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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8501168" data-attributes="member: 16814">Fiction is on the left.  Mechanics on the right.  What in the fiction affects the grapple?  Yes, there's a right arrow from "I try to grab the orc" to the mechanics to resolve the attempt, but there's nothing else from the fiction that goes in here.  You resolve the mechanics.  On a failure, there's no left arrow back to the fiction -- nothing changes.  You were not grabbing the orc before, and you are not now.  On a success, there's a leftward arrow -- the fiction changes from not grabbing to grabbing.  However, there are almost no left arrows in the fiction that adjust/impact the resolution of the grapple.And this is intentional design!  5e combat works on turns, where on your turn you can propose a change, but whether or not one happens doesn't affect the next step, which is that the next person gets to propose a change.  This structure, of fixed alternating turns, is what drives the process, but it's entirely boxes, not fiction.  Other games, though, do not have this structure, and so rely more strongly on interactions between.In 5e, if I attack the orc, my declaration as a player is in the fiction -- Bob the fighter is swinging their longsword at the orc.  This creates a rightward arrow to the mechanics.  The attack is then resolved here, without further input from the fiction.  The result, unless it zeros the orc's hitpoint total, doesn't generate any required leftwards arrows back into the fiction.  A miss or hit is pretty much interchangeable in the fiction -- it might get an arbitrary narration, but, as I've shown, a hit and a miss can be described identically*.  This would appear to stop the process, but 5e has the imitative mechanic, so once completed, the turn then goes to the next person in order (perhaps the orc) who then does the same general process.  This works because the end result of this process tends to generate a left arrow -- the orc or Bob is out of hitpoints.  For the intermediate moments, the initiative mechanic clicks along keeping thing moving.In DW, however, there's no initiative mechanic.  In fact, there's no turns at all.  Foes do not have a fixed turn.  So, here, there's more need for arrows back and forth.  The fiction of the action is a right arrow, and resolved, but it creates immediate left arrows back into the fiction.  An attack in DW always changes the fiction in some way.  Always.  And this gets even more pronounced in other game, like Blades in the Dark, where the initial right arrow of the action declaration immediately calls other right arrows from the fiction into the resolution mechanic, and then some left arrows are proposed for results prior to resolution, negotiation takes place and is agreed to, and then resolution occurs and a hard left arrow results according to the negotiated agreement.  This is iterative tech based off of PbtA.</blockquote>

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