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

[pemerton]

Well, actually the GM does have some special status in that if she rejects the suggestion and doesn't add it in to the game there's nothing the players can really do about it.

No, there's no difference here - if the players reject the GM's suggested house rule and don't add it into the game then there's nothing the GM can really do about it.

The question of what rules a group of people is going to use to play a game is something that only the group can answer.

A GM can always say 'no' to something she doesn't want to run or doesn't want in the game.

And the same is true of players. There is nothing here but symmetry.

I pull out the smackdown hammer if-when PCs try to get involved in macro-economics and trade and stocks and futures and buy-low-sell-high and compound interest rather than adventuring (which one of my players in particular would looooove to do on the meta-level): I've flat-out said a long time ago that if they want to do this crap then they'll have to find someone else to DM it

Right. And if some other Victorian is offering to GM a trade-and-compound-interest game and all the players in the neighbourhood say If you want to run that crap then you'll have tofind someone else to play it then that GM won't get to play that particular game.

As I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just social negotiation where every participant is formally equal.

The players cannot force the DM to accept their wishes. They have no power to do so.

And the GM can't force the players to accept his/her wishes. S/he has no power to do so.

The DM has a house rule whether he has players or not. He has the house. He has the game. The rules of the game are changed. It won't do him much good without players, but the house rule exists.

This is abusrd sophistry. But if we're going to go down this path, then the player has his/her house rule too. That palyer has a game with that rule. It's just that no one is playing or refereeing it.

So then Player May I is a thing? If the DM doesn't have the authority, because the players can do as they wish, then it's Player May I, not Mother May I.

I don't even know what you're talking about here. This sub-topic is a discusion of settling the rules of play, not resolving actions. But "Mother may I" is a label applied to an approach to determining outcomes and consequences, in the fiction, of actions declared by the players for their PCs.

If you're asking is it possible to play a RPG in which the players have authority to determine certain outcomes, then the answer obviously is yes.

And, of course, it's possible to have a RPG in which authority to determin outcomes is allocated from resolution-event to resolution-event, often by rolling dice to see who - player of the PC, or GM - gets to decide.

 

[pemerton]

if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel surprised or even disappointed.

As would the PC; and this is perfectly fine. Same way I'd feel if I took a swig of water only to find I'd just downed a mouthful of Gilbey's Finest London Dry: I don't like gin, and so I'd be both surprised and disappointed...and probably a bit annoyed too.

So here's a fairly uncontroversial idea: bartenders who swap water for gin, or vic versa, aren't doing something perfectly fine. Even leaving aside the breach of laws that regulate the commercial provision of alcholic beverages, there is the social issue: they're doing wrong by their patrons.

And I can tell you, if I was playing in a game where a signficant number of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that wouldn't be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.

Actively chasing someone usually falls under combat

Says who? It could be a race. An attempt to deliver a message. This seems like sheer projection.

The same is true of your discussion of other examples. Eg buying things in BW is not mostly about social interaction at all, but is primarily about how the resource stat is affected.

crossing a desert = exploration.

<snip>

it all fell under the exploration pillar in terms of learning about the setting and how things work there.

In what sense is either case (the desert crossing, or me describing to the players the situation in which their PCs find themselves) exploration?

Here's how the 5e D&D Basic PDF describes exploration (p 5):

Exploration includes both the adventurers’ movement through the world and their interaction with objects and situations that require their attention. Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens.​

In my Traveller game, last session, a group of PCs was being pursued by mercenaries and Imperial Marines in a faster, better-armed vehicle, and so surrendered. I described to them the circumstances in which they found themselves as prisoners (incuding that there were force-fields of a particular type to keep warm air inside an open-air area). That's not exploration, that's just the GM describing the situation. Having the GM tell the players about the PCs' circumstances isn't exploration - isn't "interacting with objects". It's the functional equivalent of reading the boxed text in a module.

And the last time I adjudicated a desert crossing was in BW. The PCs knew where they were going. There was no exploration, either in the fiction (the PCs weren't exploring) or in the process of resolution (the players weren't learning the content of the fiction from the GM). The actual question resolved by the action resolution was whether or not they would make it to the foothills and find the fresh water there. The outcome - given the relevant check failed - was that when they got to the waterhole it had been fouled by an enemy. There was no "give-and-take" here, and the players weren't being told the result of their journey by the GM: there was a framed, and ultimately unscuccessful, Orienteering check. Had it succeeded, the players' vision for the fiction (safe arrival at fresh water) would have been what happened. But because it failed, I as GM got to establish an adverse vision of the fiction instead.

after the jump you're going to be somewhere you weren't before - a place which you either know through previous exploration or don't know and thus will probably want to explore - even if such exploration consists only of looking out the window (and-or checking the sensors) to see what's around you before jumping again to somewhere else.

But that's not what I talked about. I referred to the need to succeed at checks to avoid misjump, enging failure and the like.

RPGs can cover any ficitonal events that can be conveived of - and human endeaour extends beyond talking to people, fighting them and looking for them.

I wonder if you can name anything a PC might do or try to do within the fiction of an RPG that doesn't fall under one or more of the four pillars including downtime?

The "three pillars" of 5e, and your "four pillars", are a jumble of in-fiction and at-the-table characterisations of PC actions. In Cortex+ there are Action Scenes and Transition Scenes - differentiated both by their role in the fiction and (more importntly) their role in pacing and conflict at the table.

In Burning Wheel there is either "say 'yes'" or else there is confict, which is resolved via checks. Whether the conflict is about fighting, persuading, or makng it safely across a desert, the mechanical basics are the same.

But anyway, I've already listed some stuff that doesn't fall under any of your pillars, in that it is not fighting, not talking, and not just "give and take where players say what their PCs do and GM tells them what happens": runing a race; and ensuring that a spaceship successfully makes a jump. More examples would include successfully placing a secret message (happened in my second-to-last Traveller game), trying to ensure a message is sent to your family so they can join you at an event (happened in my last Prince Valiant game), intercepting or blocking communiation signals (a recurrent element in my Traveller game), repairing a vehicle, testing the DNA of an alien creature, making checks to avoid being caught doing illegal things (al Traveller again), lighting a campfire (Burning Wheel), recalling a fact, etc, etc.

The other half of the picture is, of course, hidden information that the PCs (and thus players) can't know until they discover it, sometimes the hard way.

<snip>

Information gathering of any kind is exploration.

<snip>

You aren't always going to describe every last little feature of a scene and nor is anyone else. Players can (1) ask for more (or more specific) info, or they can (2) declare actions that'll get them the info. Either way, for better or worse they should end up learning more

Spout Lore and Discern Realities (in DW), or the scenario I described from my Traveller game, are not the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. They don't involve the revelaion of hidden information (maybe in the fiction it might be hidden, but not necessarily). They're examples of players activating the mechanics to oblige the GM to make some stuff up! The sort of thing the GM makes up depends on the outcomes of the check(s) at issue.

5e D&D simply doesn't contemplate this sort of thing in its account of "exploration". And there are features of the game - namely, the lack of an appropriate system of checks - that would make it hard to introduce. (This is a marked contrast with 4e, which is easily run this way.)

So they never declare any action on the basis of "let's try this and see if it works"? No trial-and-error, intentional or otherwise?

In the fiction, of course this happens. In my Traveller game one of the PCs has Jack-of-all-Trades-4. But as a resolution method, no, not really. When actions are declared the players know the general way that resolution will be determined (eg in Traveller, the default is a 2 dice throw), and we throw the dice and see what happens.

It's not any sort of coincidence that this post keeps coming back to the framing of checks. Making checks is the most obvious alternative to GM decides in order to esetablish the content of the shared fiction.

 

[Sadras]

I said that I think it is obvious how the following might be a problem: a player who is hoping to change the fiction, by way of an action declaration for his/her PC, discovers - in virtue of how the GM approaches adjudication that s/he is really exploring the fiction.

The risk of such a problem is not obviated by pointing out that exploration is a "key pillar" of the game.

...(snip)...

Here's a slightly less trite illustration: if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel surprised or even disappointed.

I think this kind of thing happens in the Star Trek show all the time where they try to do something to find out they actually can't or what they attempt doesn't work at all. This really goes back to how do you like your puzzles in an RPG. Collaborative effort or not. IMO a player's disappointed when monster x makes their saving throw and crossing pillars makes no difference to the degree of disappointment. If fact the blending of pillars is quite a common experience within RPGs.

Surprise is generally not considered a negative emotion so I'm ok with hard no's which build on the exploration and puzzle feature. Again it is all a matter of taste.

 

[Sadras]

And I can tell you, if I was playing in a game where a signficant number of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that wouldn't be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.

Bold emphasis mine. When you say significant number, Max has every right to throw in jerk DM. When people are arguing extremes or making these things a common frequence the conversation devolves to what it has become with no insight reached from either side.

 

[Numidius]

(Alignment as constraint) But to me it seems a fairly common alternative to being left hanging around unsupported by the fiction.

In the closed-world version of high simulative immersive play, I've seen the Personality Traits (and ad-hoc background) used by Gm as leverage to obtain the auspicable course of action declarations from Pc. During play, enforced by in-character superNpc, later on, out of char, by the Gm to the Player. (Eg: Nature & Demeanor traits in Vampire the Masquerade)

The open world version (always IME) sees background and traits as burdens on the path of free roaming plot-less exploration.

Both need to heavily house-rule the system in order to obtain the desired gameplay. Getting rid of significant past Npc, BG, Traits, Goals, or viceversa reinforce them ad-hoc in order to keep the game inside a closed environment.
Btw those Gms were very good at what they did: skilled and self confident. The downside being that Pc actions were usually clueless and meaningless.
In both games, I joined because the Gm needed new blood to propel the stagnating game forward. They wouldn't change approach anyway, so, sooner or later, games came to an end. In the closed world, the Gm had me change Pc: I wasnt conformating to his expectations. In the open one, I rolled a second Pc to actively take the party out of the thermal pools.

Both games were very deadly combat-wise, so players spent most of the time trying not to engage any dangerous course of action. Npcs were very consistent personality-wise, but not so relatable by Pcs.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Bold emphasis mine. When you say significant number, Max has every right to throw in jerk DM. When people are arguing extremes or making these things a common frequence the conversation devolves to what it has become with no insight reached from either side.

The thing is, this actually describes a lot of D&D play, especially with modules that GM is running close to the printed material. It's pretty typical for a "find traps' attempt, for example, for the result to be whatever the GM already knows but is now telling the players. Quite often, this is 'no traps'. Sometimes it's "you spot [insert some clue about a possible trap]." I don't think this is at all uncommon in D&D play. For evidence, I point to Grimtooth's Traps, a popular 3.x 3rd party book (popular by sales) that details many complex and fiendish traps that are often designed to obscure the true danger from players on the basis of the initial 'find traps' attempt.

 

[Numidius]

This is not unique to Roman RPGing. I've encountered this phenomenon in Melbourne, Australia. (My town.)

Melbourne, cool, or should I say "absolutely ice-box"? Long time ago I had this aussie friend during a sojourn in Cape Town, saying that all the time
I'm a fan of the Phillip Island circuit in motogp/superbike races, and on the playstation is my favourite track. Old style, flowing circuit in front of the sea, where the rider needs guts to be fast.

 

[pemerton]

I think this kind of thing happens in the Star Trek show all the time where they try to do something to find out they actually can't or what they attempt doesn't work at all.

I didn't talk about the character being surprised or even disappointed. I talked about the player - like turning up to an invitation to a bridge tournament only to find they're all playing poker instead.

Of course characters will be disappointed all the time in RPGing. The precise details of "all the time" will depend on failure rates built into the system - but the question I was addressing is whether that failure is (1) a result of GM decides, so that what a player puts forward as full-blooded action declaration (ie an attempt to change the fiction) turns out to be exploration (ie the GM has decided that such-and-such an approach can't work), or (2) a result of failing a check.

In my Traveller game a couple of weeks ago the PCs discovered that the people they were spying on were transmitting in an Imperial code that the PCs couldn't decode. But that was the result of failed action resolution (in that case, failed Education checks for the characters with an Imperial Navy background).

In DW, a 6- result on Discern Realities or Spout Lore will naturally result in the GM establishing some piece of backstory or embellishing the current situation in a way that is adverse to the situation of the PCs. That could include, for instance, discovering that a magical force field will block any attempts to teleport out.

The difference that I pointed to between action declaration that can change the fiction, and exploration, is a difference that operates at the table in the play of the game, not one that is discernible within, or pertains to, the content of the fiction itself.

Surprise is generally not considered a negative emotion so I'm ok with hard no's which build on the exploration and puzzle feature. Again it is all a matter of taste.

if I was playing in a game where a signficant number of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that wouldn't be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.

Bold emphasis mine. When you say significant number, Max has every right to throw in jerk DM.

I honestly don't understand how you can assert the two things I've quoted just above.

If it's a matter of taste - which is what I said in the OP of this thread - then how can someone be a jerk just because they have different tastes from mine?

From the way in which you post about them I am pretty sure that, for me, the games you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] run would fall foul of my "significant number" constraint. But presumably neither of you thinks that you are a jerk.

 

[pemerton]

Melbourne, cool, or should I say "absolutely ice-box"? Long time ago I had this aussie friend during a sojourn in Cape Town, saying that all the time

Not an ice-box - fairly similar, seasonally, to Rome. (Single digit max temperatures sometimes happen in winter, but not much, and there is no snow here except the - rather occasional - dusting of some nearby hills.)

Someone from further north in Australia would find it cold, but then they would find Rome cold too in winter! (To get Cape Town type temperatures here you have to go further north, up towards Brisbane - I was at the Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane, in winter last year and had a nice morning swim at the beach, with no need of a wetsuit, before heading off to my conference.)

 

[Maxperson]

Not necessarily, although it may also be a railroad.

I think there are likely 3 broad categories here, which could likely be broken down a bit more, but for the sake of this discussion it makes sense to keep it at 3. Three categories of GM Driven games. The first is an acceptable level of GM Authority. I think this is the way D&D and similar games are typically expected to run. The second is a game where the GM has too much authority and exercises it inconsistently. The third type is somewhere in between the first two.

Obviously, everyone is going to hate the second type, so it’s not even worth discussing beyond that. The third type is the gray area where opinions are going to vary. And I think this is the type of game most are trying to discuss. And you try to shift to talking about the second type.

I don't think that there are 3 types. I think that there are only 2. The first type you mention I don't think exists. No matter what level of authority a DM has, some will like it and some won't, and opinions will vary on how much is appropriate and how it should be used. That leaves us your number 2 and 3 as the only types out there.

"Mother May I" and "Railroad" DMs abuse their authority and most think those are bad. The rest want to discuss the grey area that's left.

The OP may have wanted to discuss the kind of game that falls into the grey area, but by inviting people to discuss things using the pejorative "Mother May I," even if it isn't how HE would refer to the games, he caused the discussion to devolve into hundreds of pages of arguing over the term and how it should not be applied to the playstyles people are trying to apply it to. People have strong feelings about the kinds of games they like being insulted by such terms. The OP should have said that he wanted to discuss X, and that no pejorative terms should be used in the discussion as they just cause problems and derail threads.

“Has the ability to...but doesn’t always exercise that power” is exactly what is being talked about. Again, it’s not about the tyrant DM.

I didn't say "doesn't always exercise that power." What I sad was "doesn't exercise that power." There''s a big difference between the two. Yours involves at least some instances of the DM railroading the players. Mine involves no such abuses, yet was still being called "Mother May I."

Well, this can vary. I do allow player creation of places or NPCs in my D&D game. But that’s a bit of a departure from what’s expected in the game. And there are obviously many other RPGs that function that way.

So the answer to the question depends on the system you’re playing and also how yoi’re playing it.

You’re obviously approaching the discussion with D&D in mind, so NPC or location creation and similar elements require DM approval. Correct?

So none of your PCs has ever been out for revenge against some villain that the player came up with? None of your players has never come up with family members for their PC?

Or do you restrict player introduced content only once play has actually begun?

As I mentioned in another recent response, during background I let the players come up with towns, NPCs, and sometime monsters if done well. During game play not so much, but it's not 100% unheard of and usually pertains to background that hasn't been fully fleshed out.

It’s not a problem with the system, I agree. Any game system has a desired outcome, so if play proceeds accordingly, then the system is working as intended. What we’re talking about is more an issue of a mismatch of system expectation and player expectation.

Such a mismatch is generally solved by leaving the game and finding players or a DM that matches your expectations. Occasionally, the players or DM can change and still enjoy the game.

Or they play a game differently.

I agree with that.