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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8245097" data-attributes="member: 42582">When you referred to characters in the post that I replied to I took you to mean player characters. If you mean NPCs - "you are operating on the model of Ravenloft when you run the setting (and that matters: you can't just say 'its all active creation-its all 'the fiction'). The [NPCs] are imaginary pieces moving in the imaginary model of ravenloft" - then I agree that that is not trivially true of all RPGing. But we are now back in the realm of the GM making up imaginary things.When I refer to the GM's notes, you say - no, it's not notes, it's the GM's mental model. Then when I change my vocabulary, at your request, to refer to the GM's conception you say - no, it's not something the GM just conceived of, it's the GM's notes.I don't really care which one you want to emphasise. My point is simply that at some point the GM makes some stuff up, and then the GM during play communicates that stuff to the players. I've never said that what is made up is arbitrary or pointless. I've never said that the communication is arbitrary or pointless. My point is that it is taking place and is key to how this particular sort of RPGing works.There is no objective model of Ravenloft which answers the question where should this character be right now, and what is she doing? That has to be decided.If you were GMing a game of subversives and insurrectionists in the early 20th century Balkans, would you extrapolate from the assassination of the Archduke to the death of many many millions of soldiers across Europe and its near neighbours, and the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Russian governments?I had conversations yesterday which ended up in places I didn't predict at the start.Plausibility is not a constraint that yields unique answers. Anticipation of possibilities likewise does not yield unique answers. That's why the language of "model" is misleading, once we get beyond a map which might permit simple distance and timescale calculations- and even those are very limited (eg I don't know of any version of D&D that allows for sprained ankles causing a change in a PC's movement rate).There's no model. There's a description of an imagined place or situation. Which is then referred to to facilitate framing and, in some approaches to RPGing, resolution.The phrase what is emerging is just euphemism for what the GM tells the players. Exploring room to room just means declaring actions that provoke the GM to do some of that telling. Getting a sense of the overall structure is another way of saying learn what the GM is imagining abot the house.And if the GM hasn't written down whether the dining table is oak or pine, there is no "model" that will answer that question. Someone will have to make a decision.</blockquote>

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