> From: gamartin_at_...
> > This is a bit like saying that character death is just a narrative
> > decision made by the group gestalt, and that that sword sticking out
> > of his chest, and the eight foot tall dragonewt that stuck it there,
> > are just rationalisations of his pressing karmic need to die. (Then
>
> Yes, that sounds exactly right. More precisely, the sword and the
> dragonewt are props exploited by the GM. In systematic terms, the
> Dragonewt/GM achieved a level of success sufficient to inflict a fate
> of this severity on their opponent, according (probably) to the AP
> trading mechanism. Now that the system has produced a "dead" result,
> the GM gets to rationalise how that happened after the fact. The
> kill could have been inflicted by a head butt, being throttled,
> whatever. The mechanical result of character death does not mandate
> death by the sword, even in a swordfight.
That's not the point. Character death is not mandated by the mechanics, but by events in the game world, as 'modelled' (via its narrative) by the game mechanics. Constrast this with the other domain mentioned, where you're arguing that 'what happens to the character' should be for some theoretical reason _essentially indepentent_ of the game world. Not seeing the difference?
> > form. (Is anything like this likely to be in SR1? -- if so I say
> > "yippee!".) What bugs me is the seeming implication that it's wrong
> > not so much to show bad grace in waiting for such things, but to
> even
> > _want_ them. (i.e. the "he's wealth 10W2, shaddap" approach.)
>
> OK. Taking that question completely anew then, it is not
> innapropriate to want or request them, but this is not a failure of
> the mechanics. And I still would not want a mechanical system or
> table.
That's the nub of the issue, the detail one presents or constructs on top of it is a separate (or at least a separable) issue.
> It seems to me HW:RiG was a rather confused beastie that
> simultaneously tried to present the mechanics for the whole world
Do you mean for the whole _world_, or do you mean the 'generic narrative' mechanics?
> while still presenting some information about Heortlings. It should
> have done one or the other.
I can see why one might say this, if one were analysing it as an exercise in pure game design philosophy. As as practical matter, it was the only sane way to go, however. (Personally I'd have gone with less of the _specific_ non-Heortling bits, though...)
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