This is an attempt to square the apparent circle in which setting, situation, and system have become confused. I want to propose some setting-specific terminology to clear up this mess.

My suggestion is that within setting we refer to background and foreground so as to differentiate two roles that setting fulfills. I think much of the confusion regarding setting = system comes from dealing with setting as an undifferentiated whole.

Background and foreground have differing characteristics. The foreground is what the viewers eye falls on and focusses on for the overwhelming majority of the action. Forgeround includes all the active dramatis personnae, but does not include the members of crowd scenes and whatnot. Foreground is very much where situation is happening; it is where the game happens in the RPG context.

Background provides context and colour for the foreground. Itn provides answers to secondary questions, and frames the limits of the possible available to the characters. It also serves to provide information to the viewer implicitly rather than explicitly; for all most of our attention is focussed on the action in the foreground, the background will often be the first thing we acknowledge and examine.

Now it seems to me that recognising the distinction between background and foreground resolves much of the confusion of setting = system. I would submit that a setting entity can be in either ground, but only matters, and constitutes system, when in the foreground, that is, is an actual in-focus element shaping the direction and content of play. Elements that reside purely in background serve to inform play, but the characters are not expected to interact directly with these elements.

I also think that this distiction exists on a per-story basis (in this context I use story to mean 'mini-campaign'). An element could be in foreground in one story and in background in the next, or vice versa. Arguably, character selection is a contribution to those elements of setting which will be in the foreground; frex, the rangers favoured enemy thing; useless if they never show. Thus selecting the ranger and this ability indicate a preference for this type of conflict.

Similarly this sort of structure could be used for foreshadowing, or for informing character design, or proposing premises or challenges to be addressed. Anyway, I just think that reference to undifferentiated setting is pretty sterile at the moment.

Thoughts?

Contra,

Is something important because it's in the foreground or is it considered in the foreground because it's important? If I, as a player, find myself drawing heavily from what I know about the world in the setting book even if the GM isn't emphasizing those elements then do they become foreground?

If the latter then I don't think the nomenclature will distinguish between what I'd call situation as opposed to setting. In that case you'll just describe whatever is important to play as in-the-foreground and what's not as in-the-background and it won't tell us about how that got introduced.

We could just say "things the GM creates that act on or are acted on by characters are like rules changes" but to me that doesn't describe the real impact that a knowledge of the cosmology as in Call of Cthulhu has on informing player behavior.

-Marco

contracycle wrote: Now it seems to me that recognising the distinction between background and foreground resolves much of the confusion of setting = system. I would submit that a setting entity can be in either ground, but only matters, and constitutes system, when in the foreground, that is, is an actual in-focus element shaping the direction and content of play. Elements that reside purely in background serve to inform play, but the characters are not expected to interact directly with these elements.

Yeah, I don't see that Setting is "part of" System ever. System coordinates the fictional stuff in the SIS, including Setting, with the real-world dice and numbers and stuff, according to the peoples' interactions.

(Travis: ha! I knew that I'd gotten that from somewhere. Your Representation, Resolution, Interpretation post is where!)

I think foreground/background is useful. I've been using on screen/off screen to mean the same thing, casually. But I don't see how being in the foreground means that an imaginary thing is part of System. Being in the foreground means it's being currently acted upon and considered by the players, according to System.

-Vincent

Setting isn't part of system? What if walls aren't given stats in two different systems. In the first, a detective game, the muscley hero tries to crash through a wall but just bounces off like you or I would even if we were buff (well, perhaps you are buff). In the other, a super hero system, the relatively same strengthed hero tries to crash through a wall and does so very well. The setting description has many stories of heroes crashing through walls and saving the day, all read prior to that.

I mean, rules are just something used to mutually agree on how things will happen. Setting is used the same way. No?

Noon wrote: Setting isn't part of system? What if walls aren't given stats in two different systems. In the first, a detective game, the muscley hero tries to crash through a wall but just bounces off like you or I would even if we were buff (well, perhaps you are buff). In the other, a super hero system, the relatively same strengthed hero tries to crash through a wall and does so very well. The setting description has many stories of heroes crashing through walls and saving the day, all read prior to that.

I mean, rules are just something used to mutually agree on how things will happen. Setting is used the same way. No?

"The System is the means by which players negotiate the contents of their shared imagined space."

Last things first: my argument has always been that all five elements are parts of each other.

Specifically as to whether the stats on the walls are system or setting, they are the system definition of a setting element. They enter the imaginary space when two elements within setting (one of them the character) collide (in this case literally). In one sense, those stats are not part of the system until they're needed to resolve this situation; in another sense, they are always part of the system. In the same way, the character is always and never part of the setting and the system, integrated and yet discrete.

The background/foreground distinction is useful to some degree, but I'm not sure I agree that the distinction is based on whether system impacts it.

Let's suppose for the moment that my game is set within petty medieval citystate kingdoms. I have a mechanic behind the scenes that determines the succession of power--when a king is displaced, how that happens, and who replaces him. It's a very streamlined mechanic designed so that the referee can quickly and easily know when the government changes in up to a hundred different cities. Obviously, for the players, it isn't even completely certain whether it matters to them that the king has been succeeded by his son in the city in which they are currently staying; it certainly doesn't matter at the moment it happens whether there has been a succession of powers in a distant city. Yet the game provides system to determine changing background because change in the background is a defining element of the setting. It may become important later, if the player characters travel to a city where there has been a change, or which has been impacted by the change. It may never be important.

A similar example would be in a game world in which there are two or more warring empires, and within the background portion of the setting they are each gaining and losing ground against the others. If you don't happen to be near the boundaries, this may have very little impact on you; but then, since the boundaries are moving, it may eventually come to wherever you are.

So I think that system can be integrated with background elements. That doesn't invalidate the distinction between foreground and background (although as Marco observes whether it's foreground or background seems primarily to be defined by what matters to the characters); it only means that system involvement is not the basis for the distinction.

--M. J. Young

Marco wrote:

Is something important because it's in the foreground or is it considered in the foreground because it's important? If I, as a player, find myself drawing heavily from what I know about the world in the setting book even if the GM isn't emphasizing those elements then do they become foreground?

If the latter then I don't think the nomenclature will distinguish between what I'd call situation as opposed to setting. In that case you'll just describe whatever is important to play as in-the-foreground and what's not as in-the-background and it won't tell us about how that got introduced.

This bit about "only matters, and constitutes system" still sounds to me like people are thinking that "System Does Matter" implies "System is all that matters". I don't think that that was ever Ron's intent, or Vincent's in creating the Lumpley principle.

One thing that I'd point out is that System determines what's in the foreground vs. what's in the background -- to re-use an example of mine from another thread, if the System doesn't allow for any differences in combat someone due to him/her not having a helmet, then whether or not anyone has a helmet is automatically a background element in combat.

But I don't see how being in the foreground means that an imaginary thing is part of System. Being in the foreground means it's being currently acted upon and considered by the players, according to System.

Setting isn't part of system? What if walls aren't given stats in two different systems.

Let's suppose for the moment that my game is set within petty medieval citystate kingdoms. I have a mechanic behind the scenes that determines the succession of power--when a king is displaced, how that happens, and who replaces him.

contracycle wrote: Marco wrote:

Is something important because it's in the foreground or is it considered in the foreground because it's important? If I, as a player, find myself drawing heavily from what I know about the world in the setting book even if the GM isn't emphasizing those elements then do they become foreground?

Background and foreground are properties of images; necessarily, what the image is of is what is important. I think your question is posed overly definitional terms; if you ARE dealing with something frequently and attentively, it has been fore-grounded whether you wanted it to be or not. I fully agree that what specifically gets located in the foreground and what consigned to background is a negotiation amongst the players and, significantly, they may disagree with what should be where, leading to problems.

but, like a little used mechanic, when the "background" elements do "come up" they move to the foreground.

Thus there's no way to say what element was what until the game is over and you can say element X never came up.

So if no one can know before hand, during (the GM doesn't know what I'm thinking--but I'm basing my play on my Clan's philosophy), or maybe even after the fact which elements were informing who's play then I'm not sure this gets us anywhere.

contracycle wrote:

Because then conceivably the player could say to the GM, by the way I'm interested in this aspect of the clan and would like to have it in the foreground rather than the background. Or the GM might say, can we hold off and foreground that in the next story, as its inappropriate to foreground it in this one. All of this seems a lot more constructive to me than arguments about the continuity and veracity of setting.

Agreed. That could well be useful. I'm Looking at the spade example.

-Marco

I think it's interesting that you say anything that comes to the foreground must be systemitized--if that *is* true then that would be a meaningful distinction.

I'm ... not sure it is--what happens in a game with no interaction mechanics when two characters are falling in love? Is the fact that the NPC lover has stats evidence of systemitization even though it's not relevant to the action directly?

I'm also imagining a situation where a character punches through dry-wall in a game where walls have no game stats. If the GM says "you can do it" is that "systemitization?" It isn't mechanical.

I can see "systemitizing" in a tautological context (saying that if important parts of setting are like mechanics then important parts of mechanics have been systemitized) but I'm not sure it means it in the more (IMO) useful meaning of "represented mechanically."

Which do you mean?

-Marco

Yes! Definitely it's time to distinguish between "system" meaning rules and mechanics, and System meaning how we're making decisions.

If I say "my guy punches through the drywall," what has to happen among the real people playing before we all agree that yes, my guy punches through the drywall?

It might be rolling dice. It might be comparing strength values. It might be an argument about whether my guy "really could" punch through drywall. It might be nothing but nods - of course he does. It might be we all turn to the GM for a yea or nay. I might have to bribe the GM with Yoo-Hoo or sexual favors! It might take a lot of effort and attention, it might be invisible. Whatever it is, that's our game's System at that moment.

What appears in the game rules - the game's mechanics - only contribute to System insofar as we, the players, call upon and apply them. Maybe a lot, maybe not so much. Either way we've got a System going strong. Otherwise the game would stall out because we wouldn't be agreeing what happens.

I think it's easy to read the causality in this sentence backward: "The System is the means by which players negotiate the contents of their shared imagined space." You might read it and say, "well, here's a bunch of rules in a book, that must be how we'll negotiate what happens." Really it says, "we're negotiating what happens, how are we doing it? That's the System."

If you follow rules, you're creating System based on them. If you don't follow any rules, you're creating System based on your instincts, negotiation, charisma, social aggressiveness, friendship, sex, whatever. Both can be good or bad, depending on what you're after. My job as a game designer is to design rules that create a System in play exactly suited to what you're after.

Gareth wrote: I have another formulation to propose: setting IMPLIES system and system IMPLIES setting. This means they are still linked but the linkage is not an identity. In order for something to be acted on according to system, that entity has to be systematically described, realised within system.

Marco wrote:
I can see "systemitizing" in a tautological context (saying that if important parts of setting are kind of like mechanics then important parts of setting have been systemitized) but I'm not sure it means it in the more (IMO) useful meaning of "represented mechanically."

Which do you mean?

-Marco

Well... Isn't the difference that one (Setting) is wholly imaginary and the other (Mechanics) exists in the real world, enough? That disentangles 'em cleanly and clearly for me.

I agree with you that both Setting and Mechanics can be in the foreground or the background, though.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote: Well... Isn't the difference that one (Setting) is wholly imaginary and the other (Mechanics) exists in the real world, enough? That disentangles 'em cleanly and clearly for me.

I agree with you that both Setting and Mechanics can be in the foreground or the background, though.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote:

Gareth wrote: I have another formulation to propose: setting IMPLIES system and system IMPLIES setting. This means they are still linked but the linkage is not an identity. In order for something to be acted on according to system, that entity has to be systematically described, realised within system.

I like this. This is what I'm getting at when I say that System (people agreeing) coordinates the imaginary things in the game with real-world representations. I'd have it: In order for something to be acted upon strictly according to our manipulations of real-world representations, that entity has to be described in terms of those representations.

The hump to get over is that people can agree what happens - thus, System - without such real-world tokens of the fictional stuff of the game at all. The wall doesn't have a strength rating, but that doesn't mean my guy can't punch through it. He punches through it when we all agree that he does, strength rating or no. If it has a strength rating, that's a tool we can use to make our negotiation smoother, not a real limit on what can happen in the game.

In order to see how roleplaying works, you have to tear "the mechanics are the physics of the game world" down to nothing. Enacted, the mechanics create a social dynamic, not (or not primarily) a simulation of an imaginary world.

-Vincent

ErrathofKosh wrote:
Therefore my observation that setting (and character) is DATA, and that system is the engine for processing that data.

Setting: informs that there is a wall between you and your goal
Character: informs that your character is strong (or doesn't, oftentimes)
System: takes the wall and your character's strength and feeds them into a process that determines what will happen in this Situation

The process, like Vincent said, doesn't need to appear in the rulebook and it isn't setting, because it's a process. In fact, it's a process that produces Situation or, at least, a resolution to Situation.

Jonathan

Hiya,

Marco, you wrote,

what about cases where the scene is resolved without game-mechanics?

Marco wrote: This is an interesting observation: does that mean that system is "mechanics" which is the engine that acts on the data? That'd be true in some cases but what about cases where the scene is resolved without game-mechanics?

Then it's a case of data modifying itself, yes?

-Marco

And I get real uneasy with phrases like "data modifying itself." If the imaginary stuff in the game is the data, then play without formal mechanics is the players modifying the data without using formal mechanics.

If I have my guy punch through the wall, and there are no game-rule type representations of or procedures for a character punching through a wall, so we decide it by me bribing the GM with a Yoo-hoo, so we all agree that yes, indeed, my guy punches through the wall - the data hasn't modified itself. We've modified it.

-Vincent

Ron Edwards wrote: Hiya,

Marco, you wrote,

what about cases where the scene is resolved without game-mechanics?

In Forge-speak, anyway, there isn't any such thing. The scene is resolved using other mechanics, specifically (if I'm reading you correctly) Drama ones. Just because these aren't ordinarily called "mechanics" or are referred to as "system-less" doesn't mean anything - they are still System and they are still mechanics.

Best,
Ron

That's why I asked Marco for clarification. I cannot imagine a situation where the situation is resolved without some "mechanic". Bribing the Gm, or player consensus, or Director Stance; all are parts of the system, the process of determing how the situation is resolved.

As an aside, the reason system does matter is that there always improper ways of manipulating data. Or the reverse, there are methods that simply "work" and there are those that seemingly become simply an extension of the setting.

ErrathofKosh,

The creation of the wall and the character and the character's punch are all System, IMO, in the same way. I see the wall, the character, and the physical punch as all identical things from a setting stand point. The fact that the player is "acting on the wall" doesn't make a difference to me.

Putting the wall there has to go through the same resolution steps that the character punching through it does (in this case--both are done by fiat). I don't see one as "data" and one as "resolution"--either both are resolution, the data modifies itself, or we are drawing a distinction between nouns and verbs that I'm not convinced gets us anywhere useful yet.

Maybe it does (I could well be wrong)--but I'd want to see more to believe it.

-Marco

Hey,

Even though The Forge says setting is part of System, no?

Ron Edwards wrote: Hey,

Even though The Forge says setting is part of System, no?

See, it's this sort of statement that just boggles me. What are you talking about?

No. Setting is not part of System. These are two of the five components of role-playing that imaginatively rely upon one another to be present.

This is the third of two recent threads in which I'm forced to repeat myself about something very easy: System introduces imaginary time, and therefore imaginary events, into the SIS. That's what System is.

I've seen a whole bunch of setting/system discussion recently that forgets this and tries to shoehorn all manner of weird assumptions or necessities into either term, or both. It's almost all unnecessary.

(Also: see my statements regarding fire giants in response to John Kim in one of these threads; will look up the link later)

Best,
Ron

Marco wrote: [You can say that a rock in the air is data--and the rock falling (gravity) is system-drama-mechanics.

I'm not sure I really see the difference, however, since the presence of gravity is put there the same way the rock is: by someone's use of directoral power.

Edited to add: I want to make sure everyone knows that I agree that it's got to be people making the action happen. The idea that gravity is an in-game construct that "makes everything fall down" and a rock is an in game construct of a hard, heavy object is, IMO, enough to say that the presence of both things will mean that if the rock doesn't fall (with no other acting force on it) the player running the SiS Setting (the GM, traditionally) will break continuity by having the rock stay there. It might happen--but to suggest that there aren't likely some basic social contract rules that say things in gravity fall down in this game (and I'm assuming a usual game with gravity and material objects) seems a bit nit-picky.

-Marco

Marco wrote:
Like I said, okay--if all in-game action is system, what about the creation of the wall itself? Because it's not mutating in game, that doesn't count? I mean, when it first appears that's considered setting but not system until it changes, again, by someone's fiat?

-Marco

In order to create a wall, yes, we have to have System. Somebody says "[let's imagine that] there's a wall." We all (eventually) agree that yes, there's a wall. System is the process by which we agree. System is interactions that really happened in the actual world. The wall becomes part of the Setting. The wall is something we picture in our heads and talk about, but that isn't really there.

Via System, we agree to change the Setting to include a wall.

Marco, are you saying that there's no difference between a) how we agree to imagine a wall and b) the imaginary wall itself?

edit: The imaginary punch is the same as the imaginary wall: are you saying that there's no difference between a) how we agree to imagine a punch and b) the imaginary punch itself?

Even the act of describing something static in more detail requires System, because every detail you add is a change to the SIS, and thus subject to negotiation. (Ron, do we disagree about this?)

-Vincent

Vincent 'lumpley' Baker wrote: Well... Isn't the difference that one (Setting) is wholly imaginary and the other (Mechanics) exists in the real world, enough? That disentangles 'em cleanly and clearly for me.

To bring this post full circle, I submit that background setting material and foreground setting material are already present in the model. Background setting is simply Color. Foreground setting is Setting. Mechanics that determine what happens in the background are mechanics for color and so on...

We're playing a game and I say "I punch through the wall." "I," the punch, and the wall are all imaginary. Otherwise we'd look somewhere and see them, right? They exist in our imaginations, nowhere else.

Maybe there are some numbers on a piece of paper in the real world. That's great! We look at them and we see that I have listed on my character sheet "Strength: 5" and the GM has listed in her notes "Wall Strength: 4." Do my character, the punch, the wall exist in the real world because of those numbers? Not at all. If they did we could look somewhere and see them.

So now the question is, do we all imagine that my character punches through the wall, or what?

Maybe we manipulate those numbers written on paper in some way. I roll 1d10+5 and the GM rolls 1d10+4, for instance. Or we straight compare. Or I roll 5 dice, and count all that come up 4+. Whatever.

Do the numbers still exist in the real world? Yep. There they are, written on paper, we can look and see them. Does my character, the punch, or the wall? Nope. Otherwise we'd look somewhere and see them.

Curve ball: the GM tells me that it hurts my character's hand! But not badly enough, she says, to change any of the numbers on my character sheet. Did it really hurt my character's hand?

If we agree that it did, it did. I'm like, "owie, dang," and I pantomime my character shaking his hand because it hurts.

Exactly what I'm saying is:

System is how we agree what happens in the game.

System coordinates three things:
A) The imaginary stuff and events in the game;
B) Real-world words, numbers, dice, or other tokens;
C) The interactions of the players.

The difference between A) the imaginary stuff and events in the game and B) the real-world tokens is that A) is imaginary stuff and events in the game and B) is real-world stuff in the real world.

The rules and stuff in the game book tell us how to coordinate A, B and C. Whether we follow them or not is up to us; either way, if we're agreeing what happens in the game, we've got a System.

Would it help if I point out that in Chess or Monopoly, the System coordinates exclusively B and C; in diceless freeform roleplaying with no character sheets, the System coordinates exclusively A and C; and in most roleplaying the System coordinates all three?

Neither A nor B are System, because System is what we do with them. System's the process by which we come to agreement about what happens, it's not the imaginary wall or the "Wall Strength: 4."

(I don't actually care whether you consider Setting to consist of parts of A plus parts of B. That is, it's fine with me if the imaginary wall is Setting and "Wall Strength: 4" is Setting too. Although, well, just let me point out further that Chess and Monopoly don't have Setting, while diceless freeform roleplaying with no character sheets does.)

-Vincent

Hiya,

I've laid out most of what I need to say in this thread already in:
Wait, what matters again? (top of third page)
Setting as part of System (long) (posts at middle and bottom of first page)

I'm not really seein' anything here that isn't covered by those points.

Best,
Ron

This thread is fascinating to me.

Because I can't understand its existance.

I literally cannot perceive of where the hang up is.


Setting and Character are the elements of the imaginary space shared by the players.

Situation is how the players perceive these elements relating to each other

Color is the tone and flavor we give to these elements to evoke emotional response in the players.

System is how the players all come to agreement on what these elements are and how they change through play.

Collectively we call the iterative process whereby these elements are established and altered Exploration.


Therefor setting is one of the elements being manipulated by system. Clearly the presence of system implies the existance of elements to be manipulated and clearly the presence of elements implies the existance of a system to manipulate them with (or else there would be no game).

Can someone explain to me why it isn't this simple?

Valamir wrote: Can someone explain to me why it isn't this simple?

Well I just screwed up on the system thing. I'd learnt before what the forge meant by system, I just forgot and thought it ment rules instead.

Some mention has been made of the difference between setting and rules, though, and I was trying to make a point on things like that. Really rules and setting are the same thing, both influence and inspire users who are managing the system.

Really, I'm pretty certain rules and setting don't deserve different names, except to make them easier to talk about with traditional language. Some written down numbers don't make rules any different, that's something you decide to do as part of system, like you might write down your lost hitpoints or remember them or use jelly beans and then eat one by mistake, etc. It's the same as the setting inspiring me to write fan fiction...the bits known as rules just inspire me to write numbers and such. Yeah, you might create something in reaction to this writing in a book...that doesn't make that writing stand out from the rest as really requiring a different name.

Spark any responce?

Noon wrote: Really rules and setting are the same thing, both influence and inspire users who are managing the system.

Really, I'm pretty certain rules and setting don't deserve different names, except to make them easier to talk about with traditional language.

lumpley wrote:
edit: The imaginary punch is the same as the imaginary wall: are you saying that there's no difference between a) how we agree to imagine a punch and b) the imaginary punch itself?

-Vincent

We have a featureless empty space. It is our SiS.

Whatever means we use to establish and agree that there is a wall present is system. The wall itself is Setting.

Whatever means we use to establish and agree that there is a guy present is system. The guy himself is Character (or potentially Setting depending on how one views PCs and NPCs).

Whatever means we use to establish and agree that the guy is standing near the wall is system. The relationship, relative position, and proximity of the guy to the wall is Situation (not very involved given the limited number of elements to work with).

Whatever means we use to establish and agree that the guy is punching the wall is system. Since the relationship between the guy and the wall has changed, the Situation has changed. Where before the situation was "man stands next to wall" now the situation is "the man standing next to the wall, punches the wall"

Whatever means we use to establish and agree on how much damage the guy did with his punch (to the wall or himself) is system. What has been altered through system is Setting, Character, and Situation. Instead of "the man standing next to the wall, punches the wall", we now have "a man with a bloody hand is standing next to a wall with a hole in it".


How is it not immediately clear that setting, system, and situation are seperate and distinct elements?

How can there be any confusion over this?


Rules, mechanics, or chapters in the game book are simply tools that we choose to use or choose not to use. These things do not limit action. They suggest limits to action which, through system, the players agree or disagree to be limited by.

If a rule gives the wall a Difficulty of 5 and provides a die mechanic whereby the guy may manage to beat this Difficulty with a punch, the only thing that has happened is that the rules have suggested a method to "establish and agree" on how the punch to the wall could be adjucated.

If the guy is a superhero we may, through system, decide to accept the suggestion and use the rule to adjucate the change in situation. If the guy is an average joe, and the wall is a bank vault and the rule just suggested that joe be allowed to punch a hole in the bank vault than we may, through system, decide to throw the suggestion out and ignore the rule as it violates our sense of how the situation should be adjucated.


As to whether the chapter on setting is similiar to the chapter on mechanics...sure. Both are suggestions by the game designer on the elements of exploration.

The world offers suggestions on where things are, what they look like, how the world functions, what different world elements are in relation to each other etc. It is saying "when you use system to establish and agree upon setting (and often Situation, and Character), here are the default answers provided by the game designer we suggest you agree to".

The mechanics chapter offers suggestions on methods to use to resolve situation. It is saying "when you have used system to agree upon a situation and you have used system to agree that the situation is about to change, here is a suggestion on a procedure to use to agree on how that change resolves"

The same exercise can be performed on the chapter on Character creation as well.

ErrathofKosh wrote:

Ah ha! Now I understand where you are coming from. From my POV, gravity is still data, it gives me the potential energy of an object at any point in space. Whether that object transfers that potential energy (in the SIS) into kinetic energy is entirely up to the system. If the unconscious assumption is that it falls, everyone says "setting!" But, what if someone asserts, "I use telekinesis to keep it up," is that then system?

So, I can see where you're coming from. But, I must disagree. :)

Jonathan

Valamir wrote:

How is it not immediately clear that setting, system, and situation are seperate and distinct elements?

[snip]

How can there be any confusion over this?

Valamir wrote:
How is it not immediately clear that setting, system, and situation are seperate and distinct elements?

Valamir wrote:
The world offers suggestions on where things are, what they look like, how the world functions, what different world elements are in relation to each other etc. It is saying "when you use system to establish and agree upon setting (and often Situation, and Character), here are the default answers provided by the game designer we suggest you agree to".

What's a world?

One thing that has emerged from this discussion which actually may be "on topic" relative to Gareth's original post is that there is a difference between two usages of the word "setting" that perhaps ought to be distinguished--exactly the same difference as existed between two distinct usages of the word "system" before we determined to distinguish these meanings by calling the one "rules". We chose to use the word "rules" for the meaning of "system" which was not one of the five elements of exploration--the real "system" is the one Vincent identified in the Lumpley Principle, and the "rules" as they appear in the book are not the system, but an authority to which we refer in determining the system.

Thus in the same way, the world description is not the setting. The setting is that which actually exists and/or is created/revealed within the shared imaginary space. We may have agreed that the contents of that world description in that book are an authoritative statement of the setting to which we will refer for setting details, but that does not make it the setting, in the sense of the elements. We are not exploring the content of the book; we are exploring the content of the shared imaginary space. The content of the book becomes part of it through system introducing it into the shared imaginary space, but it's not ever the setting itself.

The clearest example of this is the situation in which a referee makes a "mistake" in his description of the setting. He gets a distance wrong, or misremembers a direction, or misunderstands a description and so presents it in a way that is contrary to the book. The question is, what is the setting? Is it what is in the book, or what was described? If no one ever checks the book, it is what is described. If someone eventually does check the book, then system makes the determination as to whether we "correct" the shared imaginary space or leave it as it is. Some types of errors are almost always "corrected" (such as map errors in a module in which the relative positions of things is important), while other types of errors are almost never corrected (such as a missed, altered, or added encounter because the referee looked at the wrong room description and ran something from a different room). The setting exists in the shared imaginary space; that thing on paper is something else--an authoritative representation of the setting, perhaps; a description of the setting, certainly.

In any event, when we're talking about "the setting" in terms of the five elements, that's not it.

That also explains why the system numbers that appear in the setting description aren't part of the setting. The description of the wall in the setting description may say that it has a resistance of 4, but the wall itself, inside the shared imaginary space in the real setting, doesn't have that written on it. That's a system note describing how the setting interacts with other items, in the same way that the character's strength rating is a system note, and not actually the character's strength (strength is not a mathematical constant; it is represented by a mathematical constant).

That might clear up a lot of this.

--M. J. Young

Valamir wrote:
Can someone explain to me why it isn't this simple?

You'll have to provide some examples of where they get vague Gareth, because I'm not seeing any vagueness of a sort that could possibly matter.

Valamir wrote: You'll have to provide some examples of where they get vague Gareth, because I'm not seeing any vagueness of a sort that could possibly matter.

Actually, after thinking about it over night, I'm pretty sure there's a way that situation is like system.

John Kim argued (convincingly) that an AD&D game that was all politicking would be, in essence, drifted--even if all the rules were scrupulously followed. For that to be the case I think one of two things has to be true:

1. Situation is essentially just like mechanics and therefore System.
2. Games where the GM arranges situation so that certain rules that aren't wanted are excluded from play are not drifting the game.

Collary: I think contra is saying that foreground setting/situation is like System and background isn't. I could deal with that but with the caveat that one can never be sure which is which until after the game is over and we know setting element X never became important).

I'm cool either way--but if we decide that setting isn't system then I can run my all-politics-no-level-advancement-AD&D game and, hey, you can't say it's drifted.

That seems a bit odd to me.

-Marco

Well I had kinda hoped that this might serve as a way of resolving not so much some top-level identity of a given game element, so much as thinking about facilitating these transitions. So in the previous discussion where we were discussing the introduction of a little town, I was hoping to be able to draw a distinction between creating a town for colour purposes, and creating a town for setting/situaiton purposes.

I was also hoping it might be deployed in the specific local game context. As I see it, if you have a grup that is perhaps a ranger with a favoured enemy and a thief with a guild membership and a fighter with membership of a military order, then in this game those entities will be actually played, quite separately from the published setting material. Even though in that material some particular named city say was the intended default foreground location for the action, in this local game that city might be rendered Colour becuase the action is not set there.

But all that said it was only a proposition. I seem to see a distinction here but if others don't, fair enough.

But I do think that the general and specific cases become confused when we talk of setting as an undifferentiated whole. Usually, the setting for Hamlet or similar might be said to be the castle, or Denmark or something, rather than Earth, if you see what I mean. So I think that when you make a local game out of some setting material, you are selecting which elements are going to be real and present influences on the course of the action,a nd which are going to be used in that game as colour. you might in another, subsequent, local game select to emphasis diffreent elements; and even more usefully, explicit mechanisms might be built to allow characters to interact with and or own some of these elements.