpoints to (A-XX)/B hitpoints, but otherwise had no mechanical effect.

Fluff: My character totally just got golf-clubbed by a giant! That obviously means you go flying through the air.]

 

[Chris Knapp]

Enemy wizard had a ring of water walking on and was attacking our boat while "standing" on a lake. Player used a spell to create a large wave (can't remember how) and the DM ruled the enemy wizard was "crushed by the wave" and took much damage.

 

[pemerton]

Sometimes in Rolemaster, a crit result would indicate that a character was hurt on the feet or legs, but in the fiction this seemed exceedingly unlikely (the character was fighting from behind a wall, for example). We substituted hits to the hands/arms instead.

Also in Rolemaster, I have ad-libbed the mechanical effects of the mortal world merging temporarily with the Void/Far Realm: those with true sight could see many layers and move along them (travelling greater-than-normal distances in the mortal world), and those who could fly could likewise fly along the layers and defy normal geometry.

Now there are no rules in RM for the effects of such magic in such situations, so maybe some think this is the fiction overriding the mechanics, but that wouldn't be my preferred way of describing it. As I've said, I would describe this as ad-libbed mechanics.

A similar example in 4e is using Twist of Space (a 7th level wizard power that teleports on a hit) to rescue someone trapped inside a trapping mirror. The game text doesn't indicate this use of Twist of Space, but I think that it is a pretty uncontroversial mechancal ad libbing.

My personal view is that unless fictional positioning matters to resolution of action, you may be drifting away from RPGing to playing some other sort of game (board game? skirmish game?). Sometimes the mechanics, as written, capture the fictional positioning. Sometimes they need to be extended in play.

I think there is a distinction between extending what the PCs can do/endure and constraining what the PCs can do/endure (which goes to [MENTION=23094]Patryn of Elvenshae[/MENTION]'s point). Whether fiction is constrained by mecanical results, or whether mechanical results should be adapted to reflect fictional constraints, depends upon paticular mechanical featurs of particular games. RM crit results assume that mechanic results will be adapted to the fiction. 4e powes assume that the fiction will be narrated so as to fit within mechanical results.

 

[SSquirrel]

As for the most absurd instance, I was playing in Tomb of Horrors. We had activated as I recall, a giant stone elephant that was hurdling down a ramp towards us to crush us into pulp. The DM was kind enough to "slow things down" so that we had time to think over our options. I looked through my list of inventory and saw I had a portable hole. I threw it on the floor in front of the elephant, and it fell in.

Now next combat you should have thrown the hole up on a wall opposite your enemies and let the elephant come out and trample them