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

[Manbearcat]

Right quick.

Here is the origin point and the relevant bits of Vincent Baker's "Say Yes or Roll the Dice."

DitV 138

Drive Play Toward Conflict

Every moment of play, roll dice or say yes.

If nothing's at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they're doing. Just plain go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they're there. If they want it, its theirs.

Sooner or later...sooner, because your Town is pregnant with crisis...they'll have their players do something that someone won't like. Bang! Something's at stake. Launch the conflict and roll the dice.

So.

Is something at stake? Yes? Roll dice.

Is something not at stake? No? Say yes!

If there is no conflict, no danger, no threat...say yes. Otherwise, roll dice.

The same thing goes for Apocalypse World and its derivatives. For instance, every swing of a sword in DW isn't a "Hack and Slash" move. Sometimes its "the thing is dead/destroyed" or "roll damage."

There is plenty of advice in pretty much all PBtA games that speaks to eliding content, zooming in or out, and basically saying "yes." Just like in Dogs, PBtA GMs are meant to drive play toward conflict, make the character's lives not boring, fill the character's lives with adventure, etc. So the overwhelming majority of play is going to feature a gamestate that is threatening something the PCs' care about. However, there will be moments where nothing is (or really should be, given context) at stake. So you say yes rather than rolling the dice.

 

[Manbearcat]

Dogs is heavy prepped.

Hmmm...

I think you may be smuggling more into Dogs than Dogs has natively.

I mean, you:

a) Have a game with a focused premise (Gods watchdogs meting out justice in a wild west that never was that is shot through with (supernatural?) sin. There is loads of conflict there.

b) Have characters that have relationships and traits and stuff. That will flag extra-Dogs premise stuff that conflict should be driven toward.

c) You make a Town with the genre tropes of Dogs, the premise, and the characters' "stuff" in mind. So you pick probably 3-4 sins that are relevant and create some NPCs (with stats) with machinations and weakness and wickedness and throw it in a blender. And you don't want all of your NPCs to be too fixed before play because you aren't just revealing the towns to the players...you're revealing the town to yourself through play (there is no "plot").

d) You let the players take the lead and then you drive play toward conflict and escalate things. That is one session. Afterward, you collectively Reflect and all of this stuff leads to the next session.

Its really not much different from Apocalypse World et al. I mean, probably my longest pre-session prep for Dogs was...15 minutes?

 

[Manbearcat]

Unrelated to what I'm about to post, I just want to say that conversation has moved along rather well and looks to have been pretty profitable overall.

Because for nearly the entire history of RPGs, the authority to say "No" has been abused by far too many GMs, in far too many games, producing far too much un-fun, un-interesting, Mother-May-I? kinds of gameplay.

Heavy-handed, railroad-y, "My way or the highway," selfishly-motivated GM-ing has done more damage to the tabletop RPG hobby than literally anything else. No other single factor---including whatever "Edition War" you want to point a camera at---has had nearly as negative an impact. Period.

While I agree with your post here, let me provide a quick angle of dissent (I was going to do a post on "The Utility of No", but this abridge version will suffice).

Skilled Play Dungeon or Hexcrawl games rely upon no.

Although Apocalypse World is neither a Skilled Play game nor does it entail a "The Utility of No" principle in its GMing, the below is apropos:

AW p82

If you’re playing the game as the players’ adversary, your decision-making responsibilities and your rules-oversight constitute a conflict of interests. Play the game with the players, not against them.

GMing a Basic dungeon crawl requires neutral refereeing to achieve a particular end; "test a player's skill in dungeoneering with this character within this group setup." That test and that neutral refereeing require a preconceived gamestate (the stocked dungeon and its map + key) and a neutral adjudication of player interactions with that gamestate (interactions that wish to change it in a way that moves toward the game's "win condition"). In order to do that, an objective, and benign, "no" is an essential and natural component of play.

 

[Aldarc]

Maybe, but my window on the greater gaming community these days is pretty much what I read in here - and saying no in these parts ain't so popular.

There is only an exceedingly small sliver of people who participate in these sort of TTRPG philosophy discussions on an exceedingly small sliver of the online TTRPG community. If this is your window, you are basically looking though a needle's eye.

The only thing I see this approach accomplishing is the removal of some of the mystery from the game/setting. Many times the tension and sense of mystery is increased when the DM calls for rolls for no reason whatsoever in order to disguise the real roll when it happens...just as one example.

We have had this disagreement before, and you didn't show much sign of listening before either, so this will likely be a dead end again.

Which, taken to it's conclusion, means the players are each time setting both the problem (mystery) and its solution; and then hoping the dice co-operate and don't drag in too many complications. Isn't that like reading the end of a murder novel to find out whodunnit and then reading through the rest to see how things got there?

When you see someone lead off a point like this, then there is a good sign that a fallacy of reductio ad absurdum will follow, and you didn't disappoint on that front at least. But to answer your question, "no." Your question presumes a railroad-style play, as one would find in novels where there is (typically) a prescripted linear progression of plot.

With a "puzzle", as you call it, the players via their PCs have to think to find a solution; and have to accept 'no' sometimes when their ideas don't (or can't) work.

Yes, I understand that, which is why I acknowledged the utility of 'no' for such games, but not all games aspire to this schema or are designed around it. And incidentally, [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] touches a bit on this point in his round of posts before mine.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic.

And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue.

Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."

Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board became GMs in the first place because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?

I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."

And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives.

But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done.

The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest somewhere. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM.

But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.

Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?

If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play.

Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."

As someone who managed a successful hobby shop for half a decade and who is still very good friends with the owner of that shop, RPGs have about the average level of dysfunction among hobbies. The only real difference is that RPGs are a social hobby so it's more on display. Hit up a model train club sometime and you might be surprised/horrified.

My two biggest "problem" customer groups were train guys and Napoleonic wargamers, for largely the same reason -- obsessive attention to detail and a failure to understand why we would just order a pack of this expensive unique color of paint so they could buy one. Now, most of my train guys were fantastic people, some of whom just made my day better when they stopped by. Some of the Napoleonics were okay, too. But, if it was gonna be a bad interaction, I'd have done well betting on it being a train guy.

 

[Aldarc]

Hardly a surprise, [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]. No one likes a railroader.

 

[pemerton]

Well, I don't know what to say...

I own both rulebooks and I know for a fact that in Dogs there is the chapter for Gms to prep adventures (that are called Towns because every session involves a different town) along with Npc, ralationships, events and the infamous hyerarchy of sins flowchart.
I can show the pictures later on.

About Dw, of course the first session Gm and Players are supposed to build the setting together, but I don't know of any rule that allows Pc to produce new content on the fly during the game and no check involved. Yes there is the Move called Spout Lore, but the info is given away by the gm.

I own and have read rulebooks for both DitV and DW, but have never GMed either and have not played DitV at all.

I would like to GM DitV - not as a western but reflavouring as some sort of paladin-esque thing - and have thought about how the prep rules would work with my preferred style of play. It doesn't surprise me that you have found it challenging in actuality - to me it looks challenging when I think about how I would do it.

An intereseting feature of the DitV rulebook is the bit where Vincent talks about GM techniques for revealing the information about the town, and who is sinning in reltaion to whom, etc. He contrasts the proper approach for DitV with a more traditional approach where the GM doesn't reveal the secret information until the players declare the right sorts of actions to "naturalistically" uncover it. Speaking a bit loosely, and also without the benefit of actual play experience, I would say that the advice for the DitV GM is to treat the whole town as something like a framed scene, with the information being revealed by the GM to the player by way of presenting the situation - and hence as an input into action declaration - rather than the information being something that will be revealed to the players as part of the output of action resolution. I've tried to use a similar sort of approach in my Traveller game, although it hasn't got the same intricacy, nor the moral/dramatic heft, of DitV's sin-ridden towns.

With regard to DW and secret doors, it seems to me that if a player delcares that his/her PC is searching for secret doors then that would probably be Discern Realities (perhaps Spout Lore if the players approach is to reflect on his/her PC's knowledge of architecture and engineering) - which if it succeeds doens't grant the player the authority to establish a secret door as part of the backstory. This is a contrast with (say) Burning Wheel, where a player can declare: I am searcing the wall for signs of secret doors, drawing on my architectural training and then the GM sets a DC for the Architecture skill check - if the check succeeds, intent and task both succeed so the PC identifies an architecturally discernible secret door; if the check fails, the GM narrates some salient adverse consequence instead (eg mabye the archtiectral feature the PC noticed is actually the trigger for a trap!).

EDIT: More stuff along the same lines in reply to this subsequent post:

Re: Say Yes or Roll
Seems like there a basic misunderstandig. To me SYOR regards only action declaration by players in the present situation, and in case the Gm does not agree, the table resorts to dice rolling to resolve it. Nothing to do with creating new fiction, new content, outside the range of Pc actions.

<snip>

So regarding OD&D, I mean Say Yes, in a typical encounter, after the situation is introduced by the Dm, the Pcs declare they don't want to enter combat and propose a different plan, the Dm can say yes or let them roll = resolve the encounter via combat. Simple as that; and since PX were gained via Gold and not number of encounters cleared like today, combat was a sort of last resort.

In classic D&D, I look for a secret door is a permissible action declaration. But it is not normally resolved via application of "say 'yes' or roll the dice". The GM is entitled to declare the attempt to find a secret door a failure without calling on the rolling of dice.

Maybe your phrase action declaration by players in the present situation is meant to cover this - a secet door is not part of the present situation, because the GM's notes say the wall is solid wihout doors (secret or otherwise) - but then (trying to stick to my interpretation of your terminology) you get a dynamic of game play where the players are never quite sure what action declartions are genuinely feasible in the "exploration" parts of the game, because the GM does not make all the important elements of the situation overt in his/her framing.

It seems to me that this is what Vincent is getting at in his advice in DitV about revealing secrets - he is trying to avoid this sort of circumstance, where some action declarations will just fail because the present situation doesn't allow for them because of secret elements the GM hasn't revealed.

Infact if a game does not have a resolution system for content creation/narrative authority etc, which dice is one supposed to roll if doesn't say yes?

Well, that sort of game - eg 2nd ed AD&D - probably can't be run applying "say 'yes' or roll the dice"!

 

[pemerton]

I think games like Traveller and Runequest reacted against D&D's ethos of "We made up some we thought would be fun" with a much stronger emphasis on world simulation, with the aim of greater immersion. They are less 'gamey' than D&D - both in the sense of less emphasis on "What would be Fun?" and also less emphasis on player challenge & victory conditions. This tangentially leads in Traveller's case to the result you experienced.

I think I'm in agreement up to the last sentence. But then I'm not sure - could you say more?

To elaborate a bit: to me, the loyalty subsystem and sage subsystem in Gygax's AD&D don't seem to me to examples of "We made stuff up we thought would be fun" - they have the feeling of not having been played1 much at all; or, perhaps, of attempts to present stuff that was done by Gygax and co in an ad hoc and improvisational fashion in post hoc systematic fashion, without regard to the fact that this pushed it towards the unplayable.

The stuff in AD&D that does come across as having actually been played is also quite playable - eg the wandering monster charts, the rules for finding secret doors, really most of the dungeoneering stuff.

Writing this elaboration has maybe led me to unestand what your post is getting at, but I'll spell it out so you can tell me if I'm right or not: the world-simuation/non-gamey aspect of Traveller creates design/playtest pressure to have workable subsystems to do that - they're not just semi-hypothetical options for those who want to drift the game away from its core "gamey" experience.

Also, XP not Laugh for the other post because how to run 4e well is no laughing matter!

 

[Manbearcat]

An interesting feature of the DitV rulebook is the bit where Vincent talks about GM techniques for revealing the information about the town, and who is sinning in relation to whom, etc. He contrasts the proper approach for DitV with a more traditional approach where the GM doesn't reveal the secret information until the players declare the right sorts of actions to "naturalistically" uncover it. Speaking a bit loosely, and also without the benefit of actual play experience, I would say that the advice for the DitV GM is to treat the whole town as something like a framed scene, with the information being revealed by the GM to the player by way of presenting the situation - and hence as an input into action declaration - rather than the information being something that will be revealed to the players as part of the output of action resolution.

This is exactly right.

Here is the thing. Anyone that has GMed DitV and AW can see the obvious through-line between the two. In so many ways you could crib the GMing advice from one directly to the other and you would have virtually the same play experience as you are currently (its just organized a bit differently).

Follow the players lead = Ask provocative questions and use the answers

Play/Actively reveal the Towns = Barf forth apocalyptica and make everyone human

Do not have a solution in mind/there is no story/no plot points = Play to find out what happens

Escalation = Moves snowball

Towns/Sin = Threats

With regard to DW and secret doors, it seems to me that if a player delcares that his/her PC is searching for secret doors then that would probably be Discern Realities (perhaps Spout Lore if the players approach is to reflect on his/her PC's knowledge of architecture and engineering) - which if it succeeds doens't grant the player the authority to establish a secret door as part of the backstory. This is a contrast with (say) Burning Wheel, where a player can declare: I am searcing the wall for signs of secret doors, drawing on my architectural training and then the GM sets a DC for the Architecture skill check - if the check succeeds, intent and task both succeed so the PC identifies an architecturally discernible secret door; if the check fails, the GM narrates some salient adverse consequence instead (eg mabye the archtiectral feature the PC noticed is actually the trigger for a trap!).

This is also correct. Discern Realities has an exact example of secret doors.

But here is the thing on that. You have to reflect back upon the game's Agenda and the GMing Principles. What applies here is:

* Play to find out what happens

* Draw maps, leave blanks

* Ask questions and use the answers

* Begin and end with the fiction

So here is the likely course of events with a Dungeon World GM and a burned out tavern where the players hoping to find survivors or signs of what happened here.

1) GM may have a rough idea of maybe 2-3 things that may have happened here but they aren't sure (because they're playing to find out).

2) The player says something like "Inns have cellars for dry goods, spirits and the like. Maybe someone hid in there and locked it when whatever went down. I move all of the debris from behind the bar and look for some kind of pull or something on the seared floorboards."

3) This is basically an "ask questions and use the answers" moment (but sort of inverted).

4) The GM will not have anything nearing a blueprint (if they have anything at all and aren't just ad-libbing it) of the inn; "leave blanks."

5) "Begin and end with the fiction" comes up here as the GM is using that input from the player and thinking yeah, the "begin with the fiction" proposition of a spirit/dry goods basement behind the bar makes sense in multiple ways.

6) Is something at stake? Yeah. Survivors. The possible answer to whatever happened here (intel). Possible assets (maybe a use of Adventuring Gear/Rations/Poutlice or a Cohort in this group of people since they owe the PCs their lives). So we don't "say yes" we "roll the dice."

7) What are we rolling the dice for? To find out if there is this secret door/tavern cellar and what is in there.

So, by a collection of proxies, a player is basically being afforded the opportunity to stipulate fiction with a successful Discern Realities move.

 

[Manbearcat]

As someone who managed a successful hobby shop for half a decade and who is still very good friends with the owner of that shop, RPGs have about the average level of dysfunction among hobbies. The only real difference is that RPGs are a social hobby so it's more on display. Hit up a model train club sometime and you might be surprised/horrified.

My two biggest "problem" customer groups were train guys and Napoleonic wargamers, for largely the same reason -- obsessive attention to detail and a failure to understand why we would just order a pack of this expensive unique color of paint so they could buy one. Now, most of my train guys were fantastic people, some of whom just made my day better when they stopped by. Some of the Napoleonics were okay, too. But, if it was gonna be a bad interaction, I'd have done well betting on it being a train guy.

I just want to comment on this right quick.

I agree that RPGs have about "the average level of dysfunction among hobbies." I also agree with the wargaming and train culture (and the whys that you explained). I've known people in those communities as well.

I've known tons of people in various drug cultures, rave communities, writing workshops, archery, hunting, outdoorsmanship.

I've been deeply involved in various athletic communities from baseball (at all levels), to football, to basketball, to hockey, to golf, to tennis. I've been deeply involved in the Brazilian Jiu jitsu community when it was first becoming popularized in the States (from 95 to 2001). Believe it or not, the Jiu jitsu community is easily the most humble, kind, and least prone toward negative male traits of all of the communities I've ever encountered (despite the fact that it hooks directly into classical evolutionary male dominance hierarchy mechanics).

Our culture is no better or worse than any of these others, even though it gets a bad reputation for dysfunction (and in fact, there is a decent amount of "closet overlap" between our community and these other communities).

One thing that really frustrates me is our (humans) bias toward treating a dataset that features a few bad actors amongst a whole host of benign (or decent...or rigorously decent) actors and then representing the entirety of that dataset (therefore all members of the community by proxy) as undesirable thing x. That is, definitionally, bigotry. But that mental shorthand had its use for hundreds of thousands of years when humans needed decisive models (even if mostly wrong) to answer acute selection pressures inherent to being a social animal that competes for resources (which probably ramped up significantly about 12,000 years ago when we stopped our wandering hunter/gatherer ways and began developing fixed settlements and developing methods to work, and compete for, fertile land).

While it will take a long, long, long time to undo that programming, even though it frustrates me, I wish we were (a) much more understanding of people who deploy it still (because of that profoundly deep heritage) while (b) we work (fairly and deliberately) to slowly undo its foothold as a reflexive mental model.