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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6092677" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't agree.  The real debate in that case is over whether in game social and mental challenges are tested by player abilities or character abilities, where the complexity in the debate is that there is no wholly satisfying answer for either side.  In other words, it is a debate about what sort of propositions a DM should treat as valid.  The ability to frame the scene is only of tangental interest to the debate.  You are here using 'scene framing' in an overly broad manner.Yes, that's certainly true.  But it's notably not a discussion of or commentary on how to frame scenes, but how to offer and validate propositions involving social and mental tasks.Again, I don't entirely agree.  While it is true that one of the many reasons players will attempt to offer outcomes as propositions is a desire to reframe the scene, offering outcomes instead of propositions is a much larger topic than that and incompasses far more than that.  Likewise, powerful and reliable mechanics can exist in a game without the designer even concerning himself with scene framing.  Teleport doesn't exist in D&D out of a desire to give players scene framing abilities (for one thing, as I've argued it doesn't actually do that), but because teleportation is something that exists in magical settings.   What you see as coyness I see as a firm statement that player driven scene framing is not being put into play.   What you see as a reasonable desire to reframe boring scenes, I see as just one particular variation on what is one of the most disruptive things players can do - attempting to bully the DM.  Most often I see outcome as proposition being offered with the intention of no more than action resolution.  The goal isn't to handwave, but to attempt to gain control over both the call and response by forcing the DM to give the responses the player desires.   For example, the most common argument that immediately arises in response to outcome as proposition is whether the DM's response is correct.  This is the root cause of almost all rule-laywering and goes hand in hand with all power gaming.  One of the most common arguments I'll see from a player who offers outcome as proposition is, if the desired outcome isn't forthcoming, that the player deserves a retcon because clearly he would have never attempted X had he known that Z rather than Y was the outcome.   This far more often done attempting to hijack the smooth moment to moment scene framing that occurs in traditional D&D than it is ever done to try to reframe scenes as it is typically done in a nar game.  If a player doesn't want to play out something that is percieved as being trivial, that proposition is usually offered OOC - "Can I buy a +1 longsword?", for example.  And I disagree.  When players are given the power to reframe scenes, they will typically use them as 'I win' buttons.  Hussar's example is exemplary in this regard.  The problem is that Hussar isn't reframing a scene, he's trying to skip it.  Actually reframing a scene involves offering a counter bang that changes the meaning of the scene.   Extending the earlier example, the player proposes the scene, "We drive to St. Louis.".  The story director proposes cutting the action to the most interesting scene in this journey, "You run out of gas in Kansas.", perhaps with the intention of making the scene play out a 'man vs. nature' conflict or perhaps with the intention of introducing a horror element like attack by zombies.  The player however doesn't want to do either of those things, so proposes the bang, "When I get out to change the tire, a pickup with six beautiful giggling college aged girls stops, and one of the passengers asks if I need help."   Now that is actual scene reframing.  We are still in Kansas, and still out of gas, but the scene is about something completely different now.  In D&D, generally players don't have meta-resources to reframe a scene directly like that (though, I have considered from time to time allowing my 'destiny point' mechanic to allow optionally buying scene reframing), but they do have the ability to reframe the scene indirectly.   To my mind, Hussar reframed the scene by conjuring a giant centipede.  Where he goes wrong is changing the scene reframing 'bang' to an outcome, "We get across the desert."  Even in a nar game where you have meta resources, it's just rude to try to exit a scene that someone else has offered you.  It doesn't matter what style of RPG we are playing, though it is relevant we are playing D&D, you just don't up and try to force a curtain close on the rest of the players especially without even trying the offered scene.  If the scene isn't working, then you can take that up OOC, but bullying and browbeating other players - and the DM is a player in this sense - is always wrong whether this is D&D or Fiasco.And going further, by offering the 'bang' I conjure a giant centipede and use it as as mount, he is implicitly offering to explore having a giant centipede as a mount.  This is the 'coolness' factor he is talking about, and something that it is reasonable and likely everyone (including the DM) is going to be happy to explore.  But Hussar expects by his own declaration that what is really cool about the centipede is that it is an 'I win' button, and is frustrated if exploring the notion of traveling through the desert on the back of a centipede isn't treated that way.  In other words, Hussar wants this scene to not be about the centipede, but Hussar's characters triumph over the difficulty in the scene.   If Hussar is in a game where moments of awesome are few and far between, we might be sympathetic to that.  If Hussar wants an uninterrupted progression of triumphs and is framing scene after scene in that way, then we are likely to be less sympathetic.First of all, that's of course a statement you can make about your game.  You are however in no position to make that statement about anyone else's game.  Trying to find gas after running out in Kansas could be really boring.  You might not be interested in playing out what it feels to sit on the side of the road 50 miles from anywhere waiting for someone to stop.  I might not be either.   But unless you know that zombies or pretty coeds aren't about to show up, you really can't say what a scene is about.  Struggling with the elements is likely to be only a small part of what journeying across a fantasy desert is about.   In my game for example, sleeping in the rough always involves an endurance check.  The main purpose of this is not to provide significant difficulty to the players, but to remind them that sleeping in the wild without shelter can be uncomfortable and remind them to do things like carry bedrolls and other reasonable comforts unless they happen to be 18 CON paragons with the Endurance feat that can sleep like babies on a glacier wrapped only in their cloak.  It would be a tiny part of a sessions events.  We wouldn't actually be playing out 'man versus nature' in any depth.  It's just a reminder that it is there.   The real meat of play would likely by the inhabitants of the desert or the fantastic locations within it, which means that this ostencible 'travel/trekking' play is actually moderately disguised dungeon crawling.  In fact, I may have actually designed the entire desert as the first level of the Sorcerer-Kings tomb.  It's possible I haven't even mapped it out as a hex crawl, but a dungeon map classic cRPG style.   In all of those cases, the overland travel is not easily handwaved but is integral with the arrival at the destination and can no more be handwaved than exploration of the tomb.Schroedinger's map is when both the left and right forks in the road lead to the same destination.  It's when no matter what path you take through the desert, at the end of the first night's travel, you find the 'Lost City', and thereafter the Lost City is in that location.  When I cut to location like that, then I've implemented Schroedinger's map.  You have no choice but to encounter what I want you to encounter.  That's not the same thing even as the example you provided.   Redetailing maps at finer scales, or inventing descriptions for empty (or nearly empty) 'rooms' on the fly isn't the same being able to scene frame a particular location as you suggested in your example.  Being able to reliably scene frame an unknown destination depends on some variant of schrodinger's map.I don't notice any difference between your two scenes really.  I'm likely to offer both up circumstantially to the particular challenge occuring.  Both are very different than cut scening to an arrival at the Black Pyramid or some other destination which just happens to always lie along the direct line of the PC's travels.</blockquote>

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