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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9020839" data-attributes="member: 42582"><a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=4258.0" target="_blank">Here's Ron Edwards defining "social contract"</a>:It's the sum and the internal interactions of how the members of the role-playing group interact as human beings. It includes logistics (who's bringing the beer, who hosts, etc), standards of courtesy (don't pick on Steve, he's fragile), sexual interactions (who's with whom, etc), standards for gaming activities (it's OK to borrow Mario's dice but not Ron's), how games are chosen to be played, how rules are to be handled or interpreted, how talking or moving around relates to role-playing stuff, who is being shunted out of the group by miscommunicative "accidents," and pretty much anything else. Social Contract isn't unique to role-playing; rather, role-playing, like any other social activity, has to occur within a Contract. I maintain that a great deal of the Contract is not verbal and indeed would be embarassing or upsetting to people to bring into the verbal realm, but clearly a great deal of it is also verbally negotiated as well. All aspects of role-playing are conducted in the matrix, or perhaps embedded in the folds, or perhaps floating in the mists, of the Social Contract.By "how rules are to be handled or interpreted" I take him to mean the method of resolution of disagreements,  not the content of those resolutions. Otherwise he'd just say "what the rules are".<a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/692" target="_blank">Here's Baker stating one formulation of the "lumpley principle"</a>:However you and your friends, moment to moment, establish and agree to what's happening in your game, that's your game's system.<a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=6537" target="_blank">Here's another statement of the principle by him</a>: mechanics are a tool for negotiation among the players.I think there's a reason that the sociality of RPGs, and the role of mechanics in easing negotiation by replacing the need for sheer, unmediate sociality: namely, RPGs demand shared imagination.In a game of bridge, we need consensus on the rules if play is to proceed, but we don't need to establish consensus that - for instance - the Ace of Diamonds was just played. Assuming that all the players have typical human sensory and cognitive capacities, then the truth of that fact reveals itself at the moment of play.In RPGing, on the other hand, if I declare "My character plays the Ace of Diamonds!" we do need some process for everyone agreeing that that it is a permissible move which hence obliges us all to now imagine some new state of affairs (ie my character having played the Ace of Diamonds). There needs to be some process of bridging from actual facts - ie that people have said certain things (eg "My character plays the Ace of Diamonds") or that certain physical objects are in certain states (eg my d20 just rolled a 13) - to imagined states of affairs. (This is Vincent Bakers boxes and clouds, and the arrows that relate them.)So the rules are in some ways more intricate, more socially and personally "invasive", than rules for (say) bridge, or field sports: they dictate that the participants must, under certain conditions, adopt a common state of mind (ie a shared imagining, a shared fiction).But, while recognising this is important - one could say the whole of Vincent Baker's contributions to RPG design begin from recognising this and really taking it seriously - I don't think it is helpful to, as a result of that recognition, lose clarity of the analysis of the contrast between lusory attitude and lusory means; or (to use the language of Edwards and Baker) the contrast between social contract and system; or, to use the language of my OP (also taken from Baker), the contrast between shared imagination arrived at through sheer unmediated social agreement, and shared imagination arrived at via the medium of rules that ease negotiation among participants.</blockquote>

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