GM fiat - an illustration

[hawkeyefan]

Essentially, yes.

How do they do so?

How can a player introduce a new clue to your game? What would that look like in play?

You literally did.

This is you from post 1733

"He controls the solution. Even your phrasing shows that. “There are generally multiple avenues to the solution” means he doesn’t control how the players may arrive at the solution. But there is a solution."

And I have since clarified three… now four… times that I meant the solution as in he controls whodunnit and how and when and why. That is what I meant. Please take that into account.

There's no way to know. That's the point. I'd have to know the entire adventure and have players that thought of things that I didn't. What you're asking is impossible. First, there's no way for me to even have an inkling of what would be a clue or not when we don't have a detailed adventure to go by. Second, the entire point is I DIDN'T THINK OF IT.

But just from a process of play view… how does this work?

If the players think of things that the DM didn’t, do they just get to narrate what happens? Doesn’t the DM still determine the answers to these unexpected questions?

You’re acting like the players can just add new things at any point… it’s not clear what you’re saying.

I mean, if he's acting in bad faith, none. If he's acting in good faith, plenty. He has to respond in certain ways to certain things and has no control over those.

What?

What do you mean he has to respond to certain ways to certain things? Can you be more specific than “ways” and “things”? What are these things about NPCs that the DM has no control over?

 

[pemerton]

I did, in fact, read them quite closely, and said as much. The ending of the search for the Earl resulted in him being sent off to a private sanatorium, and you specifically mentioned that you were hinting at the notion that the mysterious antagonists were hoping to learn to control werehyenas, while the players were thinking it was about creating werehyenas, but ultimately that slight disconnect did not negatively affect the experience--and it was (AIUI?) a one-shot anyway, so nothing came of that.

OK. My question, then, is: do you accept that this is a counter-example to your claim that there can be no reasoning or "objectivity" without pre-authorship?

 

[pemerton]

How do they do so?

How can a player introduce a new clue to your game? What would that look like in play?

<snip>

But just from a process of play view… how does this work?

<snip>

What do you mean he has to respond to certain ways to certain things? Can you be more specific than “ways” and “things”? What are these things about NPCs that the DM has no control over?

I don't think we're meant to actually talk about how play occurs, are we?

 

[Maxperson]

Given: a pre-authored situation designed for players to puzzle their way through, with GM placed clues and GM led answers to all possible situations in a high-GM authority game:

This is impossible. The DM cannot think of all possible situations.

-If they leave and go somewhere else, they have stopped engaging with the situation. That has no bearing on the solution.

It has bearing, because it's their solution to the issue. For whatever reason, their solution was to remove themselves from the situation.

-If they fail, its because they failed to get to the pre-determined solution.

There is no pre-determined solution. The solution involves more than just the guy who did it.

-If they come up with stuff on their own, it's either: a total red herring, the GM decides that it "counts" and opens new avenues based on what the players have posed, or the GM re-works something pre-written as a clue/answer.

You need to look up what a red herring is. Because "A clue applicable to the case at hand isn't it."

-The GM controls what NPCs do and do not know.

No. Not completely. If I haven't thought of something that the players ask the NPC, and the NPC should know it, it would be bad faith on my part to decide the NPC doesn't know it. Or to set a super high DC in order to keep the information away from the party.

If I am playing in good faith, then I don't have the control to say no the NPC doesn't know that.

Edit: I want to be quite clear here. If @Maxperson is genuinely arguing that given above starting situation the GM does not control the "solution" to a mystery I don't think there's anything productive further to be said.

I'm saying that the solution involves more than you guys want to limit it to. And the DM doesn't control all of the other aspects. Not if he's acting in good faith anyway.

 

[Maxperson]

But some times the players will think of things like the security camera footage, that the GM simply overlooked. I think in those instances the GM is still bound to the core facts but does have to think about things like whether it is likely the killer was caught on a security camera.

Yep. In those situations, the DM isn't really the one who brought the clue into the game. The player did with his ingenuity. If the location was someplace like a bank or FBI building, the DM acting in good faith had to allow it since the cameras and footage would be there.

 

[Maxperson]

How do they do so?

How can a player introduce a new clue to your game? What would that look like in play?

See my last few posts.

But just from a process of play view… how does this work?

If the players think of things that the DM didn’t, do they just get to narrate what happens? Doesn’t the DM still determine the answers to these unexpected questions?

See my last few posts.

What do you mean he has to respond to certain ways to certain things? Can you be more specific than “ways” and “things”? What are these things about NPCs that the DM has no control over?

See post 1774.

 

[zakael19]

I feel like I’m going insane

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I feel like I’m going insane

Same, thus I haven't been active in the thread for a while.

Objective pre-existing facts you can deduce -> real mystery. Not real in the sense that it is physically real, real in these sense that there are objective facts to be deduced. This is not hard concept to grasp, everyone actually gets what is meant by this even though that would not be the terminology they would personally use.

Some people have tried to discuss what issues doing it like this has, and what benefits it has, and what sort of gameplay the different approaches produce. That to me would seem like far more fruitful line of discussion, but I guess we can just keep doing... whatever this is.

 

[Manbearcat]

OK. My question, then, is: do you accept that this is a counter-example to your claim that there can be no reasoning or "objectivity" without pre-authorship?

Agreed. The whole “you can’t draw inferences from initial conditions if the answer isn’t already preconceived/defined and the conclusion able to be derived” line of thought is…well it is something…

It’s like folks have never actually applied reason to an information set and been unable to derive a correct conclusion (nonetheless, falsification of an incorrect surmise is enormously valuable to accumulated knowledge…assuming the corpus of knowledge updates). That can happen IRL because you’re lacking necessary information, or you’re lacking necessary tools/bandwidth, or you’re working from an anchoring bias/first principles that has led you astray. Just because you haven’t derived a perfect working model or a bulletproof conclusion doesn’t mean you didn’t functionally infer from initial conditions/information set.

It can happen in a fiction mystery/game because any of:

* The mystery is poorly conceived, poorly articulated, a or convoluted quagmire that functionally harms or defies chains of inference and information integration. This happens so damn often. Once you move beyond Pictionary and Taboo dynamics, the creation and articulation of any sort of labyrinthine puzzle becomes increasingly fraught. The Sherlock Holmes boxed sets are utterly riddled with examples of this. I’ve played all of them with 3 brilliant puzzlers (one of which is the best I’ve ever been around) and we’ve fallen face first more than we’ve come out on top. The frequency of failure state in elaborate mystery creation is uncomfortably large.

* The investigators or investigative process are/is compromised (structurally, process-wise, deficient means).


Beyond that, just the process of building out or workshopping a mystery often requires either (a) rejiggering inference chains midstream (to make the puzzling remotely functional) or (b) rejiggering the initial conditions, or (c) rejiggering the actual conclusion because your inference chains and initial conditions are excellent, but they don’t point the way beautifully to that particular solve and better serve an alternative solve. Boom; solve outright rewritten while the rest stays intact. And it actually took the application of reason to ascertain that best fit answer.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Same, thus I haven't been active in the thread for a while.

Objective pre-existing facts you can deduce -> real mystery. Not real in the sense that it is physically real, real in these sense that there are objective facts to be deduced. This is not hard concept to grasp, everyone actually gets what is meant by this even though that would not be the terminology they would personally use.

Some people have tried to discuss what issues doing it like this has, and what benefits it has, and what sort of gameplay the different approaches produce. That to me would seem like far more fruitful line of discussion, but I guess we can just keep doing... whatever this is.

Yeah, I think there isn't anything to be gained going forward on it. The point is blindingly true and I feel like this has just become a game of semantics