GM fiat - an illustration

[Bedrockgames]

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?

A lot of us don't play Burning Wheel though. So we just have your descriptions to go on. However I think I've been pretty careful about not assigning a specific procedure or technique to your examples, and have asked for clarity on the techniques

 

[pemerton]

Is it regular practice in such games to make sure the players are informed that the solution is determined after the investigation begins, and not before? If not, I don't see how it could be anything other than illusionism.

If you're asking about, say, Brindlewood Bay, then - given that, as best I understand it, the players are the ones who collect clues, formulate hypotheses, and make the test to confirm those hypotheses, I don't think there is much illusionism!

My posts in this thread have not been talking about that sort of game but Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark (played using BW principles for framing and consequence), and broadly similar systems. The players know how those systems work. Like, when I GM Cthulhu Dark I'm not pretending to read from a module! I'm listening to what the players say, looking at what they roll, and responding to all that in accordance with the principles I'm deploying.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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

Yeah, I have said many times that cause and effect can still operate without the GM making the backstory.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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?

Perhaps. Though it might make the difference you mention less difficult to tell, if someone would to demonstrate it rather than to just claim it.

 

[pemerton]

When I first ran Blades in the Dark for my long time gaming group, I just said it was different, and that the best way to see how was through play.... so I ran what was an incredibly simple score for them that allowed them to see some of the differences. Not all, but some. And then we introduced more with each score until they started to get it all.

When I first ran Burning Wheel, one of the players built a magician PC who had the spell Falconskin, and who wrote as one of his instincts, If I fall, cast Falconskin! Another player built a sorcerer-assassin who had the spell Witch Flight (which in D&D terms is like a Jump spell).

And I had recently been rereading Tower of the Elephant.

So at a certain point in play, fairy early on I think, I described the tall towers on a hill in the town, above the docks. And of course play ended up there. I can't recall if there was any fall, but there was Witch Flight used to get over the tower walls.

The players weren't confused about the process here! The Falconskin player commented on it expressly as a good thing.

 

[pemerton]

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?

And why would the player of a RPG assume that the main goal of play is to work out what the GM already pre-authored? Doesn't that need to be explained too?

 

[pemerton]

before I first played The Between, I read the rules.

This is what earned the shocked face!

 

[pemerton]

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.

Re your last paragraph, I posted this somewhere upthread:

The notes are there to constrain the GM's imagination. They provide the basis for extrapolations, for instance.

So I take it that you are agreeing with that.

As I've said, adhering to pre-authored notes is not the only sort of constraint that can operate. You use the word "limitations" - in this context, that is a synonym for constraint.

I mean, what are notes other than a device for limiting what and when the GM is allowed to say this or that?

But they are not the only such device.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Re your last paragraph, I posted this somewhere upthread:
So I take it that you are agreeing with that.

As I've said, adhering to pre-authored notes is not the only sort of constraint that can operate. You use the word "limitations" - in this context, that is a synonym for constraint.

I mean, what are notes other than a device for limiting what and when the GM is allowed to say this or that?

But they are not the only such device.

Yes and?

 

[hawkeyefan]

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

Sometimes! In other instances, they’d be remarkably open about things! Modules would openly advocate force and illusionism and railroading of all sorts.

It’s not surprising to me how reluctant folks can be about being open about this stuff. There’s so much input of all kinds from so many sources, and so much of it is mystified. Like it’s stagecraft rather than a craft of its own.

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

Exactly.