No, but these are passive medium. I don't need to adjudicate a contest in order to find out the result. Nor do I generally need to explain how the results are arrived at.
> Things are not adjudicated by the writer, they are decided
> on using story logic and creative intentions.
No. on Telly or film they are adjudicated by the writer. If his adjuducation fails to follow story logic then it creates a disonnance,(and if he fails to follow his creative intentions then he has real problems)
In a roleplaying game, of course, they are ultimately adudicated by the rules of the game, which generally involves numbers in some form or another.
> Yes words can be understood differently but who honestly cares?
Anyone who is interested in what the author intended? YGWV, but it is good to know when and why it is varying, especially when you want to discuss the world with people outside of ones game...
> What reall effect will that have on anyone's enjoyment?
It affects my enjoyment when what could easily and succinctly be described on a numeric scale (that will be of actual use in the game) is instead obscufated in words that I need to translate back to numbers in order to use. (This is why I dislike Fudge and it's derivatives). On the other hand, if you have already decided to ignore all the numbers, how does it affect your enjoyment if they are included?
> 5 people present at the same event will describe
> it in 5 different ways - are any of those ways somehow more true?
>
Almost certainly. I know that I treat descriptions of events from some of my friends as a lot more suspect than those of others. (determining which of 5 descriptions is true (or even most true)is much more difficult of course)
> I think the added translation step is *from* numbers to narration.
It's a two way road. But since I want numbers with my description and you want description with no numbers, my way doesn't limit you in the same way yours does me.
And Heroquest 2 still has numbers (at least it in the last draft I saw). PC's still have a skill with a numerical rating which is pitted against a resistance with a numerical rating, dice are rolled, generating numbers, which are compared giving results. Regardless of where you get those numbers from, you are still going to have to narrate the results.
> After all nothing happens in what people call the shared imagined
> space until it is narrated.
Nothing is *agreed* until it is narrated. If I critical and you fumble then everyone at the table knows I won - but we have 5 different views of the same event - narration decides which one is true.
> Having numbers doesn't prevent a GM from adjusting them.
Exactly.
> They might prevent the GM from understanding the stakes though.
> Can you honestly say that (without using the HQ2 table) how hard a
> contest is going to be, given the two opposing target numbers? 5W
> vs 19 ... what kind of challenge will that be? Foomed if I know.
Off the top of my head, no (but I've not played HQ for a while, so I'm rust anyway). But I know which one is more likely to win, and I can go straight to the dice roll, leaving more mental capacity for describing the outcome.
>
> Btw, the idea is not to 'provide challenge' - I used to think this
> and clung to it like a barnicle on the bottom of a boat. Providing
> challenge is not a narrative/story game concern.
>
I'm sure you can have a game without challenges, but rather like Alice's sister's book without pictures or conversation, I wonder what the point is?
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