thread: 2005-11-10 : Open House: Ask a Frequent Question...
On 2005-11-11, Vincent wrote:
John: Hey Vincent, when they talk about "disconnect" when you're playing a RPG, does that just mean "failure to communicate" or something? I've seen people use it different ways around here and the Forge, and it's not in the glossary or anything.
I dunno, probably. If you link to someone's confusing usage of it I'll take a look.
Ben: How do you divide clearly between fiction (we imagine this guy as a tough dude) and cues, in terms of resolution? Is an argument "we all know he's tough" sizably different in terms of your little diagram from "I have 'tough' written down on my sheet"? If so, where's the dividing line? Is it really the physical object? What about "I know I had 'tough' written on his sheet before I lost it"?
It's really the physical object.
The idea is not to distinguish the cues from the fiction. The idea is to distinguish the cues from the interactions of the players. Remember that in principle all cues are identical to a single quarter (which we sometimes flip), that unrelated to the fiction. When we name them to correspond to stuff in the fiction, that's a simple mnemonic device, not revelatory of their nature. It reminds us how we use them, it doesn't say what they are.
The purpose of the whole cloud-smiley-d6 thing isn't to talk about how we play, but to talk about how rules work. Many game rules do not refer to cues at all, simply coordinating the interactions of the players and the game's fiction.
In those terms, "we all know my guy's tough" and "I have tough on my guy's character sheet" are both interactions - inside the smiley faces, now, right? The only difference between them is that the latter refers to a cue (tough written on the character sheet) and the former does not.
(And about your question about tough written on a character sheet present on the table vs. tough written on a character sheet present only in memory: can the rules tell the difference? Of course not.)
Have I said enough? It should be easy to construct rules which refer to cues and rules which don't, to compare the two. "If you have 'tough' written on your character sheet, then if in the game's fiction your character drinks poison, you all should have her survive" (coordinating cues, interaction and fiction) vs. "if everyone agrees that your character is tough, then if in the game's fiction your character drinks poison, you all should have her survive" (coordinating interaction and fiction).
