GM fiat - an illustration

[Bedrockgames]

They can try whatever they want, on the Railroad.

How are you defining a railroad?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How are you defining a railroad?

This is one thing @bloodtide and @pemerton have in common: they both use the word "railroad" in unorthodox way, giving it far broader meaning than commonly understood.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don’t know… calling one form of make believe real and another not real seems reductive to me. Describing what’s actually happening at the table doesn’t seem reductive… it seems accurate.

That you seem somehow put off by such a description doesn't change that.

Keep in mind where this part of the conversation came from. I was drawing a distinction between a mystery where you are really solving the mystery and one where you the solution to the mystery hasn't been determined yet and is discovered in play. Those are two entirely viable and perfectly fine ways of playing. But they are different. In the first one the point is for the players to actually solve the thing, and so it is real in the sense of them really or actually solving something. It is also real in the sense of there being a mystery grounded in objective details (it is something with measurement in the campaign conceptually: i.e. there is a body in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, the body was so and so, so and so was killed by Frank because so and staged a set up to kill Frank that failed, etc). This is the use of real you were objecting to in the first place.

 

[Maxperson]

No, it’s just pointing out similarities that you yourself have acknowledged, and how those similarities may conflict with other things you’ve said.

There is no conflict. Any conflict you are imagining is just that. Your imagination.

 

[pemerton]

I find the immersiveness of narrative games to be more akin to the immersiveness of most games in general. You can get into almost any game deeply. What sets our style of play apart and why I think D&D exploded in the 1970's as a new form of game is the immersion in a setting different from our own world but feeling like a magical version of it. The various narrative approaches always push us out of that immersion. If my fellow player names a tavern and especially if the DM asked him to name it, I instantly start thinking like a player and not my character. I don't like that experience.

I find that pretending to be an amnesiac is not very immersive (unless I'm playing an amnesiac).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean I'm thinking of people who are new to roleplaying altogether. What would tip them off that this wasn't acceptable?

What would suggest to them that it was? The books still have the DM running the game.

 

[pemerton]

I am not denying the role the GM plays or the role prep and notes play. I am saying this does not feel like a satisfying explanation because it reduces all of play to one very basic and stiff set of actions (the notion that it is simply about promoting the GM to reveal information). Revealing information is going to be part of it. But equally important will be having the NPCs in the mystery acting with their own agency. And there is also the passage of time and the adventure unfolds. The information in the notes is an important set of established facts. It isn’t everything. And there is going to be necessary extrapolation of notes and adjustment.

there is still more going on than just the GM being prompted to reveal note information. And it is a very static image. That information can change based on events. The players may be dong things that require the GM to adapt what is in the notes. And sometimes what the GM does isn't about 'revealing what they have written". An example might be talking to an NPC. Some interaction may include information the GM has in his notes. But a lot of it is going to be a fluid conversation where the GM is building a character on the fly (because no amount of notes are going to be extensive enough to tell a GM how to bring a character to life in that moment: they may inform how the GM interprets the characters once things get started, but it is more than just giving the players information on the page).

It does not "reduce all play to one set of actions" - rather, it identifies a key goal of play.

And the actions that it refers to - namely, declaring actions that will prompt the GM to reveal salient elements of their prepared material (their "notes") - are not stiff. The whole point of RPGing is that the principal moves the players make are to say what certain characters, the ones they control and "identify" with, are doing. I don't know why you think that would be stiff. Of course it occurs with the unfolding of time, both at the table - that is common to all game play - and in the fiction.

Likewise the reference to NPCs, and how the GM is portraying NPCs. As @hawkeyefan and @soviet have also mentioned, this is inherent to the medium of RPGing. But within that medium, what the players in a "solve the mystery" game of the traditional CoC-ish sort are trying to do is solve the mystery. This means they are trying to work out what it is that the GM has preauthored as having happened (eg so-and-so murdered so-and-so). And the way they work it out is by getting the GM to reveal elements of their preauthored material. And the way they do that is to prompt salient revelations by declaring appropriate actions - eg if they (the players) want to know what is (in the fiction) in the box, they might declare as an action "I open the box".

This is not reductive. As Moldvay recognised, it's crucial to explaining the game play to someone who is not familiar with it.

 

[pemerton]

I am sure this isn't accurate, probably for anyone but me, but if the players are in a position to make changes to the game in active play outside of their own PCs actions or knowledge, or the game's rules are largely bent toward producing a specific sort of story experience for the players (by whatever method), or the game itself uses a lot of narrative language in its rules, presentation, and/or design philosophy (obviously "a lot" is subjective), then to me it is a narrative game. I'm sure that there are many games that hit one or more of these points that are quite different from each other.

Now there are games I enjoy that have some element of these things, so I supposed there is a sort of "critical mass" for me personally where it crosses a threshold into being what I think of as a "narrative game" or "storygame", and at that point I cease to enjoy the experience.

By casting every game that works differently than the model of play you prefer in a single bucket you risk providing a wildly inaccurate view of other people's play experiences and the individual games in question. It would be much more accurate to simply call them "games I don't enjoy" for all they have in common.

To add to what @Campbell has posted, I don't even know what "a lot of narrative language" means here. The 5e D&D rulebooks talk a lot about stories, and characters, and adventures - is that narrative language?

The Apocalypse World rulebook doesn't say much about stories or adventures at all - those are not concepts germane to GMing or playing AW - so does that mean it is not a narrative game? Furthermore, as I have often posted and as @Campbell recently posted,

This is just fundamentally untrue of games like Apocalypse World. The GM has framing authority. They just have restrictions on that framing authority and a differing agenda than simulating a world. 95% of the differences lay in how the GM role functions. My interface as a player in Apocalypse World is almost entirely the same as it would be in a more traditional game.

In other words, AW players are not in a position to make changes to the game outside their own PCs' actions or knowledge. So does that reinforce my conjecture that it is not a narrative game?

If you want to talk about the difference between (say) 5e D&D as widely played, and AW, talking about the players is hopeless. You need to talk about the GM. I mean, there's a reason that I start threads about GMing tasks and techniques, like the role of notes, the role of setting and setting canon, the way situation is established and scenes framed, the way consequences are established, etc. This is where the action is, in different approaches to RPGing.

While a DM who can technically do anything can allow narrative play in any ruleset there are games where it is front and center. Torchbearer is one I believe though I haven't played it. In D&D, it is not there by default. Players wouldn't pick up D&D and think narrative play is the default. That doesn't mean the DM cannot turn the dial and allow however much he wants in his game.

These are good examples of narrative play. The focus is not where my focus is at as a DM or my players. Remembering to bring rope is part of the skill of the game. I've had players preplan entire backpacks and then just keep that sheet for future reference. Prep is part of skill. If you can "conjure" without any penalty at will then that for me is a different sort of game.

I don't know what "narrative play" means here.

I mean, I don't know of any RPG that makes purchasing and using equipment more central than Torchbearer 2e. You can read my actual play accounts and see how the players have their PCs acquire gear, use gear, lose gear, be unable to afford new gear, etc. For most of the game a number of the PCs have been without shoes, because they've not been able to replace the ones that they wore out. Golin's player has agonised over whether or not to keep his rope (because of its utility) or ditch it (because of its encumbrance). Does this mean that TB2e is not about "narrative play"?

 

[pemerton]

Keep in mind where this part of the conversation came from. I was drawing a distinction between a mystery where you are really solving the mystery and one where you the solution to the mystery hasn't been determined yet and is discovered in play. Those are two entirely viable and perfectly fine ways of playing. But they are different. In the first one the point is for the players to actually solve the thing, and so it is real in the sense of them really or actually solving something. It is also real in the sense of there being a mystery grounded in objective details (it is something with measurement in the campaign conceptually: i.e. there is a body in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, the body was so and so, so and so was killed by Frank because so and staged a set up to kill Frank that failed, etc). This is the use of real you were objecting to in the first place.

Perhaps ironically given the subject matter, the bit that I have bolded is a red herring: in the fiction of any RPG that is not wildly absurdist in its themes, it is the case that any mystery has an "objective reality" within the fiction - a body was found somewhere, killed by someone for whatever reason, etc.

So I will focus on the first part of your post, which talks about the GM having authored some fiction: that so-and-so killed so-and-so for such-and-such reason, etc; with a principal goal of play being for the players, by making the sorts of moves a RPG permits them to make (ie declaring actions for their PCs), to learn whatever it is that the GM authored.

You claim that that is a real mystery, "really or actually solving something", and contrast that with RPGing where "the solution to the mystery hasn't been determined (= authored) yet and is discovered in play".

That claim is, in my view, false. If you read my reply to @EzekielRaiden upthread, you'll see that your claim here rests on a failure to appreciate the full range of possibilities in RPGing.

Here's a mystery or two: what is the smallest prime number greater than 1,000,111,222,333,444? And how many factors does the natural number that immediately precedes it have?

I don't know the answer to either question. I'm guessing that you don't either. But there is any answer, and I know people (academic mathematicians) who are well-versed in the techniques for working out the answer even if no one has yet written the answer down or worked it out before.

What makes this possible, in mathematics, is that there are intimate relationships between what is the case and establishing what is the case.

There are RPGs that also establish those sorts of relationships. Not as mathematics does, via necessary inference and logical relationships. But via compelling implications within a fiction that are built up, over the course of play, by a series of techniques designed to give rise to them.

 

[pemerton]

I think lots of people come into D&D and think that 'I go into town and find my sister at the tavern where she works" would be a reasonable thing to do. Also 'my character previously went to X place and had Y experience', or 'last night I went out to the uhh... Three Monkeys tavern and got drunk with a, uh, half-giant with a fiery beard!'.

What would suggest to them that it was? The books still have the DM running the game.

The game tells them to invent a character. Why wouldn't it occur to them that this includes inventing stuff about what their character did?

The GM "running the game" doesn't entail that the player can't make up this sort of stuff about their character.