Quote from: Skywalker;734563Which also explains the main issue that some people here have with the  word "fiction", being uncomfortable close to "story".

In all honesty, I had a bunch of issues with more narrative-focused games based on preconceptions, mostly from DragonLance and other linear module series.  I had developed a serious aversion to anything smacking of "the story the GM wants to tell".

What initially broke me of that was someone telling me "no, you're not guaranteed to win.  In my last Dresden game, one person died, another lost herself to her Fae nature, and another one ended up enslaved to a demon.  None of which I had planned."

I still have lots of issues with Forge-theory, as I've described in great deal in other threads.

Quote from: jhkim;734566Fair enough. And I'm not saying this usage is the only way that I use the term "in-game". I'm just saying that in my experience, that usage is pretty common. So when I join a new group, I would not be at all surprised to hear that usage, and I might well use it that way among them.

I think there's a good reason to not use "in-game", in that it's too all-inclusive.  From what I can tell, the impetus to have another word was to draw a distinction between "the shit we're imagining" and "the shit that's on the table".

"Fiction" may not be the best term, due to baggage from people getting hammered with "it's all about the (GM's) story!" for several decades, I'll grant that.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;734568I guess for me, when i hear the words "the fiction", to echo another poster, it reminds me of my brushes with literary criticism and critical studies courses talking about "the text". I hear that, and i immediately associate it with things like postmodernism, and it feels looe a useage that takes the normal meaning of something and almost turns it into a code language. So to me, it feels like that kind of mentality seeping into the discussion.

As someone who took a lot of classics courses, when "the text" is used in that field, it refers to an actual text of classical Greek or Roman origin and what it actually says, it's relation to its place in history and the various bits of linguistic data, manuscript evidence and information we know about the author and his time and place.

So it might just be a personal hangup of yours that's resulting from your interaction with the term.

I think that "the fiction" was the exact right term to use because no one is confused by it.  Despite all the argument in this thread, everyone knows it means "the made up stuff" just like the content of a novel.

For my group, saying "Say what's happening in the game, not what rules you want to use" worked just fine in DW.

Quote from: NathanIW;734574As someone who took a lot of classics courses, when "the text" is used in that field, it refers to an actual text of classical Greek or Roman origin and what it actually says...

I'm sure there's some proper, narrow use for it in academia but the majority of times I've run into 'The Text' it was coming out of the mouth of some student using it to sound properly academic. It's often a dead giveaway that someone is obfuscating the weakness of their argument/observation.
I was at an academic conference a few weeks ago and the ONLY person I heard trotting out 'The Text' was a guy who had his whole presentation reduced to 'Downton Abbey is pretty neat' by smarter minds in the audience (none of them mentioning 'The Text').

QuoteI think that "the fiction" was the exact right term to use because no one is confused by it.

That's obviously less than true...

Quote from: NathanIW;734574As someone who took a lot of classics courses, when "the text" is used in that field, it refers to an actual text of classical Greek or Roman origin and what it actually says, it's relation to its place in history and the various bits of linguistic data, manuscript evidence and information we know about the author and his time and place.

.

Sure. I studied mainly history and people talked about the text as well. But your useage and the one we employed is much closer to the literal meaning, than how I saw it used by people involved in literary and cultural criticism (where The Text seemed to refer to many non-text based mediums, to the point where a banana could be referred to as The Text). And that is the useage that I associate with pretention. Certainly could be a personal hang-up of mine. But when I hear "the fiction" that is what enters my mind.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;734568I have never read or played DW, so not commenting on the language they use in their rules, since it might well not come off as i am describing above. I am just responding to posters in this thread talking about the use of "the fiction" in isolation, which is a term i have come across in places like enworld.

The text is available online, I posted the link back near the top of the thread for The Butcher. It's easy to go and read it if you're interested.

Quote from: Ladybird;734607The text is available online, I posted the link back near the top of the thread for The Butcher. It's easy to go and read it if you're interested.

I have enough reading on my plate at the moment. I can't say this is something I have much interest in playing, but it also isn't something that bothers me. It seems like a lot of people do enjoy it. I was just making the point that my comment on the fiction was not related to dungeon world, as i am pretty unfamiliar with the game's content.

Quote from: Simlasa;734583I was at an academic conference a few weeks ago and the ONLY person I heard trotting out 'The Text' was a guy who had his whole presentation reduced to 'Downton Abbey is pretty neat' by smarter minds in the audience (none of them mentioning 'The Text').

Wow.  Can you use it in a sentence the way that student did?  This literally makes no sense to me and googling for post modern uses of "the text" didn't turn up anything like what you're talking about either.

Last time I was at a seminar and someone said "the text" they were actually talking about the content of a letter in Latin.  It was super concrete and talking about the content of a historical work.  In this case, bringing attention to the actual words and phrases used and then showing that those words were not used until the 3rd century, so that had to be the earliest the text could have been written.

Quote from: Simlasa;734583I was at an academic conference a few weeks ago and the ONLY person I heard trotting out 'The Text' was a guy who had his whole presentation reduced to 'Downton Abbey is pretty neat' by smarter minds in the audience (none of them mentioning 'The Text').

In my experience, the more someone uses academic/technical jargon unnecessarily, the *less* knowledgeable they are.

Hell, one of the things I use to judge really stupidly smart people is their ability to explain complex things *without* the use of jargon.

So, what jargon does Baker use in Apocalypse World instead of "Teh Fiction"? It already sounds awfully Forgy, though possibly not intentionally, but apparently it wasn't adopted from Baker's game.

Quote from: 3rik;734627It already sounds awfully Forgy, though possibly not intentionally,

Sage seems like a stand-up guy, and I'll take his word for it. Why the word struck me as pretentious:

Pretentious jargon obfuscates, it's an attempt to make the speaker seem smarter. Usually, it's a novel term that replaces perfectly usable everyday language which everyone already understood.

That's (part of) my criteria for pretentiousness in language: a new term which replaces perfectly clear everyday language for no compelling reason.

So, "The Fiction".

1. It's a piece of jargon.

2. It's a wholly new piece of jargon.

3. That refers to a universally known concept.

4. Which already had a number of widely used terms to describe it.

The concept already existed, terms to describe it already existed, so an awkward, redundant piece of jargon will seem pretentious.

Add to that people who (in this very thread) insist the concept being referred to is a great and novel innovation never present in D&D, and the term seems like a lock for the Bullshit Pretentious Jargon Championship. "We're better than D&D, with bold new ideas it never even considered" is pretty much the hallmark of a pretentious game or game designer.

Fine, that was only a fan speaking and not the creator. (And the creator, again, seems like an okay guy.) But I've seen a lot of fans (in other venues) using the term pretentiously.

Again, sage seems like a stand-up guy, and I'll take his word for it. He was genuinely looking for clearer language.

In this case, unfortunately, the phrase he chose came across as pretentious. I'm not trying to harangue him, or suggest he do anything different.

In fact, I'd like to wish him well: congratulations on your success, and I hope you continue to find success in the future. Cheers!

Trigger Warning: A Term You might Have Heard someone on a message board you don't like use.

And people complain about the SJWs.

Quote from: 3rik;734627So, what jargon does Baker use in Apocalypse World instead of "Teh Fiction"? It already sounds awfully Forgy, though possibly not intentionally, but apparently it wasn't adopted from Baker's game.

I don't think he did.

Quote from: NathanIW;734619Wow.  Can you use it in a sentence the way that student did?  This literally makes no sense to me and googling for post modern uses of "the text" didn't turn up anything like what you're talking about either.

I don't remember specifics quotes... he was just kind of liberally sprinkling 'The Text' throughout his explanations... in a way that didn't add any clarity or specificity.

Quote from: robiswrong;734622In my experience, the more someone uses academic/technical jargon unnecessarily, the *less* knowledgeable they are.

Hell, one of the things I use to judge really stupidly smart people is their ability to explain complex things *without* the use of jargon.

Exactly.
It's really just insecurity... that they won't sound 'smart' without it.

Quote from: 3rik;734627So, what jargon does Baker use in Apocalypse World instead of "Teh Fiction"? It already sounds awfully Forgy, though possibly not intentionally, but apparently it wasn't adopted from Baker's game.

The terminology was pretty clearly inherited from AW:

"... letting the game's fiction decide it is uniquely satisfying."

"... [make] your move for reasons entirely within the game's fiction..."

"... always choose a move that the game's fiction makes possible..."

These are all quotes from Apocalypse World. But AW doesn't treat it as a piece of jargon. From the same section, you also get: "Pretend, though, that there's a fictional cause; pretend that it has a fictional effect." Other places in the rulebook use "fictional details", "fictional circumstances and capabilities",

DW took general discussions of "fiction" and "fictional world" and so forth and boiled it down into a consistent piece of terminology.

Contrary to some of the other people in this thread, I don't find it a useless or redundant piece of jargon: Yes, it shares some stuff in common with "the game world". And it shares some stuff in common with "the PC's back story". And it shares some stuff in common with "what your character's motivation is".  But you'll notice that those are all different terms. Handling them all under a single label unifies concepts which are frequently treated as diverse and separate bodies of concern in other games.

The other reason I don't really consider it newfangled jargon is that it's being used in a manner completely consistent with the English definition of the word "fiction":

OED 3.b: That which, or something that, is imaginatively invented; feigned existence, event, or state of things; invention as opposed to fact.

That use of the word is cited back to 1398. Claiming that using the common word "fiction" in a way that's completely consistent with its common usage since 1398 doesn't qualify as pretentious unless you're living in 1398. (And if you're living in 1398, I'm questioning how you're using a computer to post to this message board.)