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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8322004" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yes, and I think that a lot of people, I see it mostly in GMs but it happens with players too, is that they sublimate or rationalize away the whole thing. They build and arrange an entire game around utterly gamist precepts and then insist that it is all logical and reasonable and "how things would be if X" or something like that. Then on that edifice they insist that any slightest over Author Stance anything in their game is anathema because it subverts this mythical thing that never existed to start with!Well, here I think there are some distinctions we could draw with classic D&D at least: In classic D&D you trundle along the corridor and you describe to the GM what you are doing, poking the floor with your 10' pole, searching the walls for secret traps, scanning the ceiling for lurkers above, etc. These are all obviously cloaked strictly in the 'action process' paradigm, but they are concrete actions related specifically to the GM-provided fiction. You could go through this whole exploration routine without ever jumping out of actor stance. If a situation comes along where a roll is called for, suppose a monster comes along and you want to know who is surprised, classically the GM could roll it himself (not sure what Gygax would say to that, except it is allowable). Even if the player rolls, they aren't selecting a course of action, they are simply RESOLVING an already selected action. The action is tied closely to a fictional process or circumstance. The goblins get surprise, they leap out of the shadows, blows are exchanged, there's initiative checks, attack and damage rolls, etc. Again this is built very close to the action. The fighter doesn't have any 'choose what power to use' kind of choices, only resolution of in fiction stuff. The wizard is maybe a bit different, but Vancian Casting is engineered to give something close to the same experience! I think this WAS a cardinal principle of D&D design. I'm not sure if it was something Dave Arneson conceived for immersion reasons, or if it was simply an outgrowth of keeping the rules fairly light weight and Gary's desire to put the DM firmly at the center of the game. Either way, it is a trait of early classic D&D. I am more dubious about it existing in MODERN D&D!Yeah, and I think my description of classic D&D illustrates that it has that property (or can have, I'm sure it is not guaranteed in every game). I think, at least as conceived by me above, it DOES have the property of technically allowing you to remain in an actor stance DURING PLAY. However, there is a vast amount of 'stuff' you cannot address in that kind of play, or which you have to just arrange for by the super meta-gamey genre conventions and table play conventions of classic D&D (IE the dungeon itself as a model of adventure). I think in the end we end up at the same place, and we both wonder why people who accept the super meta-gamey conventions then balk at 'Wises Checks', why is that some sort of line in the sand?</blockquote>

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