I'm going to cut straight to the chase:

If you declare to a player you are pushing a vase off a balcony in game and that player then continues playing using the smashed vase as a fact, it is not because they gave crediblity to you about it falling and smashing. It's because their mind automatically drew a conclusion as to what happened next and they then gave crediblity to their own conclusions, rather than giving cred to your intent in pushing the vase.

You didn't get crediblity for your intent (for the vase to be smashed), you simply triggered conclusions to be drawn in the other players mind. The other player then gave credibility to his own conclusions.


On a side note, I feel I'm right that this is beyond credibility, in that at the Forge cred's usually refered to as being exchanged between individuals, rather than granting it to oneself. But on the other hand, I think you can draw conclusions in your head and still think "Ah, that's crap!" or "Ah, that'll just make for a crap game" and not give your own conclusions cred...so credibility is still involved...just not in the way the Forge traditionally uses the term.

Ah, but what if the player says "nope, that didn't happen. The guy reaches to push the vase, but slips on blood and hits the floor" ?

The set up of the situation (there being a vase on a balcony. It is pushed) does need cred. What doesn't need cred to be given is the falling, then smashed vase. What is imagined next in the listeners mind does not involve an exchange of cred between players.

Take this as an example: As GM, I say a HOT woman rushes up to you and tears off her clothes. I then shut up.

Now, if you play on, what are you playing from? Do you say your PC is shocked, yet interested by her nakedness, for example? Or whatever came to your mind (C'mon, it was a hot woman, something must have come to mind!)

Dude, I haven't said what happened next. And for this example I wont. Your working from your own assumption of what happens next. I didn't make a statement that she was naked underneath. You didn't, couldn't have given me cred for a statement I didn't make. You came to your own conclusion and gave yourself credibility enough for it that your now using it as a fact of play (enough to say your interested in her nakedness).

All I got cred for was "a HOT woman rushes up to you and tears off her clothes.". After that, I added no more statements and certainly didn't recieve cred for anything else.


Tony: Can you tell me if I'm going off track again?

Huh? Sorry, I was distracted by... well... errr...

Right. Fully clothed RPG theory! I think you're pretty much on track, but that the topic is close enough to familiar ground that people can easily get side-tracked into things they know well.

I suspect that Alan is gravitating to another, far more familiar, point about credibility. Yes, there are many ways that the vase on the balcony can be negotiated, at many different points and combinations. Alan, am I reading you correctly?

I gather (from PM as well as these posts) that Callan is talking about something subtly different: As he says, a player cannot grant you credibility for something that you didn't say. They can't even negotiate about whether you have that credibility. You haven't asked for any credibility. You've offered the credibility, and the fulfillment of your implication, to the other players. Yes?

I'm not sure I follow. Seems like standard old credibility granting to me.

You said you pushed the vase off of the balcony. I gave you credibility to say that.

I then envision the vase being smashed on the ground after the fall. Nobody explicitly said that, so you are concluding that it didn't involve passing credibility amongst players, that somehow I gave credibility to myself.

I don't see it that way. A vase falls off the balcony...vases are fragile, gravity accelerates things that fall, the impact with the ground smashes fragile things. These are derivatives of very basic natural laws.

Natural laws we all agreed to implicitly or explicitly when we sat down to play the game. To me this is absolutely no different than knowing that in when I roll a d20 to hit and I beat my threshold number I can make another to-hit roll to get a critical hit. That doesn't need to be explicitly granted in game. It was a basic assumption of play from the moment we all agreed to abide by the rules of d20.

Similarly the idea that a vase will smash when it hits the ground after falling from a height doesn't need to be explicitly agreed to. It is also a basic assumption of play from the moment we all agreed (usually implicitly) to abide by natural laws.

But it still very much involves you granting me credibility, because at any point later in the scene when I mentioned the smashed vase you instead could quite rightly point out that since we never made a Saving Throw vs. Crushing Blow we don't know for sure that the vase was broken. Choosing not to do that is granting me the credibility to rule the vase smashed.

This seems quite easily handled under the basics of credibility without needing to search for a more exotic explanation to me. Am I missing some additional nuance...?

I'm with Ralph. Just cuz one or more players assume something will happen in the SiS as a consequence of a prevously accepted action, doesn't mean it actually does. Someone can always insist we retcon and do that saving throw (or equivalent). Alternately, when someone then acts as if the vase were broken -- and no one challenges their assumption -- we've just giving that person credibility.

A big "me too" with Alan and Ralph, on this one. SIS is a function of the social and communicative processes of human beings ("shared imagined space"). One does not talk about "individual" SISes; that's a contradiction in terms.

Best,
Ron

Callan does have a point which is worth noting, though I suspect it's been duly noted by some already. When someone says something in a game, there are a whole host of additional implications of that statement that generally get granted credibility along with the 'literal imaginary' meaning of the statement itself. These additional implications default to:

- the players' beliefs about how things work in the real world

- the players' beliefs about how things work in the game

- the players' beliefs about how things work in other kinds of artworks relevantly similar to those in the genre of the game, etc.

It's quite striking both (a) how much a single statement actually winds up putting into the SIS and (b) how disagreements about what a statement implies for the SIS between players can go unnoticed, potentially to cause problems later.

Linguistically speaking it can seem weird to talk about 'granting' credibility to these commonly accepted implications of our statements because there's no conscious process involved with it; we accept those implications along with accepting the statement.

But in spite of that it's still, as Ralph, Alan, Ron, etc. are saying, part of the credibility-granting process. Because there can be conscious acts of agreement, disagreement, clarification, correction etc. at those very same points. An obvious example is the way that some physics/engineering nerds respond to spells in fantasy games - "introducing that much energy in that time span would cause..." "...a rock falling from that distance..." This is an attempt to get credibility granted to natural laws of this world in the fantasy world (where it's not just asshattery). On the other hand there's no need normally for anyone to consciously grant credibility to the assumption that a rock will fall when you throw it up in the world of the game, but if there's some anti-gravity magic or something than the GM will correct your unstated and un-thought assumption: "the rock just keeps going..."

But it seems to me that as long as you don't think 'granting credibility' is a conscious process which takes every single factoid of the SIS or IISs as its values, there's no real difficulty here, and nothing extra to be appreciated beyond philosophical subtleties.

Hey all,

The set up for the push of the vase requires good old credibility. Only the set up.

Ralph wrote: I don't see it that way. A vase falls off the balcony...vases are fragile, gravity accelerates things that fall, the impact with the ground smashes fragile things. These are derivatives of very basic natural laws.

Natural laws we all agreed to implicitly or explicitly when we sat down to play the game.

Alan wrote: Just cuz one or more players assume something will happen in the SiS as a consequence of a prevously accepted action, doesn't mean it actually does.

Alan wrote: Alternately, when someone then acts as if the vase were broken -- and no one challenges their assumption -- we've just giving that person credibility.

Noon wrote:

Alan wrote: Just cuz one or more players assume something will happen in the SiS as a consequence of a prevously accepted action, doesn't mean it actually does.

Yes! But what if I, as the GM, predict the conclusion they will come to, and want that?

Well, are you sure you're talking about the same issue then?

How and why the players draw their own conclusions has no bearing on the issue of credibility. But let's assume that Callan isn't talking about credibility. How players draw conclusions does have bearing on the issue of how ideas are generated and acknowledged in the mind of a player, whether as an acceptance of outside stimulus, or as an internal creation.

Yeah, I think Tony is right. I don't think you're talking about Credibility at all here. As Alan points out, there is zero bypassing of credibility that is going on in your examples.

If I draw my own conclusions about what is going on...they mean absolutely ZIP as far as the SIS is concerned. They may well form part of my Individual Imaginary Space and I may act as if my conclusions are true. But until I do something that is a direct consequence of my conclusion no credibility to that conclusion has been assigned. Only then will people either deny me (by rejecting my conclusion) or grant me (through silence or affirmation) my credibility.

At some point I declare something like "I sweep up the broken pieces of the vase". If the GM says "Ok, what do you want to do with them?" and the other players look at me expectantly, then I've just (at that moment, and not a moment before) been granted credibility to state the vase is broken. If instead the GM says "Suprisingly, the vase seems to be undamaged" and the other players are like "wow, that's one tough vase" and I say "maybe its magic" then I have not been granted credibility for my statement, but the GM has been for his.

This is absolutely bog standard traditional play where players and GM are trying to outwit each other. The player reads into the GMs description and comes to a conclusion about something (like "oooh...I bet removing the gem from the statues eye sets off a trap...probably the statue comes to life or something...") That's a conclusion just like concluding the vase broke or the woman is naked. I may well assume that I'm right. But ZERO credibility has been granted to me.


Now, if you want to talk about various techniques (such as devious psychological ploys) you can use to increase the likely hood of eventually being granted credibility (which is what it sounds like you're actually touching on to me), that would be a cool discussion. One can liken it to "leading the witness" in court, or a salesman playing the "3 yes statements in a row" game.

I sorta agree with Noon. Sorta.

1. SIS isn't real, meaning that if Joe pushes the vase and no one challenges its breaking, it is, IMO, indeterminate at worst as to whether it has entered SIS as a broken vase.

That is, if you ask, after the fact, everyone at the table if the vase broke and they all say "yes" then it entered SIS as a broken vase on the basis of Joe's push getting credibility and general expectations.

2. The case where the broken vase is challenged after the fact is an assumption clash. That's certainly *related* to granting of credibility but I don't think it's a "credibility issue" at heart (it's an 'assumption' issue).

Certainly the resolution of that would be related to credibility, but someone pointing out that there wasn't a save vs. crushing blow is, IMO, different than challenging either the laws of physics that say the vase fell or the player's statements of pushing it.

What is challenged is the statement, later, that it was broken.

Again, chances are, the state of the vase, assuming the rules-call is held as a valid point, is indeterminate until a roll is made. Thus it may well be fair to say that the broken vase entered SIS as this doesn't, IMO, retroactively invalidate the period of play wherein most of the players (or maybe all, if someone thought of the save later) had the vase held as broken.

-Marco

Alan wrote:

Noon wrote:

Alan wrote: Just cuz one or more players assume something will happen in the SiS as a consequence of a prevously accepted action, doesn't mean it actually does.

Yes! But what if I, as the GM, predict the conclusion they will come to, and want that?

Then the group is assigning credibility to the first person who acts on the assumption that the vase is broken. Silence is consent. Why the players consent -- or the fact that consent is unanimous -- has no bearing on the issue.

Valamir wrote: Now, if you want to talk about various techniques (such as devious psychological ploys) you can use to increase the likely hood of eventually being granted credibility (which is what it sounds like you're actually touching on to me), that would be a cool discussion. One can liken it to "leading the witness" in court, or a salesman playing the "3 yes statements in a row" game.

Hello,

Callan, you may need to utilize the famous Forge horse trough. The one in which people periodically go and dunk their heads.

Let me give you a for-instance ... what if you post the most brilliant, relevant, and appropriate idea imaginable. I mean, it blows the lid off of all the theory, it solves hundreds of people's problems with play, and lays groundwork for hundreds of designers.

And no one agrees with you. All sorts of people post and say, "Pooey on Callan, he's wrong." I post and say, "Oh no, it doesn't fit the theory as it stands," or something like that. You stand there in the wilderness with your lantern just burning forlornly.

You know what? You might just have to say that it's OK when that happens.

I cannot count the times I've posted stuff which garnered massive rejections, then over the next year, seemed somehow to become part of what everyone was talking about. This has happened so many times that I've given up even trying to get acknowledged for it, because the group-memory will only recall the social disagreement, even though it's incorporated what it remembers disagreeing with.

Your most stress-free, most constructive tactic at this time is to make sure that you're saying exactly what you mean to say, and to let all of the responses just wash on over you. If you feel as if you're being misjudged, misread, or misunderstood, well, all I can say is, take a number and wait for your ideas (rather than recognition of you personally) to infiltrate the culture. You'll be in good company.

Best,
Ron

Noon wrote:
'Why the players consent' isn't part of this issue/thread?

Noon wrote:

Valamir wrote: Now, if you want to talk about various techniques (such as devious psychological ploys) you can use to increase the likely hood of eventually being granted credibility (which is what it sounds like you're actually touching on to me), that would be a cool discussion. One can liken it to "leading the witness" in court, or a salesman playing the "3 yes statements in a row" game.

I have been talking about this from the begining!!

You didn't get crediblity for your intent (for the vase to be smashed), you simply triggered conclusions to be drawn in the other players mind. The other player then gave credibility to his own conclusions.

On a side note, I feel I'm right that this is beyond credibility, in that at the Forge cred's usually refered to as being exchanged between individuals, rather than granting it to oneself. But on the other hand, I think you can draw conclusions in your head and still think "Ah, that's crap!" or "Ah, that'll just make for a crap game" and not give your own conclusions cred...so credibility is still involved...just not in the way the Forge traditionally uses the term.

Hey everyone else,

Callan won't go dunk his head in the horse trough unless you guys do it too. Give the man some space.

Best,
Ron

I think I grasp what Callan is getting at, and the essential process under there is a very interesting one from this perspective.

But I take away from it a different conclusion or viewpoint, I think. What I see here is the distinction between functional roleplaying, and merely a systematic distribution of credibility. In the vase example, the GM does two things. First, he uses his own credibility to establish the vase, the railing, the push. We're all fine with this stage, it's bog-standard cred. Then he deliberately gives away the credibility for what comes next. He could assert that it smashes, it would be well within his rights; he chooses not to.

In the dysfunctional play examples, he might be doing this in order to "gotcha" players with the "real" credibility distribution. "Hah, you thought it would smash, but the true distribution of cred is that I got it, and you don't, nyah, sucka. It's fine!"

But in the functional play examples, this approaches the phenomenon good friends have of finishing each other's sentences. The GM is giving away that credibility as a sign and confirmation of trust. In the minimum (realist) case, he trusts the players to draw the appropriate conclusions from the set-up, and they demonstrate those conclusions, thus building trust and consensus about the solidity of the game world. It's a way of hiding this exchange between the words: "Ah, I get it, and in this world when you push stuff off a railing it falls down and, if fragile, breaks. I'll pick it up from there and go with it." "Right! We're on the same page." Maybe these are both true and known-true statements about the level of trust; the affirmation is still meaningful even if so. It's like saying "I love you" to your spouse, or better yet it's like using a private joke or gesture which means "I love you."

In the slightly more developed case, this grant of trust may be done for more than affirmation reasons. It can also be done to empower. "I choose not to state that the vase smashes. I trust you all to assume it breaks, unless you have a good reason to introduce something else. If any of you do, cool, let us all know what it is." To continue my example, this is the gaming equivalent of saying "I llllll..." to your spouse. With the unspoken end being "I trust you to end that affectionately with '...ove you' unless you have a reason, such as a need for humour just now, to end it with something different." (At which point if your spouse is like mine she takes the unfinished statement for the full affirmation, and then adds humour anyway since why not, saying something like "...ooooove Haagen-Dasz. D'you want some too?")

Heck, there's an opening in the vase example for exactly the same process - take the affirmation for the fact, but inject humour through a statement known to not be serious. This is the case when, in (say) a Gurps game, the player responds to the vase thing with "...and it bounces off down the road - boooing, boooing, boooing." Then everyone (once recovering their straight face) plays on with the vase presumed smashed. Trust and SIS consistency affirmed, plus bonus belly-laugh.

So the way I see it, what Callan has noted is simply a trust thing. Rather than use (or expend) his cred on making the statement, the GM is using shared trust in our shared vision of events - which is why "things fall" is an easy one, not requiring input - and giving players the opportunity to exert their own cred, make their own statements, and contribute either by statement or simply by assumption. Whether this is done to affirm and solidify the shared vision (vase thing in Gurps) or to literally take input (vase thing in, I dunno, Torchbearer) depends on the case, but in many - even most - cases, this sharing of trust is healthy. Only when it's false trust is it dysfunctional. Moreover it sounds like Callan is interested at coming at this from the perspective of a technique; "How can we use this to healthy effect?" I've listed two very different ways above - can anyone think of others?

- Eric

Heya all,

I've got a bunch of 'Yes!' responces which don't need horse troughing.

Alan: Those three points are a really good outline. I really like how you note #3 can trump #2. Can you also imagine a table of players with different CA preferences trying to figure out what trumps what? Like some simulationists and gamists. And how each would have entirely different #3 reasons to trump #2 "Nah, if it worked that way it'd be too easy (gamism)" "But it makes SENSE for it to happen that way! (sim?)" or "YEAH, I'll get away by jumping off this 100ft cliff! I have enough HP!(gamism)" "That's...terrible! People can't just do that! (sim)"

And I would have thought 2 & 3 are the same for simulationism. Perhaps you could start up a thread for that, because I want to learn what what you have to say about that (V. curious).

Harlequin:

You wrote: But in the functional play examples, this approaches the phenomenon good friends have of finishing each other's sentences.

On a side note, I feel I'm right that this is beyond credibility, in that at the Forge cred's usually refered to as being exchanged between individuals, rather than granting it to oneself. But for those who might prefer seeing that it does involve cred: On the other hand, I think you can draw conclusions in your head and still think "Ah, that's crap!" or "Ah, that'll just make for a crap game" and not give your own conclusions cred...so credibility is still involved...just not in the way the Forge traditionally uses the term.

Hey Callan,

I don’t know if you officially signed off this thread or not, but if you haven’t then I am posting in the right place!

First of all let me say that you are all over the topics that Chris Lehrich and I have been going on about for a year now, but from a completely and more easily understood angle. What you described as the “moments of thought” between “those two contact points with the SIS” exactly what I have been wrestling with. Just for reference I called that space the Affect Space borrowing from Victor Gijsbers thread Shared Imagined Space, Shared Text.

“Why players consent” IS CA in operation. Flat out. Now, I’m gonna take a stab here, but my interpretation, which could be completely off the mark, is that I think what you are looking for is how to capitalize or more concretely “influence” that internal process for the betterment of play. I am not trying to put words in your mouth or trying to tell you what you are thinking, I am just trying to get a handle on what you are trying to discuss.

To me putting statements into the “Proposal Space” is the CA of a player being expressed. Deciding which statements to make and what statements “mean” and the emotions one feels as a result of statements surviving the Proposal Space to make it into the Common/Shared Fact Space (either our own or those of the other players) is felt in the “Personal Affect Space” and is CA being felt (as it were – I’m totally open to better interpretations. I have worked with what I think is your idea, from a different angle in these following posts – my post to the aforementioned thread by Victor, An effort to un-gum the Discussion, in a post I made in my thread Ramblings on the role of Mechanics in CA's (fishing) where I make a note on mechanics facilitating the effects of actions but not aiding in the (internal to the player) process of abduction, deduction and induction. I am not trying to say I’m right or any kind of self promotion, but just trying to say the ideas you are working with are very similar to what I have been trying to work and I am hoping that what I can bring to your arguments can be as helpful to you as what you have posted in this thread have been helpful to me!

I would like to say that reason you were having so much trouble getting your initial idea about the space between contacts with the SIS is for the same basic reason that Sim is so devilishly difficult to conceptualize. The irony in that is that this thread has had more comments that nearly perfectly define the Sim process than I have ever seen since I arrived here. What is even more ironic is that those statements are not recognized as describing the Sim play process with the exception of Harlequin’s above post that is almost frighteningly spot on with the personal interactions, processes, priorities and affects in the game I play in. The notions of trust between player and GM, that the GM is purposefully creating not so much open ended sentences but open ended conflicts or situations, the idea of “building trust and consensus about the solidity of the game world,” the idea that the player generated (not mechanical) affirmations are “meaningful.” The granting of trust IS empowering!

Harlequin wrote: "I choose not to state that the vase smashes. I trust you all to assume it breaks, unless you have a good reason to introduce something else.

Callan, I don't find your statement credible.

Ralph has said pretty much what I wanted to say, although that stuff about the natural laws isn't important.

Player one said he pushed the vase off the balcony.

Player two then made statements that indicated his belief that the vase smashed when it hit the ground. The smashing of the vase is established by the credibility granted to player two--not by the laws of physics or any other thing, but solely because when player two implied it was smashed no one objected.

Player two could have said, "I rush over and make a great leaping catch, tucking the vase in and rolling, so that it doesn't break."

Player two could have said, "I gape in astonishment as the vase lands in the bushes around the front of the building. Cushioned by the light branches and needles, it tumbles harmlessly to the grass and lies there intact."

When player two says, "I pick up one of the pieces of the shattered vase, and then notice the pack of letter that had been hidden in it before it fell," he implies that the vase broke, and on his credibility we accept it.

It has nothing to do with him accepting his own credibility. It's not real within the shared imagined space until the other players also accept it. He makes it real by stating it. It was his choice.

Note also that the distinction between whether the vase is established as broken and whether some of the players believe the vase has broken, while an interesting aspect of the nature of our shared exploration, is not really different from reality. Let's suppose no one is at the bottom when the vase is pushed off the balcony. Every one of us assumes it broke; but at this point what we have is that we are imagining our characters believing that the vase broke. That would be exactly the same as if a vase was pushed off a real balcony and we were really standing there thinking, "Well, that's the end of that vase." We might be wrong; we've drawn a conclusion that does not control reality. Thus if any character on the balcony states that the vase must have broken, what is added to the shared imagined space is that this character believes it broke, not that it broke. Until someone with the credibility to declare the vase broken states that it is, it remains (as Marco observed) undetermined. The state of the vase is unknown, just as it would be in reality; because that state will be decided by the credible statement of one of the players, it is at this moment in a state not yet established.

*****

On the other hand, making a credible statement with the intent that it will induce or coerce someone else to make a specific other credible statement which you want entered into the shared imagined space by someone other than you is a common illusionist technique. The usual purpose is to cause the player to believe he made a decision that you had already made and fed him, thus giving him the feeling that he is in control when he is not. In this example, though, it doesn't seem to be working that way--it seems rather that the player is assuming you told him something you didn't.

I would say that the technique used here really has the function of allowing the players to perceive the most probable outcome of the last credible statement, and to decide whether to accept that outcome (by making credible statements concerning the broken vase) or attempt to counter it (by offering credible statements of actions or outcomes which might prevent the breakage). In a sense, the referee is saying, "I gave you the chance to try to save the vase, and you chose not to do so."

By contrast, the referee could have said, "He knocks the vase off the balcony and it falls to the ground and smashes." This is inherently saying, "There is nothing you can do to prevent the vase from smashing." In this the referee is spending more of his capital, as it were (now there's an idea for a thread), by insisting on enough credibility to declare the vase smashed instead of merely setting up that it's going to be smashed if no one thinks of a way to save it.

Thus it's a manipulative/illusionist technique, but it can be used to force the players to choose between accepting the obvious outcome or taking action to prevent it.

--M. J. Young

Jay, I read that post three times. Just to make sure that I understood what you were saying (which wasn't easy), and to make sure that I didn't miss anything. What it seems to boil down to is the standard definition of Sim that we've always used around here.

Yes, I think that it's fascinating to see how credibility links up with CA. And, yes, it's what players do as the process of trying to determine what to get into the SIS that's what makes a particular CA entertaining to them (though it's not at all neccessarily the "most important" thing that you make it, IMO). But how is this not just the "prioritization" that's always mentioned with CA?

Mike

Jay! Man! That's so dead on! And now I have to go jump in the horse trough because your post is BETTER than mine! Your asking if I want to influence this process...man, I'm only just grappling with this idea, while the idea of influencing it was only a roughly envisioned next step for me! I think you must be ahead here if your already thinking about that! How did I help you at all? Your so dead on I can't imagine how I could?

The notions of trust between player and GM, that the GM is purposefully creating not so much open ended sentences but open ended conflicts or situations, the idea of “building trust and consensus about the solidity of the game world,” the idea that the player generated (not mechanical) affirmations are “meaningful.” The granting of trust IS empowering!

Sim focuses on the abductive, inductive and deductive process inside that personal process space that you are working on teasing out - as a priority. Hence Sim play must, by definition, add to the world through player proactive and additive interactions, not to the passive employment of resolution mechanics.

I would like to say that reason you were having so much trouble getting your initial idea about the space between contacts with the SIS is for the same basic reason that Sim is so devilishly difficult to conceptualize.

Well, at the most basic, people want the world to make sense. So 1+1=2 and we can assume that the vase broke when it fell from the balcony.

In gaming the basic need for the world to make sense gets tweaked. What makes sense is altered by genre, setting, and system. But there is always a default foundation of "what would happen in the real world?" constantly in effect, just beneath the surface. It's necessary for any sort of actual play because no game system can account for every possible imaginary event instigated by the players.

Our real world experience and expectations are the foundation of our play experience because there is a constant referencing going on when we play. The imagination and extrapolation required for play is all based upon our knowledge of the real world with adjustments made based upon our knowledge of the setting, genre, and system being used for play.

The extrapolations between cause and effect that we make during play are going to generally run along fairly mundane, real world lines. Gems of outlandish creativity will be interspersed among them, but I think that most 'unreal' proposals may be directly inspired by setting, genre, and system.

-Chris

Imagine this:
GM shouts "1 plus 1!"
Micro pause
Player is compelled to shout "Equals 2!"

As you yourself said, the vase example is fundamentally the same. The reasons players surmise that when a vase falls off the balcony, in a game set in (say) present-day New York City, it falls down instead of up has only remotely to do with assumptions about cause and effect in the game world; it has much more to do with assumptions about clear and honest communication. Players have a right to assume that it fell down because if it fell up and you didn't mention that fact, it would be dishonest communication. And they have a need to assume that it fell down because the communication bandwidth is too narrow to state every detail explicitly. It's really that simple.

Walt wrote: GM: The vase falls from the balcony, out of sight.
Player: Do any of us hear it break?

That example, which is very typical in my experience, clearly shows a reluctance on the player's part to draw conclusions until facts are credibly established.

GM shouts "1 plus 1!"
Micro pause
Player says, 'Dude, why did you just shout '1 plus 1'?"

But underneath these examples, there is a compulsion involved after all. No matter what kind of world we're playing in, we have to be able to communicate about it in order to play. The thread topic is "beyond credibility," but what you're really talking about here is "before credibility." Before there can be credibility, there must be communication. THAT is a "compulsion" we can't get away from.

One plus one equals two is all but mandatory because the only definition (mathematical or linguistic) there is for "two" is "the integer successor to one" -- that is, what you get when you add one to one.

Players have a right to assume that it fell down because if it fell up and you didn't mention that fact, it would be dishonest communication.

Noon wrote:

Walt wrote: GM: The vase falls from the balcony, out of sight.
Player: Do any of us hear it break?

That example, which is very typical in my experience, clearly shows a reluctance on the player's part to draw conclusions until facts are credibly established.

No, it shows the players being compelled to think 'vases make a smashing sound when they hit the ground'

Examples of the players rejecting the set up statements are about cred and off topic.

Please check the thread guidelines above.

Callan,

So if I understand you correctly, you're talking about what goes on inside a player's head. Plus how what one person says influences that, and how what that influenced-player then says will show the influence. If I'm even remotely on track, I have several conclusions:

1) This is really, entirely and completely not about credibility at all. I think I can (and will, if you want me to) reword and amplify on your existing vase example such that it is clear that standardly-understood credibility is fully in operation throughout that example, and that your "between points of contact" focus is independant of (as in, neither conflicts with, disproves, or even threatens) credibility in all ways. Saying "grant yourself credibility" is probably not a good useage, as Credibility (gack, capitalization - sorry) is entirely an outgrowth of what's openly communicated. You're pointing at something that happens between those points of contact, and credibility isn't to be seen there, at all. In credibility, this is the "then something happens" part of the equation.

2) This is the unspecified, mostly unexamined "then something happens" part of the equation because it's a problematic area. Talking about what's going on inside someone else's head is very tricky. Talking about what's going on in your own head is bad enough, but someone else . . . really tough. That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, but it does mean some extra care is probably a good idea.

3) For example, I'd recommend abandoning the notion that (for RPG purposes) you ever "compel" anything to happen in someone else's mind - thus my use of "influence" at the start of this post. Given that to my thinking the range of possible responses to the shout of "one plus one" ranges from simply ignoring it, to thinking "eleven" or "equals two" or an endless number of other things . . . "compulsion" seems like entirely the wrong word for what (it seems to me) you're trying to get at.

ASIDE: Credibility tells us that what matters is when someone takes one of those things and offers it up to the rest of us, we have the option of accepting it or not. That while one person may in fact have provoked (another alternative to compelled) that offering by some earlier communication of their own, the option to accept, reject and/or negotiate the details of that contribution is still fully available to us. But again, you're talking about BEFORE that - what happens in my head as a result of the shout. What I think about the vase a result of you saying it was pushed off a balcony, NOT what happens when I make some statement based on that thinking.

4) Another way of saying it, maybe, is that you're interested in what can be done to make players contribute to the game the things that you want them to contribute to the game. That those contributions will go through the same credibility process as something that they "really" came up with independently is irrelevant to the question of how to provoke particular contributions (or kinds of contributions) that you want to see, as is the fact that to the one doing the provoking (which can be GM->player, player->GM, or player->player, as far as I can tell - maybe even designer->players), the granting of credibility is a forgone conclusion.

Is that even remotely where you were going here? Because if not, I'm lost as to what it is you're looking at.

ASDIE: One more thing on credibility itself - I think there's an excellent point hidden in your statement "You didn't get crediblity for your intent." Credibility can't ever be about intent. It's always about information, and who is granted what rights regarding it. Which is why so many credibility problems are actually communication problems, because what was "intended" to be communicated isn't what actually got communicated.

Hoping I'm communicating well,

Gordon

Walt's left, but the benefit of others: this gets so close I think it's might help illustrate the area of focus.

Walt Freitag wrote:

Noon wrote:

Walt wrote: GM: The vase falls from the balcony, out of sight.
Player: Do any of us hear it break?

That example, which is very typical in my experience, clearly shows a reluctance on the player's part to draw conclusions until facts are credibly established.

No, it shows the players being compelled to think 'vases make a smashing sound when they hit the ground'

No, your argument only shows you being compelled to think that a player asking 'Do any of us hear it break?' shows the players being compelled to think 'vases make a smashing sound when they hit the ground.'

In other words, what you're calling 'being compelled to think' is what most people usually just call 'thinking.' If you're asking for an explanation of why people think, I can't help you.

Hiya Gordon,

1) I agree, yes!
2) I agree, yes! It makes the topic tricky to discuss and I should be more careful.

3) For example, I'd recommend abandoning the notion that (for RPG purposes) you ever "compel" anything to happen in someone else's mind - thus my use of "influence" at the start of this post. Given that to my thinking the range of possible responses to the shout of "one plus one" ranges from simply ignoring it, to thinking "eleven" or "equals two" or an endless number of other things . . . "compulsion" seems like entirely the wrong word for what (it seems to me) you're trying to get at.

Hullo Callan,

I don’t know if it is too late to post to this thread, but as you fired some questions at me specifically I’m hoping that responding to them will not be seen as troublesome to the Forgequette. (Perhaps I should have sent this via PM?)

Regarding your ideas about Facts and authority all I can do is offer you my thoughts. I tend to view Facts and the SIS (specifically the Fact Space) as the illustrative equivalent of Chess pieces and the Chessboard respectively. The pieces don’t move themselves, the pieces or their positions on that board have no inherent meaning etc.; it is the players who move or assign meaning to the pieces or assign meaning to their relationships to one another. The decisions to move and the meanings are all internal processes based upon what is transpiring on the game board (SIS). This means all the really cool stuff happens inside the heads of the players – by which I mean the perceptual, intellectual and emotional. Obviously all these things can be communicated in some way, but the communication itself does not carry the actual percepts, thoughts or feels. Those can only be felt by the receiver after he has heard the words, assigned meaning to those sounds (spoken words) and then finally maybe perceives what the sender had originally intended.

Why all the abstract stuff? Because the same happens in role-play. We are communicating shared imaginings about a virtual chessboard that everyone is supposed to be representing internally in the same way by all the players. This is what the Lumpley Principle attempt to do – make sure everyone has the same virtual chessboard with the same pieces in identical places. There can also be communications directly between the chess players as well and this can either be social matters (i.e., I have to take a leak) to game matters (hey, let’s position the pieces this way and continue the game this way for a while). The point is that the “fun” part can only be “felt” inside the player’s head though it can be expressed. So, as a game designer you can’t directly make someone “feel” a certain way – fun, excitement, tension, etc. FREX. So whatever “it” is that the players “enjoy” doing you, as a designer, want to lead/encourage through game design the players to create the greatest number of opportunities to “do” those enjoyable “things” and thus hopefully set the conditions for the players to have a much “fun” as possible.

To me, CA’s are roughly equivalent to how one assigns and organizes the meanings of what is happening on this illustrative chessboard. CA is expressed roughly in how the player’s choose to move the pieces and the choice in the suggested rules set tentatively governing what the pieces “represent” (their qualities) and how they can interact.

This is not solution by a long shot, but I hope that putting down here how I think about certain elements of role-play this post may spark some new thoughts in your pursuit. If you wish, back in February of this year I first articulated the rudiments of this idea in the thread Thoughts on the role of game design – musings.

To your general question on why players respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, such as your example of the GM shouting “1 plus 1,” is that humans are creatures that desperately seek and are very talented at constructing structures/patterns of meaning. Unless someone is coming at this “problem” from angle that is extraordinarily different from our usual patterns of thinking/meaning structure then you are likely to get very common responses. That is - we aren’t likely to go haring off in wild directions thus breaking important thinking patterns/meaning structures without good cause or being in an environment that is conducive to that type of mental processes. The problem is that such wild careening becomes very difficult to fit into any meaning structures at all – IOW they become meaningless. I’m not going to go on much more as I am not an expert in this field of thought at all, but I will point you to some of Chris’ writings which shed a lot of light on this type of thinking.

• Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games• Not Lectures on Theory [LONG!]• On RPGs and Text [LONG]

I hope this helps.

The rest of your questions I think will be covered in a thread I am planning soon.