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Quote from: clehrichBut mechanics carry baggage: they have particular places in complex systems which we have (as you put it) preloaded into the game, and furhermore they have strong ascribed values and meanings from the broader hobby of gaming.  So I think it is not technically correct to say that mechanics never contribute anything.  The insertion of a mechanic also brings in whatever is attached to it, kind of the rest of the iceberg below the water, as it were.

Anyway, a thought for another thread.

OK, Chris thought that this was a good topic for another thread, and I'm inclined to agree.  Thus, I'm starting a new thread.  I'm often unclear by what is meant by "mechanics never contribute anything".  Now, to get specific, I'd like to consider two hypothetical cases: Will the Writing Guy, and Doug the Dice Guy.  I've heard of roughly similar discussion before, but I thought I'd make a thread entirely about these two.  

1) Will the Writing Guy

So Will was GM and pals with a gaming group for years, until Will's parents moved to Timbuktu.  For their next campaign, Will remotely wrote up everything for the new GM Graham and the gang.  So they're using a homebrew system written by Will, in a setting he created -- including the adventure module, maps, and so forth.  The players are playing pre-generated characters which were written by Will.  

Question: Has Will contributed anything to the game?  

In my mind, Will has undoubtedly contributed to the game in a practical sense.  However, my impression is that some people consider that he hasn't contributed.  i.e. He has to be there and speaking at the table to "contribute".  

2) Doug the Dice Guy

So Doug is buddies with a bunch of D&D players in school.  They all go off to camp, and due to an oversight are stuck without their dice.  So they decide to make Doug the "dice guy".  He's not a player or a DM in the usual sense.  Just whenever people want a roll, they ask him and he says a number.  The group otherwise plays by the straight D&D rules.  

Doug isn't a machine, though, nor do they expect him to be.  He hears the game, and he comes up with numbers based on what he thinks would be interesting to him.  He rewards cool moves by better rolls, keeps up tense uncertainty in the fight, and otherwise makes for interesting twists.  For example, Chuck's character died from a failed save after valiantly saving his lifelong friend.  

Question: Has Doug contributed anything to the game?  

Again, I think the answer is yes.  But I'm interested in definitions which suggest that he hasn't.

Knee-jerk reactions:

Doug is clearly contributing to play.

Will is a more complicated case. If he's contributing, then it seems like Gary Gygax is contributing to play when I play in Greyhawk (which I never, ever have, but never mind that). On the other hand, because Will was part of the group and they're continuing something they all did together, there is a personal connection that muddies the waters there. But I guess I'd still say no. Will has contributed support materials to the game, but he isn't contributing to play in the sense that I took to be at stake in this part of the discussion. Any more than the guy who wrote the encyclopedia, or William the Conqueror, contributes to a historical fantasy game set in England.

[Edited for clarity]

Doug changes the outcome of play. That does not automatically mean he contributes. In fact, he is an arbiter. I would say, even though Doug makes a difference and decides on direction of play, he has made no substantive contribution, i.e., he has not opened up new possibilities. He chooses between possibilities already brought into play by the players.

Will has provided basic material. The selection and introduction of these into play, however, is up to the players. Just like Doug cannot introduce a situation that the other players have to deal with, Will cannot decide to throw anything specific of his material in there. He's an influence, and maybe a really really strong one. But the contribution comes from the players accepting his material and putting it into play.

So, the difficulty might lie with the interpretation of the word "contribution." For me, in the context of RPG theory, it indicates very clearly an act by which something is actively brought into the SIS.

can you provide a more specific definition for Contribution in this context.

I can see a case for saying the guy who did the illustration for the third supplement, which inspired the GM to create an NPC "contributed" to the game for a certain sense of the word.

For a certain sense of the word, the pizza delivery guy contributed to the game (in the sense of the meta experience of the evenings session).

I sense that neither of those is where you're going with your question, however.

Quote from: xenopulseWill has provided basic material. The selection and introduction of these into play, however, is up to the players. Just like Doug cannot introduce a situation that the other players have to deal with, Will cannot decide to throw anything specific of his material in there. He's an influence, and maybe a really really strong one. But the contribution comes from the players accepting his material and putting it into play.

But if the players accept Will's material, isn't he contributing?  Remember that Will has created and assigned the pregenerated characters.  i.e. Will mailed all the character sheets with the players names on them.  So Zack gets a character sheet with his name on it, with stats on the front and the written background on the back.  Now, the players can all say "The heck with Will, let's play something else".  But let's say they accept what Will has written.  They all are imagining based on what he has written.  So I would think that is part of the Shared Imaginary Space.  

I could go further and say that Will's module includes a boxed introductory text which Graham reads aloud at the start of the adventure.  (This is pretty common in many modules.)  Does that change anything?  

Quote from: xenopulseDoug changes the outcome of play. That does not automatically mean he contributes. In fact, he is an arbiter. I would say, even though Doug makes a difference and decides on direction of play, he has made no substantive contribution, i.e., he has not opened up new possibilities. He chooses between possibilities already brought into play by the players.

So by the definition you are using, choosing among options isn't contributing?  So, for example, if players are in a fight where they choose different maneuvers and which to spend fortune points on, none of that is contribution?  

Quote from: xenopulseSo, the difficulty might lie with the interpretation of the word "contribution." For me, in the context of RPG theory, it indicates very clearly an act by which something is actively brought into the SIS.

Let's consider Will's boxed introductory text.  Will deliberately mailed this to Graham to be read aloud.  On the other hand, Graham is the one who spoke the words to the players.  By "active", it seems like you are concerned with agency.  Would it be Graham's contribution if he spoke it aloud?  What if someone else spoke it aloud or passed it around based on Will's written instructions?  

Quote from: ValamirCan you provide a more specific definition for Contribution in this context.

Well, no.  In fact, I'm trying to understand what other people mean by "contribute" when they say things like "mechanics don't contribute anything".  So my question is for however you tend to think about the word "contribute" in the context of RPG theory.

I can't really speak to Doug the Dice Guy, but I do have something I hope is useful regarding Will the Writing Guy.

To that end, Ralph, here's what I think "contribution" means: "What gets put into the SIS."  For something to enter the SIS it must be shared, and it also must be negotiated (even if this negotiation takes the form of no one objecting).  Without negotiation it's not in the SIS, it may be potentially in the SIS, but until we negotiate it we can't be sure that we are all imaging it.

What Will the Writing Guy and the Artist you suggest are giving to the game is what I call Constraint.  According to the (terribly rough) current draft of my essay on the subject Constraint is: "The body of all things that provide boundaries for acceptable contributions to the Shared Imagined Space (SIS)."  That is, Constraint tells you what you can contribute, or as Lumpley would say: (paraphrase) "How do I know what I can/should say?" when playing.

Will and the artist can't contribute because they can't be involved in negotiation.  However, they can be used as Constraints.  The group can decide "The world will be like Will wrote up here", or "The world looks like the pictures in supplement X."

So, going by our definition above shouldn't levels of Constraint that have been previously negotiated (i.e. Will's text) be considered to be contributed?  I say "no", Constraint only potentially exists in the SIS, it doesn't actually exist until someone calls on it and the group negotiates it into being.

That doesn't seem too coherent as I read back over it, but I really should just get back and finish this article on Constraint.  Maybe that will help.

NOTE: I almost cross-posted with John Kim on this one.  I think his points are addressed in this post.

Thomas

Yeah. What Thomas said.

Look, what we're doing here is coining terms. We do that in order to be able to talk about the things that we analyze. Of course you could define the term "contribute" to include every single influence into the game. I prefer to call that simply influence. Maybe it's the same thing that Thomas calls Constraint. So, I prefer to define the term "contribute" to mean the decisionmaking and/or creative process of, as Thomas said, getting something accepted in the SIS. I need a word for that, because I see that as distinct and different from the general influence. Now it could be you have a better word for it, and we can talk about that, then, and decide which one seems to make more sense.

QuoteSo by the definition you are using, choosing among options isn't contributing? So, for example, if players are in a fight where they choose different maneuvers and which to spend fortune points on, none of that is contribution?

Correct. This may be something where my definition is not standard, and I'd like to know how other people feel about this. But I see roleplaying as a creative process. Any in-game decisionmaking regarding already established options is not part of that process. That's what sets RPGs apart from wargames. In wargames, you choose from the options given. In RPGs, you create your own options. That's where D&D is so close to its wargame roots. The combat in D&D is almost completely void of creativity.

QuoteLet's consider Will's boxed introductory text. Will deliberately mailed this to Graham to be read aloud. On the other hand, Graham is the one who spoke the words to the players. By "active", it seems like you are concerned with agency. Would it be Graham's contribution if he spoke it aloud? What if someone else spoke it aloud or passed it around based on Will's written instructions?

Graham contributes, because it's his credibility that allows the material to enter the SIS. If it was Will's, then Will, though not physically present, would still be the GM, and therefore contribute. In either case, it's Will's material. The point is, who actively puts it in the SIS? I think that distinction is worth making, and I think "contribute" is as good a word for it as I can come up with at this point.

I think both Doug and Will have contributed significantly. I think Paul the pizza guy contributed--but not significantly.

I think the bar for significant contribution is that you ask this:
1. Would the game have been significantly different if not for that person (and you get to set the standard for "significantly" but, you know, if you say the guy who wrote the module, made the characters, and wrote the system you ran made no significant contribution to the gaming experience I think you'll have a hard time convincing most people you are using the word "contributed" correctly).

2. I think the degree of intentional input the person has to the specific game is important. This seems strange, I expect, but I think it's so. Being an inspiration is certianly important in some senses but I based a game off a Steely Dan song and I doubt the band members (or Buroughs, if we resurrected him) could guess what impact Do it Again had on my game.

On the other hand, Will and Doug will be able to tell me what impact they had with a high degree of accuracy.

I think once something becomes an "inpsiration" the person who is inspired by the subject is doing enough of their processing that the input to the game belongs to the person who is inspired. I'm sure there are gray areas though.

Paul: YES
(1) Strong Yes, the game would clearly be very much different.
(2) Strong Yes, his input was intentional and for that game.

Will: YES
(1) Strong Yes. The game would clearly (likely) be very much different if not for his input.
(2) Strong Yes. He created his input for that specific game.

Paul the Pizza Guy: NO
(1) Strong No. It is unlikely the arrival of the pizza made a significant difference.
(2) Strong No. He had no intentional input into the game.

Amy the Artist: Probable NO
(1) Medium Yes. We don't know what the NPC was--but unless the GM was working to re-create that scene and wrapped the game around it, I find it probable that another NPC inspiration would have been similar.
(2) Medium No. Unless the third supplement is directly relevant to the game that was run (and I'm assuming it wasn't) then her intentional input into this game is accidental. As with a song on the radio she could not accuately tell what input she had and so I give the majority of the credit to the GM for the game impact.

Walt the Worldbook Writer: Unknown
(1) Unknown. If his world book's text contained elements that were directly fundamental in shaping the adventure then I think he counts. If he has a very wide-scale world and some fairly generic notes then I think the impact is minimal. If the GM used stuff directly from the world book and fleshed it out a little and ran it I would be inclined to say Yes.
(2) Unknown. I think that, again, if the GM is working the game directly off springboard ideas in the world book or the world is very specifically wrapped around themes to the point where the GM could tell you important things about the action in the game by knowing which ideas came up then I think that's a case for Yes. If the game was just set in a nation near the "badlands" then probably not so much.

-Marco

I'm still operating at knee-jerk level here, but:

Ralph is right that 'contribute', as it stands, is unacceptably vague.

If you think that the game-as-played is a social phenomenon created by the players, it follows trivially that only the players at the table (or present e.g. over speakerphone, as I was when I got grounded by my parents during my high school D&D game) are contributing to the game-as-played in that sense.

It's in this sense that I think Doug is clearly contributing (he is evaluating play and making input into the SiS on the basis of his evaluations - he's a full-on member of the group, if one with an unusual set of duties relative to normal RPG experience) and Will is more or less clearly not contributing. Will's not there.

On the other hand, let's say a boyfriend of one of the players drops into the game, watches for a while, and then maybe drops a few minis on the battleboard, or makes an astute observation about what the party ought to do that is followed. He 'made a contribution' to the game-as-played by making a contribution to the SiS at that particular session.

If you want to think of an SiS getting established over an entire 'campaign', then there might be a point to that, and then Will pokes his head in the back door again. That's why I think Will has more title to be involved in the game than whoever wrote it and the various supplements. If I had to decide I'd leave him out, focusing on the particular session; but if something about the session referred back to the reality of the whole long-term game than Will might get back in. This is the same problem about whether a painting of a haystack by Monet is part of a larger art object (the series of paintings as a whole, which all relate to one another) or a single art object. In that case I think so much of the interest comes from the whole series that I'm more likely to look at the whole series as the art object. But in the case of an RPG session, well, it depends on the structure of the session I guess. But at least I've given rough criteria for when Will's in and when Will's out.

Marco,

We need to draw a distinction between "contributing something to the play experience" and "contributing something to play itself".  I wouldn't say that the audience is part of a basketball game, but I would never dream of saying that they had no impact on it.

I'm going to stick with my definition of "contribution" until someone comes up with something better, feel free to comment on it.  Specifically: "Contribution is what actually goes into the Shared Imagined Space."

This includes my assertation that nothing can enter the SIS without negotiation, and thus you can't "contribute" if you are not in a position to be engaged in negotiation.  You write the book and leave?  No.  You write the book and then play by mail?  Sure.  In one you are able to actively negotiate, in the other you are not.

Remember, we're distinguishing from the general term "contribution" and trying to define a specific piece of jargon: "Contribution".

Looking at Sean's examples: Someone buddy stops by and makes some comments?  Sure he can contribute, because he can be engaged in negotiation.  You look through a splat of some sort?  You can contribute elements from that splat, but the splat (and by proxy, its author) can't contribute because they aren't there to be negotiated with.

Thomas

Joh, to put it in the terms of my articles, Will has not contribute to the game; contribution is what happens there during play - that is, contribution includes both the mental generation and the communication of it to the other players. What has happened to Will's material is that it has been preloaded, as per my second article. (The explanation I gave of preloaded is that the group is treating stuff that actually hasn't been contributed as thought it had been.)

As far as Doug goes, exactly what Xenopulse said. Doug is not contributing, because he's not generating any imaginary content. Doug is a mechanic. :)

Quote from: John KimBut if the players accept Will's material, isn't he contributing?

Ralph's right. I am not sure that "contributing" has any specific meaning used in isolation like that. "Contributing to the shared imagined space" has a very narrowly defined meaning. It is functionally nearly equivalent to "playing the game", so anyone and especially anything that is not "playing the game" is not itself "contributing to the shared imagined space". However, there is no clear definition of "contributing to the game", nor indeed of "contributing" outside that specific application.

In this sense, Will is not "contributing to the shared imagined space" because he never actually does this. What he is doing is providing materials from which his friends can pick and choose in creating their own contributions to the shared imagined space. He is the equivalent of Tolkien in a game in which the players play known Middle Earth characters in an adventure set in Middle Earth. He has provided a wealth of material from which the players select much to contribute to the shared imagined space; he contributes nothing to that space himself, but merely makes recommendations to them as to what sorts of things he thinks they should contribute.

Doug the Dice Guy, surprisingly, is contributing to the shared imagined space, as he is presented here. In a sense, he has become the system, the vehicle for determining whether certain kinds of statements are credible or not. It appears to be a complex relationship at this point, because he doesn't make that determination completely on his own. From what appears, it seems that Paul the Player describes how he swings his great axe in a hyperbolic arc that intersects with his opponent's neck (O.K., so I wouldn't be particularly good in a game in which description of an attack was important), and Doug the Dice Guy says, "That's pretty good; I'm going to give that a credibility rating of 14." Then Graham the GM says, "14 is good, but it's not good enough; he needs a 15 to hit."

What I think matters here is that Doug is making a subjective assessment of the credibility of statements made into the shared imagined space, in essence rating them. It would be entirely different if Doug were the Dice Guy because he had a stopwatch he could check when called upon, or because he had memorized Pi to thirty-five digits and so could return the next one in sequence when asked to provide a pseudo-random result. Doug is giving the degree to which he would like to see a statement become part of the shared imagined space; he is thus participating in forming that shared imagined space directly. This is different from rattling off numbers which are interpreted by someone else to determine outcomes. It's an attempt to directly influence events through the contribution of that information.

Looked at a slightly different way, when Paul says that bit about the way he swings his axe, Doug chooses a number not by randomly tossing something out but by describing what he sees happening in the shared imagined space, albeit in a numerical way. He hears Paul's description, and he says, "That axe flies through the air with a speed and accuracy that win a 14." He then lets the referee decide whether that quality of attack is sufficient to hit. If it hits, everyone is imagining an attack that was sufficiently swift and accurate to hit the target; if it misses, everyone is imagining a similar attack which was swift and accurate but not quite sufficient. Note that had Doug rated the attack with a 5 instead, everyone would be imagining a much less capable attack--and if it happened that a 5 were to hit, they would be imagining a situation in which the poorly-executed blow still connected with the target. Thus Doug is contributing content to the shared imagined space. Paul says, "I attack"; Doug says "Paul's attack was this good." Graham says, "This good is good enough." It is because Doug is making a subjective assessment of the quality of the action that he contributes to the shared imagined space, where dice would not do so in the same circumstances.

As to the statement that "mechanics don't contribute", in the sense that they do not contribute to the shared imagined space, that is correct. Mechanics provide the basis for players to make contributions; they do not contribute in and of themselves. When Doug says the attack is rated at 14, he means (according to the description above) that he liked the description and rated it as worth a 14. When the dice roll 14, they don't "mean" anything but that a 14 has been generated as the next number in sequence. Paul's description has impact on the "roll" itself when Doug makes the decision; it means nothing to the roll when the dice are involved, but rather is spoken directly to Graham. It is up to Graham to decide how the description and the dice roll interact. When Doug intervenes, the description has already been incorporated into the value given.

I hope this is clear.

--M. J. Young

I'd say that material accepted directly into the game without any significant negotiation is actually contributed to the game, regardless of how it is contributed.

If Will sends a description of a character that reads "Joe is wears a large plate armor, uses a greataxe and has long red hair", and the group accepts this, entering a guy with a large plate armor, a greataxe and long red hair into their SiS, I'd call that a contribution.

In the case of Tolkien, he never added anything to the SiS. The keyword here is intention. Tolkien never intended for this specific aspect to be added to this specific SiS, so he never contributed to it. But Will submitted Joe to the SiS in much the same way a player sitting at the table would have done. If Joe is accepted into the SiS for which he is intended, I'd say it does not matter how he was submitted, he is still a contribution. And thus, Will contributed.

Quote from: John Kim
Question: Has Will contributed anything to the game?  

Depends on the meaning of "game", I'm afraid, which is another word with a multitude of meanings.

Will has undoubtedly contributed the methodology of play which the group use.  He has structured the game they will play in the broad sense of any writer of things to be consumed by others.  But unless he is actually running the game by remote control, he is not contributing to the SIS of the actual live games-as-process being conducted by the players.

Doug the dice guy, on the other hand, seems to me to be directly involved with the game-as-process, and is nmakiung interventions directly into the SIS.  I actually see this as an odd but interesting variation on the GM's role.

So if we are referring to the live game as it is played, I would say that Will is not contributing, and Doug is.  But i dont think anyone would dispute Wills claim to authorship of the game as designed, structured activity.

First of all -- let's remind ourselves that "shared imagined space" is a metaphor: in other word's it's literally false; literally, there is, and never could be, a shared imagined space.  All there can be are more or less congruent individual narratives.

Too, note pace the Lumpley Principal, negotiation need not be negotiation qua negotiation -- it is simply the possibility of withholding assent, eg by leaving the game.

What "contributes to the shared imagined space" literally means is:

(assuming A and B are gaming together, X is a contribution)

1. A proposes X
2. B assents to forming a congruent individual narratives

-- or --

1. A proposes X
2.  B makes modifications to X that would be incongruent with the original (forming X1)
3.  A & B assent to form congruent individual narratives based on X1

-- or --

variations on the above

One way to specify "contribution" to exclude Will the Writer Guy is to require the second case to be possible: i.e. that the group modifies X and Will assents to it.  If Will has no feedback mechanism, he cannot assent to any changes.

If Will does have a feedback mechanism the game can become a hybrid tabletop game/play by mail game or something of that sort.

[It occurs to me that "contribute" here is an exact simile for "negotiate" in the sense of "contribute X into the shared imagined space" would have the  exact meaning of "negotiate X into the shared imagined space"]

Quote from: Ian CharvillIt occurs to me that "contribute" here is an exact simile for "negotiate" in the sense of "contribute X into the shared imagined space" would have the exact meaning of "negotiate X into the shared imagined space"

Yes, this is basically what I am proposing.

Thomas

While I think that the points that have been brought up are correct in that they are internally consistent and accurate (IMO) I think the real question is this:

Does this (the original quote)

Quote from: John Kim
Question: Has Will contributed anything to the game?  

Mean the same as this:

Quote
Question: Has Will added something to SIS via the process of negotiation during actual play?

I think that if we decide they are the same we are making a big mistake--and one that we make all too often here. We are taking a general, widely used term and giving it a specific non-intuitive interpertation.

To say that the guy who wrote the campaign, created the mechanics, and generated all the characters has "not contributed to the game" is the sort of thing that gets us looked at funny.

While the counter argument is that "game" or "contributes to the game" is too vague to be of any use, I think that's not so. The term will be used in context where either, IME, it'll be clear or clarification will not be difficult. In the case of a gray area (Walt, the world-book guy) the fact that there is some discussion is probably indicative that the issue should be explored more in the specific context of the conversation (rather than in the sense of adhering to a glossary definition).

-Marco

I'd like to point out in case anyone is unaware, that the word "contribute" as John is using it is not part of the official Forge jargon. As far as I know, no one has used it before in this context, until I started using it in my Theory Without Jargon articles to describe role-playings fundamental act without needing to use words like Exploration, SiS, Negotiation, Credibility, Authority, and so on.

Maybe I'm guilty of just creating a new type of jargon. If I am, I hope that it's at least intuitive jargon that noobs will find easy to grasp. So, all this hand-flapping is kinda needless. "Contribution" means what I use it to mean, because I find that meaning convenient in this context, and not at all at odds with its conventional usage.

I'd also like to point out that, so far as I remember, I have only used "contribution" as a noun in the articles - "contribution" in the sense of "hey guys, here's what I'm imagining." If I've screwed that up, please point some places out to me so I can revise them.

Anyway, it's obvious that Will has a profound effect on the game. To argue against that is madness. But to argue about whether or not "Will is contributing to the game" is a moot point. Will is not there at the table making stuff up with everyone else. He is not involved with the negotiation process, which is what I'm specifically talking about in my articles.

(Also, I just realized I was kinda sloppy in my earlier post to this thread. I didn't really sit down and think it through like I should have. Sorry for that. I hope this post clears things up a bit.)

it all depends on what you term contribution. Probably there is more one way of contributing.

"creation" I'd say that this is the primary way of contribution. it presets what the rules, assumptions, and objects of interpretation will be. interpretation works within this framework. Wether one uses negotiation of interpretations is decided at this stage and not inherent in all roleplaying.

"interpretation" is the actualization of possibilties within the framework of "creation". A RPG story is not possible with out this dynamic actualization, but it does not follow that this is the "real" or only way of contribution. There could not be a SIS without the "creation" step.

If you say "nah, let's change Will's rule #753", you already have changed levels to the metalevel of "creation" again. Of course, in most games, you will be switching levels during a session.
You could even cross this Modell with marcos distinctions for a more fine-grained model of contribution.

In Wills case the players, even the DM are just interpreting (which does not mean they are not conributing, but Will's with creative contribution, there'd be no game - or at least no game where the question of his contribution could be posed). In many ways the groups playing is like playing RISK. one could interpret the result of a RISK attack ("that was a slaughter"), and "negotiate" assent to this interpretation. Have you now contributed to RISK?

Doug is contributing "interpretations", but only "interpretations of interpretations".[/b]

Sophist,

I'm not entirely sure what you are defining with this "creation/interpretation" dichotemy.  Are you saying that any time any player suggests something new that it's creation, and that any time a player references an existing element it's interpretation?  Let's say that Will has an NPC who is described as having "Long flowing hair".  If the GM says that the NPC has "Long flowing, red hair" is that creation or interpretation?

Thomas

Quote from: PaganiniI'd like to point out in case anyone is unaware, that the word "contribute" as John is using it is not part of the official Forge jargon. As far as I know, no one has used it before in this context, until I started using it in my Theory Without Jargon articles to describe role-playings fundamental act without needing to use words like Exploration, SiS, Negotiation, Credibility, Authority, and so on.

Maybe I'm guilty of just creating a new type of jargon. If I am, I hope that it's at least intuitive jargon that noobs will find easy to grasp.

Well, unfortunately, I think the variety of answers I see on this thread indicates that it is not particularly intuitive.  Particularly since that is supposed to be "theory without jargon", perhaps you should consider replacements?  It seems to me that it is simpler to just say "Mechanics don't negotiate" rather than "Mechanics don't contribute" -- if that's what you mean.  

Quote from: PaganiniI'd also like to point out that, so far as I remember, I have only used "contribution" as a noun in the articles - "contribution" in the sense of "hey guys, here's what I'm imagining." If I've screwed that up, please point some places out to me so I can revise them.

OK.  In Theory Without Jargon Number 2, just before the conclusion (i.e. "The Bottom Line"), you write:

QuoteIt's also important to note that the mechanics never contribute anything. Since they don't have minds, they can't make stuff up the same way that the players do. Instead, mechanics are used to pick from a list of potential contributions.

and

QuoteEven after the dice are rolled, some player still has to contribute the result by describing it to the rest of the group. This is one of those instances where the contribution is pre-approved. Everyone agreed to use the dice to pick a result, so the player narrating assumes that his contribution is accepted by everyone. If the player narrates something other than what the dice selected, it's the same as when Carl broke the social contract earlier.

So are you looking to revise these?  If so, I'd be interested in the replacement.  The first part implies that something has to be totally original and unexpected for it to be a "contribution".  That's something of a new wrinkle that wasn't clear to me in earlier usage of "contribution".  I also find the latter part to be a little odd.  In my experience, it is not uncommon for no one to vocalize the mechanical result -- at least for small bits.  i.e. An action is declared, dice are rolled, and the result is clear enough that the people at the table all understand what happened well enough to move on.  Failed perception rolls and missed attacks are common cases.

Quote from: John KimWell, unfortunately, I think the variety of answers I see on this thread indicates that it is not particularly intuitive.  Particularly since that is supposed to be "theory without jargon", perhaps you should consider replacements?  It seems to me that it is simpler to just say "Mechanics don't negotiate" rather than "Mechanics don't contribute" -- if that's what you mean.

The thing is, I feel like people are not reading the articles very carefully, so I don't really feel a strong urge to go and revise them based on this. When I say "mechanics can't make contributions" I mean "mechanics don't have minds. They can't make stuff up. They can't invent imagined facts." I've said this in plain words in the articles, and at least 2 or 3 times in the threads. The bit you you quoted below, even though it uses "contribute" in an imprecise way, immediately clears everything up by using almost these exact words! If people are all "what's contribution? Well, you're wrong, but it all depends on how you define contribution," then I don't see what more I can do. Skeptics can debate semantics and definitions until the world ends.

My goal is to make the theory accessable. I think I've made the balance between the input generated from people right there at the table and the input generated by third parties outside of the game abundantly clear.

<snip excerpts>

Thanks for finding those. In fact, after my previous post, I went through both drafts and found those places (and a few others, I think). I'm not at that computer now, but here's the gist of the revisions:

Number 1 - "It's also important to note that the mechanics never make contributions. Since they don't have minds, they can't make stuff up the same way that the players do. Instead, mechanics are used to pick from a list of potential contributions."

That one was pretty easy. :) In case you're wondering where the list of potential contributions came from, it was either made up by Will the Writing guy (in which case it counts as preloaded material - like my random encounter example) or it was made up on the spot by one of the players (as in Shadows).

Number 2 - "Even after the dice are rolled, some player still has to narrate the result to the rest of the group. This is one of those instances where a contribution is pre-approved. Everyone agreed to use the dice to pick a result, so the player narrating assumes that his contribution is accepted by everyone. If the player narrates something other than what the dice selected, it's the same as when Carl broke the social contract earlier."

As far as not verbalizing the results goes, that's an interesting point. I'll have to think a bit more about it. My knee-jerk response would be say that it doesn't really make much difference. It's just an example of a group being comfortable enough to leave out a step in the process of maintaining continuity between their individual imagination spaces. They know each other well enough that they can assume everyone is on the same page and move on.

I just had a thought on this. If Will prepares a setting writeup for everyone to read, and everyone agrees that whatever Will writes is part of the SIS, then can't Will be said to have contributed to the SIS? If a group of players decides to play in Tolkien's Middle Earth, and all agree to read the Hobbitt and the Lord of the Rings before play, then isn't everything in those books effectively part of the SIS (to the limits of our interpretation, but then those limits exist even for player contributions, if I describe my PC to the rest of the players, every one of us will have a different picture of that PC)? If a player in the Tolkien game says "You all meet in the tavern in Bree;" he doesn't have to establish that Bree is a small town on the border of the Shire and that it's a bit of a rough and tumble place (and for those who had just read the books, even more of a description would be fresh in their minds). Now someone might have to ask for a reminder of any more information that is part of the SIS (again, no different than having to ask for a reminder of what my PC looked like).

Another, possibly related, insight is that a setting book is just a set of rules providing guidance for what may become part of the SIS. And that goes for any artwork or maps. Or modules. And thus such material is part of system.

Hmm, I guess in the case of everyone reading the books, the information contained is entered into the SIS by the group's agreement to read the books, and grant them credibility.

Not sure if this really helps, it was just a thought I had.

Frank

Quote from: ffilzI just had a thought on this. If Will prepares a setting writeup for everyone to read, and everyone agrees that whatever Will writes is part of the SIS, then can't Will be said to have contributed to the SIS?

That's what I would say.  However, some people distinguish based on the source and intent of the imaginary content: i.e.

• Was it something from a published game book?
  
• Was it created by the GM or players between session?
  
• Was it created by the GM or players spontaneously during a game session
  
• etc.[/list:u]I think it's interesting to analyze the sources.  However, for me in play, all of these get blended together.  Different sources will expand upon and modify each other.  I will often imagine things during play without any idea what the original source of it was.  i.e. Someone may tell me about some local noble on Harn -- and I don't know if it was an NPC spontaneously invented in some previous session, or written up in some module, or presented in written campaign material.

Quote from: John Kim<snip>
I will often imagine things during play without any idea what the original source of it was.  i.e. Someone may tell me about some local noble on Harn -- and I don't know if it was an NPC spontaneously invented in some previous session, or written up in some module, or presented in written campaign material.

We could probably argue the semantics of this all day, but I think this is the key for me when figuring out where things happen.  It doesn't matter what the sources of inspiration are, it only matters what the players at the table say.

Looking at Frank's example, I would say that even if the group has agreed to use the body of Tokein's work, that does not ensure that the body of Tolkein's work is in the SIS.  "You are in the town of Bree."  "The where?"  "You remember Bree, right?  It's like at the very beginning of Fellowship."  "Nope, I'm drawing a blank here."  "Okay, well, it's like this..."

The players are still negotiating what goes into the SIS here, even though they have previously established Tolkein's work a an authority.  In no way am I saying that Tolkein's work, or going back to the example at the beginning of the thread, Will the Writing Guy aren't having an impact on the experience.  That would be a pretty silly argument I think.  What I am saying is that the impact they have is qualitatively different from what the players actually say.

What this means exactly, I'm not sure.

Thomas

Quote from: LordSmerfIt doesn't matter what the sources of inspiration are, it only matters what the players at the table say.

Looking at Frank's example, I would say that even if the group has agreed to use the body of Tokein's work, that does not ensure that the body of Tolkein's work is in the SIS.  "You are in the town of Bree."  "The where?"  "You remember Bree, right?  It's like at the very beginning of Fellowship."  "Nope, I'm drawing a blank here."  "Okay, well, it's like this..."

Well, but the exact same thing is true of what the players say.  i.e. "You meet up with Ned."  "Who?"  "Remember, he's that guy we ran into last session over at Monique's company?"  "Nope, I'm drawing a blank here."  "OK, well, it's like this..."

Quote from: LordSmerfIn no way am I saying that Tolkein's work, or going back to the example at the beginning of the thread, Will the Writing Guy aren't having an impact on the experience.  That would be a pretty silly argument I think.  What I am saying is that the impact they have is qualitatively different from what the players actually say.

What this means exactly, I'm not sure.

I'm not disagreeing that there are differences.  Will the Writing Guy's written input is different than a typical player's verbal input, and both are different than Doug the Dice Guy's spontaneous numeric input.  And a player's verbal input may be different than a GM's verbal input.  

My concern is that in some analyses, people simply define Will the Writing Guy's input as out of the picture.  Since they aren't even considering it, it is then impossible to compare it's input with verbal input.  I think this difference is fruitful ground for study.

Another interesting question is when Will creates new material based on communication with the players about what they did last session.

"Oh, you guys are on the road West? Well, it will take you several days to cross the wasteland. On the other side of the wasteland is the City of the Dead..."

In this case, the primary difference is the frequency of interraction. In this case, is there a real difference between Will and Co. and a play-by-mail game?

And as John mentioned, the SIS is always fragile. In fact, I would assert that there are sub-SIS which various people share. For example, if a player is absent one session, then the SIS created during that session will somewhat exclude the absent player (though he presumably would be filled in, but gaps would exist). Different players will remember things differently.

But here's a new insight. When we talk about SIS, are we talking about the body of creation that is shared memory, or are we talking about the instantaneous "live" SIS? If SIS is "live" then a player is only part of that SIS to the extent that he is actively interracting with the group. Certainly that is something that can be considered a distinguishing point, but in that case, a PBM game really doesn't have a live SIS (though a IM campaign would have one, though it is still qualitatively different from a  face to face campaign since there are cues missing).

Now another distinction would be if the author of the material is part of the negotiation process. If Will is interracting with the players, then he is part of the negotiation process. Tolkien certainly isn't. A module writer probably isn't either (however - if the players communicate with the module writer and ask questions and receive answers, then the module writer does gain at least a weak negotiation link).

And perhaps that's a key point. What is really interesting is not the SIS itself, but the process by which it is established. Will clearly is much more a part of the establishment of the SIS than Tolkien, even though Tolkien may be contributing more raw material to the Middle Earth campaign than Will is contributing to Will and Co.'s campaign.

Frank

Heres the thing I'm finding odd that no one has picked up on - Will is Us.

* Homebrew system
* World Design
* Pregenerated characters

Quick way to get to some heart of it: If you took your own system, wrote up a con session for it, and handed it to Bob because you have another obligation, have you "contributed to the imaginary space?"
I'd be *inclined* to say no. As a game author, as soon as we hand that book over to the player we have no control of what is done with it, same as Will. We can *IMPACT* it by filling the game with easy rules, vivid and exciting characters and possibilities, and the like. Us and Will are similar in another respect: We form an attachment of sorts with the con players we meet. The folks I've personally dealt with, taught them to play Twilight, and talked with them are almost rabid fans even if they were a little "Eh, I'll just give it a shot" at first. Store purchases, on the other hand, are more lackluster. They know the game, know the rules, just...'Eh, its not bad.'
Will has already had this impact on his group. They know him, know his material, just like a congoer would see "Ralph's Indie Game, GM'ed by Bob!" and get excitied- someone else is GM'ing, but they know its Bob's material.
Will indirectly has a hand in the gameplay same as one of us. The impact is undeniably there, but it has no where near the same worth as the group at the playing at the table. If they decide to go with Will's Options over Bob's Options, thats still the players choice, Will just presented an option.

Quote from: daMoose_NeoQuick way to get to some heart of it: If you took your own system, wrote up a con session for it, and handed it to Bob because you have another obligation, have you "contributed to the imaginary space?"
I'd be *inclined* to say no. As a game author, as soon as we hand that book over to the player we have no control of what is done with it, same as Will.

Quote from: daMoose_NeoWill indirectly has a hand in the gameplay same as one of us. The impact is undeniably there, but it has no where near the same worth as the group at the playing at the table. If they decide to go with Will's Options over Bob's Options, thats still the players choice, Will just presented an option.

You made a peculiar shift here from "contribute" to "control" in your answer to the question.  i.e. You imply that in order for you to contribute, you have to be able to control others into accepting your suggestions.  I find this odd, since even if you are physically present, you aren't guaranteed control.  To my mind, the important issue is acceptance.  i.e. If Will's group ignores what he's written and plays a D&D module instead, then Will hasn't contributed.  However, if they faithfully accept what he wrote, then he has contributed.  

To deal with this more concretely, I'd add another hypothetical case: George the Game Author.  Essentially, George is much like Will except that he's also physically present during the session.  George has written a new game along with an adventure module to demo it (i.e. a written adventure with pregenerated characters).  He has three friends of his GM this adventure at a gaming con, and he sits in on the games.  He is available to answer questions, but may also correct the GM if he sees something going awry or quietly offer suggestions (probably by passing a note to the GM).  

So, has George contributed to the game?  

I can see this going a few different ways:
1) Both George and Will have contributed, because they gave creative input which was accepted as part of the game.  

2) "Contribution" means that someone needs to be actively there to back up their input.  Being actively there makes a difference, because then if their input is not accepted, they can argue.  i.e. They can object or make a scene if they are ignored.  So Will hasn't contributed, but George has.  

3) "Contribution" by definition means that you are part of the defined players.  Since George isn't part of the defined circle of players, he can't "contribute".  

I personally think #2 and #3 are a bit non-intuitive, essentially creation of more jargon out of "contribution".  But the first hurdle is just understanding what we mean.

I think John's on to something here.

First, it seems to me that when we play My Life with Master, to say that Paul Czege has contributed nothing to our game is problematic.  It denies the relevance and importance of his writing to our game.  Taken strongly, it seems to suggest that it makes no difference whether we are playing MLwM or some other game, which leads ultimately toward System Doesn't Matter.  I do not think that this is a matter of intent: if we play My Life with Master in a manner never intended by Paul, or which he might even object to, the fact that we are doing so from his initial text contributes something regardless.

Second, somebody brought up the question of constraint, and that seems to me a significant contribution.  Theoretically, anything is possible in a game, but constraints make that not the case.  When we sit down and formulate a social contract, however formally or informally, I think we are making a significant contribution to play.  But much of what happens in that process is constraint: we agree that when the GM says, "Okay, no more discussion, here's what happens," that will be accepted as in the SIS (for example).  Similarly, most game systems impose constraints on the SIS and what can go into it, which is very much part of the social contract: we agree to play this game in particular and not another, and thus to abide by any rules we haven't specifically agreed to set aside.

Third, mechanics as such carry baggage.  What I was referring to in Paganini's thread was a little different from this, but it hits on Doug the Dice Guy.  When we choose to make decisions by a Fortune mechanic rather than a Karma mechanic, for example, we have imposed constraints of some sort.  This is by itself a contribution to how the game plays.  And when we now bear in mind the rhetorical and cultural distinctions between dice-based and diceless gaming (see Eric Wujcik's article as an example) we are bringing something to the game that is not simply "well, which way should we arbitrate decisions?"

Here's an example.  Suppose there is a mechanic that says, "If you don't like a rule, set it aside."  That's a rule.  Now how do we decide when it is applicable?  As soon as somebody tries to apply it in play, we are faced with a social contract problem: did that rule mean "whenever you like," or "by GM fiat," or "by general agreement in advance"?  Now compare this to a game that does not say this and makes clear, directly or otherwise, that it should never be applied.  If the rule is in there, it stays, or you play another game.  We are now straight into the ways in which groups decide about the nature of the authority of the rules text.

My point is that simply saying "okay, so then you roll dice" adds something, and I don't mean it adds a mechanic for arbitration.  Sure, it does that, but it also says something about what kind of game this is, and how it ought to be played.  Saying that your mechanics are diceless has cultural implications, since the assumed baseline is a diced system.  If you look at Theatrix, for example, which is a diceless but in many respects traditional GM-dominated game, a big part of their shtick about diceless is that it's free and liberated, unlike all those narrow-minded old-fashioned games that use dice.  Similarly, when a group decides to go with diceless, they are making a choice that has implications far beyond "how is decision-making handled?"

I'll pause here....

Perhaps to reiterate something I thought I said, I don't think we've got any consensus at all concerning the subject of this discussion. When we say "contribute", all by itself, what do we mean?

If we're asking who contributes to our game session, obviously the pizza guy does, and so does the owner of the building where we meet to play, and the manufacturer of the dice, and whoever made my clothes, and the utility company providing the heat.

If we're asking who contributes to the shared imagined space, we've got a much shorter list. At that point, anyone who contributes to the shared imagined space has to speak into it somehow.

The issue has been raised concerning a version of Will who interacts with the players, creating new material for the next session which someone else will run. In my most lawyerly manner, I would distinguish two version of this, and say that they are entirely different:[list=1]

• If Will writes up the new material and it is distributed to all the players so that they read it, or if it is read aloud by someone at the table in its entirety as a unit or in the order he intended without skipping anything at any point, recognized as what Will said was true in the shared imagined space, then Will is a player in the game. He is making one statement per session, doing so remotely, and being accepted into the shared imagined space as he does so. He then learns what was done from there, and prepares his next statement.
• If Will writes up his materials and gives them to George the Game Master, and George reads them and uses them as his authority for what he announces in the game world, then Will is not a player--everything he contributes to play goes through George, and it is George, not Will, who decides what gets contributed to the shared imagined space, in what sequence, in response to what actions. He may reference Will as his authority for this, but Will has no credibility in this situation. Even if George were to call Will on the phone to ask a question, and then come back to the table saying, "This is what Will said," George is the person with the credibility; Will is the authority referenced, much the same as looking it up in the rule book.[/list:o]
  I certainly agree that Will contributes to the game, and considerably more so than the pizza guy. I do not agree that he contributes to the shared imagined space, unless all the other players receive his contribution directly from him via his mode of communication, unfiltered by the editorial decisions of any other player.
  
  --M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. YoungPerhaps to reiterate something I thought I said, I don't think we've got any consensus at all concerning the subject of this discussion. When we say "contribute", all by itself, what do we mean?

I agree entirely.  Much of what is being debated here is caused by differences in how people define the term "contribute".  This is pointless, IMO, because the word itself is quite clear independent of any RPG considerations: "to furnish or supply in part".  If somebody creates something that adds to a work, he is 'contributing'.  There are other words that can be used to distinguish between different kinds of contributions, though, that could be used to clarify things a bit.

But, first, let me coin a new term to help out in describing the different types of contributions that I see: Proposed Shared Imaginary Space.  I'm not sure if another term already exists in the Forge jargon to cover this.  If there is, I'd appreciate someone pointing it out.  The Proposed Shared Imaginary Space is the current accepted SIS modified in some way as proposed by a player but before that modification has been adopted into the SIS.

As I see it right now, the types of contributions that can be made to the Proposed Shared Imaginary Space are:

1) Composition or Exposition: A player makes something up on the spot and introduces it into the PSIS.

2) Transcription: A player takes something that has been previously created and essentially copies it wholesale into the PSIS.

3) Variation: A player takes something that has been previously created and modifies it to some degree before introducing it into the PSIS.

Once the PSIS is established, the modifications it implies to the SIS can either be adopted or rejected.  But, only those players currently sitting around the table and experiencing the SIS can do so.  Will can't do it.  But, that doesn't mean he hasn't 'contributed' at all.  His contributions have been made either through George's Variations or Transcription of his materials.  George has also contributed, even if he transcribes Will's materials directly without adding anything of his own, by virtue of his proposal.

By the same token, we can rightly say that Tolkein contributes to any game based on Middle Earth.  His contribution is made by some player introducing some Transcription or Variation of his work into the Proposed Shared Imaginary Space and by having that adopted into the SIS by group consensus.

Quote from: M. J. YoungI certainly agree that Will contributes to the game, and considerably more so than the pizza guy. I do not agree that he contributes to the shared imagined space, unless all the other players receive his contribution directly from him via his mode of communication, unfiltered by the editorial decisions of any other player.

Surely this depends on the degree of editorial change, doesn't it?  i.e. In practice, how different is the edited version from what Will wrote?  For example, suppose the GM is reading aloud boxed text that Will wrote.  He sees what he thinks is a typo and changes a word.  By your criteria, does that one change suddenly change Will from being a contributor to not?  

Let's take a common case in my experience from games.  So there is some written resource -- written background for the adventure or world background or similar.  So most people have read it, but it turns out that one player has not.  So we take a minute and explain to him the short form.  So what is the source for this?  

To my mind, this is very similar to everyone having read the text.  It doesn't make sense to call this a completely different contribution.

Quote from: John KimIn practice, how different is the edited version from what Will wrote?  For example, suppose the GM is reading aloud boxed text that Will wrote.  He sees what he thinks is a typo and changes a word.  By your criteria, does that one change suddenly change Will from being a contributor to not?

No, I'm going to argue that Will is not contributing in this case even if no changes are made to what he wrote.

My argument runs thus: the fact that there is a boxed text for Gary to read to the group implies that there is text that Gary is not supposed to read to the group but rather is supposed to assimilate himself and use as the basis for contributions which he will make to the shared imagined space. Thus Will's contribution to the game is not being communicated in its entirety to the group; it is being communicated to Gary, who is selectively communicating parts of it to the group. Gary is the gatekeeper for anything Will has written; Gary decides whether and when it becomes part of the shared imagined space. Even that boxed text which Will wrote which Gary reads does not enter the shared imagined space until Gary decides that it should do so. Will has not contributed directly to the shared imagined space; he has provided ideas from which Gary will draw to make such contributions.

Quote from: John thenSo there is some written resource -- written background for the adventure or world background or similar.  So most people have read it, but it turns out that one player has not.  So we take a minute and explain to him the short form.  So what is the source for this?

To my mind, this is very similar to everyone having read the text.  It doesn't make sense to call this a completely different contribution.

I'll commend you for coming up with a difficult case; but I think that in this case which way it falls depends on information not given here.

• If we assume that this "background" is written by someone--such as Will--for use with this game, and limited in such a way that everyone who read the text would be imagining much the same thing from it actively at this moment, then the player who did not read the text is much the same as the player who missed last week's session. In last week's session the shared imagined space was updated by contributions between the players, but this player was not there and so needs to be updated on the current state of the shared imagined space so he can continue with the other players. In the same way, the player who didn't read the background material has missed that change in the shared imagined space and is being updated on what everyone else is imagining at this point.
• If we assume instead that this "background" is something greater, like Middle Earth or Glorantha, such that it is not addressing the current situation specifically and so is not being actively imagined in any meaningful sense at this moment, then it is not a contribution to the shared imagined space, but an authority providing materials (in these examples setting materials) from which participants may draw with confidence as they contribute to the shared imagined space. Thus, using Middle Earth as an example, a player could say, "From here, the best way to avoid having to pass through Moria is to take the pass at Caradras and come down into Lothlorien on the other side." At the moment he says that, those places are entered into the shared imagined space. The setting materials in the books are the source and authority for those statements, but they are not in the shared imagined space until someone places them there.[/list:u]
  I agree that there are close cases, and I'm not sure whether we really can say cleanly in every case which way it goes, but I do think there's always a difference.
  
  --M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. YoungGary is the gatekeeper for anything Will has written; Gary decides whether and when it becomes part of the shared imagined space. Even that boxed text which Will wrote which Gary reads does not enter the shared imagined space until Gary decides that it should do so. Will has not contributed directly to the shared imagined space; he has provided ideas from which Gary will draw to make such contributions.

Let's compare to another field for a moment -- let's take movies.  According to your logic here, the only one who contributes anything to the imaginary space of the film is the editor.  After all, the screenwriter, the cinematographer, the actors, the set designers -- they all only contribute raw materials.  Only the editor controls the final step of what goes into the final cut.  Any piece of the film he can potentially cut.  

I don't see the point of saying that.  Sure, you can form jargon definitions so that this is strictly true according to your definitions.  But it's missing the point.  If you want to analyze roles in making a film, it makes sense to look at what the actors have contributed.  It makes sense to look at what the screenwriter has contributed.  

I would argue that the same thing is true of RPGs.  It makes sense to look at what Will has contributed, and compare that to what the GM and players have contributed.  

Quote from: M. J. Young

Quote from: John thenSo there is some written resource -- written background for the adventure or world background or similar.  So most people have read it, but it turns out that one player has not.  So we take a minute and explain to him the short form.  So what is the source for this?

To my mind, this is very similar to everyone having read the text.  It doesn't make sense to call this a completely different contribution.

I'll commend you for coming up with a difficult case; but I think that in this case which way it falls depends on information not given here.

• If we assume that this "background" is written by someone--such as Will--for use with this game, and limited in such a way that everyone who read the text would be imagining much the same thing from it actively at this moment, then the player who did not read the text is much the same as the player who missed last week's session. In last week's session the shared imagined space was updated by contributions between the players, but this player was not there and so needs to be updated on the current state of the shared imagined space so he can continue with the other players. In the same way, the player who didn't read the background material has missed that change in the shared imagined space and is being updated on what everyone else is imagining at this point.[/list:u]

Right, but you missed my question.  What is the source?  i.e. Whose contribution is this?  My point was this -- you are insistent that only the gatekeeper actually contributes.  I feel this is an arbitrary line which doesn't make sense.  

So let's say we have players A, B, C, and D.  Now, if all four of them read the background sheet, then Will has contributed to the SIS.  Right?  They all saw his complete text.  But suppose three of them read it (A, B, and C); but D did not.  So C quickly explains it to D verbally.  Is it now C's contribution instead of Will's?  

To me, common sense is this:  If C explains it exactly as written, then it's still pretty much Will's contribution.  If C's explanation differs (by selection or distortion or whatever), then both C and Will have contributed -- with the degree depending on how much C changed.

MJ,

I (think) I understand what and why you are saying what you are saying. My assumption is that you are trying to make the term "contributes" be more valuable in discussion by giving it some specific meaning in our context (is present at the game, adds directly to SIS by means of negoitiation).

Is that right? I could see a motive for doing that (to refine the language we use to discuss gaming).

The problem is, I think it's wrong. And I think it does damage.

QuoteSome meanings from the Google dictionary
Contribute (v) : be conducive to.
Contribute (v) : provide.
Contribute (v) : To present as a gift to a charity or cause

The verb 'contributes' does not, in common language, have either the meaning or the connotations you are imparting to it. Walt is "conducive" to the game. He presents important materials as a gift to the cause of the night's entertainment. He certainly provides (or facilitates) stuff for the night's events.

If we are going to use the term 'contributes' in the sense you mean it then we need to say something like this:

"Walt does not contribute to SIS in the sense of actually being present at the game when the game is run (he does, however, contribute material that is used in the game)."

There's no problem with saying that--no one will disagree with it. It is clear. To take away the qualifiers is to add a layer of complexity or argument to the topic that will direct the listerner to go see thread 14266 on The Forge to understand what we are saying.

That isn't progress.

If we want to say that Walt doesn't play in the game in some sense then we need to say that. To say that he doesn't 'contribute' is jargonizing a real word that is really and correctly used when one says Walt does contribute--it's even correct if I say "Walt contributes a lot to the game--after all, he created the scenario, wrote up the mechanics, and made the characters[/i]!"

-Marco
[ Edit: the pizza guy thing is weak, IMO. If we were holding a charity event for some cause and a person brought pizza we might say he "contributed" as a joke (and thanks, Paul, for contributing the pizza tonight!) but in common conversation no normally functioning person would confuse the kind of contribuion that a volunteer who gives hours of his time phoning people for donations to someone who showed up with paid-for pizza (if Paul brought the pizza for free, though ... then yeah).

This is the slippery slope falacy: "If we use 'contributes' for Will, next people will be able to correctly say everyone in China contributed to the game via some form of the Butterfly Effect!"

Well, no--they won't--and if someone wants to discuss how Gygax 'contributed' to D&D or D&D 3.5ed then that's a discussion we can actually and profitably have. ]

Everyone who mentioned that we are "jargonizing" the term "contribution" is dead on.  The thing is: the concept of negotiating things into the SIS, which I believe must be an active process, is important enough to get a label.  That's why we have jargon, to label things that we feel need labels.

I think that "contribution" is not a terrible mangling of the word, so it's a good candidate for jargonizing here.  I offer again: come up with a better term that we can use to label what we're talking about here and I'd be willing to use that instead.

An example from existing jargon: I didn't understand Simulationism as I currently do until someone pointed out that it's not really about "simulating" anything, rather it's about "emulating".  And then it clicked.  We still use the jargon of Simulation because it's an important concept which is easier to manipulate with a label.

Now, to address Marco's "slippery slope" fallacy.  The problem is, the pizza guy inarguably does "contribute" or perhaps "impact" the SIS.  He's late, he's early, he has bad hair, he's incredibly attractive, whatever.  The course that the game takes will, in fact, be influenced by the pizza guy.  Of course the pizza guy will have less influence than Will's massive game bible (or whatever), but he has influence none-the-less.

So the question becomes: "Is there a difference between the contributions they are making?"  And my (provisional) answer is "no".  It's a matter of degree, not of type.  At the most basic level Will is simply providing an input into the social situation, he is not actually actively participating in that social situation.  He may be actively participating in some other social situation (say through correspondence), but in the actual sitting around the table and playing situation he is not a participant.

So, again, if you object to using the term "contribute" to label what we're talking about feel free to offer something else, and the "slippery slope fallacy" isn't actually a fallacy in this case.

Thomas

Quote from: LordSmerfEveryone who mentioned that we are "jargonizing" the term "contribution" is dead on.  The thing is: the concept of negotiating things into the SIS, which I believe must be an active process, is important enough to get a label.  That's why we have jargon, to label things that we feel need labels.

Thomas, man, I do not agree. I think we can say "contributing to SIS by way of participation during play" instead of saying "contributes." I think we can be specific about negoitating things into SIS. We have the words for that--we have the whole freaking language for that.

When we say Will does not contribute to the game (or even to the SIS) that's demonstrably wrong and it's demonstrably confusing (if you were about to argue that it's 'correct' to say that, you've proved my second point).

There's no need for this. If we feel "the need for labels" it's for some other purpose than clear communication. I'm not in love with Simulationist--but that's, at least, a made up word (yeah, someone else made it up with respect to RPG theory first--but those were the early days and even that has caused problems).

I mean, why not learn from the past? We don't need jargon for "is a player at the table who propses something that is accepted into SIS" we can just say that.

We can say that the hideous Pizza guy who trashed the game by showing up and scaring eveyone off did exactly that. We can be specific.

Taking a generally term that is correct in a number of usages and applying it in a single way is bad languaging. It's everything that is bad about jargon and nothing that is good about it.

Quote
Now, to address Marco's "slippery slope" fallacy.  The problem is, the pizza guy inarguably does "contribute" or perhaps "impact" the SIS.  He's late, he's early, he has bad hair, he's incredibly attractive, whatever.  The course that the game takes will, in fact, be influenced by the pizza guy.  Of course the pizza guy will have less influence than Will's massive game bible (or whatever), but he has influence none-the-less.

So the question becomes: "Is there a difference between the contributions they are making?"  And my (provisional) answer is "no".  It's a matter of degree, not of type.  At the most basic level Will is simply providing an input into the social situation, he is not actually actively participating in that social situation.  He may be actively participating in some other social situation (say through correspondence), but in the actual sitting around the table and playing situation he is not a participant.

Well, vast differences in scale are substantial differences (and that's what the ss-falacy refers to if you look at the 'slope' as the scaling factor). Would you be okay with a firecracker going off in your yard? Yes? A nuclear weapon? No.

Secondly to say that "there is no difference between the contributions they are making" is an interesting philosophical argument. What does it mean--that the guy who makes the adventure has the same type of impact on the game as the guy who delivers the food?

That would seem to indicate that all creators of adventures are equal to all people who deliver food (i.e. if we switch Paul and Will will the group notice a difference?)

I think it's pretty clear they will.

Why are we trying to hide from this? What does it gain us?

-Marco

Quote from: LordSmerfEveryone who mentioned that we are "jargonizing" the term "contribution" is dead on.  The thing is: the concept of negotiating things into the SIS, which I believe must be an active process, is important enough to get a label.  That's why we have jargon, to label things that we feel need labels.

I think that "contribution" is not a terrible mangling of the word, so it's a good candidate for jargonizing here.  I offer again: come up with a better term that we can use to label what we're talking about here and I'd be willing to use that instead.

Er, what about "playing" or "actively playing"?  I mean, you're looking for a term to distinguish an active participant in the game from someone who only contributes material, right?  This seems to match usage.  i.e. Everyone who is playing is involved in "negotiating things into the SIS".  No one who is not playing can do so.

Marco,

You and I clearly disagree on the value of jargon, discussing that is probably beyond the intended scope of this thread.  I would be perfectly willing to discuss the value of jargon in a thread dedicated to its purpose or by PM.  Let me know.

When I say that the pizza guy and Will both provide the same "type" of contribution, I am basically saying that there are two "types" of contribution into the SIS.  The first is active participation in negotiating things into the SIS, which I'm wanting to hijack the word "Contribute" for.  The second are all the things that bound and impact what gets negotiated, which I call "Constraint" (essay forthcoming).  I believe that the difference between these two is important, very important.

Why?  Because as game designers we can't do anything about the first one directly.  The second however is what game design is all about.  In fact, design is about impacting the "contribution" through "constraint".

Now, I must admit that I may be too close the problem, I am in the middle of a big essay on the subject and probably have a bit of trouble stepping back from it.

I am by no means saying that this is the only possible way to break down what impacts and influences ("contributes" in the broader, non-jargon sense) the SIS, but I do believe that it is an incredibly useful breakdown.  I'm hesitant to say "the most useful" breakdown because I haven't really considered all that many possibilities, but it is the most useful one I've run across.

EDIT: Crossposted with John.  I'll have to think about it, but my first impression is a gut reaction of "no!" and a rational reaction of "why not?".  So, provisionally I accept "playing" as a useful way to describe this.

Thomas

Thomas,

If you want to use "contributes" in a certain way in your essay define it at the top (and use some bold characters). That way you can save some letters and people who even skim it will know what you mean.

I'm okay with that--but that isn't "jargonizing"--that's just using a specific definition for the purposes of the paper.

When we jargonize a word we are taking a term and saying "in our discourse there is now only one way to use it." When that leaves us saying that the guy who wrote the game, made the adventure, and created the characters "contributed nothing to the play session" we gotta step back a second and see what a complete failure to make sense has gotten us in return. In this case not much.

-Marco

It looks like I've got a few things I have to tackle here; maybe I can clear it up this time.

Quote from: I'll start with what MarcoI (think) I understand what and why you are saying what you are saying. My assumption is that you are trying to make the term "contributes" be more valuable in discussion by giving it some specific meaning in our context (is present at the game, adds directly to SIS by means of negoitiation).

I have several times said that this discussion is floundering because we are not agreeing in the use of the word "contributes". I have also specified that "contributes to the shared imagined space" and "contributes to the game" are two completely different concepts.

When I say that only the players communicating with each other are contributing to the shared imagined space, I mean specifically that. No one else is putting anything into their minds other than what they say (or write or otherwise communicate) to each other. That has nothing whatsoever with whether anyone else can contribute to the game, and I've asserted that the people who write the materials are indeed contributing to the game, they just aren't contributing directly to the shared imagined space, and they can't do that.

It occurred to me after I left yesterday that there is a very significant difference between Will I who designs the world and gives it to Gary and then has no further impact on play and Will II who gets word of what happened in the game and writes new material which is delivered to the group corporately. The difference is that at the moment Will II's contribution is received by the entire group, everyone is imagining much the same thing including Will II. Will I, by contrast, has no idea what the others are actually imagining at any point during play (that is, from when play in the scenario begins to when it ends), and even if he does he has no further input into it. He is not participating in the shared imagined space, because he isn't part of it.

Quote from: Now, stepping back to what John KimLet's compare to another field for a moment -- let's take movies. According to your logic here, the only one who contributes anything to the imaginary space of the film is the editor. After all, the screenwriter, the cinematographer, the actors, the set designers -- they all only contribute raw materials. Only the editor controls the final step of what goes into the final cut. Any piece of the film he can potentially cut.

Except that a movie never actually produces a shared imagined space. It may have a progressive corporate vision--the story writer passes his vision to the scriptwriter, who changes it and passes it to the director, who attempts to get what he wants from the actors and other contributors, none of whom necessarily have the vision he has and some of whom are going to give him something different from what he wants, but overall there is no shared imagined space here. There are individual conceptions of what will be produced, and as it moves from the hands of one to the next it mutates, but it doesn't feed back to the previous contributors. Authors complain constantly that the screen versions of the books they write are completely wrong. Many excellent composers hate doing movie scores, because the music they create gets shredded in the process of putting together the film. The ultimate result of everyone's efforts is a movie, which ultimately is the final vision of whoever makes those last choices (usually the director). It does not produce a shared imagined space, and is not comparable to the RPG process.

Quote from: John thenNow, if all four of them read the background sheet, then Will has contributed to the SIS. Right? They all saw his complete text. But suppose three of them read it (A, B, and C); but D did not. So C quickly explains it to D verbally. Is it now C's contribution instead of Will's?

The problem I have with this is not really whether it's C or Will contributing to the shared imagined space at this point, but whether this genuinely represents a contribution to the shared imagined space at all. I don't know the answer to that. However, I've long had the practice in certain games to begin the session by reading one character's account of the events of the last session--journal entry, report to superior, letter home, something of that order. I do it to bring everyone back, kind of like saying, "In our last episode" and recounting where we are. No one imagines that that material is being read to the characters in the shared imagined space, or that those characters are recounting what happened to them during the last game session. That's not really happening in the shared imagined space, I think. It's happening between the players, bringing one player up to date concerning what has already happened in the shared imagined space that he missed.

Briefing a player on what he missed is not part of play.

Unlike Thomas, I am not arguing that "contributes" ought to be jargonized to mean one specific thing. I am arguing that "contributing to the shared imagined space" means one specific thing, and can only be done by people who communicate with each other about the content of that space and so share it between them.

I do agree that this is pretty much synonymous with "play"; however, "play" has the distinct disadvantage that we would have to explain frequently that it actually means "contributing to the shared imagined space" or some similar construction perhaps even more complicated than this. I'm not unhappy with "play" as long as no one else is unhappy with a definition that recognizes that this is what "play" involves.

Is that any better?

--M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. Young

Quote from: John thenNow, if all four of them read the background sheet, then Will has contributed to the SIS. Right? They all saw his complete text. But suppose three of them read it (A, B, and C); but D did not. So C quickly explains it to D verbally. Is it now C's contribution instead of Will's?

The problem I have with this is not really whether it's C or Will contributing to the shared imagined space at this point, but whether this genuinely represents a contribution to the shared imagined space at all. I don't know the answer to that.

OK, I'd like to narrow in on this key issue here.  In my understanding, the answer is relatively simple.  If everyone playing imagines roughly the same thing, then that thing is part of the Shared Imagined Space.  i.e. If everyone has read Tolkien and they agree to have Tolkienesque orcs in the world, then that background is part of the SIS.  The SIS is the intersection of what everyone at the table imagines about the gaming world.  If everyone playing thinks there are orcs, then orcs are part of the SIS.  It doesn't matter how it came about that everyone imagines it.

I gather you don't think that's true.  You have a set of criteria for whether something imagined in common is part of the SIS -- but I don't know quite what it is.  It seems to potentially depend on who invented it, when it was invented, when it was introduced, and who introduced it.  I know that verbal statements made up on-the-spot during tabletop play are undoubtedly part of the SIS in your view.  However, for all other cases, I'm not clear how you're deciding.  

Put back into the original question:  given any case of Will the Writing Guy, Doug the Dice Guy, George the Game Author, or a host of other possible characters.  How do you decide if they are contributing to the SIS?  My criteria would be this:  Does everyone who is playing imagine something which that person created or influenced?  If so, then that person (i.e. Will, Doug, George, etc.) contributed to the SIS.  What is your procedure or logic?

Quote from: John KimPut back into the original question:  given any case of Will the Writing Guy, Doug the Dice Guy...

I'm just too distracted by Doug the Dice Guy!

Seriously, this is a concept I'd really like to see in action. And I can't help but imaging how the other players would react, and interact, given that Doug had such awesome powers.

Ideally our play test should involve a mega-super-powered comicbook game, where each of the players had the opportunity to come up with maxed-out crazy powerhouses... except for Doug the Dice Guy, who would have to play the 'Jimmy Olsen' zero-power average human; yet who would also be the most powerful force in the universe.

Cool!

Erick

Quote from: John KimOK, I'd like to narrow in on this key issue here.  In my understanding, the answer is relatively simple.  If everyone playing imagines roughly the same thing, then that thing is part of the Shared Imagined Space.  i.e. If everyone has read Tolkien and they agree to have Tolkienesque orcs in the world, then that background is part of the SIS.  The SIS is the intersection of what everyone at the table imagines about the gaming world.  If everyone playing thinks there are orcs, then orcs are part of the SIS.  It doesn't matter how it came about that everyone imagines it.

I gather you don't think that's true.  You have a set of criteria for whether something imagined in common is part of the SIS -- but I don't know quite what it is.  It seems to potentially depend on who invented it, when it was invented, when it was introduced, and who introduced it.  I know that verbal statements made up on-the-spot during tabletop play are undoubtedly part of the SIS in your view.  However, for all other cases, I'm not clear how you're deciding.  

Put back into the original question:  given any case of Will the Writing Guy, Doug the Dice Guy, George the Game Author, or a host of other possible characters.  How do you decide if they are contributing to the SIS?  My criteria would be this:  Does everyone who is playing imagine something which that person created or influenced?  If so, then that person (i.e. Will, Doug, George, etc.) contributed to the SIS.  What is your procedure or logic?

I think that M.J. and I are on the same page on this one.  I'm leaning toward the idea that things aren't in the SIS unless they are actively being imagined.  We may all agree that there are Tolkein-esque orcs in the world, but that's not actually in the SIS until we are imagining it.  And we are not imagining anything until someone brings it up.  To bring something up you must be playing.

So: Will, George, the pizza guy, whoever: none of them are actually playing so none of their contributions can get into the SIS without some player being the gateway.  "And now you're attacked by orcs!" or "They're big, ugly, and smelly!"

Doug the Dice Guy is in a different situation.  In fact, I'm not sure whether he's playing or not.  I think he probably is, but I really don't know.

For the record: this discussion is helping me focus my essay on Constraint quite nicely.

EDIT: Typos and a bit of clarity.

Thomas

To say that Will contributes nothing to SIS implies, strongly, that the SIS would likely be the same if he hadn't done any work. I think it's fair to say he doesn't participate in the SIS during the game (you could say he "participated in the act of getting the game together though) but to say he contributes nothing to the shared imaginings has implications that are clearly not true (i.e. that if we read Tolkien and imagine his orks vs. Warcrafts that the books were not a contributing factor to what we imagined).

QuoteMJ wrote:
Except that a movie never actually produces a shared imagined space.

Oh, I think it does. And I'm not the only one to say this--the idea of the communal viewing experience being important to movies isn't new. Stephen King writes about how he thinks authors use a "kind of telepathy" (he's being facietious, but only somewhat) in bringing a shared vision to their readership.

When an audience watches a movie they are all imagining the same things (the action on the screen) even without a feedback system to the director and actors. As with an RPG there may be cases where two viewers disagree on what was meant or even what was done (usually off screen--but sometimes even on screen: "Was Shane dead?").

We could say "The only contributors to the movie experience are the audience members and the projectionist."

That's, IMO, in effect what we are saying: when a movie is showing and I am watching, the only human contributors to my imagined experience are the other audience members (who contribute by gasping or whatever) and the projectionist who started the show.

I think we might have a hard time convincing people this is so. But that's not important. It's not about convincing ourselves that we have made a valuable discovery--its that by doing so we must take the stance that anyone who uses the term "contributes" to the SIS (and John said "the game" originally and the same people still argued--and I think this is telling) that they are using the word wrong.

What we are doing when we make this statement and really stick to it is telling the guy who says the director and the actors that contributed something to what was imagined that he is wrong.

I simply don't think we can say that.

There is no "real" Shared Imaginary Space out there--there's no *actual* telepathy going on. Every person is imagining the same things together and the fact that they line up has to do with all the shared-known-inputs to each person's mind (for example: the picture on the screen for the movie, the numbers on the character sheets in an RPG).

Since Will contributed some of those inputs (the character sheets, for example) then he is responsible for some of the congruence between what Player A and Player B imagine (Ragnar has a high Strength Score and the system models that in various ways--both player A and Player B imagine a strong character with help from that).

That's "part of the shared space."

That's a contribution (the character sheet the player brings to the table).

It was made by Will.

Ragnar's player doesn't even have to say anything or even do anything except have the sheet visible.

(Just like the projectionist doesn't add anything to the movie experience other than starting the machine).
-Marco

Marco,

I think you may be beating a dead horse.  I have already stated (I hope clearly and explicitly) that I am willing to give up my attempts to jargonize "contribution" because "play" works just as well.  It is clear that Will contributes to play, but I am arguing that this contribution is qualitatively different from the contributions that are brought to bear during play.

I believe that M.J. is saying the same thing.  As far as I can tell no one is saying that Will does not impact (or as you say "contribute to") the SIS.  Such a proposal would be, as you say, ludicrous.  Where do you see people saying that?  I'm curious to see where this misunderstanding is coming from.

Thomas

Thomas,

I'm actually totally down with what you said (I think that for essay purposes your split is great so long as the meanings of the terms are clearly defined).

Wasn't arguin' with you.

MJ, on the other hand, said that he thinks Will does not contribute to SIS. He says this:

Quote
No one else is putting anything into their minds other than what they say (or write or otherwise communicate) to each other. That has nothing whatsoever with whether anyone else can contribute to the game, and I've asserted that the people who write the materials are indeed contributing to the game, they just aren't contributing directly to the shared imagined space, and they can't do that.

Now, MJ is a smart guy--and what he is saying is, in a sense, entirely correct: Will is not there, at the gaming table, puttin' stuff into people's heads.

I think you and MJ want to distinguish that from the person who (and I'm guessin' at your usage) constrains what actual players introduce for admission into the game-space.

Will certainly constrains people's input in that, say, if Player Amy is given a character who is an archer she is constrained from bringing in ... :: thinks :: an Adpetus magican.

So I can see calling that prior-to-game-input a constriant.

The question is: is Will contributing to the *shared* imaginary *space* of the game? MJ says no. I say "yeah, I think so."

So we have to take a step back and say "what is that shared imaginary space, and how do things get into it?"

Now--John has a great essay that goes into this and if I've understood it right, I think the idea is this: SIS is a *construct* we discuss but not an "actual thing." That is, philosophically I have no idea how much my imaginary-space actually shares with yours--but we can see there are sort of touchpoints where what we are both imagining seems to line up.

One of these is the imaginary characters--which Will has provided. Now, you can look at these as a constraint (the barbarian is constrained from being imagined as weak because of his awesome strength score) and that's not a bad way to look at things--however, if you ask if Will contributed any of these touchpoints--which are the active agents of the sharing of the SIS--then I think the answer has to be yes.

Where I would draw the line is asking if Will participated in the play of the game. I think that a strong argument can be made that he did not.

This is semantics and the question is: is the bar set higher for participation or for contribution. It's a fine line to be sure and, ultimately, one could ask "did Will share in the activity of gaming?" and someone might answer yes.

None of this is actually proveable--all we will get is stronger or weaker arguments. But I think that saying he didn't contribute to the shared imagining is, IMO, weaker than saying he did not participate in the actual *act* of the players imagining things in the sense that he was not there.

But what I strongly think is that since Shared Imaginary Space is a term for a collection of touchpoints that we use to dicuss the concept of group imagining then anyone who creates such a touchpoint can certainly claim a "contribution" to SIS.

-Marco

Quote from: MJ YoungI have also specified that "contributes to the shared imagined space" and "contributes to the game" are two completely different concepts.

Quote from: MarcoI think it's fair to say he doesn't participate in the SIS during the game... but to say he contributes nothing to the shared imaginings has implications that are clearly not true.

This sure sounds like you're saying the same thing. At this point it seems that much of the discussion is simply sematics.

I think we're all pretty close here; but I also think I've been asked to explain my position a little more clearly, so I'm going to attempt to do so.

I've got thirteen hardcover Original AD&D books here; they're probably all right here in my room, unless my kids have absconded with them. When I play, it's understood that whatever is in those books is part of the game world.

However, if I open to the index of the Monster Manual II and run down the list of creatures that appear in the three main monster books, I would bet a dollar to a dime that there are creatures there I can't quite remember, or that I would confuse with some other creature, or that I really never fully realized was here somewhere. What's an Achaierai? What about an Aleax?

If I can't even remember what these things are, they can hardly be said to be part of the shared imagined space. Yet they are indeed part of the world, and any player could presumably make reference to any of these at any time.

The books serve as an authority that define the potential setting, characters, and system of the game world. Nothing in the books really exists within the shared imagined space unless it has been mentioned. At that point it enters the shared imagined space.

Sure, there are orcs in Middle Earth; but if we're playing in Middle Earth, and no one has given them a thought (say we've been in Mirkwood and Fanghorn Forests, where spiders, Ents, Wood Elves, and possibly the occasional Goblin are our concerns (yes, I know that Goblins and Orcs are the same thing in Tolkien, but most people miss that, so we'll assume they're not)). Orcs do exist in the source material, and there's a sense in which our characters undoubtedly know that there are orcs and so do we--but if no one ever mentions them, they don't really exist within the shared imagined space.

Now, as soon as someone says, "Balin was killed by orcs in Moria," suddenly all of those items enter the shared imagined space. All of them are informed by whatever authorities we're using to define our Middle Earth. However, it was added to the shared imagined space by the person who said it, not by the books. The books were referenced as an authority to define how that statement was to be understood. If someone were later to say, "It's too bad that Balin was killed in that forest," someone else would say, "No, Moria is a mine, not a forest. I can show you in the books where it is." However, the books don't add Moria to the shared imagined space; they serve as an authority by which we define what Moria is if we in fact do add it. The same could be said for orcs. Tolkien and OAD&D orcs are short, probably five feet tall; Peter Jackson and 3E orcs seem to be taller, between six and seven feet, perhaps. Whatever orcs we're imagining are the kind that are in our shared imagined space. If someone comments on how tall they are and everyone agrees to that, then we're imagining tall orcs, even if our authority supports short orcs.

The contents of the books are not in the shared imagined space until we put them there. We have to put them there, actively, not by saying, "the contents of the books are in the shared imagined space" but by inserting individual items into the shared imagined space in play. It really doesn't matter if every player at the table and character in the game knows that there are orcs in middle earth--until someone states it as a reality within the game world, it's not being imagined, and until the details are defined it is not assumed that they are known or agreed.

The background is only as detailed as the references we make to it. If we never mention Moria or Lothlorien or Fanghorn, for purposes of the shared imagined space they don't really exist, because they're obviously irrelevant to our play--in much the same way as tapestries on the walls of imaginary castles. I know that medieval castle walls were covered with tapestries to keep the places warm; I don't know whether all my players know this. It doesn't matter whether or not there are tapestries on the walls until someone mentions it. The existence or non-existence of such tapestries is not part of the shared imagined space--even if it happens that we were all imagining bare walls until it was mentioned, we didn't share it. We might all have been wrong, and agreed that we were wrong at some later point. "You know, it hadn't occurred to me, but there must be tapestries on all these walls. Let's look behind them." Bingo; suddenly tapestries have entered the shared imagined space, as if they had always been there, even though they are contrary to what everyone had envisioned a moment before. Bingo; orcs entered the world when someone mentioned them, as if they had always been there, even though no one had given any thought to them before.

Something is only part of the shared imagined space if all the players are cognizant of it, and that happens because communications between the participants have created that awareness. Mutual familiarity with the same authority is not the same thing. Just because the monster manuals mention the Zorbo and the Zygom does not mean these are part of the shared imagined space, until someone communicates the existence of such creatures in the game.

Did that answer it?

Footnote: the telling thing about Doug the Dice Guy is that his numbers are not random nor otherwise dissociated, but evaluative. That makes him a contributor to the shared imagined space, because he is listening to what is said and tagging it with a numeric value that represents its coolness, likelihood of success, or similar entirely subjective judgment.

--M. J. Young

M.J. just said everything I wanted to, only better.

Thomas

Quote from: M. J. YoungWhat's an Achaierai? What about an Aleax?

If I can't even remember what these things are, they can hardly be said to be part of the shared imagined space. Yet they are indeed part of the world, and any player could presumably make reference to any of these at any time.

The books serve as an authority that define the potential setting, characters, and system of the game world. Nothing in the books really exists within the shared imagined space unless it has been mentioned. At that point it enters the shared imagined space.

OK, here I think I see the difference.  To me, nothing exists within the shared imagined space unless it has been imagined.  I consider this pretty obvious and intuitive.  If you didn't remember the Aleax, then you weren't imagining it and thus it isn't part of the shared imaginary space.  

Here's what I find strange.  Let's take a game with pregenerated characters, like my mystery game The Business of Murder.  According to your view, the SIS will change radically depending on whether players get their background through reading the sheets before the game vs having it verbally stated at the start of the game.  If it's only there from reading, then it isn't part of the SIS and won't be until it is explicitly verbally referenced.  

To my mind, it doesn't matter.  What's important is what the players imagine.  Following Ralph's advice, let me take an actual play example.  Take my recent James Bond 007 campaign.  Now, it was set in the early 1980's.  That makes a huge difference in terms of how people pictured everything: i.e. what people looked like in clothes and dress; the attitudes; the culture; and so forth.  But honestly, I don't know when I first verbally referred to this during the actual game.  We firmly established it in pre-game discussion and email, but it might not have been explicitly verbally stated for a while.  

By your view, it wasn't actually set in the eighties until that was explictly stated in-game.  Thus , there was a sudden dramatic shift in the "Shared Imaginary Space" when the year was first verbally mentioned.  In my view, it was set there from the start because that is how the players imagined it.  It was imagined in common.  It doesn't matter whether it was stated early in the session or read beforehand.  If everyone is thinking/imagining it, then it is part of the SIS.  

Quote from: M. J. YoungFootnote: the telling thing about Doug the Dice Guy is that his numbers are not random nor otherwise dissociated, but evaluative. That makes him a contributor to the shared imagined space, because he is listening to what is said and tagging it with a numeric value that represents its coolness, likelihood of success, or similar entirely subjective judgment.

OK, here you have another qualification -- i.e. that it has to be subjective judgement.  So, suppose Doug says a number.  How do I know whether he's contributed to the SIS or not?  I have to know how internally he came up with that number.  I might be fooled into thinking it was really a contribution to the SIS, only to find out later he just looked at the second hand of his watch for the number.  

Just as before, in my view of SIS, it doesn't matter.  If everyone imagines the same thing on the basis of what Doug said, it doesn't matter whether Doug decided based on coolness, hotness, time of day, or astrology.

Quote from: John KimBy your view, it wasn't actually set in the eighties until that was explictly stated in-game. Thus , there was a sudden dramatic shift in the "Shared Imaginary Space" when the year was first verbally mentioned. In my view, it was set there from the start because that is how the players imagined it. It was imagined in common. It doesn't matter whether it was stated early in the session or read beforehand. If everyone is thinking/imagining it, then it is part of the SIS.

I believe M.J. answers this here:

Quote from: M.J. YoungThe background is only as detailed as the references we make to it. If we never mention Moria or Lothlorien or Fanghorn, for purposes of the shared imagined space they don't really exist, because they're obviously irrelevant to our play--in much the same way as tapestries on the walls of imaginary castles. I know that medieval castle walls were covered with tapestries to keep the places warm; I don't know whether all my players know this. It doesn't matter whether or not there are tapestries on the walls until someone mentions it. The existence or non-existence of such tapestries is not part of the shared imagined space--even if it happens that we were all imagining bare walls until it was mentioned, we didn't share it. We might all have been wrong, and agreed that we were wrong at some later point. "You know, it hadn't occurred to me, but there must be tapestries on all these walls. Let's look behind them." Bingo; suddenly tapestries have entered the shared imagined space, as if they had always been there, even though they are contrary to what everyone had envisioned a moment before. Bingo; orcs entered the world when someone mentioned them, as if they had always been there, even though no one had given any thought to them before.

Of course the game is "set in the 80's".  In fact, the fact that it is the 80's is an important constraint: whenever anyone begins to describe what someone is wearing, or what a car looks like, or what music is playing in the background it is all informed by the fact that the game is set in the 80's.

Is "the game is set in the 80's" part of the SIS?  I don't think it is, I think that that idea is just too big to be a part of SIS.  "Set in the 80's" doesn't actually mean anything on its own, and it isn't important except in the ways it constrains us: Culture, Communism, whatever.

Does that clarify at all?

As to Doug the Dice guy, I think that Nathan (Paganini) may have this one right, but I'm not sure.  Doug is not actually adding anything to the SIS, he is selecting from a set of choices picked out by the actual players.  Do his choices matter to the SIS?  Are his choices influencing what people imagine?  Sure, but in the exact same way that dice do.

Thomas

I'm definitely going to thank Thomas for his help; that was what I would have said.

Quote from: John KimLet's take a game with pregenerated characters, like my mystery game The Business of Murder.  According to your view, the SIS will change radically depending on whether players get their background through reading the sheets before the game vs having it verbally stated at the start of the game.  If it's only there from reading, then it isn't part of the SIS and won't be until it is explicitly verbally referenced.

What's not clear to me about this example is the nature of those sheets. Let me distinguish two possibilities.

• Everyone receives exactly the same information sheet. It is concise, and describes the starting situation in sufficient detail that everyone knows where we begin. Presumably the referee passed these out at the start of play; or if there is no referee, it was agreed that this would be the starting point information. At that moment, this information conveyed by this authority was entered into the shared imagined space, either as a communication from the referee to the players (it doesn't matter whether it was spoken or written, the referee determined that the players needed to read this before they began play) or by mutual communication between the players. The fact that John Kim wrote this is incidental; at this moment, the players submit it into the shared imagined space, and the players accept it.
• Everyone receives individualized information concerning his character. At that point, we have entered the very foggy area in which we have to ask ourselves to what extent can there be information in the shared imagined space that has not been shared and is not being imagined at all? This is that fuzzy area of player secrets--that this one player (including the referee) "knows" something about a character or location or object or event which no one else knows. Everyone implicitly agrees that there may be such "secrets" within the shared imagined space--but do they really "exist" within that space? I'm inclined to say that they really do not. Thus the personal information about each character that appears on that player's briefing sheet is not really part of the shared imagined space. It is an authority from which the player can now draw as the game progresses, but it's not part of the shared imagined space until the player enters it into the game. So, to illustrate, Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple is a fluffy somewhat absent-minded seeming little old grandmother sort. Margaret Rutherford gets that part, and doesn't want to play a fluffy little old lady, so she ignores all that stuff and delivers a Miss Jane Marple who is aggressive, self-assured, and pushy. What is on the paper is one set of information; what is in the shared imagined space disagrees with it completely. Since of those present only Margaret Rutherford knows that what Agatha Christie wrote doesn't match what she's playing, the content of the authority is irrelevant--only what actually is delivered within the game impacts the shared imagined space.[/list:u]
  To the degree that your handouts do both of these, they are both of these. However, you, John Kim, are not submitting them to the shared imagined space. You are offering them to the players, who are deciding whether, when, and how to submit them to the shared imagined space. So for example you might tell them that they should read this aloud before play begins, and someone there decide that it would save time to print it up and send it to the players before they come to the game that night; or it could be reversed; or someone could decide that there was too much, or not enough, information in what you offerred, and change it before passing it out. You have provided an authority for what should be done; they get to decide what is done with it. Until it is communicated uniformly to the players, it's not really part of the shared imagined space.
  
  In regard to the aforementioned secret information, I'm inclined to think that these things are not really part of the shared imagined space; they are, rather, presumed causes for events that occur within it, with the expectation that the other players seeing the effects will attempt to extrapolate the causes. I've read accounts of referees who had an unstated backstory, released the clues into the shared imagined space, heard the players trying to work out what was behind it, and liked their explanation so much better than his own that he changed the secret backstory to match what they had decided. So, what's really in the shared imagined space? The secret backstory never is; the ultimately revealed story is what is in the shared imagined space. Similarly, secret information about characters on papers are not in the shared imagined space. The impact those secrets have on play are there, but if the explanation is never revealed, the secret isn't part of what is shared.
  
  As Thomas says, when someone realizes there must be tapestries on the walls, the shared imagined space doesn't "change" in the sense that it is different; it changes in the sense that it is more clearly defined. When your James Bond group agrees to the Eighties as a background, they have agreed to allow a shared recollection of what that decade was like to be an authority referenced in defining contributions to the shared imagined space. Thus if someone spots a Delorean, everyone checks their internal authority and agrees that Deloreans did exist, even if they were rare; if someone mentions President Clinton, everyone points out that he's not yet in office, and that the President is either Reagan or Bush. Neither the Delorean nor the President were part of the shared imagined space prior to being mentioned; "set in the eighties" is the authority by which we establish whether contributions are valid.
  

  Quote from: Then heOK, here you have another qualification -- i.e. that it has to be subjective judgement.

  That was stipulated in the original description of Doug--that he chose the number by reacting to the statement made by the players. I have previously said that if Doug is generating random numbers or next in sequence number streams he is an authority, not a contributor. Your objection would seem to be that if we don't know which he's doing we don't know whether he's contributing to the shared imagined space. I don't really see why that's an objection. Is there some reason why everyone involved in the game would have to actually know who else was involved in the game? If I'm in a PbEM game in which all the players are using screen names, and I don't know that my wife is on the other computer contributing to the same game under some other name, does that mean she's not contributing to my shared imagined space because I don't know it's her? That's not a good example; here's a better one. If in that game the referee is also secretly playing one of the player characters, does it matter that I think they're two different people, and they aren't? If we ask Doug how he picks the numbers and he says he's not paying any attention to what we're all doing, but just checks his watch when we ask him, then we assume he's not participating. If when we ask him he says that he listens to what the player says he does, decides how cool that would be, and gives it a numerical rating based on that coolness factor, then we know he's involved in intelligently interactively influencing the progress of the game. If he lies to us, then we think one thing when it's actually the other--but it doesn't change whether or not he is contributing to the shared imagined space, only whether or not we realize it.
  
  I see a substantial difference between Doug saying, "I really want this to work, so I'm going to give it a seventeen" and Doug saying, "Let's see--the second hand says fifty-seven, and if I get rid of twenty twice that leaves me with seventeen, so that's what I'll say." Even though it is the same number in the example, it is given for entirely different reasons, and so is a difference in kind in relation to how involved Doug is in influencing the shared imagined space. In the one case, he intends to influence it in a specific direction. In the other case, his opinion on what should happen is irrelevant and he has carefully isolated any thoughts he might have from having any impact on the game.
  
  --M. J. Young

I'm basically with M.J. on Will the Writing Guy and all this stuff on "authority" which is very much a part of what I'm talking about with "constraint" (it may even be synonymous).  That said, I don't think that we totally agree on Doug the Dice Guy, here's my take:

Quote from: M.J. YoungI see a substantial difference between Doug saying, "I really want this to work, so I'm going to give it a seventeen" and Doug saying, "Let's see--the second hand says fifty-seven, and if I get rid of twenty twice that leaves me with seventeen, so that's what I'll say." Even though it is the same number in the example, it is given for entirely different reasons, and so is a difference in kind in relation to how involved Doug is in influencing the shared imagined space. In the one case, he intends to influence it in a specific direction. In the other case, his opinion on what should happen is irrelevant and he has carefully isolated any thoughts he might have from having any impact on the game.

I don't think that I see a substantial difference between these two cases.  Yes, there is a difference, and yes these two cases result in different play, but I don't think it is due to a difference in type of interaction.  Basically, I think that either method that Doug uses to choose his numbers, he is acting in the exact same manner as dice.

I'll say what I said before: In the scenario presented (where the only thing Doug does is provide numbers for resolution) Doug never adds anything to the SIS.  He does the exact same thing that dice do, namely he makes a selection from a set of possible inputs determined by the actual players of the game.

Let's say that they're playing d20, but they don't have dice, so Doug gets drafted to pick numbers.  Doug has a definate impact on what enters the SIS, but he can only pick from a set of pre-defined choices: critical failure, failure, success, critical success.  He may not have perfect control over which one he picks, but he can never do anything other than take a proposed addition to the SIS ("I hit the orc!") and say "yes" or "no" to it.  If Doug picks a 1, indicating a critical failure, he still doesn't have any control over what that actually means within the SIS.

What I am saying here is that Doug is not actually playing the game.  There is no fundamental difference between Doug picking numbers truly at random and Doug picking numbers based on what he thinks is cool.

What I am not saying is that there is no practical difference because it seems pretty clear that there is one.  To look at it from a Gamist perspecitive: if Doug chooses numbers at random then the Step On Up is to calculate odds, if Doug chooses numbers based on what he thinks is cool then the Step On Up is to come up with stuff that Doug thinks is cool.

Further, while I don't think that there is a fundamental difference between Doug and actual dice, there is clearly a practical difference.  There is social baggage involved with Doug.  It's much, much harder to "fudge" Doug's input.  Presumably you can't just say, "Doug we want you to arbitrate die roll values," and then toss his arbitration out whenever you like.  Doug, unlike dice, is a persron with feelings.

One more time: Doug is not playing the game.  Doug is fundamentally equivalent to actual dice in that he is not adding anything to the SIS, but is instead choosing from a set of additions proposed by the players.  If all Doug does is pick a number, regardless of the criteria he uses, then Doug is not playing the RPG (he may be playing some other game, I'm not sure).  If Doug is able to suggest possible outcomes for selection, rather than simply choosing from a list of outcomes defined for him by some other source, then Doug is playing the RPG.

EDIT: After further thought I have come to the conclusion that while Authority and Constraint are closely related, they are distinctly different things.  Just so you know...

Thomas

I think everyone is pretty much in agreement here the only thing being bandied about is exact definitions.  To make it simple can we all agree that Will is contributing to the game but he is not a player in the game?  (by player I include the GM)  His contributions come either before or after the game takes place and are not part of the in game negotiations(though they certainly influence them).

Quote from: LordSmerfI don't think that I see a substantial difference between these two cases.  Yes, there is a difference, and yes these two cases result in different play, but I don't think it is due to a difference in type of interaction.  Basically, I think that either method that Doug uses to choose his numbers, he is acting in the exact same manner as dice.

I don't think it's that important to resolve this hypothetical at least until Erick writes the game that does this. However, let me see if I can explain why I think what I think on this point, and we'll leave it at that.

Let's remove Doug from the equation entirely. Now we have Paul Player telling Gary GM what he wants to do. In one game, Gary GM rolls the dice, and then interprets the dice according to the game mechanics to provide authority for what he's about to say. In the other game, Gary listens to what Paul says and decides, entirely on whether he likes it or not, whether to let that happen. That's the difference between a fortune and a drama mechanic.

Now we're going to get rid of the dice but we're also going to get rid of the referee fiat, and both games are going to rely on Doug the Dice Guy. In the first game, Doug replaces the dice by giving random numbers with no relation to the statements made in play. However, in the other game, Doug takes over the position of interpreter of coolness, as it were--some of the referee credibility has now been apportioned to him, because he gets to say how "good" that last move was based entirely on whether he wants it to succeed or not.

The Doug who picks numbers randomly or by some method unrelated to the shared imagined space serves as an authority based upon which credible statements are made. The Doug who picks numbers in response to statements made contributes to the shared imagined space as a means of influencing the shared imagined space (that is, he wants to see things succeed or fail) via his credibility.

Let me approach it a slightly different way.

In this Universalis-like game, and each player is dealt fifteen cards. Each card has a value for "making things happen". Whenever anyone contributes something to the shared imagined space that anyone doesn't like, they can challenge it by playing a card from their hand--one card only, whatever card they want. The person who made the statement can also play one card to defend the statement. Everyone must then play a card either for the statement or for the challenge, whatever card they want. Whichever side has the greatest value sum of cards played for it, that's what happens. However, no one can replace their cards until all the cards have been played, so spending high cards means you won't have them later--but the deal is random, so you might have more high cards than everyone else, or they might have more than you. In this case, the resolution mechanic itself is based on apportioning credibility not in the player but in the statement made: players endorse or oppose statements directly, indicating the degree to which they want that statement to be part of the shared imagined space. The cards in their hands represent the amount of credibility they're authorized to weild this hand, and each time they play to a contested statement they are exercising that amount of credibility in support of their choice.

We'll change it now. Only Doug and Gary have any cards; they each have fifteen of them, and can replace them all when the last one is played. Whenever a statement is made the outcome of which is challenged, Doug has to play a card indicating the degree to which he wants it to happen, and Gary has to play a card indicating the degree to which he wants to block it. Once again, their respective credibility is measured by the cards. Doug plays "Ten says it happens"; Gary plays "Three says it doesn't." That means Doug wins, and it happens--it also means that Doug has exercised ten points of his credibility to make it happen.

We'll change it once more. Gary doesn't have any cards. Instead, he has charts and tables that tell him what card Doug has to play at minimum to make any particular thing happen in the game world. Doug does not have access to these charts and tables. He hears something, he says, "I want that to happen, and I'm willing to play this eight to make it happen." Gary looks at the charts and announces whether or not it happens based on that. This is the same exercise of credibility on Doug's part, as measured in the cards.

Now if we take the cards away, Doug is still exercising credibility in declaring the value he gives to a contribution to the shared imagined space. What's lacking is any limitation on the variation in values Doug can give--other than that the game would get boring fast, he can rate everything ten, or everything two. Whether he does that or not, it's still the case that he is contributing to the shared imagined space in exactly the same way as the referee who decides by fiat whether something works or not, by exercising his own credibility to evaluate the likelihood of success.

So it's an exercise of credibility, not authority, on Doug's part, and that means he is contributing to the shared imagined space.

I'm splitting hairs, sure--but it is painted intentionally to be a very close hypothetical case, so it calls for hair splitting. If anyone is not convinced, as I say it doesn't much matter, at least until we see the game that does this. (Go, Erick!)

In response to Caldis, I can agree that Will contributes to the game, but not to the shared imagined space unless he has a feedback loop by which he receives the current state of the shared imagined space and makes an open statement to the group by which he changes it. Does that fit your compromise?

--M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. YoungI'm splitting hairs, sure--but it is painted intentionally to be a very close hypothetical case, so it calls for hair splitting. If anyone is not convinced, as I say it doesn't much matter, at least until we see the game that does this. (Go, Erick!)

In response to Caldis, I can agree that Will contributes to the game, but not to the shared imagined space unless he has a feedback loop by which he receives the current state of the shared imagined space and makes an open statement to the group by which he changes it.

Well, I can see some of the criteria that you're using to make up a "Shared Imaginary Space", but I can't see the point of all the splitting.  Anyhow, I'm with Erick.  I intend to try out having a Dice Guy position and see how it goes.  

I'm a bit mystified at the convoluted logic to determine what is or is not in SIS.  But anyhow, I'll be away offline for a week and a half.  If you want to hash it out a little more, that's fine, but I'm done with the thread.