GM fiat - an illustration

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

It's not a tension with player actions. It's a tension between the two instructions. One reads, to me, as "absolutely do not prep EVER unless you really, really, REALLY have to...and even then try to do as little of it as you can feasibly get away with." The other reads as, "You should definitely be doing a pretty significant amount of prep, down to a list of all significant denizens of a given area." That, to me, is two ideas in tension. One is almost-but-not-quite "no-myth", while the other is hardly different from any other RPG I've played, just with an emphasis on flexibility rather than nailing down all possible things.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Okay. Then let me specify. Because all three were meant to be player, nothing about the characters at all.

We, as players, investigate (e.g. we declare actions that trigger Discern Realities rolls) -> We, as players, establish truths by making statements which do not contradict what is already known, and which follow the rules for the kinds of statements we can make -> We, as players, find out what the correct result is, assuming our efforts as players were successful

That second step, making statements, creates new truths where before there were neither truths nor falsehoods, as anything not yet established has no truth value.

I see an inherent contradiction between establishing new truths and solving a mystery. If I established the fiction that fixed the answer, or if I am one of a set of people who collectively established the fiction that fixed the answer, then I didn't solve it. I either made it myself, or I collaborated with others to make that result, rather than any other result. The result happened because I personally or collectively chose it. Mysteries do not have solutions people can choose. I cannot, by any effort of my own, choose which smallest prime number is larger than 1,000,111,222,333,444. I cannot affect what that is in any way, no matter what--nothing whatsoever that I do changes what that number is. It simply...is. What produces this inability, even in principle, to change the solution to the mystery when we are establishing new truths? The procedures cannot distinguish why clue A that points to the Duke's son is false while clue B which points to Dr. Crimson is true. Such distinguishing can only be done by people--and thus, it is chosen by someone. It is an answer, yes, but it is an answer manufactured, not an answer discovered.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'll admit, like others have done on both sides of the argument, the discussion regarding the word solve is not an interesting one.

When I provide the PCs a riddle, I can ask them to solve it.
When I provide a word, I do not ask them to solve it, I ask them to create/establish the riddle that would prove the word to be the answer.

The more interesting part of the discussion, and I'm sure it has been either wholly or partly answered in this entire diatribe, is how games that play with story-now handle mystery adventures.

(1) Are they set as a Skill Challenges with x checks meaning the GM needs to have wrapped it up in X rolls? Or do they follow the narrative organically without a preset limitation?

(2) How do the negotiations between player and GM occur?
For instance, PCs discover a dead body, I imagine players declare they do a search of the body/area - group Investigation check called for.
(2a) Success is attainted. Does the GM narrate what is found or does the table?
(2b) Failure is attained, severity of the failure is determined by the dice and it is a GM move right? soft or hard.
Could the soft move be - you find the murder weapon thrown in the gutter. It is the (randomised) PC's dagger, which had been considered misplaced some days ago.
Could the hard move be - the town guard turn up with a senior town official who announces they are taking over the investigation and the PCs are ushered out of the area.

(3) Or are both those considered hard? How does one differentiate between what is a hard move or a soft move by the GM?

EDIT: The reason I ask all this is because I'd be curious to try this out in our D&D game. We've done plenty traditional mystery-quests and I will keep doing these, because the players enjoy overcoming obstacles, beating the DM, solving the mystery - but I could easily insert this style of mystery-adventure and have fun with this at the table too as we attempt to establish a narrative from a randomised scene frame.
I'm thinking each player at the table comes up with starting mystery and we let the dice determine which one we try establish through play.

And following @Manbearcat's advice upthread, the mechanics to be used in establishing the mystery will all be overtly communicated/signaled to the players upfront as we engage with this new style of play (to us at least).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So I can declare “I go to Mordor and cast the ring into Mount Doom” and that’s all it takes, huh? What game works like this?

No game to my knowledge, and that's why I balked at @pemerton's claim that would result a game working like this.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Huh? The existence of <Warlord? is myth. Prep. Likewise the clock. All done in accordance with the AW rulebook's instructions.

Yeah, And this is vague as hell as myth goes. It is almost no myth, barely any myth, some myth-flavourd stands loosely scattered on a bottom of an empty myth box.

To me, it seems that you are ignoring the AW processes of play, and of prep, and wanting to do something different - "setting prep", for lack of a better phrase.

It is not me "wanting" to do anything, it is that I understood this is the sort of prep @EzekielRaiden talked about. They have very cool and detailed setting for the game. A ton of myth, a ton of "setting prep."

What I said to @EzekielRaiden was that I did not understand why he said there is a tension in the rulebook. When there's not.

Then it is because you did no understand what was meant with the prep.

 

[pemerton]

It’d make far more sense to set up a threat and perhaps before the threat comes to their hold, it hits Krumptown first. So this would seem to be something that would happen as a GM move advancing a threat clock.

If only someone else had posted this upthread . . . !

 

[darkbard]

It is not me "wanting" to do anything, it is that I understood this is the sort of prep @EzekielRaiden talked about. They have very cool and detailed setting for the game. A ton of myth, a ton of "setting prep."

Then you are proceeding from false premises. As has been pointed out in this thread (and others across the years), @EzekielRaiden does not fully understand or implement the procedures of Story Now play in a way that other participants in this thread who have significant experience with games in that vein understand to be in accordance with the principles, procedures, and goals of such games. Much in the manner of your BitD GM.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Then you are proceeding from false premises. As has been pointed out in this thread (and others across the years), @EzekielRaiden does not fully understand or implement the procedures of Story Now play in a way that other participants in this thread who have significant experience with games in that vein understand to be in accordance with the principles, procedures, and goals of such games. Much in the manner of your BitD GM.

Then why not say that? Why not say that the tension exists because the GM tries to use too mch and too hard myth? Because that sounds perfecty sensible to me.

 

[pemerton]

The players aren’t solving anything in either game. They are pretending to solve a mystery in both games.

To put it another way, I think that players making moves with characters and prompting the GM with questions to reveal his answers of who done it and why has much more in common with players making moves and prompting the GM with questions to determine via play process who done it and why than either of the above has with actually solving a mystery.

Sure, for some people, the idea that there’s some predetermined answer to the questions will feel more like they’re “really solving the mystery”. The idea that there’s not some predetermined answer would make this feel somehow lesser to some folks.

If only someone had posted this upthread . . . !

 

[pemerton]

I was talking about how great a time I had playing it this way with Hillfolk

You're the only poster talking about Hillfolk. No one else is talking about Hillfolk.

But if the players are making up the backstory as things go, it is pretty obvious that takes away from them solving it.

No one else is talking about this either. They're talking about games like Apocalypse World with pretty conventional authority allocations.