Judgement calls vs "railroading"

Lanefan · Apr 21, 2017

tomBitonti said:
Which is what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said happened in their game. But, which would wreck the current Pathfinder adventure path (Ironfang Invasion). And, which would wreck a lot of tournament or organized play games.

Tournament play is so far removed from the type of open-ended home campaigns we're talking about here as to be nearly irrelevant to the discussion. Organized play - by which I take you to mean AL now and RPGA stuff in the past - I would expect to be able to handle a major left turn like this and would be disappointed if it could not. As for hard adventure paths - well, if a DM says "I'm going to run Ironfang Invasion" and I agree to play in it, I'm kind of also agreeing not to take any major left turns and to settle in for what hopefully will become a train ride rather than a train wreck.

A problem that I have personally with totally open play is having the PC's (not the players) reasonably want to be together. A certain amount of meta-planning seems necessary.

Or, characters role-play their way in and out of various parties as makes sense for them (and thus players end up cycling through characters rather than always playing the same one). I don't mind this at all, as changes to the party composition are a good way of keeping a long campaign fresh.

Lanefan

Lanefan · Apr 21, 2017

Ilbranteloth said:
The focus is on building the stories of a group of characters that are friends, and work together to accomplish whatever their goals are. Some of them may be happenstance, like stumbling upon the ruins of a long forgotten tomb that they decide to explore. There might be conflict, but it's simply because they chose to explore a tomb where there are traps, constructs, and undead. The character growth isn't due to the conflict or taking a stand, it's between a group of friends experiencing life together.

And some of the conflict can come from within - even friends fall out now and then, and who says they'll all become or end up as friends in the first place.

Lanefan

Lanefan · Apr 21, 2017

Campbell said:
I feel like much of your analysis depends on player characters essentially being islands, that they come into the fiction with no meaningful connections to the situation.

To begin with, more or less yes; those meaningful connections - particularly to the story and fiction - become established through play as the game goes along and they either go to the action or the action comes to them.

If that is your basis it makes a good deal of sense that players would often have no meaningful sense of what is going on. My preference is for players to play insiders instead of outsiders, to have a network of connections they can meaningful depend on,

Problem here is if they've already got good connections there's less impetus to go out and establish new ones.

It's not like they don't know anybody - a 1st-level MU or Thief had to get trained up somewhere, for example - but their contacts are by default limited at best. And may well all be very much elsewhere, if for example your PC is a non-human in a very human-centric land.

to have a stake in the events of play, the ability to enact meaningful change and to have to decide between conflicting priorities that push them one way or another.

If things work out right*, that all comes up as play goes along. At very low level their stake in the events is merely to survive them; by the time that stage is over they've with any luck become involved in bigger things, and away we go from there.

* - and if they don't, I'm doing it wrong.

Lanefan

pemerton · Apr 21, 2017

Maxperson said:
In your game the players upon failing could have a PC that says, "That should have worked, but it didn't. Why?", and then author the reason, "The advisor must have something on the baron."

Probably not in my case - it's the GM's job to narrate the consequences of failure, not the players'. But there are other approaches to RPGing that do encourage that sort of thing.

Maxperson said:
The only difference between that and what I said is which side authored the "puzzle" being solved.

Here is the principle difference: in my game, the check is framed, and resolved via the appropriate mechanics, and then if it fails some ingame reason for that might be introduced into the fiction (eg "Why couldn't I find the mace I left here 14 years ago? Oh, because the renegade elf took it.") Whereas in the case of adjudication via secret/hidden backstory, the check is seemingly framed, but then fails independently of the mechanics, and this is because there was some other secret element to the framing that only the GM knew about, and in virtue of which s/he deems the check to fail.

To say that that is only a difference of authorship is like saying that the difference between the player declaring actions for his/her PC, and the GM doing so, is only a difference of authorship (I mean, in the fiction the PC is acting, whoever it is that, at the table, is declaring that action). Given that RPGing is, at it's core, a game which has as its subject matter and output an authored fiction, who gets to author what fiction, when, and how, is pretty much all there is to it!

Or to put it another way: my objection to secret backstory isn't because I think it's bad story. Ie I'm not making a content-based objection. My dislike of it is that I don't like it as a way of RPGing. Ie I'm making a process-based objection.

Maxperson said:
Since you don't like to roleplay puzzle solving, would you stop play[/I] and have them do something else?

I didn't say "I didn't like to roleplay puzzle solving"! I said that I don't like puzzle-solving - ie the actual solving of puzzles - to be the focus of my RPGing.

The action of my 4e game is centred around what is, in the fiction, a mystery: Is the Dusk War upon us? Will it mean remaking the Lattice of Heaven? What is the Lattice of Heaven? But playing the game isn't about solving a mystery. There are no answers to these questions that are written down in the GM's notebook, which the players are trying to learn. For instance, the answers to the last question that have been established have been established primarily by discussion among the players, who - as their PCs - tell one another what they understand about the Lattice of Heaven (naturally, great weight is given to the views of the Sage of Ages whose Arcana and Religion bonuses enable success on Hard Level 30 checks with no need to roll).

The answer to the first question will be established via the play of the PCs, along the sorts of lines described in this actual play report:

pemerton said:
Upon arriving at the tarrasque's location they found the tarrasque being warded by a group of maruts who explained that, in accordance with a contract made with the Raven Queen millenia ago, they were there to ensure the realisation of the end times, and to stop anyone interfering with the tarrasque as an engine of this destruction and a herald of the beginning of the end times and the arrival of the Dusk War.

(Why the Raven Queen wants the Dusk War has not fully come to light, other than that it seems part of her plan to realise her own ultimate godhood. One idea I had follows in sblocks.)

<snip>

I wasn't sure exactly what the players would do here. They could try and fight the maruts, obviously, but I thought the Raven Queen devotees might be hesitant to do so. I had envisaged that the PCs might try to persuade them that the contract was invalid in some way - and this idea was mentioned at the table, together with the related idea of the various exarchs of the Raven Queen in the party trying to lay down the law. In particular I had thought that the paladin of the Raven Queen, who is a Marshall of Letherna (in effect, one of the Raven Queen's most powerful servants), might try to exercise his authority to annual or vary the contract in some fashion.

But instead the argument developed along different lines. What the players did was to persuade the maruts that the time for fulfillment of their contract had not yet arisen, because this visitation of the tarrasque was not yet a sign of the Dusk War. (Mechanically, these were social skill checks, history and religions checks, etc, in a skill challenge to persuade the maruts.)

The player of the Eternal Defender PC made only one action in this skill challenge - explaining that it was not the end times, because he was there to defeat the tarrasque (and got another successful intimidate check, after spending an action point to reroll his initial fail) - before launching himself from the flying tower onto the tarrasque and proceeding to whittle away around 600 of its hit points over two rounds. (There were also two successful out-of-turn attacks from the ranger and the paladin, who were spending their on-turn actions in negotiating with the maruts.)

The invoker/wizard was able to point to this PC's successful solo-ing of the tarrasque as evidence that the tarrasque, at least on this occasion, could not be the harbinger of the end times whom the maruts were contracted to protect, because it clearly lacked the capacity to ravage the world. The maruts agreed with this point - clearly they had misunderstood the timing of celestial events - and the PCs therefore had carte blanche to finish of the tarrasque. (Mechanically, this was the final success in the skill challenge: the player rolled Insight to see what final argument would sway the maruts, knowing that only one success was needed. He succeeded. I invited him to then state the relevant argument.)

<snip>

This was the first time that the players (in character) concretely articulated their commitment to a "third way", between a divine victory in the Dusk War that would reinstate the Lattice of Heaven, and a victory for the elemental chaos that would see the mortal world reduced to its constituent parts so that it might be rebuilt.

<snip>

Their "reading" of certain key setting ideas (eg the Lattice of Heaven, which the players have interpreted as fascistic stasis; the nature of chaos/motion, the natural order, etc, which most of the players have seen as somehow connected to mortal life and wellbeing) is informing the way they respond to challenges and engage key NPCs; and success in these challenges is then vindicating those readings of what the setting is about. They have conceived of a "third way", and have now brought the duergar, the djinni and these maruts into alignment with it.

<snip>

Their play of their characters, therefore, is making it true, in the fiction, that those who seek the Dusk War are warmongers; that a god of imprisonment need not be insane (as Torog was); that elemental chaos can be accommodated within the plan for mortals of at least some of the gods (eg Corellon); etc. It also reveals new things about the gameworld, and the metaphysics and ethics of order and chaos.

That's an illustration of what I mean by "playing to find out". I'm guessing that it's at least in the same general ballpark as what [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] mean. And obviously it's quite different from GM's secret backstory, or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s storyboarding.

Lanefan · Apr 21, 2017

pemerton said:
[The GM's] job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . . by introducing complications. . . . Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . . a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character.[/indent]

Keeping track of the backstory is integral to framing scenes that introduce complications and provoke choices. As a GM, I am almost always giving thought to elements of the fiction with which the PCs are not currently engaged: these (i) are constraints on permissible new fiction (because of the demands of coherence, both ingame causal consistency and gente/thematic consistency); and (ii) are the material from which scenes are framed, from which complications are drawn, which are explicitly or implicitly at stake when choices are made.

This bit actually sounds almost like what I'd expect in normal D&D. The DM keeps track of the backstory, keeps it internally consistent and coherent, and draws from it when needed for colour and-or conflict and-or complications.

However, who sets the backstory in the first place? The DM? If so, we're on the same page even if just for a moment. If not, then who?

Assassination of the king is no different, for present purposes, from the Gynarch becoming engaged to be married. It is simply not true to say that this would be introduced only as a result of PC action.

And to say that it would be introduced only in response to player choice is also to put things too narrowly: the presence in the fiction of the leader of the cabal is a response to a player choice (about PC story and mechanical elements, which have subsequently been deployed in play) but that is not true of the Gynarch.

If the GM is doing this in his/her own time, and simply making notes in a folder headed "Campaign Record", then - at that point - it is not even clear what it would mean to say that it is part of the shared fiction. Who is it shared with?

Nobody...yet. But it might become relevant to play at some point, even if just as rumour fodder or news brought by a travelling minstrel.

If the fate of the king and/or the assassin actually emerges in the course of play - eg as some bit of background colour, to explain why the courtiers are wearing black; or as some bit of framing, as the assassin comes to the PCs seeking refuge - then, at the current level of description, we haven't got any basis for determining whether the game is GM-driven in my sense, or player-driven in my sense. It's not until you know why the GM is framing the scene in question, or why it matters that the courtiers are wearing black, and hence that we need some explanation for that in the background, that you can tell who is driving the game in my sense.

Another possibility is that the fate of the king and/or the assassin doesn't emerge in the course of play, but rather is used by the GM as an element of secret backstory to adjudicate player action declarations: for instance, the PCs reach out to the court because they are concerned about something-or-other, but are rebuffed for no evident reason - at the table, the GM simply declares the attempt a failure without reference to the action resolution mechanics. The GM's reason for this - which (it being secret) the players don't know - is that the king was recently assassinated by someone from the same hometown as the PCs, and that has put all the people of that town under a cloud.

Now we have the sort of situation [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] described above, where the players either choose for their PCs to abandon their attempt to reach out to the court, or else think of ways to try to learn why they were rebuffed, follow them up, try to remove the stain on the townsfolk, etc. That sort of thing is, to me, a hallmark of GM-driven RPGing. But it is not characterised simply by the GM determining what happens with the assassin and the king while the PCs are otherwise occupied. It is about the use of that secret backstory as a device to resolve action declarations without reference to the mechanical procedures.

What I simply cannot grasp is why you - or anyone - would think this is wrong.

Their attempt to reach out to the court fails for no obvious reason*. OK, so look for the non-obvious reason(s). Ask. Dig. Turn some rocks over and see what's under 'em. Break a few heads. Pay some bribes. But - if access to the court is that important - do something!

* - and if someone says "fails for no obvious reason" equates to being railroaded without doing anything else, I have no sympathy whatsoever.

Every adventure path I'm familiar with violates (ii) - the gameworld, in respect of geography, past and future history, etc is pre-authored independently of any concerns/interests of the players as manifested through creation and play of their PCs.

That's because it's a bloody adventure path, which are by their very nature quasi-railroads to begin with. Quite different from open-ended campaigns that provide more room for meaningful choice.

It's nothing to do with the GM running amok. In every episode of play and campaign I have referenced in this thread I've been the GM, and I'm not worried that I am going to run amok!

It's about what I want to get out of RPGing. To borrow a slogan, I want to play to find out.

Then be a player! You can play-to-find-out all you like when someone else has the helm.

In that sort of game, the GM is finding out how the players get from A to Z; while the players have the double-puzzle of (1) finding out what Z is (some GMs, and some published adventures, make this inordinately hard), and then (2) working out a viable path from A to Z. This is not the sort of thing I enjoy in RPGing.

Sometimes you never know what Z is. Sometimes it waves wistfully at you as you wander by, oblivious to its existence. Sometimes you reach Z shortly after passing C, but only realize its importance after getting to about W. And sometimes the best you can do is get to Q, after which you left turn, start at 1, and see if you can find a way to 9 (the route to which might take you right back through J, K and L).

You like to play to find out. I like to play to both find out and figure out...as a player. As DM, I'm not a player at all in that sense, and nor should I be.

Lan-"and now we need a wandering letters table"-efan

pemerton · Apr 21, 2017

billd91 said:
pemerton said:

I mean, that's what "indirect impact" means, isn't it? (Eg the PCs look for Calimshani silks at the market, but can't find any - no dice being rolled - because the GM knows that, "offscreen", Calimshan is in turmoil and all the silk looms have been destroyed. Or that sort of thing.)

Click to expand...

So that constitutes "secret backstory that determines the resolution of some player question"? There's some turmoil the players/PCs didn't happen to know about at the time, that the GM did, that sets the probability of finding Calimshani silks to 0 (or low if it's reasonable someone's still trading them because they have backstock).

Yes.

Here is the action declaration: I go out to buy some Calimshan silk.

Here is the GM's response: Sorry, there's none available. Perhaps the GM adds: You hear rumours that their's turmoil in Calimshan and all their exports have dried up.

The GM's response is not consequent upon any engaging of the mechanics (in 4e this might be a Streetwise check; in BW it would be a Resources check, potentially augmented by an appropriate knowledge check; in Cortext+/MHRP it would be a spend of a plot point to establish a Resource). It is a narration of failure based on an element of the fiction that has been authored by the GM and is hidden from the player in the framing of the check.

Maxperson said:
Speaking for myself, it's rare for such backstory to cause something to fail outright. It's equally rare for it to cause an automatic success. Far more commonly, it just results in a bonus or penalty to the action.

Well, this relates to the point [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] made upthread:

Campbell said:
I think there is some room for fiction unknown to players to impact resolution. I do not like characterizing some fiction as backstory and other fiction as fiction. It's all fiction to me regardless of when it happened. However, it must be meaningfully knowable through skilled play of the fiction and mechanisms provided before it impacts resolution.

Namely, is the penalty known or knowable via engaging the situation, as part of the process of resolution before the penalty that follows from the secret backstory actually makes its impact on the outcome of resolution?

I also think that Campbell's adverb meaningful is carrying a fair bit of weight hear. What is meaningful, in the context of play, is not subject to unilateral determination by the GM. To quote Campbell again,

Campbell said:
If I cannot trust finely honed and well developed skills at playing the fiction to have a significant impact on how things turn out than I cannot meaningfully play the game on a strategic level. If I cannot trust the GM to provide real information I can use to reward my efforts to interrogate the fiction than the entire enterprise becomes suspect. If I cannot rely upon the fiction I feel forced to rely upon the mechanisms of the game. When those mechanisms are also not reliable than I must resort to playing the GM.

<snip>

I should note that I feel the same way about victory that comes out of nowhere as I do about defeat that comes out of nowhere.

I'll come back to this below.

billd91 said:
How do you set any checks in the games you run? Why do you choose a value that yields a particular likelihood of success rather than another?

Based on the framing. Eg, to return to the OP, "You're looking for a vessel in the room of a comatose person in a well-appointed mage's tower? Not hard to find such a thing in such a place: Easy (= Ob 1, in technical terms)."

Or, to quote from another actual play post:

pemerton said:
It then came to the drow sorcerer's turn. In an email a few days ago the player had told me that he had a plan to seal off the Abyssal rift created by the tearing of the Demonwebs and the killing of Lolth

<snip>

The drow's turn then came around. He used his move action to fly the Tower up and out of the two zones (darkness and thunder). He then used a minor action to cast Stretch Spell - as written, a range-boosting effect but it seemed fitting, in spirit, to try to extend and compress zones to create a barrier of ultimate, impenetrable entropy. And then he got ready to make his Arcana check as a standard action.

Now INT is pretty much a dump stat for everyone in the party but the invoker/wizard. In the case of the sorcerer it is 12 - so with training and level, he has an Arcana bonus of +20. So when I stated that the DC was 41, it looked a bit challenging. (It was always going to be a Hard check - if any confirmation was needed, the Rules Compendium suggests that manipulating the energies of a magical phenomenon is a Hard Arcana improvisation.)

So he started looking around for bonuses. As a chaos mage, he asked whether he could burn healing surges for a bonus on the roll - giving of his very essence. I thought that sounded reasonable, and so allowed 4 surges for +8. Unfortunately he had only 2 surges left, so the other half of the bonus had to come from taking damage equal to his bloodied value - which was OK, as he was currently unbloodied.

He scraped another +2 from somewhere (I can't remember now), brining the roll needed down to 11. The dice was rolled - and came up 18! So he succeeded in converting his zones of darkness and thunder into a compressed, extended, physically and visually impenetrable entropic barrier, in which time doesn't pass (and hence the effects don't end), sealing off the Abyss at its 66th layer.

The framing establishes the fiction (eg there's a rift in the Abyss; I'm a chaos mage whose very essence might power up entropic effects; etc). The player engages the fiction in declaring the action. The logic of the fiction, plus the result of the check (success or failure) tells us what happens.

If key elements of the fiction are secret from, or not meaningfully knowable, to the player, then (as per Campbell's post that I quoted) s/he can't engage the fiction in the process of declaring his/her PC's action.

billd91 said:
For the skill challenge with the advisor, the duke, and exposing the advisor's agenda - what skills did you choose to be relevant to the challenge and what effect did you decide they would have? Ultimately, unless you're allowing pretty much anything the PCs choose to try and set the effects in a generic manner, aren't you using some "hidden backstory" to affect the chances of success? Did you pick some skills to be more useful than others in the skill challenge at all?

There's an actual play thread that answers many of these questions. Here is a quote from it:

pemerton said:
The general pattern involved - Paldemar asking the PCs about their exploits; either the paladin or the sorcerer using Bluff to defuse the question and/or evade revealing various secrets they didn't want Paldemar to know; either the paladin or the wizard then using Diplomacy to try to change the topic of conversation to something else - including the Baron's family history; and Paldemar dragging things back onto the PCs exploits and discoveries over the course of their adventures.

Following advice given by LostSoul on these boards back in the early days of 4e, my general approach to running the skill challenge was to keep pouring on the pressure, so as to give the players a reason to have their PCs do things. And one particular point of pressure was the dwarf fighter/cleric - in two senses. In story terms, he was the natural focus of the Baron's attention, because the PCs had been presenting him as their leader upon entering the town, and subsequently. And the Baron was treating him as, in effect, a noble peer, "Lord Derrik of the Dwarfholm to the East". And in mechanical terms, he has no training in social skills and a CHA of 10, so putting the pressure on him forced the players to work out how they would save the situation, and stop the Baron inadvertantly, or Paldemar deliberately, leading Derrik into saying or denying something that would give away secrets. (Up until the climax of the challenge, the only skill check that Derriks' player made in contribution to the challenge was an Athletics check - at one point the Baron described himself as a man of action rather than ideas, and Derrik agreed - I let his player make an Athletics check - a very easy check for him with a +15 bonus - to make the fact of agreement contribute mechanically to the party's success in dealing with the situation.)

Besides the standard skill checks, other strategies were used to defuse the tension at various points. About half way through, the sorcerer - feigning drunkenness with his +20 Bluff bonus - announced "Derrik, it's time to take a piss" - and then led Derrik off to the privy, and then up onto the balcony with the minstrel, so that Paldemar couldn't keep goading and trying to ensnare him. At another point, when the conversation turned to how one might fight a gelatinous cube (Paldemar having explained that he had failed in exploring one particular minotaur ruin because of some cubes, and the PCs not wanting to reveal that they had explored that same ruin after beating the cubes) the sorcerer gave an impromptu demonstration by using Bedevilling Burst to knock over the servants carrying in the jellies for desert. (I as GM had mentioned that desert was being brought in. It was the player who suggested that it should probably include jellies.) That he cast Bedevilling Burst he kept secret (another Bluff check). But he loudly made the point that jellies can be squashed at least as easily as anything else.

While fresh jellies were prepared, Derrik left the table to give a demonstration of how one might fight oozes using a halberd and fancy footwork. But he then had to return to the table for desert.

Around this time, the challenge had evolved to a point where one final roll was needed, and 2 failures had been accrued. Paldemar, once again, was badgering Derrik to try to learn the secrets of the minotaur ruins that he was sure the PCs knew. And the player of Derrik was becoming more and more frustrated with the whole situation, declaring (not speaking in character, but speaking from the perspective of his PC) "I'm sick of putting up with this. I want Paldemar to come clean."

The Baron said to Derrik, "The whole evening, Lord Derrik, it has seemed to me that you are burdened by something. Will you not speak to me?" Derrik got out of his seat and went over to the Baron, knelt beside him, and whispered to him, telling him that out of decorum he would not name anyone, but there was someone close to the Baron who was not what he seemed, and was in fact a villainous leader of the hobgoblin raiders. The Baron asked how he knew this, and Derrik replied that he had seen him flying out of goblin strongholds on his flying carpet. The Baron asked him if he would swear this in Moradin's name. Derrik replied "I swear". At which point the Baron rose from the table and went upstairs to brood on the balcony, near the minstrel.

With one check still needed to resolve the situation, I had Paldemar turn to Derrik once again, saying "You must have said something very serious, to so upset the Baron." Derrik's player was talking to the other players, and trying to decide what to do. He clearly wanted to fight. I asked him whether he really wanted to provoke Paldemar into attacking him. He said that he did. So he had Derrik reply to Paldemar, 'Yes, I did, Golthar". And made an Intimidate check. Which failed by one. So the skill challenge was over, but a failure - I described Paldemar/Golthar standing up, pickup up his staff from where it leaned against the wall behind him, and walking towards the door.

Now we use a houserule (perhaps, in light of DMG2, not so much a houserule as a precisification of a suggestion in that book) that a PC can spend an action point to make a secondary check to give another PC a +2 bonus, or a reroll, to a failed check. The player of the wizard PC spent an action point, and called out "Golthar, have you fixed the tear yet in your robe?" - this was a reference to the fact that the PCs had, on a much earlier occasion, found a bit of the hem of Paldemar's robe that had torn off in the ruins when he had had to flee the gelatinous cubes. I can't remember now whether I asked for an Intimidate check, or decided that this was an automatic +2 bonus for Derrik - but in any event, it turned the failure into a success. We ended the session by noting down everyone's location on the map of the Baron's great hall, and making initiative rolls. Next session will begin with the fight against Paldemar (which may or may not evolve into a fight with a catoblepas also - the players are a bit anxious that it may do so).

You'll see that the players declared actions for their PCs: that's their job, not mine. They decide what they think is useful to engage the fiction.

On successes, they succeeded. On failures, I narrated the consequences - eg the advisor walking out rather than responding to the PC's taunt.

The maths of 4e dicatates that most checks will succeed - hence the need, as a GM in a skill challenge, to keep introducing new obstacles, or at least new dimensions to existing obstacles, to ensure that the PCs have reasons to continue to act, and hence the players have reasons to continue to declare actions for their PCs. In the quote you can see an example of that - the advisor saying to Derrik, trying to ridicule and humiliate him, "You must have said something very serious, to so upset the Baron." And you can see how that establishes framing for the final Initimidate check. There is no secret backstory at work.

Lanefan · Apr 21, 2017

pemerton said:
Yes.

Here is the action declaration: I go out to buy some Calimshan silk.

Here is the GM's response: Sorry, there's none available. Perhaps the GM adds: You hear rumours that their's turmoil in Calimshan and all their exports have dried up.

The GM's response is not consequent upon any engaging of the mechanics (in 4e this might be a Streetwise check; in BW it would be a Resources check, potentially augmented by an appropriate knowledge check; in Cortext+/MHRP it would be a spend of a plot point to establish a Resource). It is a narration of failure based on an element of the fiction that has been authored by the GM and is hidden from the player in the framing of the check.

Er...so what?

Every now and then I go to buy milk from the corner store and they're sold out. I don't get a Streetwise check, or a Resources check*; all that happens is I walk in and there's no damn milk.

* - I suppose these might be analogous to phoning ahead to the store and asking if they have milk in stock before leaving the house, but who does that for something so simple?

Same thing happens with our intrepid wannabe silk-buyer. He goes to the market looking for Calimshan silk and it's all sold out. He can dig around and ask why, thus learning of possible upheaval in Calimshan (which as a side note might represent a possible adventure hook), or he can buy a different type of silk, or he can go without for the time being. But it's not bad DMing in the slightest to have pre-determined there'll be a war in Calimshan starting last winter** that has really messed up their silk trade this summer.

** - and things like this would need to be pre-determined just in case the party had happened to wander over Calimshan way during that time and maybe get caught up in the war.

Lan-"sometimes knowing nothing is much more fun than knowing everything"-efan

pemerton · Apr 21, 2017

Lanefan said:
This bit actually sounds almost like what I'd expect in normal D&D. The DM keeps track of the backstory, keeps it internally consistent and coherent, and draws from it when needed for colour and-or conflict and-or complications.

However, who sets the backstory in the first place? The DM? If so, we're on the same page even if just for a moment. If not, then who?

By "backstory" in that passage, Eero Tuovinen means the gameworld.

So bits of it are authored by the GM outside the context of play.

I decided to set the game in Hardby, and hence decided that there is a Gynarch.

Bits of it are colour, authored by the GM as part of the process of play.

I decided that the merchants tell the PCs that the Gynarch is engaged to be married to Jabal of the Cabal.

Bits of it are framing, authored by the GM as part of the process of play; some of that framing is the redeployment of past colour.

The mage PC is at the docks hoping to meet a cleric who will cure his mummy rot. He thinks there should be clerics around, as a famous holy man is arriving to officiate at the Gynarch's wedding. [That's framing, and it draws on the previously-established bit of colour, namely, that some important personages are to wed.] I tell the player that, across the crowd of people waiting to greet the abbot's ship, he sees his brother, for the first time in nearly 16 years. [That's more framing.]

Bits of it are authored by the players outside the context of play.

As part of the build of the mage PC, the existence of his balrog-possessed brother, and of the sorcerous cabal, are both established.

Bits of it are authored by the players as part of the process of the play.

In the first session, the player of the mage PC declares a Circles check: in the fiction, the mage PC puts out feelers to the cabal, hoping for gainful employment. At the table, the player establishes a few more details about the cabal, including the existence of its leader Jabal.

Bits of it are authored by the GM as part of the process of narrating failure.

Early in the first session, a check made to study the magic of a newly-acquired angel feather failed; in the fiction, the mage PC's examination of it revealed it to be cursed. Later on, the Circles check described above failed. So I tell the players, "As you sit waiting in the tavern for word from Jabal, a thuggish-looking figure approaches you . . ." - and go on to explain how Jabal's servitor Athog brings them a message from Jabal, that they are to leave town immediately as they are bearers of a curse. [Note how the narration of the later failure weaves in the fiction established in the narration of the earlier failure.]

There is no single person whose job it is to author all of the backstory. And there is no single time at which this is done: not in practice, and not in principle. Playing the game produces new fiction, and establishes new "facts" about the gameworld.

Lanefan said:
pemerton said:

Another possibility is that the fate of the king and/or the assassin doesn't emerge in the course of play, but rather is used by the GM as an element of secret backstory to adjudicate player action declarations: for instance, the PCs reach out to the court because they are concerned about something-or-other, but are rebuffed for no evident reason - at the table, the GM simply declares the attempt a failure without reference to the action resolution mechanics. The GM's reason for this - which (it being secret) the players don't know - is that the king was recently assassinated by someone from the same hometown as the PCs, and that has put all the people of that town under a cloud.

Now we have the sort of situation [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] described above, where the players either choose for their PCs to abandon their attempt to reach out to the court, or else think of ways to try to learn why they were rebuffed, follow them up, try to remove the stain on the townsfolk, etc. That sort of thing is, to me, a hallmark of GM-driven RPGing. But it is not characterised simply by the GM determining what happens with the assassin and the king while the PCs are otherwise occupied. It is about the use of that secret backstory as a device to resolve action declarations without reference to the mechanical procedures.

Click to expand...

What I simply cannot grasp is why you - or anyone - would think this is wrong.

I don't think it's wrong. It's just that it's pretty much the opposite of what I want out of RPGin

Lanefan said:
Their attempt to reach out to the court fails for no obvious reason*. OK, so look for the non-obvious reason(s). Ask. Dig. Turn some rocks over and see what's under 'em. Break a few heads. Pay some bribes. But - if access to the court is that important - do something!

* - and if someone says "fails for no obvious reason" equates to being railroaded without doing anything else, I have no sympathy whatsoever.

What the players are doing here is trying to solve the mystery posed by the GM: I have something written in my notes - a bit of fiction that explains why the court rebuffed you. And now the players are doing stuff, and having their PCs do stuff, to try and learn that fiction. As I posted upthread in reply to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], it's puzzle-solving.

I'm not interested in it.

Lanefan said:
Then be a player! You can play-to-find-out all you like when someone else has the helm.

The players in the scenario just described aren't playing to find out in the salient sense. Here's the relevant passage from the DungeonWorld rulebook, p 161 (note that it's addressed to GMs):

Your agenda makes up the things you aim to do at all times while GMing a game of Dungeon World:

• Portray a fantastic world
• Fill the characters’ lives with adventure
• Play to find out what happens

Everything you say and do at the table (and away from the table, too) exists to accomplish these three goals and no others. Things that aren’t on this list aren’t your goals. You’re not trying to beat the players or test their ability to solve complex traps. You’re not here to give the players a chance to explore your finely crafted setting. You’re not trying to kill the players (though monsters might be). You’re most certainly not here to tell everyone a planned-out story.

Your first agenda is to portray a fantastic world. . . Show the players the wonders of the world they’re in and encourage them to react to it.

Filling the characters’ lives with adventure means working with the players to create a world that’s engaging and dynamic. . . .

Dungeon World adventures never presume player actions. A Dungeon World adventure portrays a setting in motion—someplace significant with creatures big and small pursuing their own goals. As the players come into conflict with that setting and its denizens, action is inevitable. You’ll honestly portray the repercussions of that action.

This is how you play to find out what happens. You’re sharing in the fun of finding out how the characters react to and change the world you’re portraying. You’re all participants in a great adventure that’s unfolding. So really, don’t plan too hard. The rules of the game will fight you.

Whereas in the scenarios that you (Lanefan) and Maxperson describe, the GM already knows what has happened. S/he hasn't worked with the players to create the world, but has authored this bit of it unilaterally. And s/he hasn't portrayed that bit of the world, either. S/he's kept it secret.

As I said, it's not really something I'm interested in.

pemerton · Apr 21, 2017

Lanefan said:
Every now and then I go to buy milk from the corner store and they're sold out. I don't get a Streetwise check, or a Resources check*; all that happens is I walk in and there's no damn milk.

This doesn't make sense.

You're not a character in a game. Your "story" is not being authored by anyone. (Not in any literal sense, at least.)

When playing a RPG, though, how do we know that the shop has no milk? One way is for the GM to stipulate. Another is for the player to make an appropriate check, and if the check fails then perhaps the narration of that failure is that the shop is out of milk.

That is why this issue has nothing to do with realism. "Realism" is a property of the fiction - do people sometimes fail to find the goods they're looking for? But what this discussion is about is the process, at a table of RPG players, for determining when such an event might occur.

Lanefan said:
not bad DMing in the slightest to have pre-determined there'll be a war in Calimshan starting last winter**

<snip>

** - and things like this would need to be pre-determined just in case the party had happened to wander over Calimshan way during that time and maybe get caught up in the war.

(1) Things like this don't need to be pre-determined. It can be worked out any number of other ways:

* The GM might make something up on the spot;

* The GM might roll on a random table (AD&D used to be big on these; so is Classic Traveller);

* A player might says "Haven't I heard rumour of war in Calimshan" and then roll some appropriate skill (say, History in 4e; or Calimshan-wise or Campaign-wise in BW);

* Etc.

(2) I have not said a single thing about bad GMing. That is a concept that you, [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] have used.

I am talking about various techniques, and why I do or don't like them in my RPGing.

Sadras · Apr 21, 2017

pemerton said:
You are midsescribing the consequence. The familiar was not killed, to respawn after a short rest. The familiar was shut down until the PC performed a ritual to remove Vecna's influence over his Eye, and hence over the familiar. The PC was able to do this once the PCs had defeated an Aspect of Vecna. Looking at the date stamps for the respective posts, that's about 3 months later, which would be in the neighbourhood of half-a-dozen sessions.

Apologies. Re-looking at that thread, at the time you had stated that the period for which the familiar was shut down was undefined/undetermined. You really did not hint it would be as much as 3 months (refer below).

You really think shutting down one feat for an encounter or so (the full duration hasn't been specified, but the minimum of an encounter has been flagged) is the equivalent of draining a level or stripping a paladin of paladinhood? Within the 4e framework it's not as severe as many diseases (which can weaken until the next extended rest, for instance).

Out of interest sake, the idea of how to reactivate the familiar was something you came up with or was it an idea by the player?

In the thread that @Sadras is recalling this episode from, the general view of other posters (I can't remember what Sadras's particular view was) was that, so far from softaballing, it was unfair to impose such a consequence on a player in the context of a success - ie a successful check in a skill challenge that allowed diverting the souls from Vecna to the Raven Queen.

They also thought it was unfair to impose a consequence which the rules of the game don't expressly provide for (ie there is no formally-defined your familiar is shut down beyond the duration of a short rest condition).

To be fair, the thread in question had to do with alignment. The penalty consequence that you imposed was not so much that it was unfair but what it implied for your position and the greater topic of the conversation if it was/or was not prescribed through the RAW with regards to the skill mechanic (at least from the perspective of the posters in disagreement with you).

For those interested the thread in question is here. My link starts from page 65.

Judgement calls vs "railroading"

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