Complications Instead of Failure

[Jason Lee]

I just wanted to step in and briefly acknowledge this post.  I'm not actually conflating realism with Sim, but I'm using short hand that probably makes it seem like I am.  There are several different definitions of Sim floating around.  The "exploration squared" family of definitions (the agenda described in The Right to Dream essay) I call the causality/exploration/fidelity/verisimilitude/etc definition both for historical reasons and because I hate seeing exchanges like:  "It's not about causality, it's about versimilitude"  "No, no. It's about exploration, except more so" and so on... when it's all the same damn thing.  You can see two more in M.J.'s discovery/learning definition and Jay's bricolage definition.  So my hands-off attitude towards Sim is because I have no way of knowing what most people say when they mean Sim, and have yet to see a definition that isn't a core action of all roleplaying. 

*I* consider genre emulation to be Nar, because if you are really emulating the genre then the character archetypes and themes are being used.  Without expressing those elements you aren't playing in the genre, you are dressing up whatever genre (or lack thereof) you are playing in with the trappings of another genre. ...but that is not a commonly held view. 

Anyway, we know Sim isn't the topic of this thread, so...

*****

Given that I see we are talking about bricolage...

I don't see a conflict between concessions and bricolage either, but I'm willing to accept that's because I probably don't get what exactly is meant by bricolage.  I don't see anything unique in bricolage from roleplaying in general, and I don't think pure bricolage is possible.  Someone has to be introducing new elements (engineering) or all you'll get is unguided group meditation (or less harshly, Walt's Zilchplay concept).  I don't see why this specific method of introducing new elements impedes such play, when other methods (which must be happening if we are roleplaying) do not?

[Jason Lee]

Heh.  Forgot the quote.  I was replying to Max.

[ewilen]

Jay, let me suggest something that works a little better for me: under Sim, no player can completely specify the entailments of his own decision. (This becomes a tautology if we see entailments as unforeseen or unintentional consequences.)

Thus, while I have the ability (within the limits of credibility-distribution) to say that I dodge the hurled flower pot and it shatters against the stone wall--and no one can change that--the implied fact that there are "broken shards lying on the floor" remains available for anyone else to use.

Nevertheless where I have trouble with the concept isn't the ability of others to specify and use (unforeseen) entailments of my decisions, but the limitations on their ability. It's probably a topic for another thread, though.