GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

Does Narnia exist? In the fictional works of C.S. Lewis it exists.

Do unicorns exist? Well, in the fictional works of D&D they exist.

Thus have I proven that unicorns are real!

Wait . . . something might have gone wrong . . .

 

[pemerton]

Does Pegasus have feathers?

If you answer "no, because Pegasus isn't real", I'm fairly sure most people would see that as a severely and unnecessary pedantic answer. Yet by your argument here it is always 100% objectively wrong to say "Pegasus has feathers."

If only philosophers and logicians had thought about this stuff . . .

Here's the standard analysis of Pegasus has feathers - it was first set out by Bertrand Russell, and for simplicity I follow Quine's work in treating "Pegasus" as a predicate:

∀x (Is Pegasus (x) → Is feathered (x))​

There has been a lot of work done in the 120-odd years since Russell set out his theory of descriptions, and not everyone agrees with Russell's analysis - but your suggestion that there is some tension between denying the existence of Pegasus and affirming that Pegasus has feathers is just wrong.

"Exist" can have different meanings in different senses.

This claim is highly contentious. And in my view is doubtful, at least until you explain those senses.

"The Chronicles of Narnia" exist as a book series in our universe, as material objects we can interact with. "Narnia" does not (much to my chagrin) exist as a material location we could interact with. "Narnia" exists as a parallel world to that of Digory Kirke, Polly, the Pevensie children, etc.

But we can make similar statements about all sorts of things. Does the law of non-contradiction exist as a material object we could interact with? I don't think anyone here would say it does. And yet I don't think anyone here would argue that that means it absolutely does not, in any conceivable way, exist at all whatsoever. Does "red" exist? Well, things that emit or reflect light of certain frequencies exist, but does red exist, itself? Not materially, not in absence of the aforementioned emission or reflection, but understood as an abstraction, a property shared by many objects, I don't think anyone here would argue that "red" does not at all exist in any way whatsoever. It just doesn't exist in the way my hands exist (setting aside extreme skepticism as G.E. Moore did).

There is literature on this: see eg Russell's Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, or Nelson Goodman's work - and also Dummett's criticism of their approach to the nature of redness (he thinks they have been fallen into a fallacy about the nature of properties, and the predicates that convey them, by focusing on a colour like red rather than a shape like square).

But anyway, suggesting that Narnia exists as redness does is just silly. Here's a simple explanation as to why:

The predicate "is red" expresses the property of redness, in the sense that the sentence ∃(x) (Is red (x)) - that is, "there exists at least one red thing" - picks out the state of affairs of there being a thing (x) that is red (ie possesses the property of redness).

Let's introduce a predicate "is Narnia" which expresses the property of being Narnia, and another predicate "is in Narnia", which expresses the property of being an element of the totality Narnia. Those predicates would figure in sentences such as ∃(x) (Is Narnia (x)) and ∃(x) (Is in Narnia (x)).

Now, the first of my existential quantifications is true: I am looking at a red book on my desk, and so there does indeed exist at least one red thing.

However, the latter two existential quantifications are both false. There is nothing that is Narnia - it doesn't exist! And there is nothing that is an element or component or part of Narnia - not existing, it has no such elements or components or parts.

Now it is possible to explain why it is true to say that Narnia contains kings and queens but not starships and Klingons. A lot of work has been done on truth in fiction (see eg this discussion: Fictional Entities (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)). But that work begins from a recognition that fictional things, being fictional, don't exist!

I want there to be facts that can be discovered, not just an ever-growing body of fiction created by my own hands. I see a fundamental difference between myself creating fictional truths within a fictional space, and myself discovering truths and then piecing them together (by abductive, inductive, or deductive reasoning) to determine something that is true regardless of what I or anyone else think about the matter. The latter is, as far as I'm concerned, functionally equivalent to an IRL scientist investigating a question they find interesting, or a logician applying the rigorous and extremely strict rules of logic to process a given claim, or a mathematician proving a new statement solely on the basis of the rigid rules of arithmetic without inserting any new axioms or the like.

The "facts" you are referring to are things that the GM imagines.

And the reasoning you refer to is not functionally equivalent to an IRL scientist or mathematician. For instance, as a player of a RPG you can't perform an experiment or investigation to determine some property of a thing the GM tells you about. You can ask the GM to tell you more about the thing. You can tell the GM that you perform some experiment - what that will do is prompt you the GM to tell you more about the thing. But prompting a person for answers does not functionally resemble actual scientific (or even common-place) investigation, and nor does it involve abductive, deductive or inductive reasoning (unless you are engaging in inductive reasoning about the beliefs of the GM - eg pemerton is soft-hearted and so probably won't have decided that the killer is the one who would make this a truly tragic turn of events). The reasoning is common-sense reasoning about common-sense relationships between relatively simple things, informed by tropes.

For instance, consider the extract from The Vanishing Conjurer that I posted upthread:

Here's just a few examples, from pp 6, 8, 18-19:

Horne starts talking in earnest . . . "Philip Leclair has vanished off the face of the Earth!" . . .

If the investigators go to the Chancellor's Theatre and approach Weiss directly, and enquire about Leclair, he will deny ever having met or seen the man. . . .

As the investigators open the cases . . . materialising in the air, is the apparition of a burning man!

This 'ghost' is Philip Leclair. . . . What actually happened to him is explained here - though the investigators will only discover most of this if Leclair emerges from tonight's performance alive. . . . Leclair was fascinated by the apparatus . . . [and] while he was examining the arch . . . he was overpowered by three cultists . . . [and] was placed within the gate apparatus as an offering . . . He is currently suspended in a state of limbo between two planes of existence.

Leclair's manifestation lasts around thirty seconds, during which time he attempts to warn the investigators and tell them what they must do. . . ". . . open the gate for pity's sake!! . . ."​

The GM's job is to present this material to the players, when the fictional circumstances make it appropriate to do so. And the players are not reasoning from the tone of Horne's earnest talking (as a police investigator might) or from the smell of the flames of the ghost (as a chemist might); they are reasoning from what the GM says.

The players can't "discover* what has happened to Leclair except by declaring actions for their PCs that will then make it appropriate for the GM to tell them that stuff.

There is no process of abductive, deductive or inductive reasoning that can lead the players to the conclusion that Leclair is trapped between two planes of existence and can escape if a the gate is opened. There is no inductive reasoning possible about the supernatural, by definition (as Hobbes and Hume both pointed out).

What the players actually have to do is to generalise from their knowledge of Ctuhulhu-esque tropes. If you want to characterise this as inductive reasoning, it is not inductive reasoning performed by them as their PCs, but rather meta-game inductive reasoning that depends upon the players knowing the sort of (quasi-)literary endeavour they are engaged in, in playing the game.

I have never seen anyone here show me how the rules of Cthulhu Dark or Apocalypse World or anything else would prevent someone (player or GM) from creating new fiction that functionally invalidates old information by "revealing" that it was a false clue all along and the real situation was something else entirely.

I am not going to try and explain BW-esque RPGing to you. I've already posted about it extensively in this thread, to no apparent avail. And I take it that you are not prepared to download and read the free PDF.

But in AW, the players have no power to create new fiction of the sort that you are worried about. So there's your answer to that!

 

[pemerton]

I'm asking for there to be some answer to the core question of the mystery.

<snip>

But when it is perfectly consistent with both the rules and the fiction to say "aha! We thought the Countess was the murderer, but it was actually the butler all along!"—a thing others have definitely said in this thread, and IIRC you have as well—then I simply cannot see this as solving a mystery. It is, instead, collaborative rules-bound creation of a mystery story.

I don't understand.

In real life, it is sometimes the case that someone thought that it was the Countess, but in fact was the butler all along. Why is this objectionable in a RPG?

 

[pemerton]

They are that.

This is why it seems obvious to me that what is happening, in a RPG where (in the fiction) the PCs set about discovering those facts, is that the players set about trying to learn what the GM has imagined and/or written down.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This is why it seems obvious to me that what is happening, in a RPG where (in the fiction) the PCs set about discovering those facts, is that the players set about trying to learn what the GM has imagined and/or written down.

They are not trying to learn what the GM has imagined or written down.
They are trying to solve the mystery based on the clues they have uncovered, which should make sense in the fiction.
We do not say we are watching a mystery/thriller movie to learn what the script writer/director has imagined or written down.

 

[pemerton]

They are not trying to learn what the GM has imagined or written down.
They are trying to solve the mystery based on the clues they have uncovered, which should make sense in the fiction.
We do not say we are watching a mystery/thriller movie to learn what the script writer/director has imagined or written down.

Well, I watch a mystery movie primarily to be entertained. And this is the same reason I have played traditional CoC-esque modules. Wondering whodunnit is part of the experience, but I don't regard it as an actual investigation.

But to turn to the RPG mystery scenario, of a traditional CoC variety, here are two terms which co-refer: "the mystery" and "that which the GM imagined or wrote down". The main reason for using the second rather than the first term is that it more accurately points to the actual process of play.

For instance, the players in a RPG don't encounter "clues" that point to a "fact". Rather, the GM tells them certain things, from which the players then draw inferences or make conjectures as to other things that the GM might tell them if they, the players, declare certain actions for their PCs.

A second reason for using the second term is that it more clearly states the correctness conditions for certain assertions the players (or any other observer) might make. For instance, suppose that a friend is telling you about the mystery scenario they have written, and at a certain point you ask them "So, is <so-and-so> the culprit?" What makes that conjecture true or false is whether or not it corresponds to what the GM has imagined or written down. There is no other basis for working out what is a true or false claim about the fictional mystery.

A third reason, related to the second, is that by talking about that which the GM imagined or wrote down, we can also understand how reasoning and inference work in a mystery RPG. For instance, the players, thinking as their characters and immersed in the fiction, might ask "Did the lights go out because the burglar cut the wires?" But there is no actual causal explanation for the lights having gone out. There is only whatever the GM has imagined. And so inferences or conjectures like the one I've just suggested will be true if they correspond to the sorts of connections between fictional events that the GM has imagined. Eg, in this case, did the GM imagine the burglar cutting the wires with the result that the lights went out.

This is also why I have responded to @EzekielRaiden's references to inductive reasoning by pointing out that the only inductive reasoning in play is inductive reasoning about the sorts of tropes and patterns the GM prefers. The players can't actually inspect the wires, search for wire-cutters, look through the burglar's credit card records to see if there was a recent visit to a hardware store, etc. Going back up to the main reason, all they can do is say certain things to the GM, which will then prompt the GM to say certain things back to them.

The medium is conversational. The object of conversation is stuff that is jointly imagined. And, in the classic CoC-type of play, the correctness condition for anyone else's imagining is that it conforms to what the GM has imagined.


EDIT:
In the Cthulhu Dark session that I've referred to several times in this thread, the player of the butler Appleby was trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to Appleby's master, the missing Earl. He was drawing upon relevant clues in pursuing this endeavour.

To contrast this play with classic CoC-type play, it's necessary to look to how the mystery is constituted. Which, in the latter case, takes us back to the GM's notes and imaginations.

 

[Bedrockgames]

(And in this very thread, we have @Bedrockgames and @Maperson saying that the GM making up security camera footage on the spot is consistent with the "objectivity" and "reality".)

My point about that, in the context of a mystery is it is a gray area. I think for the purposes of sandbox play, that kind of elaboration is certainly good enough to approximate the feel of a real world. But there is a greater state of flux here that matters when we are talking about solving something objectively determined by the GM (which is why I said some people may in fact only have clues in play that were determined before hand: I personally prefer a more live scenario, and think as long as the GM is building on existing details to extrapolate, using procedures like rolling when there is serious doubt and applying good faith reasoning to teh responses (rather than for example making determinations based on the scenario being more challenging), it is fine. But do think this is a gray area in the objectivity and realness part of the discussion (it is one that will necessarily arise too so people will probably want to contend with it if this is a concern)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is why it seems obvious to me that what is happening, in a RPG where (in the fiction) the PCs set about discovering those facts, is that the players set about trying to learn what the GM has imagined and/or written down.

You could say that. It is somewhat reductive, but not wrong. The plyaers are trying to learn objective facts, and these facts are objective because the GM has predetermined them to be so.

For instance, the players in a RPG don't encounter "clues" that point to a "fact". Rather, the GM tells them certain things, from which the players then draw inferences or make conjectures as to other things that the GM might tell them if they, the players, declare certain actions for their PCs.

This is also why I have responded to @EzekielRaiden's references to inductive reasoning by pointing out that the only inductive reasoning in play is inductive reasoning about the sorts of tropes and patterns the GM prefers. The players can't actually inspect the wires, search for wire-cutters, look through the burglar's credit card records to see if there was a recent visit to a hardware store, etc. Going back up to the main reason, all they can do is say certain things to the GM, which will then prompt the GM to say certain things back to them.

This however is nonsense and where reductionism ends up jettisoning the truth. Yes, the method of obtaining clues is talking to the GM. These clues however still are real clues, in a sense that they point towards real facts and real deductions can be based on them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You could say that. It is somewhat reductive, but not wrong....

This has been my point all along. It isn't wrong, but it definitely feels reductive and odd way to describe it

 

[AnotherGuy]

A third reason, related to the second, is that by talking about that which the GM imagined or wrote down, we can also understand how reasoning and inference work in a mystery RPG. For instance, the players, thinking as their characters and immersed in the fiction, might ask "Did the lights go out because the burglar cut the wires?" But there is no actual causal explanation for the lights having gone out. There is only whatever the GM has imagined. And so inferences or conjectures like the one I've just suggested will be true if they correspond to the sorts of connections between fictional events that the GM has imagined. Eg, in this case, did the GM imagine the burglar cutting the wires with the result that the lights went out.

This is also why I have responded to @EzekielRaiden's references to inductive reasoning by pointing out that the only inductive reasoning in play is inductive reasoning about the sorts of tropes and patterns the GM prefers. The players can't actually inspect the wires, search for wire-cutters, look through the burglar's credit card records to see if there was a recent visit to a hardware store, etc. Going back up to the main reason, all they can do is say certain things to the GM, which will then prompt the GM to say certain things back to them.

If I've understood you correctly, I think you're looking at this all incredibly wrong.
If the lights went out due to the burglar, it may point to more than 1 burglar involved in the heist.
It may point to the burglar having the necessary skills to know which wires to cut and where one cuts them.
And thus, may highlight certain suspects more so than others.

The players you're describing are not engaging with the mystery at all but instead are attempting to sus out the GMs preferred tropes. That is an utterly horrible way to imagine a game being played.
I can imagine jokes being made to that respect at the table in the same way a GM may tease their antagonism to the PCs but not to play the game that way.