Dethroning the SIS

[contracycle]

I still think SIS is a useful concept to discuss. I also think that discussing how different players always have slightly different interpretations of the SIS has some value. First, it supports the role of a GM as a player with more SIS authority than other players (someone's interpretation is more "right" than others). Second, it suggests that a game designer should look for ways through System to reduce these kinds of interpretation problems.

Oh yes, I'm a great advocate of physical props precisely because they enforce a coherent IS.  I would like to see more games that used something board-like to communicate significant aspects of the SIS (such as colour) to a greater extent than RPG does now.

But I don;t think the SIS is purely notional, not by a long way, even if agree it is LIKELY to have minor differences.  Just over the weekend I played a word game which was, umm, rather like jeopardy meets pictionary.  You had to communicate a word (mostly nounds) without using it/them.  Now, the point is that it is possible to convey to another person a thought without even being explicit about that thought is possible, based on a commonnality of external referrants and, crucially, the fact that we are able to imagine another persons mental process.

We are all mind-readers; we have an amazing ability to construct a model of what goes on in the heads of others.  The SIS in RPG, and in books, is a subset of a much more general phenomenon which is our ability, by necessity, to be able to predict what is going on on in anothers mind.