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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7350723" data-attributes="member: 42582">At the table:Player: "I draw my knife and throw it at the orc!" GM: "OK, make an attack roll" <dice are rolled, numbers compared, rules applied, etc> GM: "Your knife lodges in the orc's chest. It falls down dead."That is a causal process, primarily social in its character but there is also the rolling of dice in there - a more simple bio-mechanical process - which provides triggers for varioius parts of the social process (eg one part of the social process involves comparing the number rolled on a die to another number that is salient in the social context).As part of the social events described, the participants all imagine a knife being thrown and killing an orc. To describe this as "mirroring" doesn't seem to add anything.Another example:Player: "I cast a Death Spell!" <player rolls dice; GM consults charts, notes, etc> GM: "All of the orcs are dead - your magic snuffs out their spirits. But the ogre that was with them survives."This is similar to the first example, except that it is far less clear what the participants are imagining. What is casting a spell? Given that (unlike throwing a knife) that is a purely imaginary, impossible thing, each player probably evnisages it differently. And why did the orcs die? The AD&D PHB (p 82) tells us that the victims are slain instantly and irrevocably. But by what process? The GM has embellished it as "snuffing out their spirits" - but what does that even mean? What causal process does it describe?Talking of "mirroring" here seems to presuppose that the imaginary causation can be reflected somehow - but given that we don't even know what that was, I'm pretty confident I'm not seeing any reflection of it anywhere. There's just storytelling.Another example:GM rolls wandering monster die. It comes up 6. GM rolls on a table. The result is "6 orcs". GM: "You hear a noise ahead of you - round the corner of the dungeon corridor come 6 orcs." Player of the half-orc PC: "I call out to them in Orcish - 'What are you doing here? Maybe we can help you!'" <reaction dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc - the net results is "favourable reaction"> GM: "The lead orc replies in Orcish - 'I am Grusk of the Vile Rune tribe. We are searching for the Hidden Grotto of Luthic. If you can tell us how to find it, we will let you live!'"Again, the principle causal process here is social, but again there are interspersed moments of dice-rolling. Notice that the presence of the orcs in the dungeon is established, as part of the fiction, before the reason for them being there is established. This is typical of any random encounter generation process - the rules first tell us that something is encountered, and then require the game participants - typically the GM - to author some further fiction that establishes elements of backstory for the encountered creature.To describe this as "mirroring" seems positively misleading: acts of authorship that occur in time order A, B describe events which, in the fiction, occur in time order B, A."Mirroring" is, at best, an uohelpful metaphor. As the second and third examples show, though, it's more than that. It's an exercise in obscurantism.The "immersive standpoint" is not a valid means of analysing play. That is to say, you CANNOT explain how roleplaying works by pretending you're Falstaff the Fighter. Just the same as Robert Downey Jr can't explain to you how he played the character of Iron Man by pretending to be Iron Man. Or JRRT can't tell you how he wrote LotR by pretending to be Bilbo or Frodo.I've had an interesting experience of this matter in my own household quite recently. My daughter recently received a copy of The Princess Bride. As you may know, the book contains an introuction in which the author explains how his (grand?)father read him the story, how he (the author) abridged the book by getting rid of all the boring bits, etc.That introduction is a fiction. A story. Just as, in the movie version, Peter Falk as the grandfather is just as fictional as the evetns involving Buttercup, Westley and the rest.Now my daughter thinks that introduction is real, and when I try to explain to her that it is, itself, a literary device, she get's quite angry at me, asking "Why would the author lie?" It's kind of cute, but until my daughter comes to realise that the introduction is a device, and that there is no unabrdiged version of The Princess Bride, she is not going to be capable of offering a fully coherent analysis of the book.When playing a RPG, the player can - if s/he wishes - ignore the fact that the GM made up a reason for the orcs to be in the dungeon after rolling the wandering monster dice that told everyone that there are orcs in the dungon. But the player can't give any coherent account of how the game actually works until s/he recognises that fact. For instance, you can't write GM advice about how to use wandering monsters until you are prepared to write something like "After rolling on the table to determine what creature is encountered, it is your job as GM to determine the backstory of the encountered creatures, their reason for wandering the dungeon corridors, etc."Obviously the language of "mirroring" has absolutely nothing to offer in writing that instructional text for GMs. And it's equally obvious that you can't just tell the GM to focus on  "the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM." After rolling on the wandering monster charts the GM can focus on those imaginary events as much as s/he likes, but that is not going to tell her what the orcs are doing in the dungeon. S/he's going to have to make something up!(The same thing applies to    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s idea that the players can "guess" how many people are in the crowd. The GM can "guess" as much as s/he likes, but until s/he actually performs an act of autorship there will be no particular number which is the number of people in the crowd.)"Using this in-game logic and causality to provide a play experince" is just an obscure way of saying "making things up". Whisch is    [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point: the "in-game logic" is convention and genre conceit. So it is a convetion that we allow stories about dragons, even though from many points of view (biomecahnics, aerodynamics, etc) they are impossible.Or return to the example of the fireball cast underwater. With a fireball spell, we are already talking about an event that is literally impossible: from nowhere, energy is conjured which has the superficial markers of combustion (eg flames) but is not actuallly combusting any material. Does it consume oxygen? Who knows?! There's certainly never been any rule I'm aware of for oxygen dperivation resulting from casting fireballl spells in enclosed spaces. So will the fireball burn underwater? This is a decision about genre, flavour, colour - call it what you like - but the idea that it's more "realistic" that the fire can't burn underwater, than that (say) water caues a penalty to attack with fire spells (which is the 4e approach), or that it doesn't make any difference that the spell is being cast underwater (which is a perfectly viable if less flavoursome approach) is just bizrre.All that bolded bit means is that you're telling a story about characters who believe in causation, and who live in a world governed by causal laws. Which is somewhat implausible for a fantasy RPG, if you think about it - those characters know that uncaused events (ie magic), or events caused by subjective concerns like the will of the gods, happen all the time!</blockquote>

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