GM fiat - an illustration

[Micah Sweet]

This is false.

Imagine a dynamic puzzle game, where the state of the solution evolves, in some algorithmic fashion, based on the current state of the player's attempt to solve it. The puzzle is solved when the player's solution converges on, or anticipates, the next iteration of the puzzle state. I'm not especially well-versed in code-breaking, but an example of what I've got in mind might include matching true letters to code letters in deciphering an enigma code.

There is no assignment of true letters to code letters that is and was always correct - that's the whole point of enigma as a code machine!

But that doesn't mean that the answer is no independent of desires, preferences or creations. What it does mean is that your imagination about the relationship between starting conditions, inference rules and solutions is too narrow.

See, here you seem to betray your narrowness of imagination about RPGing: because all you can focus on (i) player declarations (so-called "narrative mechanics") as opposed to action resolution and consequences, and (ii) decisions, as opposed to realisations.

It's the great achievement of RPG design since Prince Valiant in the late 1980s to have identified ways of approaching RPGing that don't depend solely on "The GM says, then the player says" - that is, that are different from round-robin storytelling.

And that is your preference. It is definitely an innovation, but whether or not it's an achievement in a positive sense is always going to be subjective. Clearly there are folks who prefer a different way.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Why should they, if as was said the players won't know the difference either way? Is the GM supposed to explain the play structure of a game that works this way?

It depends, for sure, but there are so many ways that they would likely know.

For instance, before I first played The Between, I read the rules. So, I understood how the game works. As a player, I almost always read the rules in their entirety. At the very least, I read all the player relevant material.

Most books are very clear about what they're trying to do and what the objectives of play are, and what are the principles meant to guide both players and GMs.

Other than the text, when I GM a game, I tell people more or less how it works before we begin. As in my Blades example above, I may not share every little detail... because sometimes it's just too much and the best way is for people to experience it rather than talk about it... but I give the gist.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

See, here you seem to betray your narrowness of imagination about RPGing: because all you can focus on (i) player declarations (so-called "narrative mechanics") as opposed to action resolution and consequences, and (ii) decisions, as opposed to realisations.

It's the great achievement of RPG design since Prince Valiant in the late 1980s to have identified ways of approaching RPGing that don't depend solely on "The GM says, then the player says" - that is, that are different from round-robin storytelling.

I mean isn't it still basically that, you just at some point randomise who gets to say things?

 

[pemerton]

Why you keep repeating this non sequitur? Of course no one authored the reality of the real world! But it has objective pre-existing facts that are independent of the one trying to discern them (or at least that is the common understanding.) In a RPG the pre-authored facts take the role of this objective reality.

First, the claim that mathematical facts are "pre-existing" is contentious in the philosophy of mathematics. Plato asserts it. Brouwer and Wittgenstein deny it. Fr(om my engagement with contemporary mathematicians, my understanding is that most default to Hilbert's formalism and so deny that there are mathematical facts at all.

The whole point of formalism is that it allows for the operation of robust inference rules while remaining agnostic about what, if anything, underlies them.

Second, when it comes to legal reasoning I take it to be obvious that there is no underlying reality in any straightforward sense - eg when the Parliament promulgates a statute, or a court makes a decision, do we really think that it also generates a whole Platonic universe of consequences and entailments?

(I could say the same thing about @EzekielRaiden's example of Clue(do). When someone puts the cards in the envelope, it now becomes true that a series of inferences permits identification of the cards. But does that also mean that putting the cards in the envelope brought into being a whole host of abstract Platonic facts that explain those inferences? We can remain neutral on the metaphysical speculation without being especially puzzled by what the process of solving Clue(do) involves.)

Third, even if one accepted the Platonic hypothesis about underlying facts that explain the soundness of the inferences, this wouldn't mean that those facts were pre-authored. No one would have chosen them, for instance - they come about "automatically" by dint of the entailments that are yielded by the inference rules.

Thus, it is mere dogma to assert that the only way to achieve "objectivity" - that is, an outcome/"solution" that is not simply decided upon in the moment - is by way of pre-authorship.

And as I said, this is a common-place in fiction already. When we read a story, all sorts of things about the imaginary "world" of the story are implied by what the author authors, although not themselves authored by the author. For instance, the author might have a character wandering around the streets, having perfectly conventional interactions on the streets of 1950s Melbourne. The author then tells us that the character reaches into his pocket. Even if nothing has been mentioned hitherto about the character's clothing, the pocket does not come from nowhere, like a rabbit from a hat: perfectly convention interactions imply that the character is clothed rather than naked, and being clothed, for a man on the streets of 1950s Melbourne, implies pockets.

As I've also said upthread, the more that those who are engaging together with a fiction are on the same page, the more inferences of this sort will be generated. Successful RPGing begins with people being on the same page, but it also has techniques to bring them even more onto the same page in respect of the fiction, and to gradually build up more and more shared fiction, following rules for inference and extrapolation (both general and particular) of the sort set out in rulebooks like Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World.

This is how, as Vincent Baker has said, rules in a RPG can do something different from mere "vigorous creative agreement": anyway: Rules vs Vigorous Creative Agreement

 

[pemerton]

I mean isn't it still basically that, you just at some point randomise who gets to say things?

No. To me, this suggests that you don't have experience with RPGing that is not either GM saying or else turn-taking. In particular, it suggests that you don't have experience with RPGing where what participants (and especially the GM) is allowed to say is governed by robust rules and principles.

 

[pemerton]

While I think Plato's position on this is certainly less popular than it was back in the day, it's not one we can really dismiss. Interestingly it kind of resurfaces in things like cosmology. Is logic a characteristic of reality? These are valid questions with implications at that level.

I'm not saying that Platonism is wrong. But it is not self-evidently true, either.

 

[pemerton]

To me it is blindingly obvious that things like logic and mathematics have independent objective existence or at least are describing something that has. They produce similar results regardless of who is applying them.

So does the application of a statute.

But Platonism about law has fewer defenders, I think, than Platonism about mathematics.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No. To me, this suggests that you don't have experience with RPGing that is not either GM saying or else turn-taking. In particular, it suggests that you don't have experience with RPGing where what participants (and especially the GM) is allowed to say is governed by robust rules and principles.

I think I have experience of that. It is still GM and and the players taking turns of deciding this, there merely are guidelines and limitations regarding what and when they're allowed to decide. (And there indeed are some such limitations in every RPG, though in some they certainly are far more nebulous than in others.)

But please, go ahead, provide a clear and brief example of the sort of mechanic you mean.

And regarding inference, "our side" acknowledged from the get go the possibility of extrapolating from the initial state, and even examples not too dissimilar to yours were provided.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So does the application of a statute.

Do they though? I see lawyers and judges constantly disagreeing on what a given law means. (Granted, mostly in USA, which seem to have particularly shoddy laws.)

But Platonism about law has fewer defenders, I think, than Platonism about mathematics.

Obviously. Laws are a social construct mathematics are not.

 

[zakael19]

Then we have different experience. Now I've hoped that 5e would have more robust skill section with example DCs and stuff like that, but I have my own internal benchmarks for that stuff, so I manage. And the system seems quite sufficient for the way I run games. You can just treat most stuff via the fiction and roleplay, and then have some skill rolls when outcome is in doubt. Outside the combat mechanics what we basically have is very straightforward rules light vaguely simmish system, and that's basically what I have ever felt I truly need to run a RPG. Exploration, social situations, drama, emotions, setting of character goals, those really do not need rules most of the time.

Like what sort of concrete issues you have in mind?



We had a similar thing happen and the GM declared it was a score from that point on (even though we didn't roll engagement roll or do any usual pre-score stuff. But it was really short score and all characters did not even participate. And then we did all the after score stuff too. But it was weird and felt like a glitch in the system, though it was probably better that way as otherwise one character would have surely died. But I think the game should have answers to questions like "what gear you have in free play?" If things escalate into a sudden fight it sorta matters whether you have your weapons, armour, smoke bombs and other stuff with you or not!

Gear and loadout are constrained flashback permissions ("oh yeah I totally packed my knives when we left the house just so I could stab these guys"). There's an expectation that if you're like, out and about in normal society you're probably not loaded for bear; but on the other hand a scoundrel on their streets isn't going about with nothing. As a BITD GM, I'd assume such things as fit within a discreet load out are viable at all times. As Harper points out, the goal of the Approach/Detail framing is to minimize the tendency towards wasted table time on planning, kick the thing off and see what you actually need in play.

One thing that does baffle me a bit wandering around the BITD community these last months is how much people seem to pre-plan the GM side of scores and stuff, but that's just me.