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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9218474" data-attributes="member: 71699">If by easing/constraining one means obviating, then I'm in agreement!Less flippantly, as I commented up thread I believe that norms established up front can obviate negotiation in a preponderance of later moments. A common example is where the right to say what is true is firmly appointed.Conversely, if norms established up front unsettle or dilute the right to say what's true, then negotiation in a preponderance of (if not all) later moments would be a foreseeable (and desirable) outcome.Speculatively, the motives driving what on surface could look like quibbling over semantics are reflective of a fracture in roleplaying culture. For some, it is crucial that what any participant says is a "suggestion" that "might" be true, and which isn't true until everyone else agrees. The contingency of every participant's contribution to the ongoing fiction, and right of others to dissent or propose alternatives at any moment, is firmly asserted. That given, it is indeed the crucial normative function of rules to ease and constrain, or in a sense reassemble, agreement in each moment. And they can be crafted to produce that agreement in surprising and challenging ways.For others, that could all seem unnecessary and unsettling. They're comfortable appointing someone to say what is true and in so doing giving their umbrella consent to that person's entire chain of contributions; which is to say that they've established or assumed that norm. Reproducing consent in the moment becomes less crucial for rules, and I suppose that draws focus to what they can do to model world and craft interesting gameplay.I take Baker's analysis to represent an explosive challenge to prevailing assumptions at the time. "So look, you!" Take notice! What you thought was going on, well that's actually not all that is or could be going on. And in a sense this is right, because as we've discussed before, rules put in place or reshape norms. And the norms here are not self-enforcing, they require your cooperation, which you can - at any moment - withhold. Thus, if I have the rules of Chess - crafted to create an intriguing decision-space - well, I still can just not follow those rules, and what you do when I do that is up to you. If you like, you can accept it. And Baker isn't interested just in things we would go along with, normally, but things we wouldn't go along with, normally.</blockquote>

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