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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9016576" data-attributes="member: 42582">Isn't more context needed?There's also some syntactic ambiguity in your question - is the bolded phrase a property of the character, or of the description?Suppose that the shared fiction has established that a given character (X) is in the (imaginary) city of Greyhawk. Suppose that a player in the game (A) is the "owner" of X. (In 5e D&D terminology, we would say that X is A's PC.)Suppose A now describes X as being in the fictional city of Sigilstar. That is in a literal sense a telling of a fiction - it's the utterance of a proposition that is, in some literal sense, false (there is no such being as X and no such place as Sigilstar) but that is not intended to be literally true but rather is intended to be "true" within an imagined state of affairs. (I don't think we need to get deep into the semantics and metaphysics of fictions here.)But it would be unusual, in typical RPG play, for A's description to be a contribution to the shared fiction, because - unless it is somehow established that X is able to move from city to city at will - it is already established as true in the shared fiction that X is in Greyhawk and hence false in the shared fiction that X is in Sigilstar.Turning to "looking for a tea shop": if it is already established in the shared fiction that there is no tea (in Sigilstar, in this part of the world, in the whole cosmos - I don't think it matters), then again while A is telling a fiction A is not making a contribution to the shared fiction.But now let's suppose that (i) it is already established, as part of the shared fiction, that X is in the city of Sigilstar, and (ii) the shared fiction concerning Sigilstar and environs are such as to not rule out the possibility of tea shops. So  now, when A describes X as looking for a tea shop in Sigilstar, we do have a candidate contribution to the shared fiction.How is that candidate contribution to be assessed and either validated or rejected?One way is via (say) a Wises check (this would be the BW approach, if the GM doens't just say "yes"), or via a PP expenditure to generate a Resource (this is the default approach in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic), or via Streetwise check (this is the default approach in Classic Traveller).Another way is for a different participant in the game to ask questions to further establish context ("What tea shops to you know in Sigilstar?","What are you hoping to get from the tea shop?", etc) and on the basis of the answers to those questions to introduce fictional elements into the telling of the search for and/or discovery of the tea shop, elements of foreboding and risk that establish what is at stake but don't foreclose A's aspirations (as elicited via the questions). In this way, the search for and/or discovery of the teashop becomes a manifestation of "rising action"; and the shared fiction, in its totality and having regard to its temporal nature, comes to resemble a story. (This is the "soft move" technique of AW and similar games; what makes these games work is that (i) the rising action tends to push the shared fiction in a certain direction, and (ii) in addition to the soft move technique there are other rules - rules around hard moves - that are enlivened when the shared fiction arrives at one or more states, as set out in those rules for hard moves.)Yet another way is for there to be a game participant who is given special authority to decide what sorts of shops are found in, and what sorts of beverages are purveyed in, Sigilstar. That participant then tells all the participants, including A, what X does or doesn't find (perhaps also calling for a "check" from A, or making a roll on an "encounter" or "location" matrix, to help guide them in deciding what to say). This is the default approach in AD&D, and 3E and 5e D&D. It is also the default approach in Rolemaster, in RuneQuest, I believe in GURPS, and in many other RPGs.Whether someone wants to describe the third way in the language of expertise - the participant with the special authority is an expert on the imaginary city of Sigilstar, and its shops and beverages - strikes me as neither here nor there, as far as understanding what sort of RPGing experience it will generate. As Vincent Baker says, it puts one participant in a privileged position of authorship. And as I have said, it does not seem to be gameplay in Suits's sense, because there is no adoption of less efficient means in pursuit of the pre-lusory goal of establishing a shared fiction.</blockquote>

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