RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Aldarc]

I simply don't see that this needs to be true. It's not a requirement of the form; you can agree there is one state and move discourse about it from negotiation to clarification and mechanically mediated action.

I clarify things in a negotiation to see if I understand things correctly and to reassure myself that the opposite party and I see things eye to eye. Often negotiation involves establishing common ground through discussion without any sense of hostility.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, that's just action declaration. We know your movement speed, the difficulty of climbing things, the object interaction rules, presumably your inventory. You can do that in other games, usually just with less actions and less spiraling resolution systems. The changes to the game state are knowable outcomes of deploying mechanics.

I can change the example: I use my magic missiles to blast away the edge of the eye sockets, so the jewels are loosened and fall to the floor.

Or I shut the door to the room, seal it, unleash my Decanter of Endless Water, and float up to the same level as the eyes so that I can pry them loose.

Or, etc, etc.

Player action declarations change fictional position. That's their point.

Even in the climbing example, suppose the GM's notes record that anyone who comes between the statute and the wall behind it is attacked by hidden, spring-fired darts. Is my PC climbing up the front of the statue, or its back?

If fictional position doesn't matter, we're not playing a RPG.

 

[Pedantic]

I can change the example: I use my magic missiles to blast away the edge of the eye sockets, so the jewels are loosened and fall to the floor.

Or I shut the door to the room, seal it, unleash my Decanter of Endless Water, and float up to the same level as the eyes so that I can pry them loose.

Or, etc, etc.

Player action declarations change fictional position. That's their point.

Even in the climbing example, suppose the GM's notes record that anyone who comes between the statute and the wall behind it is attacked by hidden, spring-fired darts. Is my PC climbing up the front of the statue, or its back?

If fictional position doesn't matter, we're not playing a RPG.

I'm not sure how this is in any disagreement with my point you're responding to. My point is that the game state is changed in a way that does not require negotiation between the players, just the deployment of established mechanics.

To go back to our chess analogy, the functioning of the rules in the TTRPG and when I shift my bishop are the same. Neither of them is a negotiation, just an engagement of preexisting mechanisms.

 

[niklinna]

I'm not sure how this is in any disagreement with my point you're responding to. My point is that the game state is changed in a way that does not require negotiation between the players, just the deployment of established mechanics.

To go back to our chess analogy, the functioning of the rules in the TTRPG and when I shift my bishop are the same. Neither of them is a negotiation, just an engagement of preexisting mechanisms.

Use of established mechanics is a means/tool of negotiation, specifically intended to ease and streamline the overall process of negotiation, as has been explained and described and elaborated on multiple times. It is not negotiation itself, any more than articulating a 'p' or an 's', or even a whole word, is speaking a declarative sentence in English.

Also there is no "the game state", there are several game states—one per participant—and they must be continually checked to ensure they are in sync. And that is done through an ongoing process—however brief each exchange, using one of the means/tools that have been explained and described and elaborated on multiple times—of negotiation.

Edit: Fixed a typo, added a clarification.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure how this is in any disagreement with my point you're responding to. My point is that the game state is changed in a way that does not require negotiation between the players, just the deployment of established mechanics.

To go back to our chess analogy, the functioning of the rules in the TTRPG and when I shift my bishop are the same.

There are no established mechanics, in AD&D, for resolving the action declaration I seal the doors, unleash my Decanter of Endless Water, and float up to the same level as the eyes in the statute so that I can pry them out.

Resolving this action declaration is not a logical operation of the sort involved in resolving the move of a bishop in chess.

 

[Lanefan]

Clearly we still have some clarification of facts to do over the meaning of the word "negotiation". It's too bad we can't negotiate a common understanding.

I don't recall anybody saying that getting several people to imagine roughly the same thing is particularly hard—unless someone is deliberately trying to forestall agreement and drag a discussion into the weeds.

Negotiation isn't inherently adversarial. But certain examples of it rather highlight adversarial, one might even say disingenuous, behavior.

Except negotiation is inherently adversarial. That's what differentiates it from a discussion, conversation, or chat.

Put another way, negotiation is synonymous with argument except in an argument there's less restraint.

 

[Lanefan]

Nope. What you've described is a tool to ease negotiation—that is, a rule (or mechanic, or prodecure; it seems prudent to give people options for naming their concepts in this thread).

A.k.a. binding arbitration, which also doesn't fall under "negotiation" as there's no opportunity for back-and-forth once the positions are set between which the arbitrator (in this case, the rule/mechanic) must choose.

 

[Lanefan]

To the best of my knowledge, the closest that RPGing gets to boardgaming with a hidden board is dungeon-crawling.

But even then, the fictional position is not the sole prerogative of the GM - this is what makes the game different from a choose-your-own-adventure.

Eg the GM describes a giant statute with bejewelled eyes, and I say (speaking as my character) I climb up the statute and use my knife to pry out the jewels!

That changes my fictional position.

So far so good, though with the inevitable not-too-distant-future onset of holographic VTTs this will all come full circle: the action will play out in front of us as we speak it.

And it flows from me to the other participants, not from the GM to me.

That flow from you to the other particpants runs through the GM, however, in that one of the roles of the the GM is to represent the resolution mechanics; and often those mechanics are going to have something to say about what you-as-player want to do to the shared fiction.

Here, when you say you'll climb the statue and pry out those sweet jewel eyes the game mechanics are probably going to want a brief chat about the climb and almost certainly will have something to say about prying out the jewels. Thus, the imagination flow is (potentially) interrupted.

 

[Lanefan]

To go back to our chess analogy, the functioning of the rules in the TTRPG and when I shift my bishop are the same. Neither of them is a negotiation, just an engagement of preexisting mechanisms.

With the difference being, of course, that the deployment of those mechanisms is by default going to be much more unpredictable in a TTRPG than in chess, both because the mechanisms are (in most cases) much greater in number and because of the nigh-infinite number of ways in which they can be invoked.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except negotiation is inherently adversarial. That's what differentiates it from a discussion, conversation, or chat.

Can't agree. You can go into a negotiation with both sides trying to find a way they can make a deal that serves both sides well. The whole point can be as much as possible to try and produce a non-zero-sum situation. Not all negotiations are intrinsically selfish.