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Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8511390" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Well if it's meaningful then probably it's not mere colour.</p><p></p><p>But while the responses of participants are often mercurial, they're not always unknowable. The number of times I've come across descriptions of a NPC's appearance (clothing, hair colour, etc) - typically in module descriptions intended to be conveyed by the GM to the players - far, far outstrips the number of times that has <em>mattered</em>, in the sense of actually serving as an input into action declaration.</p><p></p><p>It seems to me that that sort of colour has two main purposes, that I think are related: to reinforce the sense of "reality" or vibrancy of the shared fiction; and to give the players something relatively concrete to support their knowledge of the fiction and to remember who is who (eg "The guy in the cape" or "The tall one").</p><p></p><p>As well as the appearances of NPCs, I think at least some descriptions of geography and architecture and "scenery" generally serve the same purpose. Not in a relatively classic dungeon crawl, but in at least some contexts of the PCs travelling through the outdoors and/or urban areas. One town might be known as the one with a particularly distinctive tower on its wall; and inn becomes known for its striking name; etc.</p><p></p><p>To use Baker's terminology, this sort of fiction does not generate rightward arrows and is not the product of leftward arrows. In your framework, if I've understood it right, this sort of stuff is not a F that '>'s to a G. It's just for fun, and to facilitate one another talking about these different fictional elements.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8511390, member: 42582"] Well if it's meaningful then probably it's not mere colour. But while the responses of participants are often mercurial, they're not always unknowable. The number of times I've come across descriptions of a NPC's appearance (clothing, hair colour, etc) - typically in module descriptions intended to be conveyed by the GM to the players - far, far outstrips the number of times that has [i]mattered[/i], in the sense of actually serving as an input into action declaration. It seems to me that that sort of colour has two main purposes, that I think are related: to reinforce the sense of "reality" or vibrancy of the shared fiction; and to give the players something relatively concrete to support their knowledge of the fiction and to remember who is who (eg "The guy in the cape" or "The tall one"). As well as the appearances of NPCs, I think at least some descriptions of geography and architecture and "scenery" generally serve the same purpose. Not in a relatively classic dungeon crawl, but in at least some contexts of the PCs travelling through the outdoors and/or urban areas. One town might be known as the one with a particularly distinctive tower on its wall; and inn becomes known for its striking name; etc. To use Baker's terminology, this sort of fiction does not generate rightward arrows and is not the product of leftward arrows. In your framework, if I've understood it right, this sort of stuff is not a F that '>'s to a G. It's just for fun, and to facilitate one another talking about these different fictional elements. [/QUOTE]
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