A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

Much like how finding a painting in a haunted house may not mean that the painting is supernatural, but it introduces the possibility.

The possibility existed before it was found. There is a reality that exists in the game outside what the players are hearing from the GM. And once found, that painting is either supernatural or it isn't. It doesn't become supernatural the moment its nature was revealed to the party (unless the GM is ad libbing everything). The idea that everything is fuzzy and in flux until the players see it or encounter it, to me runs very counter to how a typical sandbox and living world GM would think of things in the setting. Much of the point is to create a sense of a real concrete world outside the player characters. And a key way of doing that is trying to be consistent with these kinds of details. Now the parts can move around (an NPC doesn't have to be in the same room waiting for the party to get there: this is actually one of the main examples used in "Living Adventure" discussions: the NPCs are alive and move around with their own goals, like PCs). But the point is the GM is meant to take things like NPC motives and goals, very seriously when deciding what that NPC is doing, and where it is (not simply decide arbitrarily that the NPC is in location Z because that is convenient for some other goal----like having a plot or something)

 

[pemerton]

Bob's character kills Joe's character in the fiction. This causes Joe to throw a d6 at Bob in the real world.

<snip>

Fiction ==> real world causality seems pretty cut and dried from here.

The fiction doesn't cause Joe to throw a die at Bob. Bob's action in the real world - ie his act of changing the shared fiction so that Joe's character is dead - is what makes Bob angry.

Imaginary things don't exercise real causal power. To a significant extent that's what makes them imaginary!

 

[pemerton]

There is a reality that exists in the game outside what the players are hearing from the GM.

Where does this reality exist?

The City of Greyhawk has a wall about it. That wall is made, at least in part, of stones. How many stones are in this wall? Where do I look to learn this "fact" about this particular "reality"? I don't believe that Gyagx or anyone else has ever told us what they think the answer is.

 

[Fenris-77]

Outside of what is established in play there is no 'reality' in the game. It simply doesn't exist. Essentially the whole shebang is stuffed inside Schrodinger's box, waiting to be observed. There's more likely and less likely, sure, especially in a bought setting like Greyhawk, but none of it exists somehow outside of what has happened at the table, not in any kind of determined state.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Outside of what is established in play there is no 'reality' in the game. It simply doesn't exist. Essentially the whole shebang is stuffed inside Schrodinger's box, waiting to be observed. There's more likely and less likely, sure, especially in a bought setting like Greyhawk, but none of it exists somehow outside of what has happened at the table, not in any kind of determined state.

no one is saying it is real. Even the things that happen in play have no true reality. what is being said is that it has the same level of reality as what is established in play if the GM has already made a firm choice (whether or not that has yet been shared it is known to exist in the setting).

EDIT: The above quote is @Fenris-77, not Lanefan. For whatever reason the formatting is not allowing me to adjust it

 

[Bedrockgames]

The City of Greyhawk has a wall about it. That wall is made, at least in part, of stones. How many stones are in this wall? Where do I look to learn this "fact" about this particular "reality"? I don't believe that Gyagx or anyone else has ever told us what they think the answer is.

Dear lord

 

[Bedrockgames]

Where does this reality exist?

In the mind of the GM, in the notes of the GM, and in the logic that the GM uses to extrapolate details and determine accidental qualities of the things in the setting. If I decide Rupert the Elf lives at 23 Chestnut Street on Monday, and the players ask me who lives at 23 chestnut street on Thursday, his existence there wasn't fluid prior to them asking.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There are all sorts of ways that something can be established in the shared fiction. One of those ways is by the GM referencing prepared material, thinking offscreen, and making judgement calls based on what they think is likely to be true. The world does not suddenly really become in motion because of that. The GM is still animating it. I have played and run plenty of games like this. It's good stuff,

I don't think we disagree a whole lot. But what I will say is I think there are different procedures and methods for determining this stuff, and some are more grounded in setting down objective details than others. But the aim of the GM is to fold all those things into the living world, and to treat them as live forces. For example a random encounter doesn't exist until you roll it, that is for certain. But when I roll a random encounter I do try to give it a sound reason for being there. And if that encounter result is an existing NPC, then I look to that NPCs motivations, etc. But this is different from a sect that I've established in my notes as existing in Flower Bridge Village, at Red Lotus Manor. That exists in my mind and in my notes before the players go there or ask about it. I may get some clarity about the sect once the players arrive for sure. I don't want to paint an overly rigid image of what is going on just to fend off some of the more extreme edge cases being used in this discussion. And that is important, the interaction with the players cause me to think more clearly about the place. But those details aside, Red Lotus Sect existed, in the way things can exist in a game world (not actual real world existence) well before it was set in play. Sometimes I have a technique I employ where I write things down so they are set right before the players go there. For example if the players go into town looking for a fish monger, I make a quick mental map of whether that is reasonable (is there a water source with plentiful fish), then I decide if the there is a fish monger, who he is, some key details like his wife is cheating on him with the proprietor of the Fragrant Word Teahouse, etc. I do that because I want that stuff set in order to create the impression of a real world and to force myself to have fidelity to that world. It is true these details are being made up, but whether they are being made up two weeks before or two seconds before, it is coming into being in the setting prior to the players experiencing it directly. Now that won't happen in every case. you can't forsee everything, and you can't rigidly run a game just to adhere to a concept. But I do find these kinds of techniques and this approach generally quite useful because it does all help contribute to the sense of a world the players are exlporing, rather than one being created by their actions.

 

[Fenris-77]

no one is saying it is real. Even the things that happen in play have no true reality. what is being said is that it has the same level of reality as what is established in play if the GM has already made a firm choice (whether or not that has yet been shared it is known to exist in the setting).

Sure, GM decisions behind the screen can firm things up, but only for him, and only partially. That is not, IMO, the same level of reality at all. It could be of course, and sometimes it even is, but not always, and I'd say even mostly not. I think there's a sticky can of worms looming about 'firm decisions' but that doesn't really change my point. One of the reasons I brought this up is that its one good way to examine agency. Stuff done both before hand and behind the screen is being produced de novo and not in response to play. That's not a bad thing or a good thing, just a thing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Do you guys understand that you're arguing over which parts of the imaginary reality are real?