That Thread in Which We Ruminate on the Confluence of Actor Stance, Immersion, and "Playing as if I Was My Character"

[pemerton]

Also, it is CRAZY the irrelevant nothingburgers that we can spend pages and pages arguing over.

Yes.

Baker is using negotiation to mean the reaching of an agreement. That's it. It's not that complicated.

The GM gets to decide and everyone is obliged to go along with that is obviously one way of reaching agreement. It is a constraint on "raw" negotiation. Just like Vincent says!

What's the argument about?

 

[Umbran]

RPGing involves the creation of shared fiction; that's the main thing that distinguishes it from a boardgame.

Because the fiction is shared, there needs to be a means of establishing agreement about its content. This is what Vincent Baker calls negotiation - the process whereby a group of humans reaches agreement.

Sure. The nomenclature wasn't a hangup for me.

The key point that Vincent Baker is making is that agreement has to be reached, and that this is what game mechanics facilitate.

Broadly speaking, again, I am with you. However... (there's always a however)...

I walk into a cooking school, and the chef/teacher/expert holds up a small knife, and intones, "This is a paring knife. To pare is to cut the skin or rind off a vegetable. That is what this knife is for!"

And I, the home cook, think, "Sure, that knife is used for paring. But, I also use it for a ton of other small cutting tasks, because it is a very handy knife!" And sure, I can see how the high-end professional has space and budget to have tools with one, and only one function. But professional kitchens have floor space on the order of my entire home! I can't have everything be a single task tool - my tools are multitaskers, whether they are intended for the job or not.

Thus my comment upthread. Rules do what you are saying, sure. But the GM running a game at home as a practical matter, has to lean on them for more than that.

A further comment on the role of authority:

Here is what Vincent Baker says (as per my post 121 upthread): Mechanics . . . exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table.

I would say that one well-known function of authority is to ease and constrain negotiation between the various parties. Including the authority and those subject to it.

Sure. The exercise of authority is basically the creation of ad hoc rules - and we then have reduced the matter to the previous case.

 

[Umbran]

With all due respect, I may have played the music, but you chose to dance.

Heh. I know exactly what I chose to do, and why. It has less to do with your music than my user icon. But that's neither here nor there.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Heh. I know exactly what I chose to do, and why. It has less to do with your music than my user icon. But that's neither here nor there.

Well, at least you actually put forth an argument above, so I guess this is a win.

 

[pemerton]

The exercise of authority is basically the creation of ad hoc rules

Huh? At least in rule-of-law societies, most authority is supposed to be exercised in accordance with pre-declared rules, not ad hoc ones!

Even in RPGing, I don't think the exercise of authority - be that GM or player authority - needs to be in accordance with ad hoc rules.

 

[Umbran]

Well, at least you actually put forth an argument above, so I guess this is a win.

One more step for the win. The following:

Ovinomancer: Strawman! -> that nonsense above.
pemerton: merely continue to include in next post -> elucidation.

Further discussion of this event can happen outside this thread, but enough here.

 

[Umbran]

Huh? At least in rule-of-law societies, most authority is supposed to be exercised in accordance with pre-declared rules, not ad hoc ones!

Even in RPGing, I don't think the exercise of authority - be that GM or player authority - needs to be in accordance with ad hoc rules.

If the rules clearly prescribe everything, then there is no need for personal authority. Authority only serves where the rules themselves do not. Ergo, the exertion of authority is in filling in for the rules.

 

[pemerton]

Here's Vincent Baker, as quoted by me:

I think I know the quote:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .​

​

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

@Umbran seems to take issue with the use of the word sole in that final sentence.

There are at least a couple of ways of interpreting that word in that context which render the statement at least plausible and probably true.

(1) Mechanics are artificial - in the sense of human-created - processes. They therefore have a function which is what they exist for. (Contrast: tidal movements of water are a process but they are a natural process. They have no function, though humans might take advantage of the process to achieve some purpose such as power generation. To impute a function to natural processes is sometimes harmless, and can even be a useful teaching heuristic, but can be misleading in the context of the pursuit of scientific knowledge.) Mechanics might do other things too, but those other things are byproducts of performing that function for which they exist. Modelling the gameworld may be an instance of such a byproduct.

(2) Modelling the gameworld is itself a process of establishing the shared fiction, given that there is no objectively-existing gameworld that establishes an independent constraint on the accuracy and reliability of the "model". Hence it is just a special case of the general function.​

There is even a way in which (1) and (2) might both be true - ie if we accept (2) and then extrapolate to a version of (1), in which the salience of the special case emerges as a byproduct of the need for mechanics to perform their general function.

I think any of these is a plausible reading of what Vincent Baker had in mind when he wrote that sentence. He wasn't just making stuff up!

 

[pemerton]

If the rules clearly prescribe everything, then there is no need for personal authority. Authority only serves where the rules themselves do not. Ergo, the exertion of authority is in filling in for the rules.

I think this is overly simplistic. I'm not sure what you have in mind in making your claim, nor quite what you mean by "personal authority" (are you including judges in that category, or only tyrants?). Nor am I sure how familiar you are with the pretty extensive literature on rules, and on authority, and on the rule of law. So I'll leave it at that unless you wish to take the discussion further.

 

[S'mon]

Because the fiction is shared, there needs to be a means of establishing agreement about its content. This is what Vincent Baker calls negotiation - the process whereby a group of humans reaches agreement. If anyone prefers another word for that process, I don't think it's a big deal. The point is that, for RPGing to work, the participants need to reach agreement in respect of the content of the shared fiction. Vincent Baker summarises that as negotiated imagination.

Thanks for the source! I initially thought 'negotiation' was being used here as a term of art, and was flummoxed by the insistence it was being used per the dictionary definition.