A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

"Saying 'yes'" isn't GM force. It's not GM force when a player in an AD&D game says My character wears a red cloak and the GM says OK.

My character wearing a red cloak, as opposed to a green one or a white one or no cloak at all, isn't very likely in and of itself to have significant impact on the subsequent fiction. Saying yes thus has no real future impact or consequences - there's no stakes involved.

The belief/non-belief of the lie in the example clearly will have great impact on what happens next and, probably, ongoing impact for some time after that. Here there's stakes involved, thus the GM simply saying yes to one outcome while denying the other (or any others) is a use of force.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've seen the same argument from the side of sandbox and playing a living world. I think this kind of argument just sounds like a dismissal of other styles of play. I get that if you want more narrative play, what you are after here makes sense. What I don't get is the idea that everyone really wants that, even if they don't realize it. You are leading with your conclusion.

I don't think you can compare something as subjective as gameplay to a virus. You are comparing things that can be measured and quantified with things that can't. And in the case of RPGs, it a priori obvious that some people are perfectly content to play without any kind of narrative construction at all. And even if narrative construction is present, that doesn't mean it is a priority at all.

This argument basically accuses people who don't want view games the same way as you do as being crazy or sick

Nobody is being accused of being crazy or sick. I think people tend to not see what they have and have not clearly analyzed. They tend to simply dismiss criticisms with statements about what is 'true' or 'obvious'. Or simply say "I don't care how things are, I prefer to act like the world is like X." OK, but you are 'leaving money on the table' in terms of advancing the state of what you do. You can do what you want, and nobody is putting it down. However, when you do this, other people may well have an edge in analyzing what is going on. Personally I think the people who have explored narrative process in RPGs have hit on a more sophisticated analysis and one that produces a better understanding of RPGs in general.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to say "yep, that analysis is inciteful, and in view of it we do X" where 'X' is not what I would do, Pemerton, Manbearcat, etc. would do. I have no reason to judge what people actually do, and they can ignore the analysis, or use it in a way that is different from what we do. It really isn't my business how people play THEIR games. I only discuss what is possible to analyze and conclude ABOUT RPGs, that's all anyone here CAN do. For that matter, when you say "I don't like X" nobody can really say there is something 'wrong' with a preference, we all know that. As with anything else, there are a huge number of reasons for having preferences. Nobody can say why any of us have the ones we do with any real authority

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No one is claiming the dice can produce realistic odds or that you need to proceed an accurate simulation of the real world. That games don't accurate simulate reality doesn't mean that they are narrative, anymore than a game like Burger Time is narrative.

Well, I constantly hear people say things about how "it is obvious that X is likely to happen." That's a statement of probability at least. It may not even be a statement that "you have to roll/should roll dice here" (but that was stated a bit up thread). Still it smacks of some sort of ability to analyze the situation with some definitiveness. I just posit that our knowledge and judgment are too limited to ever do that in a way that is plausible from a 'verisimilitude' perspective. Instead it can only, at some level, spring from a perspective of 'narrative/dramatic sensibility'. What other place can it come from? I guess a GM could be trying to accomplish who knows what... but I am loathe to even try to imagine all/any of the possibilities! (seduce a player, exemplify a political agenda, whatever). I pretty much assume everyone plays games to have fun. That seems like a safe and fairly generous assumption. The only other font of such conclusions is sheer gamism (IE I explain the world such that the players take decisions which are easier to process in game terms).

 

[Lanefan]

It's not resolved by GM fiat. It's resolved via GM-player consensus. No player action declaration has been contradicted or blocked from succeeding.

The notion of validity that you use isn't one that I use or even fully grasp - as @AbdulAlhazred has said, there are many options that are possible but that might not be put on the table because no one thinks of them.

In many cases this is true, but in the example given the rather binary choice of does she believe the lie or not doesn't offer many other options.

I have no real idea of what you have in mind with the first bolded bit. All I can do is reiterate the notion of "say 'yes' or roll the dice"; this quote is from p 72 of BW Gold (available for free online; I linked to it upthread):

Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn’t know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice.​

​

Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.​

Here, the character wants Lady Askol to believe him and doesn't know if she does or not. Seems pretty cut and dried.

Classic Traveller is not a strictly "say 'yes' or roll the dice" system - in many ways it is closer to AW and moves. But as I posted upthread there is no when you tell a lie move/subsystem in Traveller. So I have to make a call. Is there conflict here to be resolved, such that I need to find a relevant subsystem - the most basic version being a check against a basic attribute, in this case INT?

I decided that there is not. Lady Askola accepted von Jerrel's statement that he is not psionic.

Does she really believe it? Does she accept it because she wants to believe it? These are open questions. It may be that they are put to the test, and perhaps answered, by subsequent play.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not criticizing you-as-GM for making a call and running with it. What I am doing is trying to - or trying to get you to - square this with all the anti-GM-fiat arguments you've presented over the years.

This relates to the second bolded bit. The fact that the whole direction of the fiction turns on something doesn't mean that that something is at stake.

Sure there is - the direction of the fiction IS what's at stake!

In hi Adventure Burner, Luke Crane gives the example of a player narrating his acrobatic elf walking along the railing of a bridge high over a chasm. And points out that no check is called for, because it's mere colour. There is no conflict.

Here I'd disagree - I don't care how acrobatic you are, accidents can happen. You want to walk along the railing of a bridge and put yourself at risk, even if the check is trivially easy to pass there's still going to be one.

The fact that the fiction would be very different if the elf fell to his death from the bridge doesn't mean that we have to check to see if such a thing happens; any more than we have to check to see whether a PC trips over and sprains an ankle when s/he walks out of the tavern door (though such things are clearly possible, and would affect the ensuing fiction).

Depending how not-sober said PC was when leaving said tavern, I might very well check - maybe not for something as specific as a sprained ankle, but on a more general level of "Does anything bad happen to this drunk PC on its way home?". Though infrequent, in the past things like this have led to various consequences.

The effect of what happened in our session is that the player has been able to add new fiction: not only is Lady Askol in love with, or at least infatuated with, von Jerrel - but her attitude towards him, and treatment of him, depends on a lie. By "saying 'yes'" I've allowed the player to ramp up the pressure of the romantic situation. No conflict has been resolved by social agreement; rather, the stakes of possible future conflict have been stepped up. That's part of what a GM does, - or at least part of what I do as a GM - in modulating pacing, situation and the like.

Got it. Put another way, you've used GM fiat now to raise the stakes later.

This is not neutral refereeing. But Classic Traveller does not tell the referee that s/he has to be neutral. From the 1977 rules:

* Book 2, p 36: "When a ship enters a star system, there is a chance that any one of a variety of ships will be encountered. The ship encounter table is used to determine the specific type of vessel which is met. This result may, and should, be superseded by the referee in specific situations, especially if a newly entered system is in military or civil turmoil, or involves other circumstances."​

​

* Book 3, p 8: "[T]he referee should always feel free to impose worlds which have been deliberately (rather than randomly) generated. Often such planets will be devised specifically to reward or torment players."​

​

* Book 3, p 19: "The referee is always free to impose encounters to further the cause of the adventure being played; in many cases, he actually has a responsibility to do so."​

Although the Traveller mechanics are in many way rather process-simulation in their form, the referee is not expected to confine him-/herself to administering a "world simulation".

Even all those things can be done neutrally; though the Book 3 p. 8 one sounds a bit - dare I say - railroady.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I wouldn't disagree with you about most of these observations, I just don't know if they matter all that much to the context.

The richness and depth of the real world was brought up by @pemerton (I believe, anyway, he can correct me if I've misinterpreted) to point out that the richness and depth allow different people to have their own unique perspective.

If you then place some intermediary between people and the world.....a television or a GM......the that richness and depth is simply not possible, and everything depends on that one point of view.

Well, I essentially brought it up too in the context of "nobody can possibly know what will happen in a situation in view of all the complexity that would exist in a world." My point was kind of different, which was that we are largely 'flying blind' in terms of any sort of deduction about what would happen in the fictional game world 'realistically'. We can barely make such conclusions about the REAL world, let alone the mere sketch we can describe of the presumed undefined richness of 'Forgotten Realms' or whatever.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Nobody is being accused of being crazy or sick. I think people tend to not see what they have and have not clearly analyzed. They tend to simply dismiss criticisms with statements about what is 'true' or 'obvious'. Or simply say "I don't care how things are, I prefer to act like the world is like X." OK, but you are 'leaving money on the table' in terms of advancing the state of what you do. You can do what you want, and nobody is putting it down. However, when you do this, other people may well have an edge in analyzing what is going on. Personally I think the people who have explored narrative process in RPGs have hit on a more sophisticated analysis and one that produces a better understanding of RPGs in general.

But your analysis is just to assert that narrative construction is inevitable and therefore games should be designed towards narrative construction. That isn't analysis in my view. Especially when people know just form their own experience at the table, what you are saying simply isn't true (even if they have less of a vocabulary with which to express that view)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, I constantly hear people say things about how "it is obvious that X is likely to happen." That's a statement of probability at least. It may not even be a statement that "you have to roll/should roll dice here" (but that was stated a bit up thread). Still it smacks of some sort of ability to analyze the situation with some definitiveness. I just posit that our knowledge and judgment are too limited to ever do that in a way that is plausible from a 'verisimilitude' perspective. Instead it can only, at some level, spring from a perspective of 'narrative/dramatic sensibility'. What other place can it come from? I guess a GM could be trying to accomplish who knows what... but I am loathe to even try to imagine all/any of the possibilities! (seduce a player, exemplify a political agenda, whatever). I pretty much assume everyone plays games to have fun. That seems like a safe and fairly generous assumption. The only other font of such conclusions is sheer gamism (IE I explain the world such that the players take decisions which are easier to process in game terms).

That you cannot asses something perfectly doesn't mean you cannot asses it at all. And sure, there will be a range of plausible outcomes and in some situations what is chosen will depend on what is dramatically appropriate and sometimes the dice might decide. I have no problem with GM using 'what's dramatically appropriate' as the basis of their judgement; that they can do that is one of the big advantages of having a human in charge.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, I constantly hear people say things about how "it is obvious that X is likely to happen." That's a statement of probability at least. It may not even be a statement that "you have to roll/should roll dice here" (but that was stated a bit up thread). Still it smacks of some sort of ability to analyze the situation with some definitiveness. I just posit that our knowledge and judgment are too limited to ever do that in a way that is plausible from a 'verisimilitude' perspective. Instead it can only, at some level, spring from a perspective of 'narrative/dramatic sensibility'. What other place can it come from? I guess a GM could be trying to accomplish who knows what... but I am loathe to even try to imagine all/any of the possibilities! (seduce a player, exemplify a political agenda, whatever). I pretty much assume everyone plays games to have fun. That seems like a safe and fairly generous assumption. The only other font of such conclusions is sheer gamism (IE I explain the world such that the players take decisions which are easier to process in game terms).

I totally get the preference of wanting the logic behind a ruling or mechanic to be based on drama or narrative. That is fair. What I don't get here is why you think it is impossible for the GM to determine what happens based on anything else. I mean just because it is not possible for a human GM to simulate reality, that doesn't mean they can't decide things based on what they think would happen (using common sense, world knowledge etc). The question is whether the players find the rulings believable for the purposes of a game. But none of that means the GM is employing narrative or dramatic logic. This is evident by the very problem you identify. Your whole issue is the GM on his or her own is not capable of producing something dramatically satisfying. If the GM were only capable of emptying dramatic logic then surely more campaigns would be dramatically successful. It is the very fact that they are employing other rationales in their rulings that things don't pan out dramatically all the time (and to some players can appear pointless or boring). I am not trying to be pugnacious with you here, but it is really hard for me to take your claims of serious analysis seriously, when the imply that if the GM isn't employing dramatic logic they must be coming form some truly nefarious place (i.e. seducing a player or advancing a political agenda). I don't see how we can have a real conversation about playstyle differences if you can't even acknowledge the existence of things other people experience in games, and the only way you can acknowledge them is by casting them in an extremely dubious light.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But your analysis is just to assert that narrative construction is inevitable and therefore games should be designed towards narrative construction. That isn't analysis in my view. Especially when people know just form their own experience at the table, what you are saying simply isn't true (even if they have less of a vocabulary with which to express that view)

Not really. I don't think it is really my business, beyond analyzing them, what anyone decides is the right set of considerations to account for in their game design/choice of design. I advocate for people to use all the tools at their disposal to decide that, that's all. What it FEELS LIKE is that there are a lot of people who, INSTEAD OF doing that analysis just say "no, no, I couldn't possibly do things differently, I have to come up with some unassailable reason to confine myself to what I do now." The most reliable form for that to take is just "my preferences are so set that I cannot/will not reexamine them." Followed often by language about what is 'natural', 'normal', 'popular', etc.

Again, it isn't up to me to decide what people should want to do, not at all. OTOH some of these arguments do seem at least as judgemental as when I state the conclusions of my own analysis, and state that it went beyond where some others have gone with theirs.

Often I also feel like people armor themselves with these "I have a strong preference" things, and then they are likely to pass on stuff they might actually LIKE.

 

[Lanefan]

What does "get it right" mean? There is no right answer. Without any kind of rules in play, all of it is dependent on the GM's idea. Which is fine if that's how everyone prefers to play, but it doesn't allow for a high amount of agency.

Can the player determine the outcome? Can they somehow reach a result that the GM must honor?

Is the path to success determined by the player or the GM? If I want to intimidate the NPC into acquiescence, or if I want to flatter him, or if I want to bribe him......what paths are open to me as a player?

Roleplay, trusting the GM to have the NPC respond in a manner consistent with itself and-or the situation.

The problem with "result that the GM must honour" comes not in the moment - OK, you persuade (or bribe) the archivist to let you access the restricted section, the archivist lets you in and doesn't rat on you while you're in there - but later. Does the archivist have second thoughts that evening? Does the archivist notice what papers have been disturbed, realize what specific things you were looking up, and raise a stink? Or is your success 'forever', thus making the archvist something of a robot?

So the players decide when it's enough?

Usually.

That's not what I'm talking about though.

Would you agree that in the real world, sometimes people can be surprised by their own reactions to something? They let themselves be convinced by a salesman, or they let a pretty face distract them, or they believe something told to them by someone they know they shouldn't trust? They do something that is not the most sensible or likely response. This actually happens quite often in real life, no?

Yep.

So if your GMing technique is to imagine all the fictional factors that go into a NPC's thought process, and then to determine the most likely reaction in any given moment.....how do you allow for a less likely result from a NPC? The local lord who seems very unlikely to respond to a threat from a wandering adventurer....how does your game allow for this lord to have ever been intimidated by a PC?

If the answer is that you consider what the player says from the PCs perspective and decide accordingly, then it's ultimately GM fiat. It's always subject to your opinion. The player does not have any means to determine the result without your approval.

Of course not. The player isn't playing the NPC, I am.

You'd justifiably cry bloody blue murder if it went the other way and I-as-GM were able to use no-save game mechanics* to force your PC's reaction to something, right? So why shouldn't it work the same both ways?

* - most if not all charm and control effects grant the PC a saving throw; most social mechancics don't.

This is not a matter of trust; I would guess that you'd probably use decent judgment in most cases. It's a matter of preference. I prefer that the situation or problem be crafted by the GM, and that the resolution of that situation or problem be crafted by the players.

If the GM presents the challenge and has also determined its resolution, then the players aren't free to forge their own path, are they? they're just moving along the paths already determined by the GM.

If the situation is so confined as to only present one solution, then yes. But there's almost never only one solution or resolution.

Yeah, I agree that the GM should not even have called for a roll if there was no chance of success. Or they could allow a roll and on a success, honor it.

There's any number of ways it could have been handled. Some games would have one established process for this, and would follow that process. Some games (I had 3.x/Pathfinder in mind with my example) would have far less consistent processes for play.

I don't know if I agree with that. I would think that if something is impossible, then the PC would likely know it, and the GM can simply point that out to them.

I'm still willing to let them go through the motions. It's the old "I jump to the moon" thing - sure it's impossible, but if they want to try anyway who am I to stop them?

If it's a matter of the impossibility of the task being unknown to the player, that's where I think the problem lies. Either the GM has determined the outcome of something ahead of time, or has failed to present the fiction in a clear way, or something else has likely gone wrong.

In some cases yes, in others there might be quite valid hidden reasons why what seems like a very possible task simply cannot be done. Sometimes those reasons might become apparent or obvious during the attempt (e.g. splash - the bridge you're trying to cross is an illusion), other times not (the sword will not unsheath unless blood is first rubbed into the scabbard).