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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9219942" data-attributes="member: 42582">When two people look at a chess board, then (setting to one side tricks of the light, and assuming everyone is wearing their glasses, and etc) they see the same thing.These two people do not need to establish any agreement as to the state of the board, as the physical location of the pieces, the physical properties of light, and the physiology of each person's eyes and brain, all bring it about that the two people see the same thing. Assuming the two people have at least passing familiarity with the game of chess, not only do they see the same physical objects, but they seem the same conventional state-of-affairs, that is, a board of chess pieces arranged thus-and-so.RPGs do not have a physical board, or physical pieces, to generate agreement in the same fashion. The positions of the players are fictional (hence why we can talk about fictional positioning). Imagining a fiction is an active thing - the participant in the game has to conjure it up. And for the game to work, the players have to imagine the same thing - they have to agree on the fictional position of the participants.Because that fictional position changes from moment to moment of play - this is what the play of RPG is all about - there has to be ongoing agreement, among the participants, about what it is that is being imagined, how it has changed, what the fiction is now as opposed to what it was then.This is the way in which RPGing requires agreement in a different fashion from chess or from Empires and Arms - the difference does not consist in the need to agree on rules and conventions of play, but in the difference to agree on the (imaginary, fictional) state of the game, given that there is no physical, perceptible object that secures that agreement. (Unlike a chess board or a hand of cards or whatever else.)This is why Vincent Baker refers to RPGing as negotiated imagination. He is using the word "negotiate" in its ordinary meaning of discussion aimed at reaching an agreement (thanks Oxford Languages via Google). RPGing is discussion aimed at reaching agreement on what it is that is imagined.So when he talks about constraining or easing negotiation, he is talking about processes that ease and constrain the discussion. And he gives <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">an example</a>: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? 1. Sometimes, not much [discussion] at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.Most of the disagreement in this thread consists in pointing to examples like this, pointing out that when these issues of ownership are clear there is little or no discussion. That is not in disupte.Baker gives this example too:4. And 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.And some of the disagreement consists in giving examples like this, although to me some of the presentation of them seems to be oddly idealised. As if players in 3E or 5e D&D combat, for instance, never seek clarification about where the monsters are so they can move their PCs without drawing opportunity attacks. Or as if players never seek clarification about how wet or slippery the wall is, so they can decide whether or not their PCs try and climb it.In my experience, if a GM tells players "You enter <such-and-such a place>" it is common for the players to ask "What can we see?" or perhaps to ask "Can we see <insert whatever it is that the player is hoping their PC can see>?" This is the player wanting to know what it is that they should be imagining - or to put the same point in other words, what is their fictional position?This is a discussion - a conversation among friends - aimed at reaching agreement - agreement on what should be imagined. That is why it has been described as negotiation. That's all.</blockquote>

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