GM fiat - an illustration

[thefutilist]

This is what is of course easily possible in low or no myth approaches, thus low myth is most powerful tool in the railroader's arsenal. But not all GM inventions are such contrivances. If the capability and nature of the enemies or the layout of the location were independently (and hopefully previously) established then it is not a contrivance; they are not created as a response to the player action declaration for the express purpose of nullifying it.

HOW TO HIRE ASSASSINS

I won't bash no-myth here but there is an issue. The issue is that the following three things are radically different at the deepest level (1) Adventure path play (2) no-myth play (3) Situation play. The s in situation is to denote a technical term, it has a very specific meaning in this context.


SITUATION PLAY

Situation play means we begin play with a situation, this is before any scenes are even described. The situation consists of people, things, places that have fictional positioning toward each other, before play begins.

The aim of play is to see how the situation changes into a stable state by seeing how the fictional positioning changes, which happens in scenes. I really do mean the aim of play, everything is downhill and judged by how we change the fictional positioning of things relative to each other. The aesthetic pay off is seeing these things change in relation to each other. We're excited to see how things, pre-existing things with fictional positioning, change in relation to each other.


Which gives this play cycle


1) Situation (the entirety of the game state but distinct from setting) >

2) Scene framing (takes the stuff from situation and puts it into a scene where the positioning may or may not change due to conflicts of interest amongst the characters)

3) The scene has conflict or not and the fictional positioning of this part of the situation changes or not

4) The situation has changed and this new situation becomes the next 1

1) Situation

2) Scene framing

and so on until the situation is resolved. In other words there is no longer 'tension' amongst the various components that are fictionally situated.


CONTRIVANCE IN DIFFERENT MODES

So in situation play, someone has hired some assassins. These aren't part of the initial situation (or maybe not) but must be a logically extrapolated extension of it based on the person doing the hiring and their broad fictional positioning toward the setting.

This is also where theme is expressed though fiat and situational constraint because 'what type of assassins does that person hire?'

You extrapolate based on (1) their priorities/personality (2) what's actually available in the setting which can be fairly broad (3) the resources, positioning of the person doing the hiring.


Jackson has deep roots to the criminal underworld and loyalty matters to him. He's precise, a good judge of character, not massively wealthy. His assassin is someone who is genuinely loyal, deadly, patient.

Bellow is rich, dumb and impressed by trinkets. His assassin is good because of the wealth but also a braggadocio and not as deadly, loyal or patient as Jacksons assassin.


A different player, given the same fictional material to work with, would make a different type of extrapolation. The type of extrapolation made, the causal connection. That's the GM addressing premise. This type of person gets this type of assassin.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@thefutilist I don't remember hearing term situation play before, but I love your description of it and this indeed is a great description of how I mostly approach running RPGs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I believe I was pretty clear. The GM attempts to map from prior established facts and causal chains of events to get to the current board state. My whole initial point was that reducing that process to a single thing, instead of acknowledging that you could use a bunch of approaches with different implications for play (say, the GM doesn't have to respect causality, but must respect rising action, so whatever is narrated next must be more exciting than what came before, or perhaps we're dealing with a rule of cool system where we accept whatever the GM proposes, unless a player proposes an alternative that the table thinks is more appealing).

It would obviously be superior if we could examine the imagined space to determine what's happening directly, instead of suffering the limitations of doing so on the GM's limited processing power, and limited communication, but we can't, so we put up with the shortcomings. In exchange for that frustrating limitation, we get a significantly more dynamic board to play on, that allows for novel and interesting lines of play to emerge.

This is a perfectly good articulation. I know this gets seen as some sort of 'attack' by some, but IMHO, only the very thinnest of situations, and even then with significant elision, are suitable to be subject to this process. No human mind can encompass reality with much fidelity. That is, we are obviously competent to walk, drive a car, etc. and our regular successes here indicates that humans can extrapolate and plan physical activities in the real world and judge speed, distance, simple first-order causality, etc.

But look at how BAD we actually are at much beyond that! Situations regularly go against our notions, perhaps even most of the time to an extent. And all this is with actual information to go on and motive to get it right.

I just do not accept that there is some kind of objective rational GMing techniques. Well, there is, but the grounds of that, it's motives and principles rest in the social dynamics of play, not in some kind of rational calculations of fictional reality.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is a perfectly good articulation. I know this gets seen as some sort of 'attack' by some, but IMHO, only the very thinnest of situations, and even then with significant elision, are suitable to be subject to this process. No human mind can encompass reality with much fidelity. That is, we are obviously competent to walk, drive a car, etc. and our regular successes here indicates that humans can extrapolate and plan physical activities in the real world and judge speed, distance, simple first-order causality, etc.

But look at how BAD we actually are at much beyond that! Situations regularly go against our notions, perhaps even most of the time to an extent. And all this is with actual information to go on and motive to get it right.

I just do not accept that there is some kind of objective rational GMing techniques. Well, there is, but the grounds of that, it's motives and principles rest in the social dynamics of play, not in some kind of rational calculations of fictional reality.

It of course is not perfectly objective and different GMs would produce somewhat different stuff given the same premises. And that is absolutely fine.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Distance, travel time, pursuers speed and competence in tracking etc.



"This" is fictional positioning. Time, method of entry, whether there are several entrances, possibly even the skill and identity of the enemy etc.



There usually is. We are not talking about decisions made in vacuum without a context. Roll abstracts the context.

Look, it's turtles ALL THE WAY DOWN! Y'all can say "oh, but the top one's an armadillo!" but it still doesn't add any real explanatory power! Yes, the GM can rely on some 'facts' but those are just made up themselves, and even if they were an extrapolation of some more distant facts, THOSE are just made up. Eventually you get to turtles, it's all just pure imagination.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Look, it's turtles ALL THE WAY DOWN! Y'all can say "oh, but the top one's an armadillo!" but it still doesn't add any real explanatory power! Yes, the GM can rely on some 'facts' but those are just made up themselves, and even if they were an extrapolation of some more distant facts, THOSE are just made up. Eventually you get to turtles, it's all just pure imagination.

Wait! Stuff in RPGs is made up? No way, man!

How, when and why stuff is made up matters. Like to a lot of people it matters quite a bit whether the GM decides that a troll is a super tough troll with double the normal HP before the PCs even meet the troll or after they have already been fighting it for couple of rounds.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Wait! Stuff in RPGs is made up? No way, man!

How, when and why stuff is made up matters. Like to a lot of people it matters quite a bit whether the GM decides that a troll is a super tough troll with double the normal HP before the PCs even meet the troll or after they have already been fighting it for couple of rounds.

The how is the thing here. If a GM is deciding you suddenly face an Ogre Because he is trying to kill the party, versus you suddenly face an ogre because thirty minutes ago the PCs killed that ogres brother, those are two entirely different things

 

[Pedantic]

This is a perfectly good articulation. I know this gets seen as some sort of 'attack' by some, but IMHO, only the very thinnest of situations, and even then with significant elision, are suitable to be subject to this process. No human mind can encompass reality with much fidelity. That is, we are obviously competent to walk, drive a car, etc. and our regular successes here indicates that humans can extrapolate and plan physical activities in the real world and judge speed, distance, simple first-order causality, etc.

But look at how BAD we actually are at much beyond that! Situations regularly go against our notions, perhaps even most of the time to an extent. And all this is with actual information to go on and motive to get it right.

I just do not accept that there is some kind of objective rational GMing techniques. Well, there is, but the grounds of that, it's motives and principles rest in the social dynamics of play, not in some kind of rational calculations of fictional reality.

That we're not particularly good at it has really no bearing on whether it's useful and produces interesting gameplay, especially when there is literally no other alternative. Moving from "the player's ability to learn about the fictional situation is flawed, because the GM's creation and extrapolation of it is flawed" to "let's render it impossible for the player to learn and use information about the fictional state to avoid those flaws" is wild.

I'm down for a higher fidelity board state! If you can present a system that's better than a GM trying to model the interactions between the hunter's limited information, the PC's limited information, and the effects at their disposal, I'll take it. But if the best you've got to offer is slightly weighted die rolls as the only point of interaction with the fictional situation.... well that's not a game I'd play if it wasn't an RPG, so I'll take the low fidelity, biased simulation instead, because at least it's trying to present more compelling gameplay. Doing it badly is still better than not doing it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But it is not decided because of the PC capabilities unless such decision is indeed made by an NPC with such knowledge. (And there needs to be reason for them to have such information.) Furthermore, these decisions are of course made far in advance of the spell being cast, so they cannot be a reaction for overcoming it.

NPCs don't make decisions. We only pretend they do. GMs make decisions. GMs decide if the NPC has the knowledge needed. And why. And who's available to be hired. And how devoted that person is to the cause. And nearly every other factor at play.

GMs know all about the characters' abilities and whereabouts and so on. And GMs may have some agenda in play... principles that guide their thinking. Make the game fun! Provide a challenge!

5E D&D in an attempt to appeal to as many players as possible, didn't commit to a set of principles to guide a DM. I don't know if 5.5E has done any more in that regard. Other than the very broad goals of fun or challenge and the like. Those offer very little to shed light on a DM's reasoning.

Furthermore, it is bold of you to assume that the GM is aware of all the capabilities of the PCs. I certainly do not remember everything they can do. In my last session they surprised me with Speak With Dead powder. I didn't remember they had it, even though of course it was me who had put in the loot some sessions ago in the first place.

It's not bold of me to assume that the DM knows what the players are capable of. That a given DM may not know every little thing doesn't change the fact that it's all information they likely know and which is readily available to them. Sure, they may miss a consumable magic item here and there, or even something more significant, but I don't think that changes the fact that the DM has a strong sense of what the party is capable of.

So bloody what? You still got ambushed.

Well, the conversation has been about the process, not the outcome. Welcome to the discussion!

We're talking about clear and observable procedures versus fuzzy and imperceptible ones.

I mean I would certainly freely share such details once the campaign is over if anyone was interested.

Why not just share it when it's relevant? Why wait weeks or months down the road and then explain it?

Also, if you can't remember the party's capabilities from week to week, I have little faith in you being able to recall the decision making process behind a random encounter months later.

As does Alarm.

Sure, but I had more to say than what you quoted.

Alarm may or may not work, and the reasons for that may be entirely hidden from the players. This is because the process potentially involves so much input from the DM.

What does it matter? Why you care why it failed, if the reason is "dice roll low"? That is completely useless information, you cannot do anything with it. Whereas if in D6D the spell fails due something diegetic, the characters can in future try to take it into account and come up with a countermeasure for being surprised in the same way again.

The characters aren't doing anything. The players are.

Game mechanics allow players to make informed decisions. They are not the only way to do so, but the benefits of the Aetherial Premonition are more clear than those of Alarm, due to how they interact with the game mechanics.

I mean you're taking away the fiction mattering because you're afraid of the GM screwing you over.

No, not really. I'm trying to ease the burden on the GM from having to make a million invisible decisions for every little thing that's going to happen in play because it's not a realistic or feasible expectation. Plenty of GMs make poor calls without any ill intent... it happens to me, I'm sure it happens to everyone involved in this discussion.

GM simply being able to decide anything anytime requires low myth, because otherwise there is myth that limits what and when the GM can decide!

No it doesn't. Are you going to say that Apocalypse World is more prone to railroading than a D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms?

Heavy lore play can be as railroady as anything. Probably more so... there's more that's unknown to the players that will be used to shape what they can or cannot do.

It's more about the process of play than it is the level of myth the game uses.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So it's a jerk move to contrive a reason to bypass the alarm. But it's okay in situations where the fictional reality logically produced such a result. How is the fictional reality determined? It's contrived.

This is the conflict I'm talking about. It must all be contrived. If there is an enemy capable enough to bypass the Alarm, and with motivation to do so, and who also happens to be in the area and be aware of the PCs' presence... then it's acceptable to do so. But all those things are contrived by the GM.

Exactly! It is just turtles all the way down. Any fact the GM can point at is simply resting on some assertion contrived at some level.

I will soften that a bit. As such contrivances pile together the fiction will probably begin to constrain all participants to a degree. However, that degree really rests heavily on a shared understanding of the principles, agenda, and practices of play! THIS is a key insight in the evolution of RPG practice.