Questo è il post che dà inizio al thread, di Matt Snyder. La data è il 10 Aprile 2007:
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First off, as has been noted elsewhere, it's IMAGINED, not "imaginary." The purpose of that wording is to indicate a verb, not an adjective. It's something a group does, not a thing that simply is.
Secondly, I don't recall at any point any Big Model advocate ever, um, advocating that there is NOT imagined stuff going on that is not shared. In other words, I occasionally see people criticizing SIS because they've very keen on their own personal, unshared imagined stuff, and indeed make a point to remark how important that process is to their personal enjoyment in gaming.
All well and good. But, not really a critique of SIS (that is, as the Forge community developed it). But, that particular critique (and similar variations like "does it really exist"?) really seems to be en vogue the last year or two.
SIS is about process, about acknowledging fundamental fictional events without which the fiction dysfunctions inevitably. Think of it this way:
SIS represents the most fundamental possible breakdown of what's going on in the game. If the imagined events aren't shared, the system breaks down. People have not agreed to what's happened. It's the atomic level of the fiction -- past that point, you're no longer defining the recognizable activity of that role-playing game.
And, unsurprisingly, the Lumpley Principle (or as I'm smiling thinking the Em Lumpley or maybe the Lumpley Em Principle) is inextricably tied to SIS.
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La discussione prosegue per un po', riguardo al concetto di SIS. Vi partecipo anch'io, discutendo dell'importanza basilare dell'avere una SIS rispetto a cose tipo "immersione". Non sto a quotare questa parte perchè non riguarda cose discusse recentemente nel forum, ma spero riusciate a leggerla dal link che ho dato.
Dopo un po' però, su richiesta, arriva Vincent Baker in qualità di GNS Cop:
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All right. GNS cop.
Shared Imagined Space. It's like shared social space. It's basically a synonym for exploration, which just means paying group attention to, which means, understood at its most broad, "roleplaying." SIS is the Big Model term I most dislike.
Nobody thinks that the contents of any two people's imaginations are going to closely match, so banish the absurdity of two people sharing one imagination. That's not the point at all.
I hope that the idea that instead we're going to make what we're imagining compatible - not matching, compatible - is an easy one. "Huh? I thought I was in the basement." "No, you're in the grand ballroom." "Oh. Uh. Let's sort that out."
Ron and I disagree about whether the term "system" should include the procedures you use to sort out incompatibilities in your various imaginings. I think it should; Ron thinks it shouldn't. Either way, when you get incompatibilities, you sort 'em out, and you try to avoid them in the first place, and that's far removed from the point of the looly-Care system.
Wait! Let's kill "imagining." Let's replace it with "understanding," which is truer to the Big Model up and down. The big model never yet cared about the contents of anyone's head. So accordingly: we all understand what's happening in the game's fiction. We're going to maintain our understandings' compatibility. If you're imagining doomed effete fairy knights and I'm imagining giant talking praying mantises, that's cool, as long as we both compatibly understand what they're doing and saying and where they go and what happens then.
It's from there, that position of strongly compatible, well-communicated understanding, that we begin to talk about system. System isn't for resolving disputes or bad communication (well, I think that a marginal sliver of system is, and Ron thinks that the marginal sliver is not-system), it's for making things happen in the game. Nothing can happen at all if we're confused about what's going on to begin with.
Now then, there are three things, all coordinated when you play. They are 1) imaginary stuff, made up stuff, like Sister Patience and the Steward Brother Jedediah and the whole bloody town of Silver Creek; 2) real stuff that I can point to and manipulate, like a big ol' handful of mixed dice, the words on your character sheet, and my town writeup (let's call all these "cues," per Emily); and 3) our interactions, what we say and what we do, as real people at the table.
Remember the Elements of Exploration? Same things. Start with the made up stuff, the game's fiction. Character situation setting system color: characters situated with regard to one another and to setting elements, in action, with all their concrete details.Then, system crosses out of the set of made-up stuff. System includes the real-world cues and all of our game-relevant interactions.
And remember that "exploration" means "paying group attention to"? Our game-relevant interactions are exploration. When we're talking about a character, a situation, or the setting, we're exploring that character, situation or setting. That's easy. The two interesting ones are color and system. Exploring color means paying group attention to concrete details. "Saturday morning and the rain's come, hard," is exploring color. "I punch him right in his freaking smug face" is exploring color. Exploring system means paying group attention to the procedures we're playing by. "I punch him right in his freaking smug face, with a 6, your see" is exploring color + system. Pushing dice forward on the table is exploring system.
There. That's the exploration level in the Big Model. It's not concerned with what anyone's imagining, it's concerned with the communally-understood fictional stuff of the game, the real-world cues of the game, and how we're interacting with them and with one another.
Where's the Shared Imagined Space? That bastard's a synonym for exploration, which is a synonym for paying group attention to, which is a synonym for playing a roleplaying game. Everything I just described is in the Shared Imagined Space. The stuff that isn't in the Shared Imagined Space is the pizza and the dog barking next door and the potty breaks and the reminiscing about other games. (And yes we can all construct examples where the pizza or the dog or whatever takes on in-game significance, so please don't. When they have in-game significance, they're in; when they don't, they're out.)
My least favorite term.
Is my imagination in our Shared Imagined Space? No. My (game-significant) words and actions are, and my imagination presumably underlies them, but the Big Model doesn't care about anything about me but what I say and do.
Is it valid to consider players' imaginations, isolated from their words and actions? Absolutely, of course it is. Please do! The Big Model doesn't happen to.
However, significantly, the Big Model also doesn't speak to "which is the real story of the game, the communal understanding or the individual imaginations?" To this, the Big Model shrugs and looks indifferent. "Obviously they're both the real and also not the real, depending on your interests at the moment. My deal is all, what do the people playing say and do?"
