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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7841252" data-attributes="member: 4937">To make sure we are all on the same page, while this may be true, the system on its own doesn't tell us that. It doesn't tell us if the reason you need one strike or ten is that, in the scene, Inigo Montoya is parrying the lethal blow aside but not quite enough to avoid serious injury, or if on the other hand in the scene this is Achilles and because his skin was magically hardened as a child by the river Styx, weapons don't bite him the way you'd expect them to. What it does tell us with certainty is that the target took some sort of damage, but that that damage was not lethal. The picture that the original designers had in their mind was I think very much one conjured up by pulp writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, where the greatest swordsman of two worlds stands there covered with minor scratches and hurts from the over whelming horde of swords he is facing against, but owing to his preternatural skill no foe has been able to land a lethal blow upon him.And this is precisely what I mean by both &quot;meat&quot; and &quot;no meat&quot; don't really capture the situation.&nbsp; All the language of the game is meant to be descriptive.&nbsp; So &quot;hits&quot; are really hits, and &quot;damage&quot; is really damage.&nbsp;&nbsp; What's abstract is the quality and nature of the hit, which can only be determined narratively after the results of the fortune role are applied and considered in this situation.&nbsp;&nbsp; That is to say, 17 damage means entirely different things depending on the target and the context.&nbsp;&nbsp; We can usually come up with a plausible narration to explain what 17 damage could have meant in this context.&nbsp;&nbsp; On the other hand, the system doesn't demand this of us, because narrative generation is not one of the foremost goals of the system.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's not hostile to the idea of narration, but it doesn't require it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7841252, member: 4937"] To make sure we are all on the same page, while this may be true, the system on its own doesn't tell us that. It doesn't tell us if the reason you need one strike or ten is that, in the scene, Inigo Montoya is parrying the lethal blow aside but not quite enough to avoid serious injury, or if on the other hand in the scene this is Achilles and because his skin was magically hardened as a child by the river Styx, weapons don't bite him the way you'd expect them to. What it does tell us with certainty is that the target took some sort of damage, but that that damage was not lethal. The picture that the original designers had in their mind was I think very much one conjured up by pulp writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, where the greatest swordsman of two worlds stands there covered with minor scratches and hurts from the over whelming horde of swords he is facing against, but owing to his preternatural skill no foe has been able to land a lethal blow upon him. And this is precisely what I mean by both "meat" and "no meat" don't really capture the situation. All the language of the game is meant to be descriptive. So "hits" are really hits, and "damage" is really damage. What's abstract is the quality and nature of the hit, which can only be determined narratively after the results of the fortune role are applied and considered in this situation. That is to say, 17 damage means entirely different things depending on the target and the context. We can usually come up with a plausible narration to explain what 17 damage could have meant in this context. On the other hand, the system doesn't demand this of us, because narrative generation is not one of the foremost goals of the system. It's not hostile to the idea of narration, but it doesn't require it. [/QUOTE]

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