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

pemerton · Feb 4, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
I never said that the game works is exactly like the real world. I said a GM telling a player who is at the tea house, when players say they are going there to look for members of Bone Breaker sect, is no more mother may I than if someone went somewhere looking for people in real life. I never said they followed the same process either. All I was saying is, like in real life, sometimes you go to a location to find someone and they are not there. That doesn’t sound at all like mother may I to me.

It all depends on how it comes about that the PCs do not find any cultists at the teahouse.

Here is one way: the GM decides. That is what, in the other thread, I have characterised as "Mother may I".

Here is another way: A check is made. If it fails, the GM narrates the consequence (which may include an absence of cultists at the teahouse); if it succeeds, the PCs find some cultists at the teahouse.

I think you think the difference between those two approaches is "pedantic". But there are whole RPGs and schools of play (Dungeon World, Burning Wheel and a common approach to 4e D&D among them) that are premised on adopting the second way rather than the first.

Bedrockgames said:
"Yes and" just allows anything the players want to unfold in the campaign.

<snip>

The GM instead of 'winging it' or saying 'yes' can think it through and try to come up with the most reasonable result to the question "what is there?"

This is why I am not persuaded that you really appreciate the difference between "saying 'yes'" and "say 'yes' or roll the dice. Because every time you present a range of approaches, and talk about the role of GM judgement, and the like, you seem to disregard the possibility of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", even though that is very close to a standard alternative to GM-driven play,

Thyrwyn · Feb 4, 2019

pemerton said:
....In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes.

I'll stop you at your premise: This is a nice opinion, and could just as easily turn out to be "how you hope it is". It is conjecture and hypothesis: it cannot be proven. Your experience of the "real world" would be completely identical if your experience were being shaped intentionally by something outside of yourself. Your experience would be exactly the same if that "something" considered your "suggestions" or even your "expectations", either supportively or oppositionally.

There are people that believe in agentic higher powers and believe that actions and aspirations and desires influence those powers to affect the world around themselves. People believe in karma and prayer and blessings and curses. You may not. Doesn't make them wrong, nor does it make them right.

[FWIW - I do not believe in an agentic higher power. It doesn't change the fact that "free will" could be a complete illusion created by causal processes we don't understand]

Bedrockgames · Feb 4, 2019

pemerton said:
It all depends on how it comes about that the PCs do not find any cultists at the teahouse.

Here is one way: the GM decides. That is what, in the other thread, I have characterised as "Mother may I".

Here is another way: A check is made. If it fails, the GM narrates the consequence (which may include an absence of cultists at the teahouse); if it succeeds, the PCs find some cultists at the teahouse.

I think you think the difference between those two approaches is "pedantic". But there are whole RPGs and schools of play (Dungeon World, Burning Wheel and a common approach to 4e D&D among them) that are premised on adopting the second way rather than the first.

I get that they are substantially different. I think they are very different, so much so that whole play styles are developed around them. I only said your fine toothed combiing of my language was pedantic. But from the very beginning I've seen these stylistic differences as major distinctions. Where I disagree with you is I don't think the GM deciding what is at the Tea House is mother may I, in any way. I get that you have another approach, that you use, and you feel it gets around mother may I. That is fine. It isn't a method I tend to use (though occasionally my decision will be to make a probability roll or roll on a table). I really don't understand why we are having this protracted level of disagreement. I think we both acknowledge there are different styles here. I think we both understand our gaming philosophies are quite different from one another. And I think we disagree on what constitutes mother may I. Personally, I'm fine with your style. I have no issue it, and I have no desire to characterize it as a negative thing. You persist in labeling this style that you seem to have an axe to grind with, as a negative.

This is why I am not persuaded that you really appreciate the difference between "saying 'yes'" and "say 'yes' or roll the dice. Because every time you present a range of approaches, and talk about the role of GM judgement, and the like, you seem to disregard the possibility of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", even though that is very close to a standard alternative to GM-driven play,

I am not disregarding it at all. I get that it is an option. It just isn't one I would tend to use. I really don't understand why this is becoming a point of contention here. I mean, if you think I am not sufficiently informed about this possibility, that is fine. I don't think I need to spend time persuading you that I am or am not. It obviously isn't something that would, for me, be a suitable alternative for the GM being able to decide. I get that my approach could include saying yes, or include rolling the dice. But those are not requirements of my approach (and I am not even really even thinking of it as saying yes or no, I just try to figure out what would be there). I don't know. I feel like I have a good handle on what you are doing and how you do it. I don't feel like you have a real understanding of what it is I am trying to do.

Manbearcat · Feb 5, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
I am not 100% sure what you mean in the last paragraph. But my only real point was, these sorts of things are just tools. They are neutral. They don't have moral weight and using one over the other isn't what makes someone a good GM. A good GM makes good use of the tools they use, and uses the right tools for the situation. In some styles, the tools described are not suitable. I play different games and know what you are talking about there. But I have in mind a particular style of play and method of adjudicating, that in this and the other thread (and not saying you are doing it) gets dismissed as Mother May I, or somehow inferior to the other approaches). My tool box for this kind of campaign generally includes things like rulings, encounter tables, sandbox structure, living NPCs, and trying to fairly respond to player actions. I use the dice for plenty of things. But for a question like "What is inside the teahouse", I will typically make a judgement based on the circumstances and what I know or use that to generate a probability if the likelihood seems smaller. Where I think I differ from a lot of people, is I believe the GM can serve as a valid mechanism in play for determining these things. And that doesn't make it mother may I. If I am a player for example, and Bill is running a world. I am fine with the idea that Bill's brain effectively is the universe. There are quirks that are unique to Bill that will consistently come up for sure. But that world is going to have its own internal logic and rhythm because it is all coming from Bill. And Bill is a real GM. I remember a campaign where we were in a city where all the magic users were treated like gods, and I got it into my head to become the local god of Coffee and start a temple. Every time I went somewhere to find out if some resource or potential ally or worshipper was available, he didn't 'say yes or roll', he didn't 'say yes', nor did he have a set of clear procedures. He just decided in most cases. But it never became mother may I. His decision were clearly a product of thought and deliberation and not some shell game or a game where I had to guess what he was thinking. I could tell, if I asked if a certain type of person could be found in a certain part of town, he'd think it through and come up with a response. I think it really only becomes mother may I, if he has a finite set of possibilities in his head, and I only succeed when I happen to land on one of them.

Let me just say one thing about "Bill" and:

I am fine with the idea that Bill's brain effectively is the universe. There are quirks that are unique to Bill that will consistently come up for sure. But that world is going to have its own internal logic and rhythm because it is all coming from Bill.

There is a problem with this that is similar to the error classical economists have made when assuming free markets are efficient and self-regulating because of the belief that individual people and collectives (a) can model the volatility of complex downstream interactions, (b) respond coherently to incentives and disincentives, and (c) tend toward a process of optimal decision-making (cost-benefit analysis, opportunity cost) for their (including themselves and their immediate social body) well-being.

"Bill" is a lot of people. He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others). There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.

Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is). As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced. Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement. All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.

There are so many snares set for Bill and his group. This is why the overwhelming % of intrigues and metaplots end up with several/all players at the table in an utter confounded and ultimately disconnected state...and just looking for the nearest thing to attack (because the combat mechanics and their outputs are the only thing that aren't opaque). This harkens to @Numidius 's experience in Italy above. This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem. It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem. This is a human problem. Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.

Those that do and can confront them with a longterm group of allies (players/friends) can pull it off. But these are extreme edge cases. Therefore, its a good thing to do the analysis on why these things occur, how to recognize them, how to confront them, and how to work around them.

* I say all of the above with all of the confidence in the world that I can pull off the phenomenon you are prescribing to Bill as well as any human can...which is to say...I'm quite aware of my own strengths and my own (very human) shortcomings.

Bedrockgames · Feb 5, 2019

Manbearcat said:
Let me just say one thing about "Bill" and:

There is a problem with this that is similar to the error classical economists have made when assuming free markets are efficient and self-regulating because of the belief that individual people and collectives (a) can model the volatility of complex downstream interactions, (b) respond coherently to incentives and disincentives, and (c) tend toward a process of optimal decision-making (cost-benefit analysis, opportunity cost) for their (including themselves and their immediate social body) well-being.

"Bill" is a lot of people. He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others). There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.

Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is). As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced. Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement. All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.

There are so many snares set for Bill and his group. This is why the overwhelming % of intrigues and metaplots end up with several/all players at the table in an utter confounded and ultimately disconnected state...and just looking for the nearest thing to attack (because the combat mechanics and their outputs are the only thing that aren't opaque). This harkens to @Numidius 's experience in Italy above. This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem. It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem. This is a human problem. Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.

Those that do and can confront them with a longterm group of allies (players/friends) can pull it off. But these are extreme edge cases. Therefore, its a good thing to do the analysis on why these things occur, how to recognize them, how to confront them, and how to work around them.

I think you are way, way, way over thinking this. And I think bringing in economics, just clouds the issue. In economics they are talking about how rationally people behave in a market, here we are just talking about how consistent a person's personality and judgements are---it is Bill, so you get a world run by the physics of Bill think. And Bill Think can produce all kinds of different content, but I can get a handle on it, the same way I can get a handle on how things tend to work around me in the real world. They are by no means the same ,and I don't ever expect the level of granularity from the real world to enter the game world. Like others have said, Bill is providing an approximation that is adequate. You and others keep saying how impossible the is, and hold up all kinds of clever but overly complex examples. But those posting on this thread who have played this style and enjoyed it, have seen it work in action and understand how easy it can be. Now if you come to a game like this with an axe to grind, of course you'll find issues with it. If you come to have fun, like with most styles, you should be able to enjoy yourself if it is a good fit for what you are after.

You assert that most players end up confused in a game run by Bill. I can assure you no one ever had the problem you described in the games I played with him. Not that every session was perfect, but the baffled state of aggression you describe never once arose that I saw. Again, I think people are projecting problems they've experienced and assume they are the norm. This just isn't what Ive seen. And what i see at the table, what works at the table, those are always more important to me than nice sounding arguments on a gaming thread.

Bedrockgames · Feb 5, 2019

Manbearcat said:
This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem. It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem. This is a human problem. Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.
.

Again, just to highlight, you are asserting that something is prevalent because you've heard people complain about. I hear people complain about all kinds of things that are not real problems. And frankly a red flag that they are full of it, is they frame it in hysterical terms. These are not horror stories and no one is a refugee. These are games that people either had fun at or they didn't, and moved on with their lives. Trust me we get people in our groups too coming from other styles of play (even the ones people like Pemerton advocates for). I don't assume it is because there is a flaw with the style, or that there is some deep human flaw that needs to be held in check at the gaming table. I assume it is because the tastes of that player didn't align with the tastes of the GM and or group. Which is fine. People should seek tables that match their interests. But claiming there is something fundamental to humans that makes this very simple, common and longstanding style of GMing either impossible or horrific, doesn't pass the smell test for me.

Bedrockgames · Feb 5, 2019

Manbearcat said:
"Bill" is a lot of people. He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others). There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.

Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is). As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced. Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement. All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.

Okay, you are getting very esoteric. I am not going to debate whether a single person, is actually a single individual. I actually understand philosophy pretty well, but I think it has very little place in this kind of discussion. But just to use a relevant philosophical example, the argument you lay out here is incredibly unconvincing to me. It actually reminds me a lot of Zeno's Paradox of Motion. But your running counter to what I've seen at the table. It may be if we analyzed Bill's brain and how it functioned (which by the way I think we are still pretty far off from truly understanding), we'd find issues at the micro level. At the macro level of our experience, he ran a game that felt like a real place, and where our decisions clearly mattered. I get that you are drawing on different fields of inquiry here to make an assertion. I think there is a danger there though in taking from highly specialized fields that require real expertise to understand and just loosely applying them to something like GMing a session of D&D. It is very easy to cherry pick to advance a position that style X is impossible, bad, immoral, etc. I frankly think that is all that is going on here. If you don't like the style, that is fine. Admit you don't like the style. But constructing an elaborate argument for why it is an impossible style like this strikes me as a profound waste of your time.

Numidius · Feb 5, 2019

Manbearcat said:
Let me just say one thing about "Bill" and:

There is a problem with this that is similar to the error classical economists have made when assuming free markets are efficient and self-regulating because of the belief that individual people and collectives (a) can model the volatility of complex downstream interactions, (b) respond coherently to incentives and disincentives, and (c) tend toward a process of optimal decision-making (cost-benefit analysis, opportunity cost) for their (including themselves and their immediate social body) well-being.

"Bill" is a lot of people. He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others). There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.

Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is). As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced. Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement. All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.

There are so many snares set for Bill and his group. This is why the overwhelming % of intrigues and metaplots end up with several/all players at the table in an utter confounded and ultimately disconnected state...and just looking for the nearest thing to attack (because the combat mechanics and their outputs are the only thing that aren't opaque). This harkens to @Numidius 's experience in Italy above. This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem. It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem. This is a human problem. Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.

Those that do and can confront them with a longterm group of allies (players/friends) can pull it off. But these are extreme edge cases. Therefore, its a good thing to do the analysis on why these things occur, how to recognize them, how to confront them, and how to work around them.

* I say all of the above with all of the confidence in the world that I can pull off the phenomenon you are prescribing to Bill as well as any human can...which is to say...I'm quite aware of my own strengths and my own (very human) shortcomings.

This. Precisely. (A long, slow applause follows)

Manbearcat · Feb 5, 2019

1) I don't dislike the style. I have run sandbox campaigns repeatedly in my life in multiple systems (as I said above..did you miss that?).

2) On refugees: The overwhelming majority of players in my games (70+ for sure) over the last 35 years have been refugees from games of the precise style we're speaking about that have failed due to GM issues (of which I've spoken a bit about). I've probably introduced 30ish people to TTRPGing, so the significant majority of players I've GMed for have been refugees that fled failed games (for the reasons I spoke to...and some I haven't).

3) I mentioned above and then in (1) above that I don't dislike the style. I run it. Hopefully, we can move beyond that at this point. Of the GMs I'm familiar with in my personal life (myself included), only 4 have been successful (myself included) in running long-term campaigns of the variety we're talking about where (a) it hasn't fizzled out due to overwhelming overhead or (b) disgruntled/revolting players. The number of GMs who have failed/fizzled is 30+. That % is extremely poor and begs analysis.

4) We hear all of the time from users on these boards about users personal struggles/failures at GMing (or outright horror stories...yes horror...and you've been in some of these conversations) or their dissatisfaction with their home game's GM.

5) Following from 3 and 4 above, I think you suffer from a serious selection bias issue (I don't know if you've been lucky enough to not run into refugee players or if you've had a stable homegame of mates for decades and/or you've just ignored the amount of evidence we have available that pushes back against your hypothesis that the sort of functional game you're describing is normative). It is extremely difficult to run these sorts of games and have longterm satisfied players. It requires a seriously talented GM who possesses significant creativity, humility, a forensic knowledge-base, the ability to read social cues and empathize, and the ability to convey information and mood cogently and to a wide array of mental frameworks (as players vary widely in the way they process information).

6) Regarding our "conceptual Bill", my point is two-fold:

a) Whether you like it or not, you are playing a game of "Bill, I would like to do this thing x and it would certainly be preferable if your mental model of the gamestate/fictional positioning matched up with my own conception....therefore x happens" (I'm dispensing with "Mother May I"...I'm just trying to break down the machinery at work in any player action declaration). That is basically the order of operations; ingest Bill's information regarding the shared imagined space, propose a change to the shared imagined space, find out if Bill's mental model matches up to your own and/or consult the dice if Bill decides that is the best arbiter.

b) Bill, no matter how super awesome Bill is, will suffer from various cognitive biases and other human-driven-problems that will lend themselves toward some measure of tension between how Bill perceives the gamestate and how player x, y, and z (each with their own individual perception due to their own biases and human-driven-problems) perceive the gamestate.

c) Hopefully, all players at the table are humble, understanding, and mature enough to sort through that tension and arrive at some equitable solution when those moments arise.

Bedrockgames · Feb 5, 2019

Manbearcat said:
1) I don't dislike the style. I have run sandbox campaigns repeatedly in my life in multiple systems (as I said above..did you miss that?).

2) On refugees: The overwhelming majority of players in my games (70+ for sure) over the last 35 years have been refugees from games of the precise style we're speaking about that have failed due to GM issues (of which I've spoken a bit about). I've probably introduced 30ish people to TTRPGing, so the significant majority of players I've GMed for have been refugees that fled failed games (for the reasons I spoke to...and some I haven't).

3) I mentioned above and then in (1) above that I don't dislike the style. I run it. Hopefully, we can move beyond that at this point. Of the GMs I'm familiar with in my personal life (myself included), only 4 have been successful (myself included) in running long-term campaigns of the variety we're talking about where (a) it hasn't fizzled out due to overwhelming overhead or (b) disgruntled/revolting players. The number of GMs who have failed/fizzled is 30+. That % is extremely poor and begs analysis.

4) We hear all of the time from users on these boards about users personal struggles/failures at GMing (or outright horror stories...yes horror...and you've been in some of these conversations) or their dissatisfaction with their home game's GM.

5) Following from 3 and 4 above, I think you suffer from a serious selection bias issue (I don't know if you've been lucky enough to not run into refugee players or if you've had a stable homegame of mates for decades and/or you've just ignored the amount of evidence we have available that pushes back against your hypothesis that the sort of functional game you're describing is normative). It is extremely difficult to run these sorts of games and have longterm satisfied players. It requires a seriously talented GM who possesses significant creativity, humility, a forensic knowledge-base, the ability to read social cues and empathize, and the ability to convey information and mood cogently and to a wide array of mental frameworks (as players vary widely in the way they process information).

6) Regarding our "conceptual Bill", my point is two-fold:

a) Whether you like it or not, you are playing a game of "Bill, I would like to do this thing x and it would certainly be preferable if your mental model of the gamestate/fictional positioning matched up with my own conception....therefore x happens" (I'm dispensing with "Mother May I"...I'm just trying to break down the machinery at work in any player action declaration). That is basically the order of operations; ingest Bill's information regarding the shared imagined space, propose a change to the shared imagined space, find out if Bill's mental model matches up to your own and/or consult the dice if Bill decides that is the best arbiter.

b) Bill, no matter how super awesome Bill is, will suffer from various cognitive biases and other human-driven-problems that will lend themselves toward some measure of tension between how Bill perceives the gamestate and how player x, y, and z (each with their own individual perception due to their own biases and human-driven-problems) perceive the gamestate.

c) Hopefully, all players at the table are humble, understanding, and mature enough to sort through that tension and arrive at some equitable solution when those moments arise.

I am on a phone so can’t redpond to every point. The last part is just a reiteration of prior points you’ve made. So will focus on first part:

1-I wasn’t just talking about sandbox, I was talking about sandboxes where the method of adjudication is the one under fire in this thread.

2-you are still just asserting things based on your experience. I have been playing since 86, I’ve games st all kinds of tables, using all kinds of systems. I’ve run games with local people, run convention games, played at stores and run numerous online games with people in different countries. I haven’t seen any more dissatisfaction with this approach than I have with adventure paths, narrative games, etc. people have preferences and sometimes encounter table play they don’t like.

3-Our experiences here are just very different. I know many GMs successfully running this kind of campaign. One reason I like it, is it tends to work well over the long haul.

4-I am ok lots of different online gaming communities. You see all kinds of complaints about all kinds of styles online. I can’t say I have seen more complaints about the style in question than I have about any other. Different online communities have different tendencies. However at enwotld, on this subject there really only seems to be a handful of posters who regular post about it. I think it can create a distorted impression of the reality if you rely too much on online impressions (especially when some discussions are propelled by a small number of dedicated participants).

5- I don’t think I am suffering from any more selection bias than you are. Please stop attributing things to me you can’t possibly know.