>From: "Roderick and Ellen Robertson" <rjremr_at_...>
>
>A fairly standard fantasy* trope is the unarmored guy who relies on Dodge
>and Precise Strikes ...
I don't know how to say this nicely, but do you guys have any idea what the word "drama" means? Your answers to Trotsky's question seem almost designed to fail to answer the question. They're all about how the in-game situation could be such that armor isn't important to what's going on. Which are doomed to fail as answers because that's not drama.
Drama is what's interesting to the player in emotional terms, not the in-game reality.
Now, sure, plausibility is important to drama. You can't have drama without being able to "buy in" on some level. And if, for Trotsky, that requires that there be some accounting for armor... well, I believe that Robin's game is going to allow him to account for it. It just won't require it. So I think it's a moot point.
But to answer the question directly, when isn't armor dramatic? Well for myself it's not dramatic if there's no story behind the armor. If we don't know where he got it, for instance, or why. If, on the other hand, we know that the character had to suffer some arduous trial in order to get the armor, then it's inclusion is, for me, dramatic.
What's dramatic for an individual will vary, since we each care about different things, and, again, drama is about what we're connected to emotionally as players. Not some hard and fast rule about the in-game physics. As such, if the rule really is about drama, and not about simulation, then it won't specify when it's to be used, but allow the GM and players to decide when these things should be used. Which, again, is what it sounds to me like Robin is specifically aimiing at.
It may seem odd to some that I don't always give a hoot about in-game physics, or detailing them mechanically at least. But consider that everyone does it all of the time. Even in combat, I can give you a dozen more criteria that could be considered to make it an even more plausible simulation. But we're only interested in what we're interested in, and we ignore the rest. I just ignore different things than some others do.
We all do.
Mike
Powered by hypermail