RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[clearstream]

I don't know why you say "the players talking in character" is not resolution via the fiction. When a player talks in character, they produce a bit of fiction. When another player responds in character, they are taking that earlier bit of fiction and building on it.

I mean, suppose that someone who didn't know the group was RPGing walked into the room, and heard one person telling another about how they're going to lend them a sword so that the borrower can get revenge on their nemesis. And the walker-inner expresses shock that these people are sitting around casually planning a murder! The players explain, "No, we're just roleplaying, it's pretend. That wasn't us, it was our characters talking."

That's fiction, and shared imagination.

Perhaps what's meant is like in 5e, players say what their characters say. There's normally no resolution between what player says their character says and what is added to the fiction in that regard.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Perhaps what's meant is like in 5e, players say what their characters say. There's normally no resolution between what player says their character says and what is added to the fiction in that regard.

Right. I understood "resolution" to mean something more than just saying and doing stuff uncontested based on already established fiction.

 

[FrogReaver]

This feels related to notions about "task" versus "conflict" resolution. Orienting to the latter leads intuitions toward negotiation. Toward the former, assertion.

Maybe. I thought that initially but further reflection I think conflict resolution can also be modeled with the ‘attempt to do X so Y happens’ language.

The difference of course is that ‘so Y happens’ part which isnt required for task resolution. Thinking a bit deeper and I think task resolution is just a special simplified case of conflict resolution.

 

[FrogReaver]

Right. I understood "resolution" to mean something more than just saying and doing stuff uncontested based on already established fiction.

Yea. All the language being used points toward it being more than uncontested - ‘negotiated’, ‘contested fiction’, ‘resolution’. These are all terms used to describe something being contested and from what I can tell the entire point is so that rpging can be framed as a contested for its downstream design implications.

 

[Lanefan]

It also doesn't establish any conflict.

The conflict arises when the players declare We try and stop them!

Now we have two competing conceptions of the fiction: (i) the goblins sack the tavern; (ii) the PCs defeat the goblins before they can sack the tavern.

I disagree. To me there's still only one conception of the fiction, that being there's a fight between some goblins and some tavern patrons. This disagreement comes, I think, because you're looking at a point in the fiction that hasn't happened yet, where the fight is over; while I'm looking at the here-and-now moment in the fiction of there being a fight in progress.

How that fiction proceeds in that moment is largely governed by game rules and abstractions, sure, because we can't fight out the combat in-character at the table (in most jurisdictions, anyway). And so...

Which prevails? If that is done simply by assertion and counter-assertion - say, as per round-robin storytelling - then I don't think we will get very exciting play.

...on this we agree. Sorting out what happens next becomes, in cases such as this where abstraction has to take over, the purview of the game processor based on input from the people at the table.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

To me there's still only one conception of the fiction, that being there's a fight between some goblins and some tavern patrons. This disagreement comes, I think, because you're looking at a point in the fiction that hasn't happened yet, where the fight is over; while I'm looking at the here-and-now moment in the fiction of there being a fight in progress.

But there doesn't have to be a fight, right? And if there is no fight, there's no conflict. There could be other results, aside from the binary, such that the tavern isn't sacked (the players don't fight the goblins, but someone else does), but there's still no conflict involving players in that case.

 

[Lanefan]

But there doesn't have to be a fight, right? And if there is no fight, there's no conflict. There could be other results, aside from the binary, such that the tavern isn't sacked (the players don't fight the goblins, but someone else does), but there's still no conflict involving players in that case.

Ah, OK. I was assuming the fight had already begun.

 

[pemerton]

That's inaccurate: it's I attempt to forge a sword.

How is that assertion? What does it actually establish about the fiction? I mean, is the forge hot? Is the character actually wielding the hammer. Can people walking down the street nearby hear the clanging?

That to me seems a paradigm of Baker's notion of suggesting. Until someone actually does something more to establish some agreed fiction, "I attempt to forge a sword" doesn't take the fiction anywhere.

 

[pemerton]

Perhaps what's meant is like in 5e, players say what their characters say. There's normally no resolution between what player says their character says and what is added to the fiction in that regard.

That is an example of Baker's (1):

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?

1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.​

Players in 5e D&D have a high degree of "ownership" over what their PCs say.

Although there's no mechanic invoked, it still seems to be an instance of resolution - what Tweet calls "drama" resolution, and which Edwards defines as "resolution [that] relies on asserted statements without reference to listed attributes or quantitative elements."

It counts as resolution because it establishes new fiction - note that you are not requiring the player to say "I attempt to say <insert what character says here>", which - for whatever reason - you do require when the player says "I forge a sword".

 

[pemerton]

Right. I understood "resolution" to mean something more than just saying and doing stuff uncontested based on already established fiction.

See above. If an action has come to fruition and it and its results incorporated into the shared fiction, then it has been resolved.

Appreciating this becomes interesting because we can then start to look at when instance of "drama" resolution are desirable or undesirable. Eg when does "I walk across the room and open the door" become sufficient to make it so? Under what circumstances, for instance, can the GM say "Hang on, first you need to make an Acrobatics check to avoid <XYZ>?"