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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4330664" data-attributes="member: 42582">Now I mightn't know much about RPGs, but I know a lot about philosophy of law - and this claim is pretty contentious! On a standard positivist analysis of a legal system, for example (eg HLA Hart, Jules Coleman, Joseph Raz) the judge has to exercise discretion (ie make it up, in a way that is consistent with what's come before) every time the law has a gap. And on at least some positivist theories (eg Raz) the law is very gappy.And this is the law - something which, unlike the typical RPG gameworld, has 100s of 1000s of pages of text that make it up (at least in a common law system, where the law resides to a large extent in reported cases of superior courts; a further complication of a common law system is that the superior courts are in fact invested with the authority to change the law in many circumstances).One could also use the analogy of mathematics and mathematicians. Given that some quite serious philosophers of mathematics (Brouwer, Wittgenstein) take the view that mathematics is a human construct - and manifestly the rules of mathematics are richer than those of any RPG gameworld - it is hard to see how it is obvious that the RPG gameworld is not one.But to pursue the legal analogy, the world is so gappy, and the identify of legislators and adjudicators so total, that many (perhaps most) acts of adjudication are also acts of legislation - which is to say (moving from law to RPGs) acts of narration.So here we have a player not acting in character, but acting in efffect as a co-GM. Is this not RPGing? To say that it's not seems odd - if I'm not playing an RPG when I'm building my character and creating his or her background then what am I doing? In one post you yourself suggest it is a natural way for an RPG to be played, but in another you suggest that it is like "a henhouse full of roosters." Both can't be true.And suppose I make this decision about my PC's background during the middle of a session (whether because I suddenly get the idea, or because the rules of the game permit me to introduce one background fact about my PC per session, or whatever) - am I then suddenly ceasing to play the game? (Note also that it makes no sense to say that I make this decision about my background, because I cannot choose my background - life has thrust it upon me!) Of course any such determination about my PC's background will (usually, at least) have to be consistent with what's gone before. But that is not to say that the world dictates it, only that the world permits it. And permission is a much weaker concept than dictation - for permissions to turn into actualities someone has to act (by exercising the authority conferred by the permission).This is really a separate issue, but something that I disagree with. For example - I may be playing a PC who is indifferent to the romantic overtures of an NPC, and who therefore ignores them and moves on. For the PC, a non-critical choice. But for the players at the table - including me, quite possibly - it might be a critical choice, because of what it tells us about the personality of the PC and what it means to be that sort of person.This is perhaps one of the most generic forms that the exercise of GM narrative authority takes. Sometimes it is game destroying railroading. Other times it is game-facilitating antagonism. Given that the world need only permit, but rarely dictates, it is hard to see it as simply the GM giving voice to the world.I don't think that this is especially true of RM, although it is more true of RM than (for example) Runequest. I'd therefore like to know more about the comparison class. It's certainly not easy to play a Thief in 1st ed AD&D without knowing the rules of the game - you'll keep trying to do stuff that you think a thief might be able to do, like hear noise or hide in shadows or pick pockets, and fail dismally at it. As for playing a Monk, or any sort of spell-user in that game - I don't think one would get very far without the rules.But again, maybe AD&D isn't the game you have in mind.</blockquote>

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