I've been catching up on the various threads about this whole issue of "do the characters (and presumably, game world) have any kind of existence aside from what the players decide to do moment by moment?" (such as the Who Cares? that started it all, and the Character and Our Weird Gamer Friends thread, among others.)

since I'm coming in so late on the discussion, and since I'm going to veer the discussion far away from the philosophical or psychological feel of the other threads, I figured I'd split this off by itself.

those other threads focus on philosophical issues of whether an imaginary character can be said to exist or not. although in one sense this might be a useful theoretical pondering, my main argument is that it's irrelevant. if you take a group of players pretending to be elves or cyborgs or what-have-you, it makes no difference whether the characters are just fictional tools of the players' desires or if the characters have some kind of disembodied existence in the shared imaginative space which the players use as a guideline for their decisions.

it's like the old question "how do we know this world isn't a dream?" it doesn't really matter, since the results are the same, whether it is or it isn't.

this is part of why I usually get a bit disgruntled when the "characters don't exist" slogan appears. aside from the recent threads that actually attempt to address that issue, I normally see someone say "characters don't exist" in the middle of a discussion that has nothing to do with the reality of the characters, such as the thread about relationship mechanics that preceded all of this. it seems to be more of a rhetorical device to change the subject and "score" in the discussion.

and it's frustrating in another way, as well, since the "goal" of reinforcing the idea that "the character does not exist" seems to be to remind people not to talk about what the character "did" or "wants"... which, in my mind, undermines a very useful shorthand. I think it's more useful to say "Merlin wants to do this" than "I want the imaginary character Merlin to `want' to do this".

this perhaps comes from different playstyles, for I've noticed that most of the examples being raised in the philosophical and psychological examples of players and their characters seem to be Narrativist examples -- or, at least, the characters seem to be designed with Big Moral Issues as an underlying theme.

I think it's important to remember that, although some players design characters based based on important issues in their lives as perhaps a kind of therapy, there are a lot of people who don't design characters this way at all, at least not all the time. certainly Gamist players don't: they tend to play characters they think will be effective in the current game. if they play a lot of elven wizards, it's because they are comfortable with the sort of strategies that work with an elven wizard.

similarly, most Sim players seem to either play characters from their favorite novels/movies/shows that resemble the setting in question, or play characters with the one or two features in the list of skills, advantages, or backgrounds that struck them as interesting. they read the psi rules, for example, and get a few ideas about things a telepath could do, so they want to play a telepath.

and my point, here, is that if you tell someone making these kinds of character design decisions "the character doesn't exist", they are going to look at you as if you are either insane or trying to waste time, since obviously they aren't designing the characters as if they have an independent existence.

but, on the other hand, the character *does* exist, at least in the same sense that the game itself exists, or money exists, or IBM exists. I bunch of people agree to do things a certain way and write down guidelines on paper. they follow those guidelines, and we get a feel for the internal consistency of whichever fictional entity we're talking about. we *know* it's fictional, but we also know that we agreed to play out the fiction in a certain way -- and that agreement takes precedence over personal desires, sometimes, unless we're willing to say "stop, we need to rewrite the social contract, because I don't want the character to do that". how hard the player sticks to this agreement varies with playstyle and with the rules of the social contract.

Well, for me that hits the nail on the head.

If the character "doesn't exist," why are we playing RPG's?

I'm not sure *precisely* what's going on with that--but your post brought this up for me.

Ron said this:

Therefore the fear or perception of "I must act against my character in order to 'do the story right'" is utterly unfounded in reference to successful play of any GNS stripe. It is a red herring that amounts to creating word salad, then fearing what the sentence "says."

The only sense in which this fear makes sense is when the outcomes of play are under disproportionate control by one player (often the GM), and the other players are being railroaded - which is to say, we are now talking about the realm of dysfunction rife with catch-phrases, code-phrases, and power-trips, rather then the realm of successful role-playing and having fun in the first place.

Well, I've been very active in those threads in saying the acceptance of the bedrock-reality that there is no character is valuable. I'm not sure that adding another post will actualy help, but I've got one more angle to try . . .

"There is no character" is NOT shorthand for "don't act in character." I think there's no thundering agreement beacuse people think it does mean that. It doesn't.

It's all about remembering that "Merlin wants to do this" *is* shorthand - and (for me) not neccessarily about directly remembering that all the time, but remembering it when it's important.

Our characters are our tools. Pretending our characters are "real" is a tool (and quite a cool tool). As long as a tool is serving you well, use it. But if it's not - don't forget that it's a tool. My experience is that people do forget, especially in a problematic moment of play (and by "problematic," I don't mean disastrous-disfunctional - just the normal stuff that happens in a social environment). And remembering can help.

My thought is that this is true for all GNS modes, though certain styles (in various modes) may be less prone to forget than others. But I don't think "there is no character" is a Game/Nar signifier or "the character is real" is a Sim signifier.

Gordon

Marco wrote: One of the things that *was* said was words to the effect of "if it's not on the character sheet--or otherwise known to other people in the game it's not relevant" (a paraphrase, I no longer have the PM--and my understanding of it). I think that's a strongly Nar interpertation of character (as a vehicle for story).

I think this perception is key.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: Our characters are our tools. Pretending our characters are "real" is a tool (and quite a cool tool). As long as a tool is serving you well, use it. But if it's not - don't forget that it's a tool. My experience is that people do forget, especially in a problematic moment of play (and by "problematic," I don't mean disastrous-disfunctional - just the normal stuff that happens in a social environment). And remembering can help.

John,

I'm lost as to how "a character is a created tool in the imagined game world" becomes a contradiction of character's aren't real. Tools, dolls - the point is that they are the creation of the real people involved in play.

My example from the other thread is one way in which forgetting this is an issue, but far from the only one. I also don't fully agree with your characterization (no pun intended) of that example here, but I guess that's for the other thread.

My goal for posting in this thread was mostly to correct talysman's incorrect (IMO) claim/fear that the goal of "there is no character" is to get people to stop saying "Merlin wants this." I mean, sometimes it's good not to use the words, but that's not the purpose of the whole thing. Maybe someone ELSE (Ralph?) wants to claim that whole verbal shorthand should be abandoned, but I'm not making it.

Gordon

The Social Contract determines to the delegation of control over co-creation of the shared imagined fantasy (fantasy world). Actor stance is a useful form of play. Fortunately, however, it is only one way the fantasy world is co-created.

It is useful to go outside of the limits of actor stance to examine other forms of co-creation.

Is this what is being presented? Or is their something else I am missing? If that is the case, where is the debate?

The root of this whole back and forth that keeps getting repeated on thread after thread is IMO the intentional twisting of the obvious in an attempt to obfuscate the point.

The latest example of this is in John's post above which Gordon rightly is befuddled by. John, I hate to be bluntly rude, but your statement is above is intolerably obfuscatory.

You are taking the statement "The character doesn't exist" to a ridiculously illogical extreme in order to try and (unsuccessfully) refute the inherent truth that the "The character does not exist".

I point to the following quote as an especially egregious example of this.

If characters don't exist, then how can they be tools? It might be useful to pretend that characters don't exist, but the truth is they do. Ultimately, a character is a thing -- a mental construct, an imaginary thing -- but still a thing.

Valamir wrote: The root of this whole back and forth that keeps getting repeated on thread after thread is IMO the intentional twisting of the obvious in an attempt to obfuscate the point.

The latest example of this is in John's post above which Gordon rightly is befuddled by. John, I hate to be bluntly rude, but your statement is above is intolerably obfuscatory.

Marco wrote:
The, again, most obvious example is when a psych limit makes you an NPC and the GM controlls your character.

You say they can't react to stimuli. That's not true either. A game system may call for reactive resolution in a number of ways--all of these are out of control and may be in opposition to the owning character (a "hair-trigger" character defect results in the character shooting an innocent who surprises him).

At which point the character does exist and can (depending on system) be an obstacle to a players wishes, acting--or being directed to act--in ways the player doesn't want or can't predict.

My point wasn't that "there is an outside entity" but that that the *context* you were using to discuss the existence of the character was tautological and fairly un-engaging (one could just as easily say the game doesn't exist--at all--and where do we go then?). We visit Fang actually:

Contrast to No Myth which uses a different vocabulary and expands on it the concepts and techniques to make the point that while "the game may not be a simulation of a 'real' reality, it can be seen as a genre-piece and reflective of tropes and themes in a meaningful fashion." That's what I don't see here--I see people saying "characters don't have a metaphical existence." And that, it turns out, is unarguable (even if you think they do, you can't prove it) and news to just about no-one.

What saying "the character doesn't exist," IMO, fails to address is the case of the player who *is* playing a construct with systemic and conceptional constraints on it. Those constraints certainly can/may exist--and they can define goals or aims for the character (i.e. wants)--and simply ditching them may not be what a normal person would identify as a preference.

That all seems super obvious--and it derrivies from the fact that the character certainly exists in the game world. Which is as real as it needs to get for there to be actions on the part of the character the player doesn't want or intend (to argue otherwise is, I think, to argue that when a character in a game who suffers a humiliating defeat that was 'wanted' by the player. Ask Paul C. if that's an accurate/communicative use of English).

But that said, I'm still surprised at your example of a preference of in-character play over out-of-character play.

Specifically I'm surprised youd didn't address the case where the player says "I shoot him" and the GM says "Um--no, you got 20pts for Pacificist. You don't. You walk away--or something." And the player goes "Damn. You're right. That sucks. Okay, I walk."

That's the case that's both interesting and, IMO, relevant.

-Marco

Of course, the character is imaginary. No one disputes that, but characters have parameters. If the character includes a detailed description, those parameters probably include extensive information about the character's personality. If the player considers these parameters and gives them top priority in the decision-making process, the player may well make decisions for the character that differ from decisions the player would make without those parameters. In that way, the character seemingly takes on a life of its own. To me, that's roleplaying. Yes, the player is always making those decisions, but those decisions are informed by parameters unique to the character, not the player. So, the player sets aside his own views in favor of the character's parameters. Yet, those parameters are still subject to the player's interpretation.

So, I agree with Ralph that the character has no independent will, but I also acknowledge that the parameters built into a character often have an impact on the decision-making process. This gives the appearance that the character has a will of its own, but the appearance is quite different from actual will. When a player says, "My character wouldn't do that," The player is not saying, "The character wouldn't do that because he is an independent being with free will and self-determination and he just told me so." Rather, the player is saying, "Based on the parameters of this character, I think this is not a course of action the character would pursue if the character were a real, sentient being. The character would not do this." Of course, it could also mean, "I as player don't want my character to do that," and without any regard for those parameters; but I'm not going there.

Anyway, someone in one of these threads suggested that the character is a fictional construct that operates in a sort of virtual machine in the brain, just as a program can run in a virtual machine in a computer. I like that analogy. It may not be wholly accurate, but it provides the right sort of image to explain the idea of character as a fictitious but influential subset of the player.

If the player considers these parameters and gives them top priority in the decision-making process, the player may well make decisions for the character that differ from decisions the player would make without those parameters.

John Kim wrote: If characters don't exist, then how can they be tools? It might be useful to pretend that characters don't exist, but the truth is they do. Ultimately, a character is a thing -- a mental construct, an imaginary thing -- but still a thing. The world, plot, and theme are similar things. But is character a tool? It seems to me that by calling it a tool, that implies that inherently it is supposed to be used in a particular way or set of ways. That seems like a weak parallel, though.

the statement "the character does not exist", means the "the character does not possess a will independent of the player"

where I wrote: Characters are not really people; they are functional components of a game world which are manipulated by players to achieve goals. They are, in a word, tools. It is at this point in play that you are attempting to guide the players into designing the right tools.

Put that way, it becomes obvious that GNS considerations are very important to the question of what you are designing. If you guide the players into designing hammers, they're going to wind up with tools that are very good for hitting things; if you want them instead to write stories, you need to have them design pens. You need the right tool for the job; if you don't have it, there will be a tendency to try to make the job fit the tool.

Probably you'd have saved a lot of hassle if you had actually said that, and not, "the character does not exist". Even had you said, "the character is not a real person" I don't think we'd ever have argued this.

delete double post

Valamir wrote:

The player has the right to enforce his will upon his character. The character does not have the right to enforce its will upon the player, because not being a real person, the character has no rights outside of what the player chooses for it. The player may choose to give a voice to the character's "will" by portraying in play what the player thinks the character would do or want. But the character has no right to expect the player to do this, and the player has no obligation to do this...because the character is not a real person and has no such rights.

This is the fundamental point of the issue, and is not one that can be understood with a simple "of course the characters aren't people" kind of response.

Marco wrote:
I'm curious how you justify this in light obviously existant rules that can supercede the will of the player. I think if you (as I understood you to do) justify that by claiming the "choice to behave in a certain way" was made when the player took the qualifier (say, again, a psych-limit) or (even, I think more tenuously) chose the game then you are entering some very sticky territory (and if you can elicidate how you see that, I'd be interested in seeing that).

But I'm even more interested in finding that you see a preference for deep immersion as selfish. It's the tying of "deep immersion" to "won't change their preferred style to achieve community" that I think is amazing--

espeically for someone who just came out with great hostilty for someone who holds a position they haven't considered closely enough.

Valamir wrote: Which brings us back to the point I originally made about what I called "Deep Immersion". Because Deep Immersion players refuse to acknowledge these last points and refuse to ever make choices based on priorities other than those they've assigned to their character. Which means that frequently they will make choices that are not the best for the enjoyment of the others at the table strictly because of rigid adherence to this idea that the character's parameters must always be the player's top priority. Which is how I concluded that such play is inherently selfish.

I had bolded the passage in the text I quoted that I was addressing.

Since I didn't address it *specifically* here's the passage I conted with.

"the character has no rights outside of what the player chooses for it. "

Let me throw my 2 cents on here.

Here's my model:

1. No supernatural or jungian or platonian transcendant entities exist. The only "life" a fantasy has is as part of a shared culture, ie information transfered between individuals.

2. Characters are produced by the imagination of the player playing it, and enhanced or experienced by the other players at the table.

3. The player is the agent which imagines himself as the character, then decides what the character would do.

4. All humans routinely switch from role to role, making decisions within the context of a social situation as they percieve it. A role-playing game, and a character in particular, have several different contexts in which the player makes decisions.

There's nothing mysterious about characters "having a life of their own" - this is just the natural perception of the player when he or she views an in-context decision he just made from _outside_ that context.

The fascination with this subject may be that it reveals that we are each of us a multitude, though we think we are one.

This has been an interesting series of threads to read, but I think that some of us have forgotten that Ralph's statement "the character does not exist," clearly shorthand for "the character does not have an existence and will independent of the player," was made in an effort to:

1. disabuse people of the notion that Actor Stance (sometimes called Deep Immersion) is the only legitimate way in which play can be conducted. (NB--an idea that one encounters repeatedly in many gaming products, which frequently encourage players to develop such an understanding.)

and

2. draw attention to the ways in which such play can (note: "can" not "must") rapidly become dysfunctional.

If you are fortunate enough not to have experienced how "my guy" play can quickly become a big bag of flaming shite left on your doorstep then I congratulate you. Sadly for some, this experience is all too common and familiar.

Now, I think we need to keep in mind that there may be cases where "my guy" behavior is a form of resistance to other kinds of dysfunction that may exist within the group. For instance, it may be a way of resisting some fairly egregious railroading or a passive-agressive response to GM favoritism or whatever.

Nevertheless, these were not the exceptions that Ralph was dealing with. He was simply trying to address the problem of players who routinely assert that their character "wouldn't do that" or "wants to do X as opposed to Y" as a way of avoiding taking player responsibility for that character. This isn't a rare occurence by a long shot. I hear writers spout this nonsense all the time. In fact, one writer friend once informed me that he abandoned the novel he was working on because his main character refused to do something that he, the author, wanted him to do. Needless to say I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or look behind me for a big fucking Indian and a nurse with a name like a common mechanic's tool.

When a player or an author commits to that level of character autonomy it begins to seriously impede the attainment of something far richer and more rewarding. In a reversal of the familiar expression "the best is the enemy of the good," here a good (Actor Stance or Deep Immersion or "getting into character" or whatever else you want to call it) becomes the enemy of the better (the co-creation of collectively satisfying play or, in the case of my writer friend, the completion of a novel rather than the mere creation of an interesting character).

Just my $.02

Eric

Alan, that's pretty much the way I see it.

Eric. Thanks for the summation. You captured my points precisely. Since this is the first time I recall the issue being discussed so deeply (or discussed at all for quite some time) it is understandable that we're all thrashing about abit trying to figure out how best to discuss the idea. Alot of the posts on these threads have just been primarily to try and understand and elaborate on the boundaries of the positions. I'm glad that in all of my own flailing about, my key points were at least understandable.

zhlubb wrote: If you are fortunate enough not to have experienced how "my guy" play can quickly become a big bag of flaming shite left on your doorstep then I congratulate you. Sadly for some, this experience is all too common and familiar.

zhlubb wrote: (Ralph) was simply trying to address the problem of players who routinely assert that their character "wouldn't do that" or "wants to do X as opposed to Y" as a way of avoiding taking player responsibility for that character. This isn't a rare occurence by a long shot. I hear writers spout this nonsense all the time. In fact, one writer friend once informed me that he abandoned the novel he was working on because his main character refused to do something that he, the author, wanted him to do. Needless to say I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or look behind me for a big fucking Indian and a nurse with a name like a common mechanic's tool.

When a player or an author commits to that level of character autonomy it begins to seriously impede the attainment of something far richer and more rewarding.

In any case I had little choice about the subject. Ged, who was always very strong-minded, always saying things that surprised me and doing things he wasn't supposed to do, took over completely in this book. He was determined to show me how his life must end, and why. I tried to keep up with him, but he was always ahead.

zhlubb wrote: I hear writers spout this nonsense all the time. In fact, one writer friend once informed me that he abandoned the novel he was working on because his main character refused to do something that he, the author, wanted him to do. Needless to say I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or look behind me for a big fucking Indian and a nurse with a name like a common mechanic's tool.

Eric

Marco wrote: After all, how could an author just lose a character to a dragon? How could a character be compelled to act some way the author didn't intend? And of course, what kind of author can't simply re-write a chapter.

I wasn't being clear enough--my fault. Sorry. In the second case that was the results of RPG play which can be unpredictable, dictated by game-rules, or over-ridden by other participants (unlike, as you suggest--and leaving the method-writing approach aside) an RPG.

If I told you my character died in an RPG and his story unexpectedly didn't continue you wouldn't think I was destined for the psych-ward.

-Marco

How on earth did Immersion become identified as Actor stance? This football has now been booted all over the place.

Interesting set of threads this, and a lot of talking past each other going on. I'd just like to throw some observations into the mix.

First of all we all agree characetrs do exist in some sense, the real question seems to be concerning the independence of their mental state and behaviour in the game.

Does Shakespear's 'The Tempest' exist? It contains imaginary characters in an imaginary place, it is entirely fictional yet it clearly exists as a work of art. Shakespear is dead, yet we can all read about Puck and discuss the character's behaviour and attitudes. This level of existence of roleplaying game characters does not seem to be in dispute.

As before, Puck is a character that has been played by thousands of actors, each of them interpreting the character differently and presenting it in a skightly different way, yet they are all playing Puck. The attitudes and beliefs of puck can be discussed just as the attitudes and beliefs of any person can be discussed. However we can't actualy ask puck what he thinks, or how he feels about things any more than we can do the same of Napoleon Bonaparte (without visiting the local mental assylum, at any rate). Therefore Puck does not exist as a person, we can only discuss his motives and attitudes through aprocess of interpretation.

Roleplaying games do offer an extra dimension to our characters that shakespear did not have available when creatign his. We can assign them quantified mental attributes. In Pendragon our characetrs have traits and passions that describe their lustfullnes and chastity, generosity and selfishness, or their loyalty to the king. It is true that as the characetrs creator and player we get to determine the character's initial pshychological attributes. the change during play in response to the way we play the character, but they allso feed back into the way we play the character. If I choose do develop the character's loyalty to the king, what happens if the king makes demands that I as player do not think my characetr would like to perform, and which I would prefer the character to ignore? Yet I have made the character's loyalty a defining attribute!

I',m sure it would be possible to go a step further and develop a more sophisticated game mechanical model for the psychological states of our characters. In Call of Cthulhu the Sanity attribute can make our characetrs go mad whether we like it or not. In 'My Life With Master' our characters can be compelled to actions we deplore and we might dearly wish we could avoid the character having to perform, yet in that game we clearly are not in complete controll of our characters.

So do characetrs in My Life With Master have more of an independent existance than a Traveller character? More than a D&D character with an Alignment? More than a Pendragon character with a range of psychological attributes?

To what extent are they mere expressions of our creative energies, or external constructs with a life of their own?

It... lives!?


Simon Hibbs

simon_hibbs wrote: To what extent are they mere expressions of our creative energies, or external constructs with a life of their own?

simon_hibbs wrote:

I',m sure it would be possible to go a step further and develop a more sophisticated game mechanical model for the psychological states of our characters. In Call of Cthulhu the Sanity attribute can make our characetrs go mad whether we like it or not. In 'My Life With Master' our characters can be compelled to actions we deplore and we might dearly wish we could avoid the character having to perform, yet in that game we clearly are not in complete controll of our characters.

So do characetrs in My Life With Master have more of an independent existance than a Traveller character? More than a D&D character with an Alignment? More than a Pendragon character with a range of psychological attributes?

To what extent are they mere expressions of our creative energies, or external constructs with a life of their own?

It... lives!?

Christopher wrote: ...But I would still point to the possibility that a player uses part of his brain in character portrayal that he doesn't normally use in day-to-day operation of "self." ...

Actually, (and I think this is odd for this forum) it looks like it's a personal-responsibility argument on the "does not exist" side and a "immersion" argument on the "does exist."

That's where the disconnect is (and I think where the implicit aspect of dysfunction enters in here).

Clearly, when undergoing immersion, there is a Suspension of Disbelief element that suggests that the particiant is playing "as though the character exists." No disagreement there (yet--I remember someone arguing that SoD doesn't actually exists).

Clearly, when a character is unbound by any game-mechanic constructs the player is responsible for the actions taken by the character. I see room for disagreement there (the literary character suprises the author theme--but that's getting more philosophical than I think I want to--and anyway, the presence of that argument does not, I think, absolve the "author" of responsibility for that character's actions).

And I'm all about personal responsibility.

But sometimes, with some characters the owning player is not responsible for that character's actions (plain and simple--if someone on the "doesn't exist" side of the fence has never heard of a GM interceding to prevent "out of character play" I'd be amazed--and they call *me* sheltered).

The idea that this can simply be "turned off" by the player is wrong--and flies in the face of System Does Matter. The player can't decide to overrule the game--and under many systems/social contracts can't overrule a GM judgment call on OOC play.

And when "the player" is not responsible for the totality of the character's actions (or, indeed "wants/desires"--especially in the sense that Simon brings up--discussion of literary characters within context) then you get a scenario similar to the one that Ron brought up concerning drama mechanics:

Specifically, when more than one person is involved the results become interestingly "random" (or, more appropriately, *unpredictable*)--and this creates a situation which may be seen, properly, IMO, by "the player" as a "want of the character" external to him/her (the player).

In otherwords: the character may very well wind up wanting something I didn't choose, don't want him to want, and which I have little control over him wanting.

And cases of this are trivial to describe.

But, as I said, the personal responsibility argument interests me (especially the way I think it's being made here)--so I'd like to hear more about it.

-Marco

This business of "responsibility for the character's actions" seems kind of slippery to me, since technically the character's actions don't exist either. (Subject to the sort of qualifications being discussed here; of course they exist as concepts in a conceptual space, but they don't exist as actual deeds in actual history.)

For instance, if my character in a game massacres hundreds of innocent people, I don't see any responsibility that needs avoiding. I have no problem saying that I, Walt Freitag, the actual living person, am directly responsible for (fictionally) slaughtering hundreds of (fictional) victims, and so what? Tomorrow I might add to my crimes by drawing some stick figures on a piece of paper and then crumpling it up and tossing it in the trash. Lock me up and throw away the key!

But, if those actions make another real person at the table uncomfortable... that's something to worry about and accept responsibility for. I cannot dismiss a complaint out of hand by justifying my behavior as "what my character would do." (That's when you counter with "Your character doesn't exist," and we get into three long threads worth of argument.)

That doesn't mean I must always regard such a complaint against me justified, or that I will always feel a need to make amends or correct my future behavior. There are many reasons at the social contract level that might justify an action that someone else didn't like, including "it was required by the rules of play that we all agreed to follow," "it was a well-established genre trope for the milieu we're playing in," "it was the same type of action you (the complainer) have been doing yourself," and even, "it was what my character would do, and we've all agreed to play using what the characters would do as the main basis for decision-making, regardless of the consequences."

- Walt

The responsibility thing I was referring to wasn't distance from in-game actions--but rather the case of a player refusing to do something because "it's not in character."

And claiming that the issue is taken out of his hands (i.e. denying responsibility for the inaction).*

Sometimes "acting out of character" *is* out of your hands as a player. This is especially game-depedant.

-Marco
* And while I can see a dysfunctional case being implied here, what's missing (IMO) is the distinction between the power-struggle case ("I won't do what you 'want' me to--it's not in character") and the problem case ("I don't want to do that--but it *is* in character--and that IC action is being enforced by the rules/GM/other-players, etc.)

And what's really missing is the acknowledgement that a choice of "actions that would make for a better story" can conflict with "the consistency of my character" in ways that are specific to interactions between two people in ways unique to RPGS as opposed to, single-author or even multi-author narrative works--but still qualify as functional gaming (i.e. absent of power-struggle but still with room for discussion and improvement).

So we're getting down to dysfunction in rpg sessions being a result of a breakdown of the social contract due to differeing but unstated expectations in the style and content of play, including but not confined to the balace of power between the rules, the setting, the GM and the other players?

Now, who would come up with a crazy theory like that?

Seriously, I get the feeling that the simulation, model, whatever of the character internalised by the player is looking more like another element of the system, along with the game mechanics, etc to be popped into the social contract of the group: the degree to which the game is to be shaped by the characters motivations is as important and different to each group as the degree to which the GM controls the plot, the level of power of the game mechanics and the mutability or otherwise of the established setting.

What these discussion have really opened my eyes to is how unexamined my own thoughts on character autonomy were: they've not changed a great deal, but I know better why they're there and their consequences for play, and have a better idea of how I can alter their expression to better fit a particular group.

Marco pegs an important part of this for me with the personal responsibility angle. I see this at two levels - one is just the fact that this thinking in-character thing is kinda sticky/grabby. It seems to encourage us to forget that we are the real human beings here, and the characters can only push us around if we let them. Now, sometimes we WANT to let them. Some people even don't see the point in playing unless we let them. But that doesn't change the fact that what's happening is a player choosing to have "the character " control what happens.

("We let then," of course, also externalizes the character, and maybe would be better rephrased as "choosing to allow the charcater's actions to be determined by your immediate conclusions about what the character would do, based perhaps on an analysis of previously-determined parameters, or alternatively based upon an instinctive/emotional intuition into the character's behavior (which might even feel like the character talking to you). But that's a mouthful.)

The other level is that it is an amazingly convenient and hard-to-dispute "excuse" in power struggles to say "it's what the character would do." Asking the player to instead say (and thus confront the responsibility) "I can't see any other solution working for the character" or "We've agreed to use the game system, which is dictating that Y happen, so Y is going to happen" has sometimes been very useful to me.

I read something by Dan Simmons related to the channeling-the-character phenomena recently - I'll see if I can find it at home tonight. It was something to the effect that we are forced (by Derrida and his like, damn them) to admit, yes, what we hear is not a person, but rather a character. Which (says Mr. Simmons) means much less than some people think it does.

Gordon

Now that I think I know what was being said by "the character doesn't exist" I think it's definitely worth being said. It's a valid point. However, I'm not convinced "the character doesn't exist" is the right way to say it. It certainly didn't come off that way to me.

Tiny actual play example:
Recently one of my characters accidentally killed a PC with an area lightning spell. It wasn't actually the PC, it was an alternate dimension dupe conveniently placed so we would quit looking for the real PC, but the characters don't know that yet. Ah, guilt...I feel bad for my character.

Anyway, casting the area lightning spell was a sleepy decision on my part; not something the character would have likely done. This bugged me, it meant a lot of things for the character I didn't want it to - the big one being an inability to keep the character around and remain consistent with the character's personality. I couldn't well change what happened; it integrated into the shared space and effectively left my control because I didn't correct it immediately. I was stuck killing the PC. My fix was to talk to the group between session and tweak the events. I made it a chain lightning effect and gave it stray bullet feel - made it more or an accident. This wasn't entirely consistent with the system, but it solved my problem, or at least made it tolerable.

As you can see I've got a very character exists approach. I'm, generally speaking, pretty unbending about character. I'm a lot more willing to bend system, setting, events or anything else around the character to create the effect I or the group desires.

You can still get cooperative play without bending on character by controlling the character's stimuli. "The character doesn't exist" only addresses character, so I think it's misleading and incomplete.

Disclaimer: If personal experience yields good results telling people "the character doesn't exist", honestly I probably shouldn't be criticizing. It could just be that when you say it to a forgie you get a different result.

*****

Oh, and I think my example illustrates what Marco has been saying too.

I know I'm entering this discussion pretty late, but I thought I might help clarify things (I hope)...

Valamir wrote: The player has the right to enforce his will upon his character. The character does not have the right to enforce its will upon the player, because not being a real person, the character has no rights outside of what the player chooses for it. The player may choose to give a voice to the character's "will" by portraying in play what the player thinks the character would do or want. But the character has no right to expect the player to do this, and the player has no obligation to do this...because the character is not a real person and has no such rights.

Well, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until someone can point out to me why it doesn't matter or addresses it:

In many (traditional) RPG's there are *written* rules that place the character's actions outside your control. These are not necessiarily constraints you *chose* for the character--they may have been thrust upon you.

To stretch your analogy: you mis-act Richard and the play's director steps in, kicks you out, and acts the part himself--in full accordance with the audience and the other actors--and the contract that allows him to do this isn't "unwritten" at all--it's in a manual everyone there has (and that you have agreed to).

The character continues on in your absence. The character acts in ways you no longer control.

Is *someone* acting the character's part? Yes, of course. Is it "the player"? No. It isn't. In some cases it may be the *game designer* (who may even be dead at the time the rules are aportioning him credibility--a stretch of the Lumpely principle in a sense)--but it isn't *you.*

Again: Does *someone* bear responsibility for the character's actions? yes. Is it always the creating player? Of course not.

So: Is the creating player right to look upon his character as an artifact that can act outside of it's creator's will? Yes. Yes he is.

Can that artifact said to, in context of the existence of the game itself, be had to have wants or motivations (same as discussion of the motivations of a fictional character)? Yes. It can.

Is the character's creator always responsible for the character's persuing of those wants or goals? No. He isn't.

So is this whole discussion really just about the case where the conflict is entirely internal to one person? Or is it about the presence of unpredictable characters in general?

Judging from the first post, I would say the latter. I don't think anyone would argue that a player can choose between immersion or story-directed play if they want to and there are no other rules in play to prevent it.

-Marco

I like your point in general, but before it gets sidelined tangentially, I would comment that nobody is talking about doing anything "out of character". It's entirely possible that a player can make an Author stance decision that's completely in character for the PC in question. We're not assuming that the problem is doing something that breaks with the estabished continuity, or with perception of the character, or anything like that at all. This would be bothersome to the "immersionist", but it's not the issue at stake. For to say it was would be to erroneously say that the "authorial" player can't play it straight.

No, what bugs the "immersionist" is that he can see the player's decisions behind the character's. Yes, this would occur if the player made the character do something in an implausible or inconsistent way in order to make the plot go a particular way. But it can also happen when a player makes a completely plausible decision to, for example, drive the plot in a particular direction. Sometimes it's just obvious, despite the actual decision that the player is selecting being the same.

Example:
Player A: "You know what would be cool. If Bob remembered just now that he left his wallet, and returns to the appartment in order to get it, and finds his wife with his best friend. Bob goes back. "

Despite it being something that Bob would totally do given the character, and the established fact that he left his wallet, it's still obviously Authoring.

Player B: "Bob realizes that he's left his wallet, and goes back to the appartment."

This is less "offensive", because the player is not making it obvious what his thought processes are. But given player knowledge of the situation with Bob's wife and friend, and character non-knowledge, the "coincidence" is just too convenient. Still might annoy the "immersionist".

Player C: "Bob rolls to see if he remembers his wallet."

This is a little better, because though the player is obviously trying to author the events, he is allowing for the in-game resolution model to take credit for the event. If he rolls well, it's not only "what the character would do", but "what happened" according to the game reality. But it's still not "perfect" as we see the motive behind calling for the roll.

Player D: "Bob goes to the bar."

The player is choosing one of the many plausible actions that the character might take. But this one can't be Authoring, because there's obviously no attempt to create a dramatic situation. In this case, that's the purview of the GM to accomplish. If the group wants Bob to catch his wife cheating, the GM will have to call for that roll, or just tell the player that his character remembers.

This gives an idea of the spectrum of what I'll call the Authorial Appearance. It's precisely this Authorial Appearance that the "Immersionist" doesn't want. Because at that point, the game ceases being a Simulation (hence Simulationism) in which the player is participating, and becomes a collaborative storytelling act at some level. Which has an entirely different feel to some. So if you want the Simulation feel, you avoid Authorial Appearance.

I hope I'm clarifying, and not muddying.

Mike

Marco and I cross posted, so this answer to his post follows my other one above.

Marco wrote: Well, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until someone can point out to me why it doesn't matter or addresses it:

Marco, you HAVE raised that point several times...and IMO its been addressed several times already. I'll summarize:

1) The issue at hand is whether the character exists or not as an independent entity with a mind of its own. The existance of rules that say "the character failed his morale check, the player must now portray him as scared" is IMO totally irrelevant to this point. The character has not suddenly gained a will simply because some mechanical construct is put in place. If anything, the mechanical construct highlights the fact that the character is an imaginary being with no mind of its own, because you need a rule to tell it to be scared. I don't see how the existance of such rules is even relevant to the discussion.

2) Further, if one accepts the Lumpley principal (which I do) one realizes that game rules have no credibility save what the players allow. If a group of people are sitting around a table and one says "Hey, you know, according the rules, you'd have to make a morale check" and someone else says "no that's stupid we're not going to play that way"...what happens? A thunderbolt from above? The rules get up and walk away? The paper character sheet suddenly stands up, picks up the dice, declares "its in the rules", and makes the roll. No. The rule gets discarded. OR The rule gets enforced. Either way that's entirely at the will of the actual flesh and blood players sitting around the table (or using another medium) not at the will of the character.


Mike: Authorial Appearance...I like it. It ties into the concept of Congruence but adds another layer of "does the congruence seem natural or contrived".

Valamir wrote: Mike: Authorial Appearance...I like it. It ties into the concept of Congruence but adds another layer of "does the congruence seem natural or contrived".

Mike,

Your option D - I see where it is clearly non-problematic for the "Immersionist" (quotes very important as we have no definition for that term and can only hope everyone kinda-sorta knows what we mean), but I disagree that it would, of neccessity, be a non-"Authorial" act. The player/group may see more drama in the affair continuing to be unknown by that character for now. It may set up an encounter at the bar with someone ELSE who's going to reveal the affair. Or etc. etc.

For the basic point, I'm not sure if that matters - but this discussion seems highly prone to wandering, and I wanted to nip that bit of possible dispute rather than let it be a distraction.

All,

I also think Jonathan is basically on track, and I think the only revision I'd make is along the same lines as Mike's point about "out of character" not being relevant. I'd phrase it this way: it's not (preferably - perhaps STRONGLY preferably, or perhaps not) that folks break character and ignore previous actions and/or preestablished personality - it's that they work to find something (out of the *many* possible actions/directions/interpretations available) that is consistent with all that AND also works for the other goal (story, shared group enjoyment, whatever). IMO, too much unconsidered "the character is in some way kinda-sorta a real seperate being" can get in the way of looking at those many possible actions.

Now, getting past that one still has to do things in a manner that doesn't offend OTHER desired attributes of play (not looking too contrived, displaying "too much" Authorial Appearance, etc.). And I'd say it's a pretty common preference to want as many "what the character would do" impulses as possible to just flow right into the gameplay without conducting too much perceived and/or experienced "contemplation" of the myriad other possibilities.

I just happen to strongly believe that there are some times (NOT all times) when that contemplation so greatly improves play that the cost of momentarily lost (and perhaps, if it matters to you, not even noticed by anyone else, if you're lucky/good enough) "flow" from character-thinking-derived impulse to in-shared-gamespace realization is well worth it. And I've met a number of people who in principle agree, but in practice act AS IF the direct flow from character-impulse to play were all-important. Shaking them of the (potientially valuable and rewarding) myth that the character is real can remind then to act from the principle, rather than habit.

There are people who in principle *disagree* - who hold the direct flow to be in actuality all-important, and who'd rather have the game fall apart and try again than allow that kind of contemplation to interfere with their play preference. For them, the fact that characters aren't real hardly matters, though I guess you could get almost all of 'em to admit it's true.

Knowing where your fellow players stand on this issue - at an extreme, with a leaning, firmly balanced, or whatever - is a valuable thing, IME.

Gordon

Valamir wrote: Marco, you HAVE raised that point several times...and IMO its been addressed several times already. I'll summarize:

"the character has no rights outside of what the player chooses for it. "

Marco (and everyone),

You're right, by my reading of the various threads - people (here, anyway) agree that the character does not exist with a mind of its own (though for some folks, and/or sometimes, it can be fun and useful for to act as if they did). But if that's the case, how can there be *any* context in which the character actually has an existence outside the owning player? Well, "owning player" is an interesting issue right there - if someone doesn't beat me to it, I'll eventually figure out a way to start a thread on that topic, which has been mentioned and (rightly) avoided a number of times in these threads. But for now, let "owning player" and "the group as a whole" be rough equivalents. My take is that influences to the character, which might then be revealed through the process of play, might come from anywhere. But the character itself is never "outside" the context of play. No matter how strongly you do or do not privledge the owner of a character regarding that characters' behavior and etc., the influences to that behavior always come from within the group of real humans playing - and can only be made real by the agreement of the participants.

I can't speak for Ralph, but the way I read his post is this: if the character has "rights" outside what the player "wants" for it, that is only because the player chooses to grant the system the ability to impose those "rights" (per Lumpley). So, if the player must choose to allow his "wants" to be usurped - well, that's not really losing control, is it? It's granting control - in particular situations, and always subject to a rules/social contract-trumping complaint - by choice.

Now, most of that is subtle stuff and/or philosophy-debate (if I want to not want, is that wanting?) - in some situations I think that's important, but I'm thinking we can move past it here. Because, really a matter of choice or not, people have STRONG opinions about what they like and don't like in allowing the system and/or other players to influence/control "their" character. What's that about? Power struggle? Aesthetic preference Some of both, and . . . what else?

Perhaps that's a new thread. My purpose here was both to try and explain why Ralph's way of looking at it makes perfect sense to me, and also to see if perhaps the interesting stuff lies outside of the areas these threads seem to keep focusing on. I'm open to ideas . . .

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote:
I can't speak for Ralph, but the way I read his post is this: if the character has "rights" outside what the player "wants" for it, that is only because the player chooses to grant the system the ability to impose those "rights" (per Lumpley). So, if the player must choose to allow his "wants" to be usurped - well, that's not really losing control, is it? It's granting control - in particular situations, and always subject to a rules/social contract-trumping complaint - by choice.

Gordon

I'm arguing that the game rules instruct the GM to take the character away from the player (in one case, there are many others) and therefore the character "has rights" "outside" of what "the player" chooses for it.

When that is not true then character behavior becomes unpredictable to the owning player (or at least somewhat unpredictable)--and therefore, in the context of the game, the character has wants the owning player didn't choose which can be enforced against his wishes.

I'm arguing that the game rules instruct the GM to take the character away from the player (in one case, there are many others) and therefore the character "has rights" "outside" of what "the player" chooses for it.

When the character is not doing what I tell it to do, from my perspective it may as well be independent

Valamir wrote:

I'm arguing that the game rules instruct the GM to take the character away from the player (in one case, there are many others) and therefore the character "has rights" "outside" of what "the player" chooses for it.

No...there is a huge leap you're making here.
Consider "the character has rights because the GM took it away from me"?
No, the GM has rights. The other players at the table have rights. The character has nothing.

First of all - yes, Marco, I think I am making that personal responsibility argument. The person who stays for a prolonged period of time (and I have no firm notion how to define "prolonged" - it probably varies based on a lot of stuff, like are there other aspects of the game that are rewarding) in a game with a dysfunctional power-struggle must want to be there, or they'd 1) force a "fix" to the power struggle, or 2) walk away. Remaining in the game with the power-struggle becomes, at some point, tacit agreement to let the power struggle continue. There are nuances - you can still dislike that aspect (which, sure, lets you say you don't "want" it, for a not-committed-to-do-anything-about-it kind of want), but if you're still there, and the power struggle is still there - you're accepting it. Basically - I think I am saying what you think I'm saying.

Now, a couple quotes:

Marco says: "When the character is not doing what I tell it to do, from my perspective it may as well be independent."

Ralph says: "When the character is not doing what you tell it to do because of the actions/interferences of another player...it is the other player who is independent."

I find these two quotes interesting, because I think they are both true. Marco is right - the character is (in some way, and ignoring the fact that this can only happen if the player agrees to let it happen) acting independently from the player. By not squinting close and noticing just where that independence is coming from, the player might get the feeling that the character itself is asserting something. This may be desireable. Note, though, that it is fragile - even with squint-avoidance, if the thing asserted by this method feels totally wrong for what the player already imagines about the character, it suddenly becomes obvious that rather than the character somehow doing the asserting, it's "just" another player/the GM/the system. And there goes the possibly-desired illusion of character independence, just as surely as if you'd taken that close look to see where it was "really" coming from in the first place.

This may be why personality mechanics have such a mixed reputation: they carry with them the potential to destroy (one of?) the very thing(s) they seek to promote.

(Getting into really tricky personal mental state stuff - replace the "outside" influences vs. player with the player's internal imagined space for the character vs. various other internal impulses, and I think you've got a perfectly good model for generating the illusion of an independent character within your own mind, too. Again, this might be what you want - to fool yourself into making an internal monologue feel like a dialouge. Personally, I find doing this really neat at times - even mystical. It's a great trick. But it isn't always the best trick for my RPGing enjoyment.)

But Ralph is right, too - the actual source of independence is not "the character," but rather another participant, or the game system/designer. The question is - when is Ralph's right answer the best one to look at, and when is Marco's right answer the better one to use? I like to use Ralph's answer when I see what look like reflexive, unconsidered assumptions about the nature of the character in RPG play expressed. I'll happily concede my strong opinion and the nature of on-line communication (where it's hard to tell if, when someone says "the character wanted x", they are using it as shorthand or not) may result in my over-use of that answer.

But the implications that follow on from Marco's right answer are also very interesting - if from the player's perspective the character has some independence (whatever the "true" source, or their perception of that source), is that good or bad? Why?

I'm gonna think on that a bit . . . but I certainly don't intend "the character doesn't exist" to be dismissive of those issues. In many cases, I see it as useful in helping resolve those issues.

Gordon

Ralph says that the character doesn't exist and has no rights.

We've all agreed that the character exists as a creative fiction within a larger creative fiction. Marco observes that this creative fiction is not solely within the control of its primary creator; Ralph asserts that when control shifts, it is not because the character has rights (that is, to be what it is, apart from the player's independent vision of it), but because other members of the group have rights (that is, to define aspects of the character). Since the character is not a person, the character cannot have rights.

I'm perhaps the controling stockholder in Valdron Inc; I've enough influence that it's unlikely that anyone could become director of the corporation without my support. I'm also chairman of the board of directors--a position to which I've been elected six out of six years, by those directors. However, the corporation does have rights; in fact, it has rights as against me: I cannot tell everyone what the corporation will do. Now, I created this corporation--I did the initial paperwork, the legwork to get the investment, the bylaws, the charter--and I have pretty much a controling interest; but the corporation does have rights, and I cannot change those without the agreement of the corporation.

The corporation doesn't really exist. It exists only as a legal fiction, not as a person. It can't make decisions other than through the decisions of the people who control it. Yet it does exist, and under law it has rights--it is, in fact, a person, under law, as a legal fiction. It has rights.

So it is certainly reasonable to say that something that only exists in the minds of a group of people, as a part of something else that only exists in the minds of a group of people, has rights.

The Lumpley Principle may very well give the character rights that are inviolable by the player.

--M. J. Young

I'm not a fan of 'rights' discussions becuase I often find them rather vague. I challenge MJ's well argued point as follows: it is not that the character has rights which are inviolable to player, but the player has duties to the other players.

I agree that Valdron Inc., as all forms of social endeavour, is a sort of imaginative construct, but I think it wrong to say that the corporation has rights. The concept of the corporation can be seen as a holding space for articulating the 'rights' of the other real people in the company, and the 'rights' of the corporation seen as duties imposed on MJ to accede to the will of others as organised through the structure of the corporation.

How about an alternative terminology; the character can be objectified in the game space such that it is governed by the 'natural laws' of that game space to varying degrees. To me that just means that it will be satisfying to the extent that you find the setting and system satisfying. For example, I think the conspiracy genre relies heavily on the trope, almost the fantasy, of the individual being more than they know themselves to be, albeit in a sinister manner. Having character mentality to some extent externalised through the mechanics is appropriate.

One might say that alignment gives the characters rights over the player, but I don;t think this is menaingful: in selecting alignment the player has specified a clause in the social contract as to how they will instruct the character to behave. This is still the contract between the players, however, and I suggest the character is only the subject of the articulation of player vs player rights.

I kind of agree with Gareth here. The character does not have rights but to do well in playing elements need to be sold properly. This is a term used in pro wrestling, selling it. That is, when they get hit into the steel steps or whatever, they act like it hurt...and it probably did hurt but they make it look like it hurt more so the audience gets it and it adds to the drama.

I used to say that writing fiction was telling lies about people who had never existed. I now realise this is not true. The people may not be real, but you have to tell the truth about them. This also applies to roleplaying as well.

This guides the players. It has to fit. It has to be sold. They have to buy it.

This can look like the character is asserting control. Actually it's like playing a game like Go. In the movie Pi, one character said the each game of Go was like a snowflake. No two games are the same. The Go board hold infinite possibilities. The other character counters that as the game is played, possible moves are reduced and thus makes the possibilities finite.

When playing a roleplaying game, the possibities are endless. But once the group decides on what type of game and the characters are created, the posibilities have been reduced significantly.* As the game is played, the possibilities are similarly reduced. This is not due to the character having any rights. No more than the Jenga block having rights in making the player choose which block to pull from the bottom. It's more due to natural laws of balance and gravity that guides this.


* Makes me laugh when people says that games like MLwM are limited, like every other game is not likewise limited in play, at least

M. J. Young wrote:
So it is certainly reasonable to say that something that only exists in the minds of a group of people, as a part of something else that only exists in the minds of a group of people, has rights.

The Lumpley Principle may very well give the character rights that are inviolable by the player.

--M. J. Young

MJ was not, I think, arguing that the corporation--absent of any people, anywhere--could back up its own rights.* He was arguing, if I understand it correctly, that the Lumpely Principle was the guiding method that could give my character some constraints that I had not placed upon it--or at least that were at odds with my desires at a given moment.

Which I think is clearly true. The idea that we're saying that somehow it's "the character" autonomously enforcing it's rights is a smoke-screen (the terminology of a character "having rights" was first used, IIRC, by Ralph). You can call it what you want, but your character, in the shared-imaginary space can obviously take actions out of accordance with your desires.

-Marco
* The exception may be the case where Valdron builds Artifically Intelligent Assault Robots. Since I don't know what it does, I'll leave that as an omniously cool but unexplored possibility.

Well, I wasn't talking about a corporation absent of any people, either. The rights of the corporate entity, and it's gestalt needs and desires, arise from an interaction of economics and law: The law prescribes that the the corporation must provide certain safeguards to it's employees, act with a certain amount of disclosure towards it's shareholders, etc.

I was trying to highlight the difference beyween the corporation and the character. The character has needs, desires and rights defined by an interaction between the player, his group, the game mechanics, the system, setting, etc. Whereas ignoring the restraints placed upon a corporation can lead to failure of the corporation economically, and possible legal ramifications for the individuals responsible for fulfilling those obligations (eg Enron), the ramifications for doing the same to a character are limited to possible artistic failure of the character, or compromise on style of play for the group.

As with all other aspects of the system, it's assumed that for most play, the group agress to abide by the results produced by the character system, including but not restricted to the game mechanics, setting, backstory, dice rolls, etc. For the most part, I think, we're accepting that acting as if the characters have an internal life gives a better game experience.

BUT, if maintaining that illusion becomes less enjoyable than what a momentary break would allow, I'm of the opinion that at that point Lumpley is involed, and the results produced by the game system are overridden by the desires of the group to make an enjoyable game. To persist, at that point, to maintain the illusion of character autonomy, smacks of masochism.

To restate, I believe that in most play that point is rarely reached. But if the player gets to the point of "My guy would do this, which would screw the pooch for the rest of the campaign," she can happily override it, busking a reason if need be, without agonising over whether she's done right by her PC.

The corporation doesn't really exist. It exists only as a legal fiction, not as a person. It can't make decisions other than through the decisions of the people who control it. Yet it does exist, and under law it has rights--it is, in fact, a person, under law, as a legal fiction. It has rights.

Well. Thanks to everyone for a fascinating thread. Please take up sub-topics (e.g. corporations as people, etc) in separate threads or by private mail. This one's closed.

Best,
Ron