RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[FrogReaver]

The process described includes that there is a step, randomisation, in which some participant will propose contents of a set - which are game outcomes - and someone else will accept or refuse those proposed contents - i.e. not opt into even the possibility of those outcomes.

That's what folk are calling a negotiation - a proposal followed by acceptance or refusal. And as @Thomas Shey implies, that doesn't have to be true of all RPGs. For example, it can be set up like this -

GM: there is a sheer 60' wall here (not a proposal, a statement of fact)​

Player: my character will try to climb the wall (not a proposal, a statement of fact - the character will indeed try)​

GM: make a Dexterity ability check no modifier (not a proposal, player cannot decline)​

System: failure means take d6 damage per 10' always based on falling from halfway (not a proposal in the moment, a pre-agreed fact)​

The above is what I am envisioning, which proceeds as a series of assertions and clarifications, with no in the moment options to accept or refuse. One could argue that this relocates the negotiation into participants' mental states, rather than language between them: which might make roshambo implicitly a negotiation!

Random Thoughts-

• Pre-agreement and agreement in the moment are important differentiators - and they also make the game play/feel quite a bit differently.
• Agreement about what the fiction says and agreement around how to generate what the fiction says are different things. Though if you have agreement around how to generate it, then you don't need any separate agreement for any fiction generated following that agreement.
• Wasn't Baker intending to describe all the RPG's around at the time? Whereas the descriptions he gives seem much more applicable to a game like BitD.
• The concept of being able to back out at any time before fulfilling your part of an agreement is doing much of the 'work' in Baker's 'negotiation' model. As you correctly note here - it is broadly applicable such that it encompasses many activities not normally though of as 'negotiation'.

**Dropping the term negotiation for agreement as the more I think about it, the more I think that's what's really being said by everyone.
***Also I mostly agree with your post above, so don't take these ideas as disputing it.

 

[FrogReaver]

The other significant question is whether the player gets to change their mind at the point when they get to know the actual difficulty. Unless this is strongly standardized (so they could look at the GM's first statement and already know what sort and difficulty the roll probably was out the gate), its often the case where the player's conception of that and the GM's are very different (and even when that standardization exists, the degree of detail the GM gives can impact it). Some GMs consider that metagaming, whereas others (and many players) consider it communication of the actual situation (I'm leaving out here for the moment "hidden modifiers" which in many cases should be an element of the randomization of the die roll instead of a different modifier, but that's neither of these are a given or non-controversial).

Everytime I hear the cliff example my mind goes more to:
DM: there is a cliff, etc, etc (not up for debate, there is a cliff in the fiction)
Player: I'm going to climb it (interpreted as player speaking for the PC indicating he will attempt to climb it).
DM: You would know the cliff is unclimbable without dedicated climbing gear that you don't have and even then it would be a difficult climb , it's just too smooth and slick.
Player: Ah, i'll do this other thing instead.

Play then progresses normally from here.

However, the Player might instead say: that might be common knowledge, but my PC doesn't know it.

The point is, at a table where this would happen, this is a pre-agreed upon play process that 'players can change their move if more information about the situation is provided, and this additional information may be provided if the DM thinks the PC is doing something that doesn't appear reasonable. The information is provided for clarification, to ensure the DM and player is imagining the same thing. The player doesn't get a say here, per their initial agreements, but he does get to say whether his particular PC actually knows some common piece of info, despite any particular wording of the DM - and this is per their initial agreement as well. This is certainly a process of ensuring everyone is imagining the same thing, but it's not based on proposals that can be accepted or rejected, it's based on the initial agreements.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My point was more about what point in the process the player has committed to declaration. There's some considerable variance within the hobby on that topic in my observation.

 

[Pedantic]

My point was more about what point in the process the player has committed to declaration. There's some considerable variance within the hobby on that topic in my observation.

Yeah, but I don't know if that's a process that's been subjected to rigorous design review. It would be one thing if the intended play loop was "press for information until you've established action results/difficulty or as close as it's possible to get" vs. "the GM will provide difficulty and results before any check is made." That's unfortunately not routinely called out in the game texts themselves though. The difference between the two is a huge variance in play experience to leave as a table-by-table decision. I would certainly prefer it be more normatively called out in the mechanics themselves.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, but I don't know if that's a process that's been subjected to rigorous design review. It would be one thing if the intended play loop was "press for information until you've established action results/difficulty or as close as it's possible to get" vs. "the GM will provide difficulty and results before any check is made." That's unfortunately not routinely called out in the game texts themselves though. The difference between the two is a huge variance in play experience to leave as a table-by-table decision. I would certainly prefer it be more normatively called out in the mechanics themselves.

Me too, but as I've noted before, large parts of the hobby seem to sometimes consider honest contact with the mechanics to be metagaming, so...

 

[FrogReaver]

The point is that (i) the participants propose their various conceptions of the fiction, and (ii) these have to be reconciled, resolved and integrated, and (iii) one way to do this is simply by talking it out (as might happen in a free roleplaying online game), but (iv) RPGs often use mechanics and the rules around them to ease and constrain the negotiation by establishing certain structures, authorities, etc around who gets to say what when about the shared fiction.

Does anyone disagree with the actual point?

First, thank you very much for breaking it down this way! It really cuts to the chase for me!

I'd dispute (i). See below for the details.

In addition - assuming (i) is correct, i might take issue with (iv). Even if the DM and player both propose various conceptions of the fiction, and even if mechanics resolve which proposal takes place, there is no easing or constraining negotiation by mechanics as the very act of having agreed upon mechanics to determine which fictional proposal to accept circumvents the need for any negotiation now. Easing is not circumventing. If any negotiation happened here, it happened up front when the initial agreement was made. The rest was simply adhering to that agreement.

This is a paradigm of what Vincent Baker means by "negotiated imagination" - the player's desire for the fiction is I (as my PC) am on top of the wall,

But what if that's not the player's desire - What if the player just desires to go through the agreed upon game process to see if that process allows him to place his PC on top of the wall? Would this really be a proposal for a conception of the fiction? I don't think so.

the GM's conception of the fiction is You (as your PC) may not make it, given it's a sheer high wall with guards about it.

I agree! But since in D&D (and many other games) the GM has control over the world and NPC's, the GM in those games just needs to ensure the player understands his conception of the fiction as it pertains to those elements.

So those two competing conceptions of the fiction need to be resolved an integrated somehow.

Not if the player actually intended what I first mentioned - because that player didn't have a competing conception of the fiction - he just wanted to go through the game processes to see if his PC gets to be on top of the wall. He never was saying my conception of the fiction is my pc is now on top of the wall.

To ease and constrain the negotiation, the participants use a rule, which can be summarised as having three steps: the GM establishes a target number that the player must roll, and identifies what part of the PC sheet the player can draw on in resolving that roll and then the player makers the roll, draws on the appropriate part of their sheet - ie the bit labelled Dexterity (Athletics) - to modify the roll and then the GM says what happens next.

This presupposes that 1) that there is some negotiation (your definition in this post) that needs eased and constrained - something that is already in dispute and 2) that mechanics are for easing and constraining that negotiation, when the purpose of mechanics is either to eliminate the need for negotiation or they can define a process to negotiate - but most don't do the later.

 

[FrogReaver]

How does part 2 come about without part 1?

It doesn't.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It doesn't.

Then why try and evaluate if it's a negotiation separate of part 1?

 

[FrogReaver]

Then why try and evaluate if it's a negotiation separate of part 1?

To have a full understanding of exactly what is happening. Why wouldn’t we do that?

 

[hawkeyefan]

To have a full understanding of exactly what is happening. Why wouldn’t we do that?

Because if an entire process is a negotiation, than breaking it down into steps and then picking one out and pointing out how that one step in isolation is not negotiation, that doesn’t really seem to accomplish anything.