Hence, as I have said, the player have only modest agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction; and hence, as I have also said, a significant goal of play is for the players to make moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of his/her notes.
It baffles me that this is still regarded as contentious, given how many concrete examples (described at higher or lower levels of abstraction, and with more ore less metaphor involved) we have had in this thread:
Let me help you out then: I disagree with that assessment because it's not an accurate description of the playstyle. While it does have some validity with some examples, and definitely the map examples commonly used, it doesn't account for those times where the DM has no notes to cover the actions of the players. And that's me sticking to the most extreme example of play that uses secret backstory; it's not even close to mine where notes are used for framing mainly.
* the goal of worldbuiding is to support exploration (= the players learn stuff about the GM-authored fiction by having the GM tell it to them);
Exploration provides new scenes that need to be framed, they are not the goal of play but a new area for new challenges. When my players elect to explore eastward, for example, they find the foothills for the mountains the can already see. In those foothills they will find new challenges. The result of the exploration is me framing the scene for a challenge. The goal is to find the new challenge, not to get me to read my notes to them.
* the solution to avoiding arrest is to learn whether any officials are able to be bribed, but that is not to be determined as the outcome of action declarations (and hence = the players declare moves that lead the GM to tell them stuff s/he has written up about the various NPCs);
Only in the extreme case the DM has written they can or cannot be bribed. If I did that, for instance, then I would foreshadow that fact prior to the question coming up, as in "the gate is guarded by Bob the Guard, and you, Bob the Rogue, know from your underground contacts (established by Bob the Rogue at character creation or during play) that Bob the Guard is generally held to be unbribable. He is, however, known to be rather dim."
So, for me, a DM who uses heavy prep, the goal of play here would never be for the players to declare actions to find out my notes on bribing the guards, they'd either already be told in framing what to expect or they could try and I'll let the mechanics determine things.
* the players can't just declare "I search the study for the map" and hope to have some chance of success; it depends on where the map really is (= the players can't succeed in their goal of the map being found by their PCs until they make the right move to trigger the GM to tell them that bit of his/her notes which records the location of the map);
Why can't they? Let's assume the case where the DM has notes that say the map is in the kitchen. The players don't know this, and so they have hope that they can find the map. This is negated, yes, but that doesn't negate the map as an objective of play, it just says that the fictional positioning is not yet right and they need to try again elsewhere. This isn't all that dissimilar to having to get past the guards before having a chance to search for the map. Again, broader play where agency is spread out vs narrower play where every scene focuses on the maximum agency moves.
Not the most convincing argument.
This may be a fun way to play, or not, depending on taste. It's certainly very popular, as best I can tell. What is the objection to literal descriptions of it?
That your literal description is neither literal nor a very valid description except of some aspects of that play. Again, you insist on evaluating the play from your perspective using a different paradigm and miss the other facets of play that exist that do not exist in your paradigm of play.
Your second act of authorship doesn't exhibit the same structure as the ones I described. It is not the addition of further detail about an already established character in an already established situation (that the character is the killer of an orc s/he encountered; that the character is the finder of a map in a study that s/he searched). It's a complete non-sequitur. It also involves an action declaration that would be impermissible in every RPG I'm familiar with, though I'm sure there are some less mainstream games which would permit it: but every RPG I know would only permit "I search the study for a map". (The sorts of details that OGL Conan and Fate permit players to stipulate don't extend to discovering (what I am presuming to be) a crucial item like a sought-after map.)
Dear god, you're so close to seeing my point but you still shy away from it.
I'll try again: what makes the second declaration a non-sequitur? Answer: it doesn't follow the
existing fiction! The fiction that comes before, ie the description of the scene, places hard constraints on the fiction that can be authored after. The fiction
exists.
Of course, if the PC has powerful scrying and teleportation magic then it may not be: "I scry to locate a study with a map in it, and then teleport there and ransack the study for it." But I'm assuming that's not what you have in mind.
Yes, adding additional conjecture is not what I have in mind. You may feel free to assume this is the case at all times.
This is a rather tortuous way of putting things, and again it puzzles me, as I and others have posted quite straightforwardly about this multiple times upthread.
There are some RPGs in which the players enjoy a straightforward power to stipulate elements of the shared fiction in the course of play. Fate is such a game; so is OGL Conan. But BW is not, by default, such a game (BW does permit this in the course of PC building, but not during play - of course the player can make suggestiosn that the GM goes along with, but that's true also for nearly any RPG). Neither is 4e (unless you count CaGI-style martial forced movement). And Cortex+ Heroic is not as straightforward on this matter as Fate (there are a whole lot of different ways that Cortex+ Heroic players can try and establish elements of the shared fiction, depending on the nature of the element in both story and mechanical terms).
Declaring "I search the study for the map" is not an exercise of narrative control in the manner that Fate and OGL Conan permit. It's utterly banal action declaration which goes back to D&D's origins. In a "player-facing" game, if it succeeds, then a map is found. But the player didn't exercise any direct "narrative control" - that's the whole point of having dice-based action resolution mechanics, as a tool for mediating between various expressed desires as to the content of the shared fiction, and the actual establishment of consensus as to what that content is.
(As an aside - Gygax wrote a "player-facing" mechanic for resolving checks for secret doors into the random dungeon rules in Appendix A. It's not as if this is wildly modern tech.)
Describing that consensus as a constraint on GM authorship is also odd - not because it's false, but because it seems to assume that it's constraint on the GM is more salient than its constraint on other participants. If the fiction is shared, then ipso facto everyone playing the game is constrained by whatever has been established.
Nothing you say here actually contradicts what I said that you called tortuous.
In BW, if a check succeeds then the PC succeeds at his/her task and the intention of the declaration is realised. Full stop. The GM has nothing to do with it, and the player enjoys the authority to veto GM embellishments if the player takes the view they are at odds with the intention.
Which is what I said using terms that encompass the style of play in more than just BW.
And in the "hidden backstory" style, the GM declares action declaration's unsuccessful all the time - either allowing the dice to be rolled and saying "No, you find no map"; or just telling the players "You search and there's no map", or perhaps rolling the dice secretly him-/herself. In this thread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has consistently advocated for secret rolls that preclude the players from knowing how the action declaration was actually adjudicated.
I understand that you think that you can argue for [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and that you can use [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s arguments, but I'm not arguing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] here -- he plays how he plays and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (no offense Lan) is not the definition of an entire style of play. That his style is followed by some doesn't mean that it's definitive. In other words, confine your discussion of how [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays with the only expert on how [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays on the board: [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].
I have said multiple times I run in the "hidden backstory" style and I clearly say I do not ask for rolls unless the outcome is uncertain and there is a chance of failure. If you look in a location for a non-existent map, the narration is a straight 'you don't find a map' without a roll.
Since there is clear deviation in the playstyle right here -- between your characterization of [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s play and my characterization of my play -- then it's clear that your assumption of how that style of play works is flawed. Can you accept that?
Have you ever browsed a book? I have - reference books are especially good for this purpose. I choose, or perhaps by flipping pages randomly determine, which bit I read next. That is not exercising any agency over the content of the book.
If the agency of the players is confined to influencing which bits of the hidden backstory the GM tells to them; or which bits of the pre-authored storyline the GM reveals to them; that is about the same amount of agency as someone flipping through a reference book or working through a choose-your-own-adventure book. Ie relatively little.
I'm honestly at a loss that you think that playing in a hidden backstory game means that all things are set in stone and immutable just as in a book. It's nearly insulting that you actually believe that most DMs play in a way that is actually comparable to flipping through a book. This isn't even true of your favorite example of this style [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], who runs a game full of meaningful choices that affect the entire game in ways that are not in his notes and has provided clear examples of such numerous times in this very thread.
Whatever you may think, this example is so horribly flawed in describing anything except the most agonizing total railroad (a style of game despised by almost everyone) that it's insulting to anyone you're talking to about this -- including yourself.
Can the PCs set the building on fire? What if the GM decides that it's made of non-flammable materials; or under a magical ward; or that the rain is falling so heavily that no fire catches? (In a "player-facing" game, those could be elements of narrative that might be established to explain a failed arson check.)
Those things should be apparent in framing, in which case they're not secret backstory. If the DM is engaged in post hoc additions to prevent player actions from occuring, the DM is engaged in bad play, no matter what style is being discussed.
Please, take this concept and understand it, because it's a serious roadblock to understanding and reflects poorly on you. Unless you intend to be dismissive and insulting to those that don't play as you do?
And if the scene is the building, and the action declarations are, in effect "We enter this room and search; what do we find?", then where is the agency? This is just choose-your-own-adventure again, the players making moves that trigger the GM telling them stuff from his/her notes. It's true that we might spice things up a bit by having the players make decisions about how their PCs move from room to room (eg instead of going through the GM-authored doors, the cast Passwall) but I would describe that as, at best, rather modest agency.
Yes, if that is how play unfolds it would be a question to see what they GM will narrate, and that narration may well be from notes. But that's not where the agency is, as I've told you repeatedly. You're evaluating that statement from the lens that player declarations should be about resolving a crisis -- if it's not a crisis then it's something to be glossed and agreed and moved to crisis. But, the DM-facing style of play move more broadly and includes actions that aren't addressing crisis in every scene. The choice to go to this room to search instead of the other room to search is agency if it comes at a cost, regardless of outcome. If there's a time limit, or chance of guards appearing, then the choice to move to this room and search has a consequence, and therefor agency as the players spend a limited resource (in this case time or danger) to achieve a goal. It's a small agency, at this point, and a well constructed game will have ways to eliminate choices and select better ones to maximize the use of that resource, but agency in these games is rarely large at the resolution of action you're highlighting. A fact which skews well towards your argument about there being more agency in your style for player declarations. This is true, because the only declarations that matter in that style are ones that address crisis. That crisis is pushed onto the players by the GM framing. In DM-facing games, crisis occurs as well and player declarations resolve it, but the crisis comes from a series of choices by players at a lower level of agency -- ie, which room to search -- and isn't present in each declaration.
Chess vs checkers, man.
And to say that the players are free to have their PCs leave the map is really just to acknowledge their lack of agency: they (I'm assuming) want to play a game that is about finding the map, but their access to that shared fiction is subordinated to GM pre-authorship. To say that they have the agency to give up on the focus of play that they want is not, in my view, to point to a substantial mode of agency.
This would only be true if there weren't more game off of the map.
I have lots of game off of any given map.
In that case, the ability to leave a challenge is agency. It has consequence. You don't get those rewards and must instead do something else.
This is odd for two reasons. First, you assert that choose-your-own-adventure style action declaration is a high degree of agency. Second, you assert that having the GM engage you with stuff that speaks to the character you built, and invites you to confront the issues you signalled you wanted to engage with in play, is a negation of agency!
I do not, as "choose-your-own-adventure style action declaration is your terminology and I reject both that analysis and that term.
And, I do not, and never said anything of the kind. What I said was that the players lose agency by having the GM force them into crisis of the GM's choosing. That the GM references the notes on their characters before doing so doesn't mean the players suddenly have agency at being framed into a crisis of the GM's choosing.
That's not my actual argument.
My claim is fairly simple: if all the salient fiction is authored by the GM, the players didn't exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.
There are various ways that players can exercise agency. One is by succeeding on action declarations, which establishes, as part of the shared fiction, the contnt that, prior to the resolution of the declaration, the player
desired to be part of the shared fiction. Another is by establishing material - perhaps elements of the shared fiction (eg relationships with significant NPCs, which are fairly formal part of Fate and Burning Wheel and can be an informal part of most other systems), or perhaps thematic orientation (eg by choosing to play a Raven Queen devotee, the player makes Orcus and undead salient as key antagonists in the game); and there are probably other ways of establishing material that I'm not thinking of at the moment. This second mode of player agency is quiet important, because it is another way in which players can influence the content of the shared fiction without having to engage in collaborative storytelling.
None of this is rocket science. Eero Tuovinen describes it all in
a blog that I've linked to several times now.
This is a semantic argument, where you complain that the words I use that mean the same thing aren't the words you'd use. The player expressing a desire to introduce new fiction that is actually introduced when agreed to by the GM or when the dice indicate success of that introduction isn't a different thing that the player being able to introduce new fiction through action declaration. Also, your phrasing fails to account for the fiat introduction of Jabal of the Cabal as part of an action declaration that is accepted regardless of the outcome of the mechanics, an act you've pointed out as being part of the expected results of player-facing game styles. You can't have it all ways, you know.
Leaving aside the fact that the scene might have more at stake then just the map, what you say is still not correct. Where does the GM get the framing material from? Where does the GM get material for narrating consequences from?
Again, you try to introduce new elements that support you. The argument has focused on finding the map. I was clear that the map was the current objective of play. I was precise in this because I know you love to add additional details to change the state of the situation and then explain away at the new state.
Where do you get your framing? I don't know, it's largely unimportant. You can make it up on the spot. You can use things that tie it to your characters for future links and challenges, you can read your notes that you prepped and are still useful. What does it matter?
If the check to find the map fails, it's quite legitimate for the GM to declare that (say) the document hidden in the drawer is, rather, a letter from a loved one that reveals some "unwelcome truth" (to use the Dungeon World terminology). Assuming that it's the player who has established the existence of the loved one, and the orientation towards the loved one that would make the truth unwelcome, then the GM's narration of the consequence expresses not only the GM's but also the player's agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is how, as Tuovinen puts it, "choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices".
Yes, I believe I've been rather upfront that player-facing style games allow the GM to narrate failure in many different ways, and this is an example of narration of failure. It's not in dispute, and it doesn't address anything I said.
The failures you refer to in the "GM-facing" game - lack of time, alerting enemies, searching the wrong spot or setting the wrong spot alight, etc - are all results of GM stipulation. The only one that is not a result of Gm stipulation is the PCs being killed - at least at most tables, combat is resolved by resort to the mechanics rather than GM stipulation. And so, to repost what you replied to, "If a player stakes discovery of the map, and fails, that is losing at a move in a game. That is actually quiet different, I think, from the GM stipulating failure. I don't see them as 'pretty much the same' at all."
Not in my games, they aren't. The guards arriving are a check made by me based on the events ongoing -- make a lot of noise, check gets a plus. Quiet, check gets a minus. Near the guard post? Plus. Crawling through airducts? Minus. These things are all susceptible to player declarations -- not a fixed list because I cannot (and don't) anticipate what players might do. But it's still a mechanical check based on clearly stated issues, "hey, that thunderwave spell you just cast sure was really loud, the guards probably heard it' <clatter> "you're sure of it, as you hear yells for help and the stop of hard boots running in your direction."
You can't sweep everything you want into the bin of 'DM stipulation' while claiming that you use the random generation rules of Traveller and that's a great example of not stipulating things. You keep wanting this both ways, and also keep trying to shove an entire playstyle into a box it doesn't fit in.
You should consider stopping and listening for a bit instead.
I have linked to the actual play report several times in this thread, but maybe you haven't looked at it.
Here it is again:
So, to repeat what I posted earlier, "the very first scene in my BW game presented the PC whose goal was to find magical items to help him free his brother from balrog possession with a chance to acquire an angel feather. The "challenge" in the scene was to determine the nature of the feather, whether it was worth trying to buy, whether instead to try and steal it, etc." In other words, there was no challenge that had to be overcome to establish fictional positioning to pursue the player's goal.
Right -- the GOAL was to free his brother, the SCENE was about determining if this feather was any good at that. The player could not save his brother in that scene as he had not yet achieved the correct fictional positioning to do that. Instead, he was addressing a challenge you presented that had to be overcome in order to move closer to the correct fictional positioning to achieve his GOAL of saving his brother.
That you lifted the opening scene from other player information doesn't actually change this -- in fact, the system you're discussing encourages players to create their own complications that prevent moving to the fictional positioning necessary to achieve their goals.
In "story now"/ "standard narrativistic model" RPGing there's no need to fiddle about and delay the onset of the real action. The first encounter in my 4e game, following the initial scene where the PCs met one another and their patron, involved a clash with Bane-ite slavers, whom most of the PCs had an established reason to oppose beyond just them being a challenge the GM threw out there.
I said this above and you disagreed.
And "action" is not the same as "a scene where I have the fictional positioning to accomplish my goal". It's just, action, ie, a crisis the players have to engage.
Although [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] is mistaken when he says that your description of my argument is "a pretty accurate assessment" - because that description didn't address at all the source of material - innerdue is 100% correct to say that " If [the GM] wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need." Whether having guards outside the study will satisfy that criterion is an entirely contextual matter, depending on such things as (i) established fiction about the study, (ii) established fiction about the guards, (iii) elements of the framing of both, etc.
Nothing you've said in this post contradicts what I said, though, you've just spun off into a lot of semantic spirals that say the same things using different words while pretending the outcome is actually different.
If a PC is a worshipper of Ioun, and the guards are there to stop the unworthy gaining access to valuable knowledge, then it sounds like it could be quite interesting (and also ripe for the PCs to persuade the guards to let them through, if they want, by persuading them that keeping secrets is what Vecna wants, not Ioun).
If the guards are just a roadblock, they sound a bit boring to me.
Tastes vary, surely we're not arguing that?
That said, system also matters here. 4e combat is very intricate, and combats that have little connection to broader dramatic concerns may still allow a group who is into that sort of thing to enjoy playing and expressing their characters. I wouldn't say that the same is true of combat in Classic Traveller. Or consider Cortex+: the dramatic needs of characters are established via their milestones, but these are often rather independent of the particular minutiae of a given scene (eg Captain America earns XP for engaging with superhero teambuilding): so the actual challenges that the PCs confront may often be secondary to the PC-to-PC interaction and character development that is taking place (much as can be the case in superhero comics). So in Cortex+ Heroic, the thing to think about in framing the guards outside the study is not so much whether the guards per se speak to dramatic need, but whether the framing establishes an opportunity for the players to pursue their PC milestones. For instance: one of Wolverine's milestones involves meeting with and interacting with old friends and old enemies. Wolverine's player is free to establish that an NPC is such a person, but this requires the GM to frame Wolverine into an encounter with a named character whom it makes sense to call out; so if Wolverine was one of the PCs, then as well as the nameless guards the GM would want there to be someone interesting leading them for Wolverine's player to hook onto in exploring that milestone.
Well, considering none of my arguments were about how you might earn XP in any given system, I'm not sure how this refutes or addresses anything I've said. The goal of play is shifted by how XP awards, but the style of play seems to be within the descriptions I've provided regardless.
Descriptions that aren't demeaning or dismissive of the style of play, mind. There's absolutely nothing wrong with defining agency as the ability to introduce new fiction through action declarations -- nothing dismissive or insulting or bad either implicitly or explicitly. It's a useful touchstone to understand the core difference in play: player-facing games allow more of this kind of play while DM-facing games restrict that kind of play. This whole thing you have about notes, while worth discussing, isn't the actual difference in playstyles.
This is another illustration of how player choices (here, choosing/building a particular character with a particular milestone) can influence material that becomes part of the shared fiction, although the player is not exercising any sort of direct narrative control.
But they are -- if the DM is constrained to provide situations that revolve around these player introduced concepts and then the player declarations introduce new fictions that are allow either by DM fiat agreement or a success on a mechanical test (and even possibly on a failure, depending on how the DM narrates the failure) which then binds the DM to accept this new fiction, then the players are exerting direct narrative control. Their actions lead to new fiction according to their actions.
I think this is place where you do care about some precise semantic definition. It's so odd that you publicly declare you don't care about semantics and then keep making these precise semantic arguments.
