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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6822861" data-attributes="member: 27160">I think I sympathise with the general phenomenon you are talking about, but I see a major problem with the way you put it. "The setting" does not exist. It is entirely imaginary. This is actually a fairly close analogy to the way we see, hear, smell, taste and touch in the real world (and the reason I sometimes put that "real" in quotes).The world as we perceive it does not really exist. There is no such thing as "colour", most of what we perceive as solid (and liquid) is actually empty space and, when we "touch" things none of our matter is actually in contact with the actual matter of the thing we perceive ourselves as touching.Everything that we see and hear, etc., is actually constructed in our heads from diverse sensory signals generated by our sensory organs. The world as we see it is not what is really there, it is a model of what is there created by our brains so that we are capable of quickly comprehending what is really there. Without this model, we would be lost - incapable of functioning from day to day. The case of Michael May (lost his sight at age 3, became a successful businessman and downhill skiier while blind, had sight returned by a novel medical procedure at age 46 and subsequently struggled with recognition and 3D perception) illustrates this quite well.In a roleplaying game, the game system fills the role of this model. It tells us how to interpret the "sensory" information we receive about the game in a way that is comprehensible and usable. If the system is held exclusively by the GM rather than shared with the players, then the only way the players have to make sense of the game world is to guess what the GM is thinking. Some players can do this moderately well, some can't. None can do it consistently. Some find an alternative in using social manipulation to shape the GM's vision of the game world to better fit their own, or even just to give advantage to their character.In my experience, "outside the box thinking" can take three forms:1) Correctly guessing the system that the GM is using to adjudicate some aspect of the world for which the system is not shared (and using this to advantage)2) Coming up with an idea that the GM likes (or presenting it in such a way that the GM is entertained by it) and finding success through the GM forming or altering the system by which the idea is resolved such that it gives advantage3) Finding a new way to use the shared system of the game such as to give advantageThe first of these I find facile in play - at best it becomes "20 questions", at worst it's pure guessing game. The second I find frankly distasteful, as it privileges manipulativeness and cliquishness. The last actually requires that there be a shared system, not that one is absent.</blockquote>

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