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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8654124" data-attributes="member: 71699">I would point to something of a leap in your doubts, which is that it's unjustified to say that it is subject to infinite expansion.To get from first suggestions of a chain to some crucial moment will occur within one session, or a couple of sessions, or be a long arc. In the last case, the count of events that tick toward it will typically be low on a per session basis. In the other cases, decisions (of the sort we've been dicussing) bearing on a chain while many in number, will be vastly fewer than infinite.You would hopefully agree that the RPG "conversation" at any point is informed by what came before it: the fiction, secured by the continual cycle of validation against fictional positioning, the system, secured by maintenance of state. Remember that I am not talking about events that might have happened outside our window during play, I am speaking specifically of those events that formed part of our play.It is possible to picture disjunctions, such as we end a session, take a long break, and resume with no idea of what came before. However, we also maintain ephemera of play that helps remind what we'd agreed to that point was true. So we might well resume with vague memories, but still with a shared fiction and system state and still able to go forward together from there. It doesn't matter that what we go forward with is not faithful to all that preceded it. It only matters that as a group we say what it is and accept it as such. Thus, in the end, it is the process that you would need to have doubts over, because it is tolerant of disjunctions.However, you obviously can have the doubts you do - I do not have such doubts, but then our experiences are not identical - and that does not leave us with any obvious way forward. It's been a really interesting thread and I've been able to understand some things a lot better (and some of those things are things about myself - I've been able to understand some of my own experiences better). So thank you all!I'm officially on holiday shortly, so I won't say more for a few weeks. I won't be able to stop myself from reading the thread, even so! So any new examples or ideas you have I will surely see. If the thread is still going when I'm back I might well rejoin at post 5000 or so!!</blockquote>

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