GM fiat - an illustration

[Bedrockgames]

Really? Always?

You are just taking one sentence in my post and losing meaning. I said it can. I didn't say it always does.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What exactly would you define as a mystery then? If you presume that an objective answer exists and could conceivably be found if the right information is discovered and correctly interpreted, how is that not a mystery?

What if we look at it another way.

A mystery is something unknown, right?

So isn’t the only way to do a real mystery for nobody to know the answer? So that it’s actually a mystery to all parties in the game?

I mean… I suppose you could say that’s an example of me trying to use semantics to show that my way is real and other ways are not. And you’d be right.

Now apply that same logic to the idea of what anyone else says about a real mystery.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is the big difference between the games. Your game has a make believe pretend mystery.

My game has a real mystery. That is me, as the DM, creates a real mystery. Then the players, for real, must learn the details of everything. Once the players get all the details, they must for real put it all together to try and solve the mystery.

It is MUCH more real to have a player or group have to solve a real mystery for real using their own abilities and skills. It is much more real then the "you rolled an 11 and solved the mystery".

How do they do any of that without being able to ask questions?

 

[hawkeyefan]

As a near No Questions type DM, I'd guess my game has zero player agency. Not that any player really notices. No player wastes game time asking me questions and we have fun playing the game.

@Maxperson @Crimson Longinus @Bedrockgames @Micah Sweet

Just pointing out that the above is from someone who’s advocating for a lot of the same things as you guys.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Maxperson @Crimson Longinus @Bedrockgames @Micah Sweet

Just pointing out that the above is from someone who’s advocating for a lot of the same things as you guys.

i don’t think that means a whole lot. Two GMs can be big advocates of adventure paths and have entirely different perspectives on it. I have the impression @bloodtide and I come from very different GM styles and gaming philosophies. I can’t speak to his games and he runs them. But in my games players definitely have agency. That is like one of my main priorities.

 

[pemerton]

Hard disagree. There are a ton of hidden information in real life, and "rules" of the system are fuzzy at best too, yet I think people in real life have agency.

Agency is the ability to make meaningful choices that affect the direction of the game. And there are a lot of ways to get there.

Huh? Playing a game is something that happens in real life. @chaochou is talking about the amount of agency some real people - the players of games - have in undertaking a particular, real activity - playing a game.

People choose to play a game: that's an exercise of agency.

When they play the game, though, what do they do? @chaochou's point is that a game is a structured activity, and the way a person exercises control in the context of a game is by performing meaningful actions within that structure, and that if the structure is essentially malleable at the will of one participant, then the other participants can't really exercise much control.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I'm pretty confident I can find posts from you, and @Crimson Longinus, and perhaps also @FrogReaver, that object to describing this as playing to find out the content of the GM's notes. Yet here you are saying that what @hawkeyefan is missing is that the players can declare actions that will prompt the GM to reveal further elements of their notes.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Everything in your life is exactly as you wish it to be? You are unconstrained by social pressures, the law, financial considerations? You could choose to end global hunger or global conflict but you don't want to?

But this isn’t what player agency has traditionally meant in RPGs. If it were player Agency would be about giving characters powers, wealth recourses, etc. it would be more about making sure characters are optimized mechanically. But that isn’t it what it has referred to. It is about your freedom to do as you will in the setting, to ignore adventure hooks, to take initiative and go off in pursuit of adventure that interest you

 

[hawkeyefan]

But this isn’t what player agency has traditionally meant in RPGs. If it were player Agency would be about giving characters powers, wealth recourses, etc. it would be more about making sure characters are optimized mechanically. But that isn’t it what it has referred to. It is about your freedom to do as you will in the setting, to ignore adventure hooks, to take initiative and go off in pursuit of adventure that interest you

I think @soviet was pointing out to @Emerikol that people don’t have 100% agency in real life.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm pretty confident I can find posts from you, and @Crimson Longinus, and perhaps also @FrogReaver, that object to describing this as playing to find out the content of the GM's notes. Yet here you are saying that what @hawkeyefan is missing is that the players can declare actions that will prompt the GM to reveal further elements of their notes.

I do object to that description and explained why to another poster a few posts back. It might have been Hawkeye. My phrasing was while it isn’t innacurate that this is part of what is going on, it also misses so much nuance and interplay. I used the example of it being like describing a boxing match as two people swinging their arms till one of them falls. That isn’t inaccurate but it very much misses the nuances of what is happening

And I have never said planning things out, pinning them down, so they can be modeled is bad. I just think when you describe things as ‘discovering what’s in the GM’s notes’ you miss the fluidity of what actually goes on in play. But for a mystery to work in the way I am describing, the Gm needs a mystery that is set down (I.e. a murder, a Midwest, events and backstory leading up to the murder, events that occulted after the murder, motive, suspect, method, etc).