IMO. The train of thought seems to be going. We have to imagine in a ttrpg, therefore we have to agree on what’s imagined, therefore in order to reach that agreement we have to always be negotiating in the moment to moment
Who (other than you) has asserted that final clause?
Here is what I assert (or, rather, what Vincent Baker asserted, and what I agree with):
Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .
(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted, all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)
So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.
You seem to think that by pointing out examples of mechanics easing and/or constraining the social negotiation over what to imagine, you are contradicting this passage. But I don't know why you think that.
I suppose a problem is the connotation that negotiation and agreement are active - involving dissent, debate and reconciliation - rather than ongoing tacit behaviours. What I observe in functional play is a group with sufficiently strong up-front commitments - which themselves may be tacit, or the no-longer-in-need-of-voicing outcomes of past dissent, debate and reconciliations - can play for decent stretches without hitting any moment in which there is any detectable negotiation or suspension and resumption of consent. That said, I'm not sure Baker is really thinking of any moment of lost and resumed consent, but rather observing what must be in place at any moment for play to proceed, which is very often a continuation of consent.
I’m on board with the concept you call continuation of consent. And if that’s all Baker means and all those that oft agree with Baker mean then great! Though I fear the connotation you referred to above does/will get subtlety implied in other areas built upon this foundation even though it’s not part of this idea of negotiation as ‘continuation of consent’.
I don't see why you think pointing to circumstances where negotiation has been
eased and/or
constrained by the application and following of
system (including mechanics) is a counter-example to a point which, as quoted just above, stats that such easing and/or constraining is the
purpose of having a system.
I also think that you are not taking seriously the idea that much of play involves putting forward suggestions.
Consider:
GM: "The Orcs rush towards you, attacking with their spears!
Player: "I use my special reaction <refers to relevant rule> to cast a Wall of Force directly in front of the Orcs."
GM: "Cool! They try to rush towards you, but run abruptly into your Wall. The wave their spears and curse at you from the other side of it."
The above sort of thing is very common in D&D-ish FRPGing. And look at it's structure: the GM proposes something as the object of shared imagination - the Orcs rushing forward and attacking with their spears - and then the player counter-proposes - actually, the fiction includes the Orcs
wanting to rush forward and attack with their spears, but being unable to because they were thwarted by the PC's rapid casting of a Wall of Force.
This is also an example of mechanics easing and constraining negotiation over what to imagine together.
And of course Baker gives his own example:
So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"
What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush? . . .
sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have a combat system that works like this.
It's not all that common to have such structured and mechanically-mediated negotiation for having Orcs jump out of the underbrush, but it's extremely common (as Baker notes) to have combat in a FPRG work like this.
