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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8252350" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here's Vincent Baker, as quoted by me:[USER=177]@Umbran[/USER] seems to take issue with the use of the word sole in that final sentence.There are at least a couple of ways of interpreting that word in that context which render the statement at least plausible and probably true.(1) Mechanics are artificial - in the sense of human-created - processes. They therefore have a function which is what they exist for. (Contrast: tidal movements of water are a process but they are a natural process. They have no function, though humans might take advantage of the process to achieve some purpose such as power generation. To impute a function to natural processes is sometimes harmless, and can even be a useful teaching heuristic, but can be misleading in the context of the pursuit of scientific knowledge.) Mechanics might do other things too, but those other things are byproducts of performing that function for which they exist. Modelling the gameworld may be an instance of such a byproduct.

(2) Modelling the gameworld is itself a process of establishing the shared fiction, given that there is no objectively-existing gameworld that establishes an independent constraint on the accuracy and reliability of the &quot;model&quot;. Hence it is just a special case of the general function.There is even a way in which (1) and (2) might both be true - ie if we accept (2) and then extrapolate to a version of (1), in which the salience of the special case emerges as a byproduct of the need for mechanics to perform their general function.I think any of these is a plausible reading of what Vincent Baker had in mind when he wrote that sentence. He wasn't just making stuff up!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8252350, member: 42582"] Here's Vincent Baker, as quoted by me: [USER=177]@Umbran[/USER] seems to take issue with the use of the word [I]sole[/I] in that final sentence. There are at least a couple of ways of interpreting that word in that context which render the statement at least plausible and probably true. [indent](1) Mechanics are artificial - in the sense of human-created - processes. They therefore have a [I]function[/I] which is what they exist for. (Contrast: tidal movements of water are a [I]process[/I] but they are a natural process. They have no function, though humans might take advantage of the process to achieve some purpose such as power generation. To impute a function to natural processes is sometimes harmless, and can even be a useful teaching heuristic, but can be misleading in the context of the pursuit of scientific knowledge.) Mechanics might do other things too, but those other things are byproducts of performing that function for which they exist. [I]Modelling the gameworld [/I]may be an instance of such a byproduct. (2) [I]Modelling the gameworld[/I] is itself a process of establishing the shared fiction, given that there is no objectively-existing gameworld that establishes an independent constraint on the accuracy and reliability of the "model". Hence it is just a special case of the general function.[/indent] There is even a way in which (1) and (2) might both be true - ie if we accept (2) and then extrapolate to a version of (1), in which the salience of the special case emerges as a byproduct of the need for mechanics to perform their general function. I think any of these is a plausible reading of what Vincent Baker had in mind when he wrote that sentence. He wasn't just making stuff up! [/QUOTE]

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