anyway.

Ah. That's a thing. I want to say it's a "no brainer" (excuse the pun), but I think the introduction of a very specific visual image associated with "murderous intent" (and having full authority to do so) is more important than that.

Is there some context I'm missing here? Where are the threads that suggest this is controversial?

-Marco

Oh, no threads. It's probably not controversial.

I think it's a neat connection; I'm all pleased with myself for drawing it.

It may turn out to be groundwork for this thing I want to say about "setting" the supernatural dial in Dogs in the Vineyard, which may in turn turn out to be controversial, but I don't know yet.

I know when players say, "I kill him," it's interpreted as, "I'm now going to roll dice to attempt to kill him." With the GM, it a whole different ballgame. Say, before rolling dice, the GM says, "He stabs you in the stomach and your guts spill out" everyone at the table jumps.

The trick works nicely when the system invalidates a declared intention. But if someone (with authority enough, let us say a GM as a director) tries to do it directly, telling that something happens and afterwards saying it was a delusion, everyone gets annoyed. It is part of the social mechanics of the game. What you say using your authority is always relevant for the audience. And it is measured according to the authority you have at that very moment.

Hiya Vincent,

I remember we talked about this before in the context of IRC play, so I'd just thought I'd not that again here:

While saying stuff that turns out not to be true as a graphic way of stating intent works just fine in face to face, where narration in any case is an ephemeral thing that is forgottten about almost as soon as it is said, in play on IRC where narration is stored as text in a log, it requires more care.

In an IRC environment, I think it's necessary to set out explicitly at the start that narrated events haven't always actually happened if invalidated by later narration and/or to do the invalidation explicitly, like by typing "IGNORE PREVIOUS SENTENCE" or something.

Then again, very skilled IRC players might simply type new lines which recontextualise now invalid narration as fantasies/expressionistic touches/etc.

It depends a lot on narration style, I guess. The idea that narration might contain more than a mere statement of the fictional events, or "flavour text" for the broad establishment of mood, is a little-explored area in RPGs, I think.

While saying stuff that turns out not to be true as a graphic way of stating intent works just fine in face to face, where narration in any case is an ephemeral thing that is forgottten about almost as soon as it is said ...

Hmm. This is often the case, but what if you want it to not be forgotten, or not always forgotten. And down the road Mitch could have Peter say about Ned, "I don't trust him, he wants to see me dead—I can see it in his eyes," with little dispute from the other players.

Hey Vincent,

Do you think because so much of roleplaying revolves around the idea of consensus around "what happens" that people have become uncomfortable with playing with ambiguity around what happens?