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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8237645" data-attributes="member: 42582">As far as I can tell, [USER=85555]@Bedrockgames[/USER] agrees with what I have quoted just above:In these posts Bedrockgames distinguishes two instances of imagination:* The GM imagines something, makes it up, constructs it: this is the game world. * The players at the table imagine something, make it up, construct it: this is the shared fiction.He also states that the relationship between these is not symmetrical:* The GM informs the shared fiction that is created at the table, using the world that s/he has created; * The world that the GM has created, which is used to inform the shared fiction at the table, is a mental model in the GM's mind that exists independently of the non-GM players' minds; * The players "explore" (= learn about, from the GM) the GM's mental model - the process of play includes transmission of information from the GM (drawing on his/her mental model) to the players.I don't think anything that Bedrockgames has said here is particularly controversial or revelatory. I believe that everyone participating in this thread has played in RPGs that fit what Bedrockgames describes. Including [USER=85870]@innerdude[/USER].For reasons that are opaque to me Bedrockgames objects to anyone actually explicitly stating what he very strongly implies but doesn't quite state, namely, that the process of play involves the players learning what the GM's mental model is. He will talk about the GM's mental model informating the players' shared fiction, and he will talk about the players exploring a place that exists in the GM's mind. But as soon as one joins the dots using a verb like learning or discovering (to describe the cognitive relationship between players and GM's imaginative construct) or a verb like telling or transmitting (to describe the communicative relationship between the GM, as possessor of the imaginative construct, and the players) one is apparently saying an improper thing.</blockquote>

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