GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

I don’t think we need to get into higher level math or philosophical questions about reality to understand the idea that in life there can be a real body in the parlor and this an objective fact.

But in a mystery RPG, there is no body in a parlour.

There is a statement uttered by the GM: The body is in the parlour. And the players' reasoning is from that statement, not from examination of a body.

This is (as I read it) the crux of @hawkeyefan's focus on the (mis)application of the adjective "real".

No one denies that players can reason from statements that the GM makes. Nor that the GM can be constrained, in what they say, by adherence to pre-authorship.

My point is that reasoning from, and with, statements about fictional states of affairs can be constrained in other ways too. Pre-authorship is just one mode of constraint. RPG design started to really work this out somewhere between 25 and 35 years ago.

 

[pemerton]

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.)

And only in a small number of cases. The implications of the typical statute in the typical scenario are not ambiguous.

 

[bloodtide]

To the extent that I can get a picture of @bloodtide's RPGing from their posts, I think it's pretty different from mine.

Like Fire and Water or Snake and Mongoose.

My point is that reasoning from, and with, statements about fictional states of affairs can be constrained in other ways too. Pre-authorship is just one mode of constraint. RPG design started to really work this out somewhere between 25 and 35 years ago.

No, I think you miss the point. Your game is about lots of limits and constraints, other games like mine don't have many.


I make up a real mystery for my players to solve for real, in the fictional game world. And, eventually the players might solve the mystery for real.

You don't make up a mystery and 'frame scenes" and or "have encounters" and or "follow a list of game rules" and otherwise mechanically play a game until "the players" decide the non-mystery is solved.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Yeah, I get that, but it has weird results when it works differently depending are you in a score or not. And IIRC the book addresses the gear in freeplay. Not a huge deal or anything, but still.

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.

How clear the books are how much you should plan and how how fluid the myth should be. I think our GM sometimes plans too much, and even though it goes against my usual practices, in this sort of game I would plan less were I to run it. One of the weirdest situations in our campaign was due GM "overmything" in my opinion. Our score simply failed due "secret myth." We had laid a trap for our enemy gang, and sat waiting for them top arrive. And we formally initiated the score, rolled well in engagement roll and all. But the enemies never arrived, because they had learned of our plan... So the score just fizzled out. To me it felt that this is not the sort of thing that is supposed to happen in this game. Like in D&D it would be boring too, but would still seem valid. Here it didn't...

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not sure if this will help your discussion, but my perspective is that at the start, we have a situation involving events with NPCs that have already unfolded. If it is a situation involving a mystery, then one or more of those events will not be known to all those involved, NPCs and PCs alike.

Now my notes for this, like for the Scourge of the Demon Wolf, and the Deceits of the Russet Lord (which you played a while ago) are all about describing the situation as it stands when the PCs arrive.

The only thing that is about the future is a rough timeline of what will happen to the people involved if the PCs never got involved.

This is a good point and brings up something I may not have been clear about but I wasn't addressing how future events and the adventuring playing out might go. So everything I have been saying about objective details has strictly been about backstory. With future events, especially further murders. I think those can be handled any number of ways and not disrupt the solving. I tend to do what you do though and consider what might happen if the PCs don't become involved (or I imbed intentions and goals in the NPCs: so I might not say explicitly what they will do but what they are trying to do generally over the course of the adventure and adapt to PC behavior)

 

[Bedrockgames]

But in a mystery RPG, there is no body in a parlour.

I am not denying this.

There is a statement uttered by the GM: The body is in the parlour. And the players' reasoning is from that statement, not from examination of a body.

Yes but the point is the GM sets that down as an objective fact in the setting that can be discovered

This is (as I read it) the crux of @hawkeyefan's focus on the (mis)application of the adjective "real".

I get that. But I also explained to him what I meant by real

No one denies that players can reason from statements that the GM makes. Nor that the GM can be constrained, in what they say, by adherence to pre-authorship.

My point is that reasoning from, and with, statements about fictional states of affairs can be constrained in other ways too. Pre-authorship is just one mode of constraint. RPG design started to really work this out somewhere between 25 and 35 years ago.

No one is denying this either. The original example I gave was for a game that didn't pre-author these things. The only point being made here was one about agency and information. My point is when the players are 'really solving' a mystery, giving them more information won't expand agency because it will deny them meaningful choices in the mystery.

 

[pemerton]

Right, I am just pointing out that literally determining what the answer to the mystery is may not be the actual fun and goal. It may be necessary for the game to go forward, but as with our M:tG games, getting the answer may simply be a driver, not the real goal.

Wasn't this also @deleuzian_kernel's point?

 

[pemerton]

It turns out these "correct techniques" are not actually that hard and some people just overcomplicate things?

Well the "correct techniques" for running Burning Wheel aren't that complicated either! Yet this thread is full of posts that seem not to be able to tell the difference between those techniques, and round-robin storytelling.

So perhaps the "difficulty" is in the eye of the beholder?

 

[pemerton]

I'm starting to wonder how IMO people manage to play D&D at all if it's not playable unless the GM is "well-versed in the correct techniques"?

They fill in the gaps with their own ideas and then point out how D&D does it all?

Also, Gygax and even moreso Moldvay were not shy about stating basic principles of play. Moldvay, for instance, tells us (p B4 of his rulebook) that, as play goes on, the players' map will come to closely resemble the GM's map. He's not afraid to actually talk about the procedures of play.

Gygax is not as straightforward overall, but his Successful Adventures section of his PBH is pretty clear.

It's a later thing (mid-1980s onwards?) for RPG rulebooks to be embarrassed about describing actual procedures of play.

 

[pemerton]

Here we have a fundamental disagreement on cause and effect. I wouldn't describe it as illusionary. It is following logic and makes sense

Following logic and making sense is a constraint that can operate in contexts other than pre-authorship!