RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Manbearcat]

That depends… what do you mean by value?!?

ARE YOU SAYING THAT PEMERTON WEARS DEPENDS? THAT HE IS INCONTINENT! I'M CALLING THE FORUM POLICE ON YOU!!!111111!!1

 

[clearstream]

When Baker says that RPGing is negotiated imagination what he has in mind is that (i) the fiction is a shared one, and therefore (ii) the participants in the activity have to converge on that fiction, and that (iii) the play of the game consists in various participants advancing conceptions of the fiction that can't all be true (eg "I killed the Orc" vs "The Orc escaped from you"), and therefore (iv) there has to be a process for selecting among those various proposals as to the content of the fiction.

The process whereby a group of people, engaged in a voluntary activity, choose among various proposals and settle on one is what Baker calls negotiation.

In the passage that I quoted, he identifies various ways to ease the negotiation, via rules and mechanics: eg give a particular participant "ownership" over a particular topic (You own the weather, I own what Thurgon says); have a rule for how a participant gets to make their contribution (eg When everyone looks at you to see what happens next, say something that falls within one of these dozen or so rubrics); roll a die and look on a chart; roll a die and then apply a rule that translates the outcome of that role into an allocation of authority; plus all the ways these various possibilities can be combined.

The rules and mechanics are not substitutes for negotiation, in the way that (say) a tram is a substitute for walking, or a computerised billing system is a substitute for book-keepers and writers of letters. Because the mechanics and rules won't do their job if they don't actually produce convergence on a shared fiction.

Baker has a nice example of a breakdown in this respect - which plays especially on the issue of who owns which bits of the shared fiction - with his "smelly chamberlain" example: http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/460

Well, Baker makes this point about moment to moment acceptance, which on the one hand has to be true - we can always withdraw acceptance at any moment - and on the other hand I often find at the table to be false incomplete. We make an up-front, overriding agreement, and we stick with it, so it's as if we know that we can withdraw acceptance while also knowing that per this stronger agreement that we've made up front, we in fact won't do that.

Once certain stronger agreements are in place, overriding all those moment to moment opportunities to withdraw acceptance, a model can dictate fiction. Just so long as acceptance of what game models can dictate was subsumed in the superior agreement. I think this applies well to the smelly chamberlain thought experiment, explaining what Baker observes there, just so long as one includes the prospect that the superior agreement might have been imperfectly formed.

As an aside, I also don't assume that there is only one draft of the fiction. (This comes back to arguments about what counts as a true imaginary fact?) It is possible that the chamberlain is smelly in some drafts and not others. Which draft prevails - if any - may go as Baker outlines.

 

[clearstream]

@Manbearcat

My experience in ENworld conversations has led me to the view that there is little value in choosing terminology to try and minimise controversy/semantic discussion.

I agree that "constraint" has connotations that are not perfect - eg suppose an Event roll tells the Gm to introduce a NPC who tells the PC about something bad that has happened to that PC's mentor, the GM is not only constrained but is also required to perform a particular sort of creative act - namely, to think of something bad that might have happened to the PC's mentor, which this newly-introduced NPC can relate to the PC.

The same thing happens in AW: everyone looks at the GM, who therefore has to choose a move, and if the GM chooses to announce future badness not only are they constrained, but they have to make something up and - because they have to misdirect (another constraint) - they have to make something up that follows from the fiction as established so far.

In the post you replied to I therefore tried "constrains and generates", and "contributes to the parameters of", what the participant says about the fiction.

I generally go with "constrains and compels" these days, although the alternatives that others are using are usually just fine. "Says" works. "Generates" and "contributes to the parameters of" work, although I tend to reserve the word "parameters" to mean something technical about the game as instantiated, so what I would mean by "contributes to the parameters" might diverge.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Baker has a nice example of a breakdown in this respect - which plays especially on the issue of who owns which bits of the shared fiction - with his "smelly chamberlain" example: http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/460

That seems like rather contrived example to me as I don't think anything like that is likely to happen in a real game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And to me "system's say" seems like perfectly coherent concept. Systems do provide information that then gets integrated to the shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

Once certain stronger agreements are in place, overriding all those moment to moment opportunities to withdraw acceptance, a model can dictate fiction.

People have to actually perform the acts of imagining. In this way imagining is voluntary, whereas - say - seeing the number on a die, or the position of a piece on a board, is not.

Even very strong promises to do X still require the person who made the promise to actually do X at the point it becomes due.

 

[pemerton]

That seems like rather contrived example to me as I don't think anything like that is likely to happen in a real game.

I think it illustrates very nicely the issues that can arise when "ownership" claims conflict, and the game offers no method for resolving them other than unmediated social interaction/negotiation/compromise. And I think this sort of conflict happens quite often in a lot of RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

And to me "system's say" seems like perfectly coherent concept. Systems do provide information that then gets integrated to the shared fiction.

To build one of @Manbearcat's examples: the information provided by an Event roll, in Torchbearer, is first a numerical result, and then second, a bit of text on a table. The GM then has to take that bit of text and incorporate it into their narration of the unfolding situation.

So (to echo Baker's language) the GM makes a suggestion as to what the fiction includes, where (i) the GM's suggestion is prompted and constrained by what they read on the table having rolled the dice to see what they should read, and (ii) the players typically accept the GM's suggestion because the game expressly gives the GM ownership over these elements of the fiction (namely, the events that happen when the PCs camp, enter town, hang out in a tavern, set off in a journey, etc).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think it illustrates very nicely the issues that can arise when "ownership" claims conflict, and the game offers no method for resolving them other than unmediated social interaction/negotiation/compromise. And I think this sort of conflict happens quite often in a lot of RPGing.

I literally can’t recall this ever happening, at least not in a way that wouldn’t be instantly clarified with one sentence. Most games are pretty clear about who controls what part of the fiction.

 

[FrogReaver]

I literally can’t recall this ever happening, at least not in a way that wouldn’t be instantly clarified with one sentence. Most games are pretty clear about who controls what part of the fiction.

I’m thinking of blades in the dark. I think there is a true negotiation process imbedded in there. But yea, it’s a stretch to call most d&d play a negotiation IMO. The whole idea that it’s a negotiation just because you can back out of an agreement at any time would make basically everything a negotiation - which to me deprives the concept of negotiation of real meaning. But all this is semantics. If what they mean by negotiation is simply not withdrawing consent I can understand what they are saying, even if I think it’s a really strange way to say it. Most of Bakers concepts seem to go this direction. I think I’m just going to start calling it ‘Bakerian language’.

All that said @clearstream referred to some rare edge cases where what I’d call negotiation may occur in d&d. I think I agree that it can happen - specifically if the agreement is revealed to not be as clear as initially believed. A more common occurrence of this is the DM springing a detail on the player that his PC probably should have noticed or at least had a chance to notice, but doing so after the action declaration. I think I would call what’s happening negotiation.