[D&D] Is the dungeon real?

Started by Eero Tuovinen, November 08, 2013, 03:13:52 AM

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Eero Tuovinen

I'm splitting this into a new thread, because it's a good topic. Here's Moreno and Callan with some bold assertions:

Quote from: Moreno R. on November 07, 2013, 09:13:57 PM
What's interesting is the number of answers that talks about the dungeon as if it was "true". As if the player skill you use to avoid a difficult situation was a "real" tactical sense...  and not a "real" capacity to "convince the GM".

This is an example from my very first AD&D session, from the time when I had no idea about "how the DM do it" and everything was awesome: I played a 1st level magic-user, in a dungeon full of monster to save a prisoner (for the reward the father of the prisoner would pay to save his son, to be exact). The party was attacked by a pack of zombies and we got separated when the fighters didn't stop them from reaching me (they were at the first session too). I had already used my only spell (imagine the nostalgia, a game where you can use only one spell in a 4-hour session and you are shit at doing everything else. Really, who could want anything more?) and had 2 HP in total, armor class "no armor, no shield, cloth robe", for a grand total of "if some of them attack you, you are dead, period". So I simply run away, back to the previous room where we had killed a bunch of zero-level goons, with half of the the zombies following me and the other half fighting the fighters.
What I did was to hid with the other corpses in the room, the zombies didn't notice me, and continued along the tunnel.
At the time, I was rather proud of my quick-thinking and the way I had solved the situation. In OSR-terms, I had used my brain, my tactical sense, avoiding combat and "winning" by stealth. A great gamist move...

...or no?

Let's look at the situation.

Who decided that the zombie had no "sense live people" sense so that they did not notice me?
Who decided that I had the time to hid between the corpses before they did show up? (I didn't ask, I simply stated what I was doing... with enough sureness that I think the GM didn't even think about that)
Who decided that the zombie weren't interested in eating the corpses?
Who decided that I was so calm to stand still and not betray myself with noises or movements?
Who decided, in fact, that I had "saved myself without having to roll"...  without rolling to see if I was quick enough, then if I was calm enough, and then if the zombies were stupid/blind enough?
The exact same DM could have made me roll three times. In the same situation, with my same actions, with the same exact "fiction first"... first. 
With my stats, I had very few chances to win all three rolls, my character would be probably slain. So what could have happened at the table? I say my "great idea" to the GM, thinking that it's an intelligent idea. The GM make me rolls three times. My character die, and I am not happy. The DM want me happy. All he want is a show of cunning, ANY IDEA could have save me, because he would have changed the way the zombie think, act, their quickness, their senses, to "reward" a player who think, or to "punish" a player that has an idea he doesn't think is intelligent.

There is no room, there are no zombies, I am not really running. I am telling lies (my definition of role-playing games is "people who lie to each other and play at believing all the lies they say") to the DM. if he likes my lies, his "world" is ruled by heaven-sent luck, and any idea, no matter how risky, works. If he don't like my lies... well, Murphis' Rule...rules!)

In all this, the "fiction", the room, the zombies, the corpses, are the least-real things of all. The attention span of the GM is more real than them. The happiness or sadness of the GM at the moment is more real than them. What he did eat before and what he is drinking now is more real than them. If I smile and pass him the beer, the zombie changes, their step is more slow, if I am unsure, if I say it like "ehm... I don't know... I...  run? Maybe they will not follow me..." the GM could reply "no, they follow you and they reach you, what is your Armor Class?", but if I say it like "Ah! I am too fast for these shambling half-rotted corpses! I quickly dart between them and run in the corridor, they will never catch me before I reach the other room", the GM will agree. Because I have said it in a a way that if he doesn't, he would look stupid, or it could seems that he is not neutral regarding my character.

When I played, I was very sure of my actions. I was of the idea that "a bad plan is better that no plan", so I was always in action, always with a plan. The GMs, accustomed to a group of apathetic couch potatoes, was mesmerized and all my ideas were "good". In that way I won at the time a "best player" award at a regional convention, simply by taking the lead and having the party follow MY ideas!

Then, I started to play GM-only for years, and yes, I was sure, I was a impartial God. I didn't have favorites, I objectively would judge if an idea would work, or not. Right?
I don't know, all I know is that when I started to play again with other GM...  the game world became really, really absurd. Maybe the problem is that the new GMs had a more strong idea of "the way the story should go", maybe they simply did know me better and they feared me having too much "my way" with their game world, or maybe simply they had to separate themselves, as "new GMs", from my shadow, and they could not always agree with me. But, really... the world stopped having sense. I could not out-run a goblin with the legs of a 6-years old. Fireballs stopped melting metal, so I could not use them anymore to do that. Any idea was answered by a "no, it's impossible to jump over a two-meter-wide hole in the ground" or a "roll for it: one roll to jump, one roll to avoid falling and hurting yourself if you reach the other side, one roll to see if you get dizzy from fatigue and fall back into the hole, one roll to see if you pull a muscle..."

I have never, ever, found another world by another GM that did make full sense, after these years as the only GM. Even if they are not absurd universes like the ones of the other GMs in the group, even if they are much more logical... I prod, I jump, i try everything, I still play in that way, and I expect the universe to act the way MY perfectly impartial universe did. But they never do.

Because these universe simply doesn't exist, and what I am really exploring, mapping, judging, is the GM brain, his bias, his knowledge of things and his ignorance of others, the way he get convinced, what make him stubborn and unreasonable. That is "real".

When you use you "tactic", your "strategy", to avod fighting the zombies..  you are doing nothing of the sort. What you are using is your voice, your acting, the influence and knowledge you have over the GM, to "push it" to change (or model) the world the way you want.

THIS is what I liked about games like the Pool, Dogs in the Vineyard, Primetime Adventures, Trollbabe, etc: these games acknowledge this! They are not built about a "myth" where everybody at the table try to avoid looking at the elephant in the middle and they all act like they are being "good tacticians" and not simply good speakers. They are games for THINKING people, for people who understand what really happen at the table, how role-playing games really works!

And when I angle to get more dice in Dogs in the Vineyard, I am REALLY using strategy. I don't need to convince the GM, I only need to use a good strategy in the sequence of rolls. THAT was, after all these years, the first time in a decade I had really had the feeling that my "strategy" MATTERED!  (by the way, this is the principal reason I don't like the bonus dice mechanism in Sorcerer: you still get them by convincing people, the GM or the group, to give them to you).  And for the first time in decades, I could finally interact with the GM with sincerity, without having always the thought of "tricking" him in my favor)

There is gamism in D&D, yeas, but it's not the gamism of Chess, or the gamism of a wargame: it's the gamism of being able to fool, swindle, lie, act, persuade: it's a seller/marketer game, not a tactician's game.

Quote from: Moreno R. on November 07, 2013, 11:33:27 PM
Judd, it's you that are painting my observations around that single table...

The passivity of that table (that, if you have read the thread with my old gaming history, it's the "older" group of people who played together D&D from the '70s) has no weight in my observations. I used them to illustrate why it was so EASY at that table, and then I used another table, years later, as an example of a situation where, with other players, another GM, the exact same things became impossible. Metal stopped melting, chasm that I (someone who practice no sport) could be able to jump easily in real life become "insurmountable" for my character, etc.

They are simply examples. Use them to understand what I am saying, not as "proof" of anything.

I simply don't need any "proof" to tell you that the dungeon doesn't exist, the zombies don't exist, and the success or failure of environment-based tactics in a environment that gets decided at why by a GM, BY THE RULES, is not tactic at all. It's persuasion.

But if you still believe that the Dungeon is real, and that the GM is not deciding your success or failure by whim, that he REALLY is looking at the real dungeon in his mind, fixed, unchangeable (so that every decision he makes in the course of the adventure it's not really a decision, it's an observation), you simply can do some experiments.
- Insult the GM at the same time you are declaring what you do. I should not make any difference, right?
- Don't describe what you do. You description don't change the environment in any way, right?
- try to play the exact same dungeon with different GM. Seeing that nothing in the dungeon change at whim based on the way you act, the two dungeon should be exactly identical, to the most minute detail, right? And the same exact tactics should work exactly in the same manner, with every GM in the world, right?

OK, sorry, I was enjoying a little bit of sarcasm on you in the paragraph above. Sorry, but the usual fable that only "bad GM" do humane things in D&D, and all the other 99.999% of GMs (that nobody ever encountered) are perfect beings for whom psychology and logic don't apply, become really tiresome after the 500th time you hear it...

And, anyway, in the very part you just quoted, I explained that using these exact same techniques I won a regional tournament, with the votes of three OTHER GMs... (all the judges). Are all these only exceptions, and these "objective" GM that I have never meet in thirty years of gaming, should be the norm?

Eero Tuovinen

Quote from: Callan S. on November 08, 2013, 01:17:48 AM
Thing of beauty, Moreno, your post is a thing of beauty! It's like you're punching confirmation bias right in the face! You got away from the zombies...but instead of treating the 'solution' you found as if it was THE solution, you actually questioned the validity of your solution. A path that few, as the confirmation bias studies have shown, are inclined to take.

QuoteAnd when I angle to get more dice in Dogs in the Vineyard, I am REALLY using strategy. I don't need to convince the GM, I only need to use a good strategy in the sequence of rolls.
I have no idea how you get more dice. What are the rules on that?

Quote- Insult the GM at the same time you are declaring what you do. I should not make any difference, right?
Heh, good one! I'm going to remember that for another day!

Quotetry to play the exact same dungeon with different GM. Seeing that nothing in the dungeon change at whim based on the way you act, the two dungeon should be exactly identical, to the most minute detail, right?
Yep, good question!

I like your description of the gamism involved being one that revolves around persuasion. The critical issue is that it's hard to tell when the GM simply wants to agree with you - in which case there is no freakin' difficulty to play (it's like rolling a D20 that's covered in 20's). You can't lose - and for gamism, that's utterly worthless.

It is indeed why I hate letting play revolve utterly upon persuasion. Why gameplay where gameplay hinges on whether the GM will ask you to roll or auto pass you is...well, it's incredibly vulnerable to a GM just wanted to be persuaded by you.

That's why I favour having either a random element still be present (with persuasion only being able to give a bonus and not be the sole determinant) or direct player skill check (I once had the check of throwing a RL dice into a RL bowl to do something. Being good at persuading the GM wont help you pass that!). This way if the GM does want to be persuaded by the player, atleast the player is still facing the risk of bad luck in his rolls, or poor personal skill. Never let all of play just hinge on GM determination.

And I predict you'll have a hell of an uphill battle getting your argument across, because over the years I've had a hell of a time trying to! However your presenting it as a persuasion skill is a really good way of putting it, so maybe you'll do better than I have in the way you put it!? Anyway, it was really nice to read your post - I could feel a few tiny knots of tension in me release with a sighing feeling of 'see, I'm not the only one!'. You deserve beer (or your beverage of choice)!

Eero Tuovinen

You guys might have trouble getting your argument across because it doesn't apply to the people you're trying to convince, perhaps? I mean, I am convinced that there are gaming tables out there where play is about playing the GM, but this does not entail that all tables that do not play according to your prejudices work like that, yes?

Before I go any further: I do not want to cast any doubt at your personal experiences, and I urge everybody to remember how predicate logic works; I read Moreno and Callan as attempting for a generalization from their own experiences, while I do not attempt the same: I am merely describing my own experience as a counter-example, to show that it is too bold to generalize an altogether universal claim along the lines they are attempting. I do not attempt a generalization of my own: I find it self-evident that of course there are groups and local cultures out there that play along the lines these two gentlemen are describing. I just address the claim that all D&D is rotten to the core.

I can not speak for all D&D tables everywhere, but when I sit down to play, the dungeon is real to the same extent that any hypothetical topic of discussion is, and the solutions taken to it are real to the same extent. Are all hypothetical tactical and strategic discussions everywhere arbitrary ass-kissing in your mind? If this is not the case, how come it's merely the rpg table that devolves into arbitrariness?

At our D&D table the basis of argument originates in the Shared Imagined Space and its Exploration. Those terms (look them up, it's the Big Model) themselves entail that actual communication about something that we all agree about is happening; you can't claim that we're actually successfully maintaining a SIS while simultaneously not agreeing about the facts. So at least at this level we're apparently not merely listening to a GM, we're operating under a consensus of sorts.

Given some fictional positioning that we agree upon, action is engaged in according to the system of play. Now, this system happens to be adjudicated by a referee. However, the referee is limited in his powers in several ways; for example, he cannot naysay established SIS; he cannot overturn precedent without justifying himself; he has to show his work when called to do so; his assumptions may be audited; his rulings may be overturned under review. Ultimately the referee's powers are so circumspect that I have before characterized them as being limited to merely deciding what lies behind the next door of the dungeon. In practice he also has the power of moment-to-moment chairmanning of play, which entails the ability to force conclusions to move play along (but not the power to refuse after-action review).

I know that there are many ways to interpret the GM's role, but at least under this constitutional model that we're using, there is no sense of arbitrariness to anything in our play: the very first hurdle for any GM decision is its legitimacy, and the only way to maintain legitimacy is to be scrupulous about basing those choices in the SIS and the agreed-upon values and principles of the campaign. The GM is as much a functionary of common cause as a leader; in fact, I find it very healthy for the GM to not be a leader at all in terms of campaign creative agenda, it's very good for there to be other players at the table who are passionate about getting it right.

Given the above two points (that we in fact do have a shared fiction correctly communicated, and that we are in fact successful in enumerating and circumscribing the GM's authorities), I don't see how the possibility of real tactics would be that shocking. For example, we have had situations similar to Moreno's example, with PCs hiding from various foes e.g. by feigning death. Resolving a situation like that relies on making a bunch of determinations about the positioning (timing, etc.) and setting (nature of zombies, mainly), as Moreno describes, but there is no particular reason to characterize those determinations as arbitrary, and definitely no reason to assume that a GM dedicated to challenge-based play would fail to execute their duty by playing it easy on the PC.

At our table the zombie thing would be resolved by establishing the timing and such, probably with a hiding roll - this would represent the minute details of the situation vs. the character's quick thinking in a less cumbersome way than it would be if we attempted to establish it all in the SIS. Once we'd have established consensually (note that nothing in this so far relies on arbitrary GM choice) that the character has in fact succeeded in choosing his position and becoming immovable before the foe enters, we'd have the zombies arrive. At that point the GM would reveal the heretofore unknown properties of the zombie: do they smell living somehow, are they curious and inspect the bodies, are they keen to hunt and somehow assume that their victim has gone on into the next room? The GM either has prior knowledge, or facts immediately at his fingertips to establish a spot judgement, or if he doesn't, he will declare such and call for a random roll against reasonable odds to find out what happens.

Now, I'm sure that the "spot judgement" I mention in my description of the procedure raises flags. Such judgements are sometimes made on somewhat nebulous grounds as the GM accesses his internal understanding of the setting, genre and situation (note that internal picture is different from the SIS, and a skilled group knows this). It is, indeed, a place where the GM could cheat: for example, they could decide without justification that the zombies move on, ignoring the other likely possibilities. Our table combats this type of possibility with the procedural tools I've mentioned in passing above: challenges, reviews, auditions and public acknowledging of our goals of play - I would almost characterize these as oaths of allegiance, when somebody asks whether we still want to play this lethal and unforgiving game, with others nodding around the table. Ultimately a brazen enough GM could probably brave their way through these checks by baldly lying to the other players. Did you just let me go because you don't have the balls to kill my PC? If the GM is brazen enough to lie to his friends about his motivations routinely, and he's willing to construct duplicit fictional proofs of his work to maintain the illusion, then he might be able to keep up the mere illusion of challenge for a time. I claim, however, that even this extreme and ludicrous situation (why the heck would a GM want to do this against diligent group hygienic practice?) could not be maintained over a long term, so at the very worst a GM could get away with cheating occasionally, while the overall fabric of play would maintain a pleasing objectivity.

Ultimately I find this an excellent topic, because I do genuinely value the fact that our dungeon does "really" exist. I mean, there's no reason to ascribe any mystic properties to this understanding, but it is true that we find value in the fact that our wide-ranging discourses upon strategy, tactics, hacking enemy operational security, criminal investigation, intelligence tradecraft and everything else under heaven and earth, are all in fact solidly grounded in the world as we understand it. We want our play to elevate us, and glorify our successes and failures by clean, hygienic procedure and credible solutions to credible challenges. Managing to fool enemies has no value whatsoever for this kind of gamism unless we can feel that our solutions and the risks we have managed are credible on the level of arm-chair strategic speculation that the play in fact is. Lying to ourselves would be debasement instead of elevation. Our players have no desire whatsoever to be fooled by illusionist GM technique, because we abhor the notion of descending into the sort of back-patting feel-good wanna-be armchairm-admiral society that Moreno and Callan are so keen to describe. If their accusation of play being merely about ass-kissing the GM were true, then I would be an utter fool for believing otherwise (both as a GM and a player). An utter, condemnable fool, who has wasted the last five years not only fooling myself, but also fooling others into feeling good about themselves and their supposedly rigorous play where no virtue in fact ever existed. It is a bold accusation when you think about it in this way :D

I want to emphasize that nothing in the above has any pretensions to our play being somehow "real" above the level of speculative wargaming. We are keenly aware of the fact that we are playing against our own collective understanding of how the world works. If anybody gets the sense that they're likely to find armchair generals and master-swordsmen-in-the-speculative at our table, rest assured that this is not the case. We are (rightly, I feel) proud of our clean gaming procedure that enables us to get at the truth to the extent that our wisdom and learning allows, but we do not imagine that we could somehow surpass the limitations of our own knowledge. Imaginary play can subject your knowledge to rigorous theoretical examination, but it can go no further than that in making play "real". If anything, this knowledge encourages us to learn more about the world to elevate our play even further. (This is a common motivation for all those gamers you see reading about history and fiddling with realistic economic models, I believe.)

Eero Tuovinen

Also, I want to address Moreno's experiences a little bit. I have no particular difficulty believing him when he says that he's never, ever encountered a non-biased GM with whom he could actually play a facts-based game; we all know that the rot is deep. I know that it sounds like a no true Scotsman fallacy to you all when I say it, but this variety and complexity of D&D's history is exactly why we need to be pretty careful about making blanket statements about all of it, like our own particular history of play covered everything.

However, even if we acknowledge that there are wide swatches of play cultures out there with no fucking clue about how to establish a honest GM, I would still like to note that it is possible that Moreno is seeing what he wants to see: I could easily see that when a player absolutely convinced that the game is about ass-kissing came into our group, they well might interpret everything they see in those terms. Why did the GM just block that player, must be because he doesn't like them! Why did that work, surely it's because the player happened to stumble upon the solution the GM had in mind! I can see how you could play a while, and all of your observations could be explained by this alternative psychology, especially if you were extremely cynical and unwilling to entertain the thought that everybody at the table might be sincere when they claim that they're trying to be reasonable and objective.

Furthermore, I can imagine how such a cynical wolf in sheep's clothing could even find some success in play by playing to "please the GM". Moreno, Callan: if you're willing to discourse upon this in detail, and especially in the context of old school D&D, I would love to hear your thoughts about what good strategy and tactics look like for a player who repudiates the fiction and cynically plays the GM. I could see how many of his contributions might seem very constructive to a honest GM! Such a player wouldn't contest rulings stupidly (he might not contest them at all, at least not unless he perceives that the GM likes it when you do it), and he would presumably observe the GM's cultural background and assumptions to measure his own input accordingly: for example, if the GM seems smitten by romantic notions and the table is clearly playing by swashbuckling standards, the cynical player would pepper such memes into his activities. If the table was all grim and gritty, and all about the flight pattern of cross-bow bolts vs. arrows, the cynical player would presumably adapt accordingly.

I would assume that such a cynic would come to understand the true nature of the table he was playing at over time, assuming he was actually socially competent and could read social cues. He would see the excitement of the other players, and he would see the occasional weird devil's advocacy when players actually call the GM's attention to some facts adverse to their own characters. However, in a short acquaintance I could see it possible for the cynic to play e.g. an entire session with such a group, and then go away convinced that everybody at that table was just fooling themselves.

Specifically, I could see such a cynic winning a D&D tournament, simply because tournament play emphasizes slightly different skills. This would not need to be explained by the local culture being thoroughly about ass-kissing; it suffices to note that the cynical ass-kisser might not be revealed as such upon such a short acquaintance.

In summation: I don't doubt Moreno's experiences, but it is possible that he's seeing things more negatively than they are, simply because his own presuppositions bias him to interpret the behaviors of others according to his singular model. Many of the behaviors we are observing are perfectly well explainable as the result of the alternate style of play I've described.

Eero Tuovinen

And one more observation, then I'm done for the day:

D&D, when played long-term, faces massive social and creative pressures to turn into a self-congratulation society of the sort Moreno and Callan paint. I've discoursed before upon the pressures one faces when a cherished character deeply embedded in the campaign bites it. It is completely different psychologically from when you slay 1st level characters by the dozen. It is no wonder that the game has adapted things like starting from higher levels, resurrection magic and GM cheating. So that is, like, a thing, and I acknowledge that.

However, I would like to say on my own behalf as a practicing D&D player (well, LotFP at the moment, but still) that I consider it a different game once we take these stakes off the table and accept that the game is only about doll-housing anymore. Sure, build your doll-house and have fun doing it as an ancillary activity, but if you're not going to Step On Up, then get the fuck off the plate instead of expecting the GM to just throw some xp your way for showing up to play.

My own inclinations in solving this gambler's paradox (the paradox being: the more successful you are, the harder it is to stake it all) involve character retirement (you won the game, now take a new character who you are actually willing to see bite it), improved rules for death (less one-roll death for higher-level characters, clearer and more consensus-based rules that safe-guard player rights and ensure that death occurs on consensual basis) and very blatant machismo at the table: the players know and get behind the ideal of real stakes, which prevents us from sliding into implicitly accepted GM fudging merely because nobody cared to discuss it openly.

Moreno R.

Eero, I will give you as more detailed answer later (I will have to step away from the PC in a few minutes now), but there is a precise point I want to address now: your characterization of "persuasion" as "ass-kissing" is reductionist to the extreme. Using the same kind of reductionism I could say that all you do when you play is roll a d20 to see if you win.

The player that ass-kiss the GM usually is a very poor persuader, and usually in a group he ends up being a sort of scapegoat (because the GM know that he can hurt his character with a lot less problems that he would have hurting the other's characters, and the other players despise his behavior). The most successful procedures instead are based on using PERSUASION in its full range. And ass-kissing is a very poor technique.

I have issues even with your characterization as "cynic". Are you a cynic when you use PERSUASION to convince your girlfriend to go see a certain movie instead of another? Are you menacing her? Are you lying to her? Are you secretly hating her and lying to her?

Or you simply KNOW that if you say to her "that movie won a Cannes" it will be a more convincing argument than "that movies has naked tits!"?

But the movies has BOTH: it has naked tits, and it won a Cannes. Are you using cynicism when you choose the most effective description for your objective, or are you simply using social skills?

Being that role-playing is a CONVERSATION...  are you really saying that your social skills have no part in your conversations?

Eero Tuovinen

Oh, choose the terms that suit the purpose, then - I don't see that it matters to me, as long as the logical substance is clear. Let me know if I should rephrase my train of thought for clarity on any particular point.

Dan Maruschak

In all kinds of games we have to think about what sorts of decisions are robust and reliable in the heat of the moment. In baseball, having the umpire decide whether a pitch is inside or outside the strike zone is generally considered a more reliable and objective rule than the umpire using their independent judgement of "was that a hittable pitch?" as input into the decision to classify any particular pitch as ball or a strike. Like many sports, it's also common for teams to attempt to "play the refs" by persuading/convincing/intimidating/etc. the officials to make calls that differentially favor their team, even with things that are meant to minimize subjectivity like "strike zones". As with many things, making a decision-making process transparent has advantages in terms of robustness and reliability. If there's an understanding of how decisions get made then it's easier for all participants to converge on an assessment of whether they're getting made correctly. With RPGs, if you have the right procedures and player-orientations I think it's possible to make "figure out what would logically happen as a result of that" into a fairly robust mechanism for some games, but I'm less sure it's possible to make it robust enough to be a load-bearing structure for a competitive game.

(Also, I have an old series of blog posts that may be relevant to this topic: All Games Require Agreement, Not Just RPGs, RPG Theory: Is Real vs. Fictional the most important distinction?, Interpretation and rules interact in many games, not just RPGs, The idea-space in human brains is gameable, In RPGs, "the fiction" is a convenient fiction)

Callan S.

Eero, atleast in regard to myself (and I think Moreno as well), you're just raising a strawman when you say our claim is 'D&D is rotten to the core'. It isn't. So it's kind of pointless engaging that and I certainly wont bother. Never mind that for some reason it focuses on D&D??

That our general gamer understanding (as in general population) of how play works in any RPG is fairy rotten to the core - I could be taken to be saying that. That's why I had, so many years ago, such high hopes for the lumpley principle dispelling the myths, en masse. The idea of play working off credibility. And here's Moreno basically repeating the structure of credibility and persuasion in regards to attaining credibility. But heck, even Vincent doesn't actually apply his idea fully - you can find him going on about height advantage and how it's 'obvious' when it's there, not a shred of credibility talk involved.

What underlies it is the blurring of the emperic and the imaginative. Take Dan's example - he talks about judging whether a ball went over a line - just that part. He does not talk about who judges where the heck the line actually is!? Think of it that way, not whether the ball passed the line, but whether the line passed the ball!!? Of course in the RL sports that line does not move. And Dan, you think that you have emperic measures in regard to imagination, and it's just a matter of checking if some other thing you imagined passed by the line of these things you take to be emperic measures.

You don't consider that they aren't emperic and are ambiguous figments of imagination themselves. Using a subjective line to measure where another subjective ball is - that doesn't come out as emperic conclusion, it comes out as more subjectivity!

The fact is, if you are genuinely imagining something in an emperic sense, then it is just boardgame play! If a player says they walk 10 feet north, then 5 feet east, then 15 feet north again, if you can imagine exactly where they are - well, it's not really any different from boardgaming where you use a battlemat and move by squares that represent 5 feet. I pay it is possible to imagine this way. But it's not really imagining, is it? No more than remembering you pin number is imagining, right?

And as much, imagination isn't emperic. It's either subjective (and so interaction with it is persuasion based) or it's boardgame. There is no inbetween of both being imagination, but also emperically confirmed fact. But as gamers, in general we keep blending them together. It's an issue of the human mind in general - because we're so close to our own mind, we can't by default see which parts are actually just stage props. The real and the stage props simply all appear as real as each other. Which is the real Mysterio? The line appears to be real, so we measure against it, yet it was really a subjective prop - as prone itself to moving and even passing the ball, for merely being a prop, as a ball is to passing a line. Plato's cave, blah blah, etc etc.

Well, I've gone through this subject multiple times through the years. Time to see how it breaks this time. And whether it goes any differently.

Ron Edwards

Now that everyone has yelled at one another, I think it's a good time to tell you all that in a few days, I'll probably put a cap on the D&D talk and start a thread called "what have we learned" or something similar, with ... shall we say, certain social reminders in the first post. Such that "everyone else here is a pooey-head" replies can be forestalled, but also to remember that reading threads is more important than merely posting replies.

Anyway, carry on for now.

Eero Tuovinen

Everybody might be reading my tone as angry, when such is not intended - and not the case; at the very utmost I'll confess to eagerness to discuss the topic, not to anger. I just vigorously disagree with much of what I understand to have been said about the theoretical underpinnings of play here. The Internet is just causing everybody to imagine more social weight to the words than is necessary. If you think that my critique and description of our own play is besides the point because you actually agree with me, feel free to say so, and no harm done. But if there is actual disagreement, by all means let's discourse upon it, and perhaps we will learn something!

For instance, Callan's deconstruction of the shared imagination is somewhat problematic. I'll try to clarify why: you seem to assume that we are ignoring a key property of roleplaying epistemology (specifically, how and what we know about the SIS), but as far as I can see, the only reason for this assumption is that you're projecting many complex assumptions about how roleplayers "must" play onto other people's play. I do not recognize that our Exploration (that is, I understand, the specific process you are talking about - that Exploration doesn't work in the way people think it does) would be somehow unexamined and mythological.

The above is pretty important for D&D (that's probably why we're discussing it here and now), as the game very much relies on positioning in the SIS to work. This is also why I am able to offer a very minute description of how the process works, and why it does not fall into either of your proffered extremes (arbitrariness and boardgaming). Let us see:

It is often imperative to know in dungeoneering where a character is in relation to certain important landmarks in the scene. For example, when a new door is opened and a room explored, characters have to move through a quick succession of states: where is your character before the door is opened, immediately after it is opened, a minute after it is opened, an entire turn afterwards? The reason for why we need these successive state knowledges is that the players do not know when something important might happen in reaction to their process of opening a door and exploring a room: if a trap triggers at the attempt to open the door, we need to know where your character is in relation to the trap; if a monster attacks out of the door we need to know where you were; if there is a trap in the room itself, we need to know whether you came in or remained in the hallway; if a wandering monster comes about, we need to know whether there's anybody out in the hallway. That sort of thing.

So yes, D&D has plenty of situations that require baseball-like exactness of knowledge about fictional positioning. This is quite different from many other games, where the importance of narration lies much more in the overall impression, tone, atmosphere, persuasive artistic whole of it all. In D&D the Exploration has to be much more exact about established facts for play to occur.

However, even then there are limits, exactly because the game is not a boardgame: I fully agree with Callan in that if we truly always needed to know the exact position of everything, we might as well be playing with elaborate notes that we refer to in preference to the fiction, turning the exercise into a boardgame. You will note that many, many D&D groups quite legitimately do exactly this in localized tactical situations. I personally generally choose not, as you lose flexibility and speed, and the board over-emphasizes certain types of information over other types, causing players to rely on it in exclusion to the actual SIS, which I feel should be the primary battleground.

So how do we do it, exactly? Well, the primary means is a discourse that establishes consensually agreed-upon fictional positioning. This is why I don't really recognize this idea that the umpire decides where the ball is: the vast majority of time the GM has nothing whatsoever to do with it, because everybody's paying attention and they can bloody well remember how not five minutes earlier Jacko said that his character will wait out in the hallway. If nobody else remembers, then Jacko himself surely will. The GM is of course complicit in maintaining a robust positioning that catches 85% of all important questions simply by questioning the other players and conducting a dialogue. What is your marching order? Who goes in? It's too dark, you will need to get closer, will you? Of course much is also left unsaid, relying on imagination, but in turn much of that is left unsaid exactly because players experienced with each other know that they can rely on the others to imagine these things in the same way.

Despite the primary process of clear a priori positioning, not all factors are always clear: sometimes players forget or disagree about what has been consensually established in advance, and sometimes a factor that proves significant was flat out not established any way in advance. In some cases the unsaid factors can be logically deducted because other facts we know to be true entail them: for example, if it becomes important whether the party has a torch or a lantern burning, and we notice that we didn't talk about light at all before going into the dark, we may still assume that the party has one of those two - how else would they have seen to experience the myriad of other facts we have since established?

A typical example of a non-established fact that becomes important is when the party opens a new door and carefully explores a new room. Let's say that the door closes behind them and a trap triggers. There's a quiet player in the corner, but now he gets up and asserts himself: my guy was not in the room, he was standing guard in the hallway. What do we do? (I hope that Callan finds this example pertinent to his doubts about Exploration, because I think that I'm about to get to the good stuff here - if I'm talking besides the point, it's likely that I have no clue at all what you're about here.)

As far as I can discern, Callan's claim is that the Lumpley principle explains how this type of situation is resolved, and that resolution relies on player credibility and persuasion. Given Moreno's correction, and remembering that not all persuasion is ass-kissing (I had a good reason for belaboring the point that way, but it's not pertinent for this subtopic, so let's leave it for now), I will only note that I do not find this an useful way to describe the situation: perhaps in the most abstract way one might call it "persuasion" when players draw upon jointly agreed-upon standards and procedures, but my own inclination would rather be to call it "utilizing the system" or "playing by the rules". Of course it is your credibility that allows you to utilize the rules in Monopoly, too.

That aside, I do think that the Lumpley principle applies to the situation I described, because a posteori establishment of fictional positioning is very much a systemic question for D&D, just as much as a priori positioning is. Just like we've come to learn about many other games, in D&D as well it is naive to think that the game somehow only goes forward in time: in actual fact we jump back and forth in small micro jumps to paint in minor detail. On a scene-by-scene basis the game generally only goes forward, but in the tactical situation we engage a priori and a posteori reasoning techniques in addition to the supposedly primary decision-making processes that rightly take most of our attention.

So the Lumpley principle applies, but as usual, it's mostly useful for perspective: we know that we are looking at the system of our game when we observe how we factually resolve these arguments. What, then, is happening when we establish whether your character walked into the room and into the trap, or whether he's still safe in the hallway? I'll show below what the actual system is, and I think that persuasion is not really much of a component to it.

At our table (and as I've described, I fully agree that this might be different elsewhere) the options the GM has when an important fact needs to be established a posteori are as follows, in order of preference:
- It does not actually matter. "That is all well and good. Fortunately we do not need to know whether you are right, for this trap reaches out into the hallway as well." This is the case with a vast, vast amount of fictional positioning, and the main reason for why we can actually play the game: we can just skip many details because they do not matter. Note the specific epistemology of such knowledge: when we intentionally leave a fact in the SIS unestablished, it still exists in the private imaginations of the individual players. Often such facts are drawn upon when players add to the SIS; adding upon the SIS is about consulting your internal imagination of the situation and talking about it, after all. In this way our internal facts are in many ways a sort of second-order bank of SIS facts.
- Ask the player to refer to his internal picture, and go by that. "You tell me, did your character go into the room just now?" This works well when the player is playing in good faith and actually actively imagining the situation, the GM does not have a strong opposing sense of it, and the situation is not extremely important. The GM has succeeded in re-establishing clear fictional positioning while maintaining consensus, by paying the minor price of giving up on his own uncertainty in favour of a player's certainty.
- Reason from prior cases and ordinary procedures. "No way, you guys always go into rooms in groups to avoid this other peril - doesn't make any sense for you to act differently here; next time say so in advance if you intend to act differently." This works well if the player's claim seems incredible and there is good reason to believe otherwise; note how this particular piece of fictional positioning is technically a player's responsibility to establish, so any player wanting to establish it retroactively is going up-hill. The player will generally give up, but if he insists in good faith, perhaps the GM's argument is not as strong as he thought.
- Roll for it. "This could go either way, your argument is not without its merit - we should maybe have given you a bit more time to declare your actions. How about we roll 50/50 for it and let that stand?" This works as a last resort when neither of the above principles applies well; it's essentially what you do when two reasonable people disagree, but don't care about the topic enough to stop play for the sake of it. Both outcomes need to be reasonable for this to be acceptable, of course.
- Use fiat. "I acknowledge your position, but I don't think you understand the entirety of the situation, perhaps because you weren't paying attention just now. As you can see, the rest of the group is in general agreement with me. In the interest of continuing play, I suggest we continue with my call. Let's everybody try to play a more tight game in the future so these sorts of disagreements can be avoided." As you can see from my clarifying wording, this is an extremely rare choice at our table, and it's usually a sign of moderate creative disharmony - somebody's not playing up to standards of the group. Note that the fiat is unsystemic in a sense: if you asked me, I would say that the GM actually doesn't have any particular right to dictatorial calls. The reason for why it still works is that the GM is generally backed by other players who want to go on with the game and agree with his (hopefully) reasonable stance on the topic; this silent majority opinion is what actually allows you to use fiat.

Am I just describing credibility and persuasion here? If I am, then we are apparently not in any disagreement about the nature of play in D&D, but you are harping about an obvious base quality of play in a way that I don't entirely understand: of course Exploration is practically conducted by people talking to each other and agreeing upon points, and obviously we may call this "persuasion". I just don't see the relevance of this basic observation, when the actual specifics of the matter are well-developed and important. It's like insisting that lumberjacks do not sufficiently appreciate the fact that the trees they are felling are MADE OF WOOD! Sure, but what about that makes it important here? I would have expected the fact that "it's all just persuasion!" to entail something more dramatic than "sure, we talk it over according to the agreed-upon rules and proceed once everybody's on the same page".

On the other hand, if the above doesn't look like credibility and persuasion in the sense you mean when you say that roleplayers don't recognize them, how to explain this? Am I just mistaken in thinking that we use the above tools in figuring out whether the ball fell out of bounds? Am I looking at the wrong place in the process somehow? If I had to characterize the system we use for finding out facts about the SIS, I'd simply call it functional Exploration: that's what it looks like to play a roleplaying game, for the most part people talk to each other to establish facts, and rarely they'll need to figure out compromises when they disagree. The only D&D-specific element here is the occasionally randomized fictional positioning: it makes sense in D&D due to certain subtle emphasis the game puts on tactical decision-making, while I've never used it in e.g. MLwM despite hundreds of hours of play. D&D just uses so much more positioning than other games that it's natural for it to develop a more complex range of positioning tools.

Anyway, to recap: we have three ways to establish positioning in D&D (a priori declaration, a posteori negotiation and actual task resolution that produces changes upon established positioning), and I don't particularly see how they resemble persuasion predicated on personal credibility. Any player may call upon the fact that you said that you were standing in that spot just five minutes ago, and this fact has compelling value no matter the personal credibility of whoever said it. It's just like we were accessing a game board to check a fact, except that we're checking it out of memory instead of a board. Saying that this is a process of persuasion is like saying that counting score in baseball is about persuasion unless you're writing the scores down.

I hope that I have described the type of imaginative state that I believe the Shared Imagined Space to be: I do, indeed, consider it a state between the imaginative and the boardgame, in opposition to Callan's concluding remark. If I had to characterize it in these terms, I would say that the SIS is a socially imagined bunch of content; it's not in my head, it's not in yours, but rather it exists as our mutual agreement over what has been communicated between us. Without it roleplaying would be in the exact sorry state that Callan is describing.

To close off, I should note that I am well aware of the pitfalls of imaginary measuring sticks that Callan describes. I have often felt the utmost loathing for the practice of relying on an imaginary measure against an imaginary phenomenon to produce credibility for something that remains essentially the arbitrary choice of one player, and I do my best to get rid of this error in procedure in my own game design. (Although, it should be noted that not all arbitrary choices are bad - it's the creation of virtual credibility by the way of a kangaroo court that is objectionable and childish.) What I'm saying is, the thing Callan is observing is real, assuming I understand him correctly - I just disagree that it is entirely common to all roleplaying. I hope that my description above about our procedures helps prove that not all roleplaying relies on imaginary measures; there is nothing imaginary in what was said in the past, what may be deduced from already established facts, the roll of the dice and our mutual agreements.

Ron Edwards

Since I don't want to come home from Longcon to more of this, I'm calling this thread done. Everyone's made his point, and now it's turning into "what I think you mean by saying that about what I said," and my kids are making lots of noise. So blame it on the kids, but I'm satisfied that the relationship between what is stated at the table, what is known prior to any statements, and what must be created on the spot, is not well understood. Possibly a minority opinion since everyone else seems to be certain about it, but there you go.

Further development of anyone's thinking on the matter is hereby directed to new threads with actual play in them.