GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

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.

To me, this post is hugely telling - in that you are positing a situation for the use of Alarm exactly like the dungeon scenarios that I have mentioned multiple times in this thread.

Instead of the only door to a room, make it a public building with windows; or a wilderness camp site; or some other place with multiple points of ingress (including perhaps vertical ones), where it is possible to act against the PC from more than 20' away, etc.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To me, this post is hugely telling - in that you are positing a situation for the use of Alarm exactly like the dungeon scenarios that I have mentioned multiple times in this thread.

Yes, because it is the situation where it makes sense to use the spell.

Instead of the only door to a room, make it a public building with windows; or a wilderness camp site; or some other place with multiple points of ingress (including perhaps vertical ones), where it is possible to act against the PC from more than 20' away, etc.

Well, it is a bloody useless spell to cast in such situations, so why would you?

But here again we see how with the D&D approach the fiction actually matters. You actually need to think how and where you utilise the spell. This to me is a good thing.

 

[pemerton]

I'm sorry? You seem to have just randomly appropriated a term someone else defined to make a specific point?

The whole point of that example was demonstrating that it would be unsatisfying and unpleasant to abstract the specifics of the two proposed situations down to a die roll, and instead they needed to have different methods and points of resolution to make them meaningfully different. You seem to have done some kind of mental operation, where you put everything that was not described directly in the example outside of the "situation" when it seems very clear to me that no such subtraction is occurring. Extrapolating the nature of the assassin does not free you from needing to extrapolate the "minutiae pertaining to time, distance, architecture, who speaks to whom, etc" you mentioned. Those details are as constituent of the "situation" at play, as the identity of the assassin.

Perhaps we're both reading entirely different intent into what @thefutilist as written than was intended, but your proposed method of resolution would seem entirely opposed to the goal of play as I understood it from that post.

I am reading @thefutilist's post having regard to all their prior post about situation-based play, and the fact that Sorcerer seesm to be one of their favourite RPGs.

Here are two examples of prior posts that I have in mind:

I think Torchbearer follows different rules (as in a different super structure) but I’ll use Sorcerer, In a Wicked Age and Apocalypse world as examples because in my opinion they’re kind of the same game. Hopefully you’ve read them but I can expand a bit more if you need me to.

So in In a Wicked Age you prep by just creating characters, say about seven, that have conflicting interests. At this point your situation is set and mutually legible.

In Sorcerer you use the characters Kickers to basically do the same thing you do in In a Wicked Age but the situation isn’t yet mutually legible.

Now from an aesthetic perspective, (for me) the point of role-playing is having a mutually legible dramatic situation that we’re trying to resolve. Mutually legible means that all the pieces are on the board. No one (and this mostly means the GM) can bring new stuff into the situation because it defeats the point of play.

Binding prep means you can’t unilaterally expand what the situation is before it’s become mutually legible. Before the situation has become mutually legible though. What prep does, is it means the GM is playing to find out how the situation resolves. They’re in the same position as the players, they’re not an entertainer trying to make things awesome, they’re bound by fidelity, the resolution mechanics and the granularity of the fictional positioning.

Also I can’t use the quote function well but your bit about Joe’s girl is really important. Prep means killing Joe’s girl will piss of the water cult, so that decision is taken out of the GM’s hands but I think it’s a consequence of the stuff I ramble about above rather than the reason (maybe, I can see it both ways).

And you don’t of course follow these rules in session one of AW but session one is functionally the equivalent of creating the cast pre-play in In a Wicked Age.

@niklinna

The advantage of being able to go away and think up characters is really that you have the time and space to think and make decisions about them. So I can decide I want a crimelord and I can think about his backstory and who he is and what he values. Then in play I'm thinking about what they'll do 'in character' as it were. Now that's also true of very briefly drawn characters I've had to invent on the spot and for some games that's fine. I find for Apocalypse World and Sorcerer I want more richly detailed characters that I can use to express myself.

As that relates to creating the backstory situation. Well the characters I create want stuff and the situation is really just the moment when wanting stuff matters. So I need to be able to detail the crime boss and also that he wants the artefact art from the thief.


@RenleyRenfield

I was talking to a friend about this today and I ended up doubling down on my position. When I've been prepping I've still been thinking about the player characters too much and I think it's been effecting how much of my expression I've been putting into the NPC's.

The way it works (or doesn't) is that driven characters will come into conflict (or not) and that will produce story. I don't have to think about what's good for the story, I can just think about what the characters would do.

There might be more chance of stuff falling flat that way but it seems like a better creative relationship to have (For me anyway).


@niklinna


Assuming we want story produced by characters in conflict.

On a technical level: There needs to be a situation right. A cast of characters with conflicting interests. We can't really play in any consequential way until that has occurred. So we could introduce characters in the moment and ask questions and get answers as you say. This is kind of how I interpret session one of Apocalypse World to work.

But we could divide those responsibilities up anyway we choose. Like I could create the whole cast of characters including the ones the players are going to play.

I could take a kicker and go away and do it. We could do it communally like in a Wicked Age, I could do it myself like in Fantasy for Real and then the mechanics might introduce more situation I have to weave in.

Basically we need to have a minimum of stuff that exists for stories that are created through character interaction. That minimum stuff is the characters and what they want. I think how we get there is technique dependant. I don't know if I'm a huge fan of the way Apocalypse World does is.

Obviously @thefutilist will be able to correct me if I'm wrong, or if I have been misreading their posts all this time.

But I don't think that there is much in common - at the level of details of process and resolution techniques - between Sorcerer and other situation-based games, and the sort of map-and-key play that you are arguing for.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I've never met players with this extra sensory ability. Though I'm also a Master Manipulator too...

I can say plenty of players have "commented on how great my games are" too.

It isn’t that hard to sense this when you are in a campaign. People sense when they are being railroaded for example and they can sense when the world is making logical sense around them

It isn’t a blast. I am not saying I am some great GM. I am saying I know players have sensed this aspect of how I run games because they have commented on it

Right, but how do the know?

So, in your game, the Ogre would "officially" say "if you PCs kill me my brother will seek revenge!". Then the players will go "Okay-Day, the DM has established in the fiction". So the PCs kill the Ogre...and some time later get attacked by the brother Ogre and just happily say "Okay-Day, we approve!"

Or do the Buddy DM way, where you as the DM just do a "cut scene " and say "ok, just so you know this Ogre has a brother out looking for revenge!"

I just said in my post because the ogre coming to avenge his brother likely mentions it as he is attacking. But it could be other ways. But the point here is logical connection is fairly discernible even they don’t understand the specifics (I.e. they kill an ogre one day then a few days later are attacked by a very angry ogre, who is probably wearing similar clothing or looks like he comes from the same tribe)

 

[Bedrockgames]

These are great for simple, casual games.....but not really so great for most other types of games. I your just playing a short game for simple fun....playing an RPG in the same way people play board games....then it does not matter. The DM rolls out the Red Carpet for the players to make the game fun and exciting.....the game would be too hard for most players otherwise.

This remark is very hard to take seriously

 

[pemerton]

Is there only one warehouse in this city? Presumably there are several, and PCs choose one that is suitable. Or perhaps they don't, and that's their mistake but an actual choice about the place the characters get to make in game.

How is it decided how many warehouses there are? And which one is the easiest for the PCs to use to set their trap? And which ones the PCs learn about? Etc.

Well, it is a bloody useless spell to cast in such situations, so why would you?

But it's obviously not useless at all.

If I was studying scrolls in a library, worried that my enemies might be trying to track me down, and I could place a magical warding that will give me a sensory alert if they come within 20 feet, or 10 feet in the case of Waiting Illusion (say, they come up to the corner of the shelf that I'm sitting behind), that would not be useless at all. It would be very helpful!

The fact that it is not foolproof - eg perhaps the assassin removes books from the shelf to peek through, or climbs over the top of the shelf (does the shelf go all the way to the ceiling? the map-and-key probably doesn't answer that question), or whatever - doesn't make the spell useless.

Likewise in a wilderness camp - the spell is not useless at all. Just not foolproof.

 

[soviet]

I've never met players with this extra sensory ability. Though I'm also a Master Manipulator too...

I can say plenty of players have "commented on how great my games are" too.

I recall that you've previously posted about players hating you, assaulting you (or threatening to assault you), and having had multiple groups and campaigns fall apart because players felt you'd been unfair to them.

 

[pemerton]

So what about the rolls and rules that don't feel fair to the players? Does the GM just hold up the rulebook like a shield and say "it was not me, it was this rule here!" ?

Or do you pick games with only very slight "set backs" that can effect the characters? Like the worst thing you can get from the game for a "critical setback" is "oh, no your character bumped their head for one point of damage!".

Or does the game...."technically" have real "critical setbacks" like "your character is obliterated!" but they are supper rare...like you have to make a lot of rolls to get to one.

You can download the core rules for Burning Wheel for free, from DriveThru RPG. Why not have a read of them?

 

[thefutilist]

But I don't think that there is much in common - at the level of details of process and resolution techniques - between Sorcerer and other situation-based games, and the sort of map-and-key play that you are arguing for.

Well the play cycle I describe also includes how I imagine Pedantic and Crimson play but the specific implementation, procedures and focus are going to be different.

Me and you (Pemerton) could, I imagine, play role-master in this style and probably have a good Narrativist time of it. Could we play with Pedantic though? Well despite sharing the same structure I imagine that's unlikely. We'd probably end up using a lot of the minutiae of positioning a bit differently.

In this regard I consider Sorcerer, In A Wicked Age, Cyberpunk 2020, 5E, potentially the same game. I'm just not preparing any dungeon maps for IAWA because it just doesn't operate on the same level of granularity.

I'm not preparing any dungeon maps when we play role-master either but I think the positioning level we're most concerned with would be the clashing ethos of the various characters and so we'd be highly tolerant of an amount of arbitrary positioning that Pedantic might find unacceptable. (maybe anyway, this stuff can be complicated). But yeah same basic super-structure.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How is it decided how many warehouses there are?

That could be extrapolated from the size and type of the city, but it also probably is not important as there are likely to be enough.

And which one is the easiest for the PCs to use to set their trap? And which ones the PCs learn about? Etc.

Presumably the PCs know what sort of warehouse they need depends on what their plan is, thus they search for one that is suitable or can be made so. For example if their plan requires only one entrance they find one with just one entrance or block other entrances. Or again, if they don't, and leave other entrances open, then that matters, because the fiction matters and the choices matter!

Like I get that not everyone cares for that level of detail. Perhaps you just want to have trap setting roll, and what the characters actually exactly do is mere flavour. But I think it is pretty clear that in doing it that way something rather significant is also lost.

And it is fine to do some simplifications in some areas of the game, those you don't want to spend that much time of thought on. But if you did it on all areas, then that would become a very dull game, at least to me.

But it's obviously not useless at all.

If I was studying scrolls in a library, worried that my enemies might be trying to track me down, and I could place a magical warding that will give me a sensory alert if they come within 20 feet, or 10 feet in the case of Waiting Illusion (say, they come up to the corner of the shelf that I'm sitting behind), that would not be useless at all. It would be very helpful!

The fact that it is not foolproof - eg perhaps the assassin removes books from the shelf to peek through, or climbs over the top of the shelf (does the shelf go all the way to the ceiling? the map-and-key probably doesn't answer that question), or whatever - doesn't make the spell useless.

Is this something that is actually happened in game? Like perhaps just go read the book in a reading hall with a few metres of visibility and save the spell?

Likewise in a wilderness camp - the spell is not useless at all. Just not foolproof.

I mean it is pretty useless. The alarm covers just a few metres. If the potential enemy can come from any direction, then that is not great. But I'm not against randomising some things. If you cover a tiny area we certainly can randomise whether the enemy happens to come from that direction unless there is some particularly compelling reason for assuming a specific direction. What I don't want to randomise is what the whole situation. Like if the PCs take steps to secure a place where the spell actually blocks the only entrance rather than just plopping it in middle of the empty field and hoping for the best I want it to matter. I want the situation and choices of the PCs to matter.