Setting and the SIS

[Marco]

The bolded bit is a good point. I still think that the underlying foundation of SIS is being treated as a real thing when, despite the interaction bit, it isn't. In my example, I described and interaction that led to a shared imagining of material based on knowledge that was *not* in the SIS (i.e. that France exists and that exotic cheeses come from there).

No interaction is going to nail down exactly what is going on in people's heads. And very few interactions are going to be explicit about what they "introduce" into people's imaginary space (a hit in D&D establishes a strike and damage but it looks different to everyone who imagines it and while we can say that only the strike and damage was "introduced" I think that rapidly becomes a very limited view of the experience the real people in real play are undergoing).

The appeal to transcript is something I understand (we look at an IRC game and construct a model of SIS based on what's there, in type)--however, functionally, this is not a suitable basis for all analysis.

We can ask what facts were nailed down by interaction amongst the participants--but, ultimately, what's important, IMO, is what I imagine and what you imagine--and unless there's clarification or a clash, we may never know how similar those really are.

That's why I suggest looking at what is established as expectations rather than what is "put into SIS." I think that the important thing (what is imagined) is often determined far more heavily by material that is not entered into the game by RPing interactions than what is (i.e. if I am playing WoD then I come with a massive raft of expectations that someone may or may not consider "in SIS" depending on how they view the content of the interactions).

Edited to add: My conclusion is that if we can look at my example and say "France is not in the Shared Imaginary Space" even though, upon tests, all the players imagined Frace (by name) and, perhaps, acted on that imagination in a profitable manner then what does that buy us?

How do we profit from saying France wasn't in the SIS (other than having a term which, literally, does not mean 'shared imaginary space' in a manner most people would expect it to).

We can look at assumption clashes where explicitness was a problem and decide where greater literalism is necessary, sure. But there are numerous examples of GMs or Players being explicit (fairly) and everyone still imagining different things. As such, I think that SIS needs to remain a theoritcal concept that should be treated that way--and not as a distillation of "facts" from a transcript that (in most cases) doesn't even literally exist.

This isn't meant as a slam or a rant. I think asking how do we interact with each other when we're all imagining things that may not be identical is a very important question--but limiting the discussion to established facts in in the game-space is, IMO, arbitrary and, IME, missing a big piece of the puzzle--such a big piece that the puzzle itself doesn't make sense without the other pieces (data which sets expectations that has not been formally introduced).

-Marco

[Eric Provost]

Now, does it matter whether a fact is "in the SIS" for the purposes of this analysis? It matters whether a fact is explicitly agreed upon or not. It matters whether references have been given authority through the social contract. And it matters for play what kinds of assumptions players make, even when they are not explicitly validated yet.

I had to read your whole post nearly a half dozen times to really understand what you were saying, but I finally got it.  That bit quoted nails it down nicely for me.  This is totally what I was trying to wrap my brain around when I started this thread.  Thanks.

So, lemmie see if I can nail it all down in my own words for you all to agree or disagree with.

When we agree upon any form of broad outline for a setting in any detail, from "the modern world" to "a feudal Russian steampunk island" to "Let's use this book!", we're setting up a number of assumptions with each other.  These assumptions give us each guidelines for what's probably ok to make explicit through play.  At the time that a player presents an element of setting to be introduced into play system guides our negotiation in validating or denying that element.  The validation or denial of an element of setting cannot be said to be absolute.  Meaning; any bit of setting may potentially be renegotiated later, depending on system and social contract.

That seems to cover the whole of how elements of setting are introduced.  Any apparent holes or inconsistancies there?  'Cuz if I've got this nailed down, then there are other questions that I'm ready to ask.  :)

Marco,

I think I still disagree with you on the nature of the SIS, but that's ok.  As I discovered from reading Christian's post, the SIS was really not consequential to what I was trying to figure out.  If you think it's useful and interesting then maybe we can continue to talk about the SIS on another thread.  You can probably expect slow posts from me if you do, as I was under the mistaken impression that everybody (including myself) was in agreement on what the SIS is.  Heh, or maybe there are some threads about the SIS that I missed that I should read.  

Anyway, thanks.

-Eric

[xenopulse]

Eric,

Sorry for writing so convolutedly that you needed to work hard to understand what I was saying :)  But yeah, that's what I meant.

[Eric Provost]

*L*  Totally not your fault.  Suddenly the conversation took a turn I was neither expecting nor prepared for.  But I realized that you were totally right, so all is kewl.  

But I'm dissapointed that you didn't further comment on my last attempt to nail it down.  Or did you when you said that that's what you meant?  

Cuz more thoughts are coming....

-Eric

[Callan S.]

Nope, I don't think that casually accepting a text means that all the elements in the text have entered play.  We may agree that we're going to use the FR setting book.  It may be part of our agreement that, once we've accepted that book that it cannot be contradicted.  We've given permission to each other to bring elements of setting from the text into play, but haven't yet actually brought all the elements from that text into play.

I'm not 100% sure that just being 'used' enters an element of setting into the SIS.  In your example, where the player declares the PC headed for Westgate, it seems that all the player has done is declare their intention to incorporate the city into the SIS, without having actually done so yet.

That's where I was going with this. Imagine if that player uses west gate again. Then again, then a hundred times more, in much the same way. Stuff isn't 'in play' in a binary yes/no way, instead its in game in how much its used in game.

[Eric Provost]

Well, I thought I had plenty more questions to bring up, but having been involuntarily seperated from the keyboard for a few hours those questions seem to have evaporated.  Or, perhaps, given time to consider, I just found questions for the answers I had.  I intend to go back to work on FH8, applying what I've learned here in the past couple of days.  If that dosen't bring up more questions for me, then I've almost certainly got my head around creating setting.

Thanks to everyone.

-Eric

[Mike Holmes]

Oh, I gotta jump in here, even if I'm late to the party.

Marco, saying "SIS doesn't exist" is as confusing as what you're trying to clear up with that statement. As an abstract concept it exists just as well as any other. It is misunderstood, true, but saying that it doesn't exist, and then discussing it - well, that's just not really helpful.

It's probably more accurate to say that as a construct it's not helping in this discussion. Which is what you intimate, but don't say.

Indeed, what everyone is grasping is that there's an extent to which people assume that something exists in the setting being used that's important to how they conduct their ongoing play. Does everyone agree that Westgate exists? Well, maybe not. But in the example where the player states that they're going to Westgate, this establishes certain things that will affect player's play. First, everyone will probably agree at this point that the character in question at least believes that such a city exists. Which implies other things as well, like either the city does exist, or the character is crazy, or at least misinformed.

Yes, you can say that an entire text, unread, is in play, and players can agree. Players will respond accordingly. They might read the text, or guess what's in it, or ask before making decisions.

Players must extrapolate somewhat. The idea of "entering into SIS" gives a picture that, as somebody alreay debunked, that the only information being operated on is that which has been explicity registered somehow. In fact, given the vagaries of communication, absolutely nothing can be said to absolutely fit this bill. To some extent, all communication has to do with assumption. Right down to assuming, for instance, that a word used by the speaker has the same meaning for him that you assign to it. Practically, problems don't start occuring until a much higher level of complexity comes in however (though the homonym problem is a fun one that comes up regularly).

To worry about the practical problems, there are some really grey areas that most forms of declaration do set up. Universalis was fun to design, because we came across all sorts of these things. The one that comes up most often is, in fact, related to the example. Let's say that I narrate a character saying, "The city of Westgate exists." Well, does it then exist in any practical way? Or is the narration simply that someone spoke the words? They could be lying, after all, or incorrect, or insane, or any of a number of things.

It's impossibly complicated to handle on a case by case basis. You have only two options that I'm aware of. The first is the standard used by most games, and it's to limit what the effect of a declaration is in as clear a way as possible. For example, you don't pay at all for character narration, and everything they say is subject to change possibly. Instead you only pay for "facts" about, say, geography which are then entered on a map which is sacrosanct. That sort of limit.

This has a problem, however, in that players will try to influence things by having characters narrate their characters saying things that sound factual such that to ignore their narrations will be tantamount to creating a fact that the character is insane or somesuch (actually, in play I don't think this is really a problem, but the unexploited opening can seem uncomfortable). So the second solution is what we did with Universalis. Basically what must be paid for is itself negotiated during the course of play. That is, basically, you pay for what you feel you should pay for. And then if other players disagree that you've paid too much or too little, they then use their currency to challenge your creations. What happens is that through the course of play, a standard emerges from the players that's acceptable to everyone.

It's sorta like the concept of jurisprudence, where the rule about what's acceptable evolves over time by cases being tried.

Here's another important thing to consider, however. How do you create adherence to the creations of the other players. This is not to say that players will intentionally ignore the play of others, but accidents happen. Player A creates a Mountain that's said to be 15000 Meters tall, and the tallest mountain in the land. Then Player B creates a 16000 Meter tall mountain. Player A points out that his mountain is supposed to be tallest, but that Player B's is in violation of this fact. Player B points out that his mountain is actually in the next "land" over (dunlikus), and not in this land (anvilania). Player A says that when he established the fact, he meant continent when he said land, not country.

Which player gets their way? There are a number of ways to adjudicate this sort of situation, actually, but you have to have a method for doing so.

Mike

[contracycle]

Hi Technocrat,

there is a device in computer games that I have wondered about in terms of generating bits of setting on the fly.  Some objects are designed to spawn gobbets of bits when say a critter is killed, or bits of debris when an object is destroyed.  So these are objects that exist purely for the creation of other objects in response to player activated triggers.

Conceivably a similar sort of device, constructed by system, might be usable in RPG.  A system which might be able to govern, for example, the generation of an NPC from an order or group or similar, or a building from the wealth of a town and its architectural technology.

The point here is to eastablish a relationship in which [this thing] can be used to generate [these kinds of things].  By making it a sort of point-buy or random generation system you prevent it from being specifically and precisely what the player wants, but also allow the player to make realisable requests to the setting.

[contracycle]

Hi Technocrat,

there is a device in computer games that I have wondered about in terms of generating bits of setting on the fly.  Some objects are designed to spawn gobbets of bits when say a critter is killed, or bits of debris when an object is destroyed.  So these are objects that exist purely for the creation of other objects in response to player activated triggers.

Conceivably a similar sort of device, constructed by system, might be usable in RPG.  A system which might be able to govern, for example, the generation of an NPC from an order or group or similar, or a building from the wealth of a town and its architectural technology.

The point here is to eastablish a relationship in which [this thing] can be used to generate [these kinds of things].  By making it a sort of point-buy or random generation system you prevent it from being specifically and precisely what the player wants, but also allow the player to make realisable requests to the setting.