(09-21-2015, 10:31 AM)Ignacius Wrote:(09-21-2015, 10:26 AM)Gegenji Wrote:(09-21-2015, 10:18 AM)Ignacius Wrote: In the case of eating a bagel, it likely doesn't make a difference. Â Most of this doesn't until a certain kind of context.
Understandable, but Kage made a point to mention that this was a curiosity on people using future tense and indefinite statements outside of a combat situation. Such as Doug and his bagel.
Obviously, if it's a combat or any manner of conflict situation, it's "better" for someone to leave an action open-ended to allow the other person or persons involved to react or even interrupt what is being done. Using a future tense - or a present/past tense that does not implicitly imply success - is recommended and even encouraged in these sorts of situations.
The matter at hand is when people are using it for mundane things. Again, such as Doug and his bagel. And, since it's such a small thing that will likely have little to no impact on whatever RP may or may not come from it... I would say that the tense used with Doug and his bagel is irrelevant in the grand scheme as things. Just as long as the message that Doug has a bagel and his current goal of eating it is understood.
Which is fine, but Kage's original post example is not eating a bagel. Â His example is correct in use for contested combat. Â I figured that's why he was asking. Â I highly doubt he's having lunch interrupted so often that he needs to make his bagel consumption subject to tactical checkmating.
Yeah, that's why I made my original post about using it in combat as well, leading to Kage going back and clarifying with an example being the "would head to the store" situation. Obviously in a situation of conflicted interest - where combat is the main situation of it - leaving what you are doing open is a best practice to follow.
However, it is all still rather circumstantial. While it's good to be open-ended, as long as someone isn't using their tense to "godmode" as situation ("I said I cut off your head, so it happened"), I think even combat could be written in any tense and the implications could still be understood. Grammatically janky perhaps, but if both sides understand what happened and are happy with the results... then it ultimately doesn't matter, as you eloquently mentioned earlier.
In the end, the usage of tense only matters as much as those participating feel it needs to be.
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