Now even I can't follow this discussion *_*, and I'm starting to wonder if Bren actually read my post before replying to it.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860618No, one does not have to rely on a genre conventions to establish the laws of a fictional reality. The rules alone can provide that.

The rules do not reflect the fictional reality, but provide an interface players can use to interact with it. Do Hit Points exist in the fictional reality? Do combat turns? Do die modifiers?

And when the rules do not support genre expectations, or worse contradict them, they create cognitive dissonance for the players. In these cases the GM will almost always go with the latter, so if the rules say you have enough HP to survive a jump off a cliff, too bad, because that just doesn't make sense in the setting.

Unless it's Vampire the Masquerade, in which case you get The Matrix.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860618Surprise, your question wasn't loaded!

Actually...

"A loaded question or complex question fallacy is a question that contains a controversial or unjustified assumption"

First they came for the begging questions, and I did nothing. Next they came for the loaded questions, but I thought they were safe because they were armed.

Quote from: Bren;860624You say, "especially if you're the GM" as if somehow the GM's changes are more disruptive that a players. Why "especially" the GM?

Because the GM holds the 'Ur' world, and any contradictions are ultimately resolved by what is 'true' there.

Quote from: Bren;860624It's not clear that you recognize that what you want conflicts with what some other people want.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592There's a whole collection of helpful techniques, but none of them are universal. Some players find 'combat mode' breaks their immersion, despite being perhaps the least ambiguous communication channel in play. I find playing the equivalent of '20 questions' with the GM to establish every (what perhaps only I believe to be) relevant detail breaks mine, but others rely on it to support theirs.

Did you actually read my post?

Quote from: Bren;860624Play-toe, po-tay-toe, po-ta-toe.

It's the difference between conscious and subconscious thinking.

Quote from: Bren;860624Generally I don't imagine the color. I spend more of my imagination and mental energy considering what detail has been provided than in inventing wall colors or other gap filling details. The color of the wall is seldom relevant to me in seeing the scene.

This is so alien to my experience that I simply assumed otherwise, but obviously I was wrong. Finding things out like this is exactly why we have these discussions.

Quote from: Bren;860624People fill in different amounts and kinds of detail. I have had one player who has the problem you describe. And when that comes up, I frequently find their imagination of the scene does not align with that of anyone else. Not mine as the GM and not any of the other players at the table. So other than catering to that one player's imagination over and above that of the others at the table, there isn't much that can be done by me as the GM.

You seem to resent the people who imagine differently than you and hold them in high disdain. Perhaps you as the GM aren't communicating clearly enough and lack the proper understanding of that player's background to do so. After all, you don't play with idiots or assholes.

Quote from: Bren;860624Often what is strange is not that there are no tapestries, but that one person thinks that there should be tapestries in the poor peasant's cottage. I find that often when players do that it is because they missed prior setting clues that would indicate an absence of tapestries as the most likely scene to imagine.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Again, perhaps the GM isn't communicating clearly enough. Also again, did you actually read my post?

Quote from: Bren;860624For the game to occur there needs to be sufficient consistency so that actions make sense. The GM bears the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining consistency.

And that's why the GM's inner world is the most important when it comes to resolving contradictions.

Quote from: Bren;860624Any change made for Player A may well invalidate the imagining of Players B and C in addition to the imagination of the GM himself. And once again we are back to utilitarian ethics.

...

Axiomatically it is simpler for one person to hold a consistent vision than for four people to do so.

No argument there, which is why we have rules/GMs in the first place.

However, I think even as players we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree, as without that I tend to see folks engage in an encapsulated manner, waiting their turn, only engaging with the GM, unconcerned with other player PoVs.

Quote from: Bren;860624Joint creation by the group is incompatible with exploring an apparently existent world.

Only if the things the players want to explore are also the things the players have the power to determine. That's the key, and RPGs can differ on which things they make which.

Quote from: Bren;860624One technique that games seldom mention is for the players to exert some self-control over their imagination to prevent themselves from imagining the equivalent of red walls and golden tapestries in the hut of a humble farmer. Now it's hyperbole, because I suspect that controlling imagination is pretty difficult in general and very difficult for some specific people.

And yet that's exactly what the rules do. Do players imagine automatically hitting the bad guy in D&D? No, because the rules explicitly state that that's something determined my the mechanics.

Quote from: Bren;860624No game setting can be 100% consistent. That doesn't mean we can't aim for consistency though.

Of course no game setting can be 100% consistent. In fact, inconsistency is the default. We must aim for consistency for anything to work at all. And the reason we have rules, GMs, and assorted play techniques is to enforce consistency.

Nobody is arguing otherwise. Nobody is not aiming for consistency.

Quote from: Bren;860624The other reason is that part of what we do as players, or at least what we should do, is to try to intuit and understand how the GM sees the scene. This is a skill that takes effort and practice and that improves with experience. Its related to other social skills humans have developed in predicting social interactions. And it can be improved both by experience in general, but most particularly by experience with one particular GM.

No argument there either.

My gaming experience drastically improved once I figured out you had to play to the GM, and yet I've never found a single RPG which explains how to do this and why. And for many it's cheating, not the reason they play, or requires a skill set they're poorly equipped for.

Quote from: Bren;860624Now when we allow Player A to insert some new element into the scene that does not accord with our current understanding, that new element is probably more unexpected and more distracting because it is coming from an unexpected and unanticipated direction. And if I, as a player, try to anticipate that new element I then need to intuit not just how the GM sees the scene but also how each of my fellow players sees the scene. That calls for spreading my available concentration across everyone at the table which means that I will be less effective at the intuition process than if I can safely limit the bulk of my attention and anticipation towards understanding and intuiting the GM's perspective.

It's definitely an additional cognitive load, but again I believe even as a player, the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun. And if your immersion depends primarily on the GM, then why have all these other potential disruptions (ie, players) involved?

This is a skill that takes effort and practice and that improves with experience. Its related to other social skills humans have developed in predicting social interactions. And it can be improved both by experience in general, but most particularly by experience with one particular group of players.

Quote from: Phillip;860643The notion that the laws of the world must be overturned just because I wish they were otherwise is untenable, because there is no criterion privileging my fancy; the laws would spin as often as another player with another whim spoke.

Nobody is trying to overturn the laws of the world, only rely on reasonable expectations.

Quote from: Bren;860679I assume that I'm not playing with idiots or assholes - since I won't. That drastically decreases the number of other assumptions that need to be stated before play.

You seem to assume that any misunderstanding is rooted in bad faith participation. Has anyone else been paying attention to how destructive this attitude is yet?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987GM: You walk into a kitchen.
Player: I grab the atom bomb.

The GM never "bothered to determine" whether or not there were atom bombs in the kitchen, so there should be no objection when a player assumes that there is, right?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592It was immersion breaking because neither the genre nor the character established such a possibility beforehand. It's examples like these which lead folks to think 'storygames' are like some Lucky Charms commercial where you just declare there's a balloon and fly away. But that's actually the kind of play they're designed to prevent, because the goal is to enable multiple participants to construct a coherent ongoing narrative which makes sense in the setting.

Probably should have read my post.

An atom bomb being in the kitchen is neither part of anyone's common experience, nor a part of any genre. There is no reason to expect an atom bomb in the kitchen, and if there was (such as following a geiger counter), then declaring it would not be disruptive.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987For example, the assumption that one would find a knife in a kitchen is a reasonable one. But what if the GM knows that there are no knives in this particular kitchen because the NPC has a phobia of knives? And that this is, in fact, a crucial clue in figuring out what happened the night before?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Definitely should have read my post.

Quote from: Bren;861020It is intentionally systematic. It wasn't written for you. It was written for the person who says that congruence between the imagining of the player and the GM is always impossible.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592But a major problem in these discussions is that people also tend to assume absolute positions as opposed to ideals at different ends of a spectrum.

No really, did you actually read my post?

Quote from: nDervish;861069The last game I was a (non-GM) player in was Dungeon World.  It was a lot of fun in general.  There were some things I didn't really care for.  But you know what the one thing was that utterly killed the game for me every time it happened?

nDervish:  I look out the window.  What do I see?
GM:  Good question.  Why don't you tell me what you see?

GM:  You see a group of dwarves approaching.  Roll Discern Realities.
nDervish:  I rolled a 10.
GM:  You recognize their leader.  Who is he and how do you know him?

Yes. Not only can this context breach disrupt play all on its own, but it can also be a huge unanticipated cognitive load which disrupts play even more. And while I'm not necessarily a fan of it, I've learned to shift gears well enough that I can get past it, unless the cognitive load is too much.

But the infection has spread, as even Wil Wheton was doing this kind of thing while running Titansgrave.

Quote

Quote from: Bren;861278Anon Adderlan said his belief in the world was impaired if the bar was not the equipped with a shotgun because that's the particular kind of bar that he imagined in his own head. And if he can't have what he imagined in his own head, that ruins the fun for him. Now a lot of people found that to be a really odd and possibly selfish belief* and one that was contrary with the way a lot of people play RPGs.

Quote from: Bren;861278Now I guess you are in the same bandwagon with Anon Adderlan since you keep wailing about that only reason people don't play games like you and AA are because they fear change, or they are mired in tradition, or some such bullshit.

Dear readers, is it worth even engaging past this point? It's obvious Bren feels I am participating in bad faith, despite everything I've actually said.

Quote from: Bren;861278You might try doing us the courtesy of accepting that we actually do know what we like when we play.

I accept you know what you like, but I do not necessarily accept you know why.

Quote from: Bren;861278Anon Adderlan didn't seem at all concerned about what kind of bar the other people at the table imagined nor whether a shotgun being behind the bar was ruining their fun. Now maybe he really is concerned about other people and just forgot to mention it, or maybe he sees RPGs as the players all together against the GM, or something. But if he did, he didn't say so. So some people thought he sounded overly entitled.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592If anything, I specifically look for opportunities to work off and acknowledge the contributions of other players, which may not be the most immersive thing in the world, but I'm willing to make that concession because of how much better the experience becomes for everyone in the long run.

Did you actually re... oh fuck it.

And how would me declaring there's a shotgun behind the bar none of the players have any knowledge of ruin their fun unless they assumed there wasn't one. How would they know, and why would they think that?

Quote from: Skarg;861461On RPG StackExchange

I've found RPG StackExchange to be a horrible place for advice, but a great litmus test as to what the general public thinks when it comes to the hobby.

Quote from: Bren;861734What do you think improv is? You have repeatedly said that anything the GM hasn't specifically defined is open to any player improvisation-ally creating whatever he wants with no ability of the GM to curate or veto the player's creation, because the GM is not allowed to step on another player's creation.

The difference is the GM hasn't necessarily identified the elements they've defined to the players yet.

Quote from: Bren;861734Again you misunderstand. I think intentionally.

Then why do you continue to engage them?

Quote from: Bren;862336Sure it's useful to know that heavy on the hops makes the beer taste a way I don't fancy. But that's only useful because there are other beers that taste in a way I do fancy. Coconut, on the other  hand, doesn't need analysis. There isn't anyway in which the taste or texture ever appeals to me.

Guess you're not a fan of Ballast Point's Victory at Sea then. But if you're a fan of hops, I'd highly recommend Newburg's HopDrop, which is the single best IPA I've ever had.

Quote from: Phillip;862931It's not that we don't understand, but that when we give a shit about something so fucking trivial as tossing a die or picking a number we simply take care of it and move along.

Well I'm happy to say that I don't have a clue what on earth you're talking about now.

Quote from: Anon AdderlanNobody is trying to overturn the laws of the world, only rely on reasonable expectations.

Who is the privileged judge, the final word on what is or is not reasonable? I prefer to leave that to the GM. Others prefer to create some sort of bidding or dice-tossing type of mechanism to settle conflict among players. Others yet put it to a vote.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863001Well I'm happy to say that I don't have a clue what on earth you're talking about now.

I'm talking about the old understanding -- usually explicitly stated in the old days -- that, having picked up a handbook, I am now in charge of my own game. Something I can change easy as a snap ain't worth the sturm und drang people invest in that shit these days (which seems like some wacky kind of pretentious).

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

Same here. As mentioned in the other threads. For me someone just grabbing a weapon out of the blue is very immersion breaking because we don't know there is a weapon there.

All my players are the same. They key off of area descriptions and tend to scope out a locale as needed or ask me for more details as they focus on something. Once we know some baser details we know it is safe to assume that some things are present even if not stated every single time.

Same when I am the player and gaming with the girls. For example once we know a dungeon is a little crumbly or in disrepair. We can safely assume that there are rocks and debris here and there that make make for emergency sling ammo. But if the place is well kept then we know we will not and so do not. So we are not "editing" the word. We are playing off known factors.

Quote from: Phillip;863092I'm talking about the old understanding -- usually explicitly stated in the old days -- that, having picked up a handbook, I am now in charge of my own game. Something I can change easy as a snap ain't worth the sturm und drang people invest in that shit these days (which seems like some wacky kind of pretentious).

?? That doesn't relate at all to the post of mine you were quoting.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;862679Or perhaps one simply prefers things more abstract.  Abstract is not necessarily unrealistic or "disassociated" as you use the term, but it focuses on different things.

Agreed. Once I got the idea of "rulings not rules" I was able to run my OD&D Majestic Wilderlands games with a similar feel to the GURPS Majestic Wilderlands. OD&D is more abstract however in the way I narrated the results and handle my rulings made the the different campaigns feel similar.

I dunno folks, it seem simple to me. RPGs about pen & paper virtual realities. When it is not obvious what happens when a character interacts with the setting you need to make ruling or look up a rule. But the setting defines what the character can and can not do not the rules.

Quote from: estar;863171I dunno folks, it seem simple to me. RPGs about pen & paper virtual realities. When it is not obvious what happens when a character interacts with the setting you need to make ruling or look up a rule. But the setting defines what the character can and can not do not the rules.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. If the setting and not the rules defines what the character can and cannot do, why are you looking up a rule in the first place?

Quote from: Bren;863182You seem to be contradicting yourself. If the setting and not the rules defines what the character can and cannot do, why are you looking up a rule in the first place?

To help me adjudicate an uncertain results in a consistent manner. Like whether six seconds of combat will result in damage to one or both of the combatant.

You probably thinking that I am avoiding answering your point. Let me be precise, the setting includes how physics work. Physics can be stated as simply as "It works like our world unless stated otherwise like the existence of magic."

Or it could be stated "It works like Saturday Morning Action Cartoons.", "It works like a Punisher style comic book." "It works like it does in Chinese Legends"  and so on.

All that is part of the setting, the world of the campaign existing as if it was it's own reality. Not everything a character can do is certain, when it is not certain you need to adjudicate the result based on the circumstances and make ruling. For RPGs, the rules are a set of codified rulings.

The point of traditional games is to play the game by the rules. But that not the focus of RPGs. The focus of an RPG is the campaign. A campaign has a setting. The players do things as their characters in the setting. Those things need adjudicating. Adjudication can be done with a on the spot ruling or a rule can be looked up and interpreted. Either way works.  

So the point of RPGs is to experience a setting within the context of a campaign. Not to play a set of rules like it is for a traditional game. Rules are perhaps least important part in all of this.

What this has to the various points raised about abstraction. Well it is the referee's choice to as what level of details goes into a ruling. Is the quality of the metal of the weapon important to adjudicate a medieval combat for a particular campaign? Some people think so as well as other detailed factors. So you have a bunch of players use the detailed rules of GURPS + GURPS Martial Arts.

Some people say fuck all that and just boil it down to a simple d20 roll with the experience of the character and the what armor the target is wearing as the main factors.

Neither way is better than the other. But the former may be more fun and interesting to some than the latter method. However because it takes more time to learn and remember, the detailed approach of GURPS isn't as popular as the more abstract approach of D&D.

Yes there is some point where something is so abstract that the feel that your character is living in that setting is lost. But that event that differ from individual to individual. Which is why We don't just have D&D and just have GURPS but a spectrum of games between the two. And we have games that are even more abstract than D&D and games that are far more detailed than GURPS.

Now for me I have successfully made the Majestic Wilderlands campaigns that I adjudicate using the OD&D rules for adjudication feel like the same world that I ran when I used GURPS to adjudicate what the players did.

For example characters still had advantages and disadvantage but they were written as part of the background as the character. Wait! What about Blindness! Combat Reflexies! various advantages and disadvantage that conferred important benefits and limitation on GURPS characters.

Let me clue you in something about GURPS, in twenty years I can count onthe number of players who took a severe physical disadvantage on one hand. Just about every characters who was going to do a lot of melee fighting took Combat Reflexes. Over the a number of GURPS campaigns certain patterns emerged.  So when I wrote up my Majestic Wilderlands supplement to use with OD&D, those patterns were preserve.

And for the other advantages and disads players took the one that dealt with a character's social status or personality. Something that easy just written up in a paragraph on the OD&D character sheet.

My philosophy of abstract vs specific is why I am able to run the same setting for 30 years throughout multiple system and make each of those campaign feel like they exist as part of the same world.

Now if you make yourself a slave to the rules then Vreeg's Corollary about rules and setting will come into full play. Your setting will become the setting as defined in the rules you chose. However if you reverse it, do the work of making the rules reflect your world first. Then that will not apply.

Quote from: estar;863198You probably thinking that I am avoiding answering your point.

Not really. I think your earlier statement was not well worded and thus appears contradictory. However your longer explanation clarified your position and I don't see a contradiction in that fuller explanation, so the earlier statement isn't particularly relevant to me at this point. Thanks for clarifying.

How do I roleplay?  According to some, completely wrong.

I make up some shit I think will be fun.
I run the game.
If not fun, I make up some other shit I think will be fun.
I run the game.
Repeat until fun.

In other words, I'm not afraid to make a mistake or say "Well, that sucked."

If I could change ONE thing about this hobby, it would be to remove all ... and I mean ALL ... the hand-wringing.

Trying to respond to the quotes, nested quotes, and double nested quotes is time consuming and probably dull as shit for almost anyone else to read. So before responding to any of Anon Adderlan's comments, let me lay out the points I was making in one place rather than having them scattered across multiple posts and responses to posts. Full disclosure, this is kind of long.

I play RPGs to explore an existent, imaginary world. The more the world seems, feels, and behaves like an actual world the easier it is to do that. Because we play games for fun, those worlds usually are not our world and they may set in the distant past or the far future. The world may include faster-than-light travel, alien races, magic, or horrible secrets humanity was not meant to know. But the world should still seem like a world that is real, at least in an imaginary sense. Because of this, and for other reasons, consistency in the world setting is crucial for my long term enjoyment of the game, whether as a player or as a GM.

The ability of other players to create elements of the world or setting as we play can, and often does, negatively impact the consistency of the setting as well as the feel of an existent imaginary world. So I'm not too keen on including bennies, rules, or conventions that foster or facilitate that sort of player creation of the setting. I want the GM to create the setting. I want the GM to curate and maintain the setting. I want that so that the setting will be explorable and so that it will feel like it has existence while it is being explored. I don't want the feeling that ordinary, mundane shops and houses are plywood flats and behind them are the tumbleweeds of a vacant Republic films lot. Players creating new elements of the setting give me the feeling that the setting is being created after the shop door is opened.

Worse still, creations made by multiple people tend towards inconsistency. Anyone who has watched a long running (often even a short running) television series while paying attention to continuity will find multiple areas of failure. And that is in an activity with paid professionals and that includes someone whose job, possibly their full time job, is trying to maintain continuity. That's why long running series will have "continuity bibles" that outline setting continuity for the various writers. In a leisure activity like an RPG, expecting that level of effort is unreasonable. This means that realistically, plausibly, including uncurated player creations will cause significant setting discontinuities. Some people don't care about that. The preference for kitchen-sink, gonzo settings shows that some people actually prefer inconsistency in their gaming. And that's great if that's what everyone wants. I just don't happen to be one of those people.

That is my fundamental problem with the player who says, "I grab the [nonexistent until this moment] shotgun from behind the bar." In my experience, more often than not, a player doing that causes a discontinuity in the setting for multiple people at the table. So from a utilitarian calculus the fun that one person gets from the shotgun they imagined is outweighed by the lack of fun for the other people at the table who are left with a variety of responses ranging from frustration, confusion, and irritation through approval and outright keep up with the Jones' emulation. If that's what you want in your gaming, great. I don't.

And since it is time consuming to discuss and adjudicate such attempts at player creation during play, in general, I prefer to avoid a style of play or a set of rules that encourages doing that.

Now it must be said that it is possible, even likely, that the GM will create discontinuities by failing to adequately communicating the setting to the players. Nothing is perfect; humans are fallible. But assuming that all such failures are due solely or even mainly to the GM flies in the face of my experience playing and running RPGs. It also flies in the face of every course or workshop in communication that I have ever taken. But blaming the GM is a popular thing to do and say on online forums, especially it seems, when one wants to foster a style of play that gives greater creative input (like the creation of tapestries and shotguns) to the players. Let's not kid ourselves; giving the players that input will change the feel of play. If it changes for the better for your group, that's great. But it doesn't, it can't do that for every group. And, as the saying goes, anyone who tells you that it can is selling something.

On to the exciting, fascinating quote wars. Feel free to skip to the next post.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624You say, "especially if you're the GM" as if somehow the GM's changes are more disruptive that a players. Why "especially" the GM?

Because the GM holds the 'Ur' world, and any contradictions are ultimately resolved by what is 'true' there.

Are the GM's changes any more disruptive than a players? If not, your statement "yet still must be careful to avoid unintentionally contradicting their unstated assumptions and breaking their immersion, especially if you're" a player would be equally applicable. Which is why I asked why you used the word "especially."

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624It's not clear that you recognize that what you want conflicts with what some other people want. Or that if you get your preference that increases the effort, time, and difficulty for those other players to immerse or to "reengage."

Did you actually read my post?

Yes. Which is why I said that it seems you don't recognize that what you want increases the difficulty for other people. You wrote this: "However, I think even as players we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree."

That doesn't include a caveat that maybe we shouldn't support the imagination of other people at the table because that sort of invention in the moment that you seem to advocate conflicts with a desire to explore an imaginary world or to envision that imaginary world as having an existence outside of the imagination of the individual player.  Which is, again, why I said that you don't seem to grasp the fact that what you want is in fundamental and possibly irresolvable conflict with what some other people want. That doesn't make what you want bad. It just makes it incompatible with what other people, me for example, happen to want.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971It's the difference between conscious and subconscious thinking.

Maybe you should think more consciously then?

The difference between creation and revelation is not subconscious vs. conscious but between existence in a single, solipsistic imaginary reality and building and sharing an imaginary reality with others. I don't care whether the problem for you occurs in your head before you articulate it or once you articulate what is in your head to the others at the table. Once what you imagine conflicts with the imagining of anyone at the table it is a potential issue. Once you want your imagining to be privileged over that of the others at the table you have become the problem. If you aren't actually advocating for that, than, respectfully, despite your occasional caveat you aren't doing a very good job of communicating your intent.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Generally I don't imagine the color. I spend more of my imagination and mental energy considering what detail has been provided than in inventing wall colors or other gap filling details. The color of the wall is seldom relevant to me in seeing the scene. And when it is relevant, it's almost always because the GM described it for some reason—possibly because they thought the color relevant. So ignoring it works well for me. I accept that it probably doesn't work so well for you though.

This is so alien to my experience that I simply assumed otherwise, but obviously I was wrong. Finding things out like this is exactly why we have these discussions.

Well that's some progress.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624People fill in different amounts and kinds of detail. I have had one player who has the problem you describe. And when that comes up, I frequently find their imagination of the scene does not align with that of anyone else. Not mine as the GM and not any of the other players at the table. So other than catering to that one player's imagination over and above that of the others at the table, there isn't much that can be done by me as the GM.

You seem to resent the people who imagine differently than you and hold them in high disdain. Perhaps you as the GM aren't communicating clearly enough and lack the proper understanding of that player's background to do so. After all, you don't play with idiots or assholes.

Resent or disdain? No. Frustrated by? Sometimes.
 
While some find it fashionable to blame the GM for all problems at the table, communication is a two way street. If everyone else at the table comes to the same basic understanding of the scene except that one person, the odds seem good that the outlier is at least in part responsible for the misunderstanding.

You seem focused on the GM side of communication regardless of the situation. That or, as you say, you aren't reading what I wrote.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Often what is strange is not that there are no tapestries, but that one person thinks that there should be tapestries in the poor peasant's cottage. I find that often when players do that it is because they missed prior setting clues that would indicate an absence of tapestries as the most likely scene to imagine. And often the other players noticed those clues and imagined a hut without tapestries. So putting the tapestry in to make room consistent with A's imagining of the room necessarily makes the room inconsistent with the imaginings of B, C, and G. Here I default to utilitarian ethics in saying that it's better for A to have to reconcile the lack of tapestries in the scene than for everyone else to reconcile the insertion.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Again, perhaps the GM isn't communicating clearly enough. Also again, did you actually read my post?

To answer your question inside the quote the reason I didn't "just go with it" was in the part of my post you didn't quote. It's the part in bold that I put back in.

Of course the GM may not have communicated clearly. Or the player wasn't listening. Communication isn't a one way street. Active listening helps. People who are busy imagining a lot of details often, in my experience, aren't actively listening. So they miss stuff. Stuff that the other players who are paying attention do notice. Which was the point I was making.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624For the game to occur there needs to be sufficient consistency so that actions make sense. The GM bears the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining consistency.

And that's why the GM's inner world is the most important when it comes to resolving contradictions.

Which is why I found your comment that the GM should be more flexible than the players odd. It seems far more reasonable for the players to aim at being flexible. The GM needs to balance the imaginations of everyone at the table, not just the guy who imagines a shotgun behind the bar

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971However, I think even as players we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree, as without that I tend to see folks engage in an encapsulated manner, waiting their turn, only engaging with the GM, unconcerned with other player PoVs.

Saying that "we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree" doesn't really say much though does it?

Support how? To what degree? What happens when the POVs conflict?

I don't think anyone in this thread has suggested that the GM shouldn't ever support a player's POV, but that such support must be balanced against other factors and that many of us are not looking for and don't want the player in a world creation role because it makes something we do enjoy more difficult or even impossible.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Joint creation by the group is incompatible with exploring an apparently existent world.

Only if the things the players want to explore are also the things the players have the power to determine. That's the key, and RPGs can differ on which things they make which.

I was talking about exploring the world. You were talking about players creating elements of the world. Those aims conflict.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624One technique that games seldom mention is for the players to exert some self-control over their imagination to prevent themselves from imagining the equivalent of red walls and golden tapestries in the hut of a humble farmer. Now it's hyperbole, because I suspect that controlling imagination is pretty difficult in general and very difficult for some specific people.

And yet that's exactly what the rules do. Do players imagine automatically hitting the bad guy in D&D? No, because the rules explicitly state that that's something determined my the mechanics.

Some players do imagine automatically hitting the bad guy. I've seen that many times, especially with players who come to RPGs without a background in war games. Understanding that such is not within their control is something those players need to learn to play the game. Perhaps the same might be true for their creation of red walls and golden tapestries.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624No game setting can be 100% consistent. That doesn't mean we can't aim for consistency though.

Of course no game setting can be 100% consistent. In fact, inconsistency is the default. We must aim for consistency for anything to work at all. And the reason we have rules, GMs, and assorted play techniques is to enforce consistency.

Nobody is arguing otherwise. Nobody is not aiming for consistency.

You seem to  prioritize supporting the imagination and world creation of everyone at the table.  That is one possible goal when gaming. However, if that is your first priority in the game you will end up with a less consistent setting than if you place consistency as a higher priority. Which is the point I was making.  

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971My gaming experience drastically improved once I figured out you had to play to the GM, and yet I've never found a single RPG which explains how to do this and why. And for many it's cheating, not the reason they play, or requires a skill set they're poorly equipped for.

"Play to the GM" sounds like mother-may-I to me. I don't know if that was your intent, but I have zero interest in debating mother-may-I as a caricature of a play style that focuses on exploring a world or simulating an imaginary reality.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Now when we allow Player A to insert some new element into the scene that does not accord with our current understanding, that new element is probably more unexpected and more distracting because it is coming from an unexpected and unanticipated direction. And if I, as a player, try to anticipate that new element I then need to intuit not just how the GM sees the scene but also how each of my fellow players sees the scene. That calls for spreading my available concentration across everyone at the table which means that I will be less effective at the intuition process than if I can safely limit the bulk of my attention and anticipation towards understanding and intuiting the GM's perspective.

It's definitely an additional cognitive load, but again I believe even as a player, the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun. And if your immersion depends primarily on the GM, then why have all these other potential disruptions (ie, players) involved?

Why?

Because sometimes other people add to the experience. Because sometimes other social issues dictate including other people.

And of course sometimes I don't include other players. I've done lots of duet playing and GMing.

Spending some time, on occasion, considering the POV of other players seems reasonable and courteous. But we are already doing that. So far as I can tell no one here has suggested that the GM (or any other player) should always ignore the POVs of the other people at the table. So if that is what you are arguing against, I'll happily help you set fire to your strawman.

That said, whether spending more time considering the POV of everyone else at the table is actually the best use of everyone's finite time and attention is still an open question. Your statement presumes you possess a universal answer to that question. Obviously, I think you are incorrect.  

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971You seem to assume that any misunderstanding is rooted in bad faith participation. Has anyone else been paying attention to how destructive this attitude is yet?

No I don't. But, unlike you, I don't assume that all such misunderstandings are rooted in the GM's failure to communicate clearly. I assign responsibility to all parties at the table. Blaming the GM for everything is a common position for some players, especially players who are unwilling or unable to consider their own contribution to the problem.

You have continually put forth the idea that we are not reading what you wrote. You appear to mistake understanding what you post with agreeing with what you post.

If your point has been that the GM is the arbiter of consistency, that players should align their expectations with the setting that was created by the GM, and that the players shouldn't expect to be able to change or create the world to suit their expectations, than you did a piss poor job of saying that.

If your point was, as it seemed to be, that the GM is to blame for any misunderstanding, that everyone else at the table should accommodate as much as possible the POV of any player, e.g. your imagined tapestry or shotgun, unless it was clearly communicated in a way that everyone at the table, was able to understand it, then your position is far more absolute that you are trying to now make it seem.

Or to put it another way, either you are talking about what I would see as ordinary courtesy which many of us are just assuming because we play with our friends who aren't assholes or you are advocating a different way of playing than what many of us use. It's difficult to tell which since every time anyone disagrees with something you said, you pull another quote that includes caveats and softening language and trot out "did you read what I said?"

Yeah I did read what you said. Either you are advocating for a departure from the way we play, which is understandably controversial, or you are just mouthing some trite and uncontroversial platitudes equivalent to saying it is nice to play nice with others and one can always try harder to communicate. I honestly can't tell which.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971Dear readers, is it worth even engaging past this point? It's obvious Bren feels I am participating in bad faith, despite everything I've actually said.

Yeah I am kind of getting that impression from you. Though it isn't despite everything you have actually said, but because of what you have actually said.
 

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteYou might try doing us the courtesy of accepting that we actually do know what we like when we play.

I accept you know what you like, but I do not necessarily accept you know why.

When you make a statement like "the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun" you are making a universal statement. Which certainly seems as if you think you do know best what would be fun for me and for others. Which is why I suggested you might show us the courtesy of accepting we already know what we like.

I don't claim my preferences are universal, but they do exist and they are poorly served by promoting player statements like "I grab the [heretofore nonexistent] shotgun from behind the bar."

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971And how would me declaring there's a shotgun behind the bar none of the players have any knowledge of ruin their fun unless they assumed there wasn't one. How would they know, and why would they think that?

Do you think you are the only person in the game? You don't know what they assumed until you announce "I grab the shotgun behind the bar." The responses I would expect will range along a continuum something like this.

• Frustration: "This is a bar in the uptown part of town. There shouldn't be a damn shotgun behind the bar."

• Confusion: "There's a shotgun. Damn I don't remember the GM saying that. Oh well, I must have missed something again."

• Irritation: "Anon has a shotgun. Well no point in me bothering to intimidate the bruisers like I planned. Yet another opportunity ruined by his creative additions."

• Relief: "Great! Anon got a shotgun, we are saved."

• Emulation: "And I grab the .44 magnum in the cash register. Let's rock and roll baby!"

Some of these responses will never be articulated and may even, for various social reasons, be minimized or hidden by the players affected so you may never know the negative impact you had on their fun. That you think you already know best, makes it even less likely you will notice any conflicting data.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteWhat do you think improv is? You have repeatedly said that anything the GM hasn't specifically defined is open to any player improvisation-ally creating whatever he wants with no ability of the GM to curate or veto the player's creation, because the GM is not allowed to step on another player's creation.

The difference is the GM hasn't necessarily identified the elements they've defined to the players yet.

What does this sentence purport to even say? How can elements that are not identified possibly have been defined to the players? Is this a definition without words? Charades? You have completely lost me here.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteAgain you misunderstand. I think intentionally.

Then why do you continue to engage them?

Perhaps for the same reason you appeal to the "dear readers"?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteSure it's useful to know that heavy on the hops makes the beer taste a way I don't fancy. But that's only useful because there are other beers that taste in a way I do fancy. Coconut, on the other hand, doesn't need analysis. There isn't anyway in which the taste or texture ever appeals to me.

Guess you're not a fan of Ballast Point's Victory at Sea then. But if you're a fan of hops, I'd highly recommend Newburg's HopDrop, which is the single best IPA I've ever had.

Although my mimicry of Brit understatement probably didn't make it clear, I'm not an IPA fan. They tend to all fall into the category of what I label as "too hoppy."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863252In other words, I'm not afraid to make a mistake or say "Well, that sucked."

If I could change ONE thing about this hobby, it would be to remove all ... and I mean ALL ... the hand-wringing.

Yes wouldn't that be nice. It's a leisure activity and an extremely safe one at that. It isn't skiing the double black diamonds in a blizzard or solo climbing K2. Nor is it rocket surgery or brain science. It's just an RPG.

Assume we are playing "Old West Like In 50s Movies".

PLAYER:  I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun.

ME:  * roll roll * 4... sorry, no shotgun.

If the player's answer is something other than "Shit, better think of something else," they aren't welcome at my table.

Now, if I'd rolled an 8 or higher, "Yeah, the barkeep parks his sawedoff 12 ga there."

I'm not going to build every last detail of the entire fucking world, and in an ambiguous situation I'm going to make a judgement, with a dice roll thrown in because Dame Fortune is a fickle bitch.  (q.v. "The Seven Geases" by C.A. Smith)

Just like yes, the blacksmith's wife's brother's sister-in-law's uncle's cousin's dog has a name, but I haven't bothered to figure it out.

And unless it is somehow directly relevant to the play of the moment, any player who presses too hard will be told that the dog's name is "FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHAT THE DOG'S NAME IS!"

Quote from: Bren;863255Although my mimicry of Brit understatement probably didn't make it clear, I'm not an IPA fan. They tend to all fall into the category of what I label as "too hoppy."

It was entirely clear to those actually paying attention.