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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9504702" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think I'm seeing all this conversation about &quot;improv&quot; and &quot;blocking&quot;. So I'm having a bit of trouble following the bits that I can see.I think Baker is correct to say that <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">RPGing is all about negotiated, shared imagining</a>. But it doesn't have to be freeform: there can be rules, practices and the like that allocate authority/ownership in respect of different bits of the fiction. And likewise <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/466" target="_blank">there can be rules that limit or even stipulate what participants have to say at certain points</a>, which may be <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/360" target="_blank">quite different from what would happen in freeform improv</a>.I've never taken part in improv, and don't watch much of it, but one aspect - as I understand it - is that it is for an audience and therefore has to &quot;flow&quot; smoothly.Whereas in RPGing, the audience and authors are the same people, and so they can pause to clarify - are you sure that's right? - or to improve contributions (the AW rulebook has plenty of examples of this) - or to think about what would be good (in my session of Torchbearer today, I had to stop and think a few times to come up with what I thought were good ideas for compromises).So in a discussion about RPGing, I think it makes more sense to talk directly about the rules, practices etc that are doing this work of shaping the negotiations; rather than trying to mediate that discussion via a somewhat inapposite notion of &quot;blocking&quot; taken from a medium that is different in the way its pacing/editing works due to its different relationship to an audience and its quite different procedures.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9504702, member: 42582"] I don't think I'm seeing all this conversation about "improv" and "blocking". So I'm having a bit of trouble following the bits that I can see. I think Baker is correct to say that [url=http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html]RPGing is all about [I]negotiated, shared imagining[/I][/url]. But it doesn't have to be freeform: there can be rules, practices and the like that allocate authority/ownership in respect of different bits of the fiction. And likewise [url=http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/466]there can be rules that limit or even stipulate what participants have to say at certain points[/url], which may be [url=http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/360]quite different from what would happen in freeform improv[/url]. I've never taken part in improv, and don't watch much of it, but one aspect - as I understand it - is that it is for an audience and therefore has to "flow" smoothly. Whereas in RPGing, the audience and authors are the same people, and so they can pause to clarify - [I]are you sure that's right?[/I] - or to improve contributions (the AW rulebook has plenty of examples of this) - or to think about what would be good (in my session of Torchbearer today, I had to stop and think a few times to come up with what I thought were good ideas for compromises). So in a discussion about RPGing, I think it makes more sense to talk directly about the rules, practices etc that are doing this work of shaping the negotiations; rather than trying to mediate that discussion via a somewhat inapposite notion of "blocking" taken from a medium that is different in the way its pacing/editing works due to its different relationship to an audience and its quite different procedures. [/QUOTE]

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