GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

How do you know if it is a challenge? Do you frame the scene with the challenge in mind, like 'this is a skill challenge scene about x'. Or do you talk about the character goal on a meta level, like the player may say 'my characters wants to achieve x' and so then you frame a scene?

I'm assuming that, in @zakael19's example of partners finding one another, it's mutually accepted at the table that it's not to be taken for granted that this will happen. It may, or may not, and the mechanical framework is used to find out which.

In the example that I posted, from my Middle Earth game, I as GM framed the scene with the Uncertainty scene distinction. I won't have done this arbitrarily, so although I don't have any record of the details I would guess that the players were discussing among themselves what to do next. The circumstances of play revealed reaching a decision to be a challenge for the characters.

 

[bloodtide]

So .... why then in the 20+ years of playing "trad" games with "trad" GMs has it never once occurred to any of my GMs to actually do it?

You played with the wrong DMs.

Because it's not an inculcated / enculturated value with regards to the "trad" play loop. It's talked about in "world building" and "session zero" and "ask the players what they want" and "make your characters part of a living world"---but when the rubber meets the road, and the dice are hitting the table, and the GM has the choice between "following the living world requirements" versus "give credence and narrative space to the player's intent", almost without fail the "requirements of maintaining the illusion of the living world" wins out.

Because that's what "trad" GM culture teaches and espouses, and even moreso, decries any resistance to the "living world" paradigm as anathema, anti-immersion, and inherently opposed to "good RPG play."

The above can be true, but also not true.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You too have rules and procedures for who invents what!

Indeed.

Its just the case that you have decided that the GM invents most before play, the players invent little during play, and from what little they do, the GM gets to cherry pick which ones stick to what he invented before play.

Not quite accurate. Regardless, my point about what is and isn't a real mystery stands. Now if you feel, (and I think you do) that this what I call "real mystery solving" is not that important, and by giving up on it you can bring into the game something you find more valuable, then that is of course perfectly fine.

But I believe (though it has been awhile, so who knows) that this tangent started when it was pointed out that there is a trade-off. This is how these threads always go. A narrativist tells that their way of doing things is better. Someone points out that sure, you could do it that way, but then you lose X. And then the narrativist for some reason cannot accept this, they argue for dozens of pages how X doesn't exist or whatever, instead of just saying "Sure, but I don't really care about X that much, so I prefer this method."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Continuing with the mystery story meme, suppose I were to think about a game where one of the players is a real-life police detective. Do you think your murder mystery seems at all real to them? I doubt it would. In fact it might be much less real-seeming to them than one resulting from Narrativist play, and your prewritten solution to the mystery vastly less plausible than one they might suggest, etc.

Like, it's tautological that your making up the solution means a solution has been made up. That's not in debate, but what that means is going to depend very much on the game in question, the table, etc.

 

[zakael19]

I'm assuming that, in @zakael19's example of partners finding one another, it's mutually accepted at the table that it's not to be taken for granted that this will happen. It may, or may not, and the mechanical framework is used to find out which.

In the example that I posted, from my Middle Earth game, I as GM framed the scene with the Uncertainty scene distinction. I won't have done this arbitrarily, so although I don't have any record of the details I would guess that the players were discussing among themselves what to do next. The circumstances of play revealed reaching a decision to be a challenge for the characters.

Right, yeah, like if you define during character creation that somebody is important to you, you're crushing on them, but haven't worked up the courage to do something about it and want to play to see what happens: how do we handle that? You didn't define them as "my lover" or "my beloved wife" or whatever, a degree of uncertainty and desire to pursue that was baked in.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So .... why then in the 20+ years of playing "trad" games with "trad" GMs has it never once occurred to any of my GMs to actually do it?

They are bad at GMing?

Because it's not an inculcated / enculturated value with regards to the "trad" play loop. It's talked about in "world building" and "session zero" and "ask the players what they want" and "make your characters part of a living world"---but when the rubber meets the road, and the dice are hitting the table, and the GM has the choice between "following the living world requirements" versus "give credence and narrative space to the player's intent", almost without fail the "requirements of maintaining the illusion of the living world" wins out.

Because that's what "trad" GM culture teaches and espouses, and even moreso, decries any resistance to the "living world" paradigm as anathema, anti-immersion, and inherently opposed to "good RPG play."

I really have not found these things to be in conflict. Yes, when we play the situation mostly operates by "living-world" paradigm, but the ingredients that I put in the situation in the first place are informed (among other things) by the character backstories and character goals, interests and beliefs. And I think something like this has always been a pretty common practice, and at least now it would be widely known, given that this is how Matt Mercer runs Critical Role.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Continuing with the mystery story meme, suppose I were to think about a game where one of the players is a real-life police detective. Do you think your murder mystery seems at all real to them? I doubt it would. In fact it might be much less real-seeming to them than one resulting from Narrativist play, and your prewritten solution to the mystery vastly less plausible than one they might suggest, etc.

Like, it's tautological that your making up the solution means a solution has been made up. That's not in debate, but what that means is going to depend very much on the game in question, the table, etc.

I don't know why this is such a controversial point. Again no one is saying it is genuinely real, or that it is like real world police work (though I did once go to the Boston FBI field office to do research, and was able to ask about things like evidence collection, for one of my games and so I think it is possible to elevate some of the realism in certain ways). What we are saying is there is a difference between a game where the solution to the mystery is generated and entirely unknowable at the start of play, to one where the GM has established that fact and treats all of the facts of the investigation as objective facts that can be discovered. The aim of the former is not for the players to actually solve the mystery, the aim of the latter is for them to actually solve the mystery. None of this is commentary on the quality of either approach, both have their advantages and disadvantages, and there are also plenty of options between these two extremes).

 

[pemerton]

No, that’s not quite what’s happening at these tables. It’s not that we’re inventing a story about solving a mystery. What’s happening is that we are playing characters situated in an investigation, dealing with concrete situational constraints, and actively engaging with the known unknowns of the mystery. There are real consequences to what happens next, to secondary characters, to the fiction itself, and to the investigators as people.

When you say “collaboratively inventing,” it misses the mark. The mystery is procedurally discovered, not fabricated to entertain. Even when the culprit or backstory isn’t pre-established, the investigation isn’t arbitrary or invented on the fly. It is built out of the players’ actions, their inquiries, their missteps. What’s at stake is whether those actions materially shape the trajectory of play. What is being collaboratively constructed is not the mystery’s solution, but the history of how that investigation unfolds and what it does to the people involved.

That’s the difference between procedural play and performance.

100% this. That's why I've been disagreeing with @EzekielRaiden's assertion that there must be pre-authorship of the answer by the GM, or else it's either performing detection or writing a detective story.

Is solving a mystery something that is done by agreement between the detectives involved? Or is it something where a person correctly identifies the facts involved in a situation that they were unable to directly observe, but where the correct facts are of intense interest?

Because I would consider it a gross breach of justice if solving a criminal case occurred because the detectives agreed that a particular result should be true.

As best I can tell, you're trying to make a point here about police procedures.

All I've said about actual police is that, to the best of my knowledge, they don't train detectives by playing CoC scenarios.

Other than that, I'm talking about RPGing.

"Vigorous creative agreement" strikes me as being incapable of producing that latter effect. By definition, it only produces things that people vigorously agree with. In other words, things are established by consent; the only results that can occur are results that each participant approves of occurring, and nothing can occur that does not get that consent.g without their consent.

You appear to have completely misunderstood Vincent Baker's blog.

He is contrasting "vigorous creative agreement" - ie freeform RPGing - with the role of rules in a RPG. And he points out that his very strongly preferred function for rule is to provide an alternative to vigorous creative agreement, by bringing into the fiction things that no one at the table (not even the GM) would choose to bring in.

The reason I pointed to the blog is to show that you are wrong to assume that the only two alternatives are collective authorship ("vigorous creative agreement", aka "writers' room") or else GM pre-authorship.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Right, yeah, like if you define during character creation that somebody is important to you, you're crushing on them, but haven't worked up the courage to do something about it and want to play to see what happens: how do we handle that? You didn't define them as "my lover" or "my beloved wife" or whatever, a degree of uncertainty and desire to pursue that was baked in.

I mean my answer would probably be to just roleplay it, but this is not the answer you seek. But certainly this can be formed as some sort of a conflict or a task? Like there is something the character wants (advance the relationship) and then there can be various outcomes for that, some more to their liking and some less, some perhaps a bit of mixed blessing. So depending on the exact system, I would imagine you could mechanise it. In Blades in the Dark, could see this as a consort roll, perhaps with a clock or clocks for how the relationship building is going.

 

[pemerton]

What we are saying is there is a difference between a game where the solution to the mystery is generated and entirely unknowable at the start of play, to one where the GM has established that fact and treats all of the facts of the investigation as objective facts that can be discovered. The aim of the former is not for the players to actually solve the mystery, the aim of the latter is for them to actually solve the mystery.

I very strongly disagree with your last sentence.

What is true is that in the latter, the aim is not to learn what the GM pre-authored.