Looking at the idea called 'system' again
Caldis:
I think there are two discussions happening here and that's a big part of the confusion. Contra, I think where we may be getting messed up is related to the example with the paintball guns. Is shooting someone with a paintball part of system if everything in the SIS has already been resolved? No, it's not part of system it's tangentially related like color in the earlier discussion that lead to this. Do the people playing have a system? Yes if they are able to construct events in the SIS and resolve them and everyone agrees what happened then they have a system. The paintball gun is irrelevant to system, it exists more on the social contract level.
Callan on the other hand is arguing that there is no system, even though there is evidence that things have been resolved.
Marshall Burns:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 30, 2009, 02:41:55 PM
This is probably the core dissonance here, Marshall - you've switched from 'something', to 'someone'. Treated them interchangeably, just as I was talking before about confusing and mixing up darwinistic system and man made system.
Is someone at the table causing gravity to exist? Is someone at the table causing momentum to exist?
For fuck's sake, this is getting ridiculous.
When I say "at the table" I mean "in the context of this thing that we call roleplaying." All the events that happens in-game? They don't exist. Nothing happens to the fiction unless the people imagining it (US) cause it to happen. The process by which we cause it to happen is what is termed "System." For there to be any possibility at all that System might not exist, you'd have to establish that things can happen in the SIS without people causing them to happen. Which is plainly impossible.
The only things that "just happen" (in relation to the System of play) physically, literally "at the table" are elements of Social Contract. Which may or may not feed into the actual roleplaying. If they do, it is because someone allowed them to.
Quote from: Callan S. on October 31, 2009, 10:24:32 PM
Summing up in short form, if you treat both
A: Going into a store, handing someone money and taking from them some milk and bread
B: Going into a store with a knife, opening the till, taking money and leaving
as being 'system' in the same tone, equally, without caveat, then you are speaking about them as being equal and the same. As you treat them, so they become - either in other people that hear you or in your own eyes. If you treat them equally, so they, over time, will become equal.
A good System and a bad System are both a System. This does not make them equal. Both are Systems, but one is good and the other is bad. Ejecting bad Systems from the status of "System" is nonsense and accomplishes nothing.
Arrg. Callan, I don't mean to be uncivil, but, sometimes when I'm talking to you, I feel like I'm talking to Derrida programmed into a computer. Which I find incredibly aggravating.
Callan S.:
Quote
When I say "at the table" I mean "in the context of this thing that we call roleplaying." All the events that happens in-game? They don't exist. Nothing happens to the fiction unless the people imagining it (US) cause it to happen. The process by which we cause it to happen is what is termed "System." For there to be any possibility at all that System might not exist, you'd have to establish that things can happen in the SIS without people causing them to happen. Which is plainly impossible.
"A shapely woman rushes up to you and rips open her blouse...."
What, where did your mind go? I didn't mention exposed bra or breasts. Nor did you decide to imagine bra or exposed breast...you just did. As much as if I crept up behind you and popped a baloon, you'd flinch without deciding to, so too can your imagination operate without anyone prompting it. Including yourself. And so yeah, people can keep talking at the table even without deciding too. Just as much as your dreams can come at night without you deciding they will, or deciding their contents.
Or it's plainly impossible.
Now my own 'Oh for fucks sake, this is fucking rediculous' is that this is like talking to someone who firmly believes wrestling is real, rather than talking to someone who knows it isn't, but enjoys humouring the idea it is. Rather than talking to someone who can enjoy that their imagination runs away with them, and understands that in running away, there's no system there except a biomechanical/darwinistic one, yet have found they enjoy it anyway. But I keep talking to people who, apparently, when their imagination lurches forward from stimulous, they call it their own decision to do so. They shake their chains and assert their imagination is one who's chained, to them...and hotly deny that when imagination yanks hard enough, imagination decides where they go and they are chained to it. Chain runs both ways.
Quote
A good System and a bad System are both a System. This does not make them equal. Both are Systems, but one is good and the other is bad. Ejecting bad Systems from the status of "System" is nonsense and accomplishes nothing.
If you must use some, to my mind, awkward method of calling them both system but then quickly following up with which is bad and which is good, fair enough! I think it's clumsy, but it'd probably get the job done most of the time, none the less, I will grant. But I've not been seeing that or anything like it happening. I've just seen a total lack of distinction made between people acting upon each other and acting with each other. You could write that off as repeated poor comprehension on my part, or alternatively perhaps I identified it correctly. I'm not interested in deciding which is the case for you or is merely humoured as the case and chewed over briefly for you, but I am interested in providing evidence.
Caldis,
Quote
Callan on the other hand is arguing that there is no system, even though there is evidence that things have been resolved.
Hold on, haven't you been saying raw physics counts as system?
If it did count, it wouldn't matter if things are resolved or even unresolved amongst people at the table. By that measure, it'd still be a system.
Or are you adopting some sort of view that raw physics are not enough to qualify as system? And now your speaking in terms of there being things resolved, as evidence of systems existance? Adopting just for this thread or such...I'm not implying your fully adopting it or anything.
Caldis:
Quote from: Callan S. on November 03, 2009, 02:57:31 PM
Hold on, haven't you been saying raw physics counts as system?
If it did count, it wouldn't matter if things are resolved or even unresolved amongst people at the table. By that measure, it'd still be a system.
Or are you adopting some sort of view that raw physics are not enough to qualify as system? And now your speaking in terms of there being things resolved, as evidence of systems existance? Adopting just for this thread or such...I'm not implying your fully adopting it or anything.
I"m getting to the point Marshall mentions so I'll give this one last shot and I'm done.
If the raw physics resolves the imaginary events then yes it's part of system. If it doesnt resolve the imaginary events it's not part of system. So with the paintball, if shooting the player after his character has been shot decides nothing in the SIS then it's not part of system. If shooting a player with a paintball and how the player reacts determines what happens in the SIS then it's part of system. Alternatively you could be using the paintball gun to determine if a character has been hit by having the gm try to shoot the player. If it decides what happens in the SIS then it is part of system.
It's all there in the Lumpley principle.
Marshall Burns:
Callan,
I could start arguing that we can and do, indeed, control and decide our imagination and dreams, even if not always consciously (which, as far as I'm concerned, in no way absolves responsibility). That would be nothing but a big shitfight. Luckily, I don't have to, because it's completely irrelevant.
What I'm imagining, on my own, is not the thing here. What goes into the SIS, that's the issue. If you accept "roleplaying" as the act of creating and developing an SIS, then System (as defined by the Lumpley Principle) is the means by which a group decides what goes into the SIS and what doesn't. If I imagine something and someone else doesn't, then it ain't in the SIS, and is in fact not relevant to play, at all*, until I utilize System to introduce it to the SIS and make it relevant.
* Do some people get kicks out of imagining this stuff anyway? Apparently. I don't think it's a good idea. But that phenomenon isn't pertinent if we're talking about the group activity of "roleplaying."
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