Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 8224614" data-attributes="member: 694">Bogus. The &quot;shared fiction&quot; is just a theoretical construct. Maybe it has a central place in whatever table-centric model you're working with here to convey your idea of how RPGs work, but have you stopped to consider that this model does not adequately account for every possible play-style?Not every play-style treats the &quot;off-stage&quot; elements of a campaign milieu as un-collapsed quantum wave-functions. Not every play-style gives supreme priority to whatever broad-strokes, high-level details are agreed upon by the DM and all those playing at a given moment.There is a milieu-centric model, where the only fictional world that has any &quot;reality&quot; worth a hoot is the one that exists in its totality solely in the DM's imagination, notes, and maybe books or other apocrypha. The players get to glimpse a fraction of the whole at any given moment, but the milieu isn't &quot;quantum,&quot; only extant when and where the players are looking at it. Rather, it's persistent.The basic West Marches campaign setup provides a simple example. If a single DM is running a game for three separate parties (we'll call them A, B, and C) who never interact with each other directly, but whose actions upon the game-world can in turn be felt by the others, there is in no meaningful sense a &quot;shared fiction&quot; between parties A, B, and C—only three separate &quot;shared fictions&quot; during any given game session between the DM and A, the&nbsp; DM and B, and the DM and C. But the reality of the game world is held together by the DM, who is operating (for lack of a better analogy—I hate this one only slightly less than the abuse of quantum mechanics jargon these discussions always spawn) as the &quot;CPU&quot; and &quot;RAM&quot; of the ongoing &quot;simulation.&quot; This does not work without the DM's reification of the entire milieu, including those setting-elements never directly encountered by any of the players. If, instead, the setting elements are treated as &quot;quantum&quot; (again: ugh), it's not really a persistent sandbox (which is not to discount the possibility of presenting a convincing illusion of one).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 8224614, member: 694"] [I]Bogus[/I]. The "shared fiction" is just a theoretical construct. Maybe it has a central place in whatever table-centric model you're working with here to convey your idea of how RPGs work, but have you stopped to consider that this model does not adequately account for every possible play-style? Not every play-style treats the "off-stage" elements of a campaign milieu as un-collapsed quantum wave-functions. Not every play-style gives supreme priority to whatever broad-strokes, high-level details are agreed upon by the DM and all those playing at a given moment. There is a milieu-centric model, where the only fictional world that has any "reality" worth a hoot is the one that exists in its totality solely in the DM's imagination, notes, and maybe books or other apocrypha. The players get to glimpse a fraction of the whole at any given moment, but the milieu isn't "quantum," only extant when and where the players are looking at it. Rather, it's [I]persistent[/I]. The basic West Marches campaign setup provides a simple example. If a single DM is running a game for three separate parties (we'll call them A, B, and C) who never interact with each other directly, but whose actions upon the game-world can in turn be felt by the others, there is in no meaningful sense a "shared fiction" between parties A, B, and C—only three separate "shared fictions" during any given game session between the DM and A, the DM and B, and the DM and C. But the [I]reality of the game world[/I] is held together by the DM, who is operating (for lack of a better analogy—I hate this one only slightly less than the abuse of quantum mechanics jargon these discussions always spawn) as the "CPU" and "RAM" of the ongoing "simulation." [I]This does not work without the DM's reification of the entire milieu, [/I]including those setting-elements never directly encountered by any of the players. If, instead, the setting elements are treated as "quantum" (again: ugh), [I]it's not really a persistent sandbox[/I] (which is not to discount the possibility of presenting a convincing illusion of one). [/QUOTE]

Verification