You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[innerdude]

Ah. Players want their plans to go smoothly and perfectly without interruption or complication? How... quaint.

There's lots of good arguments for skipping over stuff. "I don't want complications screwing up my plans!" is not one of them. The GM is not a plot zamboni.

"Plot Zamboni" . . . I literally LOL'd.

But really, this is the question at hand for the whole thread, right? How much leeway / force / imperative do the GM and players respectively share in "smoothing over" stuff that is perceived to need it, and how much is the GM expected to let the "rough patches on the ice" actually affect the "game in play?"

The main reason I am hesitant to "handwave" scenes is because in many cases there are details that play into future plot reveals that tie in to specific scenes and NPC interactions. Sure, those scenes can often be interchanged, but my Pathfinder players LOVED it when stuff I had been building towards, and dropping hints for three or four months suddenly made sense in an "AH HAH!" moment.

 

[chaochou]

I just set up the scene where the DM thinks the belief is ridiculous and exherted his authority to create it.

No, you didn't. You set up a scene where one or more NPC characters think the belief is ridiculous. Unless you're now trying to say that in order to do that the person GMing has to believe it as well.

Which really is the most absurd and basic misrepresentation of roleplaying I've ever seen. One has to believe what a character believes? Okay, my peasant PC has an NPC ally who fervently believes I'm the true king. What does the GM now believe when playing that NPC? He has to change to believing I'm king?

The 'doing it wrong' is not the scene. The scene if freakin' awesome. What's wrong is the need for the GM to have pre-determined the outcome of my kingship. It's totally unnecessary for the GM to decide this, unless, of course, one is unable to even envisage a game which lacks GM authority exercised in a dictatorial manner.

Not only that, but remember what your claim was?

"Stating a belief for a peasant that 'I'm the true king of this land' does not make it factual in the game.", that means that the player can't really say what the game is about.

So, not only have you constructed an example using an alien methodology, you've also managed to construct an example which totally contradicts the assertion you were trying to support.

The result of which is BW which looks like this:
PC: I'm the true king of this land
GM: No you're not
Player: What gives you the right to say that? Say yes or roll the dice, man.
GM: No you're wrong, you're a deluded peasant, I'm not playing this game, mine does this so much better.

Here's how mine works:
PC: I'm the true king of this land
GM: Great, let's find out
NPCs: Begone, deranged peasant fool!
Player: Bring it on.

Of course, some people outright reject the basic, fundamental implication of Say Yes or Roll the Dice. They may have spent years leading the players by the nose, or being lead. Here be the adventure! Defeat the giants, defeat the demon controlling the town, overcome the secret society, rescue the princess... But one critical component to the game is that everyone pretends that there's no leading, no scripting, no pre-determination.

Now it's a brilliant playstyle. I've done it myself, countless times as both player and GM and had huge amounts of fun. I enjoyed a brilliant game of Conspiracy X like this over Christmas. Wow.

But buying into the illusion doesn't make it anything other than an illusion. However, it does prompt people to make silly claims about Burning Wheel, and games of its ilk, not doing anything different. It's a perception problem based on too much buy-in to the illusion of choice where there is none. A distorting mirror, if you like.

My BW game is: Am I the king? Your BW game is: You're not king, but must continue to pretend you are. You must maintain the illusion of possibilities, even where there are none. My Morte D'arthur to your Don Quixote, indeed.

Pointing out the illusion to someone in love with it doesn't make it false. It's worse than false. It's heresy. This can make people wedded to it deeply uncomfortable, evasive, angry, resentful even. But you don't strike me like that, with your keyboard warrior threats to take the discussion to an unmoderated forum and 'get my weapons out'. As I said, you're a hoot!

Feel free to have the last word. I knew this was futile from the outset, and yet I've been sucked into wasting time on it.

Have fun, and happy gaming with whatever style suits. It's all good, dude.

 

[pemerton]

That seems to me somewhat evasive, as we seem to have established that what is genera credible depends on what is possible mechanically within the system by the character. Or in other words, "can this person do this" seems to be rather the same as "is it genera credible".

It's not evasive, or not intended to be. But there is no general rule for answering the question, particularly when we get into territory which is only lightly governed by the action resolution mechanics (which in most versions of D&D would include most non-combat pursuits).

In my 4e game, when the dwarven artificers were having trouble taking hold of a dwarven thrower artefact in their forge due to the thrumming arcane energies, the 15th level cleric/fighter of Moradin made an Endurance check against a hard DC, with a bonus to the check from using a PC toughness/shrug-it-off style buff, to shove his hands into the forge and hold the hammer still so that the artificers could grab it with their tongs. Is this genre credible or not? The system leaves that up to the table. In my own table's case, the player put the possibility forward, I pondered for a moment and approved it, no one queried it; but nor did they query my ruling that he needed a Remove Afflication ritual to heal the hurt to his hands.

On another occasion, the ranger made an Acrobatics check to ride his flying carpet into the mouth of a purple worm so he could rescue one of his comrades trapped within. Is this genre credible or not? I thought so - the player was debating what to do, and whether to have his PC try and fly into the worm to undertake the rescue, or rather to take other actions, assume that the worm would swallow him anyway, and take the extra damage from the worm's attack but get an advantage in the action economy. I (as GM) was egging him on to fly in, because I liked the image of it! (On one of the earliest 4e threads on this board someone was complaining about his PC being swallowed and dissolved by a purple worm, and [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] posted asking why the rogue didn't use Acrobatics to dive in and perform a rescue. When I framed a purple worm encounter I was hoping for something like that to happen, and it did!)

I'm sure that some other tables would find these episodes too gonzo. Even though [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] take slightly different approaches to the distribution of authority, I think we're in agreement that it's ultimately a table's call.

In my view, also, I want to think about the real-life, game-play stakes. 4e has very robust and reliable scaling rules for DCs, damage, treasure etc, and a tight action economy (either in combat, or the different economy of a skill challenge). So I can tell that allowing the dwarf to try and hold the artefact, or allowing the ranger to try and fly inside the worm, is not going to mechanically break anything. There won't be "something for nothing" Monty Haul issues, nor ongoing consequences of broken-ness.

So the trade off is between too much gonzo, or dampening the players' enthusiasm and generally being a killjoy GM. Every time I'm going to err on the side of too much gonzo (at least, that's what I hope I'll do). This is what the 4e DMG generally means by "saying yes", which isn't the same thing as what BW means - it's not "say yes or roll the dice", it's more like "if in doubt, say yes to the players' judgements of what is genre credible". But I think the two notions are reasonably closely related.

And this informs my response to Hussar's centipede strategem. I can't see that any issue of balance or Monty Hauling is at stake. So I'm strongly inclined towards saying yes. 3E throws up some mechanical challenges - it has nothing quite analogous to the skill challenge, and so it's hard to say yes in the 4e sense without also saying yes in the BW sense. But given that the latter likely won't do any harm - there's no evidence of a telepor without error mage in the party whose toes are being trodden on, for instance (to allude to [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s point from upthread) - that is the way that I would go.

So, would you say that BW requires all scenes to be the result of player initiative and GM reaction, or is it assumed that at time the GM will intiate scenes that the players must react to?

I quoted some posts of chaochou's from the BW thread upthread in this thread, which address this issue.

Chaochou, as best I can tell from his posts, plays in the "always player initiated approach". I think the texts leave the matter open, but certainly lean towards player initiative as the default and the general tendency.

In the Adventure Burner's discussion of handling resting and recovery time, for instances (which in BW can be extensive as far as ingame time is concerned) there are clear suggestions that the GM will be proactive in advancing the goals of nemeses so as to put pressure on the players. But whether that is to take the form of actively framing antagonistic situations, or rather just narrating to the players changes in circumstances that will motivate them to act, is not specified.

You seem to fall into the habit of using 'belief' and 'goal' interchangably. Are you suggesting in this scene that the players beliefs are, "I will defeat the lich king" and "I will recover my families heirloom", or are they something like, "I will redeem the honor of my family" and "I will free the land from the grip of evil" with the actions undertaken being the "therefore" of the beliefs?

I was thinking of Beliefs along the lines of "I will defeat the lich king", "The lich king will pay for ruining my life", etc, and similarly for the heirloom. The more generic Beliefs I think are perhaps not focused enough for the purposes I'm using them for.

In the Adventure Burner Luke Crane suggests, of the three Beliefs, having at least one be goal-oriented, so you can get the Persona points for achieving a goal and so the GM can frame conflicts around it, but having one Belief be a bit more generic or open-ended. The latter sort of Belief is labelled a "Fate mine" because you never realise a goal, but you can frequently invoke it in play to earn Fate points (eg if it's "I will redeem the honour of my family" then in an interaction with an NPC you appeal to your family name and honour, and thereby earn your Fate Point). And of course of your three Beliefs you want at least two of them to be well-suited for coming into conflict, so you can earn Mouldbreaker Persona points!

I mentioned upthread the idea of synergising, coordinating etc on Beliefs. These are some of the considerations that come into play in doing that. Clear signals to the GM is a highly relevant consideration, but not the only thing.

This gets to the real heart of my investigation. You say that this is true. I'm just not seeing it (yet) from your explanation. To me it sounds almost like you are saying, "If the book is in the genera I like, and is about the things I like, then I will like the book."

What I'm saying, or at least trying to say, is that the players have a device - Beliefs - for sending clear flags. So the GM has no excuse for disregarding those flags. So if no player has a Belief pertaining to the desert, or to wilderness treks, or the like, then don't run the desert crossing!

Conversely, if the GM is very keen to run the desert crossing, then this should all have been sorted out at the pre-play stage, when backstory was set up, the basic parameters of the game and hence of salient Beliefs established, etc.

There's nothing magical here, obviously, and so things can of course go wrong in practice. But the game, in its ethos but also in its mechanics, is set up to push in favour of equilibrium rather than disequilibrium. First, there are the overt Beliefs themselves, which playes are consciously pushing into the spotlight so as to earn Fate and Persona points. Then there are the backstory-creation mechanics, which give players the power to introduce the story elements that will support their pro-activity in initiating action, and thereby keep play focused.

In Hussar's situation, using 3E, the system elements aren't as robust in this respect. Flags are informal. Collaborative backstory formation is informal, and (depending on table) perhaps not practised at all. So it's to be expected that a few more collisions might occur, and a bit more evasive action be required. My response to the situation is based on an impression that the GM, rather than taking evasive action using the lifeline that Hussar's centipede-summoning established, tended to compound matters.

Ok, now here for the first time I'm seeing something like player having authorial power. The player is asserting power over the setting - not only is he asserting a fact about the NPC, but he's asserting the existance of the secret passage - neither of which exist prior to his assertion. Can you give me examples from the text of this authorial power being affirmed by the rules, and also quote any relevant discussion of how this authorial power is to be managed?

I'm not going to quote - there are pages of rules in the core rulebook, plus further pages of commentary in the Adventure Burner. The rules themselves are found in the discussion of Circles in the core rulebook (this pertains to NPCs being known and ready to hand) and in the discussion of Wises in (from memory) both the core rulebook and the Character Burner (this pertains to all other backstory elements) and in the discussion of Relationships in the Character Burner (how to buy them) and the core rulebook (how the GM and players are expected to use them).

Wises are interesting because they are expressly dual-function - they can be used both to discover GM-authored backstory (like a knowledge skill in 3E) and to establish backstory.

For example, how is the obstacle to a PC initiated authorial statement to be set, since the question here isn't "Can I find the secret passage" but "Does the secret passage exist in the first place?"

The DC for a Wises check is to reflect the obscurity of the knowledge relative to the skill. So it's the same whether (at the metagame level) the Wise is being used to learn or to stipulate.

For Circles the DC is set by comparable "simulationist" concerns - how likely is this PC to be able to find this NPC in these circumstances.

In both cases, therefore, the DC is set following the general BW methodology of "objective" DCs reflecting ingame difficulty.

If the player has the belief "I am the True King", and this belief is false then either he is a figure of tragic comedy or else he is a dangerous lunatic.

<snip>

I believe a player which creates a peasant with the false belief "I am the rightful king", is wasting everyone's time if thinks that the resulting game is going to be inherently about affirming the truth of his false belief.

Or he is an ambitious politician. Or a religious visionary. It's a basic presupposition of BW play that neither the players nor the GM prejudge the truth of the Belief. It's to be proven, or refuted, in and by play. (As a maxim for the GM, this could be compared to the obligation on a Gygaxian GM to be neutral or impartial in the right sort of way.)

With nothing to hand but that Belief, of course, it's a bit obscure what exactly the player will be doing, and what complications the GM is going to be throwing in the PC's path. But the other aspects of both pre-play prep and play (Circles, Wises etc) will generate much more context than we have here. And part of the rationale for that context, besides just providing fun fantasy colour, is to give the GM the guidance necessary to test this Belief and see what the player does with it, and in pursuit of it.

 

[Umbran]

Of course, some people outright reject the basic, fundamental implication of Say Yes or Roll the Dice. They may have spent years leading the players by the nose, or being lead.

Or, you know, they may have well-considered reasons for rejecting it.

 

[Umbran]

But really, this is the question at hand for the whole thread, right? How much leeway / force / imperative do the GM and players respectively share in "smoothing over" stuff that is perceived to need it, and how much is the GM expected to let the "rough patches on the ice" actually affect the "game in play?"

Yep. And my answer is, "It doesn't generalize, there is no one answer." If you start from the base assumption that not everyone wants the same thing out of RPGs, then you must allow that we (broadly, as GMs and players) need to have several different methodologies at hand to produce those experiences. RPGs are not "one size fits all".

The main reason I am hesitant to "handwave" scenes is because in many cases there are details that play into future plot reveals that tie in to specific scenes and NPC interactions. Sure, those scenes can often be interchanged, but my Pathfinder players LOVED it when stuff I had been building towards, and dropping hints for three or four months suddenly made sense in an "AH HAH!" moment.

That is certainly a valid reason - as a GM, I have prepped up a certain amount of material. Step beyond the scope of my preparation, and you're making the GM improvise. But not everyone is a star at improvisation. It is all well and good if the players get to the scene they wanted, but if that scene is poorly balanced and otherwise crappy because you've made the GM juggle too much to make it work, that isn't necessarily a win for the player.

 

[pemerton]

The 'doing it wrong' is not the scene.

<snip>

What's wrong is the need for the GM to have pre-determined the outcome of my kingship. It's totally unnecessary for the GM to decide this

<snip>

PC: I'm the true king of this land
GM: Great, let's find out
NPCs: Begone, deranged peasant fool!
Player: Bring it on.

For me as a GM, in the fantasy games I'm GMing which are pretty bog-standard in their tropes and pretty hackneyed in their themes and storylines, the most important thing I don't want to prejudge is what is proper for the PCs to do.

So I exert more control over backstory than would be the case in BW, for instance. And as per our exchange a bit upthread, probably more control over genre cohesion than you would. And we also know, from the scene-framing thread, that my scene-framing is pretty light touch by your standards!

My main aim in setting up situations - besides, in 4e, getting the mechanical elements right for pacing, fun resolution etc - is to highlight the cosmological options in front of the PCs, and the choices that they are making by going one way rather than another.

It's that issue of rightness that I really want to hold open - so when the players wonder what their PCs should do, they have to choose. And then I respond to that choice. And it's those choices that tend to be the vehicle to player proactivity in initiating scenes and situations - they want to attack both Lolth and Orcus, so they go to the place where an Orcus worshipper has overthrown a drow outpost and start taking on all sides, and playing the drow off against one another.

That's a big part of why alignment is probably my least favourite part of the D&D tradition, because it's the worst form of prepackaging of these issues.

It's also why I like skill challenges or similar conflict resolution mechanics (Duel of Wits, Let it Ride, 0 hp, etc) - without that sort of finality, it's too easy for the GM to situation-monger so the players' choices never actually result in definite outcomes.

 

[innerdude]

That is certainly a valid reason - as a GM, I have prepped up a certain amount of material. Step beyond the scope of my preparation, and you're making the GM improvise. But not everyone is a star at improvisation. It is all well and good if the players get to the scene they wanted, but if that scene is poorly balanced and otherwise crappy because you've made the GM juggle too much to make it work, that isn't necessarily a win for the player.

And in the case of Hussar's GM, assuming that the table agreed to "fast forward" to the city, the GM would be well within his or her rights to say, "Okay, awesome guys, you're in the city now, and there's lots of things to do here. However, there were several key components that I thought might be presented in the desert. I'm gonna need about 30 minutes to re-construct a few things about what's happening now, so why doesn't everyone get up and get a drink, use the bathroom, etc.?"

Or worst case scenario, the GM says, "I really have nothing prepped for the city at this point, and for pacing and playability reasons, I'm not really comfortable throwing mediocre-to-poor material out at you right now unprepared. Let's get back together in a week / few days, and continue." To me, THAT'S the risk the players take. Sure, fast forward to what interests you--but expecting the GM to jump through preparation hoops on the fly is definitely not to every GM's preference, and players should be prepared to rationally deal with those consequences when they arise.

This is all under the assumption that the GM and table have a solid social contract in place, and GM isn't actually pouting over losing his or her "My Precious Encounter."

 

[Celebrim]

Or he is an ambitious politician. Or a religious visionary.

In each case, a dangerous lunatic. There is a very big difference between asserting, "I will be king someday", and asserting, "I'm the king now." I mean, "I will be king someday" was itself enough to unhinge MacBeth, but "I'm the king now." when you aren't is already unhinged. Likewise there is a very big difference between leaving up in the air whether the character will in the course of play obtain the throne, and leaving up in the air whether the basic facts of the characters backstory are actually dangerous delusions. I would expect most players in most systems to understand that the former is true, but I'm rather skeptical that players even of BW are open eyed accepting of the idea that everything in their backstory is in an indeterminate state and could in fact be a delusion (whether it is something like 'I'm the true King' or 'I grew up on the isle of Crete' or 'I've been a fishermen these past seven years').

I don't think I would subvert a player's backstory without player permission.

It's a basic presupposition of BW play that neither the players nor the GM prejudge the truth of the Belief. It's to be proven, or refuted, in and by play.

That seems to be rather far from what was quoted to me:

Stating a belief for a peasant that 'I'm the true king of this land' does not make it factual in the game. But getting it out in the open you are letting the other players know that you want situations revolving around that theme - a mad peasant rebel rising to challenge the established order.

I'm a computer scientist. There is a very big difference between asserting that the answer to the question of a beliefs factuality could be 'true' or it could 'false', and asserting that it must always be 'null'. I have one quote that seems to suggest 'true or false'. Can you back up the assertion of 'always null'?

 

[Hussar]

/snip


Okay, so - if it only happens once in a blue moon, do we really need 80+ pages of discussion covering how we should change overall approach to play to avoid it in the future? We should undertake an overhaul of how we approach games and frame events for a rare event that can be talked though in a few minutes by mature adults?

No. If it is truly an exceptional event, it should be treated as an exception, a one-off situation. I don't need a system or gaming paradigm for dealing with a player who has a one-time issue.

Well, Umbran, I'm not really sure, since I've always, always maintained that this is an exceptional event that should hopefully never happen in a campaign since it means that whatever complication the DM has put forward is completely disengaging from at least one player at the table, so much so that the player is willing to try to veto the situation.

Once again, I ask the same two questions:


How often is too often for use of the cheat code?
How many players in the group does it take to activate the cheat code?



Set the number of players you are comfortable, tell me how frequently the cheat code comes out and what happens when there is disagreement over whether its use is appropriate. Indicate where the GM’s say differs from that of the other players.

Well, I'd say too often would be, "What the table decides." For your table, it would be zero. For mine, it would be, "As often as the DM screwed up and dropped uninteresting complications."

As to the second, one. AFAIC. It only takes one. I refuse to play at a table where one player outright hating what's going on gets thrown under the bus because two other players are perfectly happy. No thanks. That just means that this is a dysfunctional group.

I think the PC’s need to be designed to have common ground without having a hive mind. I suspect that your group template would favour the former (eg. “all characters should be money-motivated mercenaries who are presently imprisoned with just cause) rather than the latter (eg. All characters should be devoted to the worship of Hecate above all other goals, share her alignment and live only to serve the purposes of the church and the goddess, willing to sacrifice everything up to and including their very souls in her service).

Umm, what's the difference between the two? You have an entire group with single goals, goals which are nicely tied into the campaign as a whole. Perfectly acceptable group templates AFAIC. Much better than the group where one player has a nebulous "exploration" goal and two of the players have "Stuff to do at home" goals which are completely contradictory and the exploration goal isn't actually linked to the campaign.

If everyone had "exploration" or "stuff to do at home" then the whole wizard with a Tardis example never happens and the campaign doesn't go wahoonie shaped and fall apart because the characters have no reason to adventure together.

 

[Hussar]

Yep. And my answer is, "It doesn't generalize, there is no one answer." If you start from the base assumption that not everyone wants the same thing out of RPGs, then you must allow that we (broadly, as GMs and players) need to have several different methodologies at hand to produce those experiences. RPGs are not "one size fits all".

Totally agree with this. However, why are you not taking issue with the others then since, while my answer is, "it's best if handled rarely", their answer is, "Not a chance, this should never, ever happen and a player is a bad player for even suggesting it"?

I mean, you've been pretty vocal opposing my suggestion that a Dm just skip over something. But, I've yet to see you say, "Well, yes, from time to time it might be okay for some groups."

That is certainly a valid reason - as a GM, I have prepped up a certain amount of material. Step beyond the scope of my preparation, and you're making the GM improvise. But not everyone is a star at improvisation. It is all well and good if the players get to the scene they wanted, but if that scene is poorly balanced and otherwise crappy because you've made the GM juggle too much to make it work, that isn't necessarily a win for the player.

Well, my point would be, "Don't hand the group clear cut goals and then expect to roadblock them enough that you will have time to prepare that goal." This is, IMO, the worst reason to throw in complications. "I don't have X prepared, but I do have Y prepared, so, dammit, you're going to do Y until such time as I can prepare X".

If you have clear goals, PREP THOSE FIRST. The stuff in between? That comes second.