Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Fenris-77]

That's reasonable-ish. My thinking, unpacked a little more: The players own the PCs; the GM owns the setting (to include all places and NPCs and history). The PCs own the story; nothing that the GM owns does. Even the PCs' opposition is really part of the PCs' story (note the way the possessives point). I suspect it's probably indicative of my thinking that in my email missives to the players I always describe myself as DMing for them.

Hmm. For my games I don't think I'd agree that I own the setting. If the players aren't helping to shape, populate, and impact the setting I've probably done something wrong. Other games are more liken that though, and in those instances you're probably closer to the mark.

I'm really not sure what you're indexing when you use the word 'own' here in reference to the story. The players don't produce any story absent the GM, so the notion that they own it seems ... odd to me. The narrative, if that's what you mean by story, is produced though the oscillating movement of declaration-result between the players and the GM. I would agree with your statement, at least for myself, that I GM 'for the players' but that doesn't lead me to 'they own the story' as it seems to for you.

 

[prabe]

This is an excellent summation, but, like all summations, it's hiding a good bit of nuance. Like that the action declarations are different between these two, so there's some room to hide some agency there, and that the FACTs are different between A and B, so there's some room for agency to be hiding there. However, overall, that's a great way to put the functional differences between games like PbtA and D&D.

I dunno if the FACT in A is automatically going to be different from the FACT in B--that depends a whole lot on context, I think--but I'll agree that it's too short and too pithy to cover much nuance, and that there's at least a difference in kind of agency between them. As I said, though, I don't think there's a big difference.

 

[prabe]

I'm really not sure what you're indexing when you use the word 'own' here in reference to the story. The players don't produce any story absent the GM, so the notion that they own it seems ... odd to me. The narrative, if that's what you mean by story, is produced though the oscillating movement of declaration-result between the players and the GM. I would agree with your statement, at least for myself, that I GM 'for the players' but that doesn't lead me to 'they own the story' as it seems to for you.

What I'm indexing, I think is that the story belongs to the PCs. It's their story. It's not (to use my previous example) The Apostate's story, or the Cracked Shields' story--though they have their own stories, which are mine to work out, where they don't intersect with the PCs. As I said, my phrasing is a way to tell myself whom the story belongs to, a warning not to make it about the NPCs.

 

[Lanefan]

What I'm indexing, I think is that the story belongs to the PCs. It's their story. It's not (to use my previous example) The Apostate's story, or the Cracked Shields' story--though they have their own stories, which are mine to work out, where they don't intersect with the PCs. As I said, my phrasing is a way to tell myself whom the story belongs to, a warning not to make it about the NPCs.

Though it would seem clear that you still have to work out the NPCs' story, even if to no more extent than some virtual scrap notes in your head, such that you know the circumstances at whatever time said story re-intersects with the PCs' story in the future.

An example from my own campaign: a few in-game years ago various PC groups had dealings with a land that's been plunged into a 5-way civil war*, and then left for other places. Recently a group returned there, which meant I-as-DM needed to have some idea about how that civil war had progressed in the meantime so I could, for example, tell the players whose troops they were meeting where and give coherent and consistent answers when the PCs asked those troops for news.

* - caused by the PCs' actions: they killed the long-time Emperor, leaving a power vacuum in a generally-very-nasty realm.

 

[prabe]

Though it would seem clear that you still have to work out the NPCs' story, even if to no more extent than some virtual scrap notes in your head, such that you know the circumstances at whatever time said story re-intersects with the PCs' story in the future.

Oh, absolutely, though (A) it doesn't change that the campaign's story is about the PCs and (B) it's maybe best done when you know the PCs' story, so you know when they intersect again. So, in the case of the example I snipped, it'd be reasonable not to work out the progression of that civil war until your PCs went back there (any set of PCs, I think, whether it's the PCs that killed the emperor or other PCs).

The Cracked Shields, for instance, have been invited to the PCs' estate--and they're probably going to arrive soon. The PCs aren't there, but that doesn't need to make trouble for their castellan (and I haven't laid any foundation for it to, so it very probably won't).

 

[Hriston]

@Hriston, nice example! It correlates pretty closely to examples in Burning Wheel how-to-play text as well as the actual play example I posted. And I would definitely consider it to be an example of player agency over the fiction. Even though the action failed, the player's framing of the action declaration played a big role in shaping that failure consequence.

And reflecting further on that: In these sorts of resolution contexts it's interesting to think about how explicit the GM needs to be about the stakes of failure. BW "officially" advocates full explicitness every time but Luke Crane (the designer) has said that in his own games he sometimes lets the failure consequences remain implicit in the situation.

I vary in my approach depending on what I feel is implicit, whether I think going explicit will increase tension or defuse it because of the "meta" intrusion, etc. Explicitness seems the surest way to guarantee player agency but that may not be the only desideratum in a given moment of play. On the other hand, if a failure consequence catches the player by surprise - ie they didn't see it as implicit in the fiction - then that can be an "oops" moment as a GM!

I try to be explicit about the stakes of a check because I feel it puts tension on the die roll. In a case like this, I suppose the "meta" intrusion you speak of can come in the form of a feeling that the fiction exists in a quantum state, that the result of the check is causing one thing or the other to happen in the fiction. So, in my example, it would be the idea that the player is trying to find out the right answer and that the result of the check determines what the answer is, revealing thereby that until the check, there was no "right" answer. The cognitive hurdle for me in laying this type of concern aside was the realization that the check is how we find out what happened. So the druid's failure isn't in the moment of recall. He remembers the "right" answer either way in that he perfectly remembers what his observations revealed to him. Neither was his failure in the moment of observation. What his observations about the toads told him was correct either way. The druid's failure was actually in making the decision to track the toads so late in the day without the full party, since it was revealed by the check that he should have known better, even though the player was blameless because he didn't have the relevant information until he had made the declaration to find out.

 

[pemerton]

Why is it that posts like these make force sound like something bad that must be avoided (other concepts too) but I'm constantly reminded that no other playstyle is being condemned here and that we are just comparing how different mechanics work in different games?

I think to get to the heart of this situation we need to have two terms. 1. Established in the shared fiction. 2. Established in the DM's fiction. Anything in either of these categories can rightfully be called Established in the fiction (based on what those words naturally mean).

I would argue that the DM having things established in the his fiction that have yet to be introduced into the shared fiction is beneficial to play - or at least a certain kind of play. Maybe the discussion should shift to also discuss how that benefits play?

These two posts go together.

If you go back through this thread you'll find various posters asserting that the GM havng things established in the ficiton that have yet to be introduced into the shared fiction does not have any implications for player agency in respect of the shared fiction.

But that claim clearly cannot be true. The GM havng things established in the ficiton that have yet to be introduced into the shared fiction only becomes relevant to play if that stuff is used to frame situations, or adjudicate fictional positioning, wthout regard to what the player(s) want to be the case. Which is to say it's an alternative to, not a form of, player agency in respect of the shared fiction.

If you go back upthread you will see that there are posters who clearly recognise that and talk about its possible utility for play. @Campbell is one of them.

 

[pemerton]

I've been in groups that did dungeon-crawl-ish adventures effectively backward--we found what was supposed to be the exit and went in through it and jumped the Big Boss while we were fresh, then crawled our way out. If the GM had had us go in through the exit and find Room 1A (or however it was keyed) so we had to encounter the elements of the dungeon in the order he wanted (or at least that the writers expected), that would have been along the lines of not allowing the PCs to own the story.

OK, thanks for this example.

This is not what I was expecting as an example of the PCs (players?) "owning" the story.

If the finding of the "exit" was pure coincidence then it seems like a more-or-less random tweak to the sequence of events.

In a dungeon like the Caves of Chaos I think it's meant to be open to multiple ways of entering and engaging it - there is no opening that is "supposed to be the exit" - and so what you describe would seem to be the default. But that's not the sort of thing I have i mind when talking about player agency over the shared fiction.

I'm guessing the tension you see between this and the first thing you quoted comes to this: You think there's a big difference in player agency between (A) the PC's skill check determines whether the player gets to declare [FACT] and (B) the PC's skill check determines whether the GM reveals [FACT]; I don't.

I thikn the difference is that in one the player has a chance of establishing the shared fiction, and in the other that is the GM. That seems to be a difference in agency. Whether or not it's big I don't know, but I'm not sure how it can be irrelevant to a discussion about player agency over the content of the shared fiction.

 

[Psikerlord#]

To answer the OP - I think the answer is very obvious - if they've failed to escape, those two PCs get executed. Roll up new PCs! Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Anything else and the players know you'll do anything to save their PCs to preserve them, which is fatal to good gameplay (and ultimately player interest).

 

[Jd Smith1]

What I'm indexing, I think is that the story belongs to the PCs. It's their story.

I disagree. The story is of the PCs' deeds and the world around them, and if the PCs bugger it up, that's how the story goes.