Where's the water?

[Michael S. Miller]

So I’m pushing the snowblower and thinking about RPGs. It occurs to me that there are two distinct parts of the gaming experience: the shared imaginative space and the support structure that creates & maintains that space. Roughly corresponding to IC and OOC. In Ron’s swimming pool analogy in Sex & Sorcery, he refers to the shared imaginative space as the water in the pool. I think this is a useful distinction to make. The support structure can incorporate portions of all five Elements, and so can the water, depending on the game, the group, etc. With this in mind, it seems to me that the System Doesn't Matter folks aren't inveigning against what we call System exactly (they often have their favorites), but against the support structure. It's a sort "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" kind of philosophy. Or I could be way off-base here. Theory ain't my strong suite--I'm an application kind of guy.

So, where does the water fit in The whole model - this is it? Does it belong there at all, or is The Whole Model strictly a model of the support structure?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I daresay that if the water is anywhere it is at the Exploration box since the water is an analogy for the shared imagined space and part of what's Eplored is the shared imagined space.

[John Kim]

  With this in mind, it seems to me that the System Doesn't Matter folks aren't inveigning against what we call System exactly (they often have their favorites), but against the support structure. It's a sort "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" kind of philosophy. Or I could be way off-base here.  

Hmm.  I can't speak for System-Doesn't-Matter folks and I can't say for certain about GNS.  However, your comments about man-behind-the-curtain and swimming-pool do sound a lot like the narrative paradigms as described in my essay, http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/paradigms.html">Story and Narrative Paradigm in RPGs.  My diagrams there look a lot like the stuff around the swimming pool of what I call "Shared Play".  There I suggest that an important difference between perceptions depends on whether the players perceive the "story" is just the swimming pool or whether it includes the outside.