RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Crimson Longinus]

Conflict between whom? I didn't say anything about conflict. I talked about competing conceptions of the fiction.

Conflict, competition, same thing.

But in 5e D&D isn't it open to the GM just to say "OK, although the wall is rather high and sheer, you make it up"? Or to put it another way, the player has no entitlement to insist on a check, as I understand it.

So the GM has to decide how to respond to the player's action declaration - to let it go through "unopposed", or to introduce a new possibility for the fiction (in this case, that the character fails to climb, or falls part way up).

But there still really isn't competing concepts of fiction advocated by different people, and then the rules are used to decide whose vision prevails. Or at least that's not how I see it. Once it has been established that uncertainty exists, rules are called upon to resolve it.

And even though of course in D&D the GM has the final say on anything, in many cases it would be highly unusual for them not to evoke the rules when a situation where it is customary to do so has been reached. For example players generally expect that the combat is resolved via the combat rules.

 

[pemerton]

In this example, the smooth incorporation is down to up-front agreements. The right person said it at the right moment - where "right" was decided by up-front job descriptions and assignments. Agreement in advance isn't the same as negotiation in the moment. Baker goes on to list cases where agreement in advance might be disrupted and in such or similar cases - as I noted several times above - I concur that negotiation can arise.

I'm not aiming to prove Baker right or wrong, but to uncover whether apparently differing intuitions about "negotiation" hinge on semantics or are more substantive.

In relation to my immediate previous, I wanted to draw attention to this. I take some modes of play to not treat what the GM says as "proposals". To break that out for further clarity

GM: there is a sheer wall here (not a proposal, a statement of fact)​

Player: my character will try to climb the wall (not a proposal, a statement of fact - the character will indeed try)​

There is no negotiation in the above. Each makes definitive statements on matters they have authority over.

I still don't understand why you are presenting this as if Vincent Baker is ignorant of it. He gives an illustration. I've posted it several times. He also identifies the explanation for it - namely, ownership of the bit of fiction at issue.

So I still don't see how you think this poses some sort of contest or puzzle for his analysis.

 

[pemerton]

Conflict, competition, same thing.

I didn't say there was a competition either. I referred to competing conceptions of the fiction.

It is the candidate fictions that are at issue. Not the game participants.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I didn't say there was a competition either. I referred to competing conceptions of the fiction.

It is the candidate fictions that are at issue. Not the game participants.

I see. Your initial example where one participant was advocating for one thing and another for a different thing lead me to think otherwise.

But yes, I suppose one could characterise randomisation choosing between competing conceptions of fiction, but at this point it is pretty tautological. Of course purpose of randomisation it to choose between different outcomes, what else could it be? And it definitely isn't any sort of a negotiation by any reasonable definition, if all participants were on the same page to begin with.

 

[clearstream]

I didn't say there was a competition either. I referred to competing conceptions of the fiction.

I am suggesting that the conceptions I have described are non-competing.

It is the candidate fictions that are at issue. Not the game participants.

I am putting it that the fictions are asserted: candidates are not vetted among or selected between.

 

[clearstream]

I still don't understand why you are presenting this as if Vincent Baker is ignorant of it. He gives an illustration. I've posted it several times. He also identifies the explanation for it - namely, ownership of the bit of fiction at issue.

Vincent says

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.

To my reading, the blog piece in question represents a chain of thought from first principles. It doesn't represent a group with settled agreements in place on the matters of concern.

Regards point a) such a group does not take GM statements to possibly be true - there is no "might" - they simply are true, and then for such a group there is no subsequent "negotiating" with other participants.

Given folk appear in this thread to be offering testimony from experience, I do not see why one is so quick to dismiss that. Regardless of motives, I accept that intuitions diverge and I want to understand what might be driving that. Again, it's not about whether Vincent is right or wrong. It's about where in the lusory journey agreements - and indeed negotiation - is found? And can that vary by mode of engagement?

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.

Which "mechanics"? Ought we not to consider the game text holistically? Could principles stated up front be performing that "crucial function"? If so, what does that look like?

 

[clearstream]

But yes, I suppose one could characterise randomisation choosing between competing conceptions of fiction, but at this point it is pretty tautological. Of course purpose of randomisation it to choose between different outcomes, what else could it be? And it definitely isn't any sort of a negotiation by any reasonable definition, if all participants were on the same page to begin with.

So what "candidates" do you picture for the sheer wall in my earlier example, because in the mode of play I am thinking of I count just one...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So what "candidates" do you picture for the sheer wall in my earlier example, because in the mode of play I am thinking of I count just one...

Basically either the character manages to climb it or not. We randomise between these outcomes. Randomisation is evoked when outcome is uncertain. But this to me does not imply that that different participants are advocating for different outcomes.

 

[clearstream]

Basically either the character manages to climb it or not. We randomise between these outcomes. Randomisation is evoked when outcome is uncertain. But this to me does not imply that that different participants are advocating for different outcomes.

Baker would say that what that randomisation stands in for is implicitly a negotiation.

Up thread, you replace C - player wants their character to be at the top of the wall, with C' - player wants their character to attempt to be at the top of the wall. On reflection, player is not interested in any certainty of getting what they want. They relish the conjoint probability in C'(reach-top-quietly, reach-top-noisily, not-reach-top-painfully) which is a set containing three members (the game outcomes.)

So then Baker could say that in forming the set C', someone will propose outcomes and someone else will accept them (i.e. as the contents of C').

Question: on learning the contents of C', can player decide that their character does not attempt to climb?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Baker would say that what that randomisation stands in for is implicitly a negotiation.

Up thread, you replace C - player wants their character to be at the top of the wall, with C' - player wants their character to attempt to be at the top of the wall. On reflection, player is not interested in any certainty of getting what they want. They relish the conjoint probability in C'(reach-top-quietly, reach-top-noisily, not-reach-top-painfully) which is a set containing three members (the game outcomes.)

So then Baker could say that in forming the set C', someone will propose outcomes and someone else will accept them (i.e. as the contents of C').

Question: on learning the contents of C', can player decide that their character does not attempt to climb?

Yes, of course they can.