Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9151834" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Or the inability to accept that the mechanical state has objective reality. Sure, it's an intangible object, but it is a noun, and has provable existence. The story also exists as an intangible object. And it can, by virtue of the social contract of agreed upon rules, force a player to make certain choices that they otherwise wouldn't. Sometimes by prohibition, sometimes by promise of reward. The game rules are another intangible object with reality, and they create the mechanical state. And thus can be causal to a player or the GM making choices that are non-desired by the players, but applied because of the rules, and taking the control away from the Player of that PC.The rulebooks themselves are a tangible object, which contains the non-tangible rules within.Characters, once introduced into play, have an existence outside that of the mind of the player, and in most systems, also are subject to the GM's choices, and for those who actually use the rules, the effects of the rules.  That the GM can compel or prevent various actions of a PC disproves the thesis that the Player is the sole causality of the character's action(s). That the rules can compel or prevent action also disproves the single causality of action in the player. That many groups have the GM or another player take over a PC when the player is absent also disproves lack of existence independent of the player. The character exists so long as they are remembered. They are real, but intangible, and while their action requires a human or AI to implement actions and life to them, that does not make them not exist.And, in the Platonic Philosophical and Aristotilian Philosophical schools, that something can be conceived of means it's real in some way. The Platonic form of an object is a real thing - whether or not the thing has tangible existence, anything conceived of exists. Even the physically impossible.A D&D character has 4 levels of reality... it has a sheet - the tangible noun part of it, it has the ratings on that sheet; intangible, but objective and shareable. It has the player's mental state about the character. It has everyone else who's been at the table when the character was played having a mental construct of the character as well - a shared fiction is a real thing - it exists - and it does so outside the head of the player of the character. In Dawkin's scheme (see the later printings of the Selfish Gene, where he added the chapter on evolution of ideas) the meme (unit of information subject to evolution) in crossing from that third - mind of the player - to the fourth - minds of the other participants - is in fact a replication, inaccurate, incomplete and intangible, child of the player's concept... but also is real in that it's a noun that exists, intangible tho' it be.The characters are real, in their states as game stats, mental constructs, and the tangible sheets when used... what they lack is tangibility, sentience, sapience, and autonomy.Philosophically, real is the worst word choice I can think of for your concept about the inability to act without human intervention - autonomy.Note that NPCs in CRPGs do have autonomy in many cases, but lack senience, sapience, and tangibility, but can be impressed into a tangible storage medium, and only work in a tangible system upon which they turn their potential autonomy (their code) into actual autonomy (that code running).</blockquote>

Verification