I wanted to find out where I am on this in relation to general thought at the forge.

Now say in reality, I'm standing on a balcony where a vase is sitting on the ledge. I push it. The consequence is that it goes over the edge, falls and smashes.

Now same I'm roleplaying. My PC is established as being on a balcony, with a vase on the ledge. I declare my PC pushes the vase.

Is what happens a consequence of that, just like it was a consequence in the real world example?

Noon wrote: I wanted to find out where I am on this in relation to general thought at the forge.

Now say in reality, I'm standing on a balcony where a vase is sitting on the ledge. I push it. The consequence is that it goes over the edge, falls and smashes.

Now same I'm roleplaying. My PC is established as being on a balcony, with a vase on the ledge. I declare my PC pushes the vase.

Is what happens a consequence of that, just like it was a consequence in the real world example?

Warning: Rouge Storyteller interpretations on deck.

From a narrative standpoint, Consequence is what happens after that vase falls to the ground and smashes into pieces.

Was it a priceless vase that belonged to an insanely rich landowner seems unnaturally attached to the vase?

Is the vase ancient and therefore extremely valuable and the character now owes the landowner a vast fortune?

Did the vase contain the ashes of the landowner's great uncle and now the landowner wants the character dead?

Was the great uncle a half-demon and a contract between the great uncle and the landowner was the reason the landowner was insanely rich and now, as the local economy starts crashing and the crime element starts moving in to grab what they can, the landowner wants the character and all his friends dead and he doesn't care who he has to summon to get the job done?

That's what I refer to as Consequence in my games. Not so much the immediate physics based results of action, but the social reaction to those actions.

Callan,

Unless you are using some specialized definition of consequence with which I am unfamiliar, I would say that of course the vase falling and smashing on the ground was a consequence of the character knocking it off.

Could you explain why you think it might not be a consequence?

of course that assumes that the character is strong enough to push the vase off which, depending on the scale of the game, might not be possible. I remember a D20 variant where the players played rats, pigeons, squirrels and similar beasties.

Snark aside, assuming earthlike gravity and proportions have been established in the SIS, and that the vase is less durable than the surface onto which it is pushed, the push of the vase is intended to send it off the balcony just as an attack with a sword is intended to expose what's inside an orc to the light of day. In other words, it might not be: if you're still in the videogame mindset where damage is abstracted, you might not realize your character is getting orc blood on milady's tapestries nor that the vase is not the trigger of the spinning bookcase. Is this the kind of discussion you're looking for, Noon?

Here's what will happen:

All things being standard and assuming the vase falls into a paved parkinglot from at least two stories of height* (by standard, I mean: the world is represented as 'the real one'--there is gravity on this planet, the vase is described as porcelain and pushable, no one intervenes to stop it from falling, etc.)

The vase will fall and break.

How do I know this? I know this (or rather, I expect this) because if I go to a balcony and push a vase off it, I have a resonable expectation that it will break. It might surprise me: the vase (in reality) might turn out to be high-impact plastic and it might bounce--but I have an expectation that it'll break in reality.

That's what happens as an in game consequnce which is what you aksed about.

What happens in the meta-game?

The player(s) responsible for creating effect will narrate the consequence (possibly with the help of printed rules, or dice, or like solicitied input about physics or something). Traditionally the GM is the adjudicator.

The GM as the narrator might decide not to have it break. The GM might ret-con the vase to be indestructable, countermand gravity, or have some other event happen.

When the GM introduces an un-expected result the GM risks taking a role similar to that of an "unreliable narrator" in fiction. This has certain consequences for static writing but has, IME, far, far deeper consequences for RPG's.

Because the GM is all five senses of the characters--because the GM is, in effect, everything else in the world, when the GM becomes unreliable (and this is the perception of the players) then there are, IME, likely to be trust issues.

A potentially non-dysfunctional example:
GM: "It tumbles through the air--and then hits the pavement and BOUNCES! The pavement reverberates like a rubber platform!"
Player: "I knew it! We're in virtual-reality!"

In this case the GM's un-expected result gives the player more context about the world. The Player has confidence that cause-and-effect are still operational and their actions still matter.

Here are two other cases I see as important to examine:

GM "If you break that vase the story will be ruined."
Player: "I push it anyway."
GM: "That'll ruin the game."
Player: "I don't care."
GM: "The vase bounces. You suddenly have a fatal heart attack. Since you're no longer playing, please go get me a coke--and leave it closed."

Possible, sure. Functional? I don't think so.

I consider this equally dysfunctional:

GM: "The vase shatters."
Player: "That just ruined the story!"
GM: "Eh? What did?"
Player: "The vase breaking."
GM: "You pushed it. What did you expect?"
Player: "I expected it to land in the grass and not break."
GM: "It's a seven story fall. People who land in the grass break and people aren't brittle."
Player: "People aren't as hard as porceline."
GM: "Let's try it for real from the second story of the house. We'll use your wife's vase since you're sure it won't break."
Player: "Sod off."

Here I have introduced some plausible uncertainty of the outcome (the vase, perhaps, lands in grass). I've also set the height at 7-stories. If it was tipped off a ground floor window into the grass the question becomes much harder to answer from a 'realistic expectations' standpoint.

But as the gray area becomes bigger (a glass of water falls on the carpet--does it break?) the use of things like randomizers become more prevalent as an 'objectifying' way of making the call.

When there are reasonable expectations in play (and that's a personal judgement call on everyone's part--a personal one--but, I think, a valuable standard nontheless) then a decision not to follow them either needs to be stated up front ("You will NOT derail the plot--the plot force is ultimate in this game") or it's very potentially dysfunctional and, IMO, a bad idea if done for reasons other than precieved cause-and-effect.

One more thing: a player who takes things personally might be a reason to ensure that the events narrated conform to their expectations above those of other players. I recognize that sometimes this may be the best-case for decision making--but I think it's often a dysfunctional case.

-Marco
* If you decide that "ahh, we were on the elemental plane of air--and it's swept away by the wind", then, yes, I agree that's more reasonable. I also consider that an intentionally misleading way of framing the question.

Noon wrote: Is what happens a consequence of that, just like it was a consequence in the real world example?

Hi,

Consequence implies causal connection. In the shared imagined space, the players (through system) decide the causal connection. If they accept that, in the context in which the imaginary vase was dropped it should hit the ground and smash, then it does.

In the shared imagined space, consequence is what the player's accept - it's not inevitable. What they choose to accept will vary based on their personal investment in the outcome and their creative agendas. It's perfectly possible for someone to drop a vase, have it declared smashed, then have someone else use system to say "Wait a minute - I catch it before it hits!" The vase suddenly becomes unsmashed.

Alan wrote: In the shared imagined space, consequence is what the player's accept - it's not inevitable. What they choose to accept will vary based on their personal investment in the outcome and their creative agendas. It's perfectly possible for someone to drop a vase, have it declared smashed, then have someone else use system to say "Wait a minute - I catch it before it hits!" The vase suddenly becomes unsmashed.

John Kim wrote: In an RPG, there is actually a person to hold responsible for gravity -- such as the GM in many games. Suppose I am a player and I say that my character pushes the vase off. However, I don't narrate that it falls and smashes -- in the system we're using, it's up to the GM to determine that. Suppose the GM does so. Is it a "consequence" of my having pushed it? I would say so, but that's a matter of individual semantics.

Alan wrote: Consequence inside the RPG fantasy is the result of how the players assign meaning to the event and interpret it. Hence consequence is formed by creative agenda.

Alan wrote: It just struck me that many forms of simulationist play (virtualism, for example) like to keep this real-world fact behind a curtain. This supports the illusion that things inside the fantasy are happening solely as a result of other things in the fantasy.

Noon wrote: Is what happens a consequence of that, just like it was a consequence in the real world example?

John Kim wrote: In an RPG, there is actually a person to hold responsible for gravity -- such as the GM in many games. Suppose I am a player and I say that my character pushes the vase off. However, I don't narrate that it falls and smashes -- in the system we're using, it's up to the GM to determine that. Suppose the GM does so. Is it a "consequence" of my having pushed it?

Marco wrote:

Alan wrote: It just struck me that many forms of simulationist play (virtualism, for example) like to keep this real-world fact behind a curtain. This supports the illusion that things inside the fantasy are happening solely as a result of other things in the fantasy.

Am I to understand it that in Gamist play vases don't break if pushed off a ledge or that I have no reasonable expectation of things behaving as they do in the real world even on a basic level of letting something go and having it fall?

Alan wrote: The vase is merely an example. It happens to be an example where, most of the time, most RPG players will agree that a certain result occures. This does not invalidate the fact that the result is decided by the players, not some unstoppable law of consequence.

Now, in fact, it is possible that in gamist play, or in any creative agenda, the vase won't break. I recall an old school D&D game where some pyromaniac player was throwing around fire bombs - the GMs response was to add a break chance. If the dice said the glass didn't break, the players accepted that it did not.

Noon wrote: Now same I'm roleplaying. My PC is established as being on a balcony, with a vase on the ledge. I declare my PC pushes the vase.

Is what happens a consequence of that, just like it was a consequence in the real world example?

Let's modify the thought experiment:

In the shared fantasy, a character throws the vase off the balcony. Then, before the players can confirm that it falls, the doorbell rings in the real world. It's the pizza! Players eat pizza. One of them has a great idea for a character action. When the players get back to the game, they forget completely to address the vase and carry on with the new, exciting idea.

What happened to the vase?

All right, I completely missed the point of the initial question, it would seem. I was focusing on the larger issues of narration and didn't focus in enough. I resolved to watch the thread play out and reserve judgment on the whether it was worthwhile to discuss whether the players are responsible for gravity in a game, or the Storyteller is.

What happened to the vase?

Alan wrote: What happened to the vase?

Bill_White wrote: Ah! So it's a case of Schroedinger's vase: It's in a state of uncertainty (narrative rather than quantum). The vase is neither broken nor whole until somebody attempts to observe the state of the vase.

Bill_White wrote: The discussion of "consequence" here has invoked the concept of responsibility; oddly enough, I once co-wrote a paper about something called "relational responsibility." We noted that "responsibility" as a concept includes notions of (1) causal responsibility, in which volition is less important than law-like behavior ("The vase got smashed because nothing was holding it up anymore"); (2) moral responsibility or legal accountability, in which volition matters ("You'll pay for that vase you smashed!" -- "But it was an accident!"); and (3) practical responsibility, which suggests an awareness of the link between individual behavior and the potential consequences ("He wouldn't smash a vase; he's a responsible person").

Bill_White wrote: So it's a case of Schroedinger's vase: It's in a state of uncertainty (narrative rather than quantum). The vase is neither broken nor whole until somebody attempts to observe the state of the vase.

What happened to the vase?

Well: it depends on what context you ask from. If an NPC asks your PC in game whether their vase is in one piece or not, will your character honestly answer that they have no idea--that it's some kind of quantum indeterminency? I doubt it.

If you ask from a game-theory stand-point then one can say that there was no adjudication concerning the vase.

But the quesiton isn't what adjudication was made concering the vase--the question was "what happened to it?" This means that the speaker has already let out the idea that "there is no vase" or that "the vase exists as a static construct to which nothing can truly be said to 'happen.'"--no, we've got the whole question in context with the language (unless the speaker is trying to be misleading).

If I ask what happened to a character in a western you saw get shot and fall off a roof (and you don't think I'm trying to trap you--I ask honestly because I don't remember) most people will answer "he got shot and died."

Well, he didn't. He appeared to get shot and he fell. Maybe he was cowardly and faked taking a hit and jumped and lived on with a broken leg.

Sure, could've happened. But no one thinks about it that way--why? Because we have a shared imaginary space with the movie and assume that what's portrayed, in light of no good reason to think otherwise, is essentially what seemed likely given the internal logic of the narrative.

So when asked "what happened to that guy on the roof" you make some sort of call.

Maybe you don't. Maybe you watch movies and think about nothing but the narrative structure, the actor's expressions, the special effects. Maybe your first reaction to the question would be to tell the guy who saw the movie "Nothing happened to the character--it was indeterminate--you just create this illusion that the events on the screen represented some reality and your question shows that you're trying to preserve that illusion."

But that's, IMO, pretty rare--and fairly extreme (a person who is wnwilling to discuss a fictional narrative in its own context?)

But we're all ready to do it here. I think that's disingunious. I don't think too many people here run games where things suddenly fall upwards for no internal-cause reason.

So I'm gonna say The vase broke. And then I'm gonna amend that: "probably."

Why?

If you are running a detective game and the victim is found with a bullet in him and the revolver is found with three shots fired and the PC asks "are there any other bullet holes in the walls or floor" and you have never considred this--the numbers were just randomly picked--then you have a delimia.

1. If you decided originally that the body was shot and killed in the room it was found and the killer didn't do any other shooting then you have to account for the other two bullets. Although you do create them as an act of will, in order to preserve your internal imaginary world you have little choice in this matter.*

2. If you had no idea where the victim was killed or what happened and simply make up choices as you go along then you run a risk of creating paradoxical situations--and, furthermore, the players, once they catch on, will realize that trying to gain information about the game world from you is pointless--it's all just random.

3. If you decide, at the moment the question is asked, that the body was shot by the PC's best friend somewhere else, moved, and that the clever PC has discovered a vital clue then you have advanced drama--but when the player asks the next question, it had better be internally consistent with your decided upon scenario or you are drifting back into area 2.

So I would say that, the vase is likely broken since I hope the game is being run with enough consistency that my expectation of reality would be validated should someone ever check.

I'd asked an unanswered question about who a poster would hold responsible for pushing the vase off the balcony. I think that's an important area of discussion. Anyone?

-Marco
* arguing that the bullets might be unrecoverable is missing the point as is inventing some clever scenario where the bullets are somehow disposed of. If you are making up background on the fly then you aren't preserving any internal imaginary space.

I must say that on any other forum on the whole wide internet I'd have taken such a thread as a troll.

I must also say that I'm very impressed.

Sorry for disturbing, I just had to say it!

Bill_White wrote:
The discussion of "consequence" here has invoked the concept of responsibility; oddly enough, I once co-wrote a paper about something called "relational responsibility." We noted that "responsibility" as a concept includes notions of (1) causal responsibility, in which volition is less important than law-like behavior ("The vase got smashed because nothing was holding it up anymore"); (2) moral responsibility or legal accountability, in which volition matters ("You'll pay for that vase you smashed!" -- "But it was an accident!"); and (3) practical responsibility, which suggests an awareness of the link between individual behavior and the potential consequences ("He wouldn't smash a vase; he's a responsible person").

Marco wrote: If an NPC asks your PC in game whether their vase is in one piece or not, will your character honestly answer that they have no idea--that it's some kind of quantum indeterminency? I doubt it.

Wow. Okay. Pretty damn varied.

As the original poster, I'm going to extend the question.

In the real world, I do the following:
1. I push the vase.
2.

So what happens in #2? Can you apply certain principles to determine the outcome (given all the data present in the real world event)?

Now, in the game...this time I'm going to leave it blank. For simplicities sake, we'll assume it's some physical action (and hopefully such an assumption doesn't have flaws that lead to unproductive posts). Obviously this physical action can include many things.

1. I declare this action.
2.

So what happens in #2? What happens next. Can you apply certain principles to determine the outcome?

If you can, what does your principle consist of? Can it be relied upon like the previous real world principle to always apply? And always apply consistantly, like the real world principle will?

If the answer is 'to a certain degree', is it a principle, or belief most people think in a similar way and thus will react in a certain way?

Is RL physical consequence and the idea that people will react in a recurring way, interchangable? And by being interchangable and essentially the same, the game world has consequence that are just like real world consequence?

Andrew Morris wrote:
No, of course not. For the character, he or she is free to assume whatever result and answer appropriately. The character's belief is a creation of the player, and only happens when the player imagines it, just the same as the vase (or any other element of the game world) exists only when the players imagine it. I just don't see any problem with something not existing and at the same time having a fictional character believe it exists.

As to who's responsible for the vase falling, it depends who's asking. If a character is asking, then the character who knocked it off is responsible. If a player is aksing, then the player who's character knocked it off is responsible. That's my take anyway.

Marco wrote: Well: it depends on what context you ask from. If an NPC asks your PC in game whether their vase is in one piece or not, will your character honestly answer that they have no idea--that it's some kind of quantum indeterminancy? I doubt it.

Marco wrote: In the case where your character (in game) saw the vase get pushed off the balcony what would you choose to have your character believe? Would your character believe it broke?

Bill_White wrote:
Sure. But that's not the same thing as what you're trying to convince us of, which seems to be that the vase is really broken. Listen: There is no spoon.

Bill

Marco --

I think I get where you're coming from, and I largely agree. Specifically:

Marco wrote: I'm saying that a player (and character if you choose to go that way) has a reasonable expectation of the adjudication being that the vase is broken. This is as opposed to saying "Since gravity, physics, and everything else is totally up in the air in this reality I have no expectation of anything."

Marco wrote: If the vase shows up and and the pc's say (with a gasp of shock!) "we saw it thrown from the balcony!!" and the GM goes "Bill, this is an RPG--Gravity doesn't work unless I say it does, you idiot!" I wouldn't think you'd go "yeah, that's true."

Noon wrote: In the real world, I do the following:
1. I push the vase.
2.

So what happens in #2? Can you apply certain principles to determine the outcome (given all the data present in the real world event)?

Now, in the game...this time I'm going to leave it blank. For simplicities sake, we'll assume it's some physical action (and hopefully such an assumption doesn't have flaws that lead to unproductive posts). Obviously this physical action can include many things.

1. I declare this action.
2.

Bill_White wrote:
This basically agrees with your position. I think we disagree about the extraordinary case in which everybody forgets about the vase, but since it's difficult to imagine a circumstance in which that would actually happen in play, I can't get too worked up about it.

Bill

It seems to me that everyone agrees that when a vase is thrown from the balcony, the SIS must now include either a broken vase, an "exception" of some sort, or an ambiguity that could resolve to either, based on later evidence. What I'm not sure people agree on is what evidence (for the players) proves or disproves the existence of an exception.

So, follow-up question for people:

If a vase goes over the balcony, then I...

• (a) Assume my character hears a crash a few seconds later unless specifically told otherwise• (b) Assume my character does not hear a crash unless told otherwise• (c) Assume nothing, and ask whether I hear a crash.• (d) Something else


EDIT: Crossposted with Marco... to link more directly to current emphasis... the GM clearly has some authority over exceptions. So he is equally responsible for the vase breaking if people commonly assume (b) or (c) but not if they assume (a).

Honestly, I think in the real world, if we're going to make blanket assumptions. we can only assume that the answer will vary depending on the the group's dynamic.

We cannot come up with a definitive answer, as so many factors come to play around the table. How important to the story is the vase? How much do the players trust the storyteller? Who's the biggest influence on the SIS?

I've played with groups where the players work together to generate the SIS, and I just guide them. I've played with groups where I'm in nearly complete control of the SIS, with players asking questions about the most minute parts of the experience. And this is all with the same system.

Noon wrote: 1. I declare this action.
2.

So what happens in #2? What happens next. Can you apply certain principles to determine the outcome?

Forge Glossary wrote:
Lumpley Principle

System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play.

Now we're getting somewhere. We use "System" to tell us what happens to the vase...which, if we buy Lumpley's Principle, directly suggests that how we figure out who gets to say what happens in the game world tells us what happens to the vase. The next question is "Well, how exactly does system do that?"

(And you can't just say "It depends," because it depends on something)

What it depends on, of course, is how the system apportions responsibility in the IIEE (Intent, Initiation, Execution, Effect) cycle.

Let's go back up on the balcony. Noon is the player, Midnight is his character, and I'm the GM.

Bill: "There's a vase on the railing of the balcony."
Noon: "I push it off."
Bill: "Roll a d20."
Noon: "I rolled a 1. What happens to the vase?"

My system will tell me which of these is an appropriate response:

(1) INTERVENTION AT THE LEVEL OF INTENTION

Bill: "The vase is sitting there on the railing."
Noon: "Huh?"
Bill: "It's too beautiful. Midnight wants to keep it."

(2) INTERVENTION AT THE LEVEL OF INITIATIVE

Bill: "Before you can move, a Vase Guardian appears and puts you in a full-nelson. It throws you off the balcony."
Noon: "If we forget about this, do I ever hit the ground?"

(3) INTERVENTION AT THE LEVEL OF EXECUTION

Bill: "You miss. In fact, you miss so badly you hurl yourself off the balcony by accident."
Noon: "Well, when I get back up to the balcony, can I try again?"

(4) INTERVENTION AT THE LEVEL OF EFFECT

Bill: "The vase falls and hit the ground, but it doesn't break."
Noon: "Huh?"
Bill: "It made its save vs. breaking."

My point is that a more precise answer is possible than, "It depends on the group." We can ask, "How does the system hand out the ability to intervene in the player's IIEE, and to counter other people's interventions?" And, once we know the answer, we can say (for our particular game), whether or not that's the way we want to do it.

TonyLB wrote: So he is equally responsible for the vase breaking if people commonly assume (b) or (c) but not if they assume (a).

So the current arguement is, is that if I declare I push the vase and then look to my GM for a reaction...

The result is so predictable that the GM's responce is a consequence of that. Or looking at it from further out, the Systems responce is a consequence of that.


Keep in mind I'm not going to say that magic becomes involved, or some mysterious factor comes in. In fact it's all just like the RL world example. In fact, to confirm that lets assume the GM says "The vase falls and breaks on the ground".

This is a consequence of my declaration.


No, that is an illusion, like a magicians trick. A magician can produce 'consequences' from certain actions. They aren't true consequences though. He did perform actions, and the results seen are the consequences of them. But these actions aren't seen by the audience, and the actions he did show to the audience have nothing to do with the consequence produced.

My declaring that I push the vase and the GM declaring it broke? They are not associated in the least. And by association, and be careful to read this part without skimming, I mean associated like pushing a vase in real life and its associated shattering.

Expecting the GM to be plausible? No, that doesn't link the two at all. It's the trigger for a number of hidden actions which aren't anything at all like the actions of a vase tipping and falling.

I'd go into more detail, but I don't want to second guess the following posts question angles, which usually don't cover what I thought they would.

Marco: Of my (a), (b) and (c) the only one where the vase can break without direct GM intervention is (a).

So no, I don't equally direct my ire at the GM in the case that the narration happens by default (i.e. if he doesn't specifically create an exception there is a consensus understanding that the logical consequence holds). It's a sin of omission, not one of commission, and that makes a difference on a social level.

I've been trying to figure out the context of this thread. I'm not saying that there isn't a context, or an invalid one, just that there is an unarticulated context and this lack of articulation is causing confusion.

What I believe the original point to be is that 'causation' is a meaningless concept is RPGs. RPGs are rituals and the SIS is a convienient fiction that has no existance and hence no grounds for causation.

A classic principle of philopsophy is that theories will often have a version that is trivally true, but the 'trivial trueness' also makes the theory profoundly uninteresting. The standard example is Hedonism, the philosophy that everybody acts for their own pleasure. Hedonism has trouble explaining people that suffer for others, say in wartime. The 'trivially true' version of Hedonism says that when you take all of their desires and pleasures together, soldiers in wartime still get more pleasure from being in combat than they would being at home. You can't argue with logic like that; I mean literally, it turn the theory into a tautology and the act of making it true makes it a basically meaningless statement about the human condition. The interesting version of Hedonism, that people should act for their own pleasure, is probably false but at least worth talking about.

I think we have a similar situation here. It is trivially true that causation is meaningless in RPGs. It's also boring. It's much more interesting to allow for causation to exist in SIS, and agrue about the nature of that causation.

--eef, who is planing on chanting "There is no vase, there is no vase ..." the next time my character needs to do something really crazy.

TonyLB wrote: Marco: Of my (a), (b) and (c) the only one where the vase can break without direct GM intervention is (a).

So no, I don't equally direct my ire at the GM in the case that the narration happens by default (i.e. if he doesn't specifically create an exception there is a consensus understanding that the logical consequence holds). It's a sin of omission, not one of commission, and that makes a difference on a social level.

Your character pushes the vase off the third floor balcony toward the lawn. Given the distance and the surface, maybe it wouldn't break, and maybe if it did break you wouldn't know it. I'm the referee; I don't say anything more about the vase, but I'm about to have a non-player character ask you, in a rather angry voice, why you did that--when the doorbell rings.

I pay the pizza guy, we split up the pizza, and then after the usual disruption we get back to the game, but I forget about the interaction over the vase. You do something else, have your character leave the area, and then suddenly you say, "By the way, what happened to the vase?"

I haven't a clue. The fact is, though, that at this moment I don't need to know. There's no way your character can find out what happened to the vase, and no particular reason for me to tell you what happened to the vase, so I don't have to make that decision.

I will probably reply, "How would you know?"

I actually do this all the time when I run games. I do it when I do know the answer to the question, but sometimes I do it when there has been no reason for me to worry about that question.

Next session, a month later real time and a week later game time, you return to the house. One of us remembers that vase. Maybe you say something about it; maybe I just remember it. At that moment, I can roll the dice or use whatever mechanics I think apply to the situation, or I can make the decision--and at that moment it is determined that last month, a week ago in the game world, the vase broke. In one sense, at the moment I made the decision, it broke in the past.

Schroedinger's Cat.

In The Mouse That Roared there is a moment when the Q-bomb, capable of clearing most of Europe if it detonates, starts to make noise, and the person holding it tosses it in the air. We get this silly idea that if it hits the ground it's going to explode. Yet it keeps getting tossed around, making more and more noise, as representatives from governments all around the world in turn catch it, realize it's live, and throw it away (as if not having it in your hands when it destroys all of Europe will save you). Ultimately it is caught by someone from Grand Fenwick, and the designer of the bomb shuts it down.

If you didn't see what happened to the vase, and you didn't hear what happened to the vase, you are assuming it hit the ground and broke. It might have landed in the hedge, or been seen and caught by the gardener, or passed through the leaves of a tree to be slowed and deposited on the grass below.

Until someone with the credibility to determine what happened to the vase makes that determination, the thing has not yet happened in real time; at the moment that determination is made in real time, the thing has happened to the vase at the appropriate moment in game time, and is only now being realized within the shared imaginary space. Whether that fellow who was going to yell at you about the vase does so now, and tells you that it broke (or that you were lucky it didn't break), or whether you swing past the grounds and find shards of the broken vase, or whether you ask what happened to it and apologize for knocking it over, now is the time at which we determine what happened then. Until that determination is made, nothing happened then; once that determination is made, it retroactively defines those past events.

As far as who causes it, I think that the legal concept of intervening cause may apply. No one would say of someone thrown from a third story window that gravity killed him; we would say that the person who threw him killed him. If I shot him before he hit the ground, and he died of the gunshot, then I killed him, because I intervened. If I caught him before he hit the ground, then I intervened and prevented him from being killed. If I could have caught him but I didn't, I'm not responsible for his death--I may have let it happen, but I didn't cause it.

Your action of pushing the vase off the balcony is inherently your request to have system act upon the vase in the expected way. I as referee might try to find a means to prevent the most probable outcome from occurring, but if I fail to adjudicate it according to system I've violated your expectations. You initiated the interaction of system with the objects in the shared imagined space. If it hits the ground and smashes, it's due to your decision to involve that part of system, not due to my failure to derail the outcome.

The player is responsible.

--M. J. Young

Marco: I would say that if the expectation is that things do not happen in the game world unless and until the GM says they happen then yes I would view the GM as more culpable than if he just held veto power over a consensus view of cause and effect.

This is an emotional, not a logical, response. The GM not acting to save a vase that is globally assumed to be breaking unless otherwise described, and the GM affirming the players intent explicitlyfeel like different situations, to me.

TonyLB wrote: Marco: I would say that if the expectation is that things do not happen in the game world unless and until the GM says they happen then yes I would view the GM as more culpable than if he just held veto power over a consensus view of cause and effect.

TonyLB wrote: Marco: I would say that if the expectation is that things do not happen in the game world unless and until the GM says they happen then yes I would view the GM as more culpable than if he just held veto power over a consensus view of cause and effect.

Noon wrote: So the current argument is, is that if I declare I push the vase and then look to my GM for a reaction...[snip]...lets assume the GM says "The vase falls and breaks on the ground". This is a consequence of my declaration.

Noon wrote: No, that is an illusion, like a magician's trick. A magician can produce 'consequences' from certain actions. They aren't true consequences though. He did perform actions, and the results seen are the consequences of them. But these actions aren't seen by the audience, and the actions he did show to the audience have nothing to do with the consequence produced.

I wrote: Bill: "There's a vase on the railing of the balcony."
Noon: "I push it off."
Bill: "Roll a d20."
Noon: "I rolled a 1. What happens to the vase?"

My system will tell me which of these is an appropriate response:

Tetsuki wrote: BTW, how does this fit in with G/N/S, CA, Social Contract etc? Please help the newbie!

Bill_White wrote:
You have to remember what Plato once said: Language isn't magic. Asking you to pass the salt isn't like casting a "create salt" spell. In the latter, I get the salt because I say the words correctly. It's only because there is a social context in which saying "Pass the salt, please" has meaning and a common-sense reaction that I can expect it to be more-or-less effective.

Similarly, saying "I push the vase" is consequential in exactly the same way: The effects are jointly constructed by participants, mediated by "system" (rules for manipulating language) and indexed to common-sense expectations about how the world works.

Bill

Like most threads, this is twisting away from the original focus.

There seems to be an expectation that other people will share one's way of thought. So much so, in fact, it'll be just like a real world principle, which is the same wherever you go.

People want to just assume the synchronisation occurs and thus they can move on to assuming it is now essentially the same as a consequence.

The thing is, the RL salt passing example is where readers should be able to see this:

Let me put it this way: Imagine we're sitting at a table, and I ask you to pass the salt, and you do it. In what sense is your salt passage not a consequence of my request? And how is that different from, in a game, you telling me that you're going to push the vase off the balcony?

Noon wrote:
Like most threads, this is twisting away from the original focus.

No, it's twisting away. It's pursuing the idea that the GM or other user wouldn't say something silly, they'd never do that thus an assertion will have a reliable consequence in much the same way it does in reality. The twist then comes when posters decide this is established, deciding to move on and work out the details of this idea that's been presented.

However, this 'reliable consequence' relies on blame for a bad call or such, to weed out nonsense and that means your left with something that makes sense.

Which is supposed to make the consequence as consistant as the governing blame (or whatever weeding method suggested).

Blame or responsibilty...these are just more decisions people make in what they assert (about what someone else did), just as others choice of what to narrate for a consequence is another descision. Arbitrary descisions (blame) governing arbitrary descisions (consequence), doesn't create a concrete mechanism for the vase always falling and smashing. If the vase is falling and smashing it isn't because "it'd be stupid if it didn't". That "It'd be stupid" is just one assertion among many. It isn't a mechanism that's used to produce the smashed vase result, it's just one of many inputs to another mechanism entirely.

But were twisting away from that, establishing 'common sense' and blame as the control mechanism and then moving on to work out the problems. I think there are problems because it's a false assumption.

Noon wrote: The real life vase falls as a consequence.
The game world vase might fall because a descision was made.

Noon wrote: No, it's twisting away. It's pursuing the idea that the GM or other user wouldn't say something silly, they'd never do that thus an assertion will have a reliable consequence in much the same way it does in reality.

Noon wrote: But we're twisting away from that, establishing 'common sense' and blame as the control mechanism and then moving on to work out the problems. I think there are problems because it's a false assumption.

Noon wrote: No, it's twisting away. It's pursuing the idea that the GM or other user wouldn't say something silly, they'd never do that thus an assertion will have a reliable consequence in much the same way it does in reality. The twist then comes when posters decide this is established, deciding to move on and work out the details of this idea that's been presented.

However, this 'reliable consequence' relies on blame for a bad call or such, to weed out nonsense and that means your left with something that makes sense.

Given that we have agreed to a real-world physics governing shared imagined space object interactions:

I see the vase sitting on the stone railing of the balcony, and strike it with my ten pound war hammer.

If the vase breaks, it is my fault; I initiated the action which calls system into play resulting in breakage of the vase.

If the vase does not break, it is the referee's fault; he interrupted the natural flow of system with some added action or information which prevented the strike of the hammer from breaking the vase.

Caveat: this has been simplified by removing the questions of whether I must roll to hit the vase and whether the vase may save versus crushing blow if I succeed.

If I hit the vase, I am not responsible if it does not break, because I did what I could to break it. If the referee does not prevent it from breaking, he is not responsible for it having broken, because he did not call the system into play to bring the change in state to the vase.

Responsibility is divided precisely because we've agreed in advance to certain functions of the system within the shared imagined space, and if someone acts to put those functions in play they are responsible for having done so. The system will then be engaged by the agreement of all players together in the destruction of the vase, unless one of them, such as the referee, intervenes in some way. That intervention is a distinct action which initiates system in a new way to save the vase.

The final condition of the vase is consequent to the action of system upon it. The individual who initiated the action of system is responsible for that consequence.

--M. J. Young

After reading all this, I would have to suggest that the question of what real world social/interactive/creative mechanisms are "responsible" for the consequences of pushing a vase becomes overtly relevant only in games which do not attempt to mimic real world physics in easily examined situations.

In a game which attempts to mimic real world physics, if I want to argue with my game master that a vase will fall if I push it, I can push a plastic vase from the table. We all watch it fall; we all know that the physics of the real world and the physics of the game world are supposed to be as identical as we can manage within gaming; so we know it will fall. Since the "question" is so easily resolved in this specific situation, it becomes moot.

However, if my character pushes a vase off a ledge in a near-zero-gravity situation in an SF campaign, even if the SF campaign is intended to mimic real world physics, we can't easily test out the effects. So it becomes a matter of discussion. In some groups, it becomes a matter of some players googling up zero-G experiments while the local physics pimp pulls out his old grad school physics textbooks and the game master pulls out her hair strand by strand while waiting for the game to restart.

(Of course, if no one can imagine any reason why anyone should care about the consequences of that particular vase being pushed at that particular time by that particular character, then the question becomes irrelevant, and any player who wants to pursue it is usually asked to save his onanism for his alone times so that the rest of us can get on with the game.)

In a surreal game, such as when the player characters are adventuring through a dream reality of erratic physics, or when everyone is playing high level WoD mages whose subconscious impulses have begun shaping reality around them, the question of what and/or who determines the consequences of a player's character pushing a vase off a ledge becomes relevant.

In such cases, it is usually the game master : we hold the game master responsible for the verisimilitudinous continuity and regularity of the imagined reality into which he or she has invited us, and if he or she continually fails to enable us to suspend disbelief, we usually find a new game master.

Of course, the important thing to remember is that the player's character pushes that imagined vase off that imagined ledge; the player can never push that vase off because there is no vase in the real world (except in LARPs, sometimes)!

EDIT:

M. J. Young wrote: If I hit the vase, I am not responsible if it does not break, because I did what I could to break it. If the referee does not prevent it from breaking, he is not responsible for it having broken, because he did not call the system into play to bring the change in state to the vase.

Responsibility is divided precisely because we've agreed in advance to certain functions of the system within the shared imagined space, and if someone acts to put those functions in play they are responsible for having done so. The system will then be engaged by the agreement of all players together in the destruction of the vase, unless one of them, such as the referee, intervenes in some way. That intervention is a distinct action which initiates system in a new way to save the vase.

The final condition of the vase is consequent to the action of system upon it. The individual who initiated the action of system is responsible for that consequence.

Doctor Xero wrote: ...verisimilitudinous continuity...

Let me put it this way: Imagine we're sitting at a table, and I ask you to pass the salt, and you do it. In what sense is your salt passage not a consequence of my request? And how is that different from, in a game, you telling me that you're going to push the vase off the balcony?

I've suggested it's like any other language use: our utterances are propositions that map onto to a cognitive model of "the world" (real- or game-) and which are "adjudicated" through a set of rules for symbolic manipulation ("language" or System).

Noon wrote:
Hi Marco,

No, 'finding fault' is just a reward method...well, punishment system (lack of reward). It's just one punishment along side many other punishments and rewards being employed.

As I said above and basically by the example itself, I wanted an example with a clear cut result. Because it's to identify that the causality that sense suggests, isn't actually present. It's because people use the same method of thought/system to figure out what happened, because there is either a reward for doing so or punishment for not doing so. This is like what your saying, but your just mentioning one type of punishment (making the game silly), and isn't automatically bigger than any other punishment or reward that may come into play.

An example might be the old D&D jump off a 100 foot cliff to avoid the killer bad guy. Quite silly, but you live rather than die at the bad guys hands which = big reward. Bigger than the punishment stick for sillyness.

If you assume fault or sillyness is the biggest punishment, then you might find what you've designed to produce perverse results in someone elses hands, because of your blind spot. The blind spot being the thought that they will think not being silly is enough of a reward to outrank being killed.

Responsibility, etc? They're just more sticks and carrots. They wont tell you what happens to the vase...by themselves. Once all sticks and carrots present are added up (by whatever means), that will tell you what happens.

Noon wrote:

Let me put it this way: Imagine we're sitting at a table, and I ask you to pass the salt, and you do it. In what sense is your salt passage not a consequence of my request? And how is that different from, in a game, you telling me that you're going to push the vase off the balcony?

Even in the way you ment 'consequence' I still don't agree. Someone else made a descision to pass it to you, that's what was to be understood from the variable responces (to the request) I listed. It's so it can be understood it's a descision on the other persons part. It's not something you did, it's something they did. They may have made a descision based on something you said (your request), but that's no reason to frame it as a consequence of what you did.

What were looking at here is the illusion we use in every day life for practical purposes. For example, if I buy some milk and hand over some money, I expect change. I take it for granted that it WILL be handed over.

I have to address the issue from the POV of how it would happen in a game if I were GM. IF a player pushed the vase off the balcony and I said "it bounces back up again, it was a rubber vase" then I might expect the player to respond saying "Oh, I won't do it then" and there might be an exchange along the lines of "..but you didn't know it was rubber" and then there might be some agreement about how accurately a rubber vase ight represent a ceramic one and some agreement would be reached on that. THEN, the players would be wanting to know why the vase was rubber, was it normal in this galaxy, if it were normal it would not have been pushed, and so on as I guess what we call the imaginary space is shared between the participants. So questions from the players to establish an agreed reality but also, less immediately, a GM response depending on the situation. To me, as GM, it would be impossible for a player to have his character push a vase off a balcony for no reason. The reason might be crazy (he might be a crackpot!) but it must make some sort of sense. The most Gamist one might be to test out the effect of gravity, or see how much damage a vase does, or how accurately it can be pushed. From a Narrative angle, as GM the vase does not get pushed without narrative consequence, just as a gun in scene 1 of a play will inevitably get used later on in a play. The consequence will be a story: whether vengeance of the vase-makers, a hidden treasure discovered, the death of a passerby crushed by a deadly vase, or just a large bill from the hotel balcony owner.

I wandered off my point a bit, which was that the result is less clear cut, and if there is a dispute on the how and whys of the event they are agreed upon by mutual consent.

Keith Nellist

M. J. Young wrote:
Next session, a month later real time and a week later game time, you return to the house. One of us remembers that vase. Maybe you say something about it; maybe I just remember it. At that moment, I can roll the dice or use whatever mechanics I think apply to the situation, or I can make the decision--and at that moment it is determined that last month, a week ago in the game world, the vase broke. In one sense, at the moment I made the decision, it broke in the past.

Schroedinger's Cat.

Noon wrote:
Still, you might ask, why is that important? In terms of playing the game or in terms of designing one? If you believe consequence rather than descision is involved? That you will engage with someone else who shares the same sort of system as you?

I'd like to find out where I am on this in relation to general thought at the forge.

DannyK wrote:
As for who is at fault -- well, I can see two levels where "fault" and "causation" operate: in character, the PC is responsible for throwing the vase off the balcony. OOC, the player is ultimately responsible for everything he says, including his character's actions. In my philosophy of gaming, the GM is not there to preserve or destroy nonexistent vases.

Quoting, I think, Bill, Callan wrote:

Let me put it this way: Imagine we're sitting at a table, and I ask you to pass the salt, and you do it. In what sense is your salt passage not a consequence of my request? And how is that different from, in a game, you telling me that you're going to push the vase off the balcony?

...Even in the way you ment 'consequence' I still don't agree. Someone else made a descision to pass it to you, that's what was to be understood from the variable responces (to the request) I listed. It's so it can be understood it's a descision on the other persons part. It's not something you did, it's something they did. They may have made a descision based on something you said (your request), but that's no reason to frame it as a consequence of what you did.

ErrathofKosh wrote:

Doctor Xero wrote: ...verisimilitudinous continuity...

Wow! :)

Noon wrote: What were looking at here is the illusion we use in every day life for practical purposes. For example, if I buy some milk and hand over some money, I expect change. I take it for granted that it WILL be handed over.

But the thing is, it's still a descision on the other persons part. They aren't a robot...there is no 'It WILL happen' involved. But we all pretend there is, so we don't have to get ready to draw swords to get our change...we can concentrate on the bigger things instead of this tiny stuff. We also hope everyone else operates on this principle...usually they do, because in real life there are certain rewards for sticking to such a system.

M. J. Young wrote: So the player character has pushed the vase off the thirty-story balcony toward the street below. I know that there's not a chance that the vase would survive impact with the street--what am I going to do, have it collide with three flocks of birds which slow its descent? It is absurd to think that the vase would not break.
---snip!--
If the referee is going to discount any efforts they make to alter the shared imagined space which they expect to have honored, they're going to find someone else to run their games so that they can have real input into what happens.

Hi Marco,

I have to admit that I don't exactly get this. My suggestion of an examination of "fault" was in the case where the vase fell and broke--how is there some sort of silliness there? Where does reward or punishment factor in?

If you (and I suspect every gamer will) hold the pusher and not the GM responsible then it suggests you (IMO, rightly) see the pusher as kind of like his character and the GM as kind of like gravity.

As I've said this several times, I don't expect you to suddenly understand what I'm trying to convey--but my question (and posed situation) has nothing to do with adjudication or invocation of system (i.e. silly outcomes). It has to do with the preception of roles and responsibilities of the GM.

When the GM introduces an un-expected result the GM risks taking a role similar to that of an "unreliable narrator" in fiction. This has certain consequences for static writing but has, IME, far, far deeper consequences for RPG's.

Because the GM is all five senses of the characters--because the GM is, in effect, everything else in the world, when the GM becomes unreliable (and this is the perception of the players) then there are, IME, likely to be trust issues.

John Kim wrote:
OK, I agree that it is an everyday expectation. I don't agree that it is an illusion. I don't think that a person is inescapably forced to hand me the salt or to give me change. I don't think any normal person does. In other words, there is no illusion here. By the same token, I don't think anyone is disagreeing about what happens in game. i.e. No one thinks that the GM is physically compelled to say that the vase breaks.

I think this is simple difference in terminology. You only consider something to be a "consequence" if it is physically absolutely certain that the result will happen. Other people use the term to mean things like getting change -- i.e. a likely result, but not a 100% physical certainty. I think we just need to use terms which distinguish these two.

Alan wrote: In the shared fantasy, a character throws the vase off the balcony. Then, before the players can confirm that it falls, the doorbell rings in the real world. It's the pizza! Players eat pizza. One of them has a great idea for a character action. When the players get back to the game, they forget completely to address the vase and carry on with the new, exciting idea.

What happened to the vase?

Noon wrote: Hi Marco,
I was refering to if it didn't break (I'll cover the fault for if it did break in a moment). If I'm your GM and your a player and you say you push the vase, how will it look if I say it doesn't break? It will look silly to you and everyone else, most likely. It'll be a minor (not major) humiliation if I don't follow up with what everyone pretty much expects. The threat of a small amount of humiliation is a punishment. Here I'm covering what I thought I read in your posts from earlier pages.

If it does break and someone asserts some sort of blame toward someone else over that, it's really just the same. Someones decided there is blame/minor humiliation/punishment for what's been said, and asserts it. People might decide to take up this idea and assert their own ideas on the matter.

Focusing on that last line, that's my point. The role and responsibilities of any user(player/GM) are not static and nailed down. Just like someone will give me change when I buy milk, they perform this responsiblity because they are rewarded for it. It isn't something they will always do regardless of everything else.

On users being like their character and GM's being like gravity, these occur if they are rewarded. The actual perception of roles, by every user present, will shape the flow of reward (or punishment).

'unreliable' and 'trust issues'. These are punishments the GM faces for giving a silly result. I can't help but read your post as if this punishment will aways outweigh any reward a different narration might give (like the vase not breaking). I keep reading your posts as if your suggesting that becoming unreliable or creating trust issues is enough of a punishment to ensure a concrete foundation to the question "What happens when I say I push the vase?" and that there is no (significant) risk of any other rewards/punishments forcing another result. Was I reading incorrectly?

No--I don't think you still understand. Try answering the question for yourself. Imagine that I pushed the vase, Joe the GM ruled it broke, and you were pissed about your imaginary vase being broken. Who are you mad at?

I know you think it's pointless and unrelated--but ask yourself: who would you blame?

You're definitely reading some judgment stuff into it that wasn't there for me. I think that if the GM is arbitrary with physical laws in what is meant to be a "realistic game" that the experience will suffer--but not in terms of social approbation in many cases.

Noon wrote:
Are you asking to establish some sense of blame being apportioned generally in a consistant way, or another reason?

Depending on what the other reason is (and I'm hoping it's another reason), I may answer this.

Not in many cases? Social approbation is all you can have (or lack), in terms of the experience being good or suffering.

I think weve found the sticking point here. There is nothing else but social feedback of reward/punishment. Give some examples of how the experience would suffer in different ways (as you mention in your quote) and I'll break it down as how it is still just social feedback.

Noon wrote:

John Kim wrote: I think this is simple difference in terminology. You only consider something to be a "consequence" if it is physically absolutely certain that the result will happen. Other people use the term to mean things like getting change -- i.e. a likely result, but not a 100% physical certainty. I think we just need to use terms which distinguish these two.

It's not just terminology, it's method. If you design a game where it rewards you for jumping off a 100 foot cliff rather than face your lethal foe, but have the expectation that users will handle it the way you would expect to handle it (not jump), you will be quite divergent from the users of your game.

Hiya Marco,

Okay, I still don't like the question. I don't see what I want as anything but what, after life experiences, I've decided. In pratical terms it could be considered arbitrary, so I can't see the point of balancing any arguement on it. That's what I think now, what do you think?

Well, we certainly have found one sticking point. There have been times in my RPG history when I've done something other players didn't especially like (pursuing a sub-plot *I* was interested in) simply because I liked it. I have seen others do the same (with functional results).

In that case my experience of the game outweighted social approbation. In those cases breaking the game--causing play to come to a halt--would've been counter to my aims so there is clearly a limit to how far I'd push that--but it points out that the social dimension is not the sole one.*

But still, rather than purely the social there's an element of craftsmanship and an element of personal commitment and, IMO, a very real social commitment to the group (if I'm going to play wonky with the laws of physicis in our imagined reality, I think I owe it to the very real people who've taken time out of their day to tell them I plan on bending or breaking what I see as a very common pilar of the social contract).

John Kim wrote:
OK, where is the disagreement over method? I agree that if you (as game designer) expect that a jump off a 100 foot cliff should be avoided, then you should include rules that make the fall produce the results that you expect. I'm looking for people who are arguing the opposite, and I'm just not seeing them. Maybe you could give me some names?

It seems to me that in the movie Rambo the hero did jump off the cliff and took the damage from the fall into the trees rather than face the guns of the enemy. Although I never saw it, I'm pretty sure that in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they jumped off a cliff, expecting to survive when they hit the water at the bottom. That sort of heroic fantasy may be exactly why the cliff survival thing is possible. It may be that the intent was to make that an option, even though it's a rough one.

On Marco's question of who gets blamed, I have an actual play example of sorts.

Years ago, when we were still playtesting Multiverser, I did a rough interface with Metamorphosis Alpha and versed Ed into it. He played for a while, and started playing with a pack of intelligent mutant wolves in an effort to get control of them for his own private army. Then he versed out, but he had some hope of returning.

My playtesting expanded, and I had Chris, Bill, and Tristan playing regularly. I decided I'd try running a gather with all three of them in Metamorphosis Alpha, so I versed Chris into the place. I mentioned it to Ed.

"If he messes with my wolves," Ed said, "I'll kill him."

This is particularly interesting to me because I'd sort of decided that these other guys weren't on the same world he'd visited, but in an identical one. I'd pretty much reset everything to where it was before he'd arrived and dropped them into it afresh. Thus in a very real sense I, as referee, had prevented Chris from doing anything at all to Ed's wolves. That clearly demonstrates that I had the power to save the wolves. However, even without anything having happened to the wolves, Ed was ready to blame Chris for whatever might happen to them springing from Chris' play. (Since Chris ultimately managed to destroy the entire habitat, Ed's fears were not entirely unjustified, but that's another issue.)

Thus it seems clear to me that players I've known perceive that the referee-adjudicated and implemented consequences of player character actions are the fault of the players whose characters performed the priming action.

Now, it would be completely different if I as the referee am controlling your non-player character sidekick, and you say, "Break that vase for me, would you?" At that point, I have to decide whether the sidekick is going to break the vase. At that point, the waters get very murky. If I break it, is it because my read of the system is that your sidekick would do this, no questions asked? If I don't break it, is it because my read is that the sidekick would balk at this? Or did I make the decision based on what I want? Is the action of your sidekick the consequence of the action of system which you initiated, or is it based on my initiation of system?

That's a much more difficult question.

However, if a player has his own character perform an action in the shared imagined space which has clear probable consequences, most players will hold that player responsible for those consequences. That indicates that most players believe the consequences spring from the initiation of system by the player, not from the resolution of system by the referee.

--M. J. Young

*snip*That sort of heroic fantasy may be exactly why the cliff survival thing is possible. It may be that the intent was to make that an option, even though it's a rough one.

Callan,
I think you are not really addressing your thread's content.

You say this:

Noon wrote:
I think we can get somewhere now. Nope, it's still social feedback. You've simply decided how much negative feedback you are willing to soak. You may have decided you can and will soak a few sighs, but if the other players start throwing dice/the game breaks, this is too much negative social feedback.

Social approbation is all you can have (or lack), in terms of the experience being good or suffering.

M. J. Young wrote: Years ago, when we were still playtesting Multiverser, I did a rough interface with Metamorphosis Alpha and versed Ed into it. He played for a while, and started playing with a pack of intelligent mutant wolves in an effort to get control of them for his own private army. Then he versed out, but he had some hope of returning.

My playtesting expanded, and I had Chris, Bill, and Tristan playing regularly. I decided I'd try running a gather with all three of them in Metamorphosis Alpha, so I versed Chris into the place. I mentioned it to Ed.

"If he messes with my wolves," Ed said, "I'll kill him."
---snip!--
Thus it seems clear to me that players I've known perceive that the referee-adjudicated and implemented consequences of player character actions are the fault of the players whose characters performed the priming action.

Doctor Xero wrote:
The unspoken rule is that the game master must run his or her NPCs, human or divine, within the continuity of the campaign. Capricious coincidences and meaningless acts of deus ex machina elicit distrust in the game master, and pretty soon, the game master has no players who will trust him or her enough to participate in any of his or her campaigns. (This fits in with Noon's assertions about the ultimate power of social approbation -- regardless of whether social approbation is an immanent or ubiquitous force, an idea which Marco disputes.)

Doctor Xero

Social approbation is all you can have (or lack), in terms of the experience being good or suffering.

The example I gave you showed me doing something for internal rewards that were greater than the negative social feedback.

In other words: despite your assertion above, the social dimension isn't all there is to the value of a an experience (where does social feedback apply to me eating ice cream or day dreaming?).

"System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play."

Callan,

That's a much better post--and it's a good deal clearer with you being explicit. I take issue with you being "indulgent." Adding multi-word bolded blocks that make all sorts of changes to the original statement strikes me as being clear--not indulgent.

But aside from that:

In your above post for example, you talk about certain play not being functional. I don't get how you read such play as being non functional without identifying this from social feedback. I mean, what else are you identifying it from...there's no scientific measurement of functional...you judge it from social feedback (unless you ignore that and then your removing yourself from the activity by doing so).

Callan wrote: At the very least, it's clear [the Lumpley Principle] doesn't include the vase breaking as a 'must have to be functional play'.

Marco wrote: So, yes: the GM can do anything--but if the GM does unexpected things with basic physics for reasons that have no obvious cause, and no real reason than 'because I say so' then I can't really imagine that being especially functional.

Marco wrote: Here is why I say it's not functional: imagine you are going to talk to another person on a telephone and you speak only English and the other person speaks only ancient Chinese.

What scientific principle would you cite to say that the conversation will be non-functional?

Noon wrote: No, I mean the social dimension is all there is available to influence someone else.

Doctor Xero wrote:
I think Noon is working from the idea that roleplaying gaming is social whereas the conversation may involve information transmission or such. If two people who don't speak the same language are trying to bond, such as when a man who speaks only English is trying to bond with his brother-in-law who speaks only Spanish, the issue of social functionality becomes relevant -- but only insofar as a shared tongue is necessary to sociality (I've been able to enjoy social time with people who barely spoke any language which I spoke).

Here is why I say it's not functional: imagine you are going to talk to another person on a telephone and you speak only English and the other person speaks only ancient Chinese.

What scientific principle would you cite to say that the conversiation will be non-functional?

I believe that on the microcosom, cause-and-effect scale you have specified where someone is trying to interact with you in a conversation and your answers are all nonsequitors, the dialog will break down.

But, ultimately, who cares?

If we agree that the vase is a groaner, where does your realization get us? And I'm not being snarky here--I'm serious: what does the fact that the GM can ... and might, do anything, even the random-and-unexpected get us?

OK, so this thread (which has baffled me) is really about a sort of a social constructivist theory of gaming. That's an interesting idea, and I'm sorry it took me 6 pages to figure this out.

Honestly, I think it's maybe worth starting a new thread to think through this: I don't think the vase example is going to get us there.

Noon wrote: The issue is, that they aren't syncronised in knowledge base. How will the situation be sorted out (if at all possible)? Social feedback is the only mechanism to sort it out (even though it can be ignored).

DannyK wrote: OK, so this thread (which has baffled me) is really about a sort of a social constructivist theory of gaming. That's an interesting idea, and I'm sorry it took me 6 pages to figure this out.

Honestly, I think it's maybe worth starting a new thread to think through this: I don't think the vase example is going to get us there.

Here's the link

Noon wrote: The starting posts point was about the idea that no matter how clear cut the apparent outcome, whatever outcome is narrated is only influuenced by social feedback. The most logical outcome (by anyones opinion) will not get used just because its the most logical...social feedback determines if what gets used.

Lumpley Principle all over again.

Guys, give yourselves and the rest of us a break. Take a while to review the thread, think of sub-topics or new starting points or whatever, and let's just call this one done.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that I'm being too arbitrary, so let me know if you simply must post again, must must must, but otherwise, thanks & g'night.

Best,
ron