[MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION], you are imputing to me a a range of views I don't hold. I also think you do not have a full grasp of mainstream contemporary philosophy of mind and language.
Some fools gave me a degree in it, go figure. I apologize if you don't hold the opinions I thought you did. I went back and reread the first of those two posts and thought it assumed too much in the "you" usage.
Given that you are the only person on this thread talking about story games, I guess you're entitled to put forward a stipulative definition.
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Let's just skip it then and stick to RPGs.
I am not suffering from any such notion. The construction of the shared fiction is not fundamentally separate from the rules. It is fundamentally conditioned by the rules (this is Vincent Baker's well known "clouds, boxes and arrows"). For instance, in 4e, why does a fireball spell set things on fire? Because it has the rules property of doing [fire] damage. Or why can Icy Terrain be used to freeze a puddle or part of a stream? Because it has the rules property of doing [cold] damage.
There is no shared fiction being constructed or utilized during game play or in reference with the rules. Rules addressing a shared fiction don't have a place in an RPG. That's my direct point. Games reference a game construct, they require a field of play, but not a narrative. Try playing the text of Moby Dick as a game. Treating a game like a narrative is losing the purpose of why it was written, like hanging a tuba in an art gallery.
My claim is simply that there is no code that tells you...
There are.
I don't know where religion comes into it. The idea that thoughts are higher order properties that supervene on their realising brain states; and that multiple realising physical states are possible; is pretty standard in modern functionalist philosophy of mind (most of whose proponents are atheists, I would imagine)
Yes, and those same atheist proponents suggest these properties are existent, but fictional when treated as references to other parts of existence. For the sake of treating them as a code it is their existence which matters, not any reference.
in D&D, people reason about bashing down doors, they are not reasoning about those mental states. This can be easily seen by considering the following examples: someone in the real world encounters a door and wonders how they might break it down. The things they have to think about are properties of doors like their construction, their density, their hardness etc. None of that requires reflecting on mental states. Now, in a game of D&D the adventurers come acorrs a door and wonder how they might break it down. The things that the participants in the game have to thik about are exactly the same properties of doors: their construction, their density, their hardness etc. They are not thinking about, and do not have to think about, mental states.
The players are determining how to break down a "door" as constructed by game mechanics and existent in the DMs imagination. This is why they keep asking him or her questions about it in the form of perceptions and actions by their PCs (also existent in the DMs imagination). They do this as that's where the thing they are inspecting exists.
The point can also be put in terms of propositional content. If I tell you "I am knocking down the door", the content of that assertion is settled by the meaning of the word "door" and the phrase "knocking down", as well as the reference rule for the subject pronoun "I". If a player, playing a game of D&D, tells me as GM "My character is knocking down the door", the content of that proposition is settled by the meaning of the word "door" and the phrase "knocking down", as well as the reference rule for the phrase "my character". The word "door", when used by a D&D player to talk about an imaginary door, does not change it's meaning and suddenly start talking about mental states. It has the same meaning as when used to talk about a real door.
No. Game definitions refer to game content, not common language understandings of the world outside our heads. As a code, each DM uses whatever shared language he has with the players to refer to it. But everyone understands the terms themselves are game specific. The GM refers to a door like any Chess player talks about a King.
The point can also be put in terms of expertise. A D&D player who knows a lot about doors in the real world can be an excellent D&D player even if s/he knows nothing about the subtleties of mental states. Whereas a D&D player who knows a lot about the subtleties of mental states but nothing about doors is likely to be disadvantaged in classic dungeon play. And the reason for this is obvious: the subject matter of D&D is principally dungeons, doors, walls, stone, wood, orcs, dragons,etc. It is not first and foremost mental states, and certainly not the mental states of the participants.
Dealing with people is dealing with mental states. A person is running the game. The DM has no reason whatsoever to create their code according to common use definitions for constructions of it. My "door" may be a zebra-striped, 8-legged giraffe-like creature I draw so the players understand its configuration.
The gameboard is a piece of cardboard or timber that is a really existing physical object, tyically located between the participants.
This gameboard is a manifestation of the code, mapped, hidden behind a DM screen, and used by DM whose imprint of it is the actual code to be deciphered.
But there is no door in the GM's head.
There is a game construct termed a "door" within the game that is.
It is like the objects in a physicist's thought experiment - a posit or stipulation. Assertions about it can be true or false relative to that stipulation (which is what anlaytic philosophers mean when they talk about "truth relative to a fiction").
Yet neither of those two are denying the existence of the object. They are treating the object as a reference to a fiction and labeling the referent "fiction". Like I could call anything a fiction by claiming I don't see it anywhere except for my imagining of it.
The assertion "The dungeon and the doors within it exist" is true relative to that stipulation. But they are not real. They are imaginary.
And D&D is a "fantasy game of your imagination". It's right there, all three words.
A player wondering whether or not a hand axe can break down a door isn't "making things up". S/he is extrapolating from a posit via projection rules - in this case, ones that aren't and can't be codified. In both cases, though, the posit is not true - it is a fiction - and in both cases the person doing the thinking is going to end up asserting things which are true relative to the fiction, but not true of any reality. (Eg "The light beams bouncing of the mirrors at the ends of the moving train will meet at this point;" or, "The door is too hard to be broken down by a hand axe.")
The physicist is positing based upon his experiences in the actual world. His posits are called fictional by you (rather than speculative, which is what they are called as fiction an assertion of falseness) because he isn't sure that what he posited is actually what will happen. However, no one is denying the world is actual. You agree with that, right? The D&D player engaged in deciphering the DM's code never quite gets there, but she has actual interaction with the DM telling her the results of her attempt via the construct of her PC. To do this the DM running D&D must actually have a code in mind, so it can be played. You personally may call the Players' suppositions about the construct of the game "fictions", but the procedures of the game aren't designed for creating one. They are to enable the players to engage in game play (think Tic phase).
I don't understand what you mean by "improvising" here. But if you are telling me that there is a codified decision procedure for every permissible player "move" in a game of D&D then I flat out disagree. Given that the possibilities of fictional positioning are limitless, so are the possibilities of reasoning required.
Yes, there is a codified action procedure for the DM to follow, though not for the players to make decisions within as they do not know it. This code covers everything a Player could express to them. (btw, "Say Yes" does too). The code I use is like our universe. At any given moment in time it is finite, but it has the potential to go on without end. We are neither everywhere in it or every when. As actual reasoning (and people) are not infinite, the openness of this design is to enable players to stretch out from their current ways of thinking and get creative. However, there is a highly complex game code is to insure an extraordinary array of attempted actions have unique consequences in the game which will cascade out into its future states, never being written off or hand waved away. It's just like the consequences of previous moves are retained throughout any instance of play with a board game.
The additional game material will still not supply anything in the neighbourhood of a code. There is no code, for instance, that tell's you how INT 0 creatures behave - because ants behave very differently from wasps which behave very differently from spiders. And even if you just confine yourself to spiders, there is no code that tells you how they will behave in all situations.
There can be if there are wasps, ants and spiders in your game (which D&D includes). This is an old argument which doesn't hold up. It's thinking my in-game samurai sword should behave like I understand real samurai swords do rather than 1d8 hit points damage.
My point is that any knowledge at all about how the world works can be brought to bear by a player of D&D.
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There is no code for this.
Yeah, they shouldn't be making presumptions like that though, should they? And yes, there should be code for that stuff.
Whether or not you want to call it improvising, if the players shatter the walls and try and drown all the creatures in the resulting flood, the GM is going to have to make a decision about how long it takes a giant scorpion to drown. There is no code for the game that I have ever seen that answers that question. The GM will have to project from what is known, and may - in this case - even have to make it up, given that we are talking about a biologically impossible entity.
A game construct's real world possibility isn't relevant. The DM relates the changing game board moved per the rules. And breaking and drowning things are hardly uncommon in most RPGs. They have rules for both in 3.x.
Also, just because a publisher offers you suggestions for creating a code behind a screen doesn't mean those are all you are limited to.
It's obvious to me that Lawrence Schick didn't play D&D this way - because the most famous environment he wrote for the game, White Plume Mountain, is not limited in this way. I don't think Gygax played this way either, whether as GM or player - because as GM the most famous environemtns he wrote are Tomb of Horrors, Keep on the Borderlands and The Village of Hommlet, and none of them is a limited envrionment. Each permits "moves" to be made by the players which cannot be resolved via any code, and require projection by reference to non-code-like principles.
By your interpretation, yeah. I think the old guard kind of kicked in after awhile and started simply improvising stuff behind the screen. And that might have led to others seeing it as a authorized mode of play. I have no desire to try and emulate them, but I not ashamed to say I like their adventures and convert them for my games.
A Fighting Fantasy Gamebook is like what you describe - a game with an imagined state of affairs within a limited environment and with limited moves that are capable of codification - but precisely for this reason it would generally be regarded as a form of boardgame or wargame rather than an RPG.
Role playing is learning to perform the pattern of a social role. They require a hidden board to play.
This does not cover the bulk of a referees job even in an austere game of D&D. The referee has to decide which PC a monster attacks. There are no rules for that. Even if the GM has written down that "Lareth the Beautiful hates good clerics, and will always attack them first", it is open to the GM to have Lareth change targets if, after attacking the cleric, he finds himself in danger of dying from the assault by the fighter.
And if a player decides to drown the giant scorpions in the White Plume Mountain ziggurat room, there is no predetermined code for that.
If you as a referee are in the position of deciding what a player is going go do: STOP. Ask them. Here is the positioning of the creatures you can see. Or, you hear breathing to your left, right, and front. Or, your blind and deaf, but what direction given your facing are your attacking with the sword? I have a map with the pieces on it behind the screen. I can adjudicate from well enough.
Lareth flees due to morale rules. Fights according to predetermined combat strategies given quite a number of factors.
How pragmatic solids, liquids, and gases operate in relation to gravity is pretty standard magic system rules. Drowning for air breathing submerged creatures is pretty common too.
I think these sentences are pretty consistent with what I'm saying. The board is "imaginary" ie a fiction, a posit, a stipulation. And the board is not finite, and hence not limited.
The board is imaginary (no quotes as it's not under contention that it is imaginary), but it is actual, not a fiction. It is what the players are referencing, not something outside the referee. It's best to begin with the board small and generate it larger as play progresses to when PCs can explore it faster and further. It's limited in potential, like players are limited to their own finiteness in what they can express to attempt.
