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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7344660" data-attributes="member: 29398">Good.  You've just authored a bit of fiction about dragons in a teapot in a garden.  That fiction - in the form of some words on a screen - is now something that's been added to my real-world frame of reference as something I have read (though for these purposes and to make the distinction clearer the Holmes example is better, as the words are contained in a real physical book you can hold in your real physical hand).  But the fiction also exists within itself, and I'll get back to that in a moment.  The dragons, however, do not really exist in your real garden; and neither does the teapot.Where things are going sideways here is the concept of the fiction existing within itself - which it does - and what happens there.  My PC exists within the fiction of the game just like Sherlock Holmes exists within the fiction as presented by Sir ACDoyle.  The key difference between my PC and Holmes, however, is that within the fiction I can direct what my PC does and how it interacts with the rest of the fiction as presented.So if an orc comes up and attacks my PC that orc exists within the fiction, even though there's no real orc attacking me as a player at the table.  If my PC comes over a rise and sees a castle in the distance that castle now exists within the fiction, even though when I as a player pull back the curtain on my game room window there's no castles out there.Where it gets fuzzy is when interacting with other PCs, as they in theory have vague real-world mirrors called the other players in the game; and here while I at the table am in reality talking to Joe the player what we should both be imagining is that Lanefan the character is talking to Falstaff the character.And once it's established that the fiction exists within itself the door is open for causality and consequences and all sorts of other stuff to exist within the fiction; and then it merely becomes a question of how best to author and-or present these things in such a way that things remain believable.So, back to the teapot full of dragons on your lawn.  Having established the fiction of their existence and of some unicorns next door, within the fiction it's entirely possible to author or present a situation where the dragons annoy the unicorns enough (cause) that the unicorns come over and smash the teapot with their hooves (effect).  This is in-fiction causality - nothing to do with reality but very relevant within the fiction itself.  Meanwhile in reality all that's happened in the time it took me to type this is that the grass on your lawn has grown by a very tiny fraction of an inch and maybe become wetter depending what the weather's doing where you are.And a lot of this discussion has been based on the idea of this within-the-fiction causality and how - and by who - it is authored and-or presented. Lan-"that said, if you really are seeing dragons in a giant teapot on your lawn: whatever you're smokin', I want some"-efan</blockquote>

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