thread: 2005-06-07 : Periodic Refresher
On 2005-06-08, Emily Care wrote:
The reason why the fiction doesn't figure in the venn diagram is because it's right there along with all the other rules from the text and decisions by the people. It is not separate. As Charles said, the fiction is rules. They are cues or creative constraints like everything else.
Perhaps what you need is a diagram showing the interplay between the top diagram and the bottom diagram, showing how the bottom diagram has fingers that extend up into the top diagram (or at least into the penumbra around the top diagram that controls the feedback loops that allow the top diagramed structures to evolve).
Ben's post Big Model+ hits some of this. It addresses the interplay between the actual moments of play with the techniques chosen & social & creative agendas interacting with them. What Vincent is describing with his exhilaration of venn diagrams is the process by which folks make the decisions they do. The ephemera level is all the decisions (narrations, etc) actually made. The agenda level underlies and/or arises from the other. Actually, now that I think about it, both of Vincent's diagrams are of the ephemera level, just looked at in different ways.
Aside: the amusing thing is that breaking the ice could function perfectly well for a dungeon crawl—(your conflict is that you've got a crazy mage who wants you dead, my character's is that she's been cursed to turn into a kobold when she gets scared)—just so long as two of the characters are falling in love. The overall conflict is the romance, the intervening events could be anything. But then, that might not work for everyone, of course.
