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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9662407" data-attributes="member: 42582">Have you followed the discussion? I posted this:I took it to be obvious. Self-evident, even. Because of this, which I also posted:And [USER=13383]@robertsconley[/USER], [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] and [USER=6915329]@Faolyn[/USER] have all subsequently made posts disagreeing with me.Some of the disagreements are illusory: [USER=6915329]@Faolyn[/USER] and [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] asserted that beliefs about authored works can have causal effects. Which is true - obviously true -  and not something I ever denied.Bur [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] also seems to be arguing that the GM should be pretending the fictional world is real - just like children who believe in Santa Claus - when making decisions about it.I'm less clear what [USER=13383]@robertsconley[/USER] is arguing, because he has posted things that are similar to what I have posted - for instance, talking about heuristics a GM might adopt in order to help make decisions - but to present them as if they somehow contradict what I have posted.EDIT:I have tracked things back to these two posts:So I think my claim is very clear:*Imaginary things - fantasy worlds among them - do not have real causal power. This means that any talk by a RPGer about what the world did (eg "the world responds to what the players had their PCs do") is really talk about what an author authored the world as doing. *In a "living world" sandbox, typically that author will be the GM. *That GM may use various heuristics (eg plausibility, bringing existing trends to fruition, etc) and also techniques (eg rolling on table) in order to decide what to author.Not only is this clear, but to me it seems accurate. It describes what I have done for years as a GM. It conforms to what other RPG books that I've read suggest.I find [USER=13383]@robertsconley[/USER]'s claim less clear. He appears to disagree with my assertion that "there is no world that exercises causal potency". The most natural interpretation of that assertion is that the imaginary world does exercise causal potency; but that seems an unlikely belief for someone to hold, and so I presume that something else is intended.He then refers to the central difference between "living world" and "Burning Wheel" - but in a way that I find obscure. Because both approaches treat the world as a consistent space. In both, outcomes are shaped by how players have their PCs interact with the world (I've given ample BW examples upthread).  And in both, what happens next in the world is downstream of the GM and the procedures etc that they use.It's just that the procedures etc are different. The BW procedures, for instance, include having extensive and nuanced regard to the priorities that a player has established for their PC.</blockquote>

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