GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

World building elements are by and large created independently of in-fiction play.

Says who?

 

[pemerton]

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).

To me, that seems to overlap pretty much with the usage in the OP.

I certainly believe that I've been able to follow your posts in this thread, and your posts suggest to me that you've been able to follow mine.

 

[pemerton]

I find it very relevant to the topic, which is why I mentioned it.

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.

I mean, suppose as part of worldbuilding the GM has decided that all assassins from the Wyrd Guild do not trigger Alarm spells - perhaps, as part of their initiation, they are doused in a magical fluid - that would seem to obviously bear upon some of the stuff talked about in the OP.

And if the players don't know about these assassins, and hence find their PCs ambushed by them when they expected their Alarm spell to protect them, that might affect the sense of fairness of play.

World-building decisions also affect fidelity in NPC decision-making, in the sense that backstory decisions about this stuff (eg who someone has named in their will) are consistent with other aspects of the backstory.

 

[NN]

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.

“To hit Roll a d20, add your attack and beat opponents AC” “

and

“Elves have +1 to bows”

are different things and labelling them both “rules” and deviation as “fiat” is obfuscatory at best.

 

[Manbearcat]

Agreed.

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.

I'm pointing at the surreal or bizarre notion that (a) we can actually perform this calculus, (b) that such calculus would actually generate a real/more immersive imagined world (as you point out, improbable things happen routinely in our benign, material world), and (c) even if you were capable of and did, in fact, continuously choose the most plausible framing or situation-state change, only you (the GM) would be privy to this series of notional plausibility selections.

Put another way, someone, somewhere recently said about a certain sort of Sim-Immersionist GMing agenda:

Not the likeliest thing is often treated as implausible; or, conversely, plausible is often taken to imply the likeliest thing. These are both mistakes.

Extending this further, someone responded:

A certain sort of Sim-Immersionist GM has this nagging (to them) sense that as you scale up that not the likeliest thing, your "simulation" becomes increasingly "aphysical."

This is also a mistake in both conception and application. Aiming at some notion of "maximal plausibility" must require some way to include the implausible. For the sake of an enduringly inferable, gameable decision-space, whether that inclusion of the implausible is done stochastically (for further maximum plausibility!) or selected by GM fiat on any given occasion, the players need to have some way of understanding when/how the GM's secret mental model has opted out of the most plausible and, instead, selected for the implausible.

Given that the mental model and the dicing or fiating is all "behind the screen/in the GM's head" (table-facing procedures and meta-conversations are verboten...this stuff is mystified for immersion particulars), this particular process becomes some combination of fraught + significantly laborious. To mitigate the effects of this entangled pair, the GM either reactively punts to exposition dumps/reveals as required or develops some kind of technique akin to proactive node design (with players learning this GM's particular version of "trigger the dump/reveal" play loop).

 

[Maxperson]

What makes a NPC important? If the GM decides in advance, to me that seems like a railroad.

It can't be a railroad since players are not forced to have their PCs do anything. A railroad is when the players have their PCs forced down a rail no matter what they decide to have their PCs do. Hell, it's not even linear, so it's not even remotely close to being a railroad.

 

[Maxperson]

“To hit Roll a d20, add your attack and beat opponents AC” “

and

“Elves have +1 to bows”

are different things and labelling them both “rules” and deviation as “fiat” is obfuscatory at best.

No, you are wrong. All rules do not have to be created equal in order for deviation to be fiat.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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?

I would say there is a difference here. A mental model of the world suggests a consistency modeling things in your mind, versus say an approach where the GM is more imagining moments, set pieces, etc.

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?

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?

It is hard to read posts like this and not feel like all you are ever doing is lawyering our words Pemerton. I had a whole response that I think was sound, but I also realized this area of discussion with you just becomes about painting people into corners with their own words

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm pointing at the surreal or bizarre notion that (a) we can actually perform this calculus, (b) that such calculus would actually generate a real/more immersive imagined world (as you point out, improbable things happen routinely in our benign, material world), and (c) even if you were capable of and did, in fact, continuously choose the most plausible framing or situation-state change, only you (the GM) would be privy to this series of notional plausibility selections.

Again, this is just a straw man. People are trying to make a naturalistic world, a model sufficient for a game. They aren't pretending to be a computer that simulates reality. But in reality, things that happen are still bound by logic. Even improbably events, when you roll them back, have a logic and cause and effect that makes sense. All most people are saying here is that they try create a gaming experience in the world bound by cause and effect and naturalistic reasoning. But it is more than just that. They try to run NPCs as if they were real, operating on real personalities, motives, etc. It is the difference between starting with what the villain wants to do to the party, for example cut them off before they reach the Duke's manor, then figuring out what steps that NPC needs to take in order to cut the party off, versus deciding that the NPC and his men just so up because it is dramatically appropriate. Also nothing in the former precludes rolling dice. Most GMs like this will rely on randomness from time to time to help achieve a better sense of verisimilitude. They aren't obligated to but if you follow discussions by people who play these games you see random rolls form a large aspect of the style of play (but usually as tools, not as requirements).

And to be clear, nothing wrong with the other approach I mentioned in the example. Like I said in my example about men popping out of walls. I've done that when it is dramatically appropriate in some games because I wanted to emulate a thrilling Cheng Cheh movie. But I have also been in more naturalistic games, where something like that doesn't happen because it is appropriate, but you make it something that could happen provided there is an appropriate set up (in which case, if it does happen, it is likely to go down very differently and be easier for your players to detect or hear about ahead of time).

Put another way, someone, somewhere recently said about a certain sort of Sim-Immersionist GMing agenda:

I don't even think sim-immersionist is the best way to play. As I have said, I often run games that are drama and sandbox, while the rest of the time run games that are monster of the week. And I avoid language like simulationist. But I don't understand why folks in these threads are so bent on proving this style doesn't exist or is somehow absurd when people clearly engage in it all the time

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Right. This is salient difference. But this also means that in high myth game the GM is limited by that established myth, and that the players can at least in theory learn that myth and use it for their advantage. In a game where they myth is established retroactively that is not possible.

Now in reality, I think most games contain both approaches. Everything cannot be mapped, everything cannot be predetermined. Then again, in almost every game some things are. So are just haggling over the exact amount, really.

I mean, suppose as part of worldbuilding the GM has decided that all assassins from the Wyrd Guild do not trigger Alarm spells - perhaps, as part of their initiation, they are doused in a magical fluid - that would seem to obviously bear upon some of the stuff talked about in the OP.

And if the players don't know about these assassins, and hence find their PCs ambushed by them when they expected their Alarm spell to protect them, that might affect the sense of fairness of play.

World-building decisions also affect fidelity in NPC decision-making, in the sense that backstory decisions about this stuff (eg who someone has named in their will) are consistent with other aspects of the backstory.

Yeah, good example. IMO world building decisions absolutely should affect resolution this way. And perhaps in this instance the PCs had not learned about this fact beforehand, and it happened to be one that worked against them. But as the fact was known to the GM from the get go, it was in principle learnable. And of course in some other instance some other pre-established fact will work in the characters' favour. Furthermore, now the PCs know of this so in future they can take into account and perhaps even learn this technique themselves.

To me the world having this sort of concreteness is a benefit. To me it feels more real that way (though I recognise this is subjective.) But it definitely makes possible interaction with the world that in the fiction after method would not be possible.