Torchbearer 2nd ed: first impressions

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is no conflict between intending, and finding out: RPGers find out what is within the scope of what they intended to find out. Anything else is meaningless. But more interestingly...


There may be some unhelpful ideas about the timeline coming into play here. There is no fictional position that was. There is only our present belief about the fictional position, given what we know right now. It might be better to use the term "reflectively". You learn (through your own and others reflection upon it) what your fictional position is believed to be now.

Additionally, we're close to saying that fictional position is the judgement of what is legitimate. So that it has no other form than the sense for legitimacy. Whereas almost all of our earlier discussion has given it (incompletely known) form, so that players might be expected to be capable of self-reporting much about what they believe the fictional position is.

In any case, when I think of intention there are two ways that applies. The first is aboutness. In order to be capable of saying what follows (or does not follow, say in the case of reaching) we must know what the fiction is about. That's an important aspect of fictional positioning: a shared idea of what the fiction is about. In the case at hand, it's about (inter alia) being pursued by gnolls.

Suppose contrary to that, it was not? That will commit us to accepting non-sequiteurs - absurdly disconnected sequences of actions - as always justified. That's not the sort of game that anyone plays. Given the vast number of possible declarations, taken sincerely it would rule out anyone saying anything that follows.

The second way is the question of whether someone can hold a belief about the fictional position that includes an intention - such as I believe the parson intends to strike the child - and then make judgements of declarations in that light (retroactively, reflectively, whatever.) Such as counting justified a player's invoking their Good Parent trait (were there such a thing) to oppose the parson. I do not see how that can be ruled out and therefore one must accept at minimum that fictional positioning can include intentions.

I think the problem is you are sort of invoking some form of degenerate play. In what game would players fiddle with pebbles instead of dealing with an immediate threat which opposes their goals? I think we have to take it as a given that Story Now (and the other agendas equally it would seem) only work when the participants actually play the game. If I play chess and just make random moves, I'm not really engaging, the game will be at best highly uninteresting and have little of the character of an actual chess game beyond the basic form.

So, given that players will address their agenda and specific intent, I don't think we need to consider this intent to be a part of the fiction, certainly not a part of the bit we are establishing RIGHT NOW. It more supervenes over position. Yes, in a good faith game it will act like a constraint, but its one that is under player control to a large degree, and it is what animates the game in a way that no fiction does.

 

[JAMUMU]

I don't want to interrupt the thread, but I just joined to let you know that I've been glued to it. It's been a fantastic read. Thank you, and carry on!

 

[pemerton]

There is no fictional position that was. There is only our present belief about the fictional position, given what we know right now.

Vincent Baker: "Fictional positioning is only and always retroactive. You can guess what your position is, and you can plan for your future position". I think it follows fairly closely from those two things that you can know what your fictional position - that is, "how the game's fictional stuff affects real-world gameplay" by being one of the "factors and processes . . . that determine" your "total set of all of the legitimate gameplay options available to [you] at [a] moment of play" - was. For instance, if Dro declares "I put a bolt in its face!" and that move is accepted as legitimate, Dro now learns that his fictional position included Harguld having a crossbow ready to shoot. Dro was probably already confident about that, for the reasons I posted upthread, but that confidence is now shown to be fully warranted.

Conversely, I don't think it would be consistent with the retroactivity of fictional positioning to deny that there was some or other fictional position.

It might be better to use the term "reflectively". You learn (through your own and others reflection upon it) what your fictional position is believed to be now.

To me, this does not seem to describe something which is known only retroactively. I also don't find "reflection" that helpful. Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. It is that negotiation that determines fictional positioning. At the core of negotiation is making decisions together. Reflection may contribute to this - eg upon reflection, everyone agrees that a shattered faceplate on the surface of Pluto means freezing, suffocating and decompressing - but I don't think reflection is at the core.

Additionally, we're close to saying that fictional position is the judgement of what is legitimate.

I'm not. As per Baker, I'm saying that it is one of the factors that determines what moves are legitimate. It's not the only such factor. Cues - eg that two dice pools are tied for successes - constitute another factor. And so do interpersonal considerations.

So that it has no other form than the sense for legitimacy.

You seem to be ignoring both cues, and the interpersonal, as factors that underlie legitimacy of moves.

In any case, when I think of intention there are two ways that applies. The first is aboutness. In order to be capable of saying what follows (or does not follow, say in the case of reaching) we must know what the fiction is about. That's an important aspect of fictional positioning: a shared idea of what the fiction is about. In the case at hand, it's about (inter alia) being pursued by gnolls.

Suppose contrary to that, it was not? That will commit us to accepting non-sequiteurs - absurdly disconnected sequences of actions - as always justified. That's not the sort of game that anyone plays. Given the vast number of possible declarations, taken sincerely it would rule out anyone saying anything that follows.

I don't agree with this. How do we even know that the fiction of Harguld and the Gnolls is about being pursued by Gnolls? We don't know what Harguld's Belief is, nor what his Goal is - and in Torchbearer these are key determinants of what the fiction is about. In this way (and others) TB betrays its origins in BW.

The fiction contains or includes a pursuit of Harguld and friends by Gnolls. That's enough to let us understand the example of play, including how actions are declared. And it marks a contrast with BW - in BW we can't understand an example of play, and in particular how a GM declares consequences of failure, without knowing what the fiction is about, because in BW and unlike in TB, the GM in doing those things must have regard to the Beliefs, Instinct and Traits of the PCs. But what the fiction is about is not itself an element of the fiction (absent 4th-wall breaking stuff, like some approaches to Over the Edge). Rather, it pertains to some of the interpersonal factors that Baker mentions: being interesting, being engaging, being relevant given that everyone has gathered together here and now to play this game and not this other game. The same is true of your concerns about non-sequiturs. These are not elements of the fiction.

Returning from BW to Torchbearer, the game is about hardscrabble adventurers trying to make their fortunes in a hostile world (see DHB pp 6-7, SG pp 4-6). That means that - typically - the GM would probably be going awry to narrate the Gnoll rushing up to Harguld and planting a kiss on his cheek. We can explain that in part by reference to established elements of the fiction - the cue for Gnolls (ie their statblock on SG p 186) describes their Nature as Ambushing, Devouring and Worshipping, with an Instinct to attack from ambush rather than directly, and that cue supports a shared fiction (as @AbdulAlhazred has mentioned not far upthread), a shared imagining of what Gnolls are like, which makes the planting of the kiss seem inapt. But we can also explain that inaptness by reference to what the rulebooks tells the game is about. Contrast, say, The Dying Earth where something so absurd might be less inapt.

The second way is the question of whether someone can hold a belief about the fictional position that includes an intention - such as I believe the parson intends to strike the child - and then make judgements of declarations in that light (retroactively, reflectively, whatever.) Such as counting justified a player's invoking their Good Parent trait (were there such a thing) to oppose the parson. I do not see how that can be ruled out and therefore one must accept at minimum that fictional positioning can include intentions.

You are referring here to a NPC, it seems. AbdulAlhazred and I have been talking primarily about PCs.

The parson about to strike a child seems no different from the Gnoll about to kill and eat Harguld. These are persons in the fiction, doing some things and hoping to do other things. No one disputes that such intentions are part of a fiction. But they are not particularly worthy of remark. Flowers can also be parts of fictions. Hallucinations can also be parts of fictions.

What I have said, and what I believe AbdulAlhazred has also said, is that:

(i) imagined intentions of imagined people play no special or distinctively interesting role in the shared fiction - they are just more imagined stuff;

(ii) the imagined intentions of PCs are highly mutable in play, and often are introduced into the fiction ex-post to make sense of, or support the integration into the fiction of, declared actions (and this is why I mentioned Ron Edwards on stance - stances are particular ways of relating imagined PC intentions and action declarations, and Torchbearer is clearly not a game that promotes predominantly actor stance play;

(iii) that the real intentions of real people are not part of the fiction, and are not part of fictional positioning either.​

I think the problem is you are sort of invoking some form of degenerate play. In what game would players fiddle with pebbles instead of dealing with an immediate threat which opposes their goals?

<snip>

given that players will address their agenda and specific intent, I don't think we need to consider this intent to be a part of the fiction, certainly not a part of the bit we are establishing RIGHT NOW. It more supervenes over position. Yes, in a good faith game it will act like a constraint, but its one that is under player control to a large degree, and it is what animates the game in a way that no fiction does.

Here, you are describing interpersonal factors - playing in good faith, having regard to the overarching purpose/logic of the game, etc - that inform position (ie the suite of available legitimate moves).

Baker himself clearly distinguishes the from the fictional aspect of a particpant's position.

And also related to the issue of legitimate moves, though on the GM-side:

I think that is really ultimately what pushes it into being Gamist vs purely Narrative in character, as a game. I think that's pretty uncontroversial though at this point.

I think we're not agreed on this point. The features that you mention - players changing intentions, goals, beliefs etc - are all present in Burning Wheel. As I posted in the other thread, the difference I see between the systems is the relationship between player-established priorities, and the considerations that inform the GM's framing and consequence-narration.

As I said above in this post, that is why we can't make sense of a BW episode of play without knowing what the play was "about" - ie the Beliefs etc of the protagonists.

 

[pemerton]

The fact that they change is not at odds with forming part of the fictional positioning. Another way to put that is - can you say how you think it is at odds? Fictional positioning is fluid, right? It's not - set it up and it's static from then on.

Consider the following from Paul Czege, which has been quite influential on my GMing:

More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this.​

The "unfixedness" of NPC personalities is a useful GMing technique. That is an instance of the sort of "fluidity" that @AbdulAlhazred has described, I think, though on the GM rather than player side.

But the fluidity is not a component or feature of the fictional position. Rather, it means that there is no fictional position in which these NPCs' personalities figures. Only once the personality becomes fixed, does it become a part of the shared fiction.

This contrasts with a change in fictional position that reflects changes in the fiction - eg at the start, Harguld's crossbow is loaded, but at the end it's not because he's shot at the Gnoll.

We see similar fluidity (not change) in relation to when Harguld shoots. Only after Dro has delared the shot, and only after he has then triggered Cunning, do we learn that Harguld waited and that the Gnoll was thus too close.

 

[clearstream]

Vincent Baker: "Fictional positioning is only and always retroactive. You can guess what your position is, and you can plan for your future position". I think it follows fairly closely from those two things that you can know what your fictional position - that is, "how the game's fictional stuff affects real-world gameplay" by being one of the "factors and processes . . . that determine" your "total set of all of the legitimate gameplay options available to [you] at [a] moment of play" - was. For instance, if Dro declares "I put a bolt in its face!" and that move is accepted as legitimate, Dro now learns that his fictional position included Harguld having a crossbow ready to shoot. Dro was probably already confident about that, for the reasons I posted upthread, but that confidence is now shown to be fully warranted.

Conversely, I don't think it would be consistent with the retroactivity of fictional positioning to deny that there was some or other fictional position.

To me, this does not seem to describe something which is known only retroactively. I also don't find "reflection" that helpful. Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. It is that negotiation that determines fictional positioning. At the core of negotiation is making decisions together. Reflection may contribute to this - eg upon reflection, everyone agrees that a shattered faceplate on the surface of Pluto means freezing, suffocating and decompressing - but I don't think reflection is at the core.

For me it depends on whether you are grasping the fictional position referenced as that which existed at a past time, or grasping that it can only exist in the present and accepting that you're doing some glossing over that is useful even while not being always correct.

To attempt to diagram my argument out a bit, let's suppose we are in an RPG session and it's 8pm. For convenience, I'll step time in 5 minute increments. I will assume that player cognitive states include beliefs, emotions and inclinations.

[20.00][20:05][20:10][20.15][20:20][20:25] Clock time
[....1....][....2....][....3....][....4....][....5....][....6....] Real world states
PLAYER COGNITIVE STATES
[....A....][....B....][....C....][....D....][....E....][....F....] Fictional positions

At 20:05 the player establishes they are waiting to ambush a gnoll in a cave. Everyone agrees, so the group might be assumed to have some information about the fictional position at B.

At 20:10 GM narrates a gnoll scout emerging and the player character fires. Dice pools are assembled and rolled, establishing that the world state at 3 contains a tie.

At 20:15 the player announces using a trait against themselves to break the tie...

One way to describe the above is to say that world state 3 produces no fiction, and when we come to 20:15 we retroactively assess or gain knowledge of a pristine B that has remained exactly as it was at 20:05.

For many purposes that is adequate, but it will sometimes misguide intuitions because at 20:15 it is only physically possible for players to use what exists at 4 and D. That is because cognitive states change continuously and imperfectly. It is even possible for imperfections to creep into the world state (a dropped die, an incorrectly marked fail on a sheet and so on). Unless we have the benefit of a perfect-stenographer with access to our cognitive states, it will only be with reference to our beliefs, emotions and inclinations now that the fictional position now can be determined. My cognitive state cannot return to a previous moment to say what was in that moment: it can only say what I believe now about what I believed then.

Sometimes we are dealing with simple matters of recollection, such as did you show me a card with the letter A on it at 20:00? The facts of the matter in such cases can be abstract. Establishing reaching is a complex matter. It is not a simple test of world state. For example, what does our group feel it is to be cunning? What are they inclined to deem meet in light of what they remember and believe? Reaching isn't enacting a system step incorrectly, it's misapprehending or missapplying something quite fundamental in our fiction.

What I observe in play is no discounting of FitM events from feelings about our fiction. I don't believe folk are easily capable of discounting them. Rather I see folk weave system events into updates of what they think is in the fiction. I'd possibly say that the very best rules are those that do that job effectively (update the fiction effectively). What we decide is acceptable due to fictional positioning references everything in our cognitive states at the time it's queried... and the tie is in that state colouring our fiction.

You are referring here to a NPC, it seems. AbdulAlhazred and I have been talking primarily about PCs.

The parson about to strike a child seems no different from the Gnoll about to kill and eat Harguld. These are persons in the fiction, doing some things and hoping to do other things. No one disputes that such intentions are part of a fiction. But they are not particularly worthy of remark. Flowers can also be parts of fictions. Hallucinations can also be parts of fictions.

I am referring to characters, both PC and NPC. A gnoll that had sense ambush would be just as capable of sensing the PC ambush. Were such a gnoll included in the example, then it would amount to the GM grasping Dro's intent and (based on that intent) giving said gnoll additional options.

 

[pemerton]

To attempt to diagram my argument out a bit, let's suppose we are in an RPG session and it's 8pm. For convenience, I'll step time in 5 minute increments. I will assume that player cognitive states include beliefs, emotions and inclinations.

[20.00][20:05][20:10][20.15][20:20][20:25] Clock time
[....1....][....2....][....3....][....4....][....5....][....6....] Real world states
PLAYER COGNITIVE STATES
[....A....][....B....][....C....][....D....][....E....][....F....] Fictional positions

Fictional position is not a player's cognitive state. It's one of the factors that determines a player's total set of legitimate moves/gameplay options. It is the factor that consists in the "fictional stuff" ie the shared fiction. As I've already posted, I don't think we need to get deeply into the metaphysics of fiction. But clearly one player's cognitive state doesn't settle the content of a shared fiction. And there are parts of a player's cognitive state - eg wishing that they'd rolled higher on the dice - which are not relevant to the content of any shared fiction.

Unless we have the benefit of a perfect-stenographer with access to our cognitive states, it will only be with reference to our beliefs, emotions and inclinations now that the fictional position now can be determined.

You seem, here, to be disagreeing with Baker that fictional position can only be known retroactively.

As I already posted, all I think he is getting at with that is that you can't really be certain that what you think is part of the shared fiction is really shared until you put it to the test by using it as the basis of a declared move. At that point you learn whether or not everyone else shared your conception of that element being part of the fiction!

I see folk weave system events into updates of what they think is in the fiction.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "system event" - do you mean creating or referring to a cue? Eg rolling dice and reading the result; deciding to use a trait to break a tie; etc?

In which case, I think it's uncontroversial that the purpose of referring to cues is to generate updates to the fiction:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .​

​

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

But that doesn't tell us anything about what the arrows are, in any given episode of play, between cues and cues, cues and fiction, or fiction and fiction.

 

[clearstream]

Fictional position is not a player's cognitive state.

Given that belief we may find ourselves even more unlikely to find common ground.

My view is that fictional position exists as a set of cognitive states of the participants, supplemented in the normal human way by symbolic ephemera. (A miniature on a grid can be such a symbol; they can be seen as reminders, but are also subject to manipulation. Jo pointing to their figure "I'm there, by the door, right?" is one example.)

To put it another way, if fictional position exists elsewhere, then where?

It's one of the factors that determines a player's total set of legitimate moves/gameplay options. It is the factor that consists in the "fictional stuff" ie the shared fiction. As I've already posted, I don't think we need to get deeply into the metaphysics of fiction. But clearly one player's cognitive state doesn't settle the content of a shared fiction. And there are parts of a player's cognitive state - eg wishing that they'd rolled higher on the dice - which are not relevant to the content of any shared fiction.

I did not say "one player", although I do say that each player must settle their judgement of fictional position in their present cognitive state, as influenced by the speech acts of others. You might view the fictional positioning as shared - which is useful for some purposes. I suggest accepting that there is no objective / independent version of the fictional position - nothing that can be crystallised and stand separate from player cognitive states, unchanged over time.

Do we believe that fictional position can be queried so long as even a single member of the group remains? So that Jo could declare a use of trait against self and ask themself whether they felt they were on solid ground? From experience I would predict that over multiple such tests, Jo will attest to differences in the strengths of their conviction that they were not reaching. I believe that Jo can very well imagine a possible trait against self declaration and dismiss it - decide not to proceed with it - on the basis that it felt to Jo (alone) as reaching.

Another possibility is to rule out fictional positioning in the case of solo play. Journaling RPGs might form a good set of counter-examples, unless those are ruled out of being RPGs? In any case, my view is that individuals remain capable of inventing and inventively querying a fiction (querying without being sure of the answer prior to making the query). Fictional position subsists on individual cognitive states.

We agree I think that the position is never completely articulated, but each player will have a sense of fit that reaching may transgress, prompting a complaint. Cognitive states are so complex that it's impossible to draw a hard boundary around what will bear on a given determination. Based on work I've seen on games and brain imaging (fmri) the better assumption is that everything will. The whole brain isn't necessarily activating, but potentiation is an extremely subtle thing. Example, Jo is tilted by a low roll and responds more critically to Dro's declaration than she might have otherwise.

You seem, here, to be disagreeing with Baker that fictional position can only be known retroactively.

As I already posted, all I think he is getting at with that is that you can't really be certain that what you think is part of the shared fiction is really shared until you put it to the test by using it as the basis of a declared move. At that point you learn whether or not everyone else shared your conception of that element being part of the fiction!

I am disagreeing with any referencing back to a fictional position crystallised in time based on the temporal implications of "retroactive" . I agree that the position is never fully known, and we normally learn something about it each time we query it. That you can learn if your grasp of it is shared comes about because fictional position exists in present cognitive states.

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

I agree as to crucial, but probably not sole. To me Baker explored, demonstrated, and took advantage of that crucial function.



[Note edits as further thoughts struck me.]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Given that belief we may find ourselves even more unlikely to find common ground.

My view is that fictional position exists as a set of cognitive states of the participants, supplemented in the normal human way by symbolic ephemera. (A miniature on a grid can be such a symbol; they can be seen as reminders, but are also subject to manipulation. Jo pointing to their figure "I'm there, by the door, right?" is one example.)

To put it another way, if fictional position exists elsewhere, then where?

Fictional position, that is to say THE FICTION ITSELF, obviously exists as cognitive states, as well as cues (IE some may be written down or whatever). Nobody is disputing that. What we are disputing is that you can somehow say WHAT THAT IS, without testing it. How do you know what each participant is thinking the state is if say we process a statement like "my character moves through the door"? Joe might have meant he just takes a step in, Charlie might interpret it to mean the character is moving steadily into the space beyond and is now substantially clear of the doorway. Betty might think it means he's moved in and taken up a position where her character can move through and resume some existing defined relative position in a predetermined marching order. Suddenly the GM reveals some threat, and we are about to find out which of these alternatives (or none of them) is going to actually prevail... How that happens can vary widely. In some games it could be the GM's prerogative to decide. It could be strictly the business of Joe, who declared the action of his character. Joe however, might decide he likes Betty's interpretation better, and adopts it as his own. Frank might invoke some sort of character ability and as part of determining the results of achieving his intent maybe HE defines where Joe's character actually is as a way of explaining the outcome. ONLY PLAY WILL TELL, though obviously in some cases it might be a fairly trivial amount of play.

I did not say "one player", although I do say that each player must settle their judgement of fictional position in their present cognitive state, as influenced by the speech acts of others. You might view the fictional positioning as shared - which is useful for some purposes. I suggest accepting that there is no objective / independent version of the fictional position - nothing that can be crystallised and stand separate from player cognitive states, unchanged over time.

How is this different from what @pemerton is saying? Only play can or will determine what becomes canonical fiction, and that can only, definitionally by the laws of temporal mechanics, be something that occurred in the past. That is what is meant, only further play resolves it. Thus whatever we are thinking is the situation NOW is simply a hypothesis about the shared fiction, not established (again said establishment may be trivial, so the distinction is not always very important). In many game systems, like TB2, the importance of the distinction is pretty large, as only the use of specific mechanics and interaction with specific cues can resolve it.

Do we believe that fictional position can be queried so long as even a single member of the group remains? So that Jo could declare a use of trait against self and ask themself whether they felt they were on solid ground? From experience I would predict that over multiple such tests, Jo will attest to differences in the strengths of their conviction that they were not reaching. I believe that Jo can very well imagine a possible trait against self declaration and dismiss it - decide not to proceed with it - on the basis that it felt to Jo (alone) as reaching.

OK, I don't think anyone really disputes this possibility. I'd have to say though that there are ALWAYS at least 2 participants in TB2, the GM and a player.

Another possibility is to rule out fictional positioning in the case of solo play. Journaling RPGs might form a good set of counter-examples, unless those are ruled out of being RPGs? In any case, my view is that individuals remain capable of inventing and inventively querying a fiction (querying without being sure of the answer prior to making the query). Fictional position subsists on individual cognitive states.

I think it is determined by querying those states, and using the process of play to resolve these hypotheses and prove them true or false. Again, some will be relatively uncontroversial. Everyone may clearly understand they are in a hallway, and that the walls cannot be passed through or over, but I would say this is so BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN RESOLVED ALREADY. Now, in solo play the mechanisms of such resolution may be substantively different from say TB2, where you have a GM. OK, but I think the player still constructs some idea (hypothesis) about what the fiction will be/is and then tests it somehow. If no such test exists, whatsoever, then I'm not sure where the GAME part of an RPG would reside...

We agree I think that the position is never completely articulated, but each player will have a sense of fit that reaching may transgress, prompting a complaint. Cognitive states are so complex that it's impossible to draw a hard boundary around what will bear on a given determination. Based on work I've seen on games and brain imaging (fmri) the better assumption is that everything will. The whole brain isn't necessarily activating, but potentiation is an extremely subtle thing. Example, Jo is tilted by a low roll and responds more critically to Dro's declaration than she might have otherwise.


I am disagreeing with any referencing back to a fictional position crystallised in time based on the temporal implications of "retroactive" . I agree that the position is never fully known, and we normally learn something about it each time we query it. That you can learn if your grasp of it is shared comes about because fictional position exists in present cognitive states.

Again, I see what we hold presently in mind about what has not yet been resolved to be hypothesis. It will be valid to some varying degrees which we will only know when we try to find out by playing. Play to Find Out, what else can it mean?

 

[pemerton]

A child can think of the following: a basket with two apples, into which are placed two more apples. The child is now thinking of a basket with two + two apples. Is the child thinking of a basket with 4 apples? That's a difficult question. I imagine the developmental psychologists have something to say about it. There were also discussions among philosophers, between the wars and in the immediate post-WWII literature, about whether a drunk person who is "seeing" pink elephants is seeing a denumerable number of such elephants.

When Conan Doyle tells us that Holmes left the house, this probably implies that Holmes is wearing shoes even if Conan Doyle doesn't mention them and never thought of them.

The relationship between cognitive states - be they one person's, or shared - and the content and implications of what is believed and imagined is a complicated one. I don't think we need to establish what that relationship is in order to talk about shared fiction in RPGing, but it is part of the reason why I think it is both unnecessary and unhelpful to assert that "fictional position" is a cognitive state.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A child can think of the following: a basket with two apples, into which are placed two more apples. The child is now thinking of a basket with two + two apples. Is the child thinking of a basket with 4 apples? That's a difficult question. I imagine the developmental psychologists have something to say about it. There were also discussions among philosophers, between the wars and in the immediate post-WWII literature, about whether a drunk person who is "seeing" pink elephants is seeing a denumerable number of such elephants.

Well, considering that post-modern philosophy has pretty much annihilated the VERY IDEA of truth as a valid topic of discussion, we shall leave this where it is... (and now you know why I have little truck with modern philosophy, in general, as it seems almost absurdist, lol).

When Conan Doyle tells us that Holmes left the house, this probably implies that Holmes is wearing shoes even if Conan Doyle doesn't mention them and never thought of them.

The relationship between cognitive states - be they one person's, or shared - and the content and implications of what is believed and imagined is a complicated one. I don't think we need to establish what that relationship is in order to talk about shared fiction in RPGing, but it is part of the reason why I think it is both unnecessary and unhelpful to assert that "fictional position" is a cognitive state.

Right, I think I was hinting at that when I mentioned that a lot of what is 'unresolved' in terms of fictional position in an RPG is probably fairly trivial. It may be that it has been at least loosely established before (IE the walls down the hall were brick, these ones probably are too), or it may simply be established largely by convention (IE gravity is in force, there is a down, and it is directed at the floor, which is probably the main point of convention in this context), or it may be largely established by genre, or just common sense. It may also be true that much of what isn't established is simply irrelevant, nobody cares what the exact color of the floor tiles are in the dungeon corridor, it simply never comes up.

I would think, personally, that there is really only a fairly small residue in most situations, of factors which are both significant in a drama/plot sense, and also likely not to have been resolved. These are most likely to include things like the mental states of characters (both NPC and PC), the exact physical location of each character at some level of fine detail, and the nature and properties of materials and locales where they become relevant (IE is the floor wood, can it burn?) As you've pointed out, RE, VB, and other RPG theorists have largely come down on the side of believing that resolving these things is a matter of forming a consensus, and game design is largely a set of mechanisms and conventions for doing so.

Frankly I haven't seen any OTHER theoretical framework of RPG analysis that is even coherent! We could definitely argue about the categories (IE what are the fundamental types of agenda) and even Vince, Ron, etc. have evolved their thinking in that area quite a bit since the GNS days. Still, the core elements of the theory all seem to hold together, the function of rules, the nature of fiction, etc.