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

Manbearcat said:

1)

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) Bi.

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No, this isn’t what is going on at all. You are looking at everything through a very specific lens that conceived of play through a theoretical model I don’t subscribe to and reject. This is so condescending it is infuriating as a poster to contend. There was never any sense on my part that it were preferable for X to happen. I tried to do stuff, bill told me what happened. I wasn’t viewing it as a negotiation to controlling ‘ a shared fictional space’. All you are doing is throwing in game terms and asserting I am doing something ‘because’. And it is very obvious to me these are self serving frameworks and arguments. Believe me, I’ve seen RPG theorizing on the other side that is equally self serving and works to define away some of the styles mentioned. Those arguments are equally compelling and convincing, because thry’ve Been honed many years online in the trenches. But they are still self serving playstyles arguments meant to give primacy to a particular approach to play or to a particular way of thinking about play. I suspect that is what is going on here. If the style under discussion is so impossible and burdened with problems, it will naturally take care of itself and fade. But a slender group of posters seem obsessed with ensuring people believe all these negative assumptions about the style. Again, I see it work too frequently, know too many people running successful campaigns using this approach to buy the apocalyptic predictions you are offering. Perhaps I am not the one suffering from bias or over confidence?

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.

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,

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Even with rolling the dice, for an awful lot of systems, you're still running a variation on what you characterize as "Mother May I" because the GM is setting the ultimate difficulty target. Rolling dice isn't necessarily any guarantee of getting a result free of some kind of GM bias.
And then, even if there's some kind of rule-set difficulty that a player can beat indicating there are cultists at the teahouse, the GM is still deciding how significance a presence it is (is it a company dinner-level of cultist presence, or a part time cultist who washes dishes in the kitchen to pay the rent) which continues us along the trail of GM bias to the point I really have to wonder what the big deal is about the different play styles. One - you're relying on the GM to make a decision based on his knowledge of the campaign, or Two - you're rolling dice to force the GM to put a cultist there but he can still make it a pain in the ass to find. In either event, if the GM's judgment is problematic, it's problematic.

TwoSix said:

You're free to call it whatever you want, of course, but that kind of play (where NPCs operate under a DM controlled paradigm of action, independent of the players or PCs) is straight up simulationism. Simulationism really has nothing to do with the real world, it has to do with designing probabilistic rules of action and extrapolating to see what happens.

Random encounter charts, organized by biome? Simulationist. Weapon dice, derived from a sense of how much damage the real-world equivalent would do? Simulationist. You can't really play D&D in any form and not be a little simulationist.

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Another word for it is realism. I've been stoned here for suggesting that D&D has some realism in it. "What do you mean D&D has realism?! There are dragons and magic! Does that sound realistic to you?"

Manbearcat said:

All GMs are biased and flawed. A very typical problem is a blinkered view of one's capabilities in rendering an extremely complex system in a way that is inferrable from first principles or by weight of evidence by the other participants at the table.

That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do their best and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't attempt it at all (perfect being the enemy of the good), but perhaps they need to consider (a) their limitations and (b) other sources of input (be it procedures, a slight shift in priorities, or principles, or other table participants) to play which will correct for their biases and flaws.

Coincidentally, a few other typical problems with GMs is their investment in their work/creation/prep (and the perceived value of it), their perceived status as alpha chimp (I'm using that descriptively; in an evolutionary, dominance hierarchy way), and their entitlement to absolute authority over content introduction. These 3 work in conjunction to be extremely sensitive to (b) above.

If I'm holding a GMing workshop, those 4 flaws are right at the top of the heap of things I would deconstruct and teach how to be aware of each of those lurking beasts while also maintaining confidence in your GMing product.

Interestingly, I'd say that once those flaws are beaten back, a GM becomes infinitely better at erecting a shared imaginary space for the players to explore, suss out its machinery, and make informed action declarations they can be secure in.

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I take exception to describing how the game is intended to be played as a DM flaw. It's not a flaw to be in charge of content introduction. It's the rules. It's also a style of play different from yours, but no less valid of fun(for those that like the style).

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".

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Yes, but it's not "Mother may I." Nobody is asking permission to have their PC take an action. They are telling the DM, "I am going to the tea house to look for cultists." Now the DM has to figure out(if he doesn't know already) if they are there and then narrate the result of the action.

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.

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Since the rule is that you only roll when the outcome is in doubt, this is part of the same way. If the outcome is not in doubt, the DM has decided. If it is in doubt, then a check is made. This is all in the 5e rules and is not "Mother May I" in any way.

I propose we change the term "Saying yes" to Daddy thankyou

pemerton said:

I don't know that there's any benefit to it. My claim is that when the RPG process is so different from the real life process, it's a mistake to characterise it as being like real life.

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I don't think anyone characterizes any RPG process that determines if person X was at the tea-house as similar to the real life processes that determine if person X is at the tea house.

Instead we all understand that we are using a probabilistic model to determine if person X was there in the RPG and that real life doesn't use probabilistic models to make such determinations (philosophical questions about knowledge etc aside)

However, the uncertainty, the random outcome where you might find them or might not and the notion that such an event in real life could be modeled with probabilities all play into it "being like real life". Don't you agree that these things are our perception of what's happening in real life (even if the actual processes involved are totally 100% deterministic)? If you are causing these same perceptions to the players watching their characters in the game world then isn't it fair to say that finding person X at the tea-house in the game world is like finding some specific person at the tea house in the real world?

Bedrockgames said:

I strongly disagree with this. "Yes and" just allows anything the players want to unfold in the campaign.

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Setting aside the discussion of exactly how bad that would be...

You may have forgotten what the players actually asked.
"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."

"Yes, and... please roll Streetwise-equivalent skill... *roll*.... you don't find any of them there, but there's this other interesting thing that happens..."

This is contrasted with...
"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."

"No, you may not. There are no tea houses here."

Yes and... does not imply success at the attempt. It merely implies that the players can stipulate the existence of a heretofore unnamed or un-detailed tea house. The first example allows flow to continue, where the second gives them no setup for continued narrative.

Maxperson said:

Another word for it is realism. I've been stoned here for suggesting that D&D has some realism in it. "What do you mean D&D has realism?! There are dragons and magic! Does that sound realistic to you?"

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Even ignoring the fantastical elements within the most popular genre of TTRPG play, I'm not sure if I would call it 'realism' by any reasonable metric. Often that appeal to realism is selectively applied, if not prejudiciously, by both the game system and the participants, typically with some other goal or value in mind. 'Realism' is likely a smokescreen for some other issue(s). This is to say, I don't necessarily think that 'realism' is the genuine goal of people who claim they desire 'realism' in their TTRPG, especially D&D.

But yes, D&D has some realism in it. For example, it depicts the average human with five fingers on each hand. REALISM! So I suppose we should pat D&D on the back for having "some realism in it"? But we should also be clear here. Having "some realism" is not the same thing as valuing or desiring realism. Realism is, to reiterate, likely not the actual goal people drive at when making appeals to it. And valuing realism is not the same thing as attaining or applying it reasonably. Applying notions of realism to D&D is an inherently failed enterprise because our biased notions of 'realism' are woefully stuck in a position of ignorance (and irrationality) about a wide variety of pertinent subjects that would inform our preparation and play about the game world.

What makes for "realistic" imagining of hit points? What makes for "realistic" falling damage? What makes for a realistic damage for a longsword? What makes for realistic natural healing rules? Or Armor Class rules? "Realism" is lipstick on the pig of D&D's gamism. "Realism" is the Emperor's New Clothes: We all know that the emperor is naked, but some people go along with the farce and pretend that he is cloaked with "realism" all the same. Because if they didn't they would have to admit that they are looking at the naked imperfections of an emperor.

Thyrwyn said:

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.

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This is why, in the OP, I bracketed some theological questions. If we want to talk about the role of providence in the context of a RPG, that's an interesting discussion: but based on my experience I think it takes us even further away from a "GM decides everything that occurs" approach.