First, a little grammar lesson: it's written "lumpley principle". Smallcaps.
Then, about this thread... searching for posts about the shared imagined space I found these, at it was a pity not post the links...
Aug 6, 2001, a new guy show up at the forge and post his first thread: as he says, "I'm new, but that doesn't stop me having crackpot theories."
An approach for mechanics and innovation (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=420)
After a while, he had posted threads like these...
Is Director Stance Real? (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=766) (that did follow into Further on Stances (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=796))
Stance and Event Resolution (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=802)
Making Stuff Happen Stance (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=852)
Making Stuff Happen non-Stance (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=856)
Purpose of rules (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1221)
And so on, about this thing, form more than a year!!!
Until, at the end, he started RANTING! (October 04, 2002)
Vincent's Standard Rant: Power, Credibility and Assent (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=3701)
...until someone (Ron) said, in this topic (november 30, 2002):
Player Power Abuse (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=4415.msg43511;topicseen#msg43511):
c) Rules exist as a means of formalizing social goals (the Lumpley principle).
...and in this one, he even used it to answer the guy!....
Pervy Sim, Points of Contact, Accessibility: an example game (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=4416.msg43515;topicseen#msg43515)
Whatever you did to "work to resolve" is the system you used. From within, it's very hard to identify just what was at work in that process. But as role-players, it's even harder, because we have grown used to considering "system" as some kind of Fortune/probability mechanism, rather than as the Lumpley Principle (yes yours) in action"
Ron clarified it in this thread: (December 28, 2002)
Resolution mechanics, can this particular box be broken? (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=4689.msg46627;topicseen#msg46627)
"I like to refer to something I call the Lumpley Principle, because Vincent Baker (lumpley) first articulated it in plain words.
Resolution systems are methods for group agreement regarding what happens in the imaginary game world."
So, the lesson, children, is: do you want a principle named after you? Start ranting about crackpot theories!!!
P.S.: by the way, if you read the links above, read this too:
Common Sense Guidelines for Group-Concensus Exploration... (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1509)