Crimson Longinus
Legend
Obviously. And I don't think anyone has argued otherwise. In any case, I am really not following what your point even is anymore, let alone how these quoted bits relate to it.
GM fiat - an illustration
- Thread starter pemerton
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Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
Okay. But this looks to me like it would be perfectly fine to do what I am suggesting with a mystery in Burning Wheel. Am I correct in assuming you could have a mystery where the background and details of the crime, as well as details about the clues, are all determined but eh GM before play? Am I also correct in assuming that even though the task system engages priorities and sets stakes, these don't necessarily need to contradict details the GM has created before hand if he wants some element of the setting to remain objective?
Where does the idea of following notes so strictly come from? Other then that is what you would do?
I know plenty of DMs, like myself, that will just toss any notes on the floor...by that silly rulebook...and do whatever they want.
And I can't help but notice the harsh "follows logically from the fiction" repeated many times in your example as a big constraint, plus the other constraints. The rules just seem to be piles of constraints.....for the DM Player, of course.
Because @Bedrockgames and @Crimson Longinus are pointing to it as the (ostensible) source of "objectivity" in mystery RPGing.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
To be clear, in a mystery as it pertains to the crime, clues and backstory. We are not saying all of the notes would be this source of objectivity. The idea is there will be facts in the world you are pinning down so they can be explored and investigated and put together. This is pretty standard. No one is saying it is a clever way to run anything. But it is a way you would do it if you wanted to people to be able to really solve the mystery.
I probably am not going to be able to respond much more on this particular aspect of the topic though. We've kind of given all our perspectives and the dial has not moved much on either side. And I have other things to do at the moment. I do need to remind people this was all a pretty big tangent from what was really just a passing remark
This reply is also relevant to @EzekielRaiden, @Micah Sweet and @Bedrockgames.
Consider a typical CoC module like The Vanishing Conjurer, which I quoted from upthread.
The way that someone would literally discover the solution to the mystery is be reading the module. But that wouldn't be playing a RPG.
The way that a player, in a RPG, discovers the solution to the mystery is by saying things - ie saying what it is that their PC does (declaring actions) - which then prompt the GM to say things - that is, saying what happens next, or saying what the PC notices, and the like (stating consequences of actions). The GM says some other stuff, too, like describing the circumstances in which the PCs find themselves (framing scenes).
The GM, in saying the stuff that they say, treats what is written in the module as a constraint. It constrains both in telling them what to say, and telling them what must govern any extrapolation.
One reason for picking this scenario as an example is that the whole thing could be played freeform - even the SAN checks are very modest (eg 1d4 SAN for seeing the ghost of Leclair). That is to say, there are basically no mechanical constraints governing what anyone says. The constraints all follow from either what is written down about the fiction, or what is subsequently established about the fiction.
To the extent that this is "real" or "objective", therefore, it's about the existence of these constraints on what is said - especially the constraints on the GM. What the Gm says is not simply chosen by the GM, relatively unconstrained, on the spur of the moment.
My point is that there are other ways to generate constraints, which will also then shape and limit what it is that participants say, beyond adherence to pre-authored material. And the RPGs I've pointed to set out these constraints. Tautologically, when RPGing this way the players to do not identify what it is that the GM (or module writer) authored prior to play. But that does not mean that the players are simply portraying the solving of a mystery (as would be the case if they were actors in a scripted play), or that they are deluding themselves into "solving" a mystery whose solution they are collectively authoring (the dreaded "writers' room").
Just like the players of the Vanishing Conjurer, the players can have their PCs pursue leads, form suspicions and act on them, etc. And the rules of the game generate consequences for those action declarations that are not simply chosen by the participants. Outcomes can be generated although no one would even have wanted them had they been free to choose!
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I get all that, but this doesn't sound like solving of the mystery in the sense I was talking about
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Sure. I recognize that.
What I'm struggling with is, how can one have evidence of something, without that evidence giving credence to the truth or falsity of some particular claim independently of the participants? I cannot see how something can be evidence of anything unless this happens.
If no claims are true or false until we produce their truth or falsity, through an act of creation (whatever constraints it may have), how can there be evidence?
And if there is no evidence, how can there be a mystery-solving by the players?
Again, I do not at all dispute that characters in a game can be solving mysteries. What I'm disputing is whether "My character is solving a mystery because of the choices I made, the actions I declared, and the procedures I followed" thus produces "I personally am solving a mystery".
What is it that these rules-for-introducing-things do, which make it possible to reason from the evidence we have toward the correct solution when there isn't a solution yet? How can we solve the Mystery of the Missing Earl if there isn't anywhere that the Earl is, within the fiction, until we introduce that fact later?
That's a deeply unfortunate state of events. The clear intent of BITD is that once you have something that sounds like the goal of a score, the GM should be pushing for a Plan and Approach to be declared so you then make that engagement roll and hard frame into things based on it. It is a valid result in the core game to, on a 1-3 result for a risky/desperate action, declare the specific window of opportunity closed (eg: if you're tailing a target through city streets, they might get away) - but not by making you look incompetent. I'm playing with the reframed basic resolution system from Deep Cuts that focuses more on threats and costs vs success entirely, you have actively add "you might fail" as a type of threat in that frame. Which can be very cool! Having players make hard choices between bad stuff or goals is fun.
What the Gm is supposed to be constrained by include the "Best Practices," along with Goals and Principles. Such things as Earn the trust of the group by portraying a fictional world with integrity, but not one that's 'set up' for specific outcomes; Don't block by showing the path to their goal, and how they can create opportunities to get what they want; Be aware of potential vs established fiction which just says "hey, unless it's been established in the conversation around the table as true, it's not true yet" (on theme of this thread); and of course playing to find out about what happens based on the goals declared and questions/complications the world poses.
I think the joy of something like BITD for me is that it has that baseline cohesive scaffolding to crystalize your creativity off of (Doskvol with all it's fascinating unanswered questions; the Factions and their nebulous goals), but it's designed from the ground up to minimize GM fiat. Like, when we're starting to narrow down a new score, I'll throw some ideas out there (so you agreed to help the Lost out right? They probably want to handle something like XYZ, what do you think?), and then we work together to narrow down next steps, define out a framework, and roll into play. From there - I just front complications and see what happens.
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EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
So, much of this is familiar to me (as Blades in the Dark grew from Powered by the Apocalypse roots), but you highlight the important thing here for me:
"hey, unless it's been established in the conversation around the table as true, it's not true yet"
The critical bit is those last four words: it's not true yet.
In the absence of a true thing (whatever source it came from, I genuinely don't care if it's pre-authored or produced by randomness or published serially or whatever), how can there be evidence? How can there be analysis? It seems to me there cannot be. And if there can be neither evidence nor analysis thereof, I don't see how one can solve a mystery. It's a jigsaw puzzle that hasn't been cut into pieces yet.
It's a mathematical question with free variables, e.g. X+Y=7, what is the value of X? We don't know, because you could pick any value you like for Y and get a corresponding value of X (even if we limit it to positive integers, there's still six possible values, all of which are just as correct as any other, namely, at best only conditionally true). Unless and until we set Y, there is no value of X--and the moment we do set Y, then X is fixed, not by the contents of the fiction, but by the choice to fix Y as some specific thing.
And making it a distributed choice doesn't alter this. Perhaps each player chooses a value Y can't be, and there happen to be five players. Collectively, they chose the value of Y, even though no individual person did. I can't square that "we chose Y, and thus produced X" thing with "we discovered what X was, by learning what Y was".
