Wait, what Matters again?
Or
The Extent of Sys
Or
"If you have a D&D game without orc-killing, is it Drift?"
Or
"No complete RPG will ever be made."

Jargon Alert: If you are not familiar with these terms as they are used in Forge discourse, go and look them up before reading this:
1) The lumpley Principle (I call it lP sometimes), which I wield like a fucking club all over this post.
2) Shared Imagined Space (which is my favoritest term ever)
3) Exploration
4) Exploration, components of (Situation, Setting, Color, blah, blah)
5) Credibility
6) Drift

Curse Alert: For some reason, I am particularly vulgar in this essay.

System does Matter.

What?

What matters?

Good question.

What the hell is this "System" anyway?

Well, for a lot of people, this is like art and porn -- they know it when they see it. This is not a satisfactory definition to me and, I venture, should not be a satisfactory definition for anyone who gives a damn about discussing the theory of RPGs which is probably everyone reading this post since the god-damn forum is called "RPG Theory." I mean fuck, people. If you're not interested in RPG theory I can't exactly hold your fucking hand through this thing, can I? Just go read your pansy "Actual Play" or suck it up, stay here with the theory wonks, and quitcherbitchin.

That intro was actually a little misleading -- I'm going to take my definition from the lumpley Principle (the only piece of role-playing theory so low-budget it can only afford one capital letter), so I already have a definition in hand. But what I'm going to do is take a look at that and go "holy fuck, that's a hell of a lot bigger than I thought. Like, fuck, man! I gotta design all that shit?" Or something. Basically, what I am saying here is "the System" covers a huge range of stuff, only a small subset of which is ever talked about or even acknowledged by game texts.

So, okay. Let's look at the l.P.
"The System is the means by which players negotiate the contents of their shared imagined space."

Right.

So what is it? What's in there? To find this, I'm going to "run the statement backwards" and say that "The means by which the players negotiate the contents of the shared imagined space is the System." I realize that this is a different statement. Call it the "lumpley Principle adjunct" or the "Little Timmy Principle" or, perhaps, the "'kiss my ass, you 'systemless rpg' players' principle."

Well, let's start with the obvious thing: Mechanics.

What are mechanics? Mechanics are things which say "If your roll of 17d7 is greater than or equal to the target number correlated from charts 2.5 to 6.4.1 inclusive, your character succeeds." Or, "The character with the higher Warfare will, all things being equal, win any strategic or tactical situation." Or, "when Virgo is ascendant, the leftmost player takes on the role of High Priestess, which means that she speaks for the Mother in all things, particularly to combat with axes, maces, and tangerines." Essentially, mechanics are anything which resolves situations in the RPG through deliberate, particular means, often mathematical. There's a hell of a lot of analysis of mechanics out there. To some people, actually a lot of people, mechanics is all there is to system. System and mechanics are the same thing. This people are poorly informed assholes, fuckwits, and malcontents, not worthy to lick the dirt out of my toenails. Or perhaps we just have different definitions of system. Either/or.

Are mechanics a part of system? Well, duh. Are they the whole shebang? Not even fucking close.

How about setting? A lot of gamers (including me) have this whole hang-up about setting/system differences. A lot of people say that an RPG text is comprised of setting and system. "So they're totally different, right?" asks Little Timmy.

Well, Little Timmy ("Don't call my little I am twenty-three") let's look at the lumpley Principle. Hrm... Can setting effect the contents of the shared imagined space? Fuck yes! Setting is the background of the shared imagined space. In fact, I would say that, given the definition of system from the lP, setting is often a greater component of system than mechanics. I mean, which has more weight on the actual play of the game "We are using the D&D mechanics" or "We are playing in the Forgotten Realms?" Yeah. Hard question, ain't it?

So Setting goes in the box. Wait, does this mean that all setting-less game texts are fundamentally incomplete with regards to system. Yes. Fucking right. Precisely so, Little Timmy. Now take your medicine and get out of my face.

Okay, how about situation? Marco talked about this a little bit with me recently, which is what set me off on this whole thing but, essentially, does the basic situation of the game effect the shared imagined space? Or, as he (roughly), put it, "is it still D&D if you aren't killing orcs?" I used to be a big opponent of the idea that sitch could be a part of system or, rather, I would talk about playing D&D *without drift* (by which I meant Mechanical Drift).

I was a fucking bonehead. *I'm* not even fit to lick to dirt out of my own toenails. Look, can situation be used, by a player, to make a statement about the shared imagined space? Yes. Of course. If it can't, well, I don't know what it is. It's like the situation has nothing to do with what's going on in the game? Whatever. It doesn't happen.

Okay, let's stop it with this piece-by-piece shit and just eat the whole pie like the fucking fat pigs we are: What isn't System? What, in the entire act of role-playing, is not a part of System, as it is defined by my god and saviour, Vincent "lumpley" Baker (whose principle I'm sure you are sick of hearing of, at this point)?

Out of game relationships (players sleeping with each other, or some such) -- System
Who ordered pizza? -- most likely system. I mean, you don't want to kill the guy who ordered the pizza in the first scene. That's just low.
The emotional state of all the players? -- System, definitely. More important to System than mechanics, more'n likely.
That "Lucky twenty-sider" and the rituals that surround it? -- System, I think. This is probably the furthest borderline case I can find.

I cannot imagine a single aspect of the act of role-playing that is not, in some regard, a part of System. I can't even conceive of the possibility of their being such an element. Please offer suggestions, if you can.

So, okay, what does that mean to designers?

Well, it is pretty fucking obvious that no game text can, will, or should present a totally complete system -- that is a game without players. However, a lot of chunks of system (The GM-player relationship, say, or the little social rules that game groups carry with them) are carried from game to game totally unthinkingly, and that, I think, needs to change. Essentially, for design, this means "look, by offering a 'role-playing system' you are, in fact, offering an incomplete item which will be interfaced with by the role-playing group to create a whole system, which will in turn be used to manipulate the particulars of their shared imagined space."

So, the question that I have is: What does it mean to include a certain system in a game text, in terms of effect on Actual Play? What does it mean to leave it out?

yrs--
--Ben

P.S. The first one who gets the "23 years old" reference gets a prize. PM me or stick in a P.S. And, yes, Google is cheating.

P.P.S. Tip o' the hat to Mike Mearls for the "no complete RPG" bit.

Erm, yes and no.

Its true to say that I cannot create a complete system in the sense you appear to describe. The actual physical game that actually happens is largely beyond my control.

But this is a restriction that applies to many things and is IMO implicit in the creation of any device for use by anyone other than the designer. IMO this is Not An Issue; it was resolved by the identifiication that textual rules are only contributory elements to the social contract, which is the real mechanism governing the human interactions.

But being contributary elements, they do serve to inform the negotiation of that social contract and do bring the designer into the conversation at the table, as it were. That is the purpose of system. By analogy, I cannot perhaps construct a system that produces faultless justice; but I can propose a system of trial by jury if I think that this prior discussion of local social contract would be useful to the pursuit of justice.

System matters in that respect. System is an overt implementation of social contract.

Now I have previously proposed that in essence, among players suitably familiar with the form and process of RPG, no real 'RPG product' purchase is necessary at all. They could just pick up a book, and refer to that book as if it were the RPG world. With any of a number of generic or favoured system, they could have some sort of game.

So in that sense one might indeed say system is not very necessary at all. But we do think system is necessary - and I believe we think this becuase it frames our interactions with the SIS. We resolve conflicts, and thus determine what enters the SIS, for example. And that is why IMO particular system matters even when system in abstract falls away into the nebulous social contract. Any actual implementation of a particular system gives instructions to players: you do this after that after the other for such a goal. Actual human behaviour - sure pretty unimportant, but still actual - is being governed to an extent by the designer and the design, exactly as it might be in a beauracracy or engineering system.

I just want to point out one of those aspects of the lP that seems obvious, but that will be news to a lot of traditional-style RPG designers. Yeah, "mechanics" and "system" are not synonyms here. Mechanics may be a big part of system, but they're not the *entirity* of system.

Turn that around, though, and think about this: not all rules / mechanics are part of the system. A lot of times, especially in home-brew games, you'll see mechanics tacked on that, maybe, the designer liked in some other game, but didn't really understand the point of - with the net effect that the mechanic actually does nothing at all in terms of System. It's just kind of *there,* fogging up the works, but when you really look at it, it doesn't go anywhere.

But, to answer your question, what you're doing when you write a system is informing the players about your vision of play. What you leave out, they will be forced to make up on their own. If their personalities are incompatible with making up that particular stuff, then they will want to play a game.

A lot of people don't want to play freeform... but they will play "The Window," which is functionally equivalent to Freeform, AFAIAC.

Ben,

If setting, situation, and mechanics are the same thing in terms of system (and I'm not arguing they aren't--it's a fine way to look at it) then making up a new town is the same thing as adding critical hits to the damage system. You can argue that one's more effort than the other but the harder one is probably the town if it's detailed.

That would make drift as related to the utility of a game in terms of coherence very shaky since in practice one must make characters and situationa and setting in order to play (traditionally) anyway.

-Marco

Out of game relationships (players sleeping with each other, or some such) -- System
Who ordered pizza? -- most likely system. I mean, you don't want to kill the guy who ordered the pizza in the first scene. That's just low.
The emotional state of all the players? -- System, definitely. More important to System than mechanics, more'n likely.
That "Lucky twenty-sider" and the rituals that surround it? -- System, I think. This is probably the furthest borderline case I can find.

Marco wrote: If setting, situation, and mechanics are the same thing in terms of system (and I'm not arguing they aren't--it's a fine way to look at it) then making up a new town is the same thing as adding critical hits to the damage system. You can argue that one's more effort than the other but the harder one is probably the town if it's detailed.

That would make drift as related to the utility of a game in terms of coherence very shaky since in practice one must make characters and situationa and setting in order to play (traditionally) anyway.

Ben, can I introduce something? I think it may be helpful.

There are three things your System has to coordinate. ("System" in the full implications of the lumpy piddle sense: the on-the-fly fully-negotiated mercurial real-people's-moods-and-habits process that you're using to negotiate what happens.)

It has to coordinate:
A) the wholly imaginary things and events in the "game world";
B) real-world abstractions and representations of those things and events: maps, numbers, dice, "hit points," etc.
C) the interactions of the actual human beings.

For instance, a rule like "whoever rolls higher on the attack roll inflicts damage on the defender" operates only on B and C: it expects the human beings to interact to manipulate some "attack roll" and "hit points" at the representation level. Add to the rule "... and describe the change in the fighters' circumstances" and you bring in A: now it expects the human beings to make changes to the imaginary stuff, not just the abstractions. Or add to the rule "... but first give the fighters bonuses to their attack rolls depending on their circumstances" brings A in too, in a slightly different way. The former: changes to A (the fictional circumstances) depend on what happens with B (the representations). The latter: what happens with B changes depending on details of A. Both together: A informs B, B informs A. In all cases: ...according to the direct and active attention of C, the players.

You can imagine rules where A's informing of B is left to the subjective interpretation of C ("... but first the GM gives the fighters whatever bonuses seem called for"). You can imagine rules where A's informing of B is cut and dried ("... and any fighter whose lover is watching the fight gets +3 to the attack roll"). You can imagine rules where, instead, B informs B ("... and the fighter with the higher number written next to 'Fighting' gets +3 to the attack roll").

You can imagine rules that coordinate only A and C ("only Bob is allowed to introduce NPCs," "give Bob's character something to do so he doesn't go play video games") or act only at C ("go along with Bob, he's had a rough day") as well. Lots of play happens like this. Freeform play is easy to understand in this light.

So: now we ought to be able to talk about the real differences between 1) creating a town, 2) the town itself, 3) getting your group's assent to the town, 4) creating a critical hits table, 5) the critical hits table itself, and 6) getting your group's assent to the table, plus 7) proposing a change to the in-game Sitch (like "I hit him"), 8) the change itself, and 9) getting your group's assent to it.

We ought to be able to look critically at a particular set of rules' coordination of the three levels. Are there holes? Contradictions? Unsupported assertions? Wrong guesses? Backfires? According to the rules, who gets to say what about what? and what are the group's interests when they do so?

And then we ought to be able to look critically at the rules in actual play. Are they easy to follow? (Did we even follow them?) Are they fun, satisfying, challenging, surprising? How do they flex under pressure from various social dynamics? How do they divert or transform various social dynamics? As it actually happened, who got to say what about what? and did it serve the group's interests when they did so? and was it what the game text promised?

(Marco, John, there's a difference between Drift and by-the-rules customization. Establishing a definition of Humanity in Sorcerer, for instance, or creating characters for most games, or choosing a Setting for the Pool, is customization, not Drift. The vast majority of making towns, establishing situations, not killing orcs, that kind of stuff, similarly. What's Drift and what's customization will vary tremendously from ruleset to ruleset. It seems so basic to me that I wonder why it's even a question.)

-Vincent

Hi Ben,

I with you all the way except "System defines out of game situations"... Try, Social Contract defines everything, including System. System is everything specific to the game, and Social Contract is everything with everybody, including the game.

The lumpley Principle defines System by going above it.

thoughts?

Chris

I have to disagree with Setting coming under System here. The lP states that "System is the means by which players negotiate the contents of their shared imagined space."

Setting is part of the contents -- but Setting in and of itself is not a means. It is among the objects being manipulated. Statements about the shared imaginative space are also not System -- they are not negotiating anything, they are simply stating a point of view about what's there.

So, going by this... the situation is a part of the shared imaginative space -- but it is not System. The methods by which situation is decided, and the methods by which it affects other things -- those are System, but the situation itself is not.

The fact that, say, a town exists in the setting is not System -- but the general social contract rule of "we do not contradict established fact about the setting" -- that is System. (Note, though, that it is by no means required -- e.g., in a game which takes place in dreams, contradicting established fact may be explicitly allowed. It's nothing unusual to have a dream which starts in one place, but that suddenly turns into a completely different place halfway through, or to start with one person there with you, then have that turn into someone else, or disappear.)

Finally, to bring in an analogy (bad idea, I know...), System is a set of functions. The inputs to those functions are not necessarily System, and the outputs are not necessarily System (though they may form objects for other System functions to work on)... System is the things that are done with those inputs to produce those outputs. Something like the players' current emtional state, to me, is an input -- it is not System in and of itself, but it is something which may affect what the System does.

I gotta agree with efindel. Ben's first conclusion just doesn't work for me. I mean this bit:

I cannot imagine a single aspect of the act of role-playing that is not, in some regard, a part of System.

John Harper wrote: This makes "system" mean "everything" and reduces the value of the term to zero as far as I can tell.

Setting and Sitation are not part of System. There are two parts to the lumpley principle: The System is the means by which players negotiate the contents of their shared imagined space. Emphasis mine. The two parts are System and SIS. One is acting on the other. Setting and Situation are part of the SIS. The means by which the SIS is established... that's system.

lumpley wrote: (Marco, John, there's a difference between Drift and by-the-rules customization. Establishing a definition of Humanity in Sorcerer, for instance, or creating characters for most games, or choosing a Setting for the Pool, is customization, not Drift. The vast majority of making towns, establishing situations, not killing orcs, that kind of stuff, similarly. What's Drift and what's customization will vary tremendously from ruleset to ruleset. It seems so basic to me that I wonder why it's even a question.)

Hmmm. I see where you're coming from, John. Based on the way I understand the term "System", this is what I make of your example.

"Fire Giants are immune to fire" is a quality that Fire Giants have. Therefore, it's part of the Setting, which in turn is part of the SIS that the group is negotiating from moment to moment.

The player says "I cast a fire bolt at the giant." Now System steps in. How do we determine what happens in the SIS now? According to your example, the system in place seems to be "The GM should look at the qualities of the target and see if it is immune to the attack. If so, the attack has no effect." In the example, the GM exercises this bit of system, and adjusts the SIS accordingly: "The bolt has no effect."

System is the process by which the GM made the judgement about immunities and their effects in play. If the player complains, simply pointing at the entry in the rulebook isn't quite sufficient. The book says Fire Giants are immune to fire. So what? The book isn't playing the game. The GM has to engage System in order to get this element of Setting into the SIS.

Now, this example is less than ideal, becase the bit of System that gets used is something that is almost always unspoken in play and is almost never mentioned in the rules. D&D3E is the only game I can think of off-hand that bothers to actually have a written rule explaining what an immunity is and how it impacts play. For most groups this would just be "common sense."

Nevertheless, choosing to apply a bit of Setting to a particular moment of play and how to apply it and why and who gets to say what... that's System. The Fire Giant's quality is used by the System but it is not the System itself.

lumpley wrote: (Marco, John, there's a difference between Drift and by-the-rules customization. Establishing a definition of Humanity in Sorcerer, for instance, or creating characters for most games, or choosing a Setting for the Pool, is customization, not Drift. The vast majority of making towns, establishing situations, not killing orcs, that kind of stuff, similarly. What's Drift and what's customization will vary tremendously from ruleset to ruleset. It seems so basic to me that I wonder why it's even a question.)

-Vincent

Easy #1. Maybe your group did Drift some. Is that so hard to imagine? If you and your group are very good at CA-Y, then you can get there by maximizing what the game can offer along those lines, no matter how meager, even if you still apply the other (bulk) of the text.

John Kim wrote:
So let's take an action. i.e. A player says "I cast a fire bolt at the giant." OK, so now the GM refers to the description in the rulebook. He sees the sentence which says they are immune. The GM says "It has no effect." Let's suppose the player is a little irritable that day and says "What the heck? It should damage him." The GM then cites the rulebook, the player agrees, and they move on.

Now, on the one hand, you can say that the system is not in the rules at all. It is the process. i.e. The system is "The GM and player talk and agree on what happens" -- while "Fire Giants are immune to fire" is just part of the Setting. But this means that all or nearly all of system just reduces down to the participants agreeing.

Dang, Ben. To quote an excellent movie, "Now you walk into a bar, and sailors come running out."

This idea seems to have popped up everywhere today. I'll call your attention to my reply to Sean's thread Setting as Part of System, and say see that for why I think that's correct, and perhaps more helpfully in what sense that is correct.

John Kim wrote: So here's the big question. So creating new characters in Timelord is a change to the system, just as much so as changing the resolution mechanics. But we commonly think that, say, creating a setting for The Pool is not a change to system. But that seems to make them unequal. A problem with "incoherence" as a design criteria is that the less that you specify with a game, the less likely that parts will clash.

efindel wrote: Thus, in each of these four games, the Setting fact "fire giants are immune to fire" would mean different things -- because of the three different Systems.

Marco wrote: If setting, situation, and mechanics are the same thing in terms of system (and I'm not arguing they aren't--it's a fine way to look at it) then making up a new town is the same thing as adding critical hits to the damage system. You can argue that one's more effort than the other but the harder one is probably the town if it's detailed.

That would make drift as related to the utility of a game in terms of coherence very shaky since in practice one must make characters and situationa and setting in order to play (traditionally) anyway.

Paganini wrote:
Turn that around, though, and think about this: not all rules / mechanics are part of the system. A lot of times, especially in home-brew games, you'll see mechanics tacked on that, maybe, the designer liked in some other game, but didn't really understand the point of - with the net effect that the mechanic actually does nothing at all in terms of System. It's just kind of *there,* fogging up the works, but when you really look at it, it doesn't go anywhere.

lumpley wrote:

There are three things your System has to coordinate. ("System" in the full implications of the lumpy piddle sense: the on-the-fly fully-negotiated mercurial real-people's-moods-and-habits process that you're using to negotiate what happens.)

It has to coordinate:
A) the wholly imaginary things and events in the "game world";
B) real-world abstractions and representations of those things and events: maps, numbers, dice, "hit points," etc.
C) the interactions of the actual human beings.

Bankuei wrote:
I with you all the way except "System defines out of game situations"... Try, Social Contract defines everything, including System. System is everything specific to the game, and Social Contract is everything with everybody, including the game.

efindel wrote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have to disagree with Setting coming under System here. The lP states that "System is the means by which players negotiate the contents of their shared imagined space."

Setting is part of the contents -- but Setting in and of itself is not a means. It is among the objects being manipulated. Statements about the shared imaginative space are also not System -- they are not negotiating anything, they are simply stating a point of view about what's there.

So, going by this... the situation is a part of the shared imaginative space -- but it is not System. The methods by which situation is decided, and the methods by which it affects other things -- those are System, but the situation itself is not.

The fact that, say, a town exists in the setting is not System -- but the general social contract rule of "we do not contradict established fact about the setting" -- that is System.

John Harper wrote:
My lucky 20-sider is not process. The gaming table is not process. My emotional state is not process. All of those things can affect the process, to be sure, but they are not the process itself. Let's not confuse the hammer and the boards for the act of nailing the boards together.

Ben Lehman wrote: In general, I am totally confused by you and John Kim here. You're point is that, say "Fire Giants are immune to fire" is not system? What is it, then? How about "Fire Giants soak the first 25 points of fire damage in a round?" Is that system?

John Harper wrote:
System is the process by which the GM made the judgement about immunities and their effects in play. If the player complains, simply pointing at the entry in the rulebook isn't quite sufficient. The book says Fire Giants are immune to fire. So what? The book isn't playing the game. The GM has to engage System in order to get this element of Setting into the SIS.

In general, I am totally confused by you and John Kim here. You're point is that, say "Fire Giants are immune to fire" is not system? What is it, then? How about "Fire Giants soak the first 25 points of fire damage in a round?" Is that system?

Okay, everyone, but contracycle specifically. Let's make some distinctions for the remainder of this thread between:

1) Total System (anything that can be used to define, create, manipulate, change or address the SIS.)

2) Textual System (all systematic elements, including setting, sitch, etc, introduced by a game text.)

3) Mechanical System (the mechanical rules of the game, a subset of 1, and possibly merely a subset of 2.)

contracycle, I can't tell which of the above three you are talking about in your last post. I could make a guess, but let's clarify before we go off on a:
"Apples are red!"
"No, Oranges are orange!"
argument, because that just goes nowhere.

Over and above the excellent points made about what LS actually says do we not think that this is just definitional drift of the kind that gets the Forge a bad name?

Setting and System are 2 clear and distinct entities as understood by all gamers. What Ben is proposing is that they're actually part of one larger category namely system. As Marco pointed out that creating a town is now the same kind of activity as writinga new critical hit system.

To me that's counter-intuitive. The meanings of terms are fixed by use not by theoretical convenience and when one says "system" one doesn't mean setting.

If anything if the LS DID entail this about system then it striked me that Ben's discovered not a fact about system but a reductio of the LS giving grounds for rejecting or modifying it.

but yeah... the argument strikes me as:

system influences SIS
setting influences SIS
therefore, setting and system are the same thing.

Social contract also influences SIS, should we say that "system" now includes social contract?

To my mind analysis is dependent upon small categories clearly defined. This ain't it :-)

If you DID want to move in this direction then there might be something to say for creating a larger umbrella term that includes setting and system and all the things that influence SIS (including social contract) but I think this just muddies the water for no theoretical payoff.

MR. Analytical wrote: Over and above the excellent points made about what LS actually says do we not think that this is just definitional drift of the kind that gets the Forge a bad name?

Setting and System are 2 clear and distinct entities as understood by all gamers. What Ben is proposing is that they're actually part of one larger category namely system. As Marco pointed out that creating a town is now the same kind of activity as writinga new critical hit system.

To me that's counter-intuitive. The meanings of terms are fixed by use not by theoretical convenience and when one says "system" one doesn't mean setting.

If anything if the LS DID entail this about system then it striked me that Ben's discovered not a fact about system but a reductio of the LS giving grounds for rejecting or modifying it.

but yeah... the argument strikes me as:

system influences SIS
setting influences SIS
therefore, setting and system are the same thing.

Social contract also influences SIS, should we say that "system" now includes social contract?

To my mind analysis is dependent upon small categories clearly defined. This ain't it :-)

Mr. Analytical, I did have qualms that by specifying the term mechanism I was duplicating exactly what the term system had started out describing.
That may or may not be a clarification that needs to be preserved; I'm not sure that it should.

Ben:
I'm suggesting that the conflation of 3 and 1 is semantic. Marco is correct to say that introducing setting elements CAN be equivalent to number 3; but it is not correct to conclude that they MUST be.

That is, I can't really claim to be plying MERP if I change the setting to the Forgotten Realms, but I can claim to be using the MERP resolution mechanism. My actual game is now a different beast that merely uses the MERP mechanisms. But this could be fatal if some element of MERP rules depended on assumptions implicit in Middle Earth. The degree of change I would have to impose would approximate a homebrew system.

And yet all of this completely different to simply ariving at some small town that had not explicitly existed before. We seem to be more interested in deducing the function from the category instead of the category from the function.

Some elements of setting are organic to the game in the broad, the specific SIS which will be constructed at the table. Fire giants in a Norse mythology RPG may be very different to fire giants in a D&D-esque game and fulfill very different functions. The former may be an expression of the settings metaphysical truths, the latter is a monster to slay. You can't switch these setting elements without making a big change to the game.

IMO this feature is most often seen in magic systems; hence my dictum that you must decide on the metaphysics of your setting before you construct your magical mechanism. The failure to do so is what renders magic analogous to technology in most RPG's.

contracycle wrote:
Ben:
I'm suggesting that the conflation of 3 and 1 is semantic. Marco is correct to say that introducing setting elements CAN be equivalent to number 3; but it is not correct to conclude that they MUST be.

That is, I can't really claim to be plying MERP if I change the setting to the Forgotten Realms, but I can claim to be using the MERP resolution mechanism. My actual game is now a different beast that merely uses the MERP mechanisms. But this could be fatal if some element of MERP rules depended on assumptions implicit in Middle Earth. The degree of change I would have to impose would approximate a homebrew system.

And yet all of this completely different to simply ariving at some small town that had not explicitly existed before. We seem to be more interested in deducing the function from the category instead of the category from the function.

Ben Lehman wrote:
Can we please use my terms for the duration of this thread and stop talking about this now?

Okay, I totally fail to see how the existence of a small town is effectively different from "fire giants are immune to fire." Say you introduce this small town (okay, now a part of the setting) and then the GM later says "okay, you travel through the woods for four days without seeing civilization..." and you can totally say "dude, there was, like, a small town there last time!" And the GM has to deal with that fact one way or another.

Okay, so we just negotiated the contents of the shared imagined space using a small town. Sweet!

BTW: Do you have objections to things other than setting (like, say, who paid for pizza) being a part of the system, by the way? Or is it just the setting that bugs ya?

Ben Lehman wrote: Okay, but I really think that this is a distinction without a difference. Check this out:

"I grab him by the head and throw him out the window."
"Dude, you can't do that. Oroogs have no heads."
"Oh, oops."

In this case, I think its pretty clear that a piece of setting information (the headless monster type) is informing the negotiation of the SIS. I mean, you could say that there is this rule that "we don't violate setting traits," but I think it amounts to the same thing, in practice, and that every game has that rule, more or less. (I disagree with you about the dream thing -- that just means that "dream logic" is a setting trait.)

"Yeah, but if you look at the third paragraph of the Oroog description, it says that a throw 'by the head' should be considered to be grabbing its trunk and throwing from there, since that's where its sensory organs and brain are."

"Okay... so you're throwing it by the trunk. Why didn't you just say that?"

"Because throwing something by the head gives a 15% chance that its sensory organs are damaged..."

A: "Okay... now that we've got the guard to take his helmet off, and I'm behind him, I'm going to hit him in the back of the head with my mace and knock him out!"

GM: "You can't do that."

A: "What? Why not!?"

GM: "There's no rule for it."

A: "You're kidding me!"

B: "Nope, he's right. This game doesn't have any called shot rules."

A: "Well... is there at least a chance that I'll hit him in the head, where he's not armored?"

GM: "Nope. There's no hit location rules either."

contracycle wrote: The point again is: there are changes and ther are changes. Not all setting elements are created equal.

The problems with the fire giant, the Oroog, the called shot, what-have-you, they all go away if you break 'em down into my A (the imagined stuff), B (real-world representations and tokens) and C (the interacting human beings).

Seriously. When you try it, be sure not to leave out C.

-Vincent

Ben Lehman wrote: BL> Apropos of my most recent post post, this makes very little sense to me, and I'm going to operate on the assumption that, by "system," you mean "mechanics."

[snip]


Since "tools which can be used to influence the shared imagined space" is the local definition of "system" (hey, see that Jargon Alert? Yeah...) it seemed to me more convenient.

[snip]

Depends on the type of analysis now, doesn't it? Mathematics and hard sciences (my background) are pretty dependent on larger classifications. Honestly, so is literature. And most social crit. And really, well, everything. I wouldn't light into you for this, but its a big misunderstanding about academic analysis that a lot of armchair theoreticians have, and it bugs the fuck out of me.

Hey,

Be nicer, people. Jonathan, Ben really is trying to reach you (and be reached) halfway. Don't slap his hands just because it didn't work the first time.

On the point at issue, I dunno if this will really help, but I think of the SIS as including imaginary time, which is to say, the enactment of imaginary events. System is whatever brings time-passage/events into the SIS.

Therefore saying "There's a castle on the hill" isn't System if it's merely establishing that imaginary fact among the real people - everyone looking at a map, say, in which there may or may not be a castle illustrated on that hill.

But it is System if the person speaking is referring to characters seeing or learning that there is a castle on that hill. Now we're talking about in-game events and the passage of time.

Does that help at all? Otherwise, I don't have much to say beyond Ben's, John's, and Vincent's excellent remarks. The headless-oorog example seems like a keeper.

Best,
Ron

Hello.

I for one, would like to apologize for being a bit too hasty with replies on this thread, especially today, which has been frustrating for reasons that have nothing to do with the Forge or RPG theory at all (at least, I hope they don't.) In particular, Jonathan, that "armchair theorist" bit was really out of line, and I apologize for it.

I'm going to take a little while and chew on all this stuff -- particularly lumpley, contracycle, and mr analytical's posts -- then come back to this thread and see what has developed in my absence.

yrs--
--Ben

Ben Lehman wrote: In particular, Jonathan, that "armchair theorist" bit was really out of line, and I apologize for it.

Ben,

I think I'm sorta with you here: everything that's done with a game during play may legitimately meet someone's defintion of drift (and I mean someone who's being reasonably fair and critical). Gamma Word, IIRC, did actually state that it, itself, was incomplete and would be made complete by the GM's scenario.

While that's only one way to look at it (another is that the system and setting details are a complete tool that is then applied to a use) I think it's a reasonably fine POV from a theorist standpoint.

contracycle wrote:
Ben:
I'm suggesting that the conflation of 3 and 1 is semantic. Marco is correct to say that introducing setting elements CAN be equivalent to number 3; but it is not correct to conclude that they MUST be.

In case anyone missed my post on the bottom of page one, I'm going to reiterate that over in Sean's Setting as Part of System thread I argued that this was correct. In brief, all five elements are fully integrated into each other. Consider this:

• System is that which enables change within the shared imaginary space.• Setting is the entire description of the shared imaginary space.• Character is the people who occupy and act within the shared imaginary space.• Situation is the conflicts and events within the shared imaginary space confronting the characters.• Color is the feeling, ambiance, nuance of the shared imaginary space.

It should immediately be apparent that the fifth listed here, color, is part of the other four; it cannot exist apart from the other four. Looked at the other way, system, setting, character, and situation are the content of color.

But that's also true of situation. Situation is when character and setting interact through system, as nuanced by color. Character is also defined by setting, situation, system, and color. Since system is that which creates change, it is inherently part of setting--witness the recent thread in which Ralph derived the setting of game from its mechanics, because the system defines how the setting works.

When we speak of one of these five things, we are indeed recognizing a discrete element of exploration; but it is more akin to examining a single facet of a gem than a single gem on a ring. It is what it is because of its relationships to the other four facets.

Jonathan 'Mr. Analytical' McCalmont wrote: Setting and System are 2 clear and distinct entities as understood by all gamers. What Ben is proposing is that they're actually part of one larger category namely system.

Ben Lehman wrote: Further, I would propose that, given the incompleteness thereom that I demonstrated above, no game text ever offers a complete system and thus (whoa, this blows my mind) every game is somewhat drifted.

I'd like to comment on a few bits here....

M. J. Young wrote:

• Setting is the entire description of the shared imaginary space.

M. J. Young wrote: Since system is that which creates change, it is inherently part of setting--witness the recent thread in which Ralph derived the setting of game from its mechanics, because the system defines how the setting works.

Mainly, this discussion seems to be about what Ben called "textual system" earlier on. That makes perfect sense to me. However, I can't see a point in fussing with anything beyond that. I liked the "set of tools" metaphor. Aren't these tools what can be set up by the designer, what can be playtested and judged in an abstract manner, what can be established in different groups in the same way? Like setting and genre, or advise on creating setting and genre. Like situations or advise on creating situations. Like advise on how to describe things, on how to portray a character. To refer to these things as part of the system makes sense to me, since they are means of establishing and re-establishing the SIS that are deliberately used.

But the lucky 20-sider? Who's had a harsh day? Who's had a fight with whom? Who ordered pizza? These aspects sound like classical social contract issues to me. We are not at the point that system is the social contract, are we? My 2 cents.

Reading my post over, it sounds like "it's social contract, it can't be system." That's not what I meant. What I meant is that if system is a means to establish something in the SIS, then this requires the intent to use it with the goal of establishing something in the SIS.

Okay, bribing your GM with pizza could be used with exactly that intent. Yet the real means by which the desired statement is established in the SIS is not the pizza bribe. It is the authority of the GM, which in itself is not affected by the pizza bribe. So I don't go: "If I bribe the GM with pizza, my character will find the antidote." I go: "If I bribe the GM with pizza, he will decide to use his authority and make my character find the antidote." In my view, this is an important difference.

If the LP is about system distributing credibility and authority, does it also state something about the motives of the players? Is the reason why authority is used part of the system? If so, then literally anything that randomly affects the process of play would be system. I can't see the sense in that.

Sorry if I misinterpret anything, I'm new to this stuff.

Frank T wrote:
Okay, bribing your GM with pizza could be used with exactly that intent. Yet the real means by which the desired statement is established in the SIS is not the pizza bribe. It is the authority of the GM, which in itself is not affected by the pizza bribe. So I don't go: "If I bribe the GM with pizza, my character will find the antidote." I go: "If I bribe the GM with pizza, he will decide to use his authority and make my character find the antidote." In my view, this is an important difference.

Well, I don't want to get carried away with that example. I can pick another one that's more obvious: The GM is mad at Sue cause she's flirting with Bob the whole evening and not paying attention. Therefore he gets her character ambushed. The obvious system part is "the GM establishes the situation" (quite a classic). Now, is Sue's flirting with Bob also part of the system? It was not intended to affect the SIS, but it certainly did.

If I got Ben right, he would say, "Yeah, sure as hell buddy, that's system, too." Even given the definition from the LP, I don't think that makes a lot of sense. I'd say system represents what is supposed to affect the SIS, not what actually affects it. Doesn't the word "system" sound like something pre-designed rather than something random?

Frank T wrote: Doesn't the word "system" sound like something pre-designed rather than something random?

Frank T wrote: Well, I don't want to get carried away with that example. I can pick another one that's more obvious: The GM is mad at Sue cause she's flirting with Bob the whole evening and not paying attention. Therefore he gets her character ambushed. The obvious system part is "the GM establishes the situation" (quite a classic). Now, is Sue's flirting with Bob also part of the system? It was not intended to affect the SIS, but it certainly did.

Yeah well, if that's the way to look at it, then please somebody explain to me the difference between system and social contract.

OK, I suppose I'll take a shot and use the words of countless posters before me:

System:
Player: "I rolled an 8, therefore you take 2d6 HP damage"
Social Contract:
GM (Thought Balloon: Barry still owes me twenty bucks): "I'm gonna rule that the gun jams because BARRY hasn't PAID to have his gun serviced during the past few sessions and IGNORING DEBTS HAS CONSEQUENCES."

You can play entirely through social contract "calvinballing," narrating through skill rolls "does the door have a poison trap, what about a magical trigger, can I see the trigger...?"

You cannot play entirely through system and have it be a tabletop roleplaying game. Roleplaying Video Games that are not Multiplayer can be seen as an attempt to give system without social contract.

Am I missing anything?

There is no difference between social contract and system, except that system is not the entirity of social contract. System is a (sometimes codified, sometimes not) subset of Social Contract.

Yes, that has been pointed out. But what remains of the social contract if you remove everything that's also system? Nothing, it would seem to me after reading this thread.

System is the application of the Social Contract to the made-up events of the game. "I'm pissed at Bob so I'm going to spill his drink" is not System. "I'm pissed at Bob so I'm going to screw over his character" is.

-Vincent

Exactly what Vince said. Remember, Social Contract isn't just something that you have when you play RPGs that goes away the rest of the time. Any time you do anything involving other people, there's a Social Contract at work. When I teach my students and interact with their parents, there's a social contract at work. It's a different social contract from the way I interact with my Tai Chi instructor, and still different from the way I interact with my family.