GM fiat - an illustration

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then we have different experience. Now I've hoped that 5e would have more robust skill section with example DCs and stuff like that, but I have my own internal benchmarks for that stuff, so I manage. And the system seems quite sufficient for the way I run games. You can just treat most stuff via the fiction and roleplay, and then have some skill rolls when outcome is in doubt. Outside the combat mechanics what we basically have is very straightforward rules light vaguely simmish system, and that's basically what I have ever felt I truly need to run a RPG. Exploration, social situations, drama, emotions, setting of character goals, those really do not need rules most of the time.

Like what sort of concrete issues you have in mind?



We had a similar thing happen and the GM declared it was a score from that point on (even though we didn't roll engagement roll or do any usual pre-score stuff. But it was really short score and all characters did not even participate. And then we did all the after score stuff too. But it was weird and felt like a glitch in the system, though it was probably better that way as otherwise one character would have surely died. But I think the game should have answers to questions like "what gear you have in free play?" If things escalate into a sudden fight it sorta matters whether you have your weapons, armour, smoke bombs and other stuff with you or not!

Well, when we were in D/T or info gathering/free play we just had what we decided we needed. I'd tell the GM I was going down to the fighting pits to talk to my contact there about whatever. Of course I was armed, and might have noted having some other resources. If it devolved into major action, then I declared my loadout and that would carry over into the score. Sometimes the score just happened, like you say, but we always established initial position at that point.

I will say, we did quite a few split score loops where sometimes all three PCs were operating in different places doing different things. You can do that, just maintain position for each one.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The question, too, can be raised, "Is this more enjoyable for the players? Wouldn't they rather know that they cleverly solved the GM's firmly established 'mystery' that was set in stone via prep 6 months ago?"

For some groups, maybe. In my experience the players are more than satisfied with discovering whichever conclusion is made in the end, AND they get the added benefit of greater investment and player stakes.

If that's not the same thing as "solving the mystery," well, okay then. I'll go for the better at-the-table experience every time. I don't care if it meets the definition. If you want me to concede the point, "You're not actually running a 'mystery' scenario," then sure, fine. When I'm playing or running Ironsworn, I'm not running a 'mystery' and I couldn't care less.

That's fine, and I and others have said several times that this is not about being better, it is that it is different and whether that is better or worse is a matter of taste. I certainly get your reasons for doing it in the way you do and I have done similar things myself for very similar reasons.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is the no-myth interpretation but AW isn't a no-myth game. Dungeon World is really shaky, I don't think Adam and Sage knew what AW was trying to do in the slightest. A lot of the subsequent PbtA advice and designers do basically advocate no-myth.

Truncated history of no-myth. Gareth Michael Skarka invented it (or was the first to put it to text), he called it Intuitive Continuity. LeJour (A forge poster) took it and renamed it no-myth. The lack of backstory is leverage by the GM to create an exciting GENRE adventure. At the same time the idea of fail forward and flags was kicking around. Fail forward was really influenced by InSpectres. There's a kind of more thematic version of no-myth where you hit the flags with problematic challenges (as opposed to genre) and a lot of Narrativist games are interpreted that way even when they're not.

So the four components are: flags, no back story, fail forward, the GM as a kind of facilitator (is focussed on what the players want)

I don't think AW has any of those, although it was obviously interpreted that way and an overwhelming amount of the hype PbtA gets is because it's an introduction to no-myth.

What are flags?

And yeah it is interesting to hear about the history. Some people have applauded story now games for generally being clear about how they're supposed to be played, and I have to say that I have not really found this to be the case. Not that they're unusually opaque either. But it sorta often feels that there is this whole big backstage discussion that I missed, and everyone just assumes I'm familiar with it. Like there is this accumulated wisdom of how to do things, that is not really present in the pages. And the same is often true for trad games too, it just is that I happen to have that accumulated wisdom.

 

[FrogReaver]

What are flags?

And yeah it is interesting to hear about the history. Some people have applauded story now games for generally being clear about how they're supposed to be played, and I have to say that I have not really found this to be the case. Not that they're unusually opaque either. But it sorta often feels that there is this whole big backstage discussion that I missed, and everyone just assumes I'm familiar with it. Like there is this accumulated wisdom of how to do things, that is not really present in the pages. And the same is often true for trad games too, it just is that I happen to have that accumulated wisdom.

My Blades in the Dark experience encountered that. It wasn’t clear how to handle score like activities of limited scope occurring in downtime outside a score. It wasn’t clear to me how to resolve downtime shenanigans. It also wasnt clear when or if one should jump straight from downtime to a score. Transitions in the game from downtime to score often felt off. Etc.

The game played great in scores. Great when the party was really big mission focused so it was clear what the next score was. But it felt like it was coming unglued if everyone didn’t rather strictly stick to that structure while steering clear of grey areas.

Overall liked the game but score vs non-score seemed like a bigger divide than how something like d&d does combat vs non-combat.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hey could you expand on that please, just in terms of how that information is helpful in the players solving the mystery?

It mostly helps inform their approach to play, not help them solve the mystery.

Like if players know that there are no pre-established clues then play is primarily about authoring through the game systems what the actual facts around the mystery are. They can steer play toward trying to establish the particular facts they desire. Then when enough facts are authored such that a firm conclusion can be tested, it’s still possible to roll badly and ultimately be wrong, simply because of random chance.

But if players know there is a pre-established answer then they will steer play toward gathering facts. When they have enough facts they can then deduce with certainty the answer to the mystery.

The players have incentives to approach the games differently based on whether there are pre-established facts or not.

Though I suppose I found a few ways they play differently based on that information just talking through it here. The biggest thing beyond the approach is that when sufficient facts have been gathered, the solution can be actually put together by the players.

 

[thefutilist]

What are flags?

A Flag is a mechanic that tells the GM what the player wants to see in play. So for instance:

I'm the greatest swordsman, no can beat me

I put my family first

In play the GM will look at the flags and introduce content that plays to or challenges the flag. For instance having loads of sword fights or presenting situations which challenge the idea that you'll put family first.

 

[innerdude]

It mostly helps inform their approach to play, not help them solve the mystery.

Like if players know that there are no pre-established clues then play is primarily about authoring through the game systems what the actual facts around the mystery are. They can steer play toward trying to establish the particular facts they desire. Then when enough facts are authored such that a firm conclusion can be tested, it’s still possible to roll badly and ultimately be wrong, simply because of random chance.

But if players know there is a pre-established answer then they will steer play toward gathering facts. When they have enough facts they can then deduce with certainty the answer to the mystery.

The players have incentives to approach the games differently based on whether there are pre-established facts or not.

Though I suppose I found a few ways they play differently based on that information just talking through it here. The biggest thing beyond the approach is that when sufficient facts have been gathered, the solution can be actually put together by the players.

I know you aren't purposefully meaning to offend with this comment, but I have to say, your description here feels dismissive of the PbtA/FitD approach.

Why is there an an assumption that in PbtA / FitD / Ironsworn the majority of "facts" or "truths" are yet to be made up? Like, somehow, because every single fine detail isn't written in stone, that somehow the players are working in a "primordial sludge" of some kind of Inception-style amorphous mind-space that is impossible to comprehend, and anything the players do in that space is ultimately meaningless?

In reality, the "liminal space" between pre-authored backstory and what's left to in-play discovery is usually ~5-10% of the total fictional framing. Often less than that, occasionally a little more.

But no matter which, the players aren't starting from zero. There's still a ton of backstory and framing already in play. There are always vectors for them to pursue in the goal of uncovering "the truth of the mystery."

But that 10% makes a huge difference in allowance. All I'm doing is leaving enough wiggle room in the premises to allow for the unforeseen and dramatic, and giving myself room to focus on that---if I so choose to---by following the principles espoused in the Ironsworn system.

One of PbtA's core principles is Give the players their due. When the players win, they get to win. If they overcome the collective obstacles needed to solve the mystery, no single die roll is going to deny them that win. BitD / Ironsworn's use of clocks/objective trackers makes very easy to chart individual "evidence threads" and compare their overall progress. If they fulfill the grounding requirements of "closing the investigation" (i.e., all the clocks are full), the players win, period.

If I happen to choose Solution X, Solution Y, or Solution Z at the very last moment, it will always follow from what has already been established, including actions and moves taken by the players to that point.

In the majority of cases, the actual "truth of the mystery" doesn't deviate from the pre-prepped material---but what does deviate are the suddenly heretofore unknown connections between elements that play has revealed, or a shift in perception or motivation for one of the mystery's participants, or a crucial piece of evidence suddenly becomes more germane to the proceedings.

And yes, occasionally, a new "Solution XY" or "Solution YZ" may arise if the players' pursuits create a golden opportunity to drive the action in a way that they're angling for. But that "solution ending" will never negate any of the players' prior efforts or discoveries. If it does, I-as-GM am no longer playing FitD / Ironsworn in full faith.

 

[thefutilist]

And yeah it is interesting to hear about the history. Some people have applauded story now games for generally being clear about how they're supposed to be played, and I have to say that I have not really found this to be the case. Not that they're unusually opaque either. But it sorta often feels that there is this whole big backstage discussion that I missed, and everyone just assumes I'm familiar with it. Like there is this accumulated wisdom of how to do things, that is not really present in the pages. And the same is often true for trad games too, it just is that I happen to have that accumulated wisdom.

Well the advice/best practices/philosophy of what constitutes Narrativist play change radically depending on who you ask and are often mutually exclusive or directly opposed. This is true of 'trad' games though, so they're all really in the same basket.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What are flags?

And yeah it is interesting to hear about the history. Some people have applauded story now games for generally being clear about how they're supposed to be played, and I have to say that I have not really found this to be the case. Not that they're unusually opaque either. But it sorta often feels that there is this whole big backstage discussion that I missed, and everyone just assumes I'm familiar with it. Like there is this accumulated wisdom of how to do things, that is not really present in the pages. And the same is often true for trad games too, it just is that I happen to have that accumulated wisdom.

I do think that the Blades book could be clearer. Or at least, it could be organized better. But I do think it's more complete than many texts. Certainly D&D and other games suffer from this, often by assuming some prior knowledge or experience on the part of the reader.

I don't think you need anything beyond the Blades in the Dark book to really understand, though. What I think happens is accumulated wisdom of the sort you're talking about from other games is applied in areas where it shouldn't be for a game like Blades. Like your GM just deciding by fiat that the targets of your score learned about the score. If he had only read the BitD book and acted on the guidance it provides, I don't expect he'd have done that.

My Blades in the Dark experience encountered that. It wasn’t clear how to handle score like activities of limited scope occurring in downtime outside a score. It wasn’t clear to me how to resolve downtime shenanigans. It also wasnt clear when or if one should jump straight from downtime to a score. Transitions in the game from downtime to score often felt off. Etc.

The game played great in scores. Great when the party was really big mission focused so it was clear what the next score was. But it felt like it was coming unglued if everyone didn’t rather strictly stick to that structure while steering clear of grey areas.

Overall liked the game but score vs non-score seemed like a bigger divide than how something like d&d does combat vs non-combat.

I think the book mostly provides answers to all the questions that are being posed here, but they may be scattered about a bit, or they may have some subjectivity to them. Page 8 of the book talks about the phases of play at a high level, and makes it clear that they are there as a tool, and that there may be some blending at times.

But aside from a few things, I think it makes many things very clear in the book. The Score is generally the most focused part of the game, though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean isn't it still basically that, you just at some point randomise who gets to say things?

I don't know what game does this. PbtA games, which are a pretty common model for Narrativist play, are actually pretty conventional in terms of parsing out responsibility for saying things, and the basic conversational loop. WHAT the GM says, WHY, and the degree to which the game explicates these things, is where the differences with trad play are.

So, in a trad mystery the GM authors the mystery. That would include particulars of the crime, suspects, clues, processes for any activities or circumstances not covered by world-governing rules, NPCs and their motives, actions, etc. Your GM might add some details during play where their prep proves inadequate, but things are notionally pre established.

In a generic PbtA-ish approach the situation of solving a mystery would arise either as a premise of the game, or a narrative element introduced by the GM to address some question or element of the agenda, such as playing to depict characters as master detectives or some such.

Nothing in the later is random. Players probably have moves related to investigation and such. They probably trigger them in the obvious ways, and checks are made, which prompt the GM to present different sorts of evidence or other elements. High rolls probably narrow down the suspect list, low ones likely present problematic evidence, danger, etc. It's even quite possible for the solution to the crime itself to be already established, play is then going to center on how the solving process affects the characters, etc.