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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8596169" data-attributes="member: 71699">Thank you for a detailed response. I'll dig into this part first. When I say model I mean it in the normal sense of a simplied description that has explanatory value. The series you link to is Baker's evolution of his model of fictional positioning. The fictional positioning construct is a simplified description: it doesn't capture every detail and dynamic... such a thing would be impossible!One might just feel fictional positioning is simply a definition of a thing, but if you follow the series of essays from your link, you'll come to examples like <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/695" target="_blank">this one</a>. There Baker puts it that - "Fictional positioning is how the fictional timeline touches the real timeline." This is descriptive and Baker uses it to arrive at and explain his ideas. There is no real, parallel timeline containing fiction: that's descriptive.When it comes to prediction, you quote two definitions containing the word "potential"? By definition, potential is "having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future." For everyone to agree about the potential for action, they must be agreeing as to what the fictional positioning predicts.You say that "Dro's fictional position... includes that Harguld is at the cave mouth with a loaded crossbow ready to shoot Gnolls." You add that, "Harguld's fiction position... includes that he is at the cave mouth with a loaded crossbow ready to shoot Gnolls." These descriptions are replete with intentionality! We have no way of agreeing what the potential for actions must include in the absence of our intuitive sense for intention. If Dro says next that H removes one of his boots and examines it for discolorations, and the GM responds that the gnolls individually weigh the pebbles, stones, or handfuls of gravel they collect from the cave floor, the bare facts of the fictional position - sans intentionality - support that perfectly well. We can object that this would be unsatisfying and players would lose interest in the game. Yes, that is certainly one reason why we must include intentionality in fictional positioning, but for me there is a far more important reason. The set of actions that follow from a fictional position in the absence of intentionality is vastly large, and we're disinterested in almost all of the contents of that set. What we are interested in is an extremely tiny subset. When we say what is in a fictional position - just as you have - intentionality brings that subset into focus so that all can agree that what follows equates with (could be predicted by) the potential for action.</blockquote>

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