GM fiat - an illustration

[hawkeyefan]

I would base my opinion on definitions. I’m not familiar with the particular game in question so no comment directly there.

Okay, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying.

If I said to you that Brindlewood Bay or The Between make me feel more like I’m solving a mystery than a game where the solution has been predetermined by the GM… would you say I’m wrong about my feelings?

 

[hawkeyefan]

We're running into the issue of just having to show completed Apocalypse World prep. I was looking to see whether my prep was suitable but it's lots of scribbles that only make sense if you're me. A majority of the prep centres around the values and the resources of groups of people and how they relate to each other. Clocks often refer to other groups and so don't make a lot of sense without context.

Here is what I wrote for the npc hardholder.

Scythe: Came from scavengers. Got sold into slavery by her parents. Saw that the strong rule the weak. Came to be leader of the gang. Wants to rebuild civilization but people are stupid and evil and so must be forced. Aggressively took over and conglomerated other gangs. Raided the holding and killed Red (the previous hard holder). Started gathering slaves to work in the various manufactories of the holding. (prevent the war of all against all)

Then scribbled notes like: Huge tower building, underground slaver space and factories. Large gang size. heavy armed and armoured. building is 1 amour. Nobility class. gangs, slaves, 'free people'.

Or brief notes that make sense in my head. So one of the Captains in the gang for instance is:

White: Loyal to scythe (ideology), differs only in that he'd slow expansion, he thinks they're in a good place and too much expansion will (is in fact) screwing them.

I’m currently reading the second edition book of Apocalypse World as I may run it soon (and also just to brush up on other PbtA games) and there are some examples of threats right in the book that may help.

The second one on the page below also shows a clock, with progressing danger that escalates as it is filled.

 

[FrogReaver]

Okay, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying.

If I said to you that Brindlewood Bay or The Between make me feel more like I’m solving a mystery than a game where the solution has been predetermined by the GM… would you say I’m wrong about my feelings?

You can feel however you want. There is an objective answer to the question based on whatever definitions are being used.

 

[hawkeyefan]

You can feel however you want. There is an objective answer to the question based on whatever definitions are being used.

To what question? Sorry, I’m not following you.

 

[FrogReaver]

To what question? Sorry, I’m not following you.

Depending on the definition being used for mystery, solving, game etc we can objectively answer whether brindlewood bay is a game where the players solve mysteries.

 

[pemerton]

I was responding to a point in Hawkeyefan’s post about the difference between mysteries where the Gm creates the central backstory to be discovered and ones where the details of the central mystery are created during play.

But you are presenting Hillfolk and collective authorship, or authorship by players of the fictional elements, as if these are the only ways of creating details during play.

Whereas they're not the only ways of doing so. And they're not the ways that RPGs like Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel do so.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But you are presenting Hillfolk and collective authorship, or authorship by players of the fictional elements, as if these are the only ways of creating details during play.

I am not. I made all kinds of qualifying remarks for this very reason.

 

[pemerton]

Okay. What happens when the GM answers those questions in ways that fix the specific solution?

Has the DM not then, in that very action, pre-authored an answer?

So if we're now talking about the GM rather than a player in the conventional sense . . .

Upthread I mentioned The Vanishing Conjurer, a very standard CoC scenario (that even gets its own Wikipedia page: The Statue of the Sorcerer & The Vanishing Conjurer - Wikipedia).

This has a whole lot of stuff in it that (i) the GM is expected to present to the players, and from which (ii) the players are expected to infer the solution (ie that they have to allow the gate to open, rescue Leclair, and then close the gate before an eldritch horror comes through it).

On the player side of the experience, their job is to draw inferences from what the GM tells them in the course of play. The GM is constrained in what they say by reference to the module.

Now suppose that the GM, in the course of play, instead of operating under that constraint, operates under a different set of constraints - say, the ones that govern GMing in AW or BW. The players can still draw inferences from that, and be moved as a result to declare actions for their characters and form beliefs about the backstory.

I believe that @hawkeyefan is pointing out that, given the previous paragraph, it is no more "objective" or "real" for the players to form inferences based on GMing that is constrained by notes that they wrote a week ago (or that they purchased from someone else, in the case of a module) than it is for them to form inferences based on GMing that is constrained in the second sort of way I've identified.

I will refer back to this actual play report: Cthulhu Dark - another session

When Randall's player worked out that a crucial point linking business interests in Central Europe and business interests in East Africa (ie werewolves and werehyenas), why is this any less "real" or "objective" because the ideas have been introduced by me as GM "spontaneously", rather than by reference to something I wrote a week ago.

When the revelation that the Earl is a werehyena came out - confirmed, ultimately, by Armand (as PC) finding him exhausted and sleeping in a stable (a fairly classic trope for a lycanthrope story), why is that less "real" or "objective" because I as GM was having regard to the same players decision, as Appleby at the start of the session, that the Earl was mysteriously absent and "indisposed"?

To relate back to some things that @deleuzian_kernel posted upthread, the reason why that PC was drawn into the investigation of the mystery was because of his loyalty (as butler and manservant) to his master. How does this become less objective and real because it is the player who has decided to play a character who is perturbed by the fact that his master is missing? Of course at that point no one (including me, the GM) knew why - and when I introduced the first lycanthropic clue (the silverware cleaning fluid being kept in cannisters) the players (and their PCs) didn't pick up on it, and so even at that point play did not generate pressure on me as GM to determine a precise solution.

But no one has explained why the solution - that the Earl was a werehyena - is less real or objective in this episode of play, than is the solution to The Vanishing Conjurer.

 

[pemerton]

If you don't know the significant denizens, how can you know the demon is on the second floor? I should think the only way to know the demon is there is because you know all the significant denizens of the area, like...powerful demons.

To me, this makes no sense.

Surely the reason that I know there is a demon on the second level is because I have prepared a front, with threats, and one of the threats is the demon on the second level. And then when I have to make a move, like - in that example - deciding who pays unwanted attention to the spellcasting wizard, I draw on my prep and decide that it is that demon.

And to look at it from a different perspective - if I as GM find myself needing to decide who has paid unwanted attention to the wizard, and there is nothing in my prep to help and direct me, then surely my prep is a bit of a fail! Like, it's disconnected from play in a way that doesn't make sense for successful and effective DW GMing.

 

[pemerton]

Answering questions as the necessary output of playing the game is not pre-authoring. It's playing the game. No one is arguing that answers do not get set as a result of gameplay. That, in fact, is (part of) the whole point of distinction that's trying to be drawn: between answer as pre-authored input into fiction vs answer as output of actual play.

I just replied to @EzekielRaiden, and until I read your post hadn't realised what his point was.

Now that you've led me to understand it, I agree with you 100% - saying that playing (say) AW is just like playing with pre-authorship - except that the authorship is spontaneous and happens during play is oxymoronic. (If I may slightly stretch the use of that word.)