What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Ovinomancer]

That's . . . a pretty accurate assessment. I think that is generally @pemerton's position. It may not veer into "introducing entirely new elements" most of the time, though, but merely "re-frame an existing element based on character action declaration and resolution."

Thanks, I was pretty sure I grasped the core conceit -- as I said, I've played in that style of game and have enjoyed it. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] doesn't always do the best job at explaining his points, mostly because he uses weird vocabulary to do so. If you're not already in the know, it's hard to parse where he's going sometimes.

I think you perceive this as negative, but from my view this seems accurate. The whole point of avoiding "secret backstory" is exactly to avoid the kinds of "red herring," pixel-witching, auto-negating GM style that lead to little enjoyment for anyone except the GM, who gets to feel pleased with him/herself at how cleverly they're building a sense of "the unknown."

No, not at all. If I came across as thinking this is a negative, please let me assure you that's incorrect. I just think it's a different approach with a different conceptual model that makes it impossible to examine a single action declaration from a different context in a way that's meaningful. You could not, for example, pull any single action declaration from a DM driven game and evaluate it with any accuracy from a player driven game viewpoint. Hence my constant call out to chess and checkers. The games have many similarities, but you cannot evaluate the jumping of a piece in checkers with the rules of chess.

Maybe----if the PCs have earned the right to that framing, AND it fits a dramatic need to set that framing, AND it serves to make play enjoyable for all.

That's what I was driving at. I'm not claiming to be better at expressing this than I say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is.

Ah, see, this is where things slightly go off course, because you've forgotten what you said upstream earlier---that in player-driven play, they have the ability to add, inject, or reframe portions of the framing. And again, this all assumes they've earned the right to "act within" the framing, and it meets dramatic need.

Actually... yes and no. I was talking to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in with the specifics he mentioned in his post that the map is known in the fiction already and is an objective of the play right now. In that case, my statements make sense. If we're going with the map being a spur introduction, not previously determined to be in an objective of play, then, yes, my example goes a tad off course. It wasn't meant to be universal, as it's, again, hard to pin down the play in a way that's comparable without such artificial constraints on the play.

So, I think you're starting to conflate "illusionism" with "player-driven" here. The point of player-driven play is, if the dramatic needs and prior action declarations of the PCs haven't merited framing a scene where they're looking for the map, then why are they looking for a map? If they're not even supposed to be there (based on dramatic need), does it make any difference if they're allowed to search one side of the hall versus the other? If the scene frame isn't appropriate, giving them a false sense of agency by letting them search both sides of the hall seems a pretty poor compromise.

Yup, again, this is what I was using as my understanding, but I was trying to compare and contrast a similar setup of the fiction -- that the objective of the play was known -- that the objective was to find the map and everyone knows this. I was trying to spiral out from there.

The idea here isn't to deny the GM the ability to frame challenges. If (s)he wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need.

Totally, that's what I'm getting at -- that ability of the GM to introduce obstacles to the objective of play is similar in intent to the planned dungeons acting as an obstacle to the goal of play. I'm trading on the edges here, I don't plan dungeons to any level of specificity and move things around and allow additions in play due to player declarations, but I do write down some notes so I have a framework of the general challenges I present. I'm more DM-driven when I run, but I have a number of things I do that allow the players to establish their own fictions through their actions free and clear. I don't have a planned plot at all, and I'm not yet sure what the players are going to decide they ultimately want to do. Right now, their focused on establishing a safe base of operations and exploring the nearby lands. Suitable for 3rd level characters -- local issues, local goals. If they look like they're lagging, well, ninjas attack -- or, really, an NPC provides a prompt by bringing not a quest with a goal but a problem looking for a solution -- provided by the players.

The point is to allow the players the freedom to potentially re-frame the fiction based on their action declarations and successful mechanical resolution. How many of us have played games where we've attempted to sneak past those guards, only to have the GM say, "Great, you all succeed on your Stealth checks, but you didn't see the magical trap just inside the door, so you've alerted the guards."

Yep, it's happened to me. Almost exactly like that. Huge build up to sneaking past the guards, only to have that success totally negated by hidden, unknowable GM backstory.

Whereas, player driven play would say, "You've earned your success, and because you've earned your success, as GM, I'm to allow the next scene frame to move you past the guards, and closer to resolving your dramatic need."

It's a mindset more than anything. Yes, if you as GM really want to play out that piece of hidden backstory, and the magic trap now calls down the guards, and the PCs are now farther away from fulfilling their dramatic stakes, cool. Go right ahead. Totally your call.

I just know for me, I no longer find that kind of play interesting in the least.

I don't find your example remotely interesting at all and I don't play in those games at all either. If a DM isn't honestly presenting challenges, that's a play problem that goes outside of the styles we're talking about and addresses the social agreement in the game. I don't mind if such a thing happens and it's immediately apparent that it happened because of rash or unwise decisions by me -- ie, I knew such a trap was likely, had the means to detect it, and chose to risk it for some reason and got burned. I also trust that my DM won't add such things in just to punish me, and I certainly won't do so as a DM. I run a DM-driven game, but I foreshadow the hell out of everything. I don't do gotcha traps, I show that traps exist and that you should be wary of them and then the players ignore that it's on them. I don't have to work hard to get my players to make mistakes like that, I just have to work just enough that when they make the mistakes they're hitting their own heads with the heels of their hands.

And I like that -- I like foreshadowing, and it's an element that I find is very hard to achieve in player-driven games. You can foreshadow something, but it immediately becomes a play issue -- the players either run for it or they avoid it and you can't push it back in or string it out without violating the play concepts of the game. It's hard to put a slow burn pacing into player facing games. Not impossible, just harder. And that's because of the playstyle.

Hmm, this seems a fairly threadbare argument. In player-driven play, the player has the right to say to the GM, "I think we've earned the right to move past this small, incremental bit of minutiae that's not terribly interesting to me, and get to the heart of our dramatic stakes, don't you think?"

In a GM-driven game, the most likely response to that query is, "Stuff it."

I'm sorry you've played with such terrible DMs. Not sarcastic, but if you believe this, it's likely through experience, and I'm sorry -- those DMs sucked. Pacing is something that's a core function of DMing, and if your players are bored by some tedium in play, it's time to add ninjas and then have a long think after the game as to why and how you screwed up that badly.

Which of those choices offers more "player agency"?

I think this is a flawed question, which should be apparent by now. I don't think you can compare the agency between games because the deliver mechanisms and expectations are so different. There's a case to be made from the player driven side that player driven games include more agency, but there's also a case from DM-driven side that DM-driven games offer more agency (that one involves the fact that player-driven games cede some control over your character to the DM to use in both framing (you show up here and this is happening) and in failure resolutions (where the DM can dictate what the character does or thinks or beleives, depending on the stakes)). Both have points that are very important to their individual adherents but have very little meaning in the other context.

If your group has agreed that the smaller, incremental decision style is a fit for you, great . . . but are you REALLY sure your players have agreed to that contract? Because my last Savage Worlds fantasy campaign where I was a player and not a GM, I had no say in setting the dramatic stakes, and I found large swathes of that campaign tedious and boring.

And if the GM had asked me about it, I would have told him so.

I'm not going to take offense to the implication in that question, but, yes, yes I am absolutely sure, because it's been openly discussed. I have 2 players that dislike the additional responsibilities that player-driven games place upon them, and the rest are largely ambivalent. Again, I apologize that you have had bad DMs that never seek player input into stakes, but that's not how I run at all. Stakes are set by player declarations. Even, sometimes, the introduction of new elements of fiction.

I use a philosophy similar to some others on the board: I set the scene, with heavy foreshadowing in favor of secret keeping. The players declare actions in terms of what their characters do (and not "I make a perception check!"), and I either narrate the outcome without a roll or I ask for a roll with declared stakes. I don't ask for rolls as a rule unless there's uncertainty in the outcome and there's a cost to failure. I don't hide important play objectives, I place them behind challenges. The running example of the map in the study instead being in the kitchen is ridiculous to me, because if the objective of play was a map, then the objective is obvious or known -- you'd never look in the study if it was in the kitchen because it would obviously be in the kitchen. Getting to the kitchen would be the challenge, not searching for the map once you're there. If I were to run this scenario, the party would be well aware that the map they've decided they need (and they'd decide that) would be on the wall of the study, plain as day, but you'd have to get past the guards and the owner in some manner to get there. I'd have notes on the general layout of the house, some notes on the guards (combat stats, general attitudes), and some notes on the noble (same stuff, really), and that's about it. The players would engage these challenges however they want, and, upon achieving the study, get the objective. Hiding things behind 'guess the right combination of actions and wording' is f*ing boring, and I'd never run a game like that. Hell, I tried to run Storm King's Thunder and essentially jettisoned entire chapters and rewrote them because they were pixel bitches or had one prepared way through. I reminded myself why I hate adventures. I do love maps, though.

And, again, I've enjoyed my forays into player-driven games, and would gladly play again. I'd prefer not to run one, though, as I can handle improvising one character, but having to improvise against (or with, depends on the situation) multiple other players isn't something I enjoy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Okay - let's try this and see how your argument stacks up when you have to try and illustrate it.

I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.

Here's the question...given that those words now exist, is it your position that the teapot full of dragons now exists in my front garden?

It's a simple yes or no question, but I doubt you'll have the honesty not to try and moronically blert your way through a non-answer.

Yes or no?

I do so love my honesty being questioned right off the bat, as if I've acted, in any way, in a dishonest fashion towards you or anyone else in this thread at any time. I find your framing to be very rude and unhelpful, and would ask you moderate it. If you can't make a point without claiming others are dishonest, do me the favor of not responding to me anymore. Thank you.

That said, you've completely missed the point I was making, but I'll answer your question anyway.

Yes, a teapot full of dragons now exists in your front garden in the fiction you created. No, there is almost certainly not a teapot full of dragons in your front garden that can be seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted.

This, however, doesn't address my point, which was, in this case, specifically that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] claimed that Hound of the Baskervilles existed as a story but Sherlock Holmes does not. To put it in your example, this would be like claiming the teapot full of dragons exists but the dragons do not. It's nonsensical. Either the dragons and the teapot exist or they do not, unless there's some other reason the teapot full of dragons can exist while the dragons do not and, if so, state that reason. That was what I was saying in the part you quoted. It has nothing to do with me thinking that teapots full of dragons exist in a physical sense in any way.

But, as for fiction existing, I argue that it does. Fictions are ideas, and ideas have existence. Not physical existence you can touch. An imaginary orc cannot be touched or even seen by even the imaginer, but such sensations can be imagined to exist and described to others so as to share the idea. The idea others now have of your orc isn't the same, but is can be similar enough to call it shared. I can't share things that don't exist. Something is there to be shared.

To return to your teapot full of dragons in your front garden, at no point do I assume that this a truthful statement about a physical reality -- I don't believe that there is a touchable, visible teapot full of touchable, visible dragons in your front garden (I do believe in your touchable and visible front garden, though, or at least that you may actually have such a real thing). However, the fiction you created about a teapot of dragons in your front garden is a concept that you've managed to share with me -- you've given me this concept such that I can picture in my mind a teapot full of dragons in a front garden (sadly, it's a rather pathetic garden, but the teapot has a nice floral pattern and the dragons are iridescent green and adorable). You're shared something with me, given me an idea that is, at least in the broad strokes, just like the idea you have. That's real, that exists, else how did we share it?

Hopefully, by directly addressing your question and providing a full answer, I can avoid the return accusation of dishonesty.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I find mysteries are very hard to run in RPGs unless they are a total railroad, as the genre requires players to seek out clues and anomalies in the gameworld, and poke at the world to see what happens, and referees being human and fallible, with limited time to prepare, what they find some of the time is glitches in the simulation. Now these could be logical flaws, blind spots, errors of fact, continuity errors, etc and at least some of the time the players can't distinguish these unintended anomalies from actual clues.

Now there's a variety of ways with dealing with such errors so they don't distract the players too much. Most of them disappear into the general noise of the game, in any case, but players can happen to obsess about a spurious clue that wasn't supposed to be there at all, and spin grandiose theories around the most ephemeral of leads. Personally, I often come clean and admit it was a mistake and there's nothing there. I've seen too many referees stubbornly drive their campaign off a cliff because they were unwilling to admit they made a mistake.

IMO this is the difference between cause and effect in the real world and in a RPG, the real world doesn't glitch out over personal issues, but the gameworld might due to referee's lack of sleep, a bad day at work, or personal problems. In the real world properly conceived and executed experiments yield reliable predictable results, whereas in a conventional DM-run game that's too much to expect from most game systems or referees. RPGs aren't reliable simulations precisely because of the the squishy flawed fallible human in the loop.

So when a PC can't find footprints where she expected to, it could be because they weren't there, or because they should have been there but there was a mistake in the adventure module, or because the referee made a mistake and missed that part of the module. Mysteries call players out to investigate clues and anomalies, some of which equate to the player pointing out the mistakes in the referee's worldbuilding and plotting. The intricacies of mystery plots make presenting them a difficult process. There are often typos and errors in printed scenarios, and self-written work can have errors as well. Human error is always a possibility.

How each table deals with such errors varies a lot.

I agree in the sense of a passive mystery -- those mysteries that don't do anything until the players engage them the correct way. Whodunnits are passive mysteries, where you're trying to find and sort clues to find the "truth" of the events that have already taken place. These mysteries are hard in DM-driven games because the fiction generation necessary to find the truth is held by the DM and only parceled out to the players as they clear certain fictional gates. The problem with DM's holding information too tightly and ruining their games is apt here. This can be overcome by using a number of techinques to a greater or lesser extent -- the triple clue method, using "ninjas attack" (any bad guy) that happen to have clear clues with them when defeated to get groups unstuck, etc., but these all just try to paper over the worse issues of the passive mysteries.

In player driven games, it's both easier and weirder. Here, the endpoint cannot be determined, just the initial setup. At that point it's off to the races as the players invent their own clues and test them against the mechanics. The end result is wildly (but often entertainingly) unpredictable. System mechanics can act to constrain and funnel some of this, but the result is that you're not really solving a mystery in the classic sense, but rather building one as you go along and finding out the ending as a surprise.

I, in my DM-facing game, avoid passive mysteries in favor of active mysteries. In these, the events are still unfolding, and they come to the players. The DM can control the flow of information to achieve better pacing with the ultimate goal of having the players gain full knowledge of the mystery. The crux of play here isn't solving the mystery, it's what the players do with the information. I find this works well by increasingly releasing the fictional constraints and adopting player theories and actions to guide the mystery as you go along. It's a kind of middle ground, where you start with some strong themes and push them a few times until the players are working it out on their own and you only have to keep providing framing to let them move forward. Tight control at the beginning shifting to more and more player autonomy by the end with the players ultimately decides how they want to engage the revealed mystery as the climax.

 

[chaochou]

Where things are going sideways here is the concept of the fiction existing within itself - which it does - and what happens there.

No. That is pure meaningless gibberish. There is no 'inside' or 'outside'.

There's a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden. Your options are to add to the story or not. That's it. Add to story, in the real world. Or don't. End of options.

The words I write exist, but the things I write about don't. The dragons live in a snail. Now a shoe. Now they have turned into trampolining swans. They seem to lack causal power, those dragons. No fight at all. Look, I just turned them into an obsidian flute.

Causal power of chaochou: total Causal power of fictional things: none

Does this fiction exist? Yes. Do the teapot or dragon or shoes or flute or trampolining swans exist? No.

Fiction existing: check. Content of fiction not existing: check.

Case closed.

If you all want to pretend your games aren't authored by people playing the game, or that books aren't written by authors, go right ahead. I got nothing against self-deception as a playstyle.

I do have something against it as a mode of rpg-analysis, though.

 

[chaochou]

Yes, a teapot full of dragons now exists in your front garden in the fiction you created.

This is meaningless. There is no seperate existence 'in the fiction'. It is these words and nothing else.

The dragons are now a bacon sandwich. Now a children's swing.

I type real words. Things that don't exist do non-existent stuff.

There's no inside and outside. That's the way you and Lanefan choose to lie to yourselves. Which is a fine, popular and long-standing form of play. But a garbage form of rpg theory.

 

[pemerton]

So let me get this straight...you don’t like when the GM uses secret backstory to prevent the players from doing something that can’t be done?

I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.

I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.

Scenario 1
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?

Scenario 2
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?

My contention
The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.

It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).

There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 1 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.

If scenario 1 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.

Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because the map being in the kitchen (or wherever) is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.

 

[Emerikol]

I think a canned setting would be fine if the players were experiencing it for the first time. I have no problem using anything but I don’t like players coming in with expectations about the canned setting.

 

[Emerikol]

I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.

I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.

Scenario 1
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?

Scenario 2
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?

My contention
The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.

It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).

There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 2 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.

If scenario 2 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.

Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because the map being in the kitchen (or wherever) is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.

Sorry to quote everything but I’m on my phone.

Agency over the underlying world beyond the character is reserved to the GM. If there is an important map to be found I as GM know where it’s at. It can’t be found anywhere else. That is true of most major things. When though it’s something I hadn’t considered then I figure out a DC based on knowledge of the world and the player can roll for it. But such a thing would be central to the game only by happenstance.

Here is the thing. I want my players to feel like the world is a real place and they are their characters in that place. It’s why verisimilitude is so important to us. Far more than most groups. It’s also why in the past I’ve argued against dissociative mechanics. It’s that important to me. As soon as the world feels fake I’m out. I’m that way about movies and books as well. Not everyone is like me so no worries. Do as you like. I know why I do what I do though and it does matter to me.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 2 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.

The player doesn't author the orc's death, and neither do the dice. Only the DM has the power to say what actually happens within the narrative.

Players never author fiction. The DM is the only one capable of authoring fiction. The DM may rely on dice, if they are uncertain as to what happens next.

The only agency that a player has is to make decisions for their character. That is how we know this is a role-playing game.

Which part of this do you not understand? Or do you feign ignorance because you have nothing better to do than troll an online message board?

 

[pemerton]

On fiction and existence: this is a response to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]r, [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION] and [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION].

To begin: reading, listening, imagining etc are real processes that take place. Imagining involves causal processes in the brain. Listening also involves processes in the ears. Reading also involves processes in the eyes.

I am taking the above to be uncontenious, so if you disagree you're going to have to let me know explicitly.

There is more to these processes, too, which I will get to below.

The process in the brain when these things - reading, listening, imagining - occur involve the linguistic capacity of the person to a high degree. I'm not really across the science of this, and am going to describe it in more colloquial terms: the person who is reading, listening or imagining forms and entertains ideas. Assuming that they know what they are reading, listening to or imagining is a fiction, however, then they don't form beliefs (other than prsently irrelevant beliefs, such as "I am now reading Hound of the Baskervilles").

For instance, a person reading Hound of the Baskervilles forms ideas - such as the idea of a super-capable detective called Sherlock Holmes - but does not (unless s/he has mistaken it for a documentary report) form the belief that there exists, or once existed, a super-capable detecitve called Sherlock Holmes.

The causal process whereby those ideas are formed invovles not only the person's brain, but their eyes. But it is not confined to the brain and eyes of the reader. The causal processes also involves the use of physical materials (ink, paper) to create visually perceptible markings (writing) which - due to other causal processes around language learning - are apt to cause certain ideas to arise in the brain of the reader.

The question of how lanugage "encodes" ideas is complex, and seems largely unnecessary to address in this thread. It's probably enough to say that a book (or a speech, or an episode of quiet imagining) is a concrete thing that "eccodes" or representes an abstract thing (ie a set of ideas). The causal capacity of the book to produce ideas in a reader can't be explained simply by referring to the ink marks on the paper - it's necessary to note that they "encode" ideas in a systematic fashion (ie linguistically) and also to note that the reader has a capacity to apprehend that encoding (ie the reader has learned the language in which the book is written).

This is a good part of the sense in which fictions are real. There are further interesting questions about what constitutes a given fiction (eg why does my fanfic published on a Sherlock Holmes website not count as part of Hound of the Baskervilles). Upthread, discussing RPGing, I have simply glossed this as a type of social process whereby thje participants in the episode of RPGing arrive at a consensus on what their shared fiction is.

From the fact that fictions, and ideas, are real, it doesn't follow that their content is real. [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has given a quite straightforward example above. When I read his sentence "I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden" I understood it. It's a perfectly straightforward sentence of English, and I grasped its meaning - I formed the requisite idea in my brain.

That doesn't mean that there exists a dragon, a giant yellow teapot, etc - those are all purely imaginary.

There is an obvious similarity, in this respect, between fictions and false beliefs: just as fictional things don't exist, nor do (say) events that are falsely believed to have occurred. Eg if someone falsely believes that humans have travelled to Mars, that person's belief is a real thing, capable of exercising causal power (eg it migh tlead them to ask "When did humans first land on Mars?) - but obviously it doesn't follow that there ever existed such an event as the landing of humans on Mars. But as I said above, there is also a difference between false belief and imagintion, namely, that imagination doesn't involve belief. It's a different sort of propositional attitude.

Thus, to say that The Hound of the Baskervilles - a story - exists, but that Sherlock Holmes does not, is no more nonsensical than to say that a mistaken news report about a human landing upon Mars exists, but that no actual such landing has occured. Ie not only is it not nonsensical, it's the only tenable thing to believe! (Spoiler alert: likewise it is as obvious that a cultural practice around Santa Claus exists, as it is that Santa Claus is not real. This is not a paradox: it's common sense, as every child who has had their fantasy punctured can tell you.)

The fact that we can have stories (like Hound of the Baskervilles) that are about non-existent things (like Sherlock Holmes, or the hound) and that we can have cultural practices that are about and operate around non-existent things (like Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse) just reinforces the point that words and ideas can deal with non-existent things.

One consequence of the (I would say obvious) fact that imaginary things don't really exist is that we can imagine impossible things. In my Traveller game, we imagine starships that travel faster than light. In my D&D game, we imagine impossible magic, imposibly large insects, impossibly heavy flying creatures like dragons, impossible socieities and economies, etc.

If ideas could only be about existent things, then (i) false beliefs would be impossible, and (ii) so would imagination.

Finally, to say that fictional things exist in the fiction or exercise causal power in the fiction is not to say anything more than that we can imagine things (characters, orcs, swords, studies, maps), and we can imagine things that do things (eg we can imagine people kiling orcs with swords, or finding maps in studies). That is a pretty banal point. It tells us nothing about what might count as a useful technique for RPG action resolution.