Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Imaro]

You can't describe your success or failure in terms of someone falling down (because prone modifiers aren't activated)

Prone is a specific condition... every instance of falling does not inflict that condition and every time that condition is inflicted doesn't necessarily mean someone has fallen... In fact in D&D you take damage when you fall which seems to line up with what we are talking about... why can't I describe it that way with the victim taking damage and then scrambling to their feet before I can capitalize on a prone condition? Some inconsequential movement is assumed in the exchange of blows in D&D combat... without the prone effect it is certainly inconsequential... so why can't I describe it like that?

in terms of someone being wrongfooted (because no martial mind-control forced movement)

Why do I need martial mind-control to describe a person misjudging their footing and missing a blow? Or is the only way one could be wrong-footed in the fiction through mind-control forced movement? that's a specific maneuver not the act of being wrong-footed in the fiction.

in terms of disarming (because that's a separate mechanical state)

Again they scoop up the weapon before anyone can capitalize on them being disarmed... unless of course someone actually inflicts the mechanical effect of disarming... which they could again describe however they like as long as it respects the fiction.

and in AD&D not even in terms of spinning someone around (because that would violate the facing rules)

Well I'm not speaking to AD&D...

Depending on table conventions, you may also not be able to describe significant physical injury, as there are no debilitating consequences as a result.

Wait what? Some portion of hit points is physical... how much, we don't know so why can't I describe it as such? Now if we as a table have made an agreement about said descriptions of course not... but that's beyond the scope of what the game does or does not allow.

And, furthermore, it's all just colour, because D&D combat resolution has no regard to that sort of fictional positioning. Whether I describe the 5 hp I dealt as a wound or as reducing fighting spirit has no affect on subsequent resolution.

That's what we are speaking to... creative description and whether that description is more constrained or not in particular systems. If anything it seems you hamper your own creativity in these situations by tying the description to mechanics when they don't have to or even necessarily map uniquely with one of your chosen mechanics... .

 

[hawkeyefan]

One more quick post because I'm seeing a lot of concepts run together and Illusionism is getting conflated/diluted with other stuff because of it.

Keeping fiction mutable (be it backstory, an NPC's nature, or geographical "tightness/resolution") isn't Illusionism. It can be used as a means to facilitate Illusionism, but it isn't by itself Illusionism. It can also be used as a means to expedite only having on-screen "the action" (thematic stuff that the PCs care about). That is the orthodox utility, and therefore reason for deployment, of that GMing technique.

The "illusion of fixedness/persistence/lack of mutability" is not Illusionism. See below:

Force: A technique deployed whereby control over a characters' thematically/strategically/tactically-significant decisions (or the outcomes of those decisions) is overtly wrested from the character's player and/or by way of subordinating the system's orthodox procedures.

All you have to do to turn Force into Illusionism is place a "c" in front of "overtly", thus turning it into "covertly."

The reason why Illusionism is oftentimes considered taboo is because it violates the implicit or explicit social contract that the players have signed up for (and/or the play priorities that the game champions). If it does not violate social contract, then its perfectly fine (or necessary/expected).

I'm not saying that it is exactly the same, just that it's similar.

What's the illusion? As in, in whay way is the GM deceiving the players, or pretending to do things one way while really doing them another?

The motivation doesn't "spring into existence" - as I said, it's concrete and there all along. It's just that no one in the real world knows yet what it is, because it hasn't been authored yet.

Well when you first mentioned this, you did so by implying that you likely had an idea of what the yellow clad skulker's motovations were when he first ahowed up, but that without establishing it within the game, you were free to change those motivations.

So I don't think that would be considered concrete. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] describes it as "mutable", which to me seems a better fit. So that ability to change things...having the notion or plan for the skulker to be a member of the Cult of the Dragon, but then changing that to have him instead be a Thayan wizard...that's the illusion.

Now, I said this was similar to Illusionism as the specific term you mean it to be. It's not identical to it. But I would think that any time the GM has idea A in place, and then it becomes idea B later on...that's a but of GM trickery.

Because if it were concrete as you say, and the motovation does not simply spring into existence...then why would you not decide it upon introducing the NPC?

Do you have examples in mind?

Whether or not you do, here's a whole range of ways that standard D&D PCs (at least the spell-using ones) can "introduce solutions to the story entirely on their own" which in the right context are as effective as discovering a secret door: Stone Shape, Knock, Passwall, Dimension Door, Teleport, Transmute Rock to Mud, Dig, Move Earth, Ehterealness, Shadow Walk, Disintegratem and probably others I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Well I don't know if I would say that PCs introduce those spells to the game....they are already part of the game, and have been chosen at some point by the player.

What I'm talking about is allng the lines of "finding" a secret door to get out of a potentially dangerous fight. Or making a perception check to see if the keys wee left in the lock by the stupid jailer. Or when apprehended by the town guard for lugging a dead body around town, making a diplomacy check to establish that the PCs cousin is a member of the guard and he helps things get smoothed over.

I'm not sure why the capacity to make a Citadel-wise or Architecture check is going to break the game in a fashion that those spells don't.

But I'm not talking about breaking the game. It need not be that drastic. It's more about things resolving in a less dramatic fashion. About a lame or anticlimactic resolution of some sort.

 

[Lanefan]

If there is a secret door, what other options are there but to find it or not?

Key words there are "if there is", which by the sound of it is unknown until a player rolls a check. On a success, a secret door is found and at the same time is brought into existence. On a fail, there's no door and maybe something goes wrong...guards arrive or whatever. On a middling result there may or may not be a door, enemies might be waiting right behind it, etc. Schroedinger's door.

That the "holy grail of RPG design" is that the player's viewpoint is that the entire game is based around "nothing by choices made in playing his character."

By this measure, that the player is always in character, and making decisions as that character, then the methods the DM uses to present the world, events, encounters, etc. are irrelevant. I see it as going to a movie - I don't really care what technology, what cameras or techniques, or how many scriptwriters there were, etc. The finished product is what matters.

Yes, after the movie (or after the game) I love to dig and see if we can figure out what makes it such a great experience. And while I understand how certain players object to things like illusionism, fudging, or many other techniques, my assertion is that is has far more to do with how the DM handled (or mishandled) those tools than the tools themselves.

This kind of sums up what I've been trying to say for about the last 7 pages: if it's a good game, why does it matter how it came to be so?

=======================================

RE point 1 above, in fictional gameworlds the sun may very well revolve around the earth(or other planet)(or the world might be flat or whatever).

I'll explain the analogy as you seem to have taken it literally.

The earth is the PCs. The sun is the game world. The game world is always bigger than the PCs.

IMO some of the RPGs being discussed are intended to make the game about the way the world interacts with the PCs.

I know, and I'm railing against it as poor to awful design as all it does is make the PCs into special snowflakes, which if left unchecked and-or without the perfect group to play it leads to overentitled players and doormat or processor-unit DMs.

Re point 3 above, I disagree that seamless incorporation is always possible, and even if it was, how the DM makes decisions is very important to some players. Whenever DM decision making is based whole or in part on criteria that violate the formal or informal social contract of the group, players can have legitimate grievances.

Assuming the DM is unwise enough to reveal whatever decision-making process is being used at a given time, then yes. I know that my answer if asked about this as a DM would usually boil down to a polite version of "none of your business" which would get less polite each successive time I was asked.

I don't sign social contracts. I just say (again in more flowery terms) "here's my game, here's the rules and system, here's the game world - check it out then either sit down and play or get up and leave".

Lan-"'do it till they tell you to stop' can sometimes be a useful motto to play by"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and anyone else running a BW/DW type of system, a question:

Secret doors. How in your system can - or is it even possible - the following occur: someone rolls a check to find a secret door and fails when in fact there is a secret door right there which might be found on a later check by someone else and-or remains to be used by the enemy?

I ask because in reading what's been posted here a failed check seems to hard-write into the fiction that no secret door is present (and the DM isn't allowed to predetermine there is one and just stick with that), where realism would say instead that all that gets written into the fiction at that point is that an unsuccessful search was made and in fact it yet remains uncertain whether there's a secret door present at that location or not.

Lan-"waiter - check, please"-efan

 

[Campbell]

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION]

I think this goes back to my own concerns about group creativity over individual creative expression. When I make contributions to the fiction in a role playing game I have the expectation that the other people sitting at the table will be actively interested, have regard for what I am saying, and build upon it rather than negate it. My efforts to describe a given character's actions are not meaningful if there is no expectation that the other people sitting at the table will take that into account when making their own contributions to the fiction. If my efforts to establish fictional positioning can be freely disregarded according to the assumed social contract than playing the game loses all meaning to me. When playing my bard and I use Vicious Mockery and the rules say the words cut my expectation is that the actual words I speak for my character affected that character beyond the mechanical impact of losing 1d4 hp and getting disadvantage on the next attack. In turn I am socially obliged to actually speak words that should cut.

This is in part what I was speaking to when I said many mainstream games are played with Walled Off Gardens between players where we are only allowed to interact with each others stuff in ways that are explicitly approved. When we are socially free to disregard contributions to the fiction other players make and there is no need to actually establish appropriate fictional positioning to mechanically affect the play space there is no shared fiction - there are individual fictions that we sometimes allow others to impact when and where we choose.

This presumption that the mechanisms are meaningfully independent of the fiction and that one player's fiction is independent of another player's fiction results in play I have zero interest in. Furthermore it results in the sort of experience where in order for something to really have an impact it must be represented by mechanics. There can be no fruitful voids where we have fictional positioning that impacts play without going to the mechanisms.

What I Want

Fiction -> Mechanics -> Fiction -> Fiction -> Mechanics -> Fiction -> Fiction->Mechanics->Fiction
Fiction -> Fiction-> Fiction​

What I Do Not Want

Mechanics -> Mechanics-> Mechanics
<Fiction> <Fiction> <Fiction>

Colors are used to show different contributors. Diagrams are not perfect. In reality for the sort of play I am interested in the Fiction and the Mechanics are meaningfully shared by all participants at all times. The reason I enjoy doing this thing we do is because we play in a dynamic shared collaborative fiction that belongs to us all equally - where we are creative peers.

 

[Lanefan]

I think this goes back to my own concerns about group creativity over individual creative expression. When I make contributions to the fiction in a role playing game I have the expectation that the other people sitting at the table will be actively interested, have regard for what I am saying, and build upon it rather than negate it.

Whereas I as player harbour no preconceived expectations at all as to how my contributions to the fiction and entertainment will be received - though my ego would obviously like it to be well-received I've no right to automatically expect such, and nor should I.

I say what I say and I do what I do and - just like in real life! - it's completely up to the listeners to determine what they think of it and-or how (or if) they're going to react to it and-or interact with it. They're free to run with it, build on it, or support it and are equally as free to ignore it, be bored by it, or negate it.

It's their call.

By the same token, though, it's my call as to what I do with the fiction presented to me by the DM and-or other players.

As DM I have a right to somewhat more expectation that they're at least going to pay attention, but that's as far as it goes.

My efforts to describe a given character's actions are not meaningful if there is no expectation that the other people sitting at the table will take that into account when making their own contributions to the fiction.

The DM has to take your actions into account. The other players have to account for them but don't by any means have to agree with or support or build on them if they (in character) don't want to.

If my efforts to establish fictional positioning can be freely disregarded according to the assumed social contract than playing the game loses all meaning to me. When playing my bard and I use Vicious Mockery and the rules say the words cut my expectation is that the actual words I speak for my character affected that character beyond the mechanical impact of losing 1d4 hp and getting disadvantage on the next attack. In turn I am socially obliged to actually speak words that should cut.

And if I'm the target I have the right to completely ignore said Bard (or pretend to, I'm still eating that d4 damage), or laugh at said Bard, or loudly tell said Bard to sod off, or attack said Bard (at disadvantage, grumble), or simply turn and walk away with my head held high.

This is in part what I was speaking to when I said many mainstream games are played with Walled Off Gardens between players where we are only allowed to interact with each others stuff in ways that are explicitly approved. When we are socially free to disregard contributions to the fiction other players make and there is no need to actually establish appropriate fictional positioning to mechanically affect the play space there is no shared fiction - there are individual fictions that we sometimes allow others to impact when and where we choose.

The shared fiction is the sum of its parts, which are the individual fictions plus the overall fiction as a whole e.g. metaplot and adventure logs. It sometimes can't even be fully seen until viewed in hindsight.

The individual fictions cannot remain independent when they impact another character (e.g. your Bard Vicious-Wording my Fighter just got your fiction all up in my fiction) or the overall game (my Fighter just took down that orc which means it's dead to you too). But when my Fighter spins a grandly entertaining tale of derring-do in the highlands your Bard is still free to tell me exactly what I'm full of and then say "no, this is how it really went"...or just walk out.

This presumption that the mechanisms are meaningfully independent of the fiction and that one player's fiction is independent of another player's fiction results in play I have zero interest in. Furthermore it results in the sort of experience where in order for something to really have an impact it must be represented by mechanics.

Here I agree; we don't need mechanics for everything.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

And, furthermore, it's all just colour, because D&D combat resolution has no regard to that sort of fictional positioning. Whether I describe the 5 hp I dealt as a wound or as reducing fighting spirit has no affect on subsequent resolution.

That's what we are speaking to... creative description and whether that description is more constrained or not in particular systems. If anything it seems you hamper your own creativity in these situations by tying the description to mechanics when they don't have to or even necessarily map uniquely with one of your chosen mechanics... .

I hadn't realised that you were talking about narration as mere colour, without it actually establishing fictional positioning that matters to resolution.

Personally I don't put a very high premium on that dimension of creativity in RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

Well when you first mentioned this, you did so by implying that you likely had an idea of what the yellow clad skulker's motovations were when he first ahowed up, but that without establishing it within the game, you were free to change those motivations.

So I don't think that would be considered concrete.

I think you may have misunderstood.

The skulker's motivation is concrete in the fiction. It's just not yet been authored, and so - at the table - no one (not GM, not players) knows what it is - although all may have some conjectures.

I am insisting on a very strong distinction between the fiction and the real world here, because I find without that distinction being clearly drawn we get strange claims that seem to imply that the fiction writes itself, or exercises causal power over people in the real world.

that ability to change things...having the notion or plan for the skulker to be a member of the Cult of the Dragon, but then changing that to have him instead be a Thayan wizard...that's the illusion.

But nothing is being changed. To author some bit of the fiction is not to change some bit of the fiction. It is to establish it.

And I still don't see what the illusion is. On whom has it been perpetrated? I mean, I as GM had some conjecture as to whom the skulker might be. When the big reveal comes out it turns out that my initial conjecture was false - the skulker is someone else. Who has been deceived? What's the illusion? All I can see is authorship.

I would think that any time the GM has idea A in place, and then it becomes idea B later on...that's a but of GM trickery.

First, what is the meaning of "in place"? If you mean the fiction is already established, then that is not what I am talking about and has no bearing on the example of the skulker. If you mean the GM has a conjecture about some bit of the fiction then what does it mean to say that the idea is "in place"?

Assuming the second understanding - which is what I have been talking about, and is the example I provided - who is being tricked? Not the GM. Not the players. Not any of the fictional inhabitants of the gameworld.

Well I don't know if I would say that PCs introduce those spells to the game....they are already part of the game, and have been chosen at some point by the player.

What I'm talking about is along the lines of "finding" a secret door to get out of a potentially dangerous fight. Or making a perception check to see if the keys wee left in the lock by the stupid jailer. Or when apprehended by the town guard for lugging a dead body around town, making a diplomacy check to establish that the PCs cousin is a member of the guard and he helps things get smoothed over.

But I'm not talking about breaking the game. It need not be that drastic. It's more about things resolving in a less dramatic fashion. About a lame or anticlimactic resolution of some sort.

How is finding a secret door by way of a successful Architecture check less dramatic than (say) casting a Passwall spell? Or, for that matter, how is bumping into your cousin and smoothing things over less dramatic than casting a Charm Person spell?

You're clearly seeing some distinction here, but I'm missing what it is.

 

[pemerton]

If there is a secret door, what other options are there but to find it or not?

[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was expressing a concern that if a PC finds a secret door which the GM didn't know, in advance of the check to find it, was present in the fiction, then the PCs will "bypass the challenge". My comment is that this concern seems to rest on an assumption that there is such a thing as the challenge, which it would not be proper for the PCs to "bypass" by unexpectedly (to the GM) finding a secret door.

And my response is that, in the sort of approach I favour, there isn't such a thing as the challenge, and hence concerns about "bypassing" it aren't apposite.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and anyone else running a BW/DW type of system, a question:

Secret doors. How in your system can - or is it even possible - the following occur: someone rolls a check to find a secret door and fails when in fact there is a secret door right there which might be found on a later check by someone else and-or remains to be used by the enemy?

I ask because in reading what's been posted here a failed check seems to hard-write into the fiction that no secret door is present

Here's one way: the PCs learn (eg from a friend; from a blueprint) that a secret door is present in a certain place. They try to find it, and fail. Later on enemies come through the door.

Here's another way (reposting something I posted upthread):

suppose that a player declares a Perception check to look for a secret door at a dead end. And s/he declares that s/he (in character) is searching carefully (so as to get a bonus die). And the check fails, meaning that the GM is licensed to introduce a significant time-based complication: so the GM might narrate, "As you are carefully tapping the wall, listening for hollow places, you hear boots coming along the corridor - it sounds like the iron-shod boots of goblins! And then the wall in front of you opens - there is a secret door, with goblins on the other side of it. It looks like you're just in time for a rendezvous of forces!"

As I said, a failure to find X can be for any number of reasons other than the absence of X. Upthread, for instance, I noted that a possible failure for a check to find a vessel to catch blood in might be that the character notices the vessel just in time to see it knocked to the ground by the other struggling characters, and smash on the floor.

It depends on the context and significance of the check (and the GM's imagination, obviously).

 

[pemerton]

So I'm reading Eero's Standard Narrativistic Model (https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/) and he seems to specifically be promoting a GM-driven game:

"These games are tremendously fun, and they form a very discrete family of games wherein many techniques are interchangeable between the games. The most important common trait these games share is the GM authority over backstory and dramatic coordination (I talk of these two extensively in Solar System, which is also a game of this ilk), which powers the GM uses to put the player characters into pertinent choice situations. Can you see how this underlying fundamental structure is undermined by undiscretionary use of narrative sharing?"

His specific point, supported by all of the analysis before the outline of his structure, is that in order to have a "Story Now" game, the GM must have control over the story.

No it's not. As you've quoted, he talks about GM authority over backstory and dramatic coordination. This is not control over story.

The same sort of GM authority is described by Luke Crane in the BW rulebooks that I quoted upthread:

From the rulebook (Revised p 268; Gold p 551 - the text is the same in both editions):

In Burning Wheel, it is the GM's job to interpret all of the various intents of the players' actions and mesh them into a cohesive whole that fits within the context of the game. He's got to make sure that all the player wackiness abides by the rules. When it doesn't, he must guide the wayward players gently back into the fold. Often this requires negotiating an action or intent until both player and GM are satisfied that it fits both the concept and the mood of the game.

Also, the GM is in a unique position. He can see the big picture - what the players are doing, as well as what the opposition is up to and plans to do. His perspective grants the power to hold off one action, while another player moves forward so that the two pieces intersect dramatically at the table. More than any other player, the GM controls the flow and pacing of the game. He has the power to begin and end scenes, to present challenges and instigate conflicts. It's a heady responsibility, but utterly worthwhile.​

The "power to being and end scenes, to present challenges and instigate conflicts", and "to hold off one action" is what Eero Tuovinen calls dramatic coordination. The GM's knowledge of "the big picture" is what Eero Tuovinen calls authority over backstory.

Burning Wheel is an instance of the "standard narrativistic model" - and neither Luke Crane nor Eero Tuovinen is talking about GM control over the story. "Story" (or "plot") is the upshot of actual play, in which players make choices for their PCs in response to the situations framed by the GM. Here is Luke Crane's account of it (from the GM side):

Most important, the GM is response for introducing complications to the story and consequences to the players' choices. Burning Wheel is all about choices - from the minute you start creating a character, you are making hard choices. Once play begins, as players choose their path, it is the GM's job to meaningfully inject resonant ramifications into play.

And here is Eero Tuovinen's (more technically elaborated) account of the same process:

One of the players is a gamemaster whose 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 (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . .

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​

I've bolded some key passages - the players establish the concrete characters, and hence the dramatic needs. The GM "goes where the action is" ie frames scenes that are interesting in relation to those dramatic needs, that have been established by the players. The players then make choices, which have consequences - and those consequences (and their interaction with dramatic needs) provide the context for further framing. This is why I call it "player-driven": it is the players who establish the focus of play, and whose choices for their PCs drive play.

The sort of thing he is talking about is defeated by the GM's use of secret backstory to determine consequences of action declarations. Because at that point it is no longer a case of the GM "going where the action is" ie framing and narrating in response to dramatic need as established by the players in the build and play of their PCs.

His further elaboration seems to specifically support the sort of game I like to run:

"The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook. And it works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice. If the player character is engaged in a deadly duel with the evil villain of the story, you do not ask the player to determine whether it would be “cool” if the villain were revealed to be the player character’s father. The correct heuristic is to throw out the claim of fatherhood if it seems like a challenging revelation for the character, not ask the player whether he’s OK with it – asking him is the same as telling him to stop considering the scene in terms of what his character wants and requiring him to take an objective stance on what is “best for the story”. Consensus is a poor tool in driving excitement, a roleplaying game does not have teeth if you stop to ask the other players if it’s OK to actually challenge their characters."

That the "holy grail of RPG design" is that the player's viewpoint is that the entire game is based around "nothing by choices made in playing his character."

By this measure, that the player is always in character, and making decisions as that character, then the methods the DM uses to present the world, events, encounters, etc. are irrelevant.

The method that the GM uses to present the world, events, etc is absolutely central. Here are the key passages again, with some highlighting:

One of the players is a gamemaster whose 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 (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . .

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.

The GM . . . needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).​

This is what makes it story now. The aspiration is that every moment of play is a story, in the sense that something is happening that matters to the dramatic needs of these characters; and that this is achieved by the players playing the characters they have built and the GM framing scenes and adjudicating action declarations[ made by the players for their PCs. If the GM is framing scenes (eg moments of haggling, or marauding wolves) that don't speak to anyone character's dramatic needs, then we don't have story now. If the GM is adjudicating results not by reference to action declarations that express dramatic need, but rather by reference to secret backstory, then we don't have story now.

I think Eero's Model has some contradictions. If one of the roles is to:

"frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications."

Then how can the story be "nothing by choices made by playing (the) character?" As soon as the DM fades to black at the end of one framed scene, then fades up on the next scene, you've removed a big chunk of player decisions from the game. Sure, it might make for a great story, but it's now the DM's story, not the PC's.

Well, I can report that there is no contradiction, as I (and many others) run games in this fashion.

You have misquoted Eero Tuovinen. He doesn't say that "the story is nothing but choices made by playing the character". He says that "from the player’s viewpoint . . . he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character." That is, the player doesn't have to make any effort to create a story other than by playing his/her PC.

And the GM doesn't have to make any effort to create a story other than by framing the PCs into scenes that speak to dramatic need. (Eg the GM doesn't need a whole lot of notes such as one might find in a typical "event-driven" module.)

The story emerges from the sequence of situation -> choices -> action declarations -> consequences -> new situation -> etc. What is crucial to this is that the situation, at each point, speaks to dramatic need as established by build and play of the PCs.

It is therefore the exact opposite of most event-driven modules that I am familiar with, which are replete with devices (like back-up clues, back-up BBEGs, etc) all intended to ensure that whatever the outcomes of action declarations, nothing will change and the situation will remain constant.

Where I think this theory is wrong is in not allowing the player to determine the "moments of choice." I totally agree that you should not "ask the player to determine whether it would be “cool” if the villain were revealed to be the player character’s father." And if all he's talking about is deciding as the DM when to reveal information like this, then I'm fine with it.

It's really his procedural description that I have some issue with, particularly the bolded selection:

"The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end."

His holy grail is that the players can make decisions entirely as the characters (which I agree 100% with), but then takes away some of that ability to make decisions by instructing the DM to frame the scenes, and implying that the only scenes that should remain are those that is "interesting" in "relation to the premise of the setting or character."

But the only people that should be deciding whether it's interesting or not is the players.

I'm not sure what you think the force of the should is. And I'm not sure what method you have in mind either.

In the "standard narrativistic model", the "players [establish] concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes". As part of this, the players inform the GM what the dramatic needs of the PCs are. The GM is then obliged to frame a scene that speaks to this.

Luke Crane describes the same thing in these terms in the BW rulebooks:

The next page of both rulebooks goes on to discuss "the sacred and most holy role of the players", who "have a number of duties", to:

[O]ffer hooks to their GM and the other players in the form of Beliefs, Instincts and Traits . . .

[L]et the character develop as play advances . . . don't write a [PC] history in which all the adventure has already happened . . .

se their character to drive the story forward - to resolve conflicts and create new ones . . . to push and risk their characters, so they grow and change in surprising ways . . .​

The players offer hooks; the GM uses those hooks to frame scenes.

If the players, in fact, find the situation the GM frames unengaging (which can happen - humanity is frail, after all) then Luke Crane has the following advice:

Use the mechanics . . .

If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself.

But the player, in creating those interesting situations, is nevertheless going to have to work with what the GM has provided, because games run on this model do not require, nor empower, the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice. The player cannot frame his/her own challenge (that's the Czege Principle being applied).

I can't tell you how many games I've seen where a DM was running a published or pre-planned adventure, and the DM had put something of great importance in front of the PCs, only for them to completely ignore it and go someplace else entirely.

This is the exact opposite of the "standard narrativistic model". This is the sort of railroading play that the model is a reaction against.

There is no pre-planning of the sort you describe here in the "standard narrativistic model". Because all subsequent framing depends on prior consequences, and hence on prior choices plus the process of resolution. And so can't be known in advance.

This is why Tuovinen stresses that an important GM skill is to "figure out consequences". Whereas the whole point of the sort of published adventure you describe is to make consequences irrelevant because everything has been worked out in advance.

The only place where I think Eero misses is that the players should be in control of the story.

No one is in control of the story. It emerges from the process of situation -> choices -> action declarations -> consequences -> new situation -> etc - until, as he says, "all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end". It is the players who decide what those outstanding issues are. This is why I describe this sort of RPGing as "player-driven".