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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8499750" data-attributes="member: 42582">The same way that when I tell you I am typing on computer keys I present you not just with a sentence of English, inscribed (using this verb not quite literally) on your computer screen, but also with a representation of the event of me typing this sentence on my computer's keyboard.If you want to ask What is representation well that is a complex thing! My favourite treatment is Stephen Barker's Renewing Meaning (OUP) but that is a technical book which I think doesn't have much relevance for those not interested in technical issues in philosophy of language/philosophical linguistics.The point of separateness can be made more simply, without explaining in technical terms how it works: even if every copy of LotR in the world was destroyed, I could still imagine it. And when I imagine Frodo and you imagine Frodo, there is a sense in which we are imagining the same thing, which is not just a word but a (fictional) person.The shared fiction is the thing we imagine together. What makes it the same for the two of us, in the case of LotR/Frodo, is the canonical text. (This creates questions - eg if you've read the original version of the Hobbit, and I've read one of the later revised versions, are we imaging the same fiction? Dunno - until we know why the question is being asked we can't set criteria for "same fiction", and without those identity criteria we can't answer the question. By analogy: my cat and your cat are the same animal if we're talking about species individuation, but not if we're talking about vetinary records.)In the case of a RPG, there is no canonical text - unless the game is a total railroad. (Worst example I personally know - the Planescape module Dead Gods.) But there are the cues that - when responded to/followed as the rules prescribe - ensure that all of the group imagine the same thing.We can see that when the rules have gaps or break down, we get the shared fiction breaking down. In AD&D this seems to happen every ten minutes of play! (Eg a non-thief tries to climb a steep but non-vertical slope, while wearing studded leather armour - what happens in the fiction? The rules don't tell us!) But modern, well-designed games have few of these sorts of breakpoints. This can include having clearer rule on how to respond to the cues (for me AW and BW are paradigms of this; but D&D has always been pretty clear at least in the combat portion of its rules), which might include having clear rules on how cues are to be used to derive the fiction by way of representation (eg 4e's movement rates expressed in squares).I hope you can see more in this post how I think we can talk profitably about how different RPGs work, and have different rules and use cues in different ways, without necessarily having to get into the difficult underlying metaphysical questions about the nature of representation, how non-existent fictions can nevertheless be referred to, etc.</blockquote>

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