GM fiat - an illustration

[thefutilist]

What I was saying though, is there’s no difference between GM decisions on world building with GM decisions made during play in that they can both shape and impact play. And they will often interact… which we should acknowledge is GM fiat interacting with GM fiat.

I hope that's clearer.

Oh wait, ok I get you.

Both are GM decisions but the first one is a binding decision that the second decision must take into account.

Can this series of decisions essentially resolve chunks of situation, yeah they can and the fact they are 'binding' is what makes this possible.

And yeah I 100% agree, it is GM fiat interacting with GM fiat.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The people those on your side of this debate are engaging. I mean, if you wan @pemerton want to waste your time talking about apples, be my guest. It won't have anything to do with the oranges that we are talking about, though, and it was oranges that started you guys talking about the apples.

This tangent on world building decisions doesn't at all change what we are saying about in-game fidelity in decision making for our NPCs.

Max, when I want to respond to a point you make, I respond to you. If you’re having another conversation with someone else in a thread, and it’s about a point I don’t care about… why would I chime in on that conversation and tell you to stop?

That’s what you did.

I find it very relevant to the topic, which is why I mentioned it. If you don’t think so, either discuss or piss off, but don’t try and tell me what “we” are talking about.

Speak only for yourself.

Oh wait, ok I get you.

Both are GM decisions but the first one is a binding decision that the second decision must take into account.

Can this series of decisions essentially resolve chunks of situation, yeah they can and the fact they are 'binding' is what makes this possible.

And yeah I 100% agree, it is GM fiat interacting with GM fiat.

Thanks! My initial wording with “GM decides” was unclear.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh wait, ok I get you.

Both are GM decisions but the first one is a binding decision that the second decision must take into account.

Can this series of decisions essentially resolve chunks of situation, yeah they can and the fact they are 'binding' is what makes this possible.

And yeah I 100% agree, it is GM fiat interacting with GM fiat.

DM decision making equaling DM fiat renders DM fiat essentially meaningless. DM fiat is a specific kind of DM decision making that steps outside of the normal rule structure of the game. In D&D it's basically rule 0 enacted when the rules don't cover a situation, cover it in such a way that the DM needs/wants to change it, or the DM wants to add or remove a rule.

When the DM world builds, he is generally doing so within the rules of the game, so there's no DM fiat going on. If during world building he decides to change elves in some manner(such as happened with Athasian elves), that would be him engaging DM fiat as part of world building since he is altering game rules and assumptions.

The same distinction applies with other DM decisions such as when he is making a decision for an NPC. If he isn't stepping outside the rules to figure out what the NPC is going to do, there is no DM fiat going on, only DM decision making.

 

[thefutilist]

DM decision making equaling DM fiat renders DM fiat essentially meaningless. DM fiat is a specific kind of DM decision making that steps outside of the normal rule structure of the game. In D&D it's basically rule 0 enacted when the rules don't cover a situation, cover it in such a way that the DM needs/wants to change it, or the DM wants to add or remove a rule.

When the DM world builds, he is generally doing so within the rules of the game, so there's no DM fiat going on. If during world building he decides to change elves in some manner(such as happened with Athasian elves), that would be him engaging DM fiat as part of world building since he is altering game rules and assumptions.

The same distinction applies with other DM decisions such as when he is making a decision for an NPC. If he isn't stepping outside the rules to figure out what the NPC is going to do, there is no DM fiat going on, only DM decision making.

Ah I've been using it differently.

I've been using it to mean GM decisions but especially GM decisions related to the outcome of a stated character intention (or conflict, they're slightly different things).


So to go right back to the start. The player sets an alarm with the INTENT of keeping themselves safe from attack.

Two GM decisions both extrapolated from back story, effectively resolve the character intent by GM decision. No the alarm does not keep them safe.


My re-framing of the initial scenario was.

The situation changes due to character action which introduces a new element (a GM decision)

A conflict occurs which is resolved unilaterally by the GM (A GM decision).

So same as above. Two GM decisions. How much difference that makes depends a lot on the surrounding context.


Much of the subsequent discussion was based around the fact that the specifics of the Torch placement may vary and whether it was possible to make that an actually consequential decision given various constraints.

To the extent there are sides, I'm broadly on the 'trad' side but if I was to run a game where torch positioning really mattered to the players then I'd want a commensurate amount of prep because of the 'chasm width problem.' One of Pemertons main critiques.

The Chasm Width Problem

idiomdrottning.org

Although the conversation, especially what pedantic has said, has changed my mind as to the necessity of such requirements for gamist play.

 

[pemerton]

I consider No-myth + fail forward as an entirely different mode to situation play + conflict resolution.

You've posted about this before, and it's a very interesting perspective because it's coming at these discussions from a different set of play experiences than many other posters.

Eg not many posters are working out what they find as contrasting between (eg) a certain sort of approach to Burning Wheel and a certain sort of approach to Sorcerer.

But conflict resolution does generate some demands on the "myth" that are different from the demands imposed by (say) classic D&D or CoC map-and-key play. For instance, if there is to be room for the resolution of the conflict tells us that (say) the assassin sent by Jackson ends up admiring the PCs more than Jackson, and so lets them go (a reasonably well-known "honourable assassin" trope), then the myth can't be utterly total about what sorts of feelings Jackson's assassin might have.

Or if there is to be room for the resolution of the conflict to tell us that Jackson's assassin falls for the PCs' warehouse gambit, then the myth can't already establish, in step-by-step detail, the way that the assassin enters the warehouse.

There has to be sufficient "looseness" of the myth to enable the upshot of the resolved conflict to be incorporated into it.

 

[Pedantic]

TLDR and hopefully it is clear. I'm a Game Master. I'm running a game. Each game has distinct characteristics (premise, agenda, procedures, superstructure, participant principles, authority distribution, incentive structures, currencies, advancement scheme). No matter what game I'm running, no matter how many games I'm running at one time (not in the same moment, but weekly games), I want every decision I make to be..."game-forward." Yes, each game includes characters and settings and myth and motivations which endow play with meaning and momentum, but I'm wholly preoccupied by the effort to generate for my players the best gameplay moment possible in the game they're playing...right_now. And I want to stack those over and over until we're done.

I will never choose a sterile or mild or tepid moment of play for some notion (of which only I will overwhelmingly be privy to) of "enhanced causality," when an alternative choice is more engaging and provocative. And I will never feel like I (or my players) need to endure moments (perhaps even many!) of conflict-neutral or sterile play in order to "pay for" conflict-charged play later (and please let us not pretend that we haven't seen this all over the place here and elsewhere...that train of thought is ubiquitous..."if everything is cool, then nothing is cool" is one formulation of that absurd take).

I checked out a little bit when we starting throwing around immersion as I've long since settled on a perfectly workable technical understanding of the term and don't really care what anyone else is doing with it*, but this bothers me, precisely because it's a poor use of "game." My critique of what's being called "challenge-based play" amounts to "it doesn't use very interesting game mechanisms" and in so much as I end up in the 'sim' camp, it's because I find it leads to better gameplay; you need a board state with more levers and more information in order to have interesting moves, and RPGs are interesting precisely because they have the potential to allow for more moves on a broader board for a longer time than other kinds of games. I think there's some value in critique that drives at whether some parts of that state are too arbitrary to undermine player agency, but the fixes all seem to involve stripping out the potential for gameplay in the first place.

Framing and stacking the interesting gameplay moments is insufficient; you need to then make interacting with them mechanically interesting unto itself. Did I get to put together a strategy? Was it evaluated verse an alternative? Is there feedback I can use to refine my decision making in future? And equally importantly, was the decision space interesting while I was in it? Did I have to work to find a line, were my choices interesting to deploy? Fundamentally, there's a gameplay argument here, not just the case for "immersion."

*I plot immersion as a spectrum that measures the distance between a character's and player's decision making on an action by action basis. Immersive mechanics are forward looking in causality and have quick feedback loops.

 

[pemerton]

For me it's more about, "Do I feel that this make logical sense in the setting?" That's the question I always ask.

<snip>

I need that question answered first, and I won't apologize for feeling that way.

But who do you think doesn't worry about making logical sense in the setting. I mean, your final line makes it sound like you think you're stating some controversial thing that puts you in opposition to other RPGers (the ones who would expect you to apologise). But who do you imagine these other RPGers to be?

Well I think making choices that feel like the most logical decisions for the game world works well, but I don't think that means other approaches are wrong, unrealistic, or shouldn't be done. The GM can operate with a mental model of the world but is also making choices

A world in which only the most likely things ever happen is not going to be very realistic.

Also, I'm not sure what "mental model" means here. Is saying the GM has a mental model of the world just a fancy way of saying the GM imagines a world?

 

[pemerton]

We create detailed important NPCs

What makes a NPC important? If the GM decides in advance, to me that seems like a railroad. If they decide after the event, and then add details, how is the GM in that case extrapolating along in-fiction causal pathways?

 

[pemerton]

Depends on what you want out of the game. If a player prefers your playstyle, then there's probably little benefit. If someone prefers my playstyle, then there's lots of benefit.

There are no trade-offs, because it isn't a choice between doing it one way or another. Those who play the way I do, do it that way.

Maybe. I don't know how your players do things, but my players often circle back around to things and people encountered in the past. That details has a very real possibility of being important at some point. It also might not be.

You've misunderstood me. My questions were directed to this thing that you said:

The gamists still set up camp in the safest spots, take the best precautions, set watches, etc. to minimize the dangers to them. That would include a potential assassin.

My question was: what benefits flow to the gamist players from doing those things, and what trade-offs are they making, and why does any of it matter, in circumstances where the GM is deciding what happens in the way that you described as being " enough to be able to simulate for the game whether or not the Jackson could or would send an assassin, and how to go about determining if or when the assassin finds the group".

 

[pemerton]

GMs are making decisions all_the_time.

Agreed.

I can give you the train of thought embedded in every_single_decision I've ever made as a GM:

1) "Is this an engaging decision-space featuring compelling (for the game-relevant value of compelling) situation and a multivariate consequence-space that provokes and demands thoughtful, rigorous play and assumes robust rules and related handles; put another way, is it richly gameable?"

2) "Is this content premise relevant?"

3) "Is this content genre credible?"

4) "Amongst the myriad of options availed to me which are all credibly, causally downstream from prior fiction, is this situation-state (framing or consequence) plausible?" Choosing the most probable is absolutely absurdist...as if I (or anyone else) is possessed of the mental bandwidth and cognitive toolkit necessary to determine probabilities in complex systems approaching any level of precision...and if, on rare occasion I feel one situation-state is marginally more plausible than an alternative, I'll always defer to the one that leads to maximal integrity of play (which will be system and premise-indexing), hews toward invigorating/provoking in its elements rather than sterile/conflict-neutral, thereby passing muster with 1-3 above.

TLDR on the above, assuming both are plausible, I will never defer to sterility in the case that I'm possessed of a level of comfort that one situation-framing or state-change bears out some minor level of plausibility over another.

<snip>

I will never choose a sterile or mild or tepid moment of play for some notion (of which only I will overwhelmingly be privy to) of "enhanced causality," when an alternative choice is more engaging and provocative.

So, when I read "choosing the most probable is absolutely absurdist" I at first thought you meant something else - ie that an imaginary world in which only the most probable things happen would be an absurdist world. Which I think it would be. Our actual world is full of improbable things happening.

As for decision-heuristics, I think these days my heuristic is What would be interesting/fun/cool here?

That is relative to the game being played (as you said in a bit of your post that I snipped). For instance, Torchbearer, at least as I encounter it and play it, has a comic aspect that Burning Wheel doesn't. Prince Valiant is often light-hearted in a way that Classic Traveller is not. Etc.

But in all the game I GM, I'm pretty happy with the richness of the fiction created, the interest and integrity of the setting, etc. The idea that being "logical" to the setting would somehow establish a contrast with my approach to GMing isn't really something I can credit.