GM fiat - an illustration

[hawkeyefan]

This is what earned the shocked face!

That’s often part of the mystification I just mentioned in my last post. That the rules are the property of the GM and no one else.

 

[soviet]

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 that strange interstitial period where people wanted RPGs to be like stories, but the game design technology wasn't really there so it had to come from outside the rules. Or against them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I would absolutely love it if all RPGs stated their basic principles of play. The fact that most (all?) Narrativist games do this is a strong point in their favor IMO. WotC has generally not been great about it, however, except for 4e. 5.5 is better about it than 5.0, I admit.

This wouldn't matter if official D&D didn't have such a strangehold on the industry and the hobby, but there you are.

 

[pemerton]

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

This is obscurantism.

The players do not, in any literal sense, explore the setting and discover things.

I've watched a video of you and @robertsconley RPGing, that you linked to some while ago. It looked exactly like every other bit of RPGing I've encountered and heard of - the GM said stuff, the players said stuff, the stuff being said was integrated in various ways, follows in various ways, etc.

I've just taken a CoC module of my shelf - The Vanishing Conjurer. It is full of descriptions of events and places, like a cross between a Lonely Planet, a newspaper and an encyclopaedia.

Here's just a few examples, from pp 6, 8, 18-19:

Horne starts talking in earnest . . . "Philip Leclair has vanished off the face of the Earth!" . . .

If the investigators go to the Chancellor's Theatre and approach Weiss directly, and enquire about Leclair, he will deny ever having met or seen the man. . . .

As the investigators open the cases . . . materialising in the air, is the apparition of a burning man!

This 'ghost' is Philip Leclair. . . . What actually happened to him is explained here - though the investigators will only discover most of this if Leclair emerges from tonight's performance alive. . . . Leclair was fascinated by the apparatus . . . [and] while he was examining the arch . . . he was overpowered by three cultists . . . [and] was placed within the gate apparatus as an offering . . . He is currently suspended in a state of limbo between two planes of existence.

Leclair's manifestation lasts around thirty seconds, during which time he attempts to warn the investigators and tell them what they must do. . . ". . . open the gate for pity's sake!! . . ."​

The GM's job is to present this material to the players, when the fictional circumstances make it appropriate to do so. And the players are not reasoning from the tone of Horne's earnest talking (as a police investigator might) or from the smell of the flames of the ghost (as a chemist might); they are reasoning from what the GM says.

The players can't "discover* what has happened to Leclair except by declaring actions for their PCs that will then make it appropriate for the GM to tell them that stuff.

And as I have posted, repeatedly, working from and extrapolating from notes is not the only way to constrain what is said.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

Maybe, but IMO I can't enjoy a game where major details of the world are generated on the spot. Little stuff, like what's in this building or how many goblins just came around the corner? Sure, that what tables are for. But I want the big stuff determined, at least in broad strokes, before the PCs encounter it. Otherwise, to me the world feels like it just exists because the PCs asked about it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@pemerton you might want to reformat your last post

 

[pemerton]

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

If only it was possible to download the rules kernel for free: DriveThruRPG

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

Probably, but you have to admit the latter has a lot of historical weight in the hobby the former does not, so you can likely get away with not explaining these details more often. But you're right, if there's any reason to think your player's aren't going to assume the mechanical structure and playstyle you intend to employ, some exposition is in order.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If only it was possible to download the rules kernel for free: DriveThruRPG

I don't have interest in reading Burning Wheel just to make a point to you in a thread. I actually have to write a movie review today so I am going to spend time doing that. But I can weigh in on the thread if I have concise and clear information. What I meant when I first mentioned the rulebook was: I am sure we would understand it if we read the rule book, but we haven't so if you could just explain what you mean more clearly when you talk about the rules we can have common ground on that front (I was soliciting clarifications and trying to avoid making assumptions in my recent responses to you)

 

[pemerton]

Maybe, but IMO I can't enjoy a game where major details of the world are generated on the spot. Little stuff, like what's in this building or how many goblins just came around the corner? Sure, that what tables are for. But I want the big stuff determined, at least in broad strokes, before the PCs encounter it. Otherwise, to me the world feels like it just exists because the PCs asked about it.

Upthread I posted this:

Now perhaps there are RPGers who, for whatever reason peculiar to their preferences and dispositions, can't immerse in the fiction unless they truly believe that the GM has written an answer down in advance. But those personality traits of theirs tell us something about their capacity to immerse, and nothing about the "reality" of any mystery.

So it seems that you agree!