"Illusionism" and "GM force" in RPGing

[pemerton]

When content is introduced players must either ignore it or interact with it. Part 1 should be obvious - if they interact with the content then introducing that content modified their input by getting them to interact with the new content. Part 2 isn't quite as obvious - if they ignore the content then introducing the content modified their input by getting them to ignore the new content. In either case their input is modified from where it previously was.

I don't want to go too far down this rabbithole - but if player input hasn't occurred yet then it can't be nullified. Nor can it be modified. It can be instigated.

This is what I've been focusing on with @chaochou, and @Manbearcat around the DL dragon armies case - there are some different analyses going on, and probably more posts I haven't read yet, but my take is that this is not a modification or nullification of player input but nevertheless is force because it guides/manipulates towards an outcome.

The "guidance" you speak of is hard to separate from legitimate content introduction. The only this you have here is 'foreordained conclusion'. This is a hard sell, as if I have an idea the night before a game of Blades that I think might be neat, and an opportunity arises in game that fits, if I deploy that using my authority to frame I'm not engaged in guidance to a foreordained conclusion, I'm introducing an idea I may have though earlier.

I agree that it's tricky. That's why (as I may have posted upthread, or maybe in another parallel thread) I think framing is such a key GM skill, especially once the game moves beyond exploration of a pre-mapped-andkeyed site.

So you're correct that the fore-ordained conclusion is carrying a lot of weight. But I think this is right. It's what distinguishes the scripted adventure approach (see eg the quotes posted by me and moreso @Doug McCrae upthread from systems like V:tM, James Bond, etc) from what Paul Czege describes here in a classic Forge post:

Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently.. . . I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.​

The fact that you have a cool idea for your BitD game doesn't make it force; likewise, as @Campbell has pointed out in the past, "no myth" doesn't preclude use of prepared material (whether from a Monster Manual, or some GM write-up, or whatever). It's about preconceived outcomes, or the alternative of openness to how the payers engage the scene and letting it unfold out of that interaction and the interplay of narration and mechanics.

I think that Czege's comment about NPCs is also very interesting, and has influenced me a lot. We talk a lot in these threads about "Schroedinger's secret doors" but Czege is pointing out that NPCs can also develop in the same way. (I remember @chaochou causing controversy in one of my Traveller threads by suggesting a similar sort of approach.)

The Gygax secret door example appears to be Force in my opinion because it's subverting the player input in a skilled game to reach a GM desired outcome. The idea in skilled play, as I understand it, is that you deploy character resources in a skilled way and you succeed through how you deploy those resources. In that play concept, subverting the skill input of the players is Force. It's not a framing issue, because finding secret doors is not a matter of framing in this mode of play. You've moved something that should be an outcome of skilled play into framing, and that's what's resulting in Force -- the negation of player input in finding the secret door according to the assumptions of play.

I think the Gygax example is both subtle, and also an (unintended, I assume) illustration of a weak point in classic dungeoncrawling D&D.

So first, recall that Gygax says on p 9 of his DMG that it would be contrary to the precepts of the game to allow PCs to escape unnaturally. So we're not talking here about revealing a secret door to allow an escape (or, for similar reasons, to find a treasure or whatever). As Gygax says (DMG p 110), it's about "a secret door that leads to a complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining."

This can be handled as a mode of skilled play: eg the PCs hear rumours of a hidden part of the complex, or find a map from a previous (NPC) party's expedition, etc. But it doesn't have to be - most obviously, the 1st level party in the first session don't normally need to learn about the dungeon through skilled play. Or discovery of a dungeon can be a result of a random encounter while travelling through the wilderness.

So using a secret door to open up a dungeoneering opportunity isn't, in respect of the opening up, a violation of skilled play precepts. But the use of a secret door as the device is an adaptation of a device invented for skilled play purposes to a different purposes, driven by the lack of devices for introducing new sites other than action resolution of declarations of movement. Contrast this with, say, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, where a secret door in an action scene could be a GM-introduced Scene Distinction or a player-introduced Resource or Asset; but in a Transition Scene could easily just be a piece of GM narration.

So at a table that didn't consider PC death or a TPK to be a loss condition then would the DM introducing the dragon armies content with only 1 escape route be categorized as GM force?

If so then why? If not, then the same action can be both forcing and not forcing - it just depends on the table. That makes a poor starting point for RPG theory IMO.

If the loss conditions of the game change, then of course the role of other elements and techniques might also change. That's not a surprise, it's exactly what one would expect.

EDIT: I saw this while catching up on the thread, and it belongs in this post:

I definitely agree that framing (which is the issue with the dog’s Starting Attitude) and introducing consequences of action resolution (re-framing) are the murkiest areas of Force.

<snip>

here are my thoughts on framing of the Starting Attitude and why it’s Force:

1) The GM wants the move to fail. The players can’t know that for sure but they can only suspect that. We can know though (because we’re making this up so we can look under the hood).

2) The GM knows the Ranger has a +0 Charisma check here, so if he goes with Hostile, he nearly ensures a failed move (the Ranger would need a 20, DC 20 for Hostile, to get the dog to accompany her back to camp).

Here we have the framing as force issue right in front of us. It's not literally a manipulation or nullifying of player input, because the input hasn't come yet. Its using a mixture of mechanics (including mechanical limitations, which @chaochou talked about upthread) and fiction to pre-empt or sidestep any meaningful player impact on the shared fiction.

In practical, day-to-day RPGing I think this is a big thing.

MORE EDIT:

I think it would probably be good to discuss how Force applies to framing and and content introduction introduction as a result of action resolution (eg consequences and whether they honor the player’s goal and what was at stake), because it appears that is where there is the most daylight between the participants of the conversation.

Consequences are huge. The capacity for nullifying player input, and manipulating towards a fore-ordained goal, is very real. Getting this right is a hugely important GM skill.

 

[pemerton]

I used to do stuff like this back in the day routinely.

Not to turn this into an episode of "true confessions" - but thank you for posting this. This is the actual play correlate of the rules text that I, and moreso @Doug McCrae, have been posting.

Or in other words - the topic of this thread isn't just idle speculation or theory craft. We're talking about actual trends in RPGing here.

 

[pemerton]

The general consensus of this thread was that waving the wandering monster checks was "unfair". @pemerton and @Manbearcat were in agreement on that - unless I misunderstood their positions at that time.

You've misunderstood my position. I don't think the wandering monster thing is force - that's controversial, with the controversy turning (I think) on different understandings of how "clocks", skilled play and conceits of dungeon geography and moving PCs fro place to place interact in classic dungoencrawling.

And I don't think it's unfair either. Nor (I think) does @Ovinomancer. I'm not sure about @Manbearcat, but from his posts I don't think fairness (as opposed to, say, integrity) is the main value he is deploying.

 

[pemerton]

Put another way, should all starving, traumatized dogs be Hostile to careful, non-aggressive human interaction with them?

Then add the Ranger aspect of this and revise that to "should all starving, traumatized dogs be Hostile to a person whose life has outfitted them with a skillset that particularly equips them to dealing with such situations?"

I don't know the details of the 5e D&D social system - only your accounts of it.

But if a ranger can't befriend an ordinary dog on a 12 (ie beating 50/50 odds) then something has gone wrong. We're talking a dog here, not a hell-hound.

We're talking about genre fiction here, replete with Rangers who have a preternatural ability to deal with wildlife. In mundane, real life alone, people skilled with animals deal with traumatized, starving dogs regularly...and they aren't hostile at some kind of overwhelming rate that its impossible to envision one being "Indifferent" (in D&D terms). I'm not a Ranger, but I've helped rescue a dog exactly like this...talked to her, soothed her with nonthreatening posture and waited patiently until she trusted me...and fed her right out of my hand. My guess is, if you Youtube this, its not the most uncommon thing in the world.

Clearly you're a chosen of Ehlonna! (Or Melora, for those who prefer 4e to GH).

Other than your newly-revealed animal-handling abilities, nothing here is surprising or shocking. Only in crappy "never give the PCs an even break" D&D is using food to befriend a feral dog going to be a task out of reach of an animal handling-trained ranger.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't want to go too far down this rabbithole - but if player input hasn't occurred yet then it can't be nullified. Nor can it be modified. It can be instigated.

And if the player input has already occurred then how can that input be nullified or modified other than by fudging checks?

If the loss conditions of the game change, then of course the role of other elements and techniques might also change. That's not a surprise, it's exactly what one would expect.

I find it interesting and very important to note that you are agreeing that whether an act is forcing or is not depends on a tables loss conditions.

Consider, is it possible that loss conditions are subjective? It seems to me that they must be because what one player in a particular game counts as a loss may not be what another counts as one in that very same game.

 

[FrogReaver]

Other than your newly-revealed animal-handling abilities, nothing here is surprising or shocking. Only in crappy "never give the PCs an even break" D&D is using food to befriend a feral dog going to be a task out of reach of an animal handling-trained ranger.

That seems to be assuming that checks should tell whether you succeed or fail and the details of how you attempted to do whatever you were trying are not important. There's another playstyle where the details of how you are trying to do something really matter when it comes to setting the DC.

I find it to be a perfectly reasonable determination by the DM that approaching a starving and traumatized dog would cause it to take a defensive posture. But that's assuming a playtyle like the 2nd that I described. If you are playing by the first then you take into account it's a wilderness guy trained in animal handling and pretty much whatever he tries and however he tries to do it to do outside of attacking the dog he is going to get to roll animal handling with a moderate but not hard dc for success.

Alot of the games you describe that you like seem to have more of the first type of playstyle. So maybe that's some of the disconnect.

 

[pemerton]

Torchbearer just flat solved all of these problems through well-integrated systemization and extremely clear GMing. D&D (whether its Moldvay Basic, AD&D, or 5e) could just reverse engineer them and integrate them into their system architecture.

I've got no doubt Torchbearer solves them, because Luke Crane is a brilliant designer.

But reverse-engineering will be tricky. Look at the agony in 5e threads over how to manage 6 to 8 encounter balance in the context of recovery clocks measured by ingame time; the accusations of "contrivance" or "dissociated" against 13th Age's recovery/"campaign loss" system; etc.

Gygax's D&D treats it as pretty much a given that all time and geography are resolved via movement rates applied on maps, with no action scene/transition scene contrast. And D&D has been stuck with this inheritance except for that brief interlude we all know about but don't speak about!

 

[Manbearcat]

I think we all have a pretty good (and consensus) feeling on how Force applies to action resolution.

I think it would probably be good to discuss how Force applies to framing and and content introduction introduction as a result of action resolution (eg consequences and whether they honor the player’s goal and what was at stake), because it appears that is where there is the most daylight between the participants of the conversation.

Totally unrelated to the conversation.

No one ever comments about how I do this. I go back and read my posts later and I'm seeing this more and more anymore. Its startling. I think I'm experiencing the onset of CTE (I've had probably 30 legitimate concussions in my life, 2 with loss of consciousness before age 7). I'm right at the age (early 40s). My memory is struggling when once my memory was visceral and absolutely freakish in terms of recall. My ability to make new memories is struggling. I've gotten progressively more stupid in the last 4 years (struggling with comprehension and to formulate thoughts in ways that would have never been a problem in the past).

If anyone has any experience with the above (brain tick where you just add the same word multiple times at random), hit me up with a PM. I'd love to hear about it.

 

[pemerton]

And if the player input has already occurred then how can that input be nullified or modified other than by fudging checks?

By disregarding it, adding to it in ways that don't honour it, ignoring it's impact on a DC (in systems that have them), etc.

A classic example I have frequently seen advocated in published adventures: if the PCs kill the leader of a gang, a second-in-command takes over so the plot of the module rolls on unabated.

what one player in a particular game counts as a loss may not be what another counts as one in that very same game.

That seems likely to be a cause of dysfunctional play. For instance, if the game is fairly typical D&D and one player thinks a TPK is a loss while another doesn't, I don't see how friction will be avoided for very long.

I find it to be a perfectly reasonable determination by the DM that approaching a starving and traumatized dog would cause it to take a defensive posture. But that's assuming a playtyle like the 2nd that I described. If you are playing by the first then you take into account it's a wilderness guy trained in animal handling and pretty much whatever he tries and however he tries to do it to do outside of attacking the dog he is going to get to roll animal handling with a moderate but not hard dc for success.

And so does the player of the ranger with training in Animal Handling need to make a check so the GM will tell him/her what the best way is to befriend an upset dog? Or is that meant to be built into the skill system already - so that a successful Animal Handling check includes having reached out to it in the right way?

Also, is starting attitude meant to be a baseline, or is it meant to very radically in response? Eg if a NPC is indifferent/neutral and then a player narrates his/her PC's greeting and it's rougher/more colloquial than the NPC would prefer, is that grounds to change the outlook to hostile? Or should it impose a slight penalty? Or neither - perhaps being super-genteel should confer a bonus!

Any system that leaves a trained ranger with only a 10% or 20% chance to connect with a feral dog; or that might allow a silver-tongued bard only a 10% or 20% chance to get the time of day from a frightened waif; has, in my view, obviously failed. And in my experience this sort of thing - resulting from some of the factors I've mentioned in this post - is a common manifestation of poor GMing that, in fantasy gaming, pushes players towards spells over ordinary actions as solutions, subverts genre and generally causes frustration.

 

[Sadras]

Alternatively, another player is an escaped thrall of mindflayers, but has no memory of before thralldom. I have a rule in this campaign that PCs don't die unless the player says so, but choosing this option means I get creative license to be mean. This PC elected to not die, and so I introduced that when he came to, he recalled that he had volunteered for thralldom, but diesn't remember why. I had that license because he invoked the death rule and I chose that because I knew it would torture the player far worse than PC death eould have.

I'd say the latter was Force, even thoigh I had loose permission, but I'd say that oermission was to engage in Force, not make it not Force.

I very much like this house-rule but do you feel it is correct to call your example Force. For instance the player invoked it after a failure (combat failure in this instance), which is not very different than using mechanics and rolling poorly. If one rolled poorly using a mechanics system to allow a GM to provide PC background input would you still say it results in Force?