What is *worldbuilding* for?

[hawkeyefan]

You can make up a story under which fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation.

Is anyone really doing that? Or are we all just talking about the fiction and how events within the fiction SEEM to influence each other?

Why did Boromir die? (oops spoiler alert!!!)

Because he was shot by orcs while trying to usher the hobbits to safety. That, or something very like it, is the answer you'll get if you ask that question.

The fact that the character died in the story was actually because Tolkein wanted to establish the stakes, and he wanted to break up the group of characters, and he wanted to set up Faramir's later introduction and struggle are the real answers.....but is anyone really confusing that?

Fictional continuity can be a desire in play. I don't think that having such a desire means one has "left the reservation". At worst, perhaps an argument has been constructed on shaky logic or wording.

No one is mistaking these events for real life.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have not made any such presumption.

Perhaps you've not outright stated it, but it certainly seems to be the case.

I asked simply if a GM playing Burning Wheel could introduce his own agenda into the narration...and you could not even acknowledge that such was possible. Instead, you asked what I was aiming for and then gave an example where the GM of course did not do it.

It's inherent to a GM-driven style of game that the GM drive. Hence, the players have less agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is evidenced by the fact that action declarations may fail not in virtue of the resolution mechanics, but because the GM has already established some unrevealed backstory in virtue of which the action can't succeed. It is further evidence by the fact that the GM will not be drawing the material for framing and consequence narration from stuff provided by the players themselves in the build and play of their PCs.

Who says the GM will not be drawing on the material from stuff provided by the players? This is going to vary by table.

The action declaration "failing" is something I disagree with you about, but ultimately, it does reduce player ability to introduce fictional elements to the game, so a game that does allow it will likely have more agency than a game without. But that's presuming all other areas of the games are balanced.

That's what a GM-driven style means! Of course if the GM-driven game is less GM-driven (eg the GM draws material from stuff provided by the players; the GM does not rely on unrevealed backstory for adjudication; etc) then the game will have more player agency, but precisely because it is less GM-driven!

Yes, this is my point....I don't think that it's a binary situation. I think all games contain elements of both "styles". In the past, I've been told I am wrong in that regard....that the game must be either one or the other. This thread seems to be putting forth that same concept.

Am I misunderstanding? Do you think that a game can be both player driven and GM driven? Or that it can contain elements of each?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Thoughts aren't abstract objects. They are concrete - located in time and space.

(Well, "thought" is ambiguous. Sometimes it is used to mean "meaning" or "proposition" or "content" - that's abstract. But the state of your brain that constitutes the fact that you're thinking whatever you're thinking right now - that's a concrete physical process in your brain.)

Likewise emotions.

Bafflegab. We clearly aren't discussing brain function, and I don't concede this argument, either. I'm uninterested in the side discussion it would entail, though.

No. You can use your brain to make things happen. You can use two (hammers, cables, kilograms of concrete, etc) to make things happen. The number 2 itself does not do anything, because it does not participate in causal processes, because (for starters) it's not located in time or space.

Having a location in time or space is not the full criterion of the Way of Negation for abstract vs concrete objects. In fact, using the first principle of physicality to satisfy the second criteria of causation is expressly bad logic. That entire argument even accepts that some things may not have a location in time and space but may still have causal properties.

Correct. But your concept of the number 2 is not the same thing as the number 2. The general point is that an idea of something isn't the same thing as the thing itself. I have an idea of Godzilla. That idea exists - it's in my brain. I'm prepared to say that the content/meaning of that idea exists - it's an abstract object. The idea in my brain expresses that content. So does the idea of Godzilla in someone else's brain - that's why it is possible for us to have "the same idea" ie to both have an idea that has the same content meaning.

But Godzillla doesn't exist. And is not the same as the idea of Godzilla. The idea of Godzilla can fit in my head. Even if Godzilla did exist, it's too big to fit in my head.

I can also have ideas about things that do exist. This isn't an argument that works -- you cannot find one example of a thing and then import the properties of that example to the entire class.

My story about my super-mathematician had a couple of points.

First was to point out that it's trivial to tell a story about impossible things.

Not argued.

Second was to point out that it's trivial to tell a story about inconsistent/contradictory things - the idea that any person squared the circle is contradictory; the idea that any person designed a perpetual motion machine is inconsistent, as the same causal processes that are necessary conditions of anyone being a person (eg basic physical and chemical processes constitutive of and necessary for the continuing existence of all living things) make it impossible that there should be such a things as a perpetual motion machine.

Also not argued.

Third was to point out that I can draw a line on consistency or inconsistency whereever I want. So I'm happy to tell a story about my super-mathematician doing these impossible things that involve self-contradiction and are actually inconsistent with my mathematician even existing, but I draw the line at my mathematician being in two places at once, and so insist that first the circle was squared, and then the perpetual motion machine designed.

Again, not argued.

What was argued is that I can imagine possible things, consistent things, and have an objective line on that consistency. This becomes difficult the more complex a situation I imagine, but a simple statement like, "The boy walked up the hill" can meet all of those criteria and still be fiction.

Again, you cannot take an example of impossible, inconsistent things and say that all such things are impossible and inconsistent. This is a basic logical failure -- going from the specific to the general.

The relevant constraints are (as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already pointed out) aesthetic ones - what conventions do I wish to follow, or perhaps to flout, in my storytelling? It's just laughable to say that a fictional construct of time in fiction to dictated how I authored the fiction. I mean, which construct do you even have in mind - the one that says the mathematician can't be in two places at once, or the one that says that perpetual motion machines are possible?

No fictional construct dictated anything. I decided to tell a story which conforms to some but not other ideas about what is possible in relation to time.

And yet, you authored the fiction that the mathematician cannot be in two places at once because he cannot be in two places at once. You used fictional concepts applied to your scenario (ie, I imagine the fictional world my mathematician inhabits spa has spatial properties consistent with the real world in this regard) to constrain the fiction you authored. Can you author you fiction about the mathematician without such constraints? Sure, but you didn't, you used another fictional concept to modify how you authored the fiction of you mathematician. The constraint you imagined caused you to author your fiction in a certain way.

Did it cause you to author the fiction? No. Just like a rock doesn't cause a window to break. But, absent the rock, the results change, just like absent your fictional constraint, the results change.

I don't really understand this, but in any event here is what I did in my example: I told a story about a super-mathematician who squares the circle and who designs perpetual motion machines, but who is unable to do both at once.

If this was a RPG, presumably we would have rules which say things like "Whenever a player declares that his/her PC is trying to perform a feat of impossible mathematics or science, follow procedureX XYZ." Much like the spellcasting rules found in many fantasy RPGs.

Question: do rules exist? According to your arguments, they cannot, as they are concepts. Note, there's a difference between the rules of an RPG and the physical arrangement of woodpulp and ink laid out in patterns so that you can transport those concepts.

If rules are concepts, and so abstract and non-existent, then they are like fiction (and, arguably, as they don't describe real events they are fictions) and you're arguing that this fiction defines how you can author fiction in an RPG.

(As I said, I don't understand what you mean by "without ever referring to any fiction whatsoever". If you mean "tell your story without telling your story", well that seems rather hard and I haven't done that. If you mean "tell your story about imaginary things without talking about any imaginary things" well I haven't done that either, for much the same reason. If you are assuming that to talk or think about something implies that it exists, well I refer you once again to Godzilla: from the fact that I've mentioned Godzilla several times in this post, it doesn't mean that Godzilla exists. From the fact that I've told a story about a super-mathemtician who can square the circle and design perpetual motion machines, it doesn't follow that any rule for constructing a square from a circle exists - there is no such rule - nor that any perpetual motion machine exists - there are no such machines.)

Godzilla does exist -- not as a 80 story tall atomic lizard, but as the concept of an 80-foot tall lizard. That concept exists, else how would I know what you're talking about. Is it a concrete object? No, clearly. It's an abstract one. But that doesn't eliminate it's existence because abstract objects exist, and can have causality.

But, thank you for admitting that you cannot discuss fiction without the fiction being involved. This means that your story must exist, else you should be able to discuss non-existent things by just referring to the set of things that doesn't exist.


NOTE: it occurs to me that your penchant for abusing the definition of words may again be at the forefront, so, what do you mean when you say 'exists.'

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't find this to be a cogent line of reasoning. Gravity isn't a convention in the real world. It happens. We describe it as a 'law of nature'. Take 100' fall onto a concrete surface, there's nothing like "just because I got 42 fractures last time doesn't mean it will hurt this time." People get locked up for their own good when they reason like this. So clearly there is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT about the causality that exists in the real world vs whatever you are talking about, which is simply "some people agreed to pretend to believe that their characters fell 100' and took 10d6 damage." I'm arguing that PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute. We aren't arguing about an opinion or something here, this is just reality talking. You can make up a story under which fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation. The two things are qualitatively different and should not be named using the same name.

What causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage? I'll wait.

Again, this is apples vs oranges. Causation isn't a convention, not in the real world, its an absolute objective property of the Universe we inhabit (@Pemerton, and all other philosophers in this thread, NOT A PEEP!!!!).

Cool. What was the first cause? Oh, sorry, did I step across the philosopher line?

Again, I ask, what causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage?

Huh? Fiction is fiction! Experiencing fiction can of course have, WILL have I should say, some sort of real-world consequences, but the fictional narrative and its fictional causality is only very tangentially related to any ACTUAL causality in the real world.

If you're argument is "the tale of the Red Wedding cannot break a window!" then, sure, we agree. But that's an extremely narrow view of causation. Especially if, while reading about the Red Wedding, I become upset by those fictional events and throw the book across the room and into the window, which breaks (actually, it was my wife that did this, and it wasn't a window, it was a vase). Did the fiction have any part of that causal chain? What if I read a lie that says that windows are actually aliens spying on us and I believe it and begin to break all the windows I see? The lie is fiction.

Clearly, there's a bit more to causation, even in the real world, than 'the book broke the window'. The book can't break the window by itself, either.

I don't entirely agree even with the aesthetic element of this argument. I think there are plenty of times when we agree (often, maybe even typically in a silent understood fashion) to just 'let it go' and make a narrative that has some aesthetically pleasing character to it (a moral tale, or just a pleasing story of revenge, survival, whatever) and not even worry about some critical thing would make the narrative utterly unbelievable if you attempted to pass it off as a description of events in the real world. I don't mean some spell or monster, I mean just basic stuff we know about how the world works. I don't even think D&D worlds FAINTLY RESEMBLE something that anyone would agree, on careful observation, can exist. The ecology is crazy, the economics are crazy, the politics are crazy, everything is crazy and pretty much exists to service telling a certain kind of story. Creating a certain narrative logic, rising and falling tension, etc. Those are the things that matter, not pretend causality that we mostly turn a blind eye to anyway except when people mysteriously get hung up on one tiny detail even though the whole forest is really paper mache.

Again, that an example exists where you do not do a thing doesn't mean that, at all other times, you also do not do that thing. This is a flawed argument -- going from the specific to the general, from an example to assuming it's all just like the examples. Examples illuminate general concepts, they do not define them (generally).

To ask again: what causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage?

 

[Lanefan]

I don't find this to be a cogent line of reasoning. Gravity isn't a convention in the real world. It happens. We describe it as a 'law of nature'. Take 100' fall onto a concrete surface, there's nothing like "just because I got 42 fractures last time doesn't mean it will hurt this time." People get locked up for their own good when they reason like this. So clearly there is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT about the causality that exists in the real world vs whatever you are talking about, which is simply "some people agreed to pretend to believe that their characters fell 100' and took 10d6 damage." I'm arguing that PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute. We aren't arguing about an opinion or something here, this is just reality talking. You can make up a story under which fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation.

No, I'm still here on the reservation, thanks; but to me the two bits I've bolded here are in effect the same thing. In the fiction, event A caused event B to happen; and in reality the narration or mechanics of event A caused the subsequent narration or mechanics of event B at the table.

They mirror.

Now, I'll re-quote an excerpt from the above quote:

PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute.

Not from an immersive standpoint, a valid means of both play and analysis of said play which you seem to be completely and very intentionally rejecting.

From the character's point of view event A caused event B, and the character's immersed player would in theory also see it as such and react to it on that level. Who cares what happens at the real-world table? That's a minor irrelevant distraction - OK, dice get rolled, game mechanics get involved, blah, blah - to what's more important at this point: the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM.

Again, this is apples vs oranges. Causation isn't a convention, not in the real world, its an absolute objective property of the Universe we inhabit

Which by default means that if the game world is to reflect any sort of reality (which IMO it should try to where and how it can) then causation within the fiction is going to be every bit as much an absolute objective property as seen by those within the fiction - the inhabitants of the game world. And as it's those eyes through which the immersive player is looking.....

We as real-world players and DMs (myself included!) just need to learn better how to use this in-game logic and causality to provide a more consistent play experience and more engaging (and believable, and immersive) narration.

Lanefan

 

[innerdude]

From the character's point of view event A caused event B, and the character's immersed player would in theory also see it as such and react to it on that level. Who cares what happens at the real-world table? That's a minor irrelevant distraction - OK, dice get rolled, game mechanics get involved, blah, blah - to what's more important at this point: the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM.

Which by default means that if the game world is to reflect any sort of reality (which IMO it should try to where and how it can) then causation within the fiction is going to be every bit as much an absolute objective property as seen by those within the fiction - the inhabitants of the game world. And as it's those eyes through which the immersive player is looking.....

We as real-world players and DMs (myself included!) just need to learn better how to use this in-game logic and causality to provide a more consistent play experience and more engaging (and believable, and immersive) narration.

At one point in my RPG play and GM-ing experience, I would have felt that the bolded part of the quote above was paramount to my enjoyment of RPG play. "Believable" and "immersive" play was the whole purpose in playing. I've always been a very "actor stance" player, more so than anyone else in the groups with which I've played. The best moments playing RPGs for me were the times I felt like I could really stay in the character's head.

The problem for me eventually became, it didn't matter how much I could "stay in my character's head" when my character never actually seemed to be pursuing something relevant to their framed fictional positioning. There was always tension between the things my character would do in the game, and the things that should have been intrinsic to their circumstances.

So at points throughout play, the immersion would dim, as my character would be led from one GM plot hook to another, because that's what was in front of us.

Too, my enjoyment would wane significantly when the party would get "stuck"---we somehow missed the GM's clues, and then he'd get exasperated and have to throw in some random bit of "deus ex machina" to get things back on track. One of the issues of GM-led games is that GMs---myself included---can rarely conceive of all of the potential connections between pieces in the game world. One of the most common logical fallacies is "narrow framing." The world is generally much more interconnected than we comprehend, and the problem of narrow framing only grows in an RPG when the GM is the sole arbiter of what exists in the fiction. As an "actor stance" player, I've often, OFTEN felt that my character would be significantly more self-aware and comprehending of their own circumstances than what was being presented by the GM.

The ability for a player to author fiction becomes immersive when the player is able to set their character into the fictional frame in ways that they feel are important.

 

[pemerton]

In the fiction, event A caused event B to happen; and in reality the narration or mechanics of event A caused the subsequent narration or mechanics of event B at the table.

They mirror.

At the table:

Player: "I draw my knife and throw it at the orc!"
GM: "OK, make an attack roll"

<dice are rolled, numbers compared, rules applied, etc>

GM: "Your knife lodges in the orc's chest. It falls down dead."​

That is a causal process, primarily social in its character but there is also the rolling of dice in there - a more simple bio-mechanical process - which provides triggers for varioius parts of the social process (eg one part of the social process involves comparing the number rolled on a die to another number that is salient in the social context).

As part of the social events described, the participants all imagine a knife being thrown and killing an orc. To describe this as "mirroring" doesn't seem to add anything.

Another example:

Player: "I cast a Death Spell!"

<player rolls dice; GM consults charts, notes, etc>

GM: "All of the orcs are dead - your magic snuffs out their spirits. But the ogre that was with them survives."​

This is similar to the first example, except that it is far less clear what the participants are imagining. What is casting a spell? Given that (unlike throwing a knife) that is a purely imaginary, impossible thing, each player probably evnisages it differently. And why did the orcs die? The AD&D PHB (p 82) tells us that the victims are slain instantly and irrevocably. But by what process? The GM has embellished it as "snuffing out their spirits" - but what does that even mean? What causal process does it describe?

Talking of "mirroring" here seems to presuppose that the imaginary causation can be reflected somehow - but given that we don't even know what that was, I'm pretty confident I'm not seeing any reflection of it anywhere. There's just storytelling.

Another example:

GM rolls wandering monster die. It comes up 6. GM rolls on a table. The result is "6 orcs".

GM: "You hear a noise ahead of you - round the corner of the dungeon corridor come 6 orcs."

Player of the half-orc PC: "I call out to them in Orcish - 'What are you doing here? Maybe we can help you!'"

<reaction dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc - the net results is "favourable reaction">

GM: "The lead orc replies in Orcish - 'I am Grusk of the Vile Rune tribe. We are searching for the Hidden Grotto of Luthic. If you can tell us how to find it, we will let you live!'"​

Again, the principle causal process here is social, but again there are interspersed moments of dice-rolling. Notice that the presence of the orcs in the dungeon is established, as part of the fiction, before the reason for them being there is established. This is typical of any random encounter generation process - the rules first tell us that something is encountered, and then require the game participants - typically the GM - to author some further fiction that establishes elements of backstory for the encountered creature.

To describe this as "mirroring" seems positively misleading: acts of authorship that occur in time order A, B describe events which, in the fiction, occur in time order B, A.

"Mirroring" is, at best, an uohelpful metaphor. As the second and third examples show, though, it's more than that. It's an exercise in obscurantism.

PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute.

Not from an immersive standpoint, a valid means of both play and analysis of said play which you seem to be completely and very intentionally rejecting.

From the character's point of view event A caused event B, and the character's immersed player would in theory also see it as such and react to it on that level. Who cares what happens at the real-world table? That's a minor irrelevant distraction - OK, dice get rolled, game mechanics get involved, blah, blah - to what's more important at this point: the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM.

The "immersive standpoint" is not a valid means of analysing play. That is to say, you CANNOT explain how roleplaying works by pretending you're Falstaff the Fighter. Just the same as Robert Downey Jr can't explain to you how he played the character of Iron Man by pretending to be Iron Man. Or JRRT can't tell you how he wrote LotR by pretending to be Bilbo or Frodo.

I've had an interesting experience of this matter in my own household quite recently. My daughter recently received a copy of The Princess Bride. As you may know, the book contains an introuction in which the author explains how his (grand?)father read him the story, how he (the author) abridged the book by getting rid of all the boring bits, etc.

That introduction is a fiction. A story. Just as, in the movie version, Peter Falk as the grandfather is just as fictional as the evetns involving Buttercup, Westley and the rest.

Now my daughter thinks that introduction is real, and when I try to explain to her that it is, itself, a literary device, she get's quite angry at me, asking "Why would the author lie?" It's kind of cute, but until my daughter comes to realise that the introduction is a device, and that there is no unabrdiged version of The Princess Bride, she is not going to be capable of offering a fully coherent analysis of the book.

When playing a RPG, the player can - if s/he wishes - ignore the fact that the GM made up a reason for the orcs to be in the dungeon after rolling the wandering monster dice that told everyone that there are orcs in the dungon. But the player can't give any coherent account of how the game actually works until s/he recognises that fact. For instance, you can't write GM advice about how to use wandering monsters until you are prepared to write something like "After rolling on the table to determine what creature is encountered, it is your job as GM to determine the backstory of the encountered creatures, their reason for wandering the dungeon corridors, etc."

Obviously the language of "mirroring" has absolutely nothing to offer in writing that instructional text for GMs. And it's equally obvious that you can't just tell the GM to focus on "the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM." After rolling on the wandering monster charts the GM can focus on those imaginary events as much as s/he likes, but that is not going to tell her what the orcs are doing in the dungeon. S/he's going to have to make something up!

(The same thing applies to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s idea that the players can "guess" how many people are in the crowd. The GM can "guess" as much as s/he likes, but until s/he actually performs an act of autorship there will be no particular number which is the number of people in the crowd.)

We as real-world players and DMs (myself included!) just need to learn better how to use this in-game logic and causality to provide a more consistent play experience and more engaging (and believable, and immersive) narration.

"Using this in-game logic and causality to provide a play experince" is just an obscure way of saying "making things up". Whisch is [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point: the "in-game logic" is convention and genre conceit. So it is a convetion that we allow stories about dragons, even though from many points of view (biomecahnics, aerodynamics, etc) they are impossible.

Or return to the example of the fireball cast underwater. With a fireball spell, we are already talking about an event that is literally impossible: from nowhere, energy is conjured which has the superficial markers of combustion (eg flames) but is not actuallly combusting any material. Does it consume oxygen? Who knows?! There's certainly never been any rule I'm aware of for oxygen dperivation resulting from casting fireballl spells in enclosed spaces. So will the fireball burn underwater? This is a decision about genre, flavour, colour - call it what you like - but the idea that it's more "realistic" that the fire can't burn underwater, than that (say) water caues a penalty to attack with fire spells (which is the 4e approach), or that it doesn't make any difference that the spell is being cast underwater (which is a perfectly viable if less flavoursome approach) is just bizrre.

if the game world is to reflect any sort of reality (which IMO it should try to where and how it can) then causation within the fiction is going to be every bit as much an absolute objective property as seen by those within the fiction - the inhabitants of the game world.

All that bolded bit means is that you're telling a story about characters who believe in causation, and who live in a world governed by causal laws. Which is somewhat implausible for a fantasy RPG, if you think about it - those characters know that uncaused events (ie magic), or events caused by subjective concerns like the will of the gods, happen all the time!

 

[pemerton]

One of the issues of GM-led games is that GMs---myself included---can rarely conceive of all of the potential connections between pieces in the game world. One of the most common logical fallacies is "narrow framing." The world is generally much more interconnected than we comprehend, and the problem of narrow framing only grows in an RPG when the GM is the sole arbiter of what exists in the fiction. As an "actor stance" player, I've often, OFTEN felt that my character would be significantly more self-aware and comprehending of their own circumstances than what was being presented by the GM.

This is another, very clear way of putting the point I tried to make in the OP - the dungeon is a very (I woudl say artificially) constrained environment, which makes it possible (if the GM and players share the same basic conceits of play) for the GM to manage the connections that you talk about.

But as soon as we start having adventurese take place in what is (notionally, at least) a "real" world it breaks down.

It's not a surprise that so much fantasy RPGing involves characters who are more like Conan - strangers in the worlds they travel through, with few or no connections to the society in which they live (although this is true only for some Conan stories; in others he encounters characters - NPCs, in RPG terms - with whom he has had past dealings) - than like the Dragonlance or LotR heroes, who are already strongly embedded in rich social situations, which they draw upon to give themselves strength, knowledge, etc.

The problem for me eventually became, it didn't matter how much I could "stay in my character's head" when my character never actually seemed to be pursuing something relevant to their framed fictional positioning. There was always tension between the things my character would do in the game, and the things that should have been intrinsic to their circumstances.

So at points throughout play, the immersion would dim, as my character would be led from one GM plot hook to another, because that's what was in front of us.

If you've never read Christopher Kubasik's "interactive toolkit" you might find it interesting - among other things, he talks directly about this issue of disconnect between character as conceived by the player, and the actual events of play as dictated by the GMing techniques used, which seem to contracit that self-conception.

This is also why when, upthread, I have said that as a player I want to play my character I have not just been saying "I want to make my own action declarations." I mean what I take you to be getting at - if my character is all about family and loyalty to the order, then I want to play a game where family and loyalty to the order matter. Not a game where I'm going on some fetch quest to get a NPC wizard the mushroom he needs for his magic soup, fighting random myconids and bullywugs along the way.

 

[pemerton]

So here's a test for you then. Using the 3.5 rules. While playing D&D, come up with a way to go from the player declaration of UMD on the wand to the fireball happening, without having to go to the fiction during the process. If you you can do that, I'll concede the point that the fiction isn't part of the cause and effect.

Going to the fiction here means performing an act of imagining stuff while talking to your friends.

Here is the process, in rough outline:

Player: "I take the wand out of my backpack and concentrate on it - I want to activate it's magic."

GM: "OK, make a Use Magic Device check."

<dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc>

GM: "OK, your check succeeds. A fireball blasts out of the wand!"

Player: "Cool!"​

The fiction does not play any causal role. The player and GM are engaged in a relatively complex social process, which itself is - at certain points - mediated through simpler bio-mechanical processes like rolling dice.

The fact that the player and GM both agree that, in the shared fiction, the player's character is holding the wand and concentrating on it, is a part of the causal process. That doesn't mean that the PC, the wand, the backpack, the fireball, etc play any causal role.

Similarly: a production of Othello won't get very far if those on the stage can't agree who is being Othello, who Iago and so on. Just like RPGers, they have to coordinate their imaginations to establish a shared fiction. But that doesn't mean that the purely imaginary characters Othello, Iago etc are exercising any causal power.

These imaginary things are imaginary. They don't make us do things. We make ourselves do things, in part because we agree with others to engage in various feats of imagination.

 

[pemerton]

Who says the GM will not be drawing on the material from stuff provided by the players? This is going to vary by table.

You're the one who said we were talking about GM-driven games - I'm just following your lead!

If, in fact, the players are contributing the key material (eg the stakes, the context, the motivations that are going to be actually salient in play - see my reply just above to [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] - etc) then why would you describe it as GM-driven?

I think all games contain elements of both "styles". In the past, I've been told I am wrong in that regard....that the game must be either one or the other. This thread seems to be putting forth that same concept.

Am I misunderstanding? Do you think that a game can be both player driven and GM driven? Or that it can contain elements of each?

I think that saying that "all games contain elements of both "styles"" is, in the context of a thread like this, mostly unhelpful. It adds nothing to the analysis, and tends to make everything dissolve into porridge. It makes it impossible, for instance, for [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] to make the point he just made in his most recent post. It means that we can't talk about the difference between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example of the GM making up all this off-screen fiction about the harlot, and the way that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] might conceivably have produced similar fiction using DungeonWorld.

I honestly don't know much about how you run your game. I haven't read a lot of actual play examples from it. You persist in calling it GM-driven (as best I can tell from your posts and my recollection of them) but you also say that the players have a lot of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction, and I am left trying to understand what you have in mind.

All I can say is stuff like this: if, at key moments of crunch (eg trying to find the important map; trying to persuade an NPC to accept a bribe; etc) the outcome depends to a significant extent on what the GM decided about the fiction in advance (eg s/he wrote in her notes that the map is in the kitchen; she has already made a note that the only official in town who will take a bribe is Old Ludo the cemetery gatekeeper; etc), or what the GM secretly decides about the fiction at that moment; then the players are, at that key moment of play, exercising little agency over the content of the shared fiction.

Or stuff like this: if your game is run in a similar way to what the Alexandrian describes with his "three clue rule" and "node based design", then you are running a game in which most of the agency over the content of the shared fiction resides with the GM.

If sometimes your game is like that, but sometimes like something else, then that means that sometimes the GM is the predominant author of the shared fiction, and at other times the players have agency over it. That sort of precision is - in the context of a thread whose aim is analysis - far more helpful than a bland statement that tries to average everything out. (For the same reason that, when you're analysing human thermal comfort, it sheds little light on the matter to describe the person whose head is in the fridge and feet are in the oven as having the same overall thermal experience as the person who is in a room heated to 40 degrees.)