GM fiat - an illustration

[thefutilist]

I have the revised and it has just threats. But these threats are threats for some reason. Pyro Cult is not a threat if they're just chilling! But the prep might say that the Pyro Cult has burned down several settlements including Krumptown, killing all its inhabitants, then that's a threat.

You'd establish that as part of their clock. So let's say after session 1 you create a clock for the Pyro cult and the first tick is, burn down Krumptown and kill Sludge.

And the first scene is as follows:

MC: What are you doing Midnight?

Midnight: I'm riding to Krumptown to see Sludge.

(look at my count down clock (prep) see that Krumptown has been burned to the ground and Sludge has been killed)

MC: Hard cut to you outside the smouldering ashes of Krumptown. There are many heads on spikes and amongst them you recognise Sludge.

 

[FrogReaver]

You'd establish that as part of their clock. So let's say after session 1 you create a clock for the Pyro cult and the first tick is, burn down Krumptown and kill Sludge.

And the first scene is as follows:

MC: What are you doing Midnight?

Midnight: I'm riding to Krumptown to see Sludge.

(look at my count down clock (prep) see that Krumptown has been burned to the ground and Sludge has been killed)

MC: Hard cut to you outside the smouldering ashes of Krumptown. There are many heads on spikes and amongst them you recognise Sludge.

are the details from the clock hidden from the players until they try to interact with those elements in the fiction?

 

[thefutilist]

are the details from the clock hidden from the players until they try to interact with those elements in the fiction?

Yes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You'd establish that as part of their clock. So let's say after session 1 you create a clock for the Pyro cult and the first tick is, burn down Krumptown and kill Sludge.

And the first scene is as follows:

MC: What are you doing Midnight?

Midnight: I'm riding to Krumptown to see Sludge.

(look at my count down clock (prep) see that Krumptown has been burned to the ground and Sludge has been killed)

MC: Hard cut to you outside the smouldering ashes of Krumptown. There are many heads on spikes and amongst them you recognise Sludge.

Yeah, that makes sense. But then "prep negated an action declaration," a thing Pemerton insists cannot happen.

Also, certainly it should be possible the burning have been happened before the game even started, as factions and NPCs obviously have history before that. And then the PCs just wouldn't know of it yet.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So have we now came full circle? Are we back to Narrativist games like AW don't allow prep for most details and certainly not enough to pre-establish the facts of a mystery?

That's indeed what it sounds like. The allowed prep seems to be barely existent by my standards.* Which is exactly the stance @EzekielRaiden talked about earlier which started this whole tangent.

* Which I don't find surprising, it has always made sense for me that narrativist games work better with very low and vague myth whilst more simmish games benefit from detailed and plentiful myth.

 

[pemerton]

I don't get what you don't get. If you mean that the prep will not contradict moves, then that seems plausible enough (at least for most of the time,) but that's not what you said, you said the prep doesn't contradict action declarations, and that I have an issue with.

When an action declaration is made, that does not trigger a player-side move, the GM makes a soft move in response. (Or as hard and direct a move as they like, if the player has handed them an opportunity on a plate.)

So the player says whatever it is that they say their PC does, and the GM makes a soft move. If the example is I go to Krumptown to meet Sludge, I've already given you a post showing multiple ways that that might resolve.

I have the revised and it has just threats. But these threats are threats for some reason. Pyro Cult is not a threat if they're just chilling! But the prep might say that the Pyro Cult has burned down several settlements including Krumptown, killing all its inhabitants, then that's a threat.

I don't have the revised version. Maybe it's wildly different from the original?

In the original, the purpose of the prep is to give the GM interesting things to say. And those things are GM moves, including threat moves.

Krumptown is burned down looks like a pretty hard move, in response to the action declaration I go to Krumptown to meet Sludge, so the GM would only say it if the circumstances of play licensed a hard move. I posted an example upthread.

If you're asking , "Is the GM allowed to make a hard move when the game tells them to make a soft move", well the answer is no.

 

[robertsconley]

Maps and minis are not remotely first person. Or second person. They are god's-eye-view.

I found that the use of maps and minis is a better representation of a character's situational awareness than theater of the mind based on my experience in live action roleplaying, and outdoor activities like caving and hiking. The point of this

Isn't that the characters have magical sight that allows them to see through walls. The purpose of the map is to illustrate what they recall. Something I found players do far more poorly with is theater of the mind. And this doesn't stem just from live action and the outdoors, I have been training novices on complex metal cutting and metal forming machines for forty years. I have long understood that this training is more effective when you combine the visual with the verbal.

Because the use of maps and minis is there as a memory aide, the players would not see a creature or NPC approaching them through the room with the pond in the lower middle part of the graphic. They might hear them splashing through the water, but I would not take the token on the map until it was within line of sight. Specific to Roll20, when using fog of war and an already exposed area, is there a GM layer that the players can't see? So I place the token there and move it accordingly, then move it to the token layer when they are spotted.

Because the map is there as an aide, it will be a graphical reminder when the NPC steps from that south corridor into their line of sight of the room with the pool of water.

In addition, by adding a visual description to my verbal description, I found that for most players, it heightens the tension or urgency of the moment when they see a token or miniature of a creature like a giant centipede emerge from around a corner, compared to a verbal description alone. Adding the visual component makes the experience more vivid which for most players enhances their emotional experience while playing my campaign.

I watched a bit of this video that Google turned up:

Here is the transcript of what occurs around the 1 hour 40 minute mark

Rob: "And we're out of combat."

Tenkar: "All right,"

Tenkar: "Um, because we're out of combat and I remember our other small person saying 'little feet'

JoeTheLawyer: "yeah, and I'm looking backwards.

Tenkar: "Not Happy Feet, little feet."

JoeTheLawyer: "Yeah"

Tenkar: "I come this way and start looking for little feet. Or do I hear little feet?"

Rob: "You see something come sneaking around the corner."

Tenkar: "Oh naughty word!"

Rob: " A giant centipede! And it starts chomping on the bodies of the orcs!"

Tenkar: "Okay, okay! Everybody—runaways!"

JoetheLawyer: "I shoot the #%#%! Let's get my arrows over there. I gotta scavenge my arrow. I shoot the centipede!"

Rob: "Okay, you shoot it."

JoeTheLawyer: "Twenty plus three. Take that, centipede ##$*$#!"

JoeTheLawyer: "All right. D6 damage."

JoeTheLawyer: "Take that too! All right."

Rob: It makes a hissing sound like a steam kettle as it backs away.

Rob: "I guess this time everybody rolls actual initiative."

The description of something making a noise like a steam kettle didn't seem to me to be "only a step removed from actually having something there fore the players to smell, taste, or touch".

I will leave that for the readers to judge, as I have posted the transcript for them to read to provide context for the statement I made.

It also either made assumptions about the character's mental states (ie that, upon hearing the noise, they would think of a steam kettle) or else involved meta-gaming (that is, trading on the player's knowledge of an out-of-game thing, namely, a kettle, to try and then get them to think of the sound happening in the fiction).

It is an accurate description of the sound the giant centipede made after it was injured. I was inspired by a nature documentary that talked briefly about how some species of centipedes make a hissing sound called stridulation. While normal centipedes don't sound like steam kettles even when the sound is amplified, that's how the giant centipedes in my world sound.

As for the anachronistic use of steam kettles, I am running a session in a medieval fantasy setting for 21st century players for fun. I had three hours in which to run this session, and knew the players in question. All three factors were sufficient for me to conclude that accurately describing the sound as that of a steam kettle was an economical and understandable way of describing what the centipede sounded like to this group.

Throughout the decades, I have found that for most players, my campaigns and sessions run smoother and are more enjoyable when I use relatable analogies as part of my descriptions of what the players see or sense. And note that to be effective, I have to understand what is relatable to the particular group that I am running a campaign for. It's not about what I find relatable.

Two years ago I ran my Deceits of the Russet Lord adventure at Shirecon, and I was lucky in that half of the group were big fans, like myself, of the Harn setting and all things medieval. And for the rest of the group, like me, those players were self-aware that not everybody is a medieval geek and were able to help pull everybody else into their enthusiasm for the medieval side of how I run things. Because of that, I was able to tailor my descriptions to be more period-accurate than I usually am with a group of random 21st-century players.

The end goal here is to paint a clear picture of the circumstances within the time we have, using our limited verbal bandwidth as effectively as possible. The point isn't to tell the players what the answers to a mystery are, but to get them to feel that they are within a mystery that could be investigated and solved. Because if they don't get that, then it will make for a poor tabletop roleplaying experience.

Out of the points all that I made in my reply to @Bedrockgames, I am not sure why criticizing my use of maps and minis, as well as the use of a steam kettle analogy, reinforces the points you have been making. Frankly it comes off that you personally dislike my choices. Which is valid, but no more a basis for discussion than saying you like cars with blue paint and criticizing that I like cars with red paint.

 

[thefutilist]

Also, certainly it should be possible the burning have been happened before the game even started, as factions and NPCs obviously have history before that. And then the PCs just wouldn't know of it yet.

Well there is no MC prep before session one, so the prep can't prevent anything. The PC could say they go to Kumptown to meet sludge and I could say 'yeah it's a burning ember and sludge is dead. Looks like the work of the Pyrocult'

 

[Crimson Longinus]

When an action declaration is made, that does not trigger a player-side move, the GM makes a soft move in response. (Or as hard and direct a move as they like, if the player has handed them an opportunity on a plate.)

So the player says whatever it is that they say their PC does, and the GM makes a soft move. If the example is I go to Krumptown to meet Sludge, I've already given you a post showing multiple ways that that might resolve.

And your claim is that regardless of whatever the player says, it is not possible fo GM to have established in prep anything that could contradict it? Because then then what the GM can prep is insanely limited.

I don't have the revised version. Maybe it's wildly different from the original?

In the original, the purpose of the prep is to give the GM interesting things to say. And those things are GM moves, including threat moves.

Krumptown is burned down looks like a pretty hard move, in response to the action declaration I go to Krumptown to meet Sludge, so the GM would only say it if the circumstances of play licensed a hard move. I posted an example upthread.

It is not a move. It just is. It is part of the history of the Pyrocult that they did this. Before the game even started. The PCs just do not know of it yet. Now if you're saying that the GM cannot in prep establish that things just are, but instead just brainstorm some move ideas that might occur, then it again is not prepping anything concrete, it is just potential ideas.

If you're asking , "Is the GM allowed to make a hard move when the game tells them to make a soft move", well the answer is no.

I am not.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well there is no MC prep before session one, so the prep can't prevent anything. The PC could say they go to Kumptown to meet sludge and I could say 'yeah it's a burning ember and sludge is dead. Looks like the work of the Pyrocult'

Right. This is what I imagined. But @pemerton seems to think you are not allowed to do this.