GM fiat - an illustration

[zakael19]

I've never played BitD. But I think you'll find there are posters here for whom your claim that it cannot do skill play constitutes fighting words!

And there's FITDs that go even further (BoB, etc) down the crunchy / skilled play lanes probably!

 

[pemerton]

Are you really saying that having a NPC is important is railroading? How?

<snip>

So only the players can say an NPC is important? Why? Just more DM hate?

I was taking important to mean important to play (like, a main character, principal antagonist, etc); not important in the imaginary setting (like, say, a prime minster compared to a shopkeeper).

 

[aramis erak]

Usage is meaning.

Your usage is inconsistant with the common understanding of the term obligation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Right. So this is what I see as the difference. In my method the setting details determine whether things go poorly (or at least affect the odds of it.) In yours the randomiser determines it, and the setting details merely provide the flavour for the potential complication.

I think we have examples of that in this thread. I think your preferred method of randomising magical defences denies the players the agency of choosing the method of deployment of such defences to matter.

But that's wrong. The use the Aetherial Premonitions ability and it works to help them lessen the risk.

That you consider a failure on that roll to somehow remove agency doesn't make that correct. That's wrong.

I also alluded earlier Blades in The Dark being too random for skilled play, and this is very similar to what I said above. (Which is not a criticism of the system as such, as it is not intended for that, but it nevertheless means that randomness inhibits that type of agency.)

Yeah, Blades allows for skilled play. It's not as much the focus as something like Torchbearer, but it's present.

Then we touched upon social mechanics, and we had a long thread about them a while ago. In many of them random determination of reactions erodes the player agency over the behaviour of their character.

Losing control over the behavior of your character is not in and of itself a loss of agency. It could very well be the consequence of a player taking an action that puts control of their character at risk in some way.

Certainly a player who decides to face a dragon let's say, knows that he may not make his Fear saving throw. If he chooses to engage the dragon anyway, he is exercising his agency.

The way you're describing agency here is too simple. I don't know if you elaborated further in the thread in question, but if not, then no, I think you're wrong.

If one would for some reason want to intentionally obfuscate how we arrive at the outcome, I guess one could torture it thusly.

If I there are three boxes, and unbeknownst to you I put a cookie in one of them, and then you decide to open one of the boxes, did I decide whether you find a cookie?

The boxes example doesn't actually work because in the RPG where the DM is extrapolating from his prep, there is no actual causality. The DM may look at it that way, and that illusion of causality may be important to him... but it's not real.

So only the players can say an NPC is important? Why? Just more DM hate?

Railroad hate, sir. Get it right.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're talking about things that are predetermined in GM prep rather than things that are decided in the moment.

If you pre-decide in prep that the sports car is behind door one then fair enough, player agency is preserved.

If you wait for me to choose a door and then decide no, that door has a goat behind it after all, I have no agency.

If you wait for me to choose a door and then decide yes, that's the sports car, well done, I also have no agency.

If you wait for me to choose a door and then randomise the goats and sports car I still have agency.

Well...yeah. the whole point is that the determination of where the sports car is is made before the player makes a choice. Who wants it otherwise?

 

[Manbearcat]

OK?

@Manbearcat's point, from which my post followed, was about the whether a situation is gameable. If consequences are unknowable, and hence calculations/reasoning correspondingly impossible, that reduces gameability.

Exactly.

And you can't just look at a single instance of this in a vacuum. The knock-on effects on the participants create a feedback loop of instability in drawing functional inferences (for play that relies upon the apparatus of inference-based puzzle solving). Frequency and magnitude have a role to play here.

Build a small bridge and it collapses into a small chasm "here and there" causing minimal injuries/deaths? The drivers are not going to be apt to take that route...and the civil engineers, project managers, and construction workers are going to lose their credibility and prospects. And rightly so.

Build a massive bridge and it collapses into a gaping chasm one time causing a huge injury and death toll? The drivers are not going to be apt to take that route...and the civil engineers, project managers, and construction workers are going to lose their credibility and prospects. And rightly so.

Inference-based puzzle solving play that relies upon both (a) relentlessly consistent mental modelling and extrapolations of complex systems and (b) enormously deft articulation/telegraphing of the relevant constituents of that system so that they are gameable...while (c) mystifying procedures to ensure maximal immersion of a particular type? It is enormously sensitive to low stakes failures with some level of frequency or very infrequent, high stakes failures.

And the above is just on the GM side. Add in the human element (mental fatigue due to life's general toll, the common communication barriers that haunt even the most remote and benign conversations or signaling regimes, etc), things become more fraught. On occasion, the players might wrongly perceive that the GM's "bridge has collapsed" when it is actually the players themselves that have driven over the guard rails and into the gaping chasm! You see this all the time with GM testimonials blaming players for poor play when the GM claims they did all of the great and excellent mental modeling and extrapolations of complex systems and then deftly articulated/telegraphed its relevant constituents so the players could properly puzzle solve; the players just sucked! At least some of those ubiquitous GM laments have to be true!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, who do you think doesn't?

I mean, I know of examples of D&D play that don't worry about an internally consistent world: dungeon modules like Castle Amber, White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors etc. The real "funhouse"/"deathtrap" ones. But no one in this thread is talking about that sort of RPGing, as best I can tell, not even you the OSR enthusiast.

But even the G-modules and D-modules set out to present a broadly naturalistic world, albeit one full of giants' kingdoms and dark faeries underground pleasure-palaces.

When it comes to what you call "fault", which to me seems closer to a difference of aesthetic opinion, I think you're looking in the wrong place. (At least if the "some GMs" are the ones you interact with on ENW. Maybe you're referring to other conversations that I'm not party to.) In this thread, for instance, @hawkeyefan has made the point that (i) the GM builds the setting, presumably along lines that they think are interesting/worthwhile, and hence (ii) extrapolation of events and situations from setting is apt to put a lot of focus on things that have been chosen by the GM because they express what the GM is interested in. This is not a diagnosis of fault; but is a discussion about whose priorities are likely to be foregrounded in heavily setting-driven play.

But the fact that the play is setting-driven (ie that a lot of what happens is decided by the GM extrapolating from their setting authorship) is different from the setting having an internal logic/consistency. My Prince Valiant play, for instance, is not setting-driven at all - the setting (of a romanticised dark ages/early-mediaeval Europe, North Africa and West Asia) is mere backdrop. But that doesn't stop the setting from being logical, nor does that mean that events lack setting fidelity.

And this is quite different from saying the setting should be consistent/logical. It's a preference for various techniques of scene-framing and resolution. And as always when you post this, I wonder why you are trying to do this with D&D. I mean, I know your answer is because that's what your players want: but if you're compromising on your own goals, I don't know why you seem to keep insisting that D&D is a game that can achieve those goals.

For my part, I had a similar preference to yours for a while, but 19 years intense experience of RM play persuaded me that those techniques aren't all they're cracked up to be.

EDIT: This post, although it contains a few rhetorical flourishes, basically sums up my own experience:

It can if you put some work into it.

And I have plenty of experience too, so please stop trying to play the, "I used to be like you, but my years of experience have led me to drop those preferences you still cling to" card. We are different, but that does not mean that you are farther along some path of gamer evolution.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Rolemaster is great, and does what it's designed to do really well.

It doesn't do well the things it's not designed to do, and for sure trying to push it into spaces like addressing premise would be very difficult.

What does "addressing premise" mean?

 

[darkbard]

What does "addressing premise" mean?

One way of thinking about addressing premise is focusing scene elements around player motivations and their characters' exploration of ethical/moral dilemma, the tension around unanswered questions to be explored via play.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But that's wrong. The use the Aetherial Premonitions ability and it works to help them lessen the risk.

That you consider a failure on that roll to somehow remove agency doesn't make that correct. That's wrong.

Failure doesn't remove agency, but the fact that the result is random instead of based on fictional positioning removes the agency of engaging that fictional positioning! Like in D&D it matters whether you block other entrances and put the Alarm on the only remaining one or just put it middle of the empty field. In TB it doesn't matter. Like this cannot be so bloody difficult! It is perfectly fine to say that this is the sort of detail you don't care about. Not everyone does, and even I care about it only moderately. But it still is meaningful difference, and one where the players making decisions that affect the effectiveness of the spell is replaced with randomness. That is loss of agency!

Yeah, Blades allows for skilled play. It's not as much the focus as something like Torchbearer, but it's present.

I TB seems to undermine it same way than Blades does. By replacing relying on fictional positioning by randomness.

Losing control over the behavior of your character is not in and of itself a loss of agency. It could very well be the consequence of a player taking an action that puts control of their character at risk in some way.

Certainly a player who decides to face a dragon let's say, knows that he may not make his Fear saving throw. If he chooses to engage the dragon anyway, he is exercising his agency.

Assuming the rules allow them to. Not all social rules work so. And even then, the player was denied the agency of determining the emotional reaction of the character to the situation.

The way you're describing agency here is too simple. I don't know if you elaborated further in the thread in question, but if not, then no, I think you're wrong.

It was discussed in length then, people did not agree then, and they will not do so now.

The boxes example doesn't actually work because in the RPG where the DM is extrapolating from his prep, there is no actual causality. The DM may look at it that way, and that illusion of causality may be important to him... but it's not real.

So speaking of oversimplification... It is not that simple. Like some things are way more causally obvious than others. That something is extrapolated, is not the same than it being made up fully on spot. Like It is not wild extrapolation if in a forest known for its aggressive flying monkeys the PCs get attacked by flying monkeys. If they got suddenly attacked by say, modrons, then that would not feel like a similarly coherent extrapolation.