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

Bedrockgames · Mar 3, 2019

pemerton said:
In the real world, if I am looking for something no one decides where it is. It just is where it is.

Only if one treats the GM's decision as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.

Again, I wasn’t arguing it was exactly like real life. My point was just that for my purposes, it felt enough like the way things would work in the real world to not be mother may I. You don’t have to share this view. But can we please quit it with this straw man? I have been clarifying this since the thread was started.

Bedrockgames · Mar 3, 2019

AbdulAlhazred said:
It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.

What it is about is how I want to shape a narrative which centers (at least for the part about my character) on his quest to build a great kingdom. He may well fail. OTOH he may well succeed! Certainly it will be more dramatic and probably more engaging if he is able to get pretty far in his ambitions, taking great risks, winning great victories, etc. Eventually he may well fail. He might risk it all once too often on the chance of making it not just an ordinary kingdom but a really extraordinary one, and crash it all tumbles down! That's fine. That's playing to find out what happens.

But if I have to play inside the DM's conception of how the world is basically going to work and only draw from his palette then it will be a more limited story that is less about that, probably. I mean, maybe not, maybe the DM and I are in perfect harmony about it, but probably we aren't. At least I would have liked to see 5e structured in such a way that it could take 4e's implicit possibilities as a story now type of game and given us a mechanism to make that explicit. Truth is though, we got a game which at the basic mechanical level bakes in DM-is-in-charge pretty hard, and then adds a bowtie to it that is mostly dress. Even if you hack it pretty hard it doesn't yield a really good narrative focus very easily. You could read my 4e hack though and see how easy it is to make it explicit there.

I don’t think iris automatically easymode at all. I do think people connect with systems differently from one another.you have found these systems work well for you. When I’ve encountered them, it has created issues with plausibility (in part because I just don’t naturally connect to these systems). I would imagine people on the other side have trouble when it comes to what we are describing. Those kinds of differences are to be expected. The best situation is we have access to all these tools, the tools are honestly described and people can decide for themselves what to do. The only real contention here is that describing GM decides as mother may I fails to accurately describe the style and paints it in a negative light. For those of us who like the style, mother may I is a terrible descriptor of it. It doesn’t capture what we like about it. When we attempt to explain why we think we like it, it seems those attempts are shot down. At the end of the day, these are all just reasons we are working through to try to understand our preferences. But shooting down those reasons doesn’t change the preferences. Really all that truly matters is someone encounters GM decides and they do or don’t like it, someone encounters SYORTD and they do or do not like it. Explanations of the reasons can all be wrong.

pemerton · Mar 3, 2019

Maxperson said:
They don't necessarily make non-meat, either. So I find myself at the gates to the city. The first thing I have to think about is how will I go about becoming the ruler of my own nation. Do I go to the library and do research on items that can make me a king(i.e. Excalibur types)? Am I adventurer enough to accomplish finding and controlling such an artifact? Do I go to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status? Do I put those things on hold for now and seek ways to fund a conquering army? Those things are meat

No, they're not MEAT.

None of them forces a hard decision. None of them puts your values - PC or player - to the test. None generates any pressure here and now.

Which you seem to agree with, here:

Maxperson said:
One of the things that I don't really agree with is the idea that events from the DM should confront one or more of the PCs in some dramatic way. Drama is drama because it's not the normal state of things. When drama is the norm, it's no longer drama.

This is obviously wrong. Watch Casablanca - drama is the norm. Rick has to make hard decisions (about whether to help the young couple; about whether to support the Nazis; about whether to go with Ilsa; etc). That doesn't make it not dramatic - Casablanca is one of the great dramas of all time!

Of course real life isn't terribly dramatic for many of us much of the time. But RPGs are fictions, and the ones I play are adventure fictions where exciting and challenging and dramatic things are the norm. And I'm not yet jaded, as this report of the session I GMed today will reveal. (Upthread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] asked how one would handle separated groups other than by precise tracing of times - this play report provides an example of an alternative approach, based on GM's sense of pacing/narrative imperatives.)

Maxperson said:
Some of what the DM does should confront PCs, and some should just be normal stuff.

Why normal stuff? And what is "normal stuff" in the context of an adventure-oriented RPG?

Going to the library and do research on items that can make me a king doesn't seem very normal to me. Nor does going to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status. The difference between those things, and what I described, is that - on the face of it - those things are safe because nothing is really at stake. It's all maybe and in due course. Which is precisely what I'm saying it has not MEAT.

EDIT: I read this post by AbdulAlhazred:

AbdulAlhazred said:
It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.

What it is about is how I want to shape a narrative which centers (at least for the part about my character) on his quest to build a great kingdom. He may well fail. OTOH he may well succeed! Certainly it will be more dramatic and probably more engaging if he is able to get pretty far in his ambitions, taking great risks, winning great victories, etc. Eventually he may well fail. He might risk it all once too often on the chance of making it not just an ordinary kingdom but a really extraordinary one, and crash it all tumbles down! That's fine. That's playing to find out what happens.

But if I have to play inside the DM's conception of how the world is basically going to work and only draw from his palette then it will be a more limited story that is less about that, probably.

The idea of a narrative centred on a PC goal, and offering the possbility of ambition and taking great risks, seems pretty close to my take on MEAT.

Asking the GM about what the books in the library say, and roleplaying interactions with NPCs whom the GM has established with no particular dramatic orientation towards my PC, doesn't seem to involve either of those things. Nor the real risk of failure.

hawkeyefan · Mar 3, 2019

pemerton said:
In the real world, if I am looking for something no one decides where it is. It just is where it is.

Only if one treats the GM's decision as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.

I understand all that.

And yet it’s still true that the player does not get to decide where something is any more than a person in the real world does. That’s the comparison that was made and it’s clearly true.

Yes, we can examine the play style further and point out that someone decides where the something is and how that may be relevant. But it doesn’t change the basic comparison that was made.

And I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.

Ovinomancer · Mar 3, 2019

Sadras said:
I truly attempt to steer my game hard in the sandbox tent where I'm willing to sacrifice large meta-plot arcs and storylines in favour of letting the PC pursue their desires. Of course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, given that I am the primary author of the fiction.

The question I ask is, how was that different for you in 4e?
For instance, we have a PC at my table with a backstory (all his by the way):
A restitched soul of the player's previous dead PC (Bard), but now different/altered/evolved into a being serving Kelemvor (Cleric). He has memories/fragments of his past, but his personality is changed, more solemn and grave. His sole purpose is to track down and kill a psychopathic NPC who intends to revive A'tar whom the NPC believes is the true deity of the sun, the harsh and merciless goddess, as opposed to the feeble and fake gods Amaunator and Lathander. Kelemvor, the deity of the Dead, firmly believes that A'tar must remain dead for the good of the cosmos and so his faithful servqnt, the PC, does his bidding.

As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to write their own story (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.

EDIT: The psychopathic NPC was also a previous PC of his who had that goal to resurrect A'tar. He became an NPC when he left the table for a while due to personal reasons.

It's a common misconception that narrative play allows the PC full latitude over introduction of fiction. It doesn't. The PC may have a larger goal, like yours does, but the GM still controls the framing of scenes and the narration of failures. In your case, the player really owes the GM a "first step" goal. Look to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example above of a PC's whose goal is to save their brother from possession by a Balrog. That's the big goal, but that player also provided "and I will not leave this town until I find something to help." That's the goal that pemerton framed and put at risk to start. Play then goes on to see if that item actually is what's looked for or not, and what happens next is up to that determination, which will involve the addition of new elements of fiction that will be pursued or stymied as play determines. Eventually, the game will resolve or moot the big goal. IIRC, the player of the PC with that goal failed, firstly by discovering that his brother wasn't possessed, but a willing partner, and then by not preventing his brother's death before he could save them. None of those elements were at all conceived of when the angel feather was first put into play.

In my own example, a Blades in the Dark game, the Crew took a mission from an ally to place an artifact of power inside a rival gang's hangout for reasons they were not privy to (honestly, they're allied with but terrified of the Dimmer Sisters). This started with them choosing how to approach the warehouse that was the rival's hangout. They chose going in via the roof, so, of course, the warehouse has a skylight or two (this was me acknowledging their opening move by allowing for their intent to be realized, I had no schematic of the warehouse). But they're roll to determine how the score started was normal, so immediately there's a complication. The skylight was rusted shut. Here, play started. Recall the big goal was to place a macguffin in a specific place, but play actually started being confronted by a rusted-shut skylight. From there, they had to navigate across the beams of the warehouse without being noticed, approach the second story office of the warehouse. Deal with the gang members hanging out there (a nifty flashback involving a gift of a crate of laced wined did the trick, at a few coin cost), and place the object where it wouldn't be discovered. Getting out we elided, because that wasn't the focus of the drama for the score.

So, yes, the GM should acknowledge the player's goal and frame scenes that involve it, but at no time should the goal not be challenged, vigorously. This is what the guidance for these games tell you to do -- up the drama all the time in a scene, put player agendas at risk, and play to find out what happens.

pemerton · Mar 3, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.

And then we can ask who, at the table, should decide what a PC's family members do? The player of the PC - who is playing the character who has intimate knowledge of those people - or the GM, which will make those people's behaviours largely opaque to the player of the PC who supposedly knows them so well?

The most obvious solution I'm familiar with is to make a check - and if it fails, then the GM can establish that the PC's friends and family did something unexpected/undesired.

Which also, not fully coincidentally, is a different mechanic from player decides. Which is something I'vd been pointing out for most of the thread. But for some reason posters seem to keep suggesting that the most salient alternative to GM decides is player decides, even though most of them for their whole RPGing lives have been playing a combat system (D&D's) which examplifies an alternative approach.

Ovinomancer · Mar 3, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
I understand all that.

And yet it’s still true that the player does not get to decide where something is any more than a person in the real world does. That’s the comparison that was made and it’s clearly true.

Yes, we can examine the play style further and point out that someone decides where the something is and how that may be relevant. But it doesn’t change the basic comparison that was made.

And I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.

Eh. In the game, if a player declares they're looking for something somewhere, then it introduces the possibility it is there, which is not something that happens in real life at all. Now you either have a "say yes" moment, where the player is right (not the real world), or you use a mechanic to determine if the player is right or not or it's complicated (not the real world), or you rely on the GM to make the call as if the player is right, wrong, or complicated (again, not the real world).

What we can say is that the game may seem like it's a believable, internally consistent, internally coherent, believable world where there's fictional causality for things that makes sense. This is also not like the real world, but we can use our suspension of disbelief to believe so.

Why it this important? It's, well, not very. It's a bit of an in the weeds talk about how game worlds are constructed and how they work. It's nerdy and detailed. If you approach how games work casually, this is utterly nitpicky and unimportant -- just play what makes you happy. If, however, you're actually interested in how games do what they do, and what they incentivize, then it's very useful to recognize that gameworlds have absolutely nothing to do with the real world, but instead may contain what we think about the real world. Gravity does not exist in your game, but what you think about gravity may. This leads to a better understanding of how fiction works in game, what elements are necessary to maintain coherent, believable worlds and what may be elided entirely, and where the fiction causality determination needs to or may occur.

Fundamentally, I think that this discussion really revolves around whether a person thinks that causality needs to be determined prior to the mechanics or if it can be provided after you have your answer from the mechanics. Those saying that the mechanics need to be more "realistic" are the former camp -- fictional causes need to be fed into or be part of the mechanics engine to be germane. The mechanics then determine the outcome of this. The latter camp is comprised of those that say that the mechanics only need generate a predictable probability curve of success/failure/complication and that the fictional causality will be whatever explains that. In the end, both generate solid fiction, but far be it for me to actually say that the ends justify the means. The only point of saying that the ends are indistinguishable is to say that method of play doesn't really affect fictional integrity at all. It does, however, strongly affect how you enjoy playing.

So, then, to circle back to why care. For those of us actually interested in these things, we've recognized that this knowledge has improved our play by allowing us to better understand what it is we like about the games. And, of course, we like being nerdy about these things. The discussion is part of the enjoyment.

pemerton · Mar 3, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
Look to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example above of a PC's who's goal is to save their brother from possession by a Balrog. That's the big goal, but that player also provided "and I will not leave this town until I find something to help." That's the goal that pemerton framed and put at risk to start. Play then goes on to see if that item actually is what's looked for or not, and what happens next is up to that determination, which will involve the addition of new elements of fiction that will be pursued or stymied as play determines. Eventually, the game will resolve or moot the big goal. IIRC, the player of the PC with that goal failed, firstly by discovering that his brother wasn't possessed, but a willing partner, and then by not preventing his brother's death before he could save them. None of those elements were at all conceived of when the angel feather was first put into play.

YRC.

Sadras said:
IOf course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, given that I am the primary author of the fiction.

<snip>

As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out?

I'm about to go to sleep here and so haven't tried to think through your example - and I don't think I have enough detail to do so in any event, as I don't know all the cosmology that seems to give the relationship with this opposed NPC its heft and meaning.

But I can point to my own play examples. I just posted an actual play report of a Traveller session I GMed today. Here are some obstacles encountered by the on-world team, trying to scout out faction A's pathfinder base at the behest of faction B:

pursuit of their ATV (upshot: surrender by the PCs);

imprisonment and interrogation (upshot: all but one of the PCs unconscious, then one of the PCs "goers kinetic", trying to escape imprisonment, get control of some battle dress (Traveller's analogue of powered armour) and take over the base);

numerous chances for attempt to take over base to fail, due to presence of enemy NPCs plus some risks associated with untrained use of battle dress (upshot: the PC succeeded, but not before the NPCs got a communication out that will be bad for the PCs if the Imperials get it).

I didn't know how the pursuit would turn out: the system has evasion rules, so the PCs could have tried that. They also had a forward observer on their team, and a ship with a triple beam laser turret in orbit, and so could have tried to call down fire on the pursuing ship.

Once the PCs were imprisoned, I didn't know how that would turn out: they coud have folded under interrogation, and two of them might well have been inclined to join with the NPCs (but their refusal to cooperate under interrogation got in the way of that). I didn't know in advance that one of them would try a violent approach, though obviously that sort of thing is on the cards. And it was something of a coincidence, resulting from how the interrogations unfolfed, that the only PC who had any chance of using the NPC's battle dress happened to be the one who had the chance to do so.

And once violence broke out, things could have turned out differently too. The Classic Traveller combat rules can be pretty fickle, so the PCs could well have ended up being defeated in their attempt.

I certainly didn't start things with the preconception that the PCs might (i) end up with an upgraded ATV and some battle dress but (ii) be identified as enemies on an Imperial relay satellite.

pemerton · Mar 3, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
Fundamentally, I think that this discussion really revolves around whether a person thinks that causality needs to be determined prior to the mechanics or if it can be provided after you have your answer from the mechanics. Those saying that the mechanics need to be more "realistic" are the former camp -- fictional causes need to be fed into or be part of the mechanics engine to be germane. The mechanics then determine the outcome of this. The latter camp is comprised of those that say that the mechanics only need generate a predictable probability curve of success/failure/complication and that the fictional causality will be whatever explains that.

Here are some things said by Ron Edwards, 2003:

Internal Cause is King
Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. . . .

Resolution mechanics, in Simulationist design, boil down to asking about the cause of what, which is to say, what performances are important during play. These vary widely, including internal states, interactions and expressions, physical motions (most games), and even decisions. Two games may be equally Simulationist even if one concerns coping with childhood trauma and the other concerns blasting villains with lightning bolts. What makes them Simulationist is the strict adherence to in-game (i.e. pre-established) cause for the outcomes that occur during play. . . .

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order . . .

The most common Simulationist resolution is handled through Fortune, specifically Fortune-at-the-End. This term refers to a dice roll (or cards, or whatever) which is consulted after all possible pre-resolution description of the actions in question has been delivered. Its alternative, Fortune-in-the-Middle, is not historically observed in Simulationist game design.

. . .

Fortune-in-the-Middle: the Fortune system is brought in partway through figuring out "what happens," to the extent that specific actions may be left completely unknown until after we see how they worked out. Let's say a character with a sword attacks some guy with a spear. The point is to announce the character's basic approach and intent, and then to roll. A missed roll in this situation tells us the goal failed. Now the group is open to discussing just how it happened from the beginning of the action being initiated. Usually, instead of the typical description that you "swing and miss," because the "swing" was assumed to be in action before the dice could be rolled at all, the narration now can be anything from "the guy holds you off from striking range with the spearpoint" to "your swing is dead-on but you slip a bit." Or it could be a plain vanilla miss because the guy's better than you. The point is that the narration of what happens "reaches back" to the initation of the action, not just the action's final micro-second.

There's a whole spectrum of extreme connect/disconnect between conflict and task. At one end, the task does fail, but the goal fails too, perhaps with a nuance or two. The other end is much wider in interpretative scope: we know the character's goal (killing some guy) doesn't happen, but with those in place, narration takes over to provide all the events involved. Applying different judgments along this spectrum, for different parts of play, is a big deal . . .

Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates Narrativist play in a number of ways.

* It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent goofs; conversely, if you want your guy to suffer the effects of cruel fate, or just not be good enough, you can do that too.

* It permits tension to be managed from conflict to conflict and from scene to scene. So a "roll to hit" in Scene A is the same as in Scene B in terms of whether the target takes damage, but it's not the same in terms of the acting character's motions, intentions, and experience of the action.

* It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens in tandem with the real-people statements.

. . .

Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:

* Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.

* Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.

* More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.

What Edwards doesn't really discuss, at least in these essays (as I recall them - I haven't re-read them in their entirety this evening), is the variety of ways in which the ingame causal constraints that simulationsist play relies upon might be established. It has to be prior to the action declaration, but I don't think that means that it has to be the GM. To give just a simple example, equipment load-outs in these games are important in-fiction inputs into action resolution, but they aren't normally decided by the GM.

Maxperson · Mar 3, 2019

AbdulAlhazred said:
Our 5e campaign was fun, and the DM of that game took plenty of input. Still I felt the system was working against us. There were many times when I would have liked to point the action in a direction which I was more interested in. Lots of times material was introduced for reasons which had, apparently, little to do with specific things the players wanted. It seemed, at times, like obstacles were coming up more because there was some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, some 'meta-plot' or something that dictated that our schemes were to be curtailed. At any rate there seems an undercurrent surviving from the ancient days when Gygax wrote the 1e DMG, like the DM's mission is partly to make sure the players don't "get away with anything."

Personally, I don't want everything to relate with specific things that we want for a few reason. The first of which it's unreasonable to think that everything that comes up for the PCs is going to somehow relate to their desires. For me that's too unrealistic and detracts from my enjoyment of the game. For you, that appears to be what you look for. Different strokes for different folks. If something is very important to my PC, I'm going to find a way to make it happen in the game. Second, there are tons of things that interest me and I'm not going to remember them all. Many of the things the DM comes up with will be interesting to me anyway, and that's really cool. It's nice to be surprised with interesting things.

It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.

Well, it's not a Strawman, because it has nothing to do with your argument. It was a response to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] who tried to falsely attribute my success at pursuing the goals of my PCs as coming from DMs who "align with my expectations," rather than just from gameplay. My response wasn't to you or about you in any way.

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

Bedrockgames

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Maxperson

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