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

[pemerton]

"DADDY YOUR GAME IS UNINTERESTING, BORING, INCOHERENT, SUCKY NONSENSE AND YOU'RE TERRIBLE AT THINKING ON YOUR FEET SO IT LOOKS LIKE THIS GAME DOESN'T WORK CAN WE PLAY SOMETHING ELSE PLEASE?"

This reminds me of a Ron Edwards post that I've posted from time-to-time: if your "story now"/"scene framed" game sucks, what you probably need to work on is coming up with interesting situations!

 

[Lanefan]

Why would you ever do this? Why go back and tamper with anything?

You said you hate retcons, and here you say that the problem is if you want to retcon things.

No, the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.

The only way to avoid the evil these retcons represent is to not allow major elements to be introduced out of nowhere...which is pretty much my whole point. If your PC didn't have a noble background at char-gen and the run of play hasn't given it one in the meantime, then no noble background for you. The same constraints apply equally to the GM, of course: if the town didn't even have a defensive wooden palisade two weeks ago when the PCs last were here it can't* suddenly have centuries-old feet-thick walls now.

* - barring the vagaries of wishes etc., but it would soon be obvious by the behaviour of the townsfolk that those walls came out of nowhere.

And this also sums up much of my issue with the 'no-myth' type of games where everything is made up on the fly: sure it can work great for a while when there's little-to-no established fiction, but the longer the campaign goes and as more and more fictional elements get established (and thus locked in), the more care has to be taken that things introduced now aren't invalidating things established earlier; all in the name of internal consistency. This puts a ton of work on the GM's shoulders** to keep everything straight; and as nobody is perfect it's inevitable errors will happen. Minor errors can usually be smoothed over. Major errors (of which I'd count my wagon example as one) wreck the game.

** - nothing at all says it can't be a player doing most or all of the recordkeeping; but I call out the GM specifically here as someone has to be the final arbiter should disagreements arise in the collective table memory regarding something bit of established fiction, and that would usually be the GM.

And the inevitable corollary question: if someone introduces a fictional element that might cause these sort of consistency problems, is anyone else (be it the GM or another player) allowed to veto it then and there on those grounds?

 

[Lanefan]

No.

There is some established fiction - call it F. And there is a newly-introduced element - call it X.

I am confident for any F, and for any X, there are indefinitely many ways of reconciling them as fictions - call these R. Any valid R will render it evident (if it's not already) why F happened given that X.

Of course.

But let's add a few more variables, shall we? Let's say F fiction was established at time 1, and X is being introduced somewhat later at time 2; and the fiction that came between these events is, in sum total, FF.

Back at 1, F was established using the known information at the time - information of which X would have been a part had it been introduced at or before 1; and from there FF proceeded.

Now we get to 2, and X is introduced. And while you can come up with many versions of R that maintain FF, my contention is that had X been known at 1 then the resulting fiction could just as easily have been GG or HH or II or JJ by now - all different fictions that are not FF that could have happened but did not because X wasn't known about. This calls all of FF into question, and in the worst case renders it completely invalid.

You seem to be focusing on identifying possibilities that aren't R - call them N - which exhibit tension between F and X. Obviously there are indefinitely many Ns also, but I don't know why you are focusing on the Ns rather than the Rs. We already know that no N is a valid candidate for the evolving shared fiction, and so there's no need to obsess over them as opposed to work on giving effect to some R or other.

We don't already know that one or more Ns are not valid candidates - just because they weren't what was played out doesn't invalidate them - and had X been known back at time 1 then who knows where the fiction might have gone. It might have stayed true to FF, for all we know - but the very fact that it might not have is what calls it into question.

Put another way, introducing X now in effect retcons X as having been present all along; meaning the fiction needs to also be retconned in order to account for the presnece of X the entire time. And as retcons are bad, the simplest way to prevent this is to veto X on the spot.

In my personal experience this isn't that hard. And is a fundamental GMing skill. (The earliest D&D mechanic that I'm aware of that requires deploymnent of this skill is the wandering monster mechanic.)

Yeah, the whole bit about where do they come from, how come there's a seemingly infinite supply of them, why don't they beat each other up more often when of clearly opposed types, and all that. Never been a fan of it, paticularly in a closed dungeon setting.

Some module authors are wise enough to give the DM a total for each wandering monster type (and sometimes they even note where they'll be found if not met wandering) which then gets counted down by the DM as the PCs knock them off, until none are left. This is an excellent start; now all I have to consider is whether the different types of wandering monsters will get along. (e.g. what are the odds of the 2d4 wandering guards [based in room 14] getting in a fight with the 1d3 wandering giant ants [from the nest in cave 23] should they ever happen to meet; and how many of each would survive?)

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.

No you don’t.

I mean, we could be working with a different definition of retcon, but you don’t have to change anything. Everything happened as it did. There’s no reason the new element introduced needs to be contradictory.

In the event of any possible contradictions, you figure out why there is no contradiction. The new element fits into the established fiction.

Now, there of course could be cases where contradiction can’t be avoided, or there is just no satisfactory way toget the new thing to fit. In such cases, maybe the new element has to be denied or changed a bit. I think it’d be a case by case thing.

I mean, Blades in the Dark allows for flashbacks. The players can call for a flashback to reveal something their character had done earlier. By your reasoning, this game element cannot work. Yet it does.

The only way to avoid the evil these retcons represent is to not allow major elements to be introduced out of nowhere...which is pretty much my whole point. If your PC didn't have a noble background at char-gen and the run of play hasn't given it one in the meantime, then no noble background for you. The same constraints apply equally to the GM, of course: if the town didn't even have a defensive wooden palisade two weeks ago when the PCs last were here it can't* suddenly have centuries-old feet-thick walls now.

* - barring the vagaries of wishes etc., but it would soon be obvious by the behaviour of the townsfolk that those walls came out of nowhere.

Anything added to the fiction has the risk of being contradictory. Do you think it’s the case that the DM is better suited to avoiding such contradictions? Or that players are more susceptible?

Are you worried only about what’s been established? Or are you equally worried about potential story elements that haven’t yet been introduced being contradicted?

And this also sums up much of my issue with the 'no-myth' type of games where everything is made up on the fly: sure it can work great for a while when there's little-to-no established fiction, but the longer the campaign goes and as more and more fictional elements get established (and thus locked in), the more care has to be taken that things introduced now aren't invalidating things established earlier; all in the name of internal consistency. This puts a ton of work on the GM's shoulders** to keep everything straight; and as nobody is perfect it's inevitable errors will happen. Minor errors can usually be smoothed over. Major errors (of which I'd count my wagon example as one) wreck the game.

It seems like it could be a reasonable concern. Which game did you have in mind? Have you played any such games?

** - nothing at all says it can't be a player doing most or all of the recordkeeping; but I call out the GM specifically here as someone has to be the final arbiter should disagreements arise in the collective table memory regarding something bit of established fiction, and that would usually be the GM.

For me, I find that sharing the burden of tracking all this information with the players makes it easier. We talk about that stuff all the time...kind of recap things to make sure everything’s clear. I do this in bith my D&D game and my Blades in the Dark game. With Blades, that’s more the expected mode, but I find it useful in D&D as well.

Funny enough, in D&D we don’t keep written campaign log of any kind. In Blades, I use the Score Tracker included in the game to keep a breif summary of each score.

And the inevitable corollary question: if someone introduces a fictional element that might cause these sort of consistency problems, is anyone else (be it the GM or another player) allowed to veto it then and there on those grounds?

That’s a gokd question. I would hope that the game would address this in some way. I think most games that allow this kind of thing do have processes for how to handle this. Blades in the Dark works as a conversation between the players and GM, and does place final judgment with the GM. But it does allow for player introduced content, including flashbacks, and it also encourages discussion and trying to persuade the GM.

In D&D, this isn’t the expected method of play, so it’s not really addressed. If a group wanted to play this way, they’d have to decide how such instances should be handled. In my game, we have a discussion about it and try to make the idea work. If we can’t, then we change it or deny it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Of course.

But let's add a few more variables, shall we? Let's say F fiction was established at time 1, and X is being introduced somewhat later at time 2; and the fiction that came between these events is, in sum total, FF.

Back at 1, F was established using the known information at the time - information of which X would have been a part had it been introduced at or before 1; and from there FF proceeded.

Now we get to 2, and X is introduced. And while you can come up with many versions of R that maintain FF, my contention is that had X been known at 1 then the resulting fiction could just as easily have been GG or HH or II or JJ by now - all different fictions that are not FF that could have happened but did not because X wasn't known about. This calls all of FF into question, and in the worst case renders it completely invalid.

This is really strange. It’s making an issue where none needs to exist.

It’s the equivalent of being thirsty, and someone hands you a glass of water, and you toss it aside and grab a glass of sand instead.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] - one moral of your posts is that there's no uniform thing good GMing (and hence no uniform thing jerk GMing). This can be set out in terms of both risks and skills.

An obvous risk in GMing AD&D in a non-class dungeoncrawling context (and 2nd ed AD&D really brings this risk to the fore) is railroading/"Mother may I" - because the system simply lacks a mechanical framework beyond GM decides for making important decision about the fiction outside of combat. We can see this in the orc cannibilism chase situation: AD&D barely has the mechanics to determine whether or not the PCs forgoing rest lets them catch the orcs (at best there are movement rates, but nothing for determining whether eg the orcs get slowed by a flooded creek or twisted ankles), let alone for determining how frequently and how many children the orcs eat.

That particular risk simply doesn't arise in (say) Burning Wheel, which has robust mechanics for resolving an indefinitely wide range of conflicts.

A risk that arises in classic ("skilled play"/dungeoncrawling) D&D is that the GM lacks impartiality and "gets involved". And the flipside of that is that a good GM for that sort of game need the skill of remaining impartial and impassive, and of judging what's the proper amount of information to communicate so as to keep the "free kriegsspiel" going but not just telegraph the solutions. As I've often posted, it's a skill I lack.

Conversely, my love of getting involved - of taunting and poking the players and seeing how far and in which direction I can push them - which would be a liability if I was running a ToH tournament, is a virtue when GMing Burning Wheel, or Prince Valiant, or 4e. It lets the players know what I think is at stake in a situation, gives them something to play off and push back against, creates conversations in which they can correct misapprehensions if they think I've made them, etc.

That's not to say that there can't be multi-purpose systems. A lot of people think of Classic Traveller as a game to be GMed by an impartial referee. But I'm finding it to be eminently playable in something closer to a DW style (and even in the original, 1977 rulebooks there are passages that point in this direction, like the observation (Book 3 p 19) that "in many cases" the referee "has a responsibility" "to impose encounters to further the cause of the adventure being played").

But most systems tend to foreground one set of skills and techniques and make some other approaches a liability. A strong sense of how things will unfold is pretty crucial if a GM-driven, 2nd ed AD&D type game is going to reliably produce strong story - if the GM doesn't bring that to the table, then in the absence of mechanics that will reliably deliver it, or player authority to do it, where's it going to come from? (Hence we get the typical AD&D 2nd ed era, CoC, etc module design.)

But bringing that inclination to the GMing of (say) a DW game will just cause headaches and heartaches.

 

[pemerton]

No you don’t.

I mean, we could be working with a different definition of retcon, but you don’t have to change anything. Everything happened as it did. There’s no reason the new element introduced needs to be contradictory.

In the event of any possible contradictions, you figure out why there is no contradiction. The new element fits into the established fiction.

Now, there of course could be cases where contradiction can’t be avoided, or there is just no satisfactory way toget the new thing to fit. In such cases, maybe the new element has to be denied or changed a bit. I think it’d be a case by case thing.

<snip>

I would hope that the game would address this in some way. I think most games that allow this kind of thing do have processes for how to handle this. Blades in the Dark works as a conversation between the players and GM, and does place final judgment with the GM. But it does allow for player introduced content, including flashbacks, and it also encourages discussion and trying to persuade the GM.

In D&D, this isn’t the expected method of play, so it’s not really addressed. If a group wanted to play this way, they’d have to decide how such instances should be handled. In my game, we have a discussion about it and try to make the idea work. If we can’t, then we change it or deny it.

To me this all seems very obvious. Which is not to criticise you for posting it (on the contrary - XP given!) but rather to say that it's odd to me that this needs spelling out in such detail.

I mean, the very first time a wandering monster appeared from around a corner that the PCs had themseles just walked around, the need to fit newly-authored elements into the established fiction arose. And it doesn't generally seem to have caused many crises.

the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.

Let's say F fiction was established at time 1, and X is being introduced somewhat later at time 2; and the fiction that came between these events is, in sum total, FF.

Back at 1, F was established using the known information at the time - information of which X would have been a part had it been introduced at or before 1; and from there FF proceeded.

Now we get to 2, and X is introduced. And while you can come up with many versions of R that maintain FF, my contention is that had X been known at 1 then the resulting fiction could just as easily have been GG or HH or II or JJ by now - all different fictions that are not FF that could have happened but did not because X wasn't known about. This calls all of FF into question, and in the worst case renders it completely invalid.

For someone who purports to hate metagaming, you sure do seem to do a lot of it!

Sure, had the authors of the fiction at T1 known that X was coming along at T2, they might have authored a different F. Just like, had Stan Lee invented Mysterio earlier, he might have used Mysterio rather than Sand Man (? am I remembering right?) as one of Spidey's first villains. Likewise, had the players or GM thought of X back at T1, they might have gone on to produce a different FF.

But so what? Those are all facts about how the game might have unfolded at the table - ie facts about authorship. It's all metagame speculation. The possibility that someone might have written a different FF is not a fact about the gameworld itself. FF is what it is. And X is what it is. So as far as the shared fiction is concerned, we already know that FF unfolded as it did despite X. There're almost always many readily available Rs that will explain how this is so - pick one!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, I see. The example was provided as an ...example.. of drama in Gm-driven play. I can't see any drama.
It's a quest, like many others.

While I agree it isn't presented so as to highlight all the drama, there seems to be quite a bit inherent in the situation. I've certainly watched movies with much weaker plots! I mean "can we catch up with the orcs before they eat our children" seems like a fairly dramatic concept for an adventure to me...

I agree it is presented in a rather DM-driven way, and the system that is assumed lacks a mechanism for determining levels of success and failure. This turns the tension of the situation into basically "how mean will the GM be to the imaginary children", but at least you can presume that the greater skill and alacrity evinced in the pursuit would let you advocate more strongly for less lunch and more child. I have already agreed that 4e and using SC mechanics, for example, vastly strengthen the whole concept. Furthermore you can imagine many subsidiary scenarios, do you pay 1000 gp to the trolls to let you use the bridge so you can gain a march on the orcs? That's all your treasure! Maybe the thief is not such a nice guy, do you beat him up and take his share, or do honor his choice and don't pay. Maybe you can fight the trolls. What does the thief owe the dwarf when the dwarf dies fighting them because the thief was stingy? Anyway, you can go on and on, and cast things in more fantastical or mundane, but equally fraught terms.

Nor need it be the end of things. This is a simple scenario in essence, but you can always ask all about why the orcs were there, who's to blame, should we be nicer to our neighbors or are they just subhuman, etc. (or other completely different questions as you wish). It is really the play process of scene framing and pushing on player interests and such that distinguishes the different types of game, not so much the narratives (though some are unlikely to result from specific types of game).

 

[pemerton]

Over the Edge (a Jonathan Tweet RPG) includes a three-column essay by Robin Laws, "The Literary Edge" (at pp 1912-93 of my 20th Anniversary edition).

I'm not going to type out the whole thing, but it has some interesting stuff to say about "metagaming" and about authorship of the shared fiction:

Role-playing games changed forever the first time a player said, "I know it's the best strategy, but my character wouldn't do that." Suddenly an aesthetic concern had been put ahead of a gaming one, ie establishing characterization over a scenario's "victory conditions." At that unheralded moment, role-playing stopped being a game at all and began quietly evolving into a narrative art form, a junior cousin of drama, film, and literature. . . .

The closest analogue to role-playing is improvised theatre, in which actors invent scenes as they go along. Participants must be receptive to contributions of others and use their own input to build on them. The Prime Directive of the improviser is “never negate,” which means that the actors must accept all ideas as they come up and work with them.

In role-playing, however, the GM is often called on to say “no” to players’ desires for their characters; this is because roleplaying games are ongoing epics centred around the adventure genre rather than brief comedy skits. The GM is responsible for decisions about characters’ successes in the physical world, and will often decide that attempts at given actions fail. After all, stories in which the leads breeze over every obstacle without opposition are undramatic and therefore fail to entertain.

But GMs should also be prepared to say “yes” to players when a suggestion inspires new possibilities for the storyline. In fact, a good GM will work to incorporate player input into his plans. In drama, character is the most important thing, and this element belongs to the players. The GM is not a movie director, able to order actors to interpret a script a given way. Instead, he should be seeking ways to challenge PCs, to use plot developments to highlight aspects of their character, in hopes of being challenged in return. . . .

When viewing role-playing as an art form, rather than a game, it becomes less important to keep from the players things their characters wouldn’t know. When character separate, you can “cut” back and forth between scenes involving different characters, making each PC the focus of his own individual sub-plot. This technique has several benefits. First, it allows players to develop characters toward their own goals without having to subsume them to the demands of the “party” as a whole. Secondly, it quickens the pace, allowing players to think while their characters are “off-screen,” cutting down on dead time in which players thrash over decisions. . . . Finally, this device is entertaining for players out of the spotlight, allowing them to sit back and enjoy the adventures of others’ characters.

The price of this is allowing players access to information know to PCs other than their own. But it’s simple enough to rule out of play any actions they attempt based on forbidden knowledge. This doesn’t mean there will be any shortage of mystery. Any OTE GM will still have secrets to spare. In fact, by allowing the number of sub-plots to increase, the GM is introducing even more questions the players will look forward to seeing answered.

GMs who employ this multi-plotting device will find it changes the nature of PC interaction, making meetings between them more remarkable and meaningful as they become rarer. Now PCs will interact because they want to for reasons arising from the story, not merely because they have to as part of a team. After all, parties of adventurers in roleplaying sessions are often made up of wildly disparate types who would never ally with each other, except for reasons outside the storyline: the players all want to be included, and the GM has one plotline prepared, so they all get shoehorned together. . . .

For years, role-players have been simulating fictional narratives the way wargamers recreate historical military engagements. They’ve been making spontaneous, democratized art for their own consumption, even if they haven’t seen it in these terms. Making the artistry conscious is a liberating act, making it easier to emulate the classic tales that inspire us. Have fun with it, and enjoy your special role in aesthetics history – it’s not everybody who gets to be a pioneer in the development of a new art form.​

You can see, in the notion of the GM establishing the fiction so as to challenge the PCs, the idea of “scene framed” play. You can also see, in the suggestion that GM decides is the main resolution mechanism, the underdevelopment of resolution techniques to fit scene-framing. (Prince Valiant is an earlier game than OtE, and has such techniques, but Greg Stafford was a pioneer and a genius!)

 

[Aldarc]

What part of metagaming being "Bringing in real world knowledge THAT THE PC DOESN'T HAVE." do you not understand?

The part where you actually manage to establish that this is knowledge that the PC doesn't have.