pemerton said:
I'm hoping to get you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and @Imaro to agree that discovering the door isn't the same as creating the door. And that there's nothing remarkable about a new element being introduced into a fiction although, at the time the audience first learns of the protagonist's encounter with it, it already existed within the fiction (eg an adult met by Holmes for the first time).
you can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction until the act of searching. You can only create it and add it to the backstory. The act of searching creates the secret door, even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.
This is why I keep saying that you are not distinguishing reality from fiction.
I am going to restate these sentences, but with the reference (to real world, or fiction) made clear:
1 (pemerton): (A PC) discovering the door isn't the same as (the PC) creating the door or (the player) creating the door.
2a (Maxperson): You (the PC?) can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction until the act of searching.
2b (Maxperson): You (the player?) can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction (ie authored) until the act of searching (is declared).
3a (Maxperson): The act of searching (by the PC?) creates the secret door (in the real world?), even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.
3b (Maxperson): The act of searching (by the player?) creates the secret door (in the real world?), even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.
1 is true. A PC discovering the door isn't the same thing as a PC creating the door. (Hence use of Perception skill rather than Building skill.) And a PC discovering the door isn't the same thing as the player creating the door. One is an (imaginary) event that happens only in an imagined world. Whereas anything a player does happens in the real world.
It is true that, for something to occur in the imagined world, someone in the real world has to make it up. That act of authorship (creation? I think authorship is clearer, to be frank) has to happen at some point. One function of RPG rules is to manage and mediate these moments of authorship - who gets to do them, and what they are allowed to do when they do it.
2a is true. Trivially so. No one denies it.
2b is true. A player can't discover what was authored by someone if it wasn't authored prior to declaring an action. But so what? I've already mentioned several times in this thread that, for me,
learning what story someone else has written is not an important goal in my RPGing.
The truth of 2b doesn't mean that a PC can't discover a door by searching for one.
3a is confused. Imaginary events have no causal power in the real world, so no act performed by a PC makes any difference to the real world. Least of all can imaginary characters cause real people to author them or things about them!
3b is also confused. The player doesn't search for anything. The player declares an action - and the result of resolving that declared action can of course be that some element is established as part of the fiction. But the player didn't
search. The player
declared that his/her PC searches.
The fact that resolution of action declaratoins introduces new elements into the fiction I would have thought is uncontroversial.
That's what action declaration is for. In a game whose main orientation is around the shared creation and enjoyment of a fiction,
making a move in the game means
changing the fiction in some fashion!
TL;DR - the above analysis shows that it is false to claim that
searching created a secret door.
Action declaration may (if successful) result in establishing a secret door as an element in the fiction. But action declaration is not (in general, nor need it be in this particular case)
searching or
trying to discover. It is, at its heart
trying to change the fiction.
I know that some RPGers like a significant amount of action declaration to be
triggering the GM to tell the players stuff that s/he has already written, or is making up but presenting as if s/he had already written it. But that is not inherent to RPGing, and the action declaration "I search for a secret door" is not inherently closer to that sort of thing than is the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword."
And the entire time the focus of the players is on concentrating about how to use their skills to get three successes before they fail. I said their focus is pulled away from the fiction, not that they ignore the fiction entirely.
This is strang.
Using your skills means
engaging the fiction and ascertaining what your PC might do to improve his/her situation. That is not having focus pulled away from the fiction. It's what engaging the fiction, and playing a RPG, looks like!
There's a big difference between trying to discover a way out(climactic), and being able to poof escapes into existence by coming up with a myriad of reasons to make rolls that allow escape(anti-climactic).
This is also strange, for the same reason as you remarks about skill challenges. Declaring actions like "I search for a secret door" isn't
different from attempting (as one's character) to discover a way out. It
is attempting (as one's character) to discover a way out.
I'm aware that there is an alternative approach to resolving that action declaration, different from my preferred approach. According to this alternative approach - which I believe [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] prefers - the action declaration is (at the table) a trigger for the following two steps: (1) the GM consults what s/he has already written in his/her notes; (2) the GM determines (perhaps on the basis of a die roll, or perhaps on a basis of the described method of searching: in his DMG, Gygax canvasses both as possible options for the AD&D referee) what (if anyting) to reveal to the player about the outpout of (1).
I am also aware that there is a variant on that approach, which I believe (from your posts) that you sometimes used, which substitues the following for stpe (1) in the event that the GM's notes are silent on the matter: the GM determines (on the basis of a die roll - Gygax's DMG suggests some odds for this, in Appendix A on random dungeon generation - or perhaps by "objective" extrapolation from what is in the notes) whether or not a secret door is present in the particular circumstances. Step (2) then proceeds as described above.
It would be fair to say that the approach that I am discussing does away with step (1), and uses step (2) only, with success on the check meaning
discovery of an existent secret door. (Obviously the AD&D method of resolving step (2) is probably no longer suitable; I am thinking of systems like 4e, BW and MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.)
Now, what someone finds anti-climactic is ultimately a matter of taste, for which - as they say - there is no accounting. That said, it's not obvious to me why the insertion of step (1) introduces tension. Making a check and hoping for success is exciting; the cost of failure (eg, as we've already canvassed in relation to this example, being captured) introduces tension.
Knowing that success or failure turns on the GM having written something, or now deciding something that is outside my control, doesn't - to my mind - increase the excitement or tension. (It changes its nature - instead of the suspense of a die roll, I have the suspense as to whether or not I've correctly predicted the GM's own authorship.)
Or it could be because the tension goes away if I know that I can just creatively keep rolling(not retries) until I escape.
This makes no sense to me.
Keeping rolling until I escape equals
playing the game. Playing the game, by declaring actions and seeing how they turn out, isn't anti-climactic. It's what I turn up to do!
The only alternative that I can see is
finding out what story the GM has written, or - if the GM is using the variant I described above because s/he has not notes -
finding out what story the GM is writing as s/he goes along. To me, that isn't much fun. I know that others quite enjoy it. But I can't see how the fact that someone enjoys it gives any cause for saying that playing the game my way isn't exciting.
After all, most people agree that D&D combat, at it's best, can be exciting. And D&D combat is resolved the same way I resolve the attempt to find a secret door. It's not resolved by finding out whether or not the GM has decided that this orc dies here, now.
Searching the enemy base for, and eventually finding the bosses escape route = exciting and climactic, with tension all around. Your style: Poofing that passage into existence right next to you and finding it all in the same roll = anti-climactic. Finding the secret door right next to you with a roll cuts the tension away like a knife through hot butter.
This, on the other hand, is all just conjecture based in ignorance. Tell me - how does the search for a secret door resolve in Burning Wheel? How long does it take at the table? How is the framing handled? How many dice are rolled?
What about in Cortex+ Heroic? HeroWars/Quest?
Or tell me, how would a skill challenge to
escapet the enemy base be framed and resolved in 4e? How many checks would it require? What would be involved in framing and resolving each of those checks? How long would it take at the table?
You don't know the answer to any of these questions, so can't possibly know what effect it has on the drama of the situation.
And that's before we even consider the circumstances of pacing, other established elements of the situation, etc in any given context of play, which neither you nor I know in the absence of some concrete example of play.
The last time this particular issue came up in play, was in my Cortex+ Fantasy game. One of the PCs had been on his own in a necromantically cursed room with many burial niches in its walls, out of which zombies had come. The PC, a skin changer, was in wolf form, with his wolf companions, crawling through an empty zombie niche looking for a way out. The player of that PC was successful in an attempt to create a "Secret Exit" asset. What is your
possible basis for asserting that that was anti-climactic?
The player could, of course, have attempted to kill the zombies. Mechanically, in that system, there is no fundamental difference between the two actions. I assume that you have no problem with killing zombies being possible without regard to whether or not the GM has decided that they are to be killed. Why would killing them be more dramatic than escaping them?
I also want to say something about your reference to
searching the enemy base. Given that your are objecting to the possiblity of simply resolving that search by the normal rules for action declaration, and instead are insisting on the sort of two-step process I have described above, what you are saying creates drama is
the players declaring a series of actions which trigge the GM to tell them stuff s/he has made up about the enemy base. You might find that exciting. I don't. It's what I call a railroad.
