Re: mechanics of surprise

On Sat, 3 Mar 2007, Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
> These three desires are entirely compatible, if you drop the implicit
> requirement that mechanics are representational -- ie, that each
> mechanical bit corresponds directly to some fictional bit. Then it's
> easy to satisfy these three particular desires.

I'm curious how you think that's true.  Again, the conditions that Erol 
specified were:

> In article <49ofu25erb02q7dgaejtkqjk6s567riqck@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Erol K Bayburt
wrote:
>> 1. To be able to slay monsters with a single mighty blow, or at least
>> a small number of attacks, [high Pace of Decision]

>> 2. To be able to withstand many attacks, or attack attempts by
>> monsters against them, [low Pace of Decision]

>> 3. To have the same rules apply to both their PCs and to the
>> NPCs/monsters.

Regardless of whether the mechanics are representational or not, if you 
apply condition 3, that the same rules apply to both PCs and 
NPCs/monsters, then how can the Pace of Decision differ between the PCs 
and the NPCs/monsters?  Perhaps an example of what you have in mind?

John Morrow