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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9030974" data-attributes="member: 71699">I feel some things at least as clear. There should be shared referents. There should be internal causality. The world is imagined to persist beyond the characters. If something is true in one place, all things being equal it is true in another place.How does extrapolation narrow the infinite list of possible next sentences containing "Magneto" down to exactly "sinking the submarine caused the Soviet leadership to bring Magneto to trial". What is it about Magentos, submarines, Soviet leadership, and trials, that motivates connecting them causally? That makes doing so not only plausible, but will go on to a next imaginary event, and a next and a next, continuing to be plausible?Looking at just one element - submarines - it seems they are sinkable. And we are to accept - in fact we are to know - that such sinking is plausible in this case. How and why? Supposedly submarines are made of metal, which as it turns out can be moved and distorted by magenetic powers. Magneto, apparently, has such powers. Can magnetic powers always sink submarines, or only this time?I cannot park the enquiry at "authorship" and leave that as an inscrutable manufacturer of things to say about Magnetos etc that go on, and continue going on, to be plausible, coherent, apparently causally connected. So extrapolation is made to reference a set of things, and I have rules, references and concepts about how those things are related. Magentic powers can move and distort metal things thus plausibly causing metal submarines to sink. That's a simple example with a couple of referents and a couple of relationships. The persistence of that model is basic to simulation. If we're made of metal, we better look out!In answer to your questions. I think the goal is less to challenge players, and more to let them find challenge. And you are on the money when you "do it because it makes sense according to what's been established in the game".Like almost all aspects of consciousness, I don't have complete and transparent access to the internal dispositional models that I rely on. Nonetheless, I find myself able to call them into consciousness and externalise them. I find myself able to continue on in the direction that simulationist game systems indicate even in the moments of absence of the game text.The first part is really down to the zealousness of the practitioners. Is the idea of narrativism more important than what's actually happening at the table? Yes and no. I would say there is a useful ideal that assumes the group fully understands and commits to the practice, and there's a practical non-ideal which is what happens at the table... where there is more likely a mixture or shifting focus of priorities.When doing simulation, one doesn't attribute one's aesthetic choices to simulation. I mean, the question here is similar to - can one play a story game not according to its principles? The answer is yes. In both cases it's possible for humans to misattribute. However, I would reemphasise my earlier point that intuitions are by no means necessarily failing to be simulationist. Misattribution is distinct from missed attribution.How do we know what hard move to use with Hack and Slash 6-? Simulationism relies on persisted referents and relationships that are external to characters (objective, from their point of view.) Each practitioner - knowingly or not - internalised or externalised - draws from such models what to say next, and can judge against them whether what is said is plausible. Simulationism is the prioritisation of including that in legitimation so that it is legitimate when it is caused and goes on to be caused in like circumstances; what is represented will go on to be represented in like circumstances.If you asked yourself - would it be exciting to have a dragon here - then that's not it. If you asked - would it be challenging to have a dragon here - that's also not it. If you asked - why in the world would there be a dragon here - that's it. If you followed up with - and what will be the consequences of that - you're really there.Notice that in all cases there can indeed be a dragon there. It's motivated differently and will go on to motivate differently (unless other modes drift into sim for a bit, which is common.) The pace of play in my experience is generally quite different, because we're not forcing to rising tension. It has been called daydreaming by Edwards, who had no real empathy for it. It's not daydreaming, it's just not forced along dramatic lines. Subjects of focus can be things that other modes might find hard to make sense of. In Bushido playing out a tea ceremony with interest in the ceremony for its own sake (not any swirling intrigues and passionate challenges or whatever around the ceremony, although those are not disallowed, either.)Most likely at the table, simulationism will be drawn on in service to narrativism and gamism (using those terms for convenience rather than precision). I prize play where each string reverberates with the others to produce a chord. And I can see the appeal of going hard out for a particular purpose, which in simulationism has just been described.</blockquote>

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