Well, that's a couple anyway. Sorry to go on. It is a big thing for me, though, that there are systems in there, even if they are unspoken and little understood.
Here I read that she is attributing freeform play with systems, which is interesting in its own right, but I want to address fictional positioning.
Here, Emily's talking about the
player's position: what gameplay options do I, as a player, have available to me right now? Over the course of the game, my legitimate moves change; what are my legitimate moves at this moment of play?
In freeform games, Emily says, what determines your selection of available legitimate moves is the current state of the fictional stuff in the game. If there's a gun in your character's hand, that adds certain moves to the selection available to you, the player. If there's a gun in someone else's character's hand, that changes the likely outcomes of the moves you might make.
Recall that I want my construct for fictional positioning to be predictive. It predicts the moves characters will make.
(For now, let's politely pretend that making a move in a roleplaying game means asserting something, like "my guy shoots yours," and subjecting it to the group's assent or dissent to determine its actual in-game veracity. I think this is not true, but it makes it easier for now.)
Politely pretending, while noticing that what is described never happens. We never subject moves to groups assent or dissent, rather players submit moves that follow the conversation. They only say what they believe will be assented to. Rarely, they say something that prompts dissent, which occasionally crashes them out of the magic circle.
Contrast freeform with cue-mediation. The freeform rule at play here is "if you've established that your character is holding a gun, all other things being equal, it's a legitimate move to assert that your character fires it at someone." The equivalent cue-mediated rule would be "if you have a gun on your character sheet, all other things being equal, it's a legitimate move to assert that your character fires it at someone." See the difference? Playing freeform, we look into the fiction-as-established to determine whether a possible move is legitimate; playing with cues, we look over at the cue to determine whether it is.
This doesn't match experience. It's a simplification. That may be all we need here.
Given that D&D is cue-laden, many of the legitimate moves that a player can make will follow not from fictional position but from the state of the cues ("cue position"). For instance, whether my PC is conscious or unconscious is typically not an element of fictional position but rather follows from the fact that my hp tally is greater than zero. Attack reach, in contemporary D&D, is likewise typically a matter of cues and not fictional position (contrast Dungeon World, or some approaches to AD&D).
The "typically" in my previous sentence sits in the same conceptual space as Baker's "all other things being equal":
In a given game design or game in play, freeform and cue-mediation can happily coexist. You see where I included "all other things being equal" in both rules? Often in practice that includes a quick check across the boundary between them. Like when you have a pistol on your character sheet, but in the fiction as established your character's just stepping out of the shower, right?
As far as
everything a player is motivated to say, that does not seem to be part of position at all. Rather, and as Emily Care Boss explains, it is motivation that drives positioning: ie because I want the fiction to include such-and-such a thing (say, my PC isn't killed by the giant), then I have a motivation to establish an appropriate position that will enable me to avoid that outcome, be that a fictional position (eg I'm hidden from the giant) or a cue position (eg I've got a sword of giant-slaying on my PC's gear list). Of course my current position might constrain my possibilities of further positions (eg fiction like
I've just encountered a giant on an open plain or a cue record like
I'm subjected to paralysation). But I don't see how motivated action declarations are themselves part of position (fictional
or cue).
I have two concerns in mind here. First, I don't observe motivation in play as Newtonian, a force that is applied once to a character in a vacuum, who is propelled onward imperturbably from there. Rather, motivations are continuously being formed, revised, and applied. They are layered from overarching to immediate, and hold differing priorities for action. Second, it wouldn't matter if motivation was Newtonian: it must still be counted in fictional positioning.
if I want to shoot your character with a gun, I have to first establish that there is a gun present,
Think this through in a few different ways. First without motivation. I
don't want to shoot you with a gun. Say there is nevertheless a gun present because we're in an armory. A gun is therefore squarely within the legitimate moves, but it's not one that will enter the fiction. If it did, it would feel jarring to all concerned. Dem was strictly unmotivated to shoot Jo with a gun, but Dem shot Jo with a gun. After the fact, everyone would most likely try to impute a motivation for the shooting to Dem.
If I want to kill your character, I will have to establish, and get others to collaborate with me in establishing, that my character can keep yours from escaping, that mine has the ability to successfully shoot yours, that help will not arrive in time etc.
Say Jo tries to escape as imagined here. If Dem is unmotivated, Dem doesn't try to keep Jo from escaping even though that would be a legitimate move. I can't stress this enough - there are at any time a
vast number of legitimate moves. Dem could have hopped on one foot. That would be a legitimate move (were motivation not at issue.)
Those moves a character has motivations in connection with, form the subset from which they choose what they say next. Unmotivated moves aren't in that subset. It's meaningless to talk about the vast number of legitimate moves that have nothing to do with what's going on. Hopping on one foot might be an example (there's probably cases where it isn't).
And those motivations change all the time. Say Dem is threatened by Jo and about to run (motivated to escape), when as a result of "looking around desperately" she spots a loaded six-shooter. She snatches it up and forms a new motivation - the shoe is on the other foot - "right Jo, tell me who's behind the plot to..." and so on. Motivations are continuously added to and altered.
Baker touches on effectiveness here
1. Positioning:
A player's position is the total set of all of the legitimate gameplay options available to her at this moment of play. Positioning refers to the various factors and processes, including in-fiction, cue-mediated, and interpersonal, that determine a player's position.
The "various factors" here could be taken to include motivation. If that's right, great!
2. Positioning & Effectiveness:
Positioning establishes (proactively or retroactively) the legitimacy of the group's various moves.
Effectiveness establishes (proactively or retroactively) the outcomes of the group's various moves.
Both positioning and effectiveness include who-knows-how-many factors, some in the form of cues, some interpersonal, some purely fictional.
There are cause-and-effect relationships between the many various factors, some formal, cue-mediated, "mechanical," some purely interpersonal.
Now, I'm not saying that Baker intended effectiveness to be included in fictional positioning here, but seeing as I want a construct that has predictive power, I'm forced to bring effectiveness into fictional positioning (under the broader umbrella of 'motivation') Players are motivated toward doing the more effective over the less effective, but other motivations can prove more powerful still.
That is because legitimacy alone isn't enough. A
vast number of moves are always legitimate. And it is because motivation isn't one-and-done, motivations are referenced, formed, revised continuously during play. The legitimacy dimension gets at what is off the table. If I don't have wings (and assuming wings and only wings are needed to fly) then I can't legitimately declare flight. If we like, we can build motivation into legitimacy by saying something like this. If I don't want to fly, then I can't legitimately declare flight (this example is apposite to story-now play). That's fine, all I care about is that we put motivation into our construct.
My preferred construct makes it explicit.
A player's position is the total set of all of the valid (legitimate and motivated) gameplay options available to them at this moment of play. I'm using "valid" here in a similar way to how it is used to understand game balancing, where "valid" options are those that are legitimate and effective. However, I am placing effective into motivated, for what I think are obvious reasons.
Obviously you can and should go on with your version of fictional positioning if you like. You often express a concern for analytical power. Why do you think the version that considers only legitimate moves is better than legitimate + motivated? (Assuming of course that motivated isn't simply built into legitimate, which also works for me.) How do you show that the set of legitimate moves isn't vast and undifferentiated, without bringing in other criteria (i.e. motivated)? It's like Borges' Library: you can take a few books off the shelf (moves that are removed due to constraints) but those remaining on the shelves are still
vast in number.
