GM fiat - an illustration

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think so. It is pretty simple spell and the methods it could be overcome by are pretty logical. I think most people would arrive to rather similar conclusions. Besides, things only need to be consistent within one campaign. So if the GM decides that enemy overcomes the player Alarm spell with a given method, then then it it is established that this works and the players can later use the same method to overcome the enemy Alarm spell.

I actually find it wild that people find this somehow super fuzzy or complicated.

I likewise don't understand how you can see that there is a vast nexus of factors involved in any specific outcome in a complex causal web of realistic circumstances. The upshot being there's a finite possibility of outcomes across the range of possibilities almost regardless of the small number of factors which the fictional position of any practical RPG can address. The upshot of this being GMs can generate pretty much any outcome and explain it. Thus you will inevitably have to appeal to other considerations in order to pick one, or other processes like dice.

 

[soviet]

No. This is the fundamental difference right here. You say "only a small number of things from my tiny list can happen". I say "anything". You play a Limited Game, I play an Unlimited Game.

Hang on. You're saying that if you decide the one thing that will happen, it's an Unlimited Game of infinite possibility, but if hawkeye decides six things that could happen and rolls a d6 to determine which one it is, it's a Limited Game (TM). Isn't that the wrong way round? Doesn't his game have six possibilities while yours has one?

 

[soviet]

I likewise don't understand how you can see that there is a vast nexus of factors involved in any specific outcome in a complex causal web of realistic circumstances. The upshot being there's a finite possibility of outcomes across the range of possibilities almost regardless of the small number of factors which the fictional position of any practical RPG can address. The upshot of this being GMs can generate pretty much any outcome and explain it. Thus you will inevitably have to appeal to other considerations in order to pick one, or other processes like dice.

Agreed. The GM can always find a fictional pretext to say yes or no, easy or hard, possible or not possible. 'This is the only logical consequence of the world simulation engine I am running in my head and anything else would be unrealistic' is a delusion.

 

[bloodtide]

This is all decided by the GM. With full knowledge of the players' capabilities and their character abilities and location and destination and everything else.

Some of us good DMs don't make every encounter an anti character one.

In 5e, that is likely not going to be the case unless the DM decides to share all the decisions he made that led to this point and why he made them.

Logically, the player would not know every detail of the game and game play. It's not like an RPG player is like a viewer or video gamer and gets a special cut screen to explain everything.

You want to take away GM ability to make decisions, so that they cannot make bad decisions (either by accident or by purpose.) But at the same time you're taking away the GM ability to make good decisions, that enhance the play. You seem to see GM contribution as some sort of necessary evil that we need to minimised, whereas I see it as one of the biggest strengths tabletop RPGs have over computer games.

Hear, hear! Because a DM might make a bad call or decision or such.....you like games that limit them to only one or very few things.

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.

I'd just note here the players will often not know things.

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.

Techniques? I guess I could write out a bunch of them. Though this has a lot of problems.

Most people....like 75%...are really stuck in what they can "imagine" or "think of", and it only get worse. Back in the 20th century there was at least a lot of diversity of thought. In the 21st century nearly everything is just more of the same over and over and over again.

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

Except this is pointless. This is just sneak legalese.

Sure players say it is "bad" if the DM is "trying to kill the PCs and just has a Ogre attack".

But as long as the players know "why" or have a "good idea why" or "approve" of the reason for the Ogre attack, then it is "Okay!"

But the players won't always know everything...and they can't as that would ruin the story. The players are not viewers sitting at home watching a TV show or pushing buttons on a video game: they have active "live" characters in a simulated game world.

You can't stop the game every hour or so and give the players "cut scenes" so they fully understand every single detail of the story.

Hang on. You're saying that if you decide the one thing that will happen, it's an Unlimited Game of infinite possibility, but if hawkeye decides six things that could happen and rolls a d6 to determine which one it is, it's a Limited Game (TM). Isn't that the wrong way round? Doesn't his game have six possibilities while yours has one?

Maybe you missed a post?

So, with my infinite limitless creative I can think of a large, large number of possibilities. I have no limit at all. And I will pick one.

In the Limited Low Creativity Game, the rules or the DM have a tiny list of things that are possible. And a roll determines one of those few, and the DM can add some fluff.

It is Anything vs every dumb video game with NPC that have five random greetings each time you 'talk' to one...and they cycle through them and repeat and repeat and repeat.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I likewise don't understand how you can see that there is a vast nexus of factors involved in any specific outcome in a complex causal web of realistic circumstances. The upshot being there's a finite possibility of outcomes across the range of possibilities almost regardless of the small number of factors which the fictional position of any practical RPG can address. The upshot of this being GMs can generate pretty much any outcome and explain it. Thus you will inevitably have to appeal to other considerations in order to pick one, or other processes like dice.

The usual use of alarm is to put it into the only door of a room. It is not visible. Overwhelming amount of time the only thing to determine is whether someone was going to move through that door in the first place. Situations where there are magic detecting assassins or hidden entrances to the space are unusual edge cases. It is not that hard.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Except this is pointless. This is just sneak legalese.

Sure players say it is "bad" if the DM is "trying to kill the PCs and just has a Ogre attack".

But as long as the players know "why" or have a "good idea why" or "approve" of the reason for the Ogre attack, then it is "Okay!"

But the players won't always know everything...and they can't as that would ruin the story. The players are not viewers sitting at home watching a TV show or pushing buttons on a video game: they have active "live" characters in a simulated game world.

You can't stop the game every hour or so and give the players "cut scenes" so they fully understand every single detail of the story.

it isn't actually. Players do sense when the GM is playing fair behind the scenes in this way. And the GM can occasionally peel back the veil to demonstrate this is it helps. But I've run a lot of sandbox games for example, where NPCs functioning as living characters in the adventures was a part of how things operated. And without prompting have had many players comment on how there is a real sense of cause and effect in the game. On the other hand, when the GM is dong things for another reason, for example because they want the party to die, or they want a certain level of drama to arise, the players can sense that as well. And if you are playing fairly, the pacing and flow is going to naturally just feel different

 

[Pedantic]

Agreed. The GM can always find a fictional pretext to say yes or no, easy or hard, possible or not possible. 'This is the only logical consequence of the world simulation engine I am running in my head and anything else would be unrealistic' is a delusion.

I've never found this argument compelling, because you can get usually get far enough on what's ruled out to have a gameable state. If nothing else, whatever the GM comes up with to defeat your alarm this time is something you can prepare for next time, and at the very least they'll have to make something else up. I personally think you can do a lot better with more descriptive rules, but that's the baseline.

Setting that aside though, there still isn't an alternative; the gameplay substitution of turning that board state over to dice doesn't produce the same kind of gameplay. Specifically choosing what counters to deploy can't be emulated by interpreting a die result to explain what that choice might have been.

I'm actually curious as a design question if you could get close. If you could somehow specify the possible fictional states ahead of time to a level of completeness you wouldn't lump into fiat, and then select from that total set some amount of possibilities the GM could introduce, which could be prevented through various resource expenditures by the player, maybe with roughly assigned probabilities to each scenario?

Ultimately, it just becomes an asymptote to "the GM tries to simulate everything" as you expand the set. It's funny, because that same fuzziness about how big that set is is the entire gameplay driven justification for "why an RPG and not some other game?"

 

[Bedrockgames]

But as long as the players know "why" or have a "good idea why" or "approve" of the reason for the Ogre attack, then it is "Okay!"

Just want to point out, in the case of the Ogre attack example I gave, the players would know most likely because they had killed the Ogre's Brother and that was the reason for the attack. And if they didn't connect the dots, it is very likely the Ogre might communicate this to them before trying to kill them anyways

 

[pemerton]

None of that is fiat. Fiat is outside the rules, not within it. If you are making a decision from within the rules, then it's just a DM decision making, not DM fiat. For example, if you just up and decided whether that PC in Torchbearer succeeded or failed the test instead of letting the player roll(I assume rolling is how it's done), that would be DM fiat since you've decided to supersede the rules and make the decision.

Invoking rule 0 is also DM fiat, since it's just a vague, "The DM can ignore/change/create rules." It's really just saying to the DM that DM fiat is okay.

The second paragraph seems to contradict the first.

Anyway, I am using GM fiat as per the way it is used in the OP, and in this post: GM fiat - an illustration

Oxford Languages vis Google gives, as the meaning of "fiat", a formal authorization or proposition; a decree, and that's more-or-less what I'm talking about.

I'm also interested in the constraints that govern GM fiat, as obviously the existence and nature of such constraints significantly affects the RPGing experience.

 

[soviet]

I've never found this argument compelling, because you can get usually get far enough on what's ruled out to have a gameable state. If nothing else, whatever the GM comes up with to defeat your alarm this time is something you can prepare for next time, and at the very least they'll have to make something else up. I personally think you can do a lot better with more descriptive rules, but that's the baseline.

Setting that aside though, there still isn't an alternative; the gameplay substitution of turning that board state over to dice doesn't produce the same kind of gameplay. Specifically choosing what counters to deploy can't be emulated by interpreting a die result to explain what that choice might have been.

I'm actually curious as a design question if you could get close. If you could somehow specify the possible fictional states ahead of time to a level of completeness you wouldn't lump into fiat, and then select from that total set some amount of possibilities the GM could introduce, which could be prevented through various resource expenditures by the player, maybe with roughly assigned probabilities to each scenario?

Ultimately, it just becomes an asymptote to "the GM tries to simulate everything" as you expand the set. It's funny, because that same fuzziness about how big that set is is the entire gameplay driven justification for "why an RPG and not some other game?"

Well, I don't say that it can't make for compelling play, just that it's a choice made by the GM and not some inevitable consequence of the laws of cause and effect. If you want the gameplay experience it generates then great, but it isn't inherently more realistic or valid than other methods.