"Illusionism" and "GM force" in RPGing

[Manbearcat]

I tend to agree with the first 2.

I took a quick look at what the Failure example of Sway w/ Controlled Position in Blades. I'm curious what you think.

1-3 (Now Risky Position): He shakes his head the whole time you’re talking, making a face. “You’re right, I know! But I can’t do anything! You have to tell Vale to let me back into her crew. Then I’ll be safe, and I can do this for you.”

Neither DW nor AW (a) has codified moves for 6- on a Parley/Seduce or Manipulate and (b) neither comes with any examples (so you just have to follow the GMing agenda and principles to derive it).

Blades release post-dated this game in Dungeon World (which I think took place around 2014), but this looks like the formula I followed here:

1) Subsequent Position for Action becomes Risky.

2) The formula is an arrangement of "if you do x for me (related to the leverage inherent to the Sway move), then I'll do y for you". The "x" in the dog:Ranger interaction was "give me food and security" and the "y" was "I'll accompany you."

That looks to me to be pretty much in lockstep with how I handled it.

---

However, on the Defy Danger complication:

The dog running off into the frozen waste followed by a pitiful yelping and the emergence of a new threat swallowing its remains would be one.

The first part I could definitely get behind; the dog runs off yelping into the dark, frozen wilderness (thereby making an audible target of itself for predators to follow it, complicating the Ranger's goal and endangering its life).

That is absolutely a good way to go and may have yielded a more interesting snowball effect.

However, if I'm a player there and you outright kill the dog on a move I've had success on where my intent in this conflict/scene is "recover the dog", I feel like you've effed me to be honest. That looks like a Hard move on a 7-9.

Thoughts on those two?

 

[Nagol]

I took a quick look at what the Failure example of Sway w/ Controlled Position in Blades. I'm curious what you think.



Neither DW nor AW (a) has codified moves for 6- on a Parley/Seduce or Manipulate and (b) neither comes with any examples (so you just have to follow the GMing agenda and principles to derive it).

Blades release post-dated this game in Dungeon World (which I think took place around 2014), but this looks like the formula I followed here:

1) Subsequent Position for Action becomes Risky.

2) The formula is an arrangement of "if you do x for me (related to the leverage inherent to the Sway move), then I'll do y for you". The "x" in the dog:Ranger interaction was "give me food and security" and the "y" was "I'll accompany you."

That looks to me to be pretty much in lockstep with how I handled it.

---

However, on the Defy Danger complication:



The first part I could definitely get behind; the dog runs off yelping into the dark, frozen wilderness (thereby making an audible target of itself for predators to follow it, complicating the Ranger's goal and endangering its life).

That is absolutely a good way to go and may have yielded a more interesting snowball effect.

However, if I'm a player there and you outright kill the dog on a move I've had success on where my intent in this conflict/scene is "recover the dog", I feel like you've effed me to be honest. That looks like a Hard move on a 7-9.

Thoughts on those two?

The first is hard to fully interpret. Is it a simple refusal with a hint the situation can be reset by accomplishing the offered goal or is it a contract/promise that if you do X Y will follow? I'd be happy providing the first. "Nope you failed. You can't try again until the situation substantially changes -- here's one change I'd consider substantial enough".

On the second, I agree it'd be a Richard move to kill the dog on a partial success. There's no "yes but" or "yes and" it's just a messy version of 'no'. Removing the dog on an outright failure would be fully in line, I think.

 

[Doug McCrae]

These are from the article "Campaigning Champions" by Aaron Allston, in the Champions supplement Champions II (1982). Champions (1981) has wargame-style rules. There's nothing to promote, for example, the dramatic turnarounds and rising action of comic book superhero battles. Once one side starts to lose they tend to keep on losing.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's only force, at least in my understanding, when the GM is introducing material with the expectation of steering the game towards a specific later state. It's the GM framing gamestate B after A, because they've already thought of a cool gamestate C.

You mean like creating a dungeon and inserting it into the world and giving the PC's ample opportunity to hear about it in the hopes that they will find it interesting and explore it. From my understanding of the definition posted - that would constitute forcing of the illusionism variety.

 

[pemerton]

In my opinion, if the designer or the GM doesn't like the overall probability curve of one (or more) of the clocks, the answer is to iterate and redesign the curve, not curate out particular content produced by the content introduction machinery (which the players are interfacing with to make their general and system-relevant guile based decisions).

Everything else being equal that's good advice. But it's also hard! And if you use randomly-timed content introduction (ie wandering monsters) then there is always a chance that you will get improbably severe results even when the players haven't deserved the punishment thus inflicted.

In discussions of Cortex+ play (including in the Hacker's Guide) there is the suggestion that the GM not always build the best pool s/he can out of a Doom Pool roll if doing something else would better serve the trajectory of the game. Frankly that's a concession to weaknesses in the design of the Doom Pool as a system (it serves many different functions and it's hard to make all of them work all of the time) but maybe the designers just couldn't get it any better and still keep it workable.

I see that advice as somewhat similar to Gygax's advice about the wandering monsters - if the players don't deserve more punishment then don't roll (or ignore the result - same diff) even if the rules say you should. In neither case is it force (in my view), because in neither case is it adjusting or manipulating the outcomes of action resolution. (This is why I see Gygax's insistence on not letting the PCs escape unnaturally as key - because that would be subverting action resolution.)

As far as his comments about allowing the PC to be maimed rather than killed, as I said that's barely force because it's barely manipulation. To make it not be force at all, all you need is a rule (both 4e D&D and Prinve Valiant have versions of this) that says "If you want, zero hp can be some sort of incapacitation shot of death"). That's a pretty trivial change. And Gygax is very clear that this sort of thing should not be done so as to fundamentally alter what was at stake in play ("disinterest", "always give the monster an even break"). It's only removing death as the only failure state - but I don't think that's fundamental to classic skilled play D&D, as he says (pointing to the existence of resurrection magic).

Whether any of these things is good or bad GMing is a different matter, but I think the nuance with which Gygax addresses them is one of his high points in grasping what is going on with his game design and where it does or doesn't have capacity to give a little bit. It's much more subtle than I sometimes see suggested when people just present the quote about it being a GM's prerogative to change or ignore a die result. And it's more subtle than the AD&D 2nd ed passage that was presented upthread.

In my opinion, this is why both Moldvay Basic and Torchbearer are both just fundamentally better game's than Gygax's D&D (when it comes to challenge-based gaming).

I don't think Moldvay is fundamentally different on this particular issue. There is a remark somewhere in there about fudging, I think, though I can't recall the details.

Maiming rather than death is largely irrelevant in Moldvay because at levels 1 to 3 there is no regeneration magic and hence no recovery from maiming any more than from death. As far as the wandering monster issue is concerned, exactly the same thing can happen - ie there is a chance that a very well played party might nevertheless be absolutely hammered by wandering monsters while heading through the dungeon to their exploration goal, putting their punishment severely out of whack with what they deserve. Moldvay has no better way to correct this problem than Gygax does.

 

[pemerton]

It seems to me that the only way for a DM to not use forcing as described above is to create a fully procedural world where the dice dictate every thing. How is anything else not forcing?

Most straightforwardly: present content without a "fore-ordained goal"; and then introduce new fictional content as an output of action resolution rather than to undermine or manipulate the outcomes of action resolution.

Apocalypse World is a terrific example of this in its presentation of the rules and procedures for play. Classic Traveller (where the OP quote comes from) can be played this way - I know, I'm currently doing it in a campaign - but the books aren't quite up there with AW as far as instructional text is concerned! There are somewhat oblique remarks in the 1977 version that I think show some awareness of the issue, but that's about it.

 

[pemerton]

Adding the dog initially isn't Force. Refusing to accept the mechanical outcome (outright failures should fail at what they're attempting) is Force. Continually adding/updating an element until the game state hits the DM preference is illusionism/force.

I agree it's force in the way you describe. I don't think it's likely to be illusionism, however - what you describe seems to me like it will be pretty transparent at the table.

 

[pemerton]

One presumes that having the dog mutate and attack the PCs immediately after the forced roll wouldn't be force.

I'm assuming such would be normally acceptable as a scene, so you are correct. Force is being applied to achieve that particular scene regardless of player choice or gambit outcome. In effect, it is the same as having the castle at the end of whatever road the players choose.

I'll put the castle example to one side . . . because in your example the players have rejected the dog and/or failed with it.

I think having the dog sprout into tentacles counts as force (guidance/manipulation to a foreordained goal) if the established fiction ("soft moves", and/or in some systems PCs' Beliefs/Traits/Aspects etc) hasn't foreshadowed/anticipated it. Obviously much depends on the nuances of the particular case.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You mean like creating a dungeon and inserting it into the world and giving the PC's ample opportunity to hear about it in the hopes that they will find it interesting and explore it. From my understanding of the definition posted - that would constitute forcing of the illusionism variety.

I've pondered on this for a day, re-reading the OP and trying to remove myself from the strong definition of Force presented by @Manbearcat (which follows my understanding), and I that I can't tell if it is or isn't. And, I think the operator here is what's present in Manbearcat's definition but missing in @pemerton's, and that's the idea of subverting or defeating player input.

The passage in the OP, and much of @pemerton's responses seem to flow from the idea that prepared outcomes are Force. In that much, I agree, but what's odd is that pemerton's talk doesn't differentiate between legitimately GM introduced material and Forcefully introduced material. Your dungeon, that's then "advertised" in play, seems to fall under pemerton's conjecture of 'gentle guidance'. Or, at least, I see no operation in the OP that can tell if it does or doesn't. Your dungeon, even "advertised," does NOT fall under Manbearcat's definition, because there's not overriding or altering of player input.

So, I'd really like @pemerton to clearly state whether he thinks that your example is Force or not. He partly answered your question only in the sense that he provided a different path from procedural creation, but didn't respond as to whether your example fits his conception of Force. Now, after trying to think it through myself, I'd like to hear the answer as well.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Everything else being equal that's good advice. But it's also hard! And if you use randomly-timed content introduction (ie wandering monsters) then there is always a chance that you will get improbably severe results even when the players haven't deserved the punishment thus inflicted.

In discussions of Cortex+ play (including in the Hacker's Guide) there is the suggestion that the GM not always build the best pool s/he can out of a Doom Pool roll if doing something else would better serve the trajectory of the game. Frankly that's a concession to weaknesses in the design of the Doom Pool as a system (it serves many different functions and it's hard to make all of them work all of the time) but maybe the designers just couldn't get it any better and still keep it workable.

I see that advice as somewhat similar to Gygax's advice about the wandering monsters - if the players don't deserve more punishment then don't roll (or ignore the result - same diff) even if the rules say you should. In neither case is it force (in my view), because in neither case is it adjusting or manipulating the outcomes of action resolution. (This is why I see Gygax's insistence on not letting the PCs escape unnaturally as key - because that would be subverting action resolution.)

As far as his comments about allowing the PC to be maimed rather than killed, as I said that's barely force because it's barely manipulation. To make it not be force at all, all you need is a rule (both 4e D&D and Prinve Valiant have versions of this) that says "If you want, zero hp can be some sort of incapacitation shot of death"). That's a pretty trivial change. And Gygax is very clear that this sort of thing should not be done so as to fundamentally alter what was at stake in play ("disinterest", "always give the monster an even break"). It's only removing death as the only failure state - but I don't think that's fundamental to classic skilled play D&D, as he says (pointing to the existence of resurrection magic).

Whether any of these things is good or bad GMing is a different matter, but I think the nuance with which Gygax addresses them is one of his high points in grasping what is going on with his game design and where it does or doesn't have capacity to give a little bit. It's much more subtle than I sometimes see suggested when people just present the quote about it being a GM's prerogative to change or ignore a die result. And it's more subtle than the AD&D 2nd ed passage that was presented upthread.

I don't think Moldvay is fundamentally different on this particular issue. There is a remark somewhere in there about fudging, I think, though I can't recall the details.

Maiming rather than death is largely irrelevant in Moldvay because at levels 1 to 3 there is no regeneration magic and hence no recovery from maiming any more than from death. As far as the wandering monster issue is concerned, exactly the same thing can happen - ie there is a chance that a very well played party might nevertheless be absolutely hammered by wandering monsters while heading through the dungeon to their exploration goal, putting their punishment severely out of whack with what they deserve. Moldvay has no better way to correct this problem than Gygax does.

"Barely force" is a subjective opinion, which appears to mean "force I'm okay with." I don't think discussion of game concepts is benefitted by defining a tool or concept by whether or not we're okay with a specific application of it. In other words, a definition of Force that exists only when it's criteria are met AND we're okay with it is not a useful definition of Force. The latter half renders the entire discussion a matter of competing opinion without any objective measures. If we, instead, define the term and stick to it, even if it means we're defining play we're okay with that term, then we have a useful definition and a useful discussion. I'm perfectly fine with dropping a wandering monster roll in some circumstances, but that doesn't mean that I'm ignoring the mechanical structure of the game and my prior, demonstrated routines of play, to achieve a goal that I'd prefer. That's Force. The players have chosen to be in a situation (or are there through consequences of previous choices) that require a wandering monster check. If I, as GM, decide the outcome of the game is better if I ignore that player created input and don't use the mechanics, then I'm using Force. I'm okay with knowing that AND still using the Force because the game system is fighting against the play experience the table prefers.