GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

Skipping over 93 pages of discussion to ask a side question: how have people best seen non-transactional social relationships handled in a way that reduces GM fiat being the primary decider? Because most PBTAs etc are concerned with conflict, this is the sort of thing that still tends to be left up to either open ended "role-play" stuff; kept within the realms of conflict (and thus elided from play); or in a handful of cases handled within the core design. I'm curious about introducing some mechanics around relating to existing games where I keep having table situations come up where I simply dont want to be like "ok she likes you now" but also something like Persuade vs NPC isn't really satisfying.

You know a wider range of AW-influenced/derived RPGs than I do.

So when you talk about non-transaction social relationships, I think of the role, relatively narrows, of Seduce/Manipulate in AW, and how social reactions that sit outside of the narrow role/scope of that move are handled by the GM just making moves as usual, following their principles (including their prep of the NPC). I am guessing that that is an example of "open-ended 'role-play' stuff" that could end up with "OK, she likes you now".

I'm not sure what you mean by "kept within the realms of conflict (and thus elided from play)"; and I don't know what examples of "handling within the core design" you have in mind.

I've enjoyed the social conflicts in my TB2e play (which have included both the transactional and the non-transactional), and also the use of social responses/fallout as twists when players fail rolls; but I don't know if these are what you're interested in.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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

but th shoal of play can vary. We know nothing else about this campaign except a mystery adventure being run in this way us being played. But I would say the goal of pay is to solve the mystery, not see the GM’s notes

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you forgot an important one here:

4.Portraying Sherlock Holmes as a player character in an RPG

Not at all. Because that specific thing--doing a mystery in a gaming context--also admits the three possible elements. The main difference is that they aren't mutually-exclusive in the RPG context, whereas they mostly are in the author-actor-audience context.

1. Portraying a character in an RPG who is solving a mystery (but which you yourself are not solving)
2. Personally doing the action of solving-a-mystery as part of playing an RPG
3. Creating a mystery for someone else to solve as part of playing an RPG

In this space, #1 and #2 can happen at the same time. You can be, but absolutely do not have to be, both portraying a mystery-solver and doing mystery-solving yourself. They can also happen separately; e.g. you can portray a detective and declare her solution to the mystery, without ever personally doing the mystery-solving. (As the game Paradise Killer puts it, "Your facts have become the truth", since it's not possible to know with certainty whether your evidence is ironclad or not.) Or you can be personally solving a mystery even though your character isn't doing so, though some folks might consider that meta-gaming. E.g. if you figure out who the hidden Big Bad is, but your character wouldn't know that so you keep silent, you've done a mystery-solve yourself but you're portraying a character who has not solved that mystery.

#3 is still incompatible with #2 insofar as creating a mystery, even purely in-character, kinda means you already know the solution and thus you can't be "solving" anything.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The key to the difference from your #3 is that (i) there are multiple participants, each of whom has distinct duties and distinct permissions when it comes to introducing content into the shared fiction, and (ii) there are procedures which means that no single participant is guaranteed to be able to introduce whatever they want into the fiction, even within the scope of their role.

Then I still don't understand how this produces I am solving a mystery myself. I fully agree that it can produce I am portraying a character who solves mysteries.

But I just don't see how the things you've described do not result in, as an actual matter of fact to the players at the table, someone at some point made a decision which fixed who the "whodunnit" points at. Whether they knew they were doing so or not is irrelevant to me. Someone, at some point, created a truth that was not true before. I don't see how that truth-creation can be compatible with me as a player solving a mystery.

It's fundamentally declarative. Someone declared what the solution would be. There is a difference between declaring (even if you do not realize it) a solution, and finding out a solution. The former is incompatible with solving. The latter is precisely what "solving a mystery" is.

What enables us to make the jump from "we have declared facts, and those facts made a particular result be true, thus removing the mystery" to "there simply are facts, and we discovered what those facts were, thus solving the mystery"?

Because that's where I'm sticking here. Whether or not you have rules and procedures that limit your input, whether or not you have multiple people splitting duties so no one person is unequivocally responsible, whether or not there is a well-constructed procedure for how declarations are allowed to be made, you're talking about people, collectively or individually, declaring what the solution is--and, thus, what it "always" was. Even though it wasn't anything at all until the solution was declared.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

What makes that possible in mathematics is that you have posed a question that is about things independent of your conception thereof.

Is that true of an RPG where someone can--regardless of whether they follow rules for doing so--declare facts about the world? I would argue no. If you can, even while following strict and well-structured rules, still declare new facts, even if those facts must be consistent with what is already known, those new declarations decide the mystery. They don't solve it.

Because...that's kind of the point of a mystery? That there could be multiple possible answers and we need more information before we can find out which one is the correct one. So...when you follow those rules, you're going to come to a point where either an individual declaration decides what the solution is, or some declaration completes a jointly-sufficient set, at which point that declaration or set of declarations decided the mystery, rather than solving it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

You are free to point out possibilities you think I am missing. I am not pretending to know every RPG and to play the type of RPGs you play extensively. I was responding to @hawkeyefan's description of something and offering my experience running Hillfolk as a mystery. My point wasn't to say that there aren't other approaches that can also be about solving real mysteries, but that in this case it was clear to me that there was a major distinction between a mystery that is established by the GM at the start and one in the game we were playing where the solution to the mystery is created through dialogue. I also said I was aware that there are ways to mitigate some of the issues we encounters (and I was also clear that I didn't consider this a problem with the game, it was a very fun adventure, but it was distinction worth being aware of)

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 am not a math person so you will need to use a different example to make your point here

..........

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.

Again feel free to offer up some concrete examples. I am not saying there aren't other approaches that could also be about solving a real mystery. just going by the description you have provided though, this sounds like it would create a consistent mystery but not an objective one in the sense of you would be able to guess and confirm the answer earlier in the session than intended. It doesn't sound to me like there was any established fact of who was murdered, by whom and what and how, prior to the start of play. I could be missing something though

 

[zakael19]

You know a wider range of AW-influenced/derived RPGs than I do.

So when you talk about non-transaction social relationships, I think of the role, relatively narrows, of Seduce/Manipulate in AW, and how social reactions that sit outside of the narrow role/scope of that move are handled by the GM just making moves as usual, following their principles (including their prep of the NPC). I am guessing that that is an example of "open-ended 'role-play' stuff" that could end up with "OK, she likes you now".

I'm not sure what you mean by "kept within the realms of conflict (and thus elided from play)"; and I don't know what examples of "handling within the core design" you have in mind.

I've enjoyed the social conflicts in my TB2e play (which have included both the transactional and the non-transactional), and also the use of social responses/fallout as twists when players fail rolls; but I don't know if these are what you're interested in.

Right, so I’m thinking you generally either keep everything in the realm of conflict res and thus remove non-conflict relating from the mechanics of play; or you run it through what you said and keep the player-faced mechanics away and just try to “portray things honestly” and tell a compelling narrative that gives space to challenge the player character or let them show who they are.

Like, in my opinion PBTA conflict res just isn’t a good match for the relationship i built with my wife for instance.

Ive seen moves around vulnerability and openness and relating (most often in the Baker’s non-AW stuff but the Belonging Outside Belonging designs often wrap this in); but the problem is that they’re usually a) supported by a whole set of scaffolding and/or b) baked into the recovery system.

 

[pemerton]

but th shoal of play can vary. We know nothing else about this campaign except a mystery adventure being run in this way us being played. But I would say the goal of pay is to solve the mystery, not see the GM’s notes

Why do you keep attributing views to me that I have never espoused? At this point, it's moving from careless to rude.

I've never said the goal is to see the GM's notes. The goal is to learn what is in the GM's notes, by prompting the GM to reveal that stuff, by declaring actions that will so prompt the GM.

In dungeon play I want to learn what is in a room, so I tell the GM that I (as my PC) open the door. This prompts the GM to tell me what is noted in the dungeon map and key - eg "You see a round room, about 20 feet in diameter, with a chest in the middle of it and a door opposite the one you just opened". This is not complicated.

In the mystery game of the CoC-esque sort, I want to learn what Frank knew. So I tell the GM "When night falls I break into Frank's house and search around for a journal." This prompts the GM to consult their prep (canonically, their notes) and tell me what my PC finds. If the notes state there is a journal, then the GM says "Yep, you find a journal sitting on the desk." I then say something like, "OK, I take it home and read it." And then the GM, again by reference to their prep, tells me what my PC learns from reading.

It's not complicated, and I don't understand your determination to make it seem otherwise.

I mean, there is no mystery to solve other than what the GM decided has happened. It's like saying, of dungeoncrawl play, that the goal is to explore and accurately record the shape of the dungeon, not to make a map that closely resembles the GM's map. But - as Moldvay acknowledged up front - there is no "shape of the dungeon" other than what the GM has drawn as their dungeon map.

 

[pemerton]

Like, in my opinion PBTA conflict res just isn’t a good match for the relationship i built with my wife for instance.

I think that MHRP, HeroWars/Quest, a 4e D&D skill challenge or Burning Wheel could all handle this - in BW, though, the GM might have to do a little bit of mechanical ad libbing, perhaps building on the rules for Circles and Relationships together with the rules for chases to create an extended resolution framework.

 

[Umbran]

I agree that those sorts of agreements are restrictions on agency. They are not agreements that I would make, however, because when you are modeling a world I believe you shouldn't

Shouldn't?

I will accept that it might not be a world you like to play in. But SHOULDN'T?

That, sir, is not something you have right or authority to decide for others. You can peddle your shouldn't elsewhere, as I will have none of it.

then tell the players they can't have their PCs do things that it's within the PCs ability to do.

No. I tell the players before play begins what's expected, and they get to choose to join play under those conditions, walk away, or perhaps discuss and negotiate.

And when I run a game I am always trying to model a world.

Yes, well, previous notes about how all collaborations require compromise apply. Always is an uncompromising position.