A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Bedrockgames]

...as previously rebutted by others.

Not sure what this means in terms of what I said

 

[Maxperson]

The big issue for me, in the setup [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] describes, is how do we know how many children are eaten? In a skill challenge, this can be managed through failures - each failure is more children dead. But in other D&D versions, which have no rule for determining children eaten per orc-time-mile-unit, it becomes GM fiat. So the stakes and the action resolution become somewhat illusory.

I don't know about you, but to me and my players even 1 kid being eaten is too many. It's also not a skill challenge where failures/successes will yield a number. The orcs butcher some when they camp and that's that. You either get there before that happens, or you get there after it happens. It's not as if the orcs were bringing them out over a period of time that would allow the PCs to have a partial success/failure. The PCs were rushing to catch up to the orcs before they could camp again and hopefully keep any more kids from dying.

 

[Maxperson]

I read his diary, obvs.

Of that jokester? Nothing he wrote could be trusted.

Also, if you as GM are doing this kind of thing, you're very much in.MMI territory. The point I'm nakinng is that it's very much in character to have knowledge about the game world while having knowledge of modern chemistry is not.

Don't think I'm answering you seriously. You have no interest in good faith discussion with me, as that drive by post blurb still shows.

Oh, and chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology and oceanography were all fields of study for sages. And with good reason. Chemistry would be something people in ancient times knew about. Not to the same degree as modern chemistry, but then the player can't bring in ANY chemistry he knows if the PC has no reason to know it, which goes along with the first portion of that paragraph that indicates that it's player knowledge in general, and not just "real world" knowledge that is forbidden.

 

[Maxperson]

Robbing the player of choice, or feeding him with an illusory one.
That's why they call it illusionism, because you can't see the trick.

Or else there was no trick and I could make any choice I wanted, which is the true situation. Trying to armchair quarterback this isn't going to work out for you. You aren't right about this.

So me, the Gm, decide that you, the Pc, will have to choose between your family and the land by the end of the next adventure, making sure you will find the McGuffin lil witch.

Then it's probably a good thing that you weren't the one there and I was. You would have somehow forgotten that you have other choices you could make and felt forced into only those two choices for some unknown reason. Of course, that would be your doing, not the DM's.

Yeah, your Pc could just put down the guns and retire on a small island living out of fishing and letting the years go by drinking rhum to drown the remorse for his lost family, but odds are you, the Player, are gonna fight to save them.

Not all PC's are saints. Some have human troubles and feelings, and humans are very complicated. Some people, when faced with super hard decisions, will retreat and hide from them, even though they aren't bad people. Running away from the hard choice was a perfectly valid decision that I could have made for my character.

 

[Numidius]

One example doesn't overcome that it very clearly said the players first duty was to play within the limits of the CHARACTER, not the player. It's talking about all player knowledge, not just real world or game knowledge, but just in case, I will point this out. The Monster Manual is in the real world, and it and everything in it is real world knowledge. We use that real world knowledge to play the game and construct the game world, but if real world knowledge isn't allowed into the game, the player cannot use any knowledge gained from the Monster Manual.

MM talks about gameworld, not real world. If I bring to the table my chemistry schoolbook and want to use it in the game, then it's real world knowledge.

Anyway if the genre is Alchemic Steampunk, I would probably allow even the chemistry manual

During DW first session of worldbuilding, the Cleric player actually had a real book about Etruscan religion ( the pre-roman italian civilization known for their complex necropolis)

 

[pemerton]

There is a point that may have come up earlier in this thread, or perhaps in another one - I remeber I was responding to [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] - that I want to come back to: the role of GM sentimentality.

In the campaign with the fox and the nobles and so on, the resolution of the campaign saw the PCs acting in defiance of Heaven. In addition to the edict-disobeying fox, there was a paladin whose patron was a dead god trapped in an eternal, timeless, but ultimately corrupting and hence fatal struggle with entities from the outer void. The paladin had cleansed echoes of the dead god of their voidal taint, violating certain karmic principles; and the PCs had befriended an exiled god who had, back in the day, been the best friend of the dead god and had helped him prepare for his eternal struggle.

The ultimate failure of the dead god's struggle - due to his corruption by the voidal forces he was opposing - occurred in the course of the campaign, meaning that the voidal beings were able to once again threaten the earth. The PCs - powerful mages and warriors by the end of the campaign (Rolemaster level 27 or so) - were able to drive them off. But to secure the earth on a long-term basis, they needed to re-establish a bulwark in the outer void itself.

At the time, I had read (not played) Paul Czege's RPG Nicotine Girls, and so was framing this climax to the campaign very deliberately as an end-game which would establish the fate and subsequent denouement for each PC. So the players appreciated that there was no need to hold back!

In this context, the player of the paladin decided that the dead god had suffered enough, and that his PC would take the dead god's place in the eternal struggle. A noble sacrifice! He also intended to bring some of the PC's powerful cosmological enemies - evil, former Lords of Karma - with him, to trap them also in the void. A cunning plan!

But then, as the players were discussing how to operationalise all this, they realised that they had an item leant to them by the exiled god - the Soul Totem, a device for transmitting and even altering karmic burdens - which they could use to create a karmic duplicate of the paladin PC (the base for the duplicate would be a simulacrum of the paladin that the fox could create using his magic) who would then be able to take up the mantle of the dead god while the PC himself retired to found and administer a monastery on an island that had (i) been an important focus of events in the latter part of the campaign and (ii) happened to be the head of the stone body of the dead god, kneeling in the sea at the entrance to a harbour.

As GM, I acquiesced to this plan by "saying 'yes'", rather than forcing checks to see whether the plan involving the Soul Totem would succeed. (This was also easier mechanically, as the Soul Totem had not really been defined in RM mechanical terms.) This is mostly because I am a very sentimental GM and audience member, and when the players came up with a way to spare the PC from an eternity of horrible suffering in the void I was very happy to accept it. So GM fiat in response to player suggestion precluded the possibility of a tragic ending to this PC's story arc.

Another manifestation of GM sentimentality in that campaign finale was in relation to the PC whose player had built up the character's social and artistic skills to facilititate his wooing of an NPC sorcerer who'd been rescued froma demonic prison. When the player posited that the PC and sorcerer would found a dynasty who would be the earthly "key" that would keep the voidal threats locked away, and that the fact that they were a dynasty (hence ever-renewing) rather than one immortal person meant that they wouldn't succumb to corruption as the dead god had, I acquiesced in that again without requiring any checks.

One reason I find GMing Burning Wheel demanding is because it stomps on such GM sentimentality at just about every point. The GM is forced to be cruel to the PCs. I find that hard.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Don't think I'm answering you seriously. You have no interest in good faith discussion with me, as that drive by post blurb still shows.

Don't blame me for your paranoia, Max. I've been nothing but honest. This is all you.

 

[Maxperson]

MM talks about gameworld, not real world. If I bring to the table my chemistry schoolbook and want to use it in the game, then it's real world knowledge.

It doesn't matter what it talks about. The knowledge is gained here in the real world, making it real world knowledge. I've read many books on Greek Mythology. That's real world knowledge, despite those myths not being real and talking about a fantasy land called Olympus.

Anyway if the genre is Alchemic Steampunk, I would probably allow even the chemistry manual

Which is fine for your game. We all have different ways we play.

 

[pemerton]

I just found him to be an odd person to use to provide an example of this sort of play (since he is pretty antagonistic towards it).

No he's not. In 2000, Ron Edwards wrote a very praising review of Hero Wars. In 2003, he discussed setting-based "story now" play, again putting forward Hero Wars as an example. In 2011, he wrote the "setting dissection" that I linked to upthread, that is, a fuller account of how to run setting-based "story now" games (unsurprisingly, HeroWars/Quest again figures as a prominent example).

I don't think people consider that meta gaming generally. Not in the sense that it is a problem for play the way a player using his or her knowledge of Trolls would be

<snip>

I've only heard complaints about the conceit fo the party being together being a problem from players who are particularly focused on seeing and experiencing everything as their character without any outside forces shaping them. But that is an unusually strict view of meta gaming and kind of sketches the meaning of what Max Person is even talking about

In this thread, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has repeatedly talked about a "focus on seeeing and experience everything as his character". That's his basis for criticising metagaming. But now you're saying that some departures from this, like the paty conceit, aren't really metagaming because Maxperson doesn't mind it. (I'm not sure why Maxperson's view counts for more than [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, who has said that he minds it.)

Your defence of Maxperson makes it obvious that there is no objective notion of metagaming, let alone cheating, at work here. Maxperson may not like how [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s imagined player handles the troll case, via the story of the uncle; but there is no objective concept of metagaming that explains how what hawkeyefan is suggesting is wrong, whereas the party conceit is completley unproblematic. There's nothing here besides table preferences.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, your Pc could just put down the guns and retire on a small island living out of fishing and letting the years go by drinking rhum to drown the remorse for his lost family, but odds are you, the Player, are gonna fight to save them.

I highlighted the bolded bit only because surely a better choice would be to retire to the thermal baths.