GM fiat - an illustration

[thefutilist]

Yet if it fails because of GM generated fiction, you think agency is undermined? I think your way of looking this is illogical. To me it seems you have irrational bias against the GM being involved in the resolution. I am far more concerned with what actually happens rather than how we got there.

It matters how we generate the fiction and not just what fiction is generated.

Yeah this is it. A ton of the criticism is about not having an equal/fair say in the outcome

 

[Bedrockgames]

Mate, this is just silly. Of course it is all made up. So are the crime puzzles in a Sherlock Holmes computer game I've been playing. Those puzzles still are real mysteries that can be really solved even though no real people were killed in making it. (I hope!)

And this is always kind of the point when we talk about something's 'realness' or objectivity in a setting. None of us think the thing actually exists, it is that these things have been objectively set down or modeled (in the mind of the GM or in their notes) so that they are discoverable properly through exploration. If from the very beginning, Master Little Wing was the one who killed the son of Purple Cloud, and the GM knows Master Little Wing did so by strangling Purple Cloud's son with a Guzheng string, taken from teh Guzheng in the inner courtyard. And that Long Winded Huang saw Master Little Wing put the string back into said Guzheng. And the GM has all other kinds of details like times, other possible suspects, alibis, a timeline in his mind of Master Little Wing's actions that day, the build up to the murder, its motive, what Master Little Wing has said to different people since, etc. That all provides stuff that players can make informed choices about and informed guesses about as they investigate. That is a mystery that you can actually solve. You are emulating the act of solving a mystery.

On the other hand there are approaches to play that aren't as interested in that. There is nothing wrong with those approaches but in this approach, the reason I brought it up, expanding agency to mean things you can do beyond your character, has the potential to disrupt agency.

And this isn't just a hypothetical example, it happened to me when I ran Hillfolk by Cludging it to my Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades campaign setting. I want to be clear here. I enjoyed using Hillfolk in this way. I also understand there are ways to do mysteries in Hillfolk that can get around this very concern. but the point is you have to address this area where meaningful choice in the mystery can be impacted. In our case, we were fine not worrying about that. We just realized this was something different than the players actually solving the mystery and that we were all going to discover the mystery together. But what that meant was, when I was playing various NPCs, and even potentially when the players even were playing their characters, we were not necessarily sure if that particular character was the murderer. Again, I get that things could have been done differently here to prevent this issue. And I was relatively new to running the system at the time (a friend who is a more veteran GM of the system gave me some pointers on managing mysteries). This isn't a criticism of Hillfolk (I think it is a highly immersive game personally and the only area where I noticed this was when we tried running a mystery). So I am not even saying you can't do this sort of thing in a more narrative game or in a game where these kinds of details and events are resolved differently. The point is that agency is not simply a spectrum of ever broadening agency the more power you give to players (whether that is power possessed by their character or by the player themself)

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yet if it fails because of GM generated fiction, you think agency is undermined? I think your way of looking this is illogical. To me it seems you have irrational bias against the GM being involved in the resolution. I am far more concerned with what actually happens rather than how we got there. And of course my character, whose viewpoint I try to inhabit for most of the game, wouldn't know either way. They do not know of camp event rolls or of GMs making decisions.

It depends on how and why the GM generated fiction causes the player action to fail. Were these things in some way relevant to what was happening? Were they knowable?

The way we get to the outcome is the entire point.

The character doesn't exist. It has no agency. It is the player's agency we've been discussing.

Mate, this is just silly. Of course it is all made up. So are the crime puzzles in a Sherlock Holmes computer game I've been playing. Those puzzles still are real mysteries that can be really solved even though no real people were killed in making it. (I hope!)

What's silly is to look at two games that involve fictional characters solving fictional mysteries and saying that one is real and one is not.

It's this kind of thinking I mentioned earlier in the thread...

I think that many folks have been doing this so long and are so comfortable with it, that they no longer realize what they’re actually doing. They think of the setting as some independently operating entity. I mean, that starts out as the goal… to make decisions as if that was the case. And that’s perfectly fine as a goal or a guiding principle to GMing.

But folks get so comfortable with it, that when they talk about it, they describe it that way. But that’s not what it is. It’s a collection of many, many GM decisions, combined with details that have been established in play, connected to nearly innumerable blanks spots.

It makes discussion difficult.

 

[FrogReaver]

What's silly is to look at two games that involve fictional characters solving fictional mysteries and saying that one is real and one is not.

This sounds to me like just another example of ‘mechanics don’t matter’. And here I thought one of the overarching points of narrativism was that mechanics, ie how you things are done in an RPG matters a great deal.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What's silly is to look at two games that involve fictional characters solving fictional mysteries and saying that one is real and one is not.

No one is saying they exist for real in the real world. They are saying they have theoretical measurement. They have objective details that matter in their discovery and in the players interaction with the mystery that is different, not better, but different, than if you are approaching the game using approaches where the player solving the mystery by putting clues together for 'real' isn't the point. It is only relevant because it relates to the meaningfulness of choices players make as they solve the mystery

 

[hawkeyefan]

This sounds to me like just another example of ‘mechanics don’t matter’. And here I thought one of the overarching points of narrativism was that mechanics, ie how you things are done in an RPG matters a great deal.

No, the mechanics matter for sure. Obviously, people have preferences about which method they may prefer.

It’s the mistake of labeling one real and the other not.

Yes, they work differently. But that difference doesn’t make one real.

People are mistaking the illusion of cause and effect for actual cause and effect.

 

[FrogReaver]

No, the mechanics matter for sure. Obviously, people have preferences about which method they may prefer.

It’s the mistake of labeling one real and the other not.

Yes, they work differently. But that difference doesn’t make one real.

People are mistaking the illusion of cause and effect for actual cause and effect.

What if ‘real’ here means - ‘having the illusion of cause and effect’?

 

[hawkeyefan]

What if ‘real’ here means - ‘having the illusion of cause and effect’?

Then it would apply to both methods, wouldn’t it?

 

[FrogReaver]

Anyways. @hawkeyefan

You are being ganged up on a bit and that’s never fun. So I’m going to let others say their piece for now. I’ll chime back in later. Thanks for keeping your cool in the discussion.

 

[FrogReaver]

Then it would apply to both methods, wouldn’t it?

It didn’t sound like it did in your post? So you tell me. It sounded like you were originally only applying ‘having the illusion of cause and effect’ to one method.