FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
Does Narnia exist? In the fictional works of C.S. Lewis it exists.
GM fiat - an illustration
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
What I am saying is this: if the GM prepared a map of the city, and it included Wan's Mutton Stew, prior to the PCs exploring. Then that shop objectively exists in the setting the moment play begins (even if they are 8 cities away, and have no interest in ever going there, Wan's Mutton Stew is still a thing that exists in the campaign world). Whereas if the GM never maps those things out, but only deals with them as they arise, it is a different situation. For instance they players go to that town, and the GM never created Wan's Mutton Stew (the city map is just a blank page), but then one of the players says "Hey is there a mutton stew shop in town". And the GM thinks about it and decides "sure there is a place called Wan's Mutton stew. It has now become an objective part of the setting, but it wasn't prior to that moment (it didn't exist at all prior to that moment). And that doesn't make the latter case bad. The GM could have really good reasons for deciding it was there when the players asked (and no matter how much prep a GM does, there is always going to be a need to expand the boundaries of the existing material in this way during play)
And in the real world it does not.
FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
Where else can fiction exist save for the real world?
What happens if the GM decides that Wan's Mutton Stew shop exists while the player characters are 8 cities away, and then decides that nah it doesn't exist after all when the players are 1 city away? Did it exist and then not exist? Did it never exist? Does it still exist?
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
A GM trying to create an objective exploration experience wouldn't typically do this. It goes agains the point. If you do that, you aren't likely running an objective setting (at the very least its objectivity isn't very consistent). This is why I harp on 'pinning it down'. Even when players are going places where I have no information, I pin down facts in my notes so that if they decide to go left or right, that is a meaningful decision that will objectively lead to different outcomes (and not for example just outcomes I want)
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
Also just to bring this back to a mystery, if you do this in a mystery, and the players are meant to be solving the thing, it would be very bad IMO. It is just unfair to begin a mystery with guy X being the culprit, allowing players to gather up clues intended to point towards him being the culprit, then change your mind to guy Y being the culprit for whatever reason.
Whether it's good GMing or not, if something has a real objective existence it cannot be unexisted by an act of thought. I think again this comes down to 'the GM's notes' being given an artificial sense of gravitas by using language that invokes some kind of simulated world.
I agree with you, but it doesn't change my point, which is that because it is possible to do this, Wan's Stew Shop is not real.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
On the Narnia thing, I just think "It exists in CS Lewis" notes is a very unsatisfying explanation. The idea of Narnia was in his mind, and the notes are more a reflection of what he was thinking about it. And once it entered the world, there was a broader, shared concept of Narnia.
