Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7570579" data-attributes="member: 4937">Eureka!&nbsp; I mean, that's not all that this thread is about, but it is a necessary insight to fully understand the conversation.So, suppose you had an RPG that came with a little box something like Alexa, and during combat if you declared an attack, the box would magically spit back a detailed summary of the results of your attack that paid attention to all the factors involved in the attack and produced a granular and cinematic result like:&quot;You slash the orc's sword hand, severing it at the wrist.&nbsp; The wrist lands in an adjacent square and the orcs scimitar clatters to the ground beside him.&nbsp; The orc howls in pain as blood splatters out of the wound.&quot;, and meanwhile during this narration, the orcs stats on the GM's worksheet were magically updated.There was a time when this would have been considered unquestionably the greatest thing ever.But some people started asking, &quot;Why do you need to know whether the orc's sword hand got severed?&nbsp; Don't you really just want to know whether you one the fight with the orc or not?&nbsp; Why not just generate that as a result, and then leave it up to the game's participants to narrate that result in the way that they thought would make the best story?&nbsp; Having it specified what happened during the fight is actually getting in the way of the goal of RPing.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7570579, member: 4937"] Eureka! I mean, that's not all that this thread is about, but it is a necessary insight to fully understand the conversation. So, suppose you had an RPG that came with a little box something like Alexa, and during combat if you declared an attack, the box would magically spit back a detailed summary of the results of your attack that paid attention to all the factors involved in the attack and produced a granular and cinematic result like: "You slash the orc's sword hand, severing it at the wrist. The wrist lands in an adjacent square and the orcs scimitar clatters to the ground beside him. The orc howls in pain as blood splatters out of the wound.", and meanwhile during this narration, the orcs stats on the GM's worksheet were magically updated. There was a time when this would have been considered unquestionably the greatest thing ever. But some people started asking, "Why do you need to know whether the orc's sword hand got severed? Don't you really just want to know whether you one the fight with the orc or not? Why not just generate that as a result, and then leave it up to the game's participants to narrate that result in the way that they thought would make the best story? Having it specified what happened during the fight is actually getting in the way of the goal of RPing." [/QUOTE]

Verification