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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8599944" data-attributes="member: 42582">Whose? Dro's? That's real, not part of the fiction. Harguld's? That's part of the fiction, but at the moment of action declaration is fully subsumed within the action - indeed, it's this relative thinness of the established fiction pertaining to Harguld's intention, ie we know nothing more than that he is shooting a bolt at the Gnoll, that permits the subsequent retcon created by use of the trait.This isn't really aimed at you (AbdulAlhazred) as on this I think we're agreed. But I don't think that either [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] or [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] has said whose intention they are having regard to, when they say that the intention is a component of the fictional position.Sure. But I will always take the view - whether in conversations on a discussion board, or when supervising my students, or when doing my own work, that it is a mistake to wheel out more machinery than you need.Dro declares Harguld's action, which is to shoot at the Gnoll with a crossbow bolt. Although Dro's literal words are "I put a bolt in his face!", we all know that (i) Torchbearer has no hit location, so "in his face" is mere flavour, and (ii) a player saying it doesn't make it so, so the description of the action as "putting a bolt" in the Gnoll really means "shooting at the Gnoll, hoping thereby to stop and perhaps kill it".We don't need any deeper analysis of Harguld's mental states to know what the declared action is. Nor do we need any notion of potentiality. We have all the relevant components of the fiction established: a cave, with a mouth and beyond that a shadowy tunnel; Harguld at the mouth, having just launched a bolt from his crossbow at a Gnoll in the tunnel.The question is, what happens next. Whatever answer is given, the established fiction constrains the subsequent narration of that new fiction; no one can change the fact that Harguld is there, that the Gnoll is there, that Harguld has shot at the Gnoll.But none of that subsequent narration is part of Dro's fictional position when he declared that Harguld shot the Gnoll. Not even if that subsequent narration establishes something that was true, in the fiction, when Harguld shot - such as the Gnoll got in close because Harguld waited too long to take the shot, trying to cunningly lure the Gnoll in.What I've just posted can be explained without needing any account of Harguld's mental states beyond the description of his action: he shoots at the Gnoll hoping to stop or kill it ("put a bolt in his face!"). And adding some richer analysis of Harguld's mental state won't change the way the use of a trait works, the retcon works, and the GM's narration of consequences works.That's why I think its unnecessary machinery.</blockquote>

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