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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9258079" data-attributes="member: 7006">I'd disagree with you here, in that all of these illustrations you give us here are in my opinion 'Yes, And' all the way!The thing about 'Yes, And' is that the philosophy of the idiom is not that the characters are agreeing with each other for every statement each one makes... but rather that one improvisor makes a statement about the situation and the other improvisor tacitly agrees to make that statement True.  And then adds onto the statement with more clarifying information.So in your first example, the 'Yes, And' is that the player states they are attacking a goblin... and the DM agrees that you are attacking the goblin and reacts to being attacked.  Now in a normal improv scene onstage, the 'DM' improvisor would ordinarily react to the attack by making an offer as to whether the hit was successful or not by either acting as though they were hit and hurt by it, or by "blocking" the attack and not being hit.  The first improvisor would then treat the 'DM' improvisor's reaction as True and react to whatever they did.But in the RPG, rather than the improvisor themself deciding whether or not they got hit... we ask dice to be an impartial arbiter to determine the success of the attack.  Then once we get that from the dice, then the DM accepts the die result as True, and then narrates what the goblin does after that.  The DM says the goblin got hit and then disengaged from the fight and ran around a wall.  At this point, the DM has made an offer that the goblin is around the corner, which the Player says 'Yes' to by accepting this reality as True, and then the Player makes a new choice and does something else (like chase after the goblin.)  And this back and forth continues for as long as the fight goes on.  Each one accepting what the other offers as their action and accepting the die roll as the truthful adjudicator of the result before making their own reaction to it.So just because two characters are in conflict doesn't mean they can't say 'No'... it just means the Players are both accepting the truth of the scene as being real, while letting their characters disagree with each other.The actual 'No, But...' in this scenario would be if the DM says the players turn a corner in the dungeon and run into a band of goblins, then one of the players says "No, we don't.  We're not there.  We're actually back at camp."  That's the player fundamentally not accepting the Truth of the scene they are in and just making up whatever truth they want.  Which of course goes against the whole point of the scenes and the game in the first place.  No one can just up and decide that something doesn't exist or doesn't happen (at least not in D&D usually), we all as part of the social contract accept the results of things we do as true and real.This is where the idea of 'Negging' your scene partner comes about in improv.  Someone makes an offer of the reality the characters are in and the other improvisor says 'Nah... that's not true.  What's actually happening is..."  And at that point, until both players agree on what is true, the scene can never move forward because each one just keeps negging the ideas of the other and blocks whatever attempt at reality they make.And that's when in improv you have truly failed.</blockquote>

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