GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

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.

If you specify a situation that does not resemble a RPG, but rather an incomplete novel, what do you expect it to reveal about RPGing?

For a start, everything that you describe is about the fiction. Nothing you have said describes any process of RPG play.

 

[pemerton]

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.

A necessary condition of learning what is in the GM's notes is the GM having notes.

That seems a tautology. I don't know that it sheds any light on what is a "real" mystery, though.

 

[pemerton]

There is pretty clear and obvious tension between the two. The prep says "the X is at Y", the player says "I search the X at Z."

I was talking about Apocalypse World and Dungeon World (the latter being the game that @EzekielRaiden mentioned, and being heavily derivative of the former). Neither of them directs the GM to write down that sort of thing as their prep. And neither of them has a defined move "I search for the X". So if a player says, "I search for the X" then in AW the GM makes a soft move, and in DW the GM calls for a roll on Discern Realities.

Like the prep could say "'this character can't be persuaded to confess."

What RPG are you talking about here?

 

[pemerton]

I have always understood these sections to be in tension because, as "play to find out what happens" is presented, there should be almost no prep at all, and certainly nothing like knowing very specifically that there is a demon on the second floor of the dungeon who might know about the players. I have had folks tell me, point-blank, that Dungeon World is supposed to be, at least practically if not theoretically, truly "no-myth", where there isn't any myth, at all, whatsoever, only and exclusively that which is explicitly established in play, and nothing else: hence, play to find out what happens.

E.g.: "This is how you play to find out what happens. You’re sharing in the fun of finding out how the characters react to and change the world you’re portraying. You’re all participants in a great adventure that’s unfolding. So really, don’t plan too hard. The rules of the game will fight you. It’s fun to see how things unfold, trust us."

This comes across to me as extremely strong, as advocating avoidance of preparation as much as humanly possible--do only the absolute bare minimum and nothing more. But then, as quoted above, the "exploit your prep" description is almost entirely in the opposite direction, entailing that you already know the whole layout of a dungeon before the party goes there, that you know exactly what is inside (and whether it could turn its baleful eye/s to the PCs), etc.

I don't really follow this. DW is, as far as prep and other procedures of play, pretty derivative of Apocalypse World. And the role of prep in AW is quite clear. As far as I can tell, its role in DW is the same.

Suppose that the GM preps, as one of their threats/fronts, the demon on the second level. What player action declaration is going to establish tension with that prep?

 

[pemerton]

If the chain of events goes...

We investigate -> We establish (by rules, procedures, etc.) things that are true -> If successful, we determine the perpetrator (etc.)

Then I don't see how one can argue that it isn't that establishment (by procedure, rules, etc.) which caused the perpetrator to be one suspect and not another.

Your middle paragraph is confused. Because the first "We" refers to imaginary people (the player characters). While the second "We" refers to real people (participants in a game). And I can't even tell who the third "we" refers to.

Confusing imaginary causation (in a fiction) with actual causation (in a social process, like playing a game) will make it hard if not impossible to analyse the social process at hand.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I was talking about Apocalypse World and Dungeon World (the latter being the game that @EzekielRaiden mentioned, and being heavily derivative of the former). Neither of them directs the GM to write down that sort of thing as their prep. And neither of them has a defined move "I search for the X". So if a player says, "I search for the X" then in AW the GM makes a soft move, and in DW the GM calls for a roll on Discern Realities.

What RPG are you talking about here?

It was just an example, the details could be anything. And "action declaration" is not same as move. Players can declare their characters do all sort of things. Now if you claim that the moves in AW cannot produce results that could contradict GM's pre-established myth, then that's another matter.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think having a backstory the players don't is obscurantism.

The obscurantism is in your description of play, that is, in referring to "objective facts that can be discovered".

A sentence written in the GM's notebook is an objective fact that can be discovered - by taking the GM's book and reading it.

An imaginary state of affairs described by a sentence in the GM's notebook is not an objective fact that can be discovered. It is something that the players can imagine, if prompted to do so by the GM, in accordance with the procedures of playing a RPG.

For reasons that escape me, you will not actually talk about what actually happens at a RPG table - who says what, how participants are led to say those things, how this results in shared imagining etc. You will only speak about imaginary causation between imaginary events and imaginary people. That's the obscurantism.

 

[AnotherGuy]

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.

Cool, I do that with 5e's Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws, but I offer XPs (valuable in our game) for them to lean into those when they conflict with their goals.

i.e. PC was trying to shield their mind from a Detect Thoughts spell.
Character has the Personality Trait I can barely keep a secret
I offered an XP if he played up the Personality Trait by allowing the character to auto fail the saving throw and let the name he was trying to keep secret rise to his surface thoughts (which is what the spell Detects).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Confusing imaginary causation (in a fiction) with actual causation (in a social process, like playing a game) will make it hard if not impossible to analyse the social process at hand.

This right here is a huge part of the confusion and disagreement happening in this discussion.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Yes. But it is still people saying things, the system doesn't produce some independent truth apart the participants. And yes, there is randomisation who gets to say what involves. If the player rolls well what they said their character intents to accomplish happens. If they roll badly, the GM gets to say what sort of bad thing happens. In many case there is also the mixed result for both.

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.

You are literally describing here the randomisation of who gets to say what, the exact thing you claimed doesn't happen!

In any case, all the clues, all the suspects, all the motives, and the culprit, they're just invented by someone, and if it is done during the play, then you're not solving a mystery, you're generating a story about one!