Lanefan
Victoria Rules
It can be - or it can be a version of a thing that happens rather often in the real world: unforeseen consequences. No "GM oops" there.
Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay
Manbearcat
Legend
I absolutely 100 % agree. But I'm not sure that I agree in the exact way that you intended it, so maybe you can confirm either way.
Unforeseen consequences as an outgrowth of action resolution is one of the beating hearts of keeping conflicts dynamic and interesting. Here are all the moving parts:
1) The consequences (presuming failure here) needs to address what the thematic stakes were about in the conflict. Do you recall a long, long time ago when we (I'm almost certain you were involved in that conversation) my 4e play excerpt where the PCs were on horseback sprinting across the badlands trying to get to the forest to lose the army of bad guys on their tail (after they just stole an idol from their temple to bring back to the forest's Shaman to lift a curse)? They failed a navigation check (it was Nature if I recall) and it was the 2nd failure of their Skill Challenge to "escape the pursuit by making it to the forest." I navigated them getting lost and cresting a rise and narrowly stopping their horses before falling into a large gorge (with the forest in view on the other side).
Do you recall this?
"Unforeseen consequences" that set them back in their goal and created a new obstacle to overcome (as the scene's conflict mechanics said things were still in the balance).
2) Unforeseen should mean all participants. The more the GM contrives to preconceive a outcomes, the following happens:
a) The GM's precious, prepared material will have a tendency to limit the dynamism of play. There is situational context and ebb and flow and momentum and player intent that will emerge during play that will not be regarded in the GM's preconception of events before play ever began.
b) The GM won't get to "play to find out."
c) The game will be increasingly apt to be seduced toward GM Force in any singular moment of play and possibly have a tendency toward erecting a railroad for the long haul.
Preconceived notions of how events will unfold is almost guaranteed to at best not quite match up with how play actually unfolds, and at worst look like the half-baked random nonsense. It's a spectrum, but anywhere along that spectrum it's somewhere between kinda meh and awful. I also think @Manbearcat has hit the nail on the head when he identifies it as a potential source of force.
I agree. This is pretty much what I mean when I talk about a story emerging from play. I don't write what will happen, just what has happened (before the PCs arrive).
I agree with this, too, at least mostly. If what you prep is at least mostly what happened before the PCs get involved, and/or what will happen if they don't get involved, I don't think that's necessarily in the direction of building a railroad, or GM Force. I don't see that being inconsistent with "play to find out."
For example, I seem to have (against my better judgment) set up something like a mystery, and a pretty complex something like a mystery. There a lot of details to keep straight, but I have no idea how the PCs are going to solve or otherwise handle the situation.
If you have to have things react to the PCs, though, I think it's worth it to have at least considered how the PCs have acted in the past and consider the likely reactions to that. If the PCs do something else, oh well. I don't think this is a "preconceived outcome," but I may mean something narrower by that than you do.
I don't see any tension between these two remarks.
Here is John Harper on soft and hard moves in AW GMing:
I keep seeing some people struggle with this, so here's a handy guide to hard moves in Apocalypse World.
When you make a regular [=soft] MC move, all three:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It gives the player an opportunity to react.
3. It sets you up for a future harder move.
This means, say what happens but stop before the effect, then ask "What do you do?"
. . .
When you make a hard MC move, both:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It's irrevocable.
This means, say what happens, including the effect, then ask "What do you do?"
. . .
See how that works? The regular move sets up the hard move. The hard move follows through on the threat established by the regular move. . . . [A] hard move doesn't automatically equate to severe consequences. The severity of the threat is a separate issue, depending wholly on the fiction as established. The hard move means the consequences, large or small, take full effect now.
It's not about being mean, or punishing a missed roll, or inventing new trouble. It's about giving the fiction its full expression. Setup, follow-through. Action, consequences.
He gives some examples of soft vs hard:
He swings the chainsaw right at your head. What do you do? vs The chainsaw bites into your face, spraying chunks of bloody flesh all over the room. 3-harm and make the harm move!
You sneak into the garage but there's Plover right there, about to notice you any second now. What do you do? vs Plover sees you and starts yelling like mad. Intruder!
She stares at you coldly. 'Leave me alone,' she says. What do you do? vs Don't come back here again.' She slams the door in your face and you hear the locks click home.
He also gives an example of what not to do:
I've seen people struggle with hard moves in the moment. Like, when the dice miss, the MC stares at it like, "Crap! Now I have to invent something! Better make it dangerous and cool! Uh... some ninja... drop out of the ceiling... with poison knives! Grah!"
Don't do that. Instead, when it's time for a hard move, look back at the setup move(s) you made. What was threatened? What was about to happen, before the PC took action? Follow through on that. Bring the effects on screen. Bring the consequences to fruition.
Harper's idea of bringing consequences to fruition, of giving the fiction its full expression, is what I am getting at when I refer to consequences as being implicit in the fiction. If what the GM fails in that respect - if, to the players, it's like ninjas dropping unheralded from the ceiling - then you're probably into my "oops" territory.
Your famous gorge is (by the sound of it) not like that at all. The players are having their PCs attempt a cross-country escape relying on their riding skills and their familiarity with the countryside. A sudden obstacle like a gorge is absolutely implicit in that situation. (Contrast: finding your path blocked by a UFO that has just landed is not; wheres if the pursuit were in air/rafts in a Traveller game than the converse might well be true!)
My own take away from BW's equivocation between its "official" instructions and its designer's admitted practice is that when the rules were first written there was less familiarity with the sorts of techniques we're talking about here, and so it made sense to urge everyone to be express, in advance, about consequences; but that as the AW style (which I dont think AW invented, - you can see it eg in Prince Valiant 20+ years earlier and even hints of it in Classic Traveller 30+ years earlier - but which AW expresses probably more clearly than any other RPG rulebook) became more widely familiar, the need to advocate such strict scaffolding around play fell away.
I think we can easily relate this back to the OP. Among other things, it appears that there was some sort of mismatch between the players' and the GM's conceptions of what consequences were implilcit in the fiction. My view is that this is a largely inelminable risk of relying on secret GM notes rather than treating what has been narrated as the core of the established fiction.
Manbearcat
Legend
Don't disagree that its good to have a considered opinion on your PCs and on the setting elements that you're interposing between the PCs and their goals (which hopefully is the premise of play).
The problem arises when the consideration becomes precious and when a GM eschews malleability for ossification because of it (which tends to manifest as Force, or bare minimum feel like Force, during play).
Manbearcat
Legend
Don't have anything to add. Agree on all points:
1) There isn't any daylight between what we're saying (implicit meaning follow from the fiction which entails genre expectations + play principles and procedures + thematic expectations; in badlands chases use gorges not UFOs + Fail Forward with momentum + challenge them on the axis of the premise of the challenge).
2) Harper's layout of the architecture of this (in AW) is spot on.
3) Your last paragraph also spot on and its my same feeling about the relation to the OP. That action declaration in the OP could absolutely be a thematically coherent, good faith move by the player. As such, the only interesting conversation orbits around working from that premise (otherwise, again, just fix your out of play issues) and the premise is definitely hooked deeply into a mismatch of GM and player conception about what should be reasonable inputs to and outputs from play.
hawkeyefan
Legend
This is something I still struggle with at times with 5E D&D. I tend to work pretty loosely in prep, and I try to craft situations that appeal to my players and their characters, and then let them engage with them how they want.
But....I also tend to ponder things in between sessions. I tend to mentally flesh out a villain, or some potential element....and then they become more than mere props for my players to interact with.
And I think that can be problematic. Not that the NPC or location or whatever has more depth as a result...that’s likely a good thing. But that this element has now become more important to me as a DM than it may be to my players.
This is why I advocated for “holding on loosely” as a GM earlier in the thread. It’s something I have to keep in mind and actively work at. I think the wannabe writer in me just tries to take over, and that’s not necessarily a good thing for an interactive game.
I used to be very bad at this. Especially with enemies of the PCs. I learned early on that recurring villains can be very engaging for players. And then I think that every single antagonist I’d introduce would somehow get away and show up later. I mean, this can be great sometimes....but all the time? Ugh.
I’ve gotten much better with it. I’ve changed up my approach to DMing a lot since 5E came along. I’ve also GMed several other games that work differently, and that’s only reinforced what I expected was a weak point for me, and shown me other ways to manage it.
That idea that you had when you crafted the game....that can be a powerful draw, and can be tough to let go. But you have to be ready to do that if that’s the way it goes.
Manbearcat
Legend
Great post @hawkeyefan .
Humility, self-awareness, cognitive malleability (able to pivot at least), and the willingness to work on your game are assets that aren't remotely discussed enough when it comes to GMing.
If anyone ever wonders what vantage I'm coming from when I post on these forums its as someone who encourages GMs to remain disciplined and industrious around those four things.
Its not your game. Never consider yourself a finished product. Realize your responsibility when play doesn't turn out satisfyingly and always aspire to be better (that includes developing a diverse experience in running games).
EDIT - Basically the antithesis of the George Lakoff Strict Father model of GMing that I see so often; "Its your game and if you spare the rod you'll spoil the child and you'll never condition your players into 'playing appropriately'...oh and beware of games that are too player-facing because its nothing but rod-sparing and child-spoiling!"
There is a spectrum of diverse GMing ethoi, for sure, but it seems like the one that I see advocated for most vociferously is the model above. I don't agree with that approach (to say the least) and I don't think its good for the hobby for it to be the standard-bearer.
Humility, self-awareness, cognitive malleability (able to pivot at least), and the willingness to work on your game are assets that aren't remotely discussed enough when it comes to GMing.
If anyone ever wonders what vantage I'm coming from when I post on these forums its as someone who encourages GMs to remain disciplined and industrious around those four things.
Its not your game. Never consider yourself a finished product. Realize your responsibility when play doesn't turn out satisfyingly and always aspire to be better (that includes developing a diverse experience in running games).
EDIT - Basically the antithesis of the George Lakoff Strict Father model of GMing that I see so often; "Its your game and if you spare the rod you'll spoil the child and you'll never condition your players into 'playing appropriately'...oh and beware of games that are too player-facing because its nothing but rod-sparing and child-spoiling!"
There is a spectrum of diverse GMing ethoi, for sure, but it seems like the one that I see advocated for most vociferously is the model above. I don't agree with that approach (to say the least) and I don't think its good for the hobby for it to be the standard-bearer.
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I only really bust out 'the rod' in cases of players who are disrespecting the shared fiction, specifically by being flip and casual and not taking anything seriously in a game where things are, sometimes, supposed to be serious. The kind of player who will bring a whole social encounter crashing down, and generally ruin role playing moments for the rest of the table because he's more concerned with amusing himself than in playing the game. When I say rod, I really mean I'll transition to hard moves faster and the hardness of the moves goes up. I don't need anyone to be super serious, and my games always contain a solid leavening of humor (I'm incapable of not adding humor), but you need to respect the other players.
With those players I'll generally start with the odd comment at the table, and I'll generally be transparent about linking cause to effect with moves and consequences. One, this lets the other players know that the issue has been identified, and two, it allows the player in question to try to manage his own behavior. Peer pressure is a good first tool. I'll usually put off 'taking them aside for a chat' as I find people often get defensive in those situations. Sometimes it fixes itself.
With those players I'll generally start with the odd comment at the table, and I'll generally be transparent about linking cause to effect with moves and consequences. One, this lets the other players know that the issue has been identified, and two, it allows the player in question to try to manage his own behavior. Peer pressure is a good first tool. I'll usually put off 'taking them aside for a chat' as I find people often get defensive in those situations. Sometimes it fixes itself.
