GM fiat - an illustration

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

As above, I cannot comment on specifically Blades in the Dark having never played it myself, but I can speak for Dungeon World, having years of experience with it.

There is a tension in the written rules, for DW, between the high-level Principle "play to find out what happens" (which pushes toward a "no-myth" approach) and the How To GM instruction "exploit your prep" (which pushes away from absolute no-myth). Here's a bit of relevant text which seems to fit, to some extent, with what you've described here (emphasis in original):

"In all of these things, exploit your prep. At times you’ll know something the players don’t yet know. You can use that knowledge to help you make moves. Maybe the wizard tries to cast a spell and draws unwanted attention. They don’t know that the attention that just fell on them was the ominous gaze of a demon waiting two levels below, but you do."

So, in some sense, yes. Things like what you describe should exist. DW refers to "Fronts", from the phrase "fighting on multiple fronts". Fronts are meant to ensure that the players are never truly, absolutely safe; they are always at some risk of peril, even if it's still a ways off. Fronts often involve factions or organizations with goals that may or may not be good for the PCs (usually, at least a mix of both good and bad, but often just bad). These Fronts progress through various Grim Portents: events that signal the gradual progression and worsening of the Front until either the players defeat the problem, or its final fruition occurs.

Looking up Blades' rules, it looks like Factions are specifically meant to be a part of play, but again I haven't played the game myself, so I might not fully understand how they're supposed to be used. However, based on what I'm reading from others on it, it sounds like the Factions are what Blades uses instead of Fronts to drive long-term conflict. You need your Scores in order to, y'know, have money and such, so that would still happen. But Factions can like or dislike you, can aid or hinder you, and can even be "At War" with you, which severely hampers Scores and downtime.

 

[pemerton]

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".

You seem to be describing round-robin storytelling, or something in that neighbourhood - "vigorous creative agreement". RPGing doesn't have to be like that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You seem to be describing round-robin storytelling, or something in that neighbourhood - "vigorous creative agreement". RPGing doesn't have to be like that.

Your solution is basically just randomisation and guidelines for who gets to decide what Y is, so it doesn't alter @EzekielRaiden's point.

 

[pemerton]

How can clues point at anything if there isn't anything to point at?

This seems to be like asking, how can there be foreshadowing without pre-authorship? In RPGing, John Harper explains how that can be the case here: The Mighty Atom

(Which I've already referred to upthread.)

Of course, when actual police solve actual mysteries, the clues are generally causally downstream consequences of the actions taken by the criminal (whether those actions are taken before, during, or after the commission of the crime).

But when we are talking about inference from statement to statement, as a component of a fiction, causation can be a component of the fiction without operating the same way in the creation of the statements.

In just this way, the fiction associated with a soft move can, in the fiction, be causally downstream of the fiction associated with a hard move, even though - in the actual process of play - the making of the hard move is causally downstream of the making of the soft move (eg soft move: "You see smoke over the horizon"; hard move "Its coming from your house, which is on fire").

 

[pemerton]

Your solution is basically just randomisation and guidelines for who gets to decide what Y is, so it doesn't alter @EzekielRaiden's point.

That is not how the RPGs that I'm familiar with work.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That is not how the RPGs that I'm familiar with work.

You keep saying that, but have failed to demonstrate it.

 

[pemerton]

There is a tension in the written rules, for DW, between the high-level Principle "play to find out what happens" (which pushes toward a "no-myth" approach) and the How To GM instruction "exploit your prep" (which pushes away from absolute no-myth). Here's a bit of relevant text which seems to fit, to some extent, with what you've described here (emphasis in original):

"In all of these things, exploit your prep. At times you’ll know something the players don’t yet know. You can use that knowledge to help you make moves. Maybe the wizard tries to cast a spell and draws unwanted attention. They don’t know that the attention that just fell on them was the ominous gaze of a demon waiting two levels below, but you do."

This is strange to me. I don't see what the tension is supposed to be.

It's a principle of Apocalypse World to always say what your prep demands. Prep is binding on the GM.

But there is no process, in AW, whereby prep can produce a "negation", by the GM's reference to it, of a player's declared action. I don't think there is in Dungeon World either. As the AW rulebook says, the purpose of prep is to give the GM interesting things to say when the rules call upon them to say things. I would expect DW to work the same way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This seems to be like asking, how can there be foreshadowing without pre-authorship? In RPGing, John Harper explains how that can be the case here: The Mighty Atom

(Which I've already referred to upthread.)

Of course, when actual police solve actual mysteries, the clues are generally causally downstream consequences of the actions taken by the criminal (whether those actions are taken before, during, or after the commission of the crime).

But when we are talking about inference from statement to statement, as a component of a fiction, causation can be a component of the fiction without operating the same way in the creation of the statements.

In just this way, the fiction associated with a soft move can, in the fiction, be causally downstream of the fiction associated with a hard move, even though - in the actual process of play - the making of the hard move is causally downstream of the making of the soft move (eg soft move: "You see smoke over the horizon"; hard move "Its coming from your house, which is on fire").

I don't consider it to be "solving a mystery" if the solution is "causally downstream" of the event the mystery is about. If it is causally downstream, you aren't solving it. You are, in some way, establishing it, building it, making it be that thing and not some other thing.

The characters are solving a mystery in such a context. The players are not. Unless the causal order is preserved for the players in addition to being preserved for the characters, it isn't solving a mystery. It just...isn't. I don't know how to express it better than that. It's something other than solving. It has a lot of things in common with solving. It features characters that are, themselves, solving. But it itself isn't solving.

 

[pemerton]

You keep saying that, but have failed to demonstrate it.

For a start, guidelines - your word - is not a synonym for rules and principles and requirements.

 

[pemerton]

I don't consider it to be "solving a mystery" if the solution is "causally downstream" of the event the mystery is about. If it is causally downstream, you aren't solving it. You are, in some way, establishing it, building it, making it be that thing and not some other thing.

The characters are solving a mystery in such a context. The players are not. Unless the causal order is preserved for the players in addition to being preserved for the characters, it isn't solving a mystery. It just...isn't. I don't know how to express it better than that. It's something other than solving. It has a lot of things in common with solving. It features characters that are, themselves, solving. But it itself isn't solving.

So suppose a GM comes up with a brilliant idea for a clue. Then writes a crime that will yield that clue.

The crime was causally downstream of the clue. So by your lights that's not a mystery.

But for all you know, every CoC module ever was written in the way I just described!