thread: 2009-07-13 : How About Some Q and A
On 2009-07-15, Bwian wrote:
Fascinating thread - thanks all.
*Vincent: Thanks for the quick response!
Sorry to drag you back to what is now ancient history; feel free to carry on if you are on a roll with the other stuff.
Your reply at 6 was helpful for me, especially (I think) when you wrote:
"The point of IIEE-based resolution is to resolve a character's intent into its final effect... through the character's _concrete action_, not abstractly." [my emphasis].
So the 'execution' is what the character _does_ in terms of 'the character's concrete action' - walking up to the wall, and looking at it, and climbing up?
And 'effect' is what the character _gets to/ achieves_ as a result of 'the character's concrete action' in terms of what the character wanted to occur - either 'hangin' out there' or 'gettin' in there'?
I still can't help thinking that climbing through the window is a 'concrete action'. Couldn't the original example have been played as two separate IIEEs? 1) Climb up to the window (outcomes: at the window, almost at the window but tired, splattered on the plascrete); 2) Climb in through the window (outcomes: inside the room, inside the room but scared, exhausted and hair mussed, splattered on the plascrete?)
If so, how did the group know to treat it as one resolution rather than two? After all, there was an 'and' in my description of the intended action (as you pointed out).
So maybe I still haven't got it? I seem to be going around a loop of action vs. outcome. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem if a player could arbitrarily select an intended outcome (if that's a phrase you use) at any scale? But this might create problems of its own?
Concrete action
I'm also curious about the 'concrete' in 'concrete action'.
This seems to mean that _abstract_ actions like 'managing', 'organising', 'ensuring', 'verifying', 'accepting', 'researching', 'thwarting' are _not_ generally acceptable in statements of intent?
From what you said it seems to imply using only unitary, concrete verbs in intent statements. I can 'climb the wall' but I can't 'overcome the wall'; and I can 'climb the wall' but I can't 'climb the social ladder'; and I can 'kidney punch the space tyrant', but I can't 'overthrow the space tyrant'?
IIEE as character intent
I found the clarification later in the thread that IIEE is about the _character's_ intent useful, as I was unclear about that. Most of the time this seems like this would be workable.
I can imagine it might get a bit tricky when one is dealing with a character's reflex or habitual responses (like a catch in slips or bragging about one's wealth). In these cases the character might act (and the player might have wanted the character to act) without adopting any self-conscious before-the-act _plan_ (assuming a whole bunch about how fictional people are constituted and function in the game-world).
I suppose in some ways this is similar to the example given of the player's wanting the water level to rise - the water has no self-aware desire to rise.
Cheers
Bwian
