Ejh posted to this old thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6537

And here is my reply:

Ejh,

I think you're on the right track, but are in semantic danger.

The thing is, it really is true that rules don't represent the game world. See, the game world doesn't need representing. The game world is the sum total of what we imagine - no more, no less. As you've said, mechanics lend weight to a particular course of imagining. (The reason that a praticular course should be given weight is not defined at the mechanical level; it's an artifact of the social contract layer.) But, mechanics don't tell us what the game world is like, they encourage us - via the distribution of credibility - to imagine the game world in a certain way.

Take Facts in Universalis for example. In Universalis, Facts are the representational element you're talking about; in your example, the Strength of a TFT character is a Fact. Let's say that a group has defined the Fact that "cows can't fly." Is this modeling the game world? Well, no, not really, because the mere existence of this Fact does not, in fact, mean that cows can't fly. What it does mean is that a narration including flying cows has less weight than that doesn't include flying cows. It means that it will be more difficult - but not impossible - for the player to have his narration be incorporated into the imagined reality. In Universalis, the strictness with which this is enforced depends on the lenience of the group (how often they invoke the Challenge mechanics). In more usual games, the strictness tends to be built into the mechanics, leading to a sort of "vote with feet" situation, where the players ignore rules that encourage them to imagine something that they don't care to imagine.

Paganini wrote: Ejh posted to this old thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6537
The thing is, it really is true that rules don't represent the game world. See, the game world doesn't need representing. The game world is the sum total of what we imagine - no more, no less. As you've said, mechanics lend weight to a particular course of imagining. (The reason that a praticular course should be given weight is not defined at the mechanical level; it's an artifact of the social contract layer.) But, mechanics don't tell us what the game world is like, they encourage us - via the distribution of credibility - to imagine the game world in a certain way.

lumpley wrote:
the Lumpley Principle. It's actually really stupid, a triviality: mechanics are a tool for negotiation among the players, no frickin' duh.

lumpley wrote: I wouldn't've ever mentioned it at all, except so many people seem to come into game design with the idea that mechanics exist to represent the stuff of the game world.

Paganini wrote:
The thing is, it really is true that rules don't represent the game world. See, the game world doesn't need representing.

Paganini wrote:
The game world is the sum total of what we imagine - no more, no less.

Paganini wrote: As you've said, mechanics lend weight to a particular course of imagining. (The reason that a praticular course should be given weight is not defined at the mechanical level; it's an artifact of the social contract layer.) But, mechanics don't tell us what the game world is like, they encourage us - via the distribution of credibility - to imagine the game world in a certain way.

Paganini wrote: The thing is, it really is true that rules don't represent the game world. See, the game world doesn't need representing. The game world is the sum total of what we imagine - no more, no less. As you've said, mechanics lend weight to a particular course of imagining. (The reason that a praticular course should be given weight is not defined at the mechanical level; it's an artifact of the social contract layer.) But, mechanics don't tell us what the game world is like, they encourage us - via the distribution of credibility - to imagine the game world in a certain way.

Take Facts in Universalis for example.

Kamikaze --

My turn to defend the Principle. I don't think anything you've said has contradicted the principle as Vincent set it out, with one exception. When Vincent says "rules don't represent the game world" that sets off bells and whistles and seems way wrong to you. I think it's infelicitous of him to put it that way.

How about "unlike other games, besides just the rules and the numbers on the sheet, in an RPG, there is a consensus between GM and players about what happened, arrived at by dialogue. This is the most important representation of 'what happens in the game world' -- what the GM and players agree happened, happened. Period. Now, one of the ways we achieve that agreement, is consulting the rules for issues that they cover. It is a ground rule that anything the rules cover, they must be consulted on, and anyone who agrees with what they say has credibility, and anyone who disagrees has zero credibility, and in unclear cases the GM rules. Period."

That's a way of describing how the rules "distribute credibility" without disagreeing with your "I'm a hardcore rules-consulting dude, not one of these freeform freaks" attitude at all.

The rules distribute credibility because they *do* represent the game world, and they validate the credibility of any player or GM who agrees with them. Of course, the game itself can cover a lot more than any rules could cover, because the game relies on another form of representation *besides* rules -- the verbal consensus of the GM and players. And such verbal consensus is much more flexible than any rules system. But where the rules do say anything, they *determine credibility* by *representing the game world*.

Though I've been disagreeing with some of the details of how it's phrased, I think you're selling the Lumpley Principle short when you write it off as "something that only applies to those freeform games." It is most certainly attempting to describe *exactly* the kind of heavily rules-following game you are saying it doesn't apply to, and your arguments as to why it doesn't apply seem more to me to be a result of Vincent and Paganini having expressed it infelicitously on some occasions than a result of any actual deficiencies in the principle itself.

ejh wrote: I'm not sure about that "via the distribution of credibility." If I look at a character sheet in Melee, where a character has a ST of 20, it describes something in the game world directly, with no "distribution of credibility" in the middle (remember, Melee is not an RPG, it's a boardgame/wargame). I know that character, in the gameworld, kicks ass.

If I look at a TFT character sheet (TFT *is* an RPG), I have exactly the same knowledge about a character in the game. Why do I now have to interpolate "via the distribution of crediblity"?

Or did I just tip my hand as to a conceptual gulf here? When I say "the game was never played but I'm still talking about the game world" am I talking nonsense, because the game world doesn't exist except to the degree it is manifested in actual play?

Hey Ed,

ejh wrote: I'm not sure about that "via the distribution of credibility." If I look at a character sheet in Melee, where a character has a ST of 20, it describes something in the game world directly, with no "distribution of credibility" in the middle (remember, Melee is not an RPG, it's a boardgame/wargame). I know that character, in the gameworld, kicks ass.

John Kim wrote: Well, by taking a system like Universalis as your example, you are ignoring what mechanics do in many other systems. Not all games are universal systems, though. Sure, it is inherently true that a system like Universalis or FUDGE isn't going to tell us anything about the game-world. But there are lots of non-generic systems as well.

ejh wrote: How about "unlike other games, besides just the rules and the numbers on the sheet, in an RPG, there is a consensus between GM and players about what happened, arrived at by dialogue. This is the most important representation of 'what happens in the game world' -- what the GM and players agree happened, happened. Period. Now, one of the ways we achieve that agreement, is consulting the rules for issues that they cover. It is a ground rule that anything the rules cover, they must be consulted on, and anyone who agrees with what they say has credibility, and anyone who disagrees has zero credibility, and in unclear cases the GM rules. Period."

OK, Nathan and Chris, I think we've encountered the real source of discrepancy. I'm pretty sure I detect in both your replies the assumption that the "game world" only exists in actual play; that the statement "My character's ST is 20" says ZILCH about the game world directly -- the only way it describes the game world is by describing what might possibly happen during play because of it.

Given that assumption, the Lumpley Principle follows: if the "actual play" dialogue is the only "real" definition/depiction/representation of the imaginary game world, then it follows logically that anything else only contributes to representing the imaginary game world by affecting the "actual play" dialogue. QED. True by definition. (Which is why Lumpley has sometimes described the principle as "duh, big whoop.")

The "in game dialogue and consensus defines/depicts/represents the gameworld" is the distinguishing feature of RPGs. As far as I know, it is unique to RPGs.

However, the fact remains that RPGs have traditionally included other features besides in-game dialogue which are capable of definining/depicting/representing an imaginary world.

Game rules and tokens and stats are capable of depicting an imaginary world. They do so in wargames.

The 'writeups' in rulebooks and supplements are narrative and description, and obviously written text is capable of depicting an imaginary world. Little thing called a 'novel' and all that.

The illustrations in rulebooks and supplements, and maps and illustrations made by the players, are capable of depicting an imaginary world.

I've basically never played Runequest, but I know a lot about the imaginary world of Glorantha. I can tell a Dragonewt from a Morokanth and I know that crystals are the blood of the gods, and all that. I know that because of representations of those things in the rulebooks.

Now, because the in-game dialogue is the unique defining feature of a roleplaying game, it may be seen as the *privileged* representation of the imaginary world, and from that point of view what you are saying may be completely correct. However, even so, the in-game dialogue is not the only thing that is capable of representing that imaginary world.

In fact, it is by representing the game-world that traditional RPG rules "distribute credibility" (i.e. affect the in-game dialogue representation of the game-world). As I said above, in-game dialogue which accords with the representation in the rules is seen as credibile; that which doesn't is seen as incredible, in instances where the rules are consulted.

Hence we have both the Lumpley Principle as obviously true, and the Lumpley Principle as obviously false -- it depends on whether you are taking for granted that in-game dialogue between players and GM is the royal road to imagining the gameworld, and that any other depiction of the gameworld is of secondary relevance at best.

I'm personally not committed to either side of that issue -- as far as I'm concerned, it's a matter of choice of terms and definitions, and I don't have a ton invested in either way of defining it.

John Kim wrote: I'm not sure how this differs from other games. I mean, say I'm playing a game of Carcassonne (a tile-laying boardgame). What happens is what we the players agree on happens. For example, the rules might not allow a player to take back a move, but we could agree to let Laura take a move back because she's had a hard day. Agreement among the players always trumps what the printed rules say, for any game.

ejh wrote: Though I've been disagreeing with some of the details of how it's phrased, I think you're selling the Lumpley Principle short when you write it off as "something that only applies to those freeform games." It is most certainly attempting to describe *exactly* the kind of heavily rules-following game you are saying it doesn't apply to, and your arguments as to why it doesn't apply seem more to me to be a result of Vincent and Paganini having expressed it infelicitously on some occasions than a result of any actual deficiencies in the principle itself.

Ed,

ejh wrote: OK, Nathan and Chris, I think we've encountered the real source of discrepancy. I'm pretty sure I detect in both your replies the assumption that the "game world" only exists in actual play; that the statement "My character's ST is 20" says ZILCH about the game world directly -- the only way it describes the game world is by describing what might possibly happen during play because of it.

Given that assumption, the Lumpley Principle follows: if the "actual play" dialogue is the only "real" definition/depiction/representation of the imaginary game world, then it follows logically that anything else only contributes to representing the imaginary game world by affecting the "actual play" dialogue. QED. True by definition. (Which is why Lumpley has sometimes described the principle as "duh, big whoop.")

The "in game dialogue and consensus defines/depicts/represents the gameworld" is the distinguishing feature of RPGs. As far as I know, it is unique to RPGs.

However, the fact remains that RPGs have traditionally included other features besides in-game dialogue which are capable of definining/depicting/representing an imaginary world.

kamikaze wrote: Those words may well be correct for games where everyone has an equal voice in the law (freeform games), but are not correct for some other set of games where the rules are the law, the GM is their arbiter, and the players are citizens living under that law.

Hey Ed,

Just something I want to tack on to Nathan's last post:

Having pieces of narrative and other things that represent the game-world outside of play is fine, but once play begins the manner in which the system apportions credibility may have a profound effect on your perception of that world.

Read a 'Forgotten Realms' novel then go play in that setting using D&D 3e. Then take that same setting and play using The Riddle of Steel. The mechanics shape the medium, in this case that being the imagination. That in turn has an effect on how the setting is realized in play.

-Chris

Blogged a little summary of where I'm at right here.

http://www.puddingbowl.org/ed/archives/001095.html

Paganini wrote: Think of it this way; Any world-information you care to name is nothing more and nothing less than a collection of Universalis Facts. (Facts that are pre-Proposed by the designer, yes, but that makes no difference.) Their function is not to provide hard-and-fast information, but to send our imaginations in a particular direction.

John, Ed,

I feel like we're talking past each other, or maybe arguing on different levels. Lemme see if I can present things from another angle.

Role-playing is a communal group act of imagination, right? It's when we all sit around and imagine something as a group. In order for this to work, there has to be some way for the many imaginings of the individual group members to be synthesized into that single group imagining. There must be some method by which the imaginings of a particular player are given weight over the imaginings of the other players - so that his imaginings are realized into the imagination space over theirs. According to the Lumpley Principle, that weight is Credibility, and that method is System.

It doesn't matter if you're playing completely freeform or using Champions; it doesn't matter if you're trying to tell a story or win a game; in fact, it doesn't matter what your motives are at all. The Lumpley Principle isn't about motives - it's about the way that individual imaginings are "officialized" into the group imagning.

That's all. The Lumpley Principle says nothing about what form credibility takes, or how it should be distributed. All it says is that when you're playing an RPG, the rules are distributing credibility.

The Lumpley Principle is at the level of action: What mechanics do when we use them.

Modeling a particular world is another level higher: Why a particular set of mechanics distributes Credibility in a particular way.

Think of it this way:

A game designer imagines a particular setting that he wants to share with gamers by having them imagine it too. So he writes a game that will (if he's a good designer) encourage players to imagine his setting the way he intends it to be imagined. How does he do that? Well, he creates rules that give credibility to statements that match his view of his setting, and witholds credibility from statements that contradict his view of his setting.

So, the mechanics only model the world to the extent that they encourage the players to imagine the world the way the designer intended the world to be imagined. If the players stick close to the rules, and if the designer did a good job, then what they imagine should be pretty close. If the players aren't completely hip with what the designer intends, they're free to chuck out the parts they don't like.

Now, suppose that the designer has some other goal in mind, a goal that doesn't involve the characters imagining a particular setting at all. The system is still distributing Credibility. Only now it's distributing it in a way that encourages some other design goal - a goal not related to setting.

Does this presentation make more sense?

Hey Ed,

Well, read the blog. What I don't understand is why sitting alone reading an rpg book has any relevance to "The Lumpley Principle". The game world can be depicted in stories, pictures, cave drawings, whatever, but until you attempt to reconcile that information with another person’s interpretation of those things there is no need to worry about “The Lumpley Principle” at all.

The rules of an rpg exist for when you do get together with other people to lump all your separate imaginings together. Not everybody is going to see things exactly the same. Lumpley comes in to say that those rules are apportioning credibility amongst the imaginers. It matters not if it’s called Strength or Mojo Points, if in your imagination you see your character as performing feats of strength then you better well insure that you get a high Strength attribute if you want the other participants to see your character the same way. Or even if you want to continue seeing the character the same way yourself. It all comes down to whose version of the imagined setting and events becomes canon.

When you go back to imagining the setting by yourself you no longer have need of the rules.

So, I guess I’m a little confused about what exactly we disagree on. Yes, the game-world can be represented by more than in-play events but if you want to share that setting with others and you differ on just what is what then, according to “The Lumpley Principle”, credibility is king.

-Chris

Paganini wrote: Role-playing is a communal group act of imagination, right? It's when we all sit around and imagine something as a group. In order for this to work, there has to be some way for the many imaginings of the individual group members to be synthesized into that single group imagining. There must be some method by which the imaginings of a particular player are given weight over the imaginings of the other players - so that his imaginings are realized into the imagination space over theirs. According to the Lumpley Principle, that weight is Credibility, and that method is System.

John,

You seem to be nitpicking. I mean, it's true that I didn't specifically cover the case you describe, but it doesn't contradict anything in my post.

If it makes you happy, consider your case covered by "sticking close to the rules" in this paragraph:

I wrote:
So, the mechanics only model the world to the extent that they encourage the players to imagine the world the way the designer intended the world to be imagined. If the players stick close to the rules, and if the designer did a good job, then what they imagine should be pretty close. If the players aren't completely hip with what the designer intends, they're free to chuck out the parts they don't like.

Ed: your main dilemma is easily solved. The Lumpley Principle is only about actual play, and I never intended otherwise. It doesn't say a thing about "the game world," whatever that is, whether it even exists. (I leave discussion of whether the game world exists in some sense outside of actual play to people who get excited by that kind of thing. Don't bring my principle into it, as it has a small brain and is easily overwhelmed.)

The thing about "representing" is pretty easy too. I don't know of any rpg where none of the mechanics refer to the stuff of the (in-play) game world. My nighttime animals game, otherwise abstract, cares what the danger is; Universalis, otherwise abstract, cares about Traits; even John Wick's I-give-you-coins-if-you-make-me-laugh game made it cheaper to do things our characters were "good at".

That's fine, and no contridiction to the principle. Any given mechanic or piece of a mechanic might represent in-game events somehow, or it might not; it must and always will distribute credibility.

An imaginary game where it's all abstract, where no mechanic represents any in-game stuff, might seem odd, distanced, and pointless, but if it were well designed, I posit, it would be playable, and that's what counts.

(Reread that thing I wrote to Fang, putting emphasis on the word "exist." Mechanics don't exist to represent the game world, they exist to facilitate negotiation. Representing the game world may be the means, often, but the end is inter-participant consensus.)

Mark: "credibility" just means who gets to say what about what. It's super-common, as you point out, for credibility to get distributed thusly: The GM gets to say anything about anything, provided he stays mostly within the bounds of the written info and consults the mechanics as the game text recommends. If he goes beyond those bounds, the players can credibly "correct" the GM or "remind" him to consult the mechanics. Marginal cases are to be decided covertly by strength of personality.

That describes like 75% of my lifetime gaming, it describes the gaming you're talking about, and it's absolutely entirely according to the Lumpley Principle.

Aside, the hard line: One can play and GM roleplaying games happily forever without knowing the Lumpley Principle. It's one of the red pills of being a game designer. Don't wanna take it? I don't know what to tell you.

John: Learning astrophysics is beyond actual play, thus beyond the Lumpley Principle. As to X-Y-Z:

You wrote: Both players agree to go with Z.

lumpley wrote: Here's that concise statement you all keep asking for.

The Lumpley Principle:
When one participant says that something happens in the game, what has to happen in the real world before, indeed, it happens? Bottom line: all the participants have to assent to it. Mechanics can help create and shape this consensus, as part of negotiations, but they cannot make things happen in the game without it. This process -- statement -> negotiation -> consensus -- is the game's System in play.

lumpley wrote: Ed: your main dilemma is easily solved. The Lumpley Principle is only about actual play, and I never intended otherwise. It doesn't say a thing about "the game world," whatever that is, whether it even exists.

lumpley wrote:
The Lumpley Principle:
When one participant says that something happens in the game, what has to happen in the real world before, indeed, it happens? Bottom line: all the participants have to assent to it. Mechanics can help create and shape this consensus, as part of negotiations, but they cannot make things happen in the game without it. This process -- statement -> negotiation -> consensus -- is the game's System in play.

lumpley wrote: John: Learning astrophysics is beyond actual play, thus beyond the Lumpley Principle. As to X-Y-Z:

You wrote: Both players agree to go with Z.

They agree? Bang, it's the Lumpley Principle in action.

How does that conflict? Statements were made (X,Y). Negotiation occurred (in which statement Z was arrived at, in this case by looking in the game book), and consensus was reached over statement Z.

You don't need to remove the "Statement" part. Without statements X and Y, they never would have looked for Z.

John Kim wrote: Er, OK, as long as you cut out the "Statement -->" part at the beginning of your process diagram, then I agree. Tabletop play is always about forming a consensus. Negotiation per se isn't always necessarily, but it may be needed at any point -- so I'd agree to it as at least an optional step prior to consensus. However, in my example, none of the players necessarily made Z as a statement. That was something they found when they looked in the rulebook. It's possible that someone might say aloud what is in the rulebook, but it's also possible that the players might all just read it for themselves.

John Kim wrote: Your principle as stated excludes any reference material (i.e. rulebooks, character sheets, maps, etc.) from play. i.e. In your view, any input from these isn't a part of play until a player makes a verbal statement about it. Thus you say that, for example, my learning astrophysics wasn't a part of play even though much of it occurred at the gaming table as part of the characters' action (i.e. the PCs jump into a system, and we process the information about it). However, since the learning occurred primarily between me and the rulebooks (rather than between me and other players), you say that it isn't "actual play".

John? You're raising a bunch of non-objections.

If we want to continue with X-Y-Z past Alexander's (excellent) answer, I'm going to need a more concrete example.

The only thing I see in your post that I can really answer is your complaint against "verbal." My answer is: no, of course I don't mean only verbal. I include whatever forms of nonverbal communication there are in an rpg. Show somebody something on your character sheet with only a barely-raised eyebrow? Flip through the book and stop with your finger on a paragraph, where others can see? Get up and get a drink while someone else is talking? That's negotiation.

I may be missing your point about the astrophysics, though. In what ways did your learning astrophysics from Traveller's mechanics contribute to the in-game events of your Traveller game? (Not challenging, asking.)

-Vincent

Mark, check this:

At any moment during play any participant can stop using the game mechanics as written. At that moment, whether the game comes to a (likely screeching) halt or continues, changed, is up to the group to negotiate.

If it's still unobjectionable, we're good.

-Vincent

This is getting a little difficult to follow.

I had understood it all if we bracked it with the assumptions that the Lumpley Principle was only about "actual play" where "actual play" was defined as the ongoing *verbal narrations* of the players.

My scope was broader; I was talking about all the things that depict a game world, both before you start narrating verbally, while you do, and after you did.

"Depict" = "portray in some way" = "describe" ... This is something that an ongoing game's verbal narration does, but it's also something that other things can do, i.e. reading a rulebook. A variety of different world-depicting mechanisms have traditionally been associated with RPGs.

Interesting to see the "solos are roleplaying!" "No they're not!" argument come up. It seems to me to be a matter of definition, but it sure generates some strong opinions for a matter of definition.

I can see that seeing solos as roleplaying or not would depend on whether you accepted the assumption that "actual play" consists of the verbal consensus achieved by a group in a session.

Here's a prediction: anyone who sees the Lumpley Principle as obviously true will also think solos are not really roleplaying games, and the converse is also true.

Except for me, I think both are a matter of definition and can be true or false however you like to define it. :)

Just to clarify --

lumpley wrote: Ed: your main dilemma is easily solved. The Lumpley Principle is only about actual play, and I never intended otherwise. It doesn't say a thing about "the game world," whatever that is, whether it even exists. (I leave discussion of whether the game world exists in some sense outside of actual play to people who get excited by that kind of thing. Don't bring my principle into it, as it has a small brain and is easily overwhelmed.)

Any given mechanic or piece of a mechanic might represent in-game events somehow, or it might not; it must and always will distribute credibility.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
As far as arriving at Z, this is the nature of compromise. When buying a house, the seller may be asking for 100,000 and the buyer offers 80,000. After negotiation, they agree on the figure of 85,500. Neither side originally stated this amount. They arrived at it after negotiating.

Marco, I'd put that case very solidly in the "sometimes the game rules do put statements up for negotiation" spot.

Whose statement stands -- player A's, player B's, mine as the game designer -- depends on the negotiation -> consensus process, same as it ever was.

And I agree: it's a very interesting break point.

Ed, I think we're happy, then. Just this:

You wrote: Here's a prediction: anyone who sees the Lumpley Principle as obviously true will also think solos are not really roleplaying games, and the converse is also true.

Marco,

Marco wrote: This does rely on an inexact knowledge of the rules by both parties--but that sort of thing can and does happen in games all the time. As both a player and a GM I've been surprised to find certain things in the game rules.

At that point the rules, I'd say, are no longer aportioning credibility between the participants but actually claiming it.

lumpley wrote: Marco, I'd put that case very solidly in the "sometimes the game rules do put statements up for negotiation" spot.

Whose statement stands -- player A's, player B's, mine as the game designer -- depends on the negotiation -> consensus process, same as it ever was.

And I agree: it's a very interesting break point.

lumpley wrote: Mark, check this:

At any moment during play any participant can stop using the game mechanics as written. At that moment, whether the game comes to a (likely screeching) halt or continues, changed, is up to the group to negotiate.

If it's still unobjectionable, we're good.

Mark, John,

There's something that you don't seem to have grasped here, and that is that the amount of rules, degree of crunchiness / freeform-ness is absolutely irrelevant. Doesn't have anything with the Lumpley Principle at all. It's not a valid issue for discussion in this context. It matters not if a game is crunchy or freeform, the Lumpley Principle is *there.* It is always there, even in games that are not RPGs. John, you pointed this out once, but you don't seem to have applied it completely. No one is trying to exclude any particular style of game. The Lumpley Principle is just as relevant to Harn as it is to SOAP. If you uses lots of reference books when you play, that's cool. Doesn't matter. It's not that the Lumpley Principle is somehow exclusive. It's more like it's very *inclusive.*

I suspect that once "the rules apportion credibilty" is specified (as Paganini says) to include "and sometimes they apportion it to the rules themselves/the game designer/whatever" then most objections to it must evaporate, as John's seem to be.

Can you confirm, Vincent, that you're cool with Paganini's stipulation that sometimes the rules apportion credibility to something besides the players but still accessible to them?

E.g. if there are random encounter tables in the rulebooks which are somehow mandatory to use, then the rules are assigning credibility to that encounter table and the dice -- or to say it in a more roundabout way, they are assigning credibility to any player who agrees with the results of the dice as read on the encounter table?


(Because I think a lot of this discussion, especially the portion between Kamikaze and others, has gotten sidetracked into issues of social contract about whether a particular, written, set of rules is to be considered authoritative or not.)

Paganini wrote: There's something that you don't seem to have grasped here, and that is that the amount of rules, degree of crunchiness / freeform-ness is absolutely irrelevant. Doesn't have anything with the Lumpley Principle at all. It's not a valid issue for discussion in this context. It matters not if a game is crunchy or freeform, the Lumpley Principle is *there.*

Mark, um, hi there. Screeching halt, gotcha, I mentioned that already.

Yes, I know it's potentially game-breaking for someone to change the rules. Do you see that it's possible for someone to change the rules, in mid-game, even if it's irresponsible, rude, uncouth, antisocial behavior? And that the fallout depends on how the group handles it?

I think you do, I think your "hardly ever happens" statement shows that you do.

So easy on the tirades, okay?

Anyhow, Mark, John, please rest assured. I am in favor of agreeing to rules and then playing by them. I'm a for goodness sake game designer. I wouldn't write games if I thought blowing them off was the best way to play. I like my games to be fast and easy to learn, because that's the kind of time I've got to invest, but jeez. Play Harn, amen!

Ed, Nathan, no, I can't confirm that game rules ever hold credibility. Here's why:

Case 1: Me, Mitch, and Zoe are playing a game.

I say: I shoot the guy.
Mitch says: Zoe, think he should hit?
Zoe says: Nope. I think he should miss.
Mitch says: Dude, that's ass. Vince, wanna shoot the guy anyway?
I say: Oh yeah. You know it.
I roll damage.
Zoe says: Hey! I said no! You cheating pig hogs! I quit, you can find some other gamer to play with! And give me back my yoo-hoo!

Case 2: Me and Mitch are playing a game.

I say: I shoot the guy.
Mitch says: Roll for it.
I roll for crap.
Mitch says: Dude, that's ass. Wanna shoot the guy anyway?
I say: Oh yeah. You know it.
I roll damage.

Do the mechanics quit and storm out with their yoo-hoo? Nope. They're stone silent on the matter. You can tell they don't have credibility because someone with credibility? If you treat them that way, it hurts them. Credibility is social, remember?

Here's more why:

Show me game mechanics that withhold credibility for themselves. How do they enforce it? Remember that if they've got some human being enforcing it for them, they aren't withholding credibility, they're apportioning it.

BUT, I think that allowing the mechanics to put statements up for negotiation really does answer your concerns.

-Vincent

Crossposted with John.

ejh wrote: Interesting to see the "solos are roleplaying!" "No they're not!" argument come up. It seems to me to be a matter of definition, but it sure generates some strong opinions for a matter of definition.

I can see that seeing solos as roleplaying or not would depend on whether you accepted the assumption that "actual play" consists of the verbal consensus achieved by a group in a session.

lumpley wrote: Yes, I know it's potentially game-breaking for someone to change the rules. Do you see that it's possible for someone to change the rules, in mid-game, even if it's irresponsible, rude, uncouth, antisocial behavior? And that the fallout depends on how the group handles it?

lumpley wrote: Mark, um, hi there. Screeching halt, gotcha, I mentioned that already.

lumpley wrote: Mitch says: Dude, that's ass. Wanna shoot the guy anyway?
I say: Oh yeah. You know it.

Paganini wrote: Mark, John,
There's something that you don't seem to have grasped here, and that is that the amount of rules, degree of crunchiness / freeform-ness is absolutely irrelevant.

Mark, if you're serious about the conversation and not just looking for a soapbox, please answer my actual question to you:

I wrote: Yes, I know it's potentially game-breaking for someone to change the rules. Do you see that it's possible for someone to change the rules, in mid-game, even if it's irresponsible, rude, uncouth, antisocial behavior? And that the fallout depends on how the group handles it?

lumpley wrote:
Ed, Nathan, no, I can't confirm that game rules ever hold credibility. Here's why:.....Credibility is social, remember?

Here's more why:

Show me game mechanics that withhold credibility for themselves. How do they enforce it? Remember that if they've got some human being enforcing it for them, they aren't withholding credibility, they're apportioning it.

BUT, I think that allowing the mechanics to put statements up for negotiation really does answer your concerns.

Responding to a bunch of people in one post.


Vince,

Lumpley wrote: BUT, I think that allowing the mechanics to put statements up for negotiation really does answer your concerns.

The rules can and do depict the game world, but in terms of "play" (where "play" means "how people interact and talk their way through a story"), that depiction is significant in that it provides a way to help people establish a group consensus about events in an imagined world.

John wrote:
Does this mean that the "Lumpley principle" was right all along and I simply didn't grasp it?

Mark wrote:
I grasp it just fine, thanks. You're right, the amount of rules are not relevant, but I never talked about the amount of rules.

The Lumpley Principle needs a precondition: "In a freeform gaming social contract, every action is explicitly or implicitly negotiated.

Mark wrote:
The only "negotiatiation" if someone tried to change or ignore rules in the middle of a game would be shouting "You cheating nimrod!"

I think that's a pretty well voiced summary Nathan.

This is not a "style of play" that's being talked about.

It is 100% physically impossible for anyone ever to have engaged in any activity recognizeable as roleplaying with any rule set and any play group in any environment at any age without the Lumply Principle being the driving force behind every instance of actual play that occured. Period.

Its that fundamental.

Nothing happens in an RPG until every player at the table agreed that it happened. The Lumpley Principle is not so much a revolutionary idea (as Vince notes above) as it is simply a verbalization of how things get agreed to in that imaginary space where gaming takes place.

Rules never decide what happens. If they did then fudging and cheating would be impossible. People decide what happens. People decide how much credibility each element at the table is going to have. Whether this is "throw the rules out and just wing it" or whether this is "we're going to play every single rule as written without deviation" its people deciding and aportioning credibility accordingly.

This is so basic that there is not really any room for arguement.

Ralph,

Uh... yeah. I think yours was better voiced than mine was. :)

Or to put it another, slightly less vehement, way:

The Lumpley Principle is not a way of playing, it's a way of looking at what's going on in play.

You may or may not find it a useful or helpful or interesting way of looking at what's going on in play. But "we don't play that way" is not a relevant objection....

To be fair to the objectors, the ways that people often state the principle have tended to encourage some misunderstandings of it, which is why I've been seeking clarification so avidly.

Indeed, I suspect there might be a better term to use than "credibility" here, though I'm not sure what it would be. It gets used a lot without definition, kind of a magic buzzword -- Vincent, you want to define it for us?

The word "credibility" tends to encourage the notion that the Lumpley Principle only applies when two different players have made different suggestions about what is supposed to happen next, and one has to decide using the rules between these suggestions.

Obviously much of the time players turn to the rules as an oracle to *find out* what happens, and so the scenario immediately conjured up by the word "credibility" seems incongruous with people's gaming experiences.

kamikaze wrote: I've seen groups that will run anything freeform, no matter what the books say. Fine. The Lumpley Principle does indeed describe what they do, as it was articulated upthread (not the ever-shifting Platonic ideal version that seems to be in some posters' heads). But for groups like I prefer most of the time, like John seems to prefer, and like most of the people I've ever played with in groups or at cons, it does not describe what happens.

lumpley wrote: Mark, if you're serious about the conversation and not just looking for a soapbox, please answer my actual question to you:

I wrote: Yes, I know it's potentially game-breaking for someone to change the rules. Do you see that it's possible for someone to change the rules, in mid-game, even if it's irresponsible, rude, uncouth, antisocial behavior? And that the fallout depends on how the group handles it?

I think it's time to close this thread down. Ed, would you agree that your initial reservations have been satisfactorily resolved? If so, let's call it here. Mark needs to start a thread devoted to his own separate concerns about the Lumpley principle.

Valamir wrote: It is 100% physically impossible for anyone ever to have engaged in any activity recognizeable as roleplaying with any rule set and any play group in any environment at any age without the Lumply Principle being the driving force behind every instance of actual play that occured. Period.

Its that fundamental.

Nothing happens in an RPG until every player at the table agreed that it happened.
...
This is so basic that there is not really any room for arguement.

I think there is some confusion here.

lumpley wrote: Yes, I know it's potentially game-breaking for someone to change the rules. Do you see that it's possible for someone to change the rules, in mid-game, even if it's irresponsible, rude, uncouth, antisocial behavior? And that the fallout depends on how the group handles it?

kamikaze wrote: Is it possible for someone to try? Yes. Is it possible for them to do so without being caught? Maybe, though it's usually pretty obvious, and of course it's a gross betrayal of everyone's trust. Is it possible for anyone in a "follow the rules" social contract to let it slide? NO.

I say: I shoot the guy.
Mitch says: Roll for it.
I roll for crap.
Mitch says: Dude, that's ass. Wanna shoot the guy anyway?

In that situation, I would say: "No, didn't ya see my roll? My gun jammed. Shit happens and now zombies are gonna eat my brain. Who's got next init? Kill me afore I rise again, would ya?"

John Kim wrote: So I'd like to take two more test cases: LARPs and MUDs.

(edited) wrote: ...is there a difference between playing with a group around a table and playing in a LARP or MUD? Is it a significant difference?

John Kim wrote:
Look, if is no room for argument, then I guess you should just close your ears to what I'm going to say -- or perhaps try to get the moderator to ban me. (In case you didn't guess, the attitude here is rather grating to me.)

So I'd like to take two more test cases: LARPs and MUDs. The distinguishing feature of a LARP is that it is played over a large area. Players wander about. No one in the LARP necessarily knows all of what goes on. So this case throws a wrench at the idea of consensus. Clearly not everyone in the game needs to agree. Is it just the people in the room? How do you define the room?

1. Fundamentally, we evaluate each assertion that each player makes, giving and withholding Credibility on a case-by-case, moment-by-moment basis. The power rests exclusively with the listener, never the speaker - no one can claim Credibility; Credibility is only given or withheld. A roleplaying game is, thus, based on negotiation. Usually it's streamlined and invisible, but negotiation underlies every game-significant statement.

2. I'm not offering a way to play. I'm saying that this is how all of us play, every single time. I'm also not defining roleplaying, cuz lots of things work the same way and aren't roleplaying. (Saying, "Vince, dude, every conversation works like that" is agreeing with me, not disagreeing. Roleplaying is a kind of conversation.)

3. It's practical to divvy Credibility up in advance. One common arrangement is to have one player be the final authority on all matters. Another is to play by preset rules, usually again with one player as the final arbiter. Let me emphasize that these are social arrangements, subject to change at the will of the group, and that even so, every statement about "what happens" must be negotiated. (It just makes the negotiations easy: "I shoot you." "The gun jams [because you gave final authority to me]." "Dang.")

4. All roleplaying game systems apportion Credibility, and that's all they do. There is nothing else for them to do. The crunchiest, sprawlingest, simmest game is a contract between the players about whose word to take for what.

Valamir wrote: I think that's a pretty well voiced summary Nathan.

This is not a "style of play" that's being talked about.

It is 100% physically impossible for anyone ever to have engaged in any activity recognizeable as roleplaying with any rule set and any play group in any environment at any age without the Lumply Principle being the driving force behind every instance of actual play that occured. Period.

Its that fundamental.

Nothing happens in an RPG until every player at the table agreed that it happened.

Valamir wrote:
Rules never decide what happens. If they did then fudging and cheating would be impossible. People decide what happens. People decide how much credibility each element at the table is going to have. Whether this is "throw the rules out and just wing it" or whether this is "we're going to play every single rule as written without deviation" its people deciding and aportioning credibility accordingly.
This is so basic that there is not really any room for arguement.

When a player says "I do X", the GM is the only one whose yea or nay is relevant.

kamikaze wrote:
The Lumpley Principle claims that the players must agree with every action. Once play starts in a "follow the rules" social contract, that is just plain wrong; it's up to the Judge.

contracycle wrote: A true stoppage of play for an argument is an imposition on your fellows players too. With whatever ill grace, consent is usually granted, but if the conflict goes on for any length of time, to the point that consent is in fact withdrawn, the game will be greatly disrupted at least.

John, I would agree with you that the Lumpley principle should be ammeded to be "system apportions credibility in an attempt to achieve consensus". Sometimes it doesn't work. Either via miscommunication, or by objection, people can disagree on what is happening. This results in one of two things, however, when it is discovered: the cessation of play for one or more participants, or further negotiation to bring things back into line. Thus, when play does continue, it is, in fact the Lumpley Principle in action once again.

I suppose that, occasionally, when it doesn't matter to anyone, people do obtain their own idea of what happened in a game, even when they know that others have a different idea. Still, this doesn't speak to what system is designed to do. Just that all systems are imperfect.

The Principle doesn't speak to success, just what system is intended to do.

Mike

kamikaze wrote:
That's the claim, but that is directly contradicted by my experience of gaming. It's quite possible for a player to disagree with a GM's rules call and sulk for a while, trying to deny that it happened (this is uncommon, because you agreed to abide by the GM's decision when you sit down and join that social contract, and most adults are capable of living by their agreements; I don't play with oathbreakers). When a player says "I do X", the GM is the only one whose yea or nay is relevant. The other players may point out facts which would change the situation, or react, but don't get a veto.

A "follow the rules" social contract is a dictatorship, not a democracy. Hopefully a benevolent and enlightened dictatorship, and people are free to leave the group if they find it oppressive, but still the rule of one.

I think you're going to have to accept that your universal principle *IS NOT UNIVERSAL*. Sorry, no Grand Unified Theory of roleplaying for you. It applies only to a specific freeform style of gaming.

It is not productive conversation to insist that everyone is exactly like you, and must therefore play the same way you do. You need to learn to phrase your comments in a civil manner, with propositions leading to conclusions, rather than merely asserting your conclusions.

Carefully read the Kamikaze Principle (slightly amended, now that I've slept on it): "In a follow-the-rules gaming social contract, the players agree to play a specific game by the rules, with one player chosen as the judge of the rules, game world, and characters."

Note the verbs, because I chose those words carefully. The players agree, and choose. The one player judges. At no point are the rules said to do anything. The law does nothing without someone to apply it, but that does not mean that there are no laws.

The Lumpley Principle claims that the players must agree with every action. Once play starts in a "follow the rules" social contract, that is just plain wrong; it's up to the Judge.

Until this thread, I too would have thought this was so basic that it didn't even need expression, that it was beyond dispute, but apparently not. Now I've accepted that freeform social contracts behave in a different manner; I've done it myself when playing freeform, and the Lumpley Principle is right *for that context*. It is just not correct *for this context

Again, it is not a productive conversational strategy to insist that everyone is exactly like you, and has no room to argue with you. Don't do that again, okay?

Actually, there might be another case that's maybe interesting: A rule call is made last session. Something fairly catestrophic happens as a result (the Sid the barbarian is killed).

Next session, the call is shown to be in griveous error--already a lot of play has been predicated on that event (the players contineue *without* the barbarian).

The GM, when shown the rule, punts: "Okay. Sid is back. I don't know what happened--but he's back. You pick him up at the next tavern."

At that point play is continuing with a gray space where the rules have prevented 'X' or 'Y' from happening but there is no 'Z.'

Even if Sid's player makes up a story, the rules have not granted him the credibility to do so--all they've done is take it from the GM (who declared him dead).

Not that I think this is *especially* relevant to anything--but when Mike noted that different people might imagine things in different ways I thought "I bet that happens all the time!" (ask what color the evil necromancer's eyes were next time after a big battle and you didn't specify it--but that wasn't really about the rules or credibility, per se).

-Marco

Even if Sid's player makes up a story, the rules have not granted him the credibility to do so--all they've done is take it from the GM (who declared him dead).

Agreed--in the scenario I'm envisioning there's a functional gray-space in the narrative:

Sid descibes falling for hours, battling with a fire demon. Underwater, high mountain tops. You get the drift.

The other players (and maybe even Sid's player) don't buy that scenario ("You fell down a well when you totally blew you dancing roll, dude. It was like penalty for excessive celebration in the in-zone from hell")

The GM has said he doesn't know how to resolve it (rules say he shouldn't have fallen. The play following the event established clearly that he had, the well was established as fatal ... etc.)

But play continues. So each player might imagine it differently--or at very least it's a functional example of a self contradictory situation. Now Mike says Lumpley is an *attempt* to aportion credibility--so here no one has any credibility for what happened in the shared imagining ... so it's just a failure (and indeed, it's a rules failure that starts the ball rolling).

So that's a good way to look at it: the rules grant no credibility so there is none.

But on the other hand, it was the rules themselves that *create* the gray space (without the re-examination and ex-post-factor application of a solid rule Sid remains sadly dead).

So it's an extreme case. A paradox.

Hey ... next time travel game I run, that's how I'm gonna to do it. A real-world in play paradox.

-Marco

John Kim wrote: That's what my point was about LARPs and MUDs. In both of these, a non-consenting player does not stop play or even necessarily greatly disrupt it. There may be some local disruption, but play continues in other areas without noticing.

Mike Holmes wrote: I suppose that, occasionally, when it doesn't matter to anyone, people do obtain their own idea of what happened in a game, even when they know that others have a different idea. Still, this doesn't speak to what system is designed to do. Just that all systems are imperfect.

The Principle doesn't speak to success, just what system is intended to do.

Valamir wrote: There are only 3 possible avenues at this point.

a) Whatever it was the person who was speaking described has just been accepted as happening in the game world.
b) Whatever it was the person who was speaking described has just been denied as happening in the game world.
c) Whatever it was the person who was speaking described has been altered or modified before being accepted as happening in the game world.

quot;John Kim]I believe that Vincent actually contradicted this. He said that the Lumpley Principle didn't say a thing about the game-world.

I for one would be happy to end this thread. Seems like pretty much everybody agrees, or is gonna have to keep thinking about it.

John, Marco, in the initial thread, I set up an example of some PC picking up a can of peaches. Between me and Mike we imagined a situation where the fate of the peaches was never satisfactorily resolved, but play continued, dodging the issue, and over time it became not a big deal. Forever after, some of the players held conviction that the peaches had been picked up, and some held conviction that they hadn't, and the group talked about it with ribbing, joking, and friendly controversy.

There, the consensus wouldn't be "yes, X happened," it'd be "whatever, let's move on."

Exactly your gray area, Marco, and a lot like your post modern game, John. Cool, very interesting stuff.

John wrote: I believe that Vincent actually contradicted this. He said that the Lumpley Principle didn't say a thing about the game-world.

John Kim wrote:
Ooh, ooh!!! OK now, just because you said this, now I want to go and design a system which is intended to encourage multiple game views. I think someone described this as a "Post-Modern" RPG before, and now that I think about it, it sounds neat.

To some degree, this is always true, I think. Players will interpret statements differently, and they don't always identify and correct differences. What I would be trying for would be to actually exploit this for effect -- to actually try to keep up differences among player views.

Matt Snyder wrote:

When a player says "I do X", the GM is the only one whose yea or nay is relevant.

Not true in all cases. Are you refering to a specific game, or maybe just using this as one possible answer? Or, do you view this process as applicable to all games? I don't think this happens as you describe in Dust Devils, as an example.

Matt Snyder wrote:
Further, even if this applies in 99% of how gaming operates, it is still operating under the Lumpley principal. It is indeed universal.

Matt Snyder wrote:
The kamikaze principal presumes a lot about how RPGs operate, by the way. We could, for example, have a bidding system in which players "vote" with resources to say how "X" happens. Such a system could be robust, and it could also be played strictly by the book.

Mark, man. You need to chill out. Seriously.

That said, your follow-the-rules social contract fits perfectly within the lumpley principle, which I've always heard described as: the system is the means by which group concensus is reached as-to what is in/occurs in the shared imaginative space. Following the rules is a means by to reach this concensus.

I don't see any confusion.

lumpley wrote: I for one would be happy to end this thread. Seems like pretty much everybody agrees, or is gonna have to keep thinking about it.

lumpley wrote:
Also I've said explicitly that larps and other kinds of rpgs - muds clearly qualify - might operate on different principles than "consensus rules."

kamikaze wrote: A couple people in this thread are becoming excessively dogmatic, and are never going to agree that the principle with your name on it only describes certain social contracts; I'm not sure if you recognize that or not, but at least you haven't been dogmatic about it, and have tried to make useful clarifications.

Geez, guys. A page and half since I called it. Did you just not notice, or what? The thread is OVER. The original topic has been covered. Ed's question has been aswered. If you want to continue discussing other aspects of the Lumpley Principle, start new threads; please don't post to this one.