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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8601877" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here's a fuller quote:A player's position is the total set of all of the legitimate gameplay options available to her at this moment of play. Positioning refers to the various factors and processes, including in-fiction, cue-mediated, and interpersonal, that determine a player's position. . . . When you say that your character does something, no, she doesn't. Not until every person at the table agrees that she's done it. Fictional positioning can give legitimacy to other players' assertions and challenges about "your" character, thus showing the character to be not your own at all, after all. . . . Fictional positioning is only and always retroactive. You can guess what your position is, and you can plan for your future position, but it's only when you test your position by making a move that you learn whether the move is legitimate. (It usually is.)This conforms broadly with what [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] have posted:Manbearcat's examples of action declarations which have an uncertain outcome at the moment they are declared reflect Baker's remark that a character doesn't do a thing until everyone agrees that they do, and hence that fictional positioning is retroactive, in the sense that it a player's intuition about what the shared fiction is vis-a-vis their PC is not confirmed until after they declare an action on the strength of it. Manbearcat's examples of action declarations all involve the triggering of fortune mechanisms (I think - I'm not sure about Matilda and the Baroness) but another example, which turns on sheer consensus unmediated by a fortune mechanism, is declaring a trait.So [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] is correct in mentioning that (in post 260) but in my view wrong to think it's any sort of counter-example to Manbearcat's post.Right. And because we can't know what is shared until we put it to some sort of test, that's why it becomes confirmed retroactively. In the context of the sorts of examples Manbearcat has in mind, the main contributor to uncertainty - and hence the locus of the "test" - is the roll of the dice. (Or toss of the coin, or draw of the cards, etc.)In the case of a drama-type resolution, like Dro declaring that Harguld's cunning leads him to wait too long, then the uncertainty arises from the possibility that fellow participants will reject the suggested addition to the shared fiction. Personally I think that Baker here is too sceptical and/or behaviouristic about our knowledge of the contents of others' minds, but I'll willing to let that pass. He kind-of concedes the point with his parenthetical "It usually is." Why is that? Because usually we know what our fellow players are thinking about the fiction.)None of this seems to connect in any particular way to intentions - either the imaginary intentions of imaginary people (ie the characters in the fiction) or the real intentions of real people (those who are together constituting the shared fiction in virtue of their collective imagining.That would depend on one's standard for knowledge. To use a phrase from Russell's Problems of Philosophy, it can certainly be a matter of "probable opinion". Eg when Dro declares that Harguld shoots his crossbow, that is drama resolution (before we get to the fortune aspect of whether or not the Gnoll is shot, or driven back by the shot) and the fictional position that underlies it is Harguld waiting in the cave mouth with his crossbow loaded and ready. Dro can be pretty confident that his fictional position permits the making of that move, as there is no provision in Torchbearer that I'm aware of that would permit another participant to veto that sort of action declaration grounded in that sort of robust fictional position.Well, it can depend. In Dro's case, what you learn is whether your conjecture about what your fellow players are envisaging, and that it's the same as what you are envisaging, is true. You learn this twice: once when you declare that Harguld shoots, and a second time when you declare that Harguld's Cunning led him to wait too long trying to lure the Gnoll in.You don't learn anything new about the fiction out of this. What you do learn is the truth (or otherwise, if your move is not accepted) of your conjecture about what your fellow participants believed about the fiction. You learn what your fictional position was. (Not what it is - that would contradict the claim about retroactivity.)Contrast [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s fortune-based examples. In those cases, what the dice do is lead you to learn something new about the fiction. Eg is your PC really able to abjure the spirit?Fictional position is, says Baker, confirmed retroactively, in that it is tested by finding out if everyone agrees with your own conception of what the fiction contains and permits. At T+4 you know that your move at T+3 was legitimate, but that doesn't mean that your move at T+4 will be.What does "intervening change" mean here? In Baker's terminology, it is a guess that your fellow participants agree with you, the declaring player, that the fiction has not relevantly changed. (Maybe think there are no needles left on the tree, or that you've fallen asleep, or that by touching the tree you were paralysed by a contact poison.)I've set out my quibbles with his use of the word "guess" above and so won't reiterate them. Those quibbles don't go to the main point, which is that the status of the fiction as shared depends upon consensus at every moment. It is never "locked in" by the conception of one particular participant at one particular moment.I don't think this is what is being said at all. He's not talking about the process of building up the fiction. He's talking about the issue of consensus. This is brought out by linking the remarks about fictional position to the remarks about what a character does - eg Dro says "I put a bolt in his face!" but that doesn't actually become part of the shared fiction unless everyone agrees, and everyone will agree only if certain cues - results of dice rolls, etc - come up certain ways. Otherwise all that Dro establishes is that Harguld has shot a bolt from his crossbow.The picking of a pebble from a cave floor is an action declaration that takes, as a premise, that Harguld is in a cave with pebbles on the floor. Dro finds out if his fictional position permits that action declaration when people agree or they don't - maybe the GM calls for a Scavenger test! (In my last Burning Wheel session, I made a Scavenger test for my PC to find a burning brand in the inn that would let him light his way.)This doesn't change the point that fictional position flows from (or if one focuses on character rather than player, is constituted by) an imagined state of affairs. But the state of affairs has to be imagined by everyone, and every attempt to introduce some new content into it - and for players, it is action declarations that are the main way of doing that - reopens the question of what exactly it is that everyone agrees on!Whose intention are you referring to here? Who is the "we"?Dro declares "Harguld picks up a pebble." This is a suggestion to introduce some new content. The GM calls for a Scavenger test. The test fails. The GM narrates a twist - groping around on the cave floor in the semi-darkness, Harguld accidentally drops his crossbow. The Gnolls hear the clatter and rush the cave mouth! We still don't know whether or not there are pebbles on the cave floor. We know that Harguld has dropped his bow, and that the Gnolls are charging at him. These newly-known things are not things anyone at the table intended to know.If that were so, RPGers couldn't play to find out.</blockquote>

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