How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

Crimson Longinus said:

Yes, you have said things like this before. And I have disagreed.

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Crimson Longinus said:

I discussed this earlier, you liked the post above. A PC sees a thing. There is uncertainty of whether PC knows what the thing is. A roll is made.

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Micah Sweet said:

I'm with you on that, but how would you address the actual point they're making here?

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pemerton said:

I prefer a game in which the player declares actions for their PC, and then - depending on the action declared - there are shared principles that tell us whether or not a roll is to be made.

Your post that I liked didn't say that the GM may declare an action for the player.

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Crimson Longinus said:

That obviously was the implication. I also don't understand why you think this is big deal.

A PCs arrive in a room, and see a ruined altar with a statue on it. The GM asks to roll religion to recognise the statue.

How does adding the player declaration of pondering whether they know what the statue represent between these improve things? All it does is make things less realistic, as like I said earlier often people just know if they know when they see something. And worse, it also encourages pixel hunting where the players declare "pondering actions" regarding various things to be sure.

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pemerton said:

But the idea that the GM would narrate the statue, and then tell the players to make rolls before they have declared any actions, is extremely unappealing to me. It seems to cut the player out of the play of the game!

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Crimson Longinus said:

That obviously was the implication. I also don't understand why you think this is big deal.

A PCs arrive in a room, and see a ruined altar with a statue on it. The GM asks to roll religion to recognise the statue.

How does adding the player declaration of pondering whether they know what the statue represent between these improve things? All it does is make things less realistic, as like I said earlier often people just know if they know when they see something. And worse, it also encourages pixel hunting where the players declare "pondering actions" regarding various things to be sure.

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pemerton said:

But the idea that the GM would narrate the statue, and then tell the players to make rolls before they have declared any actions, is extremely unappealing to me. It seems to cut the player out of the play of the game!

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soviet said:

Possibly a side note but I think that 'roll to see if you know what this is' is almost always bad play. IRL people either have knowledge of a subject or they don't. The idea that any random person has a 5% chance of knowing something, or that people who operate in the relevant field and have the relevant expertise still have an X% chance of not knowing something, is preposterous. Even more preposterous is that my character's experience and knowledge is therefore in a quantum state of uncertainty, and I as a player don't know what my character knows or doesn't know. In actual play of 5e I quite often refuse to make these 'recognise statue' rolls when I don't think my fighter/barbarian would have any chance of knowing something.

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Micah Sweet said:

Then how would you describe the character of the games you favor then? In general; no need for a play report.

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pemerton said:

A conversation with a couple of friends about "tips for new GMs" blogs/Q+As led to someone suggesting a thread along these lines. So here it is.

At the heart of "story now" RPGing is the players bring the protagonism. The players decide what it is that their PCs care about, what their motivations are, what their projects will be. I'll bundle all these up as the players' concerns for their PCs.

This gives the GM three important, and related, jobs during play: to facilitate; to respond; to oppose. A fourth job happens outside play: to prep.

Prep: there's a lot that can be said about the role of prep in "story now" play, but some simple ideas are enough to start. You need to learn what your players' concerns are for their PCs. The easiest way to learn this is to ask them. This can be part of PC gen. (Burning Wheel and Torchbearer are both good systems for this approach.) It can also be part of a first session where the players and GM bounce off one another to build up the initial situation for the game. (Apocalypse Word uses this approach.)

Once you've learned what your players' concerns are for their PCs, think up - and if it makes sense for your game system, stat out - a few situations and a few NPCs that speak to those concerns. Think up some links between them - use ideas the players have given you, and add your own. Soap operas and Marvel Comics can be your guide here - making everything interconnected (my family nemesis is also a cultist of the demon you're sworn to defeat) will make it easier to do your other jobs.

Facilitation: it's your job to "set the stage" so that the players can pursue their PCs' concerns. This means presenting situations that speak to those concerns, and thus prompt the players to declare actions for their PCs. This is where your prep can be helpful. But if you need to take a 5 minute break to think up something new and appropriate, don't be afraid to tell the players that. Let them talk among themselves for a little bit while you exercise your imagination!

It's helpful, here, to know how your game's action resolution system works, because if you prompt your players to declare actions that your system can't handle, that can be a problem. It pushes play away from the player protagonism you're aiming for, and into either rules debates, or rules-free storytime.

Also, different game systems express different attitudes towards "rigidity" of prep. As a general rule, though, I suggest it can be better to be flexible with your prep - adapt your situations and your NPCs that you've worked up, in order to do the job of facilitating - rather than sticking to it rigidly and risking things becoming boring or aimless. (There's a skill in sticking to your prep and keeping things interesting and focused on the players' concerns for their PCs. The Apocalypse World rulebook is excellent, maybe essential, reading for anyone who wants to develop this skill.)

Responding: when your players declare actions, you have to respond. Your game should (if it's got a good rulebook) tell you how to do this. Maybe your response is to call for some appropriate dice roll. Maybe it's to say something more that develops the situation. Maybe both: first dice are rolled, and then you say something that honours the outcome of the dice role and develops the situation appropriately.

The big pitfall here is prejudgement. If your responses impose your own prejudgement of how things "should" go, then you've lost that player protagonism you were aspiring to. It's fine to inject your own ideas - you're a creative individual, just like your players! - but your ideas should complement and build on what the players have contributed, in accordance with whatever the rules of your game say. They shouldn't contradict or override them.

A useful technique here is to follow the lead of your players' response to your responses. If the players pick up your responses and run with them, then great! Build on that positive feedback cycle. On the other hand, if the players push back on your response, don't ignore that. Sometimes it might make sense to overtly retcon in response to such pushback, but I think a better first step is to use your game's own rules and procedures to invite the players to reorient back to their concerns. Maybe you can ask them questions that invite them, as their characters, to think about how they want to respond to the situation that is dissatisfying to them as players: that might prompt some new action declarations which allow the players and you to steer things away from the dissatisfying towards the satisfying.

Opposition: protagonism needs antagonism. It's your job, as GM, to bring that. It's something to keep in mind both when you're facilitating, and when you're responding. Not every bit of facilitation needs to involve opposition - sometimes it's fun and interesting to offer a player (and their PC) an opportunity, rather than presenting them with a challenge or a conflict - but sometimes it needs to. By presenting situations that oppose the players' concerns for their PCs - whether that is NPCs acting against the PCs' interests, or impersonal obstacles - you not only prompt the players to declare actions, but you give the players a chance to really show that their PCs mean it! (Or, perhaps, that they don't. That's interesting too.)

Not every response needs to involve opposition or confrontation. Sometimes a success takes a PC to a nice place for a while. Sometimes a failure just brings pain. But opposition is a nice way of responding. And it can be both a reward for success - the PC gets to confront the antagonist, or the impersonal force, the player was hoping for - or a consequence for failure - the PC has to confront some new obstacle or antagonism that they weren't anticipating. But when using opposition as a consequence for failure, still keep in mind that the game is focused on the players' concerns for their PCs. You'll need to find your balance here - most players will probably accept that a failure entitles the GM to put their imprint on the situation, but don't use it as an excuse to reorient play towards something completely different. Good standbys are old enemies turning up again, or new opponents who really care (but in the wrong way) about a PC's ideology or beliefs, or a NPC or situation that will let a player deploy their PC's central skill or method or approach.

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I hope that it's clear that facilitation, response and opposition are not mutually exclusive. They're not steps in a cycle of play. (The rulebook for your game should tell you what the cycle of play is, and what its steps are.)

Rather, facilitation, response and opposition are interrelated jobs. Good responses facilitate. One way to facilitate is to oppose, and one sort of response is opposition. But some facilitation should provide the PCs (and thereby the players) with opportunities other than just confronting challenges. Getting the hang of this - how to pace things, how hard to push - is a skill that takes time. But if in doubt, follow the signs your players are sending, as described above under Responding.

And remember: the reason for presenting the jobs in this way is to orient your thinking, as a "story now" GM, towards the players' concerns for their PCs. Or in other words, to orient your GMing towards player protagonism. That's the heart of "story now" RPGing.

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Anyway, the above is a starting point. There's a lot more that could be said about "story now" GMing. One big topic is how setting factors into "story now" RPGing, and related ideas like "no myth"/"low myth" RPGing. And if you're already familiar with some other approaches to RPGing, there are also things to be said about how the "story now" approach is different. (Eg why is the idea of a "plot hook" unhelpful for "story now" GMs?)

But hopefully what I've written above is enough to get some discussion going!

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pemerton said:

the topic of this thread is player agency. To me, it seems obvious that if all players can do is establish "inconsequential", "minor" or "not directly pivotal" elements of the fiction - so that all the significant elements of framing, consequence etc are established by the GM - then their agency is modest at best.

And in order to pre-empt, or at least attempt to pre-empt, confused or incorrect statements about how (say) Dungeon World works: in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.

There may also be techniques that permit the players to declare actions or make decisions pertaining to their PCs' memories. This goes together with the players' establishing goals and aspirations, to overall produce characters that have "thicker" lives, relationships, etc than is typical of much D&D play.

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