thread: 2009-07-13 : How About Some Q and A
On 2009-07-14, Bwian wrote:
Hi
I've been browsing here and at the Forge site on and off, and I'm struggling a bit with the IIEE terminology. In fact I am pretty certain that I am missing the point. I would like to get it, because I suspect you guys have thought pretty carefully about it, and I'd like to benefit from that.
I'm a bit unclear how (or where?) to draw the line between an 'execution' and its 'effect'. In one of your recent threads you gave an example about climbing a tower, which I think ran something like this:
Intent = climb the tower
Initiate = so you start to climb the tower
Execution = you get to the top of the tower
Effect = choice of: a) stuck clinging in terror to the outside of the tower; b) just barely drag yourself in through the window; c) easily swing self in through window.
What I'm not clear about is how the GM (or whoever) decides where 'execution' ends and 'effect' begins. In the example above, the GM has interpreted 'climb the tower' as what happens between 'starting climbing the tower' and 'getting up to at or near the level of the window on the outside of the tower'. Then (in the game you were discussing) the GM's next task is to decide the worst, best and in between outcomes (possible 'effects'?) of this.
First: How does the GM know that 'I climb the tower' is complete ('executed') when the character is hanging off the outside of the tower near window height? What if the player had intended that the character climb onto the roof of the tower, well above the window? Or hang off the outside of the tower and look over the castle wall? Maybe I have misunderstood the relationship between intent and effect (or intent and execution)?
Second: Assuming that the GM somehow knows that the player intended the character to climb in through the window from context, prior conversation or whatever, why wouldn't that have been the 'intent' in the first place? And if that was the 'intent', why would 'execution' stop before 'intent' was fulfilled?
Player: I climb the tower.
GM: What? With a ladder? Unassisted? You want to hang off the outside of it? Get on the roof? Search the roof guttering?
Player: I want to climb in the window.
GM: Just like that? Bare hands?
Player: Yup.
So then the 'intent' would be 'get into the tower by climbing through the window at the top, unassisted'. Initiation might be the same as in the original example: 'so you start to climb the wall' (although it might be: 'so you start walking toward the foot of the tower'). And execution might be 'So you climb up the wall and in through the window at the top of the tower'. Now the GM has to think what is the range of best to worst outcomes _given_ that the character has climbed up the wall and in through the window.
But this would also involve a series of assumptions about the character's values in the situation of 'climbing in through the window'. I am in danger of some kind of infinite regress. So I must have missed the difference between 'execution' and 'intent'?
Third: So, (and I'm not sure how to ask this more clearly) how does the GM decide what is 'worst' and 'best' effect of a given 'execution'?
What I'm trying (very clumsily) to get at is: Surely she must make some assumptions about the goals/ needs/ hopes/ fears/ values of the character in this situation in order to come up with 'best' and 'worst'? But isn't this a sort of covert way of detecting/ inventing/ assuming the character's 'intent' as he dangles off the outside of the tower (or steps through the window)?
I have this worrisome intuition that the story (or the game world events or whatever) are infinitely divisible... and that for some reason this creates a problem.
Cheers
Bwian
