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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8237894" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sandbox RPGing is not seance. It is not telepathy. The players do not, in any literal sense, enter or explore another world.The GM imagines something. S/he may prepare it in advance (notes). S/he may extrapolate from those notes in the moment. S/he may just make stuff up in the moment. (You, [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] and [USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER] seem to have different methods in this respect. But the upshot of all of them is that the GM is imagining something.)The only way for the players to learn what the GM is imagining is for the GM to tell them.This telling normally takes place in two sorts of ways: (1) the GM describes to the players what their PCs perceive and what their PCs know; (2) the GM describes the outcomes of action declarations the players make for their PCs, where (in the fiction) those outcomes depend upon the PCs doing things to the world around them. Searching for a secret door is a simple example of (2). Making an offer to to a NPC is a more complex example of (2).Neither (1) nor (2) is done by the GM arbitrarily. The GM is either drawing upon his/her prep (notes). Or s/he is extrapolating from prep in a principled fashion. (This is what [USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER] calls &quot;neutral&quot; or &quot;fair&quot; GMing.)You seem obsessed by that phrase. I used it in a post replying to [USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER], where the latter referred to a preference for RPGing being the &quot;exploration&quot; of a world. My point, in that reply, was that there is no literal exploration: there is learning what the GM has authored. As I already posted upthread, I am quite happy to use the phrase GM's conception of the fiction to describe what it is that the players are learning. Upthread you used the phrase mental model. I think conception or imagination are less jargonistic terms to use, but they are all synonyms in this context.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8237894, member: 42582"] Sandbox RPGing is not seance. It is not telepathy. The players do not, in any literal sense, [I]enter or explore another world[/I]. The GM imagines something. S/he may prepare it in advance (notes). S/he may extrapolate from those notes in the moment. S/he may just make stuff up in the moment. (You, [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] and [USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER] seem to have different methods in this respect. But the upshot of all of them is that the GM is imagining something.) The only way for the players to learn what the GM is imagining is for the GM to tell them. This telling normally takes place in two sorts of ways: (1) the GM describes to the players what their PCs [I]perceiv[/I]e and what their PCs [I]know[/I]; (2) the GM describes the outcomes of action declarations the players make for their PCs, where (in the fiction) those outcomes depend upon the PCs doing things to the world around them. [I]Searching for a secret door [/I]is a simple example of (2). [I]Making an offer to to a NPC[/I] is a more complex example of (2). Neither (1) nor (2) is done by the GM arbitrarily. The GM is either drawing upon his/her prep (notes). Or s/he is extrapolating from prep in a principled fashion. (This is what [USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER] calls "neutral" or "fair" GMing.) You seem obsessed by that phrase. I used it in a post replying to [USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER], where the latter referred to a preference for RPGing being the "exploration" of a world. My point, in that reply, was that there is no literal exploration: there is learning what the GM has authored. As I already posted upthread, I am quite happy to use the phrase [I]GM's conception of the fiction [/I]to describe what it is that the players are learning. Upthread you used the phrase [I]mental model[/I]. I think [I]conception [/I]or [I]imagination[/I] are less jargonistic terms to use, but they are all synonyms in this context. [/QUOTE]

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