Ludic Fiction

Ludic Fiction is a fictional truth: what is to be imagined of an element of a game - what it counts as. The wooden cube counts as gold, the piece as a knight, the phase as the night in which the werewolves prowl. Ludic Fiction is one of the three terms of the RAF triad, alongside Ludic Regulation (How is it regulated?) and Ludic Appearance (How does it appear?). Its question is: What does it count as?

A fictional truth is set by ascription: it attaches a Ludic Narrem - gold, blood, power - to a bearer. The narrem brings a field with it. Whoever calls the cube gold also sets that it is valuable and scarce. What is set is ascribed, what comes with it is implied; both are fictionally true.

The question of fiction is a decision question: should anything be imagined of this element? The zero point - nothing is to be imagined of the element - is the normal case and a determination like any other. The Go stone is a stone and counts as nothing else.

As a mass term, the Ludic Fiction of a game is the totality of its fictional truths, ascribed and implied. In discourse it is called the game world.

What it is not. Fictionally true does not mean untrue: in the game the cube is gold, for the purposes of the game. Fiction is not narrative: the knight without a story is fiction too. And fiction is not meaning: meaning results from all three terms of the triad. The Go stone has one - in this position it is valuable - but it comes from the regulation, not from a fictional truth.

In everyday language

• “story” (related): “The game has no story” often means that little is ascribed. Does not distinguish what the game specifies (Ludic Sujet, in the corpus) from what a match produces (Ludic Fabula, one for each agent); nor the reason for acting from the order of telling.
• “theme” (related): what the individual elements stand for (“the cubes are gold”). Does not distinguish the schema by which something is read (Ludic Frame) from the ascriptions on the individual elements (Ludic Fiction). A theme is called “pasted on” when ascriptions and regulation do not fit together.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - Ludic Fiction is a determination of the corpus: one of the three ways in which the corpus determines at its bearers, alongside regulation and appearance.

Design access: designable - designers set ascriptions, and they decide whether anything is to be imagined of an element at all.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: fiction is part of the corpus. It determines at the bearers what they count as - at Entity, Action, Operation and at the places of the coordinate structures. A single ascription attaches a narrem to one bearer; a bearer carries none, one or several, and none is the normal case. With Regulation and Appearance it corresponds at the joints of the triad: where two terms determine at the same bearer, the question arises whether their determinations fit together. Its special form is the Ludic Sujet, the ascriptions of this game in their order; a game has at most one. Narrem, Argumentum and Narrational Structure belong to fiction but are attached to it by no edge: they are transferable and are realised only through ascriptions (§11).
• FORM: the form determines nothing at fiction itself - the same fictional truth holds in a board game and in a digital game. It spans the possibility space of Narrem, Argumentum and Narrational Structure, and it provides the channels on which an ascription can appear.
• PROCESS: fictional truths hold in phases of the process - initial, ongoing, terminal (§10). In the process the places of the sujet are passed through.
• AGENT–CORPUS: the Ludic Frame limits what is coherent within it, including Narrem, Argumentum and Narrational Structure. From its content frames - pirates, outer space, fairy tale - designers derive ascriptions. The frame raises expectations; fiction fulfils them or not.
• AGENT–PROCESS: on the game side fiction contributes to the Ludic Ductus - twists, revelations, what is at stake. The Ludic Fabula of each agent arises from the sujet and what happens.
• AGENT: fiction determines what is to be imagined; whether agents imagine it, and what they want and feel in doing so, it does not determine. Agents also ascribe themselves - by agreement (“the floor is lava”) or emergently in the process (in Go a group “lives”). These ascriptions do not belong to the corpus.

The trias at this concept

Ludic Fiction is itself a term of the triad. This section states how it borders on the other two.

Regulation - fiction regulates nothing: ascriptions do not chain causally, they accumulate. An ascription can, however, be bound to a condition of validity, a place or a state that the regulation brings about - the meeple in the city counts as a knight; the rule lies with the regulation. And they raise expectations of the regulation. What counts as gold should be scarce. If the regulation does not fulfil this, coherence costs arise - a design latitude, not an error.

Appearance - an ascription is usually conveyed through an appearance: the shape of the piece, the name on the card, the narrator’s voice. Iconicity measures how similar the appearance is to the ascribed narrem - from the rendered gold nugget via the stylised knight piece to the yellow cube.

Ascription - fiction is the ascription, together with what it implies. It becomes reflexive in embedded fiction: an ascription to something that is already fictional. In The Witcher 3 the Gwent cards are cards of a card game within the game world, and in that card game each counts as a soldier.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Narrem

Against the Ludic Narrem: unit and truth. The narrem is the smallest unit of fictional truth - gold, blood, power - and it is transferable: life travels from game to game. Fiction is the fictional truth at a bearer of this game: that this cube is gold. The narrem is what is ascribed; fiction is what holds through the ascription.

Delimitation from Ludic Frame

Against the Ludic Frame: schema and determination. The frame is an interpretive schema from culture - pirates, film noir, fairy tale - according to which agents read and from which designers derive. Fiction is what a game determines. The frame pirates raises the expectation of ships, treasure and betrayal; that this tile is a ship and this card a treasure map is fiction.

Delimitation from Ludic Fabula

Against the Ludic Fabula: set and arisen. Fiction is set in the corpus before anyone plays. The fabula arises in the process, a separate one for each agent: the story of the match as it is for them. In chess the fiction is sparse - pieces that count as kings and knights - while the fabula of a match can be rich.

Examples

• Chess: the pieces count as king, queen, bishop, knight, rook and pawns - two courts at war. Why they fight stays at the zero point; the urgency lies in the objective. On promotion the pawn counts as a queen from then on.
• Go: zero point - stones are stones. Players nevertheless say a group “lives” or “dies” or has “eyes”: emergent ascriptions, not determinations of the corpus.
• Werewolf: the cards assign roles - villager, werewolf, seer -, the phases count as night and day, elimination as being devoured. Who is a werewolf holds from the start and is revealed only on elimination.
• Pandemic: the cubes count as outbreaks of disease, the players as an epidemic team with roles. The premise: four diseases are spreading.
• “The floor is lava”: an agreed ascription without any game material - the floor of a children’s room.
• The Witcher 3: Gwent is a card game within the game world; in it each card counts as a soldier - embedded fiction.
• Zelda: Ocarina of Time: ascriptions, premise and narrative framework are set - Hyrule is threatened, the hero’s journey leads through the temples.

Explanation

A wooden cube is a wooden cube. In the game, however, it counts as gold - nobody believes that, and yet it is true as long as the game is played. That is Ludic Fiction: what is to be imagined of an element.

For design this means two things. First, you decide whether there is anything to imagine. Many elements need nothing: a Go stone is a stone, and that is a decision, not a lack. Second, every ascription brings expectations. What counts as gold should be scarce and valuable. If your rules fulfil this, the fiction carries the game; if they do not, there is friction - and sometimes exactly this friction is intended.

Usage context

• Narrative worksheet: the narrem table records bearer, narrem and experience segment for each ascription. The header field “deliberately without narrative” is the zero point as a decision.
• Stacks: Argumentum (AR) for the premise, Narrational Structure (NA) for the narrative framework, Frame for content frames.
• Phases: in ideation the premise and the frame, in development the ascriptions at the bearers, in evaluation the question of whether they come across.

Theoretical foundation

• Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990): props and principles of generation make propositions fictionally true - not one but many, including implied ones. The tree stump is a bear for the purposes of the game.
• John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (1995): the formula X counts as Y in context C - games are his own example. His status functions confer rights and duties; such a “counts as” is regulation, not ascription.
• Jesper Juul, Half-Real (2005): video games are half rules, half fiction; fiction is to be distinguished from the rules and can be absent.

Coordinates

• Kind of ascription, the axis of its own: designated - set by the designers (the stone is gold); culturally conventional - taken over from play traditions (the red heart counts as life); agreed - arranged by the players (the floor is lava). In the process agents also ascribe emergently (in Go a group “lives”).
• ascribed | implied: gold is set; valuable and scarce are implied - ascribed by no one and yet fictionally true.
• Object: the bearers - the Entity (the piece counts as a knight), the Action (capturing), the places of the coordinate structures (the phase counts as night, the square as a prison, the team as a village, the hidden as fog of war) and the Operation (the arm movement counts as a stroke). The reflexive object is embedded fiction (§4).
• Scope: initial - the premise; ongoing - constant (the knight stays a knight) or changing (night and day, the pawn becomes a queen); terminal - the resolution (checkmate: the king is defeated). A twist is not a fourth value: “Anna was a werewolf from the start” held initially and was hidden; when it becomes known is regulated by the View Structure.
• Condition of validity: an ascription can be bound to a place or a state that the regulation brings about. In Carcassonne the same meeple counts as a knight in the city, as a highwayman on the road, as a monk in the cloister, as a farmer in the field; the promoted pawn counts as a queen. The ascription brings about nothing - the rule lies with the regulation.
• Zero point: it holds per place, not per game. Chess has ascriptions but no argumentum; Go has no ascriptions.

Composition

Fiction is composed through sense, not through effect: it has no rules; its ascriptions accumulate.

	transferable	game-specific
composed	Ludic Argumentum (premise) · Ludic Narrational Structure (narrative framework)	Ludic Sujet (the order of this game) · the premise of this game
atomic	Ludic Narrem	ascription

Argumentum and Narrational Structure are two kinds of composition, not two levels. The Ludic Sujet, the special form of fiction, brings the ascriptions of this game into their order and realises the Narrational Structure, as a Procedure realises a Mechanism. The premise of this game - “Ganon threatens Hyrule” - realises the Argumentum without an order.