Mechanics and Story

A

Alex319

Artisan
At the Mod Writers Workshop, it was mentioned that one should keep the mechanics of the world in mind when writing story. For example, resurrection is a thing that happens, so a story that includes lots of people getting killed in a battle probably should not include all of them permanently dying.

With that in mind I have a question about one of the stories at the roleplay event last weekend. In Duchess Iliana Tiberion's story about how she met her husband, one of the story elements included someone who was injured by arrows, and with his dying breath told (then-Acarthian Rider) Iliana to take a letter to another destination, then died.

Unless there was a highly non-standard effect involved, this is not possible according to the mechanics. If you are at -1 body, then you are bleeding out, and can't speak. If you are at positive body, then you are up, and will not "bleed out" unless you take another hit. If you are at 0 body, then you can't speak and won't die. There is no injury state in the game where you are about to die of your wounds but are still able to speak, thus this "dying breath" scenario cannot occur. (I believe the only effect in the standard rulebook that has any type of "damage over time" effect is Euphoria, an unlikely case in this scenario).

Is this "dying breath" scenario another thing that should be avoided when writing plots, or is there something I am not understanding here?
 
You are not understanding that this works for story sometimes... and her story has better dramatic effect because of this. Just accept it and pretend you play in a world where anything can happen... like if I shot you with a gun, you could probably get off a few words before you bleed out and die. Maybe he was a zero level no class person and they can bleed out at 1 body? Maybe? Maybe he got struck by a rare poisoned arrow that drained him? Pretend that there are things in the world that not everyone understands.... Sometimes story-line trumps game mechanics... what we are telling our PC guest writers, though, is stick to the basics and keep it consistent. Hope that helps.
 
I'm of the opinion plot should be able to "cheat" as much as it wants. The story should always trump the mechanics, especially if the story doesn't take agency away from the player characters. Mechanics are more for players to understand how their character interacts with the world at least in my opinion.
 
Also, I imagine that in a story about something that happened long ago, this doesn't pose a problem. If you were to incorporate an event like this into a mod, then you would have two problems:

- Since players might try to first aid/heal/life/etc. the person, you would have to figure out how the "bleeding out while conscious" effect interacts with the rest of the healing mechanics.
- A PC might think "normally arrows don't cause someone to bleed out while conscious, so there must be something fishy about his story or weird about the arrows, let's go investigate that instead" and get sent off-track.
 
Yeah, it's VERY unlikely that this will ever happen "on screen".
 
David posted in a different thread recently that the last year of Alliance was about "setting expectations". I think this applies here. If I was plot I would want to create an environment that PCs understood and set a "baseline" before I deviated from that baseline for cool effect. Mods from Players should be as baseline as possible to set those expectations. Just because one CAN cheat, doesn't mean it will always achieve the desired effect.
 
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