GM fiat - an illustration

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Yeah, agreed on that. @Crimson Longinus , the GM should not have just essentially cancelled the score. Especially not on a strong engagement roll. I mean, they shouldn't have done that at all... but at least if the engagement roll was a 1-3, I could at least see them saying that the targets had learned of the plan. Even then, I think they should still be there and still be some kind of score... it'd be just like, instead of laying a trap, you're now in the trap.

There are certain things the GM shouldn't really do in Blades at all, and that would be one. Messing with payoff is another.

 

[innerdude]

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?

I think the disconnect here is the phrase, there isn't a solution yet.

As a GM in Ironsworn, I will nearly always have potential solutions to a "mystery" already outlined in my head (*edit, or yes, even written down in my notes [the horror!!]). Possibly two or three avenues that solve the "mystery" as well as plug in to one or more character's goals.

But I don't choose which avenue has "always been the truth" until the last possible moment---because the dynamics of play can push one potential solution to the fore in such a way that it ultimately becomes obvious that, "Oh yes, of course this is what happened, and here's why, and here's why it's important to Character X, Character Y, and NPC Z."

There are clues. There are leads. There are potentially even "living world" concerns where some piece of evidence can only be in one place at a specific time (though Ironsworn's play loop doesn't typically enforce that sort of thing in any rigid fashion).

But the totality of the "ultimate truth" of the mystery isn't revealed until the very last possible moment. Because Ironsworn is the kind of game that pushes character stakes in the fiction to the absolute forefront.

*Edit --- and yes, occasionally, due to in-play dynamics, scene framing, and player-driven intent, sometimes an entirely new "mystery resolution path" raises its head mid-stream in play. But it's based/grounded in existing evidence uncovered, in previously established fiction, by adherence to game principles, and giving the players their due. It's never a "haha, pull the rug out from under the party!" type of dynamic. It's merely a realization as a GM---literally playing to find out---what the "real truth" of the matter always was and now means for the PCs.

The other thing that's interesting is that the majority of the time, due to play dynamics, the end result rarely ends up being the most directly productive or beneficial for the PCs. When the mystery is "solved", it is almost always accompanied by "unwelcome truths" that have come to light during its resolution.

@bloodtide 's constant whining about "capitulating to the random whims of the players" is nonsense, because the play procedures of the game rarely produce "get out of jail free" results. And on the very rare occasion that procedures do produce such a result, play remains interesting because now there's a fresh narrative drive to follow---"Wow, now what are you going to do with that?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, agreed on that. @Crimson Longinus , the GM should not have just essentially cancelled the score. Especially not on a strong engagement roll. I mean, they shouldn't have done that at all... but at least if the engagement roll was a 1-3, I could at least see them saying that the targets had learned of the plan. Even then, I think they should still be there and still be some kind of score... it'd be just like, instead of laying a trap, you're now in the trap.

There are certain things the GM shouldn't really do in Blades at all, and that would be one. Messing with payoff is another.

Absolutely. Something a lot of other-game (particularly D&D) experienced GMs may struggle with in PbtA/FitD/etc. games is that there are actually pretty strong rules which constrain what the GM is allowed to do. I don't know the specifics of what it means to cancel the score, but from what you've said here, it sounds like it is (at the very least) a soft move, if not an outright hard move. GMs in PbtA should not be making even soft moves when a roll does well (e.g. full success), and I can't imagine FitD games are radically different on this front.

Like...for a D&D comparison, it would be like if you critically hit on an attack, and the GM declared that the force of your blow broke your weapon as if a crit fumble had been rolled. Even for a game using crit-fumble rules, invoking them when the player critically succeeded would be Very Not Okay and would almost surely significantly erode player trust in that GM, even if the GM has a great plan and is genuinely trying to do good things with this choice. It's not that it's outright impossible for a GM to do this, but in a very real sense they are violating both the letter and the spirit of the rules to do so.

I'm sorry you dealt with such an experience, @Crimson Longinus, because I can absolutely agree that if a thing like that happened to me, it would damage the experience. Maybe not irrevocably, but now I'm going to be pulled away from the doing-of-things, and pulled toward unhelpful meta thinking: "Can I trust the GM to honor the text of the rules? If I succeed, will the GM take that away? If I fail, will the GM cushion the blow too much?" It's the gaming equivalent of being reminded that your tongue is in your mouth or that you are wearing clothes, it's just not good for play actually focused on what's happening within the fiction.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the disconnect here is the phrase, there isn't a solution yet.

As a GM in Ironsworn, I will nearly always have potential solutions to a "mystery" already outlined in my head (*edit, or yes, even written down in my notes [the horror!!]). Possibly two or three avenues that solve the "mystery" as well as plug in to one or more character's goals.

But I don't choose which avenue has "always been the truth" until the last possible moment---because the dynamics of play can push one potential solution to the fore in such a way that it ultimately becomes obvious that, "Oh yes, of course this is what happened, and here's why, and here's why it's important to Character X, Character Y, and NPC Z."

There are clues. There are leads. There are potentially even "living world" concerns where some piece of evidence can only be in one place at a specific time (though Ironsworn's play loop doesn't typically enforce that sort of thing in any rigid fashion).

But the totality of the "ultimate truth" of the mystery isn't revealed until the very last possible moment. Because Ironsworn is the kind of game that pushes character stakes in the fiction to the absolute forefront.

How can clues point at anything if there isn't anything to point at? That's where I'm getting stuck here. Your "Oh yes, of course this is what happened" (emphasis in original) is precisely what seems to interfere with the possibility of the players (NOT the characters, very specifically the players) doing a mystery-solve. Again, I refer back to my "X+Y=7" thing above: I don't see how one is "solving for X" by selecting Y values, whether that selection is done directly (some participant picking a Y as part of play) or indirectly (various participants excluding values of Y until only one, or I guess none, remain). Instead, that looks transparently to me like picking an X value via picking a Y value, or picking an X value by excluding all-but-one Y value.

To re-use pemerton's next-prime-number example from above, instead of the question being, "What is the first prime after <many-digit-long number>?" it's saying "What is the first prime number after the unknown integer Y?" and then giving various people varying degrees of control over which Y is chosen to plug into the question. As soon as you select a value for Y, there is one and only one answer, but until you have, there is no answer at all, because that answer depends on a free variable.* I cannot structure this process as anything other than, "Because you selected Y, you selected the prime X that is the answer." In other words, you caused the answer to be X, by choosing Y. If you are the cause of the answer being (say) 103, then I don't really believe you solved the mystery; instead, you picked one answer out of the field of equally-valid answers and declared that that answer was "the" answer. Whether that declaration is made by a single person or by a group doesn't matter. It's still an answer declared, a "all those other equally-valid answers are wrong because I/we said so".

*This is actually a thing in first-order logic. A statement with a free variable simply lacks a truth-value. Like how, say, the sound of middle C on a piano lacks visible color (synaesthesia aside). The presence of the free variable nixes the possibility of a truth (or falsehood), and thus I'm stuck wondering how you can have evidence for a thing that lacks a truth-value.

*Edit --- and yes, occasionally, due to in-play dynamics, scene framing, and player-driven intent, sometimes an entirely new "mystery resolution path" raises its head mid-stream in play. But it's based/grounded in existing evidence uncovered, in previously established fiction, by adherence to game principles, and giving the players their due. It's never a "haha, pull the rug out from under the party!" type of dynamic. It's merely a realization as a GM---literally playing to find out---what the "real truth" of the matter always was and now means for the PCs.

Oh, this part I don't mind at all. I actually find it quite delightful, so long as the group can...well, for lack of a better term, prevent a criticality event. A stable game arises from spawning off enough new leads to keep things rolling. Too few, and the game grinds to a halt whenever the players need a reason to Go Forth And Do Stuff. Too many, however, and the game becomes an unmanagable mass of way too many things to remember and process. My DW game kinda fell into that, and I've been slowly working to trim it down just a little so that we maintain that steady-state reaction.

The other thing that's interesting is that the majority of the time, due to play dynamics, the end result rarely ends up being the most directly productive or beneficial for the PCs. When the mystery is "solved", it is almost always accompanied by "unwelcome truths" that have come to light during its resolution.

Whether it is beneficial to the PCs or not isn't really relevant to me. I understand why it might be to others, but that's orthogonal to my line of inquiry here.

@bloodtide 's constant whining about "capitulating to the random whims of the players" is nonsense, because the play procedures of the game rarely produce "get out of jail free" results. And on the very rare occasion that procedures do produce such a result, play remains interesting because now there's a fresh narrative drive to follow---"Wow, now what are you going to do with that?"

Oh, believe me, I'm not paying any attention to their comments on this one, so I'm just not engaged with that in any way.

 

[Gimby]

How can clues point at anything if there isn't anything to point at? That's where I'm getting stuck here. Your "Oh yes, of course this is what happened" (emphasis in original) is precisely what seems to interfere with the possibility of the players (NOT the characters, very specifically the players) doing a mystery-solve. Again, I refer back to my "X+Y=7" thing above: I don't see how one is "solving for X" by selecting Y values, whether that selection is done directly (some participant picking a Y as part of play) or indirectly (various participants excluding values of Y until only one, or I guess none, remain). Instead, that looks transparently to me like picking an X value via picking a Y value, or picking an X value by excluding all-but-one Y value.

Coming off watching a bunch of Poriot recently, in a Christie style mystery there often isn't a clear deductive through line to a single culprit, at least until the very end. There's often a lot of inference and circumstantial evidence that points towards multiple possible suspects and we often rely on the tropes of introduction to the cast to narrow things down - in at least some cases it'd be entirely possible for an outside party to have done the deed.

Clues can the point at a class of suspect, but not anyone in particular

 

[AnotherGuy]

Coming off watching a bunch of Poriot recently, in a Christie style mystery there often isn't a clear deductive through line to a single culprit, at least until the very end. There's often a lot of inference and circumstantial evidence that points towards multiple possible suspects and we often rely on the tropes of introduction to the cast to narrow things down - in at least some cases it'd be entirely possible for an outside party to have done the deed.

Clues can the point at a class of suspect, but not anyone in particular

I just saw Christie's Black Coffee at the theatre this weekend.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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!

So this seem to be an attempt at semantic chicanery, where you first identify that mysteries have some constraints about what sort of things can be said and then then proceed like any constraints on what can be said would produce a mystery. That's why I was not getting it, as this is so elementary logical fallacy that I would not expect you to employ it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

So first I want to say this was an one-off event and the GM admitted they did not handle it well. Overall it has been a good campaign.

And yeah, it was a tad frustrating when it happened, but I also think it was interesting. It was produced by "secret myth" thinking clashing with a system that assumes pretty light myth. And the GMs thinking was logical. there were previous events that had occurred, that had tipped off our enemies. It made sense. Still, it did not work with how the game is structured.

I believe our GM thinks in terms of "secret myth" quite a bit. Like there are secrets and conspiracies we have uncovered and whilst the details may have been flexible, I assume most of them were preplanned way before we found about them in the game. Similarly NPCs and factions seem to do things based on their own plans and motivations and that produces events visible to us players. I am not sure how much this sort of thinking one is supposed to do when running a game like this. Like there are all these established factions and some named NPCs and they have their goals and stuff. But instead of as active forces with their own volition, should they actually be treated as fodder for fiction when the dice or player actions demand it?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Coming off watching a bunch of Poriot recently, in a Christie style mystery there often isn't a clear deductive through line to a single culprit, at least until the very end. There's often a lot of inference and circumstantial evidence that points towards multiple possible suspects and we often rely on the tropes of introduction to the cast to narrow things down - in at least some cases it'd be entirely possible for an outside party to have done the deed.

Clues can the point at a class of suspect, but not anyone in particular

Sure, some clues can be simply excluding certain categories or indicating certain categories, e.g. a footprint in the victim's blood from a woman's shoe would naturally promote suspicion of the female suspects and reduce suspicion of the male suspects.

But there are two things here that complicate this if there truly isn't an answer until someone or something decides the answer:

1. False clues. Take the aforementioned footprint. A clue like that would be a pretty dramatic mistake for a culprit to make, especially if they had otherwise been particularly fastidious--so it could be a false clue, placed by the real culprit to throw off the scent. If there is no answer until something decides the answer, the clue cannot be true or false until there is in fact an answer. But that means the exact same evidence could be evidence for OR evidence against, and there's literally no possible way to know because there isn't anything to know yet. That's a problem for, y'know, solving a mystery.

2. One of the principle ideas of a well-written mystery, as opposed to a poorly-written one, is that it's supposed to be at least reasonably possible that a smart, perceptive reader could determine the solution without needing to be psychic or omniscient. You are correct that inference and circumstantial evidence are often involved; earlier, I specifically mentioned "deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning" because all three are involved in most crime-solving efforts. (Indeed, in many mysteries, the only way they can prove the crime is to do something that causes a person to confess.) But if there is no answer until it is decided, whatever it is that does the deciding, it literally isn't possible for a player to solve the mystery, no matter how perceptive or smart they might be, no more than you can solve an equation with free variables or the like. The information to do the solving simply doesn't exist.

Like, let me give you an example. Duke Black is slain at a masquerade ball, which is locked down by the police, and the party of detectives (who were invited on a lark by a noble friend of theirs), and the murderer is almost surely still on the premises. The Duke's body was found stabbed. His masquerade mask is missing, and the knife is an ordinary dinner knife, held with a napkin so it has no fingerprints.

The party finds the following clues:
1. The knife actually penetrated the Duke's sternum, which would require quite a lot of force, so only a very strong person could have stabbed him that way.
2. The mask was found in Countess Green's room.
3. The Duke's son Adam, now the new Duke, had crippling gambling debts, but he can pay them off now.
4. The knife was taken from the table where Countess Green, Adam Black, the Duke's old friend Lord Grey, and his physician, Dr. Crimson.

These clues certainly put suspicion off of Lady Black, the Duke's elderly widow, and his butler Timothy Trevelyan...if they are true clues, not false ones. How can the players know? It's unlikely all of them are true clues. E.g. if Countess Green killed him (implied by finding the mask in her room) then the Adam's debts are a red herring. If Adam killed his father, then the mask in the Countess' room is an effort to throw people off Adam's scent.

How can anyone solve this? There isn't an answer, so the clues are neither true nor false, they just are...pieces of evidence that are known. It can't be solved unless and until something is established which either (a) specifies which suspect(s) actually did the dirty deed, or (b) specifies all but one of the potential suspects who couldn't have killed the Duke. But in the moment that last piece is put in place which established who did it...the players didn't solve it. Something--a single player, a collective player effort, an effort of all the participants GM included, a roll, a card, whatever--established the guilt. It wasn't the evidence that led them to that conclusion; it was the procedures, whatever those procedures might be, which made it so someone was and always was the murderer, even though nobody could have known that prior to that moment, even in principle.

 

[FrogReaver]

I’m a bit behind on the thread but it seems to me like there are 2 meanings of find, discover, reveal, etc. being used in this discussion.

I agree that narrativist games allow for a 'who-done-it' scenario without details preauthored and that this can/will produce an answer to that question through play. In some sense whatever answer play produces can be called finding, discovering, revealing, etc. the answer to the mystery of 'who-done-it'.

But when a solution is pre-authored and yet-to-be-found/discovered,revealed then that play produces both that same kind of finding, discovering, revealing etc. that was mentioned above, (usually producing a less interesting and compelling fiction in the process, narrativist games are great for more book/movie like narratives emerging from play) AND it produces a kind of finding, discovering, revealing, etc. that isn't present in narrativist games, namely, the finding, discovering, revealing, etc. of the preauthored solution.

Definitionally that may be a bit tautological, but it's precisely the difference we are talking about. So why does this difference matter? Because knowledge of the fact of preauthorship impacts how the game is played, sometimes in process, sometimes in how players make decisions, and oftentimes in both. Essentially it's the difference in what you love about narrativist games, and what we love about non-narrativist games. (IMO, how players make decisions is one aspect narrativism doesn't emphasize enough due to it's focus on process and distribution of authority, but it's at the heart of where I see the differences arising).

More broadly, this discussion is hard to have because the words we are using almost always apply to both game styles in some way. We've went through this same exercise with 'fiction first' (albeit party roles were reversed). We've went through it with 'player authorship' and 'agency'. We don't have strong terms to delineate the differences and so we stay right at square one.