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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6075713" data-attributes="member: 2067">I tried to get at that idea <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?409-Metaphor-and-Meta-Game" target="_blank">here</a>, by contrasting metaphor with definition and acting with directing and referencing the right-brain-dominant processes of immediate reactions with left-brain-dominant processes of contextualization and analysis.I wouldn't call it a lack of engagement with the world, but it's certainly accurate to say that the players don't really define the world when the players are in an "actor" mindset. It's not passive -- the player is constantly thinking as if they are the character they are playing, and making decisions and actions based on being that character. That is the action that moves the game forward. However, their sphere of control stops at their character. It's similar to an improv routine: I do not define what my other performers do, or the context of the story I'm in, I simply take action. Similarly, the DM's control stops there, too: the DM does not control the character. The world is not so much there for the player to define as there for the character to interact with in pursuit of that character's goals, so the character engages the world at the player's direction rather than having the player directly define the world. You can see this in some pronoun ambiguity: using "I" for "my character," or "you," for "your character." You can see it in the central question used to keep the game moving: "What do you do next?" The game in this light is constantly asking the player (and the DM) to make an in-character decision about their characters' next actions. From this activity, we get emergent phenomenon: out of dice rolls and in-character choices comes the gameplay, and context gets applied to what happened. You don't use the rules to model anything, but rather you determine what kind of results happen by what the rules cause. Not according to the commonly accepted meanings of the words. I suppose one may be overly narrow in their definition of "edition," and then somehow exempt post-Essentials 4e on a technicality, but I don't know what one would gain from than other than a disconnect with how the rest of the world talks about edition changes.</blockquote>

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