thread: 2009-04-06 : Fistfightville
On 2009-04-09, Jonathan Walton wrote:
"Hey Jonathan, I feel like there is a there there because the social relationships between the people give reality to that stuff."
Or
"Jonathan, is it possible you're overlooking the fact that preestablished stuff in the fiction is upheld by the social relationships between players?"
Instead of
"You're blind and/or willfully ignoring something."
Vincent's response was fine too, clarifying the stuff that went unsaid in his original post, explaining where he thought the realness lies. He also strongly disagreed with me, but told me I was wrong without telling me it was because I was trapped into some kind of outdated worldview. I guess I just prefer being told I'm wrong in this particular case rather than being told that I'm trapped in wrongness land.
I mean, yeah, I guess I started it with calling Vincent a dirty Sim-lover, but I intended that to be a jovial jibe (also, I had no clue what he was trying to get at, and even now I think his claims only hold true in some cases).
Frex: Vincent seems to be saying that the group's understanding of "what happens" (as per loopily poopily) will always be enforced by the group even if it conflicts with the GM. Like the GM says, "You don't have high ground," and then the playes say, "Yes he does, that was preestablished in the last scene." And then they eventually build consensus or whatever, even if it's by the GM using authority to arbitrarily overrule the players. Eventually a consensus supposedly emerges.
However, I'm not sure I really believe in true group consensus that much anymore. If I'm the high ground player and the GM overrules me, even if the other players go along with it, I may still have the high ground IN MY MIND, despite getting no mechanical bonus for it. That's still a part of what this story means to me. In fact, the way the GM overruled me may become influential in the fiction, as I get slightly pissy about it and that influences the actions of my character. And then later, when I'm telling the story of what happened to someone else, I'll have to include the GM overruling me because otherwise the story of play and my character's actions make less sense.
All of this makes me suspect that things only have as much reality as people are willing to allow them to have, making them more arbitrary than Vincent suggests while still being relatively stable in any given moment, as long as "group similarity" (as opposed to group consensus) is upheld. Still this can be a fleeting, ephemeral thing.
