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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9252239">This really isn't helpful. I have no issue with a game style that doesn't prioritize it, or makes sure setting consistency isn't getting in the way of dramatic or thematic concerns (or player agency). If that is what people want, it is a reasonable thing to seek in gaming. But calling setting consistency monkey poo, doesn't drive the conversation anywhere productive This seems like very shaky reasoning to me. Is it sometimes or often post hoc? Sure. It would depend on the situation, the medium, who is doing the work here. I know some things in RPG settings I am fine seeking post hoc explanations for, some things I am not, so I take steps to make sure setting consistency is playing out in those cases. I think extremes like always or never are just not that connected to the reality of gaming or a creative enterprise like writing a novel (different novelists all take very different approaches, from someone like Neil Gaiman who says the goal is to make it look like you had meant it to be that way the whole time, to someone like an Arthur C Clarke or Tolkien who certainly might be doing that but is also building ideas and concepts to write stories up in many cases. And most authors are probably a mix). Again, I don't particularly care if it is post hoc or not. The issue is whether setting consistency matters. But this sort of thing doesn't have to be post hoc at all. Because the moment you start thinking of a character like Gollum your brain is already thinking about how that could even be the case. And in a world where magic exists, the idea of a cursed hobbit, or a hobbit who acquires something like vampirism or undeath, are all perfectly plausible and readily available to the mind of the author. What you seem to be talking about is the editing process of ideas as they emerge in a writers mind. Well we don't even know how to measure a thought in a persons brain. I don't think we have cracked the code on this. But what matters is not the steps you think through in your head before you write it down or throw it down at the table in the game. Me juggling ideas in my head, and one of those ideas coming first, then my mind explaining it, is not a post hoc explanation. A post hoc explanation would be me introducing the character then coming up with the explanation. In the case of Gollum I can't recall which was the case (and I know the Hobbit was revised to be more in line with Lord of the Rings, so no idea what the actual history of editions is in that respect). I don't think it is particularly relevant though because whether it was or was not in that particular case 1) it still doesn't violate setting consistency---which is the core issue at hand, and 2) It doesn't follow that if it was post hoc in the case of gollum such instances of characters are always post hoc (i.e. creating dracula doesn't require a post hoc explanation, creating a cursed figure in horror story or fantasy story doesn't require post hoc explanation: especially if those things are fully formed in concept when they hit the page)</blockquote>

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