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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8934768" data-attributes="member: 71699">As you call out (at the bottom of your OP, but not quoted here) this restates a position VB stated or restated pretty well. In more recent discussion on his blog, he argues that(Emphasis mine.) Vincent then clarifies in comments thatMy current feeling on this matter is that fiction is a complex term, or perhaps that is better said as - it's a term that unpacks into some markedly different components. The relationship many folk have historically had with fiction is as a relating or retelling. I read about real or imagined events that have occurred to real or imagined people. Retold fiction has typically been the product of the workings of an author's mind. Today, it can also be a product of the workings of an AI. Something we have discussed in the past and drawn differing conclusions about, is a retelling of game play - a retelling of a chess game, for instance. When I read the "story of a game of chess" and "story by chatgpt", I might call both of those mechanically generated fictions. I could be drawn to say that the chess "fiction" is in truth non-fiction - a series of facts about the play, but then what of chatgpt? Is its fiction anything but a series of facts about (collected from) the play of its mechanisms?There is a sense, anyway, of fiction as a product of a process. Viewed that way, boardgames and TTRPGs both produce "fiction", and this is not what I think you are talking about. I think you are talking about something closer to VBs "fictional positioning" which is fiction that will be continuously addressed during play. It is the distinctive and compelling purpose of RPG play to address that fiction.In boardgames and TTRPGs, players continually form intents and - mediated by rules or agreements around the table - say what they are and see them enacted. In play of boardgames, such intents address the physical game state. To say it is physical is to give it independence from its authors. X and Y can play five plies into a chess game, and then hand the board to Q and R, who can perfectly well continue addressing it. (The forming of intents is not interchangeable among players, but the physical game states are.) In TTRPG, the game state is mental as well as physical. Being mental, it is not perfectly known or reified among the players and must be addressed in a sense that VB has described as retroactive. I believe it is this mental component that you are calling "the heart of RPGing".There is something recognisable as fiction that emerges in both boardgames and TTRPGs. Player intents are common to all games. That those intents should shape the fiction that emerges is in turn common to most or all games. Again, this is not the "fiction" at the heart of RPG that I believe your OP contemplates, but the boundaries are blurred: there is a complex entanglement between emergent fiction and shared imagination. That plays out in - for one example - debates about resolution types.I find these difficult ideas, so will leave it here not because I feel I've been entirely successful in stating my point, but - as you did - to make space for commentary before attempting to get at something more successful. EDIT, a quote from VB that I want to say should not derail or devalue your OP, but perhaps speaks to some of my feelings of caution...</blockquote>

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