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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8600282" data-attributes="member: 71699">Something Baker wrote that I find interesting is -It's hard to see if this means that the fictional position is ever known. One way to read it might be to suppose that at time T I don't know my fictional position, and at T+1 I make a test to establish something about it, so that at time T+2 presumably the outcome of that test is known and thus I know something about my fictional position. The nature of the test is to make a move and learn whether it is legitimate.Alternatively, it might rule out establishing with certainty any of the contents of fictional position at any time, so that a fact that legitimated a move and thus might seem to have been established at time T+2 cannot be reliably known at time T+3, and I can only guess at the result of testing something also (seemingly) connected with it at T+4.Perhaps this is more a comment on the nature of declarations: avoiding assuming that future (and thus not yet known) declarations can be reliably connected with the contents - established or otherwise - of a fictional position. Suppose that a player's subsequent declaration is identical to their first? At T1 "I pick a pine needle from the Christmas tree" which we test and say that it's okay. At T4 "I pick a pine needle from the Christmas tree"... is it no more than a guess that this will be legitimate in the absence of intervening change?We regularly speak of established or prior fiction, so for now my view is the first one. Through speech acts and tests we gradually establish some known contents of our fictional position. Even if we never establish all of its the contents.Suppose we had a description of fictional positioning that assumed it was a set of facts. Earlier you suggested that Harguld's fictional position is that he is standing, in a cave mouth, crossbow cocked and loaded, waiting for Gnolls. These facts seem to include both imaginary physical facts (imagined tension in the spring arm of a crossbow) and imaginary mental facts (waiting for Gnolls).What I believe Baker might have been dealing with is that Dro can say something like "H picks a pebble up off the cave floor" - and everyone may well agree that yes, cave floors no doubt have pebbles and picking up a pebble is something H can do. In that light, it seems hard to pin fictional position down to a finite set of facts, rather it has to be thought of as a scene with some known contents and some unknown.What contents become known? Only those we intend to know.We must avoid assuming here that Dro's fictional position is completely known at time T when Dro declares that H shot. According to Baker, and my own reasoning, it is not. Whatever is known about its contents at time T omits something that comes to be known at time T+1.The only known contents of the fictional position are those we intend to know, and at time T+1 it has gained additional or modified contents that will legitimate (or not, e.g. rule out as reaching) Dro's further declarations.Of all the things we can argue about, arguing about what we are allowed to include in our process of understanding seems to me the least appealing. Especially given the nascent state of game studies and ludology.</blockquote>

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