GM fiat - an illustration

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not so sure we understand this better than Mozart did. He understood differently but you can teach someone music theory and they won't be able to replicate Mozart. I think people are still trying to understand Mozart because he had such a strong command of that style of music. Also while I definitely think Music theory is a good thing. It can be blinding too. You see this if you watch youtube videos of classical musicians listening to modern music and then playing it by ear on a piano (often times their mind fills in the blanks based on music theory and they play notes that aren't actually present on the recording: it is a completely understandable error but ends up producing something that actually sounds different). I am only modestly proficient in music theory and it can sometimes steer me wrong or blind me too. And to be clear I am not complaining about it. I think music theory has value. I also think music theory isn't for everyone. Some composers are well served by it, some aren't. And for some composers, a little music theory goes a long way, while too much music theory ruins a good thing. It is really individual.

I will say though again on this point: music theory is generally expanding its ability to describe different styles of music. But when it is used to limit other styles or play favorites it doesn't illuminate. Western music theory is based on 12 tones, but some forms of music, like middle eastern have microtones and have 24 tones. So if you learned a 'middle eastern' scale when you were a kid that used western music theory it was usually a very reductive understanding of middle eastern music that tried to compress those 24 tones into the 12 tone system (and there isn't anything wrong with that, Slayer got a lot of mileage out of it and it sounds great, but it misses the nuances of real middle eastern music)

Whosoever said anything about limiting any styles?

Now you're talking about something that didn't happen.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Interestingly 5e had a fantastic murder mystery module, Murder in Baldur's Gate, where the actions of the PCs determined who the final villain would be. So, it wasn't your traditional all-planned out mystery and there was no possibility of a dead-end in the investigation which required further clues or GM prompting.
There was an objectively decided bad guy, Bhaal, the God of Murder - but who his tool/pawn was more play to find out scenario.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's not inside a black box. When the players come up with things if the DM unfairly(and it will be obvious most of the time) blocks it in bad faith, they will see it.

Only if the problem is THAT obvious.

It very, very, very, very often isn't.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I take it that when you say "So it isn't an objective detail", you actually mean "So it is an objective detail".

Yes that was an error on my part

I do think this is an outrageous use, in that it is a point of needless jargon - you are using "objective" to mean "pre-authored" (ie it is a detail of the setting that has been pre-authored by the GM without having regard to any player action-declarations or salience/priorities that arise during play). Why you refuse to use the term "pre-authored" to describe the process of authoring stuff prior to play is a mystery to me.

I am using objective to mean it is exists as a fact outside the players, outside the PCs. I don't like the term pre-authored at all. I think a lot of your language leads in the direction of a particular approach to talking about narrative. So I don't find it useful. Your jargon seems very loaded, especially when the terms start coming together

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Notice that, if your criteria for "discovering a truth" are applied to a classic CoC scenario, than there is no discovery.

Because it is not possible to solve a CoC scenario by way of abductive, inductive or deductive inference. Here is the short reason why this is is so: the player always needs to add an extra premise, such as "the GM has presented me with all the salient information", and that premise is not warranted abductively, inductively or deductively but rather is arrived at by exactly the same means as the "fiction-introduction rules" that you decry.

I can post a longer explanation if you like, that elaborates on this short one.

I would appreciate that, yes, because I don't see how that premise doesn't apply to literally every possible interaction in a TTRPG.

No matter what you do, someone had to present someone with something. Otherwise we're just sitting there doing nothing, talking about nothing. The silent regard of slow things.

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?

Because in real life, when we find this out, it is because our previous understanding was actually incorrect all along. It is not, and cannot be, the case that anyone, regardless of role, could make one interpretation true and the other false.

It is the case, with a fictional space, that someone (I literally don't care if it's player or GM or a random bystander or ANYONE) could

And yes, I am in fact familiar with the philosophical discussions on this--to an extent. I didn't take any actual graduate-level courses on philosophy so I didn't get far enough, I don't think, to get to that specific reading material you mentioned. But the core of my point was that we can (and some philosophers do!) talk about things like "Pegasus has feathers" as a meaningful statement about something, something with value and merit, even though Pegasus does not in fact exist.

So, fine, sure. I used "exists" etc. when I should not have. That was an error, I concede. How, then, do we deal with the "Pegasus has feathers" problem? Because that to me seems still unresolved here, but that was the whole point of bringing it up. There's something to this. If you don't like red, how about "three"? There's a huge philosophical debate--I'm quite well aware of this one--about whether "three" exists or not. Is it just a name we invented? (Then why does it achieve results?) Is it somehow an existing abstract object? (What the hell would that even mean?) Is it a complete fiction, such that all mathematical statements are simply false? (Then why is it so intimately related with logic, and why does it achieve results?)

Are you among those who would deny that mathematical statements can be true? If so I don't think there's a whole lot more we're going to be able to talk about; that would mean we disagree on something so philosophically fundamental we don't really have much common ground for a discussion on this topic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have posted plenty of information, to little avail.

Perhaps you have in other posts. When I have asked for clarity on something, I haven't seen you give it in response, and I said, feel free to give me a concise and clear example (which I don't recall getting: and that is fair, you aren't obligated to answer every question I ask as questions in these threads are not always well intentioned). When I have seen your descriptions, I haven't found them clarifying and that is why I have tried my best to not really weigh in on the games you are invoking (I honestly don't understand your explanation of them most of the time)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I would appreciate that, yes, because I don't see how that premise doesn't apply to literally every possible interaction in a TTRPG.

No matter what you do, someone had to present someone with something. Otherwise we're just sitting there doing nothing, talking about nothing. The silent regard of slow things.

Right. That the medium is people talking to each other is obvious, but also besides the point. All RPG that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Whosoever said anything about limiting any styles?

Now you're talking about something that didn't happen.

My point was the way some people in these threads talks about RPGs very much reminds me of music theorists who would minimize, degrade or dismiss rap when it comes to certain styles of play. Things like music theory or RPG theory can be used to illuminate, but can also be wielded to obscure, to favor one approach over an another, etc.

 

[Xamnam]

In the fiction, there is a difference between waking and dreaming, and hence between reality and imagination.

But that is clearly not what @Bedrockgames means when he calls a mystery "real" or "objective", as all the RPGs that I and @hawkeyefan have posted about draw exactly the same distinction in their fiction.

I think using the words real, or objective are a huge red herring (pun obviously intended) in this discussion, hence why I put them in scare quotes. Yet, to me, both sides of this conversation are terribly clear in what they're trying to communicate about mysteries, and I do not understand why folks cannot bridge the gap. It, at times, almost feels deliberate on both sides in order for folks to bolster the point or argument they are trying to make, rather than to aid communication and discussion. My post was merely my attempt to make clear what felt like an extreme misinterpretation. We all know that the setting someone created from whole cloth did not exist in our universe 100 years before they lived, so if they were to use the world 'real' to describe it, or some part of it, telling them that can't be true because they made up their setting feels wildly off the mark, and not actually engaging with the point they are making. Given that Bedrock liked my post, I'm going to put forth that they at least felt like what I was saying communicated what they felt was lost in translation in what I was responding to.

There is value in jargon, in specific language, in being terribly careful about what words you are using, especially when you are getting into nuance and high level concept discussion, obviously. That's why I read these threads, that's why I follow discussions that you, or say Manbearcat, participate in, they're usually well argued, intriguing, and enlightening. But I personally get hives every time a person jumps down someone's throat for having said 'a character did something' with "Well, the player did that, the character can't, because they don't exist." Maybe 1 out of every 10 times, that is a distinction meaningful to the discussion, though I'm not denying those instances exists. In my experience, however, holding it over them to solely to correct tends to just stomp on any actually interesting part of the conversation.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Given that Bedrock liked my post, I'm going to put forth that they at least felt like what I was saying communicated what they felt was lost in translation in what I was responding to.

I wasn't 100% sure I understood your wording, but it seemed like you were trying to understand what I was trying to say and explain it. And it sounded at least in the ballpark of where I was going