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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6302029" data-attributes="member: 42582">Mathematical designs are realised in the building of my house - for instance, it is build on a concrete slab, which is a relatively sophisticated engineering technique. But I can almost guarantee you that the builders who laid that slab knew next-to-nothing about mathematics beyond simple arithmetic. And likewise if I ever need to takes steps to maintain the slab on which my house is built, I won't be asking a mathematician.Playing a game of basketball on a basketball court is not a mathematical exercise, and does not require mathematical reasoning. To say otherwise would be to say that typing on my keyboard is a mathematical exercise, simply because the person who invented computer keyboards used mathenatical and engineering skills to do so.No one in this thread has asserted this. Not in general. And not even in the particular case of RPGs.Chess neither is, nor involves, a shared fiction.Basketball neither is, nor involves, a shared fiction.RPGing is not a shared fiction. It is a game. But it involves (among other things) shared fictions, in something like the way that chess involves (though is not identical with, or equivalent to, or an instance of) a board."Manipulating" here is clearly a metaphor, and an obscure one at all. "Stipulating" is probably not quite right, but is closer to the literal truth of what is going on. The permissibility of the stipulation is obviously governed by the shared fiction - eg what makes it permissible for the players to stipulate the presence of goblin dung in the dungeon is that it is already established (i) that goblins are present in the dungeon, and (ii) that goblins are biological, more-or-less anthropomorphic beings, who hence have digestive systems comparable to those of humans.This sort of reasoning is utterly crucial to playing D&D. It has no analogue in chess. You can't get better at chess, for instance, other than by practising your chess. Whereas you can get "better" at D&D by, for instance, learning more about human biology and hence learning new things to ask about goblins, who closely resemble human. Similarly, you can get better at D&D by reading books about polearms, hence getting a better idea of what options are available to your PC equipped with a Bohemian ear-spork.</blockquote>

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