Quote from: Arminius;895959I'd like to know specifically what "creating a situational advantage in D&D" refers to.

Tactics?

Quote from: Bren;895962But there is a clear difference to me between gaining a situational advantage by using the wall is that has already been established to  existence and that existence is known to the player before their declaration and a game where the player tosses down a poker chip with their declaration to ensure the existence of a handy wall to crouch behind.

This is one I've been wondering about.

How many RPGs, storytelling or non, actually allow you to create things from essentially thin air? I thought most required at least some grounding in the situation to be able to actuate? IE you are in the ocean and a shark attacks. You cant just spend a fate point and say "I hide from the shark behind a wall!" whereas you might be able to say "I hide from the shark behind a big piece of driftwood!"?

Quote from: Omega;896067How many RPGs, storytelling or non, actually allow you to create things from essentially thin air? I thought most required at least some grounding in the situation to be able to actuate? IE you are in the ocean and a shark attacks. You cant just spend a fate point and say "I hide from the shark behind a wall!" whereas you might be able to say "I hide from the shark behind a big piece of driftwood!"?

That you can't create absolutely anything, doesn't mean you aren't creating some things. Sure for any group there is going to be some step that they find ludicrously too far.

Setting aside the tangential question of how one hides behind (on top of?) a big piece of driftwood, if a big piece of driftwood why not a whaling boat from the Pequod?

Quote from: Bren;896081if a big piece of driftwood why not a whaling boat from the Pequod?

I believe that driftwood might be big enough to hide an elephant behind it.

Quote from: Bren;896081That you can't create absolutely anything, doesn't mean you aren't creating some things. Sure for any group there is going to be some step that they find ludicrously too far.

Setting aside the tangential question of how one hides behind (on top of?) a big piece of driftwood, if a big piece of driftwood why not a whaling boat from the Pequod?

1: Right. That is why I was asking. I cant think of any game with "fate points" as it were that allows you to totally alter things. Im sure there must be. But Im drawing a blank. Even Torg with its probability bending points still required you to come up with at least some sort of improbably reason for why X happens. And there times where X simply can not happen.

2: Actually it was Queequeg's coffin that saved him. :cool:

Quote from: JesterRaiin;896032Piling a wall of corpses between you and the enemy.

Right, and something like that is done completely by the character.

Quote from: Omega;896066Tactics?

Tactics are using what exists to your advantage, not creating something to give you an advantage.

Quote from: Itachi;896065Player: I'll roll to convince the guard to let me in.
GM: Ok, the target number is 14.
Player: But remember I've paid him some beers yesterday at the tavern and we became more acquainted after that.
GM: Hmmm, right. Because of this (perfectly justifiable situational advantage), I'll give you a bonus +2 to the roll.

Jesus, you really don't see how this is different than the MHR example, do you? Your character actually did talk to that guard before and your character did buy him some beers.  You're not picking up a bonus die carried over from a skill roll you or some other character made before, you're not paying some meta-currency and invoking the "I know a guy" aspect, you're reminding the GM of something that actually happened.  The reality of whether a few beers is enough to have the guard do you a solid depends on other factors also already existing in the setting.

Quote from: Itachi;896065Player: Since there is this rift in the ceiling and the sunlight is passin through, could I try to reflect it with my shield to blind the goblin ? And if I do that, could it count as a situational advantage/bonus to my next rolls against him ?
GM: Oh totally. Nice idea, by the way.

Again, here you're using an already established fact of the light, but now you're trying to create facts about the shield, namely that's it's reflective enough to blind someone.  What kind of shield is it?  Steel, wooden, etc.  A reflective shield would be pretty rare unless is was some type of Aspis/Hoplon or Scutum.  Even if the GM determined that your shield was reflective, then you'd need to make some kind of Dex check or whatever to actually do what you're attempting, different systems would handle that differently of course.  Although a smart character who had fought goblins before might just stand in the light, thus giving goblins a penalty to hit or defend against him while he's there.  That's a lot different then "Spend or Invoke X, do Y."

Quote from: Itachi;896062Yep, I agree.

Ah, so now we come to it.  You agree with Dragoner that the term "Authority" should be used instead of "Narrative".  So what are you objecting to, the idea that there can be a type of OOC mechanic that provides a different form of play or that the name for such a mechanic is "Narrative"?

Quote from: CRKrueger;896098Right, and something like that is done completely by the character.

Tactics are using what exists to your advantage, not creating something to give you an advantage.

er? Really? Figuring out a tactic is creating something, in this case some action, to give you an advantage? Piling corpses to make a barrier is a tactic too. That was the point. Neither are creating something from thin air. They are drawing on whats there.

Right, tactics are In-Character manipulations of elements already existing in the Setting...  

...unless what you're doing is tripping a slime so everyone gets +2 to hit.

That's why OOC Mechanic or Metagame Mechanic or OOC Metagame Mechanic, etc are useful terms, but they don't tell you what type of mechanic that is.

For example James Bond 007 gives you a currency to affect the outcome of a roll or to create things that show up by coincidence or mimic something as seen in the James Bond novels or movies.  The mechanic is OOC, as presumably James Bond doesn't know that Blofeld is going to put him on a death machine and start monologuing.  It's a James Bond game, we all know it's a James Bond game, so James Bond stuff happens.  It's 4th wall breaking meta-knowledge and meta-mechanics used to provide for genre-emulation.

It sounds like Itachi wouldn't like Hero Points to be called a Narrative Control mechanic, but would prefer something like Genre Emulation Control Mechanic or the like, but regardless of what you call it or the history of Usenet or Ron Edward's posting history - the mechanic operates the same, for the same reason.

By contrast, 4e is full of AEDU powers that make no sense in the context of the setting.  The purpose of these mechanics is to provide a tactical challenge (as in the tactics of a boardgame, wargame, cardgame, etc) that don't necessarily line up with what you would expect from a character in the setting.  Those are OOC mechanics, sure, but why do they exist?  They exist to provide for additional OOC Tactical play.

So when you create an OOC mechanic, you do it for a REASON.  That's why terms like Narrative Mechanic or Narrative Control mechanic are useful because they tell you what the mechanic is.  It's a an OOC mechanic that gives the player some Narrative Control.

But...all that having been said, I wouldn't be opposed to a more specific use of language, if for no other reason, to prevent another decade of someone being able to completely shut down all conversation by obstinately going to the mattresses Every.Single.Fucking.Time over the N-word.  

The problem is, once we open that door, I'm pretty sure what we'll find is that no term is acceptable, because there is an entire generation of gamers at this point that never really managed or even attempted to stay mostly In Character while roleplaying.  As such, to them there is no difference between a game with OOC mechanics and one without, because they are, for the most part, always somewhat OOC.

Quote from: CRKrueger;896098Right, and something like that is done completely by the character.

Yes. Unless we're talking D&D 6th, which isn't about combat anymore. Oooops, too soon?

Just joking. In all honesty, I don't understand your observation. While I was only joking, truth is that yes, since the early days of D&D characters were piling up walls of bodies and sometimes they used them to their advantage. :cool:

My point was, that
The living things existed in the setting.
Your character killed them in the setting.
The bodies therefore exist in the setting.
You deciding to manipulate those bodies in the setting to make a "300 wall" to hide behind, or to toss down a hole to squash whatever is down there, or to push before you to set off pit traps, are all In-Character decisions using 100% In-Setting resources.  DMs have been having characters make Str checks, Dex checks, Int checks, Proficiency checks to correctly "MacGuyver" shit for over 40 years now.

None of that is "I spend OOC Metagame Currency X to make the Orc trip over the bodies we've strewn all over the floor, and if I don't spend the OOC Metagame Currency X to make the Orcs trip, then none will.

Obviously characters interacting with a setting will have an effect and make things True that weren't True before.
The difference is, does the change come organically from what the character did or is it some artificial switch that gets flipped?

• If we kill ten orcs then decide to turn this hallway into something out of a Rob Zombie/Clive Barker movie, then we've essentially created Difficult Terrain, Hazardous Terrain or whatever, and there will be an effect.  That effect will be true as long as the conditions don't change.


• If, no matter what I do, I have to spend some kind of OOC Metagame Currency to either create that effect, or once I've created it, have to spend some form of OOC Metagame Currency in order to "activate it" or have it actually apply, then I haven't actually changed the setting in a material way, I've effected Quantum Change, and this hallway now has a Shrodinger's Hazard, that may or may not be in effect depending on the OOC Metagame Currency spends I make to invoke it.

The game in which the first happens is a fundamentally different form of game then that in which the second happens.

Quote from: CRKrueger;896115My point was, that
The living things existed in the setting.

And my point was, that piling a wall of corpses - amusing idea, really - might be considered as "tactics" slash "creating an advantage" in D&D/d20. Nothing less, nothing more.

I know, but considering that type of thing isn't the same AT ALL as what Itachi was claiming it was...I went into more detail.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;896124I know, but considering that type of thing isn't the same AT ALL as what Itachi was claiming it was...I went into more detail.  

I know, Hulk, I know.

It could be a fun movie/book/comic premise if a corps of troubleshooters literally each had a finite number of charges in their utility belt/brain implant/whatever that they could use to effect Reality Deviations or what have you (kinda like The Matrix or Dark City, but less hand-wavy).

But if I'm in a firefight and I duck behind a wall, reminding the GM that I get a +2 for cover is nothing like spending a point and narrating a wall into existence to justify my arbitrary +2.

In the first case the GM either has to have said the wall is there beforehand, or they have to agree that it's there. (Player asks if there's any cover nearby; GM says sure.) The player doesn't have to spend a finite resource.

In the second case there's a pretty strong implication that the GM has to accept the player's narration as long as it doesn't break the game. (That's assuming the GM has any veto power at all.) And the player has to spend a resource. If the mechanical transaction is more than a joke, you have to ask--what happens when the player's out of points? What happens when the player wants a wall but doesn't want to spend a point since it should "obviously" be there--or it's there but the GM won't agree that it's tall/thick enough to provide cover unless the player spends a point? This sort of budgeting of reality draws attention to the meta-layer of interaction and creates a pretense of OOC narration rights. In a more traditional game, players and GM may banter about the application of the rules or the details of a situation but there's no sense that actions are enabled or disabled purely because of a metagame mechanical construct. Simulationist or non-narrative rules (obviously) exist outside the game world but their purpose and function is to mirror causality and decision making within the game world. (See the "immersion break" thread elsewhere on this site.) In Dogs in the Vineyard if you have a free Relationship die, you get to decide on the spot that you have a prior relationship with an NPC. Nowhere in reality or fiction have I heard of someone consciously deciding "that guy and I know each other and I hereby make it so".

AIU, Marvel Heroic Role play (and I guess other Cortex games) seems fall in some middle ground between outright scene editing and "traditional". You can't, afaik, really call things into existence. It has to be justified in some way by the ongoing reality in the game. The GM/players can veto things that don't make sense. The terminology "creating an Asset/Resource, etc" isn't literally pulling it out thin air. If your character is an area described a a broad open field you can't declare you jump behind a wall for cover unless you have some ability, like mutant Earth Mastery, to create one. There's going to be allot of edge cases though and the game is very handwave driven in many ways.