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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8009427" data-attributes="member: 42582">My first response to your angel example is that the problem with it is its failure to follow from the fiction.This seems like a good time to trot out an old example from 4e play:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The PCs were fighting a NPC hexer/warlock.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The NPC successfully attacked the paladin PC (of the Raven Queen) with his Baleful Polymorph, turning the PC into a frog.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">More stuff happened that didn't directly involve the frog.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As per the effect duration, I narrated the frog turning back into the paladin.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The paladin PC (as narrated by the player) advanced on the NPC, threatening him in the name of the Raven Queen.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The NPC (as narrated by me) sneered back that "I'm not afraid of you and your mistress - I turned you into a frog."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">WIthout missing a beat, the paladin (as spoken by the player) replied "And my mistress turned me back," the obvious and intended implication being that the Raven Queen and her servants are more powerful than the hexer's magic.</li> </ul>Now every time I post that example it seems to cause at least a slight degree of havoc, but I keep bringing it out because:* I like it - it was a fun moment of play that I still remember years later; * It shows that players taking control of the narrative won't wreck the game; * It shows that there is no general contradiction between a player playing his/her PC from the point of view of first person immersion and the player engaging in narration that settles truths outside the immediate causal power of that player's PC; * It shows that the relationship between mechanical processes (eg in this case me applying the timing rule written in the NPC's stat block and hence narrating that the frog turns back into the paladin) and in-fiction causation (in this case, the paladin's mistress turned him back from being a frog) can be very flexible, but that the shared fiction is primary.I think [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s example of the guard - while it has a different structure of play from what I've described, because it's the GM narrating consequences of a player-side mechanical process rather than a player narrating consquences of a GM-side mechanical process - is similarly demonstrating flexibility within the constraint of fidelity to the shared fiction.</blockquote>

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