GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

Because I am saying your metaphor of the GM just showing the players their notes is reductive

But I've never said that.

Or anything remotely like it.

 

[pemerton]

I have also said it in the past, so I'm qualified to answer.

I guess my confusion is why would you resume my reference to 3 other posters is a reference to you? I mean, I didn't say anything about you. Yet you replied that I had assumed something about you. When I didn't.

 

[pemerton]

What they have done is make sure we have more information, not more agency. And life is full of folks who thought very hard about something and got it wrong. Happens all the time in science.

Sometimes experts are wrong. That gives me no reason to think that your amateur analysis of agency in the context of market transactions is correct.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But is the best way to resolve secret chambers, in CoC play, via maps and mapping? I don't think so. The could be handled more like, say, finding a book in a library or noticing a scar on a NPC is handled.

It depends. There have been times for example where I have had players staying at a New England mansion and there is a locked door leading down into library or cave system where the family history records. And I have had adventure beneath pyramids of inside family crypts. I wouldn’t say mapping is the heart of Cthulhu but it has its place if you want to use it

 

[Maxperson]

Sometimes experts are wrong. That gives me no reason to think that your amateur analysis of agency in the context of market transactions is correct.

Fortunately, we're talking about RPGs, not market transactions, so your Appeal to Authority isn't really relevant.

 

[pemerton]

It is about exploring the mystery and setting around it, as well the characters, that the GM has mapped in their head.

So suppose that instead of referring to actions intended to prompt the GM to reveal what they have written in their notes I said actions intended to prompt the GM to reveal what they have imagined. Would that satisfy you?

I don't care which expression is used, although I think the reference to notes is helpful because it emphasises pre-commitment. Just as the dungeon map and key pre-commit the GM.

I also have an issue with it because in these conversations you have used this explanation to downplay how we often talk about our style of play. I know you don't like poetic language. But I see these scenarios as having life breathed into them and words on a page don't capture what I feel I am going for when I run these types of sessions

When I analyse a play, I am not trying to produce an experience of seeing it performed. That is what a performance is for.

If my analysis of play produced the same experience as the play itself, it would be poor analysis.

And you mistake my motives. I am not setting out to "downplay" anything. I have no doubt that you find your play immersive. For some reason you seem to think that, by describing the process as one of trying to find out what the GM is thinking, by declaring actions that prompt the GM to tell you some bit of that, I am denying that it can be immersive. I don't know why.

I mean, I've played RPGs. I'm familiar with the difference between saying "I do <such-and-such>" and having the GM reply, comparing to reading a sentence describing some place or circumstance in more abstract and third person terms. You seem to think I'm not aware of this, but again I don't know why.

To flip it around: when I quote the Burning Wheel rulebook which says, among other things, that "The GM is responsible for challenging the players. . . . The GM presents the players with problems based on the players' priorities" (Gold Revised. pp 10-11), do you think that I (or Luke Crane) think that play is not immersive, because that description of how play works is rather dry and technical?

 

[pemerton]

Fortunately, we're talking about RPGs, not market transactions, so your Appeal to Authority isn't really relevant.

Huh? I made a post about market transactions in response to another poster (not you). And you replied with this post, which was about market transactions, not RPGing:

When I bought my house, I could have just decided with full agency to sign all the documents without bothering to read them. It would have still 100% been my decision(agency) to do so. Having more information doesn't increase my agency, though it might affect the direction I choose to go with my agency.

If you didn't want to discuss agency in market transactions, why did you make a post about it?

And it is that post that I am replying to by way of my "Appeal to Authority". And my "Appeal to Authority" is entirely relevant to your post.

 

[FrogReaver]

Narrativist play revolves around "play to find out" not "play to author your favored plot". The latter is probably closer to some form of neo-trad/oc play where the main goal is showcasing defined characters and story arcs.

What other ways of playing to find out are there other than relying on random rolls? Player authored fiction? DM authored fiction? Or some combination of these things? How else in an RPG can something be 'found out?'

 

[FrogReaver]

I would call Clue just a pretty basic logic puzzle. I recall realizing this around age 6. If you index all the answers to all the players guesses you can derive the contents of the envelope. It is really just an exercise in note-taking at that point. It's about as much a 'mystery' as working out the product of 2 10 digit numbers, you just grind through an algorithm and get the answer.

Clue does have a game component, rolling dice and disrupting other players be guessing their character into the wrong room, but the solution to the game is just logic.

Isn't it fair to say that any solvable mystery is simply a matter of gathering evidence and logical deduction from that evidence? That is, all solvable mysteries boil down to basic logic puzzles.

 

[FrogReaver]

So, you have now reduced the term to meaninglessness. I doubt that will be edifying...

How so?