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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9221335" data-attributes="member: 71699">Rather than abstract, it is due to observing actual play that I find it hard to dismiss assertion. Further below though, I highlight the value of keeping negotiation in mind for design.Regarding (i) and (ii) a consequence of designing effective methods (i.e. "some way") is to alleviate negotiation in the moment. That is found in our understanding of rules as normative: we learn from them what to normally do in the moment.A good example is when you want your scene-setting to involve negotiation, so you design rules that prompt negotiation. Conversely, if you don't want your scene-setting to involve negotiation, you design rules that alleviate it, such as by assigning one participant ownership of scene-setting.[USER=71235]@niklinna[/USER] An important difference between what I am saying and what you have been saying, then, is that negotiations implied in cases anticipated or desired to arise in play, factor into the process of rule design for them; with the result that the designed and playtested rules alleviate that same negotiation during play. In that light, see how [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] lays out examples such as "an action that the rules haven't firmly encoded" as driving negotiation in the moment... implying both that the absence of effective methods can provoke negotiation, and that the presence of effective methods ("firmly encoded") is less likely to do so.That doesn't really respond to what I was outlining, which was not that additional things couldn't be true, but that each participant's private draft of the fiction is sketchy and incomplete. Certainly prior conversation could have established eye colour, but in this case it did not and didn't need to. In it's absence, each player could have a different eye colour in mind (or none), and that would not matter.The prior agreements I am thinking of is the game design best practice that has emerged of ensuring that principles and agenda are part of game text. I assume that those elements do useful work, rather than amounting to blank text. They do change actual facts about what is involved in establishing the shared fiction, including expectations about who is under a duty to say and do what... your bracketed example even discusses how choices in their regard impact actual play.Apologies if I am misreading, but I do not follow why you wrote the above.I'd advocate differentiating between problems for RPG design, and consequences of RPG design. Negotiation is a crucial concern for the former, while success addressing its drivers alleviates it during play (where that is desired, as is quite common).</blockquote>

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