A question on a fundamental, whether it's taken as a given and taught by default
Callan S.:
Kind of difficult to phrase this question without a somewhat technical set up first...
If you had a real life roulette table, and had a rule
"If the ball ends up in a slot marked six, the result is six"
And if you had a rule
"If your character has the higher position, the result is you get +2 to your attack roll"
How is the forge teaching this? Is it teaching them as both basically being the same, in that your consulting an actual something for the result? Has it always been teaching them as the same? And by teaching, I mean informally as well, even in just treating it as a given when writing anything?
I'm asking in site discussion because after writing a long draft I realise there is nothing to argue as no evidence is being given for the latter, in terms of proving to any degree there's an actual thing to consult. I've only seen assertion and sole onus on the other guy to disprove it (and the falacious idea that if others can't disprove it, it's proved). There's no actual evidence/meat to engage at all.
To me, the latter is exactly the same as this
“If Harvey, the invisible six foot rabbit next to the GM, gives it the nod, you get +2 to your attack roll.”
In that it refers to a made up thing as if it's real and determines the +2 - both Harvey and "checking if there's height advantage" (in a literal sense) are both the same to me.
And I'm starting to wonder if actually, all this time, the vast bulk of people at the forge treat the height advantage (and similar 'mechanics') as an actual thing you can consult, like you can consult the real life roulette table.
If this is an accepted and (even informally) taught fundimental at the forge all this time...well, fuck. I would say it's a fundamental, and as you can tell I see measure it as flawed, so that flaw would have permeated though everything to some degree.
But for the question never mind whether I think it's flawed. Are the roulette wheel and height advantage being treated as two things that can be consulted for a result by most people at the forge?
I'm kind of stuck at asking because it's both fundamental and inarguable. It's just how a forum or whatever teaching/work place operates from, or doesn't. It's a bit like asking if you can have pictures in your posts, in that way.
So yeah, I took awhile to ask the equivalent of a 'can I post pictures in threads' question!
Just as a quick side note for comparison, here's something that I think, at a measurable level, does work: Someone is the backstop – hopefully declared by the rules. This person listens to everyone else, and he allows himself to be moved somewhat by their ideas. A vague approximation of everyone elses ideas collect in his head, then he looks at them with his own idea of the words ‘height advantage’ in mind and chooses whether you get +2 to hit. Maybe we talk as if were climbing onto the table and crap, but that’s no more happening than when we dream at night were climbing onto a super model a table, it’s happening. What’s really going on is our own mind tumbling through a lot of ideas.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Callan,
This is one of the best examples I've ever seen of an Actual Play topic. Please rephrase it as such, and it could become a fine thread.
I do want to stress that the Forge is not a school. The only conclusions and outcomes of discussions here are those which emerge, for better or for worse, completely or incompletely. To say "the Forge teaches (x)" might be accurate in terms of what happened at a particular time or for a particular group of threads, but it's not the same as referring to a curriculum or a dedicated message.
Discussion of your point or claim may not continue in this thread.
Best, Ron
Filip Luszczyk:
I think the way you formulated this thread is problematic. My first impulse is to unpack my thoughts on the higher ground issue itself, but that's specifically not what you are asking about, it seems.
I anticipate, unless the thread simply gets ignored, somebody is going to just say Forge is not a monolith. It's the same sort of mental shortcut as that unfortunate group thing from other thread. The Forge in itself doesn't teach anything. There appears to be a strong presence of people who conflate the two, but it's hard to measure, I think.
The core of the problem, I guess, is that fundamentals were never defined here. The site has its mission statement, it exists for the discussion of a specific type of activities. However, I don't think an precise definition of that type was ever formulated. The result is that people come here to discuss games on the grounds of a vaguely related product base, i.e. the commercial focus of the extended hobby. When users attempt to discuss their actual activities and rulesets as fundamentally the same, however, it often leads to deep disconnects that obstruct reaching useful conclusions (like conflating very specific and mechanically defined effect with fictional effects reached via sheer consensus, or this higher ground out of nowhere issue).
The confusion regarding the higher ground out of nowhere issue ties to a thread I've been thinking to start for quite some time now. The main reason I didn't is that I'm afraid of bumping into the fundamental disconnect again, and a functional threadjack by posters approaching the matter in ways useless for my purposes. At the same time, I can't think of a single webpage where the thread would be more appropriate and potentially productive. My sense of suitability is based exclusively on the vaguely related product base discussed here, however.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Filip,
My suggestion is the same: an Actual Play thread. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't, but in my estimation, they are likelier to work here than at most other websites.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Hello Ron,
I think I'm getting pipped by much the same thing here, but at an even earlier stage. For example, I can swear in front of my children without a particular curriculum in mind. Does that mean they wont repeat the swears latter?
Quote
The only conclusions and outcomes of discussions here are those which emerge, for better or for worse, completely or incompletely. To say "the Forge teaches (x)" might be accurate in terms of what happened at a particular time or for a particular group of threads, but it's not the same as referring to a curriculum or a dedicated message.
I don't think what the forge teaches at a particular time simply emerges out from some neutral ether or something, as much as I don't think that 'Harvey' just popped out the +2 on a particular occasion. But I'm not saying there's any grand controller, either. I think there will be accepted trends that can be identified, as much as there is at a gaming table, or can be identified at any social gathering, and I'm asking what are those trends (maybe it's a fairly intimate question, even of a large group?). Perhaps I didn't say that particular well with the word 'informal' in informal teaching, but what words are there to use? So I lodge my skepticism on the proposed idea of there being no informal teaching, though really I want to lodge it much further on on the actual high ground stuff.
As to rephrasing for an actual play account, part of why I'm asking this is to see if I'd just be shoving at firmly held beliefs, like a missionary or something.
Hello Filip,
Well good luck with it. Just it might be like wrestling ghosts. And it can be tempting to invent ghosts of ones own when there is no way to disprove theirs (though there is the Richard Dawkins tea cup example, where if someone says there's a tea cup orbiting the sun, too far out to see by telescope, does the fact that it can't be disproved mean it should be treated as being there? That can help dispell ghost assertions).
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