GM fiat - an illustration

[Micah Sweet]

The pieces in chess have names. The cards in MtG have flavour text. The variant of ludo that I played as a child was called Alien, and labelled the pieces as Astronauts and Aliens, and the board had spaceship illustrations on it.

In all these cases, the fiction is mere overlay. It does no work in the actual play of the game. These games are not RPGs. They don't have stance.

As @Umbran pointed out, what you said was "Clue(do) has no fiction". That is factually incorrect and what I was responding to. Furthermore, it was later noted that the fictional overlay is what makes the game fun for some people. The work that fiction does is to get people to want to play it beyond a bare-bones logic puzzle. It provides a "why", which some folks find absolutely essential.

 

[grankless]

Imagine the beautiful world where the people in this thread adamantly insisting that it's impossible for an RPG to do [thing] would just go read a game where it's expected that you do that thing.

I do not see any difference between solving a mystery that is pre-authored by the GM versus the players formulating their own solution and then using mechanics to determine if they're correct or not. Either way you're using clues to connect details and determine some sort of solution to a problem; the only difference is you don't have to figure out the specific details that have been pre-authored to reach that conclusion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Imagine the beautiful world where the people in this thread adamantly insisting that it's impossible for an RPG to do [thing] would just go read a game where it's expected that you do that thing.

I do not see any difference between solving a mystery that is pre-authored by the GM versus the players formulating their own solution and then using mechanics to determine if they're correct or not. Either way you're using clues to connect details and determine some sort of solution to a problem; the only difference is you don't have to figure out the specific details that have been pre-authored to reach that conclusion.

no one is saying you can't do this, they are saying this doesn't seem like you are actually solving a mystery

 

[Pedantic]

I do not see any difference between solving a mystery that is pre-authored by the GM versus the players formulating their own solution and then using mechanics to determine if they're correct or not. Either way you're using clues to connect details and determine some sort of solution to a problem; the only difference is you don't have to figure out the specific details that have been pre-authored to reach that conclusion.

I'm not sure how to be clearer that those are completely different gameplay loops. The differences are more salient than the similarities, and it's wild to put "use mechanics" outside the grounds of comparison! The play is entirely the interaction with systems; different systems lead to different gameplay. Your "only" in "only difference" is stretched to be enormous.

 

[pemerton]

It is merely about there being objectively correct predetermined answer to the mystery, so that it can be "really solved."

I thought that @Bedrockgames was denying this?

And also: there can be other approaches which permit a mystery to be "really solved". GM pre-authorship is not the only method.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I thought that @Bedrockgames was denying this?

Again, you guys are using language I wouldn't use which I think is causing some of the confusion. But having an objective predzrtemined answer is what I am talking about (though I also think maintaining an objective state around the basic facts one the course of the scenario is equally important).

And also: there can be other approaches which permit a mystery to be "really solved". GM pre-authorship is not the only method.

I said earlier it doesn't have to be Gm created. You could randomize it, but you would need for those basic facts to establish clues that can be pieced together and discovered (so the particulars of the random method would matter a great deal). But I think it would need to be done at the start of the scenario. I do think we have slightly different definition of what it means for players to 'solve' though.

Also I am open to other approaches also functioning in this way. I just haven't seen one presented that isn't a pre-established factual foundation for a mystery that seems like it achieves that (not saying it is impossible, I just haven't seen anyone offer up an example, at least one I noticed-----so one in a response to one of my posts)

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, I think the problem we'd run into next is what is meant by "gameplay." My first point in this whole thread was saying the fiat/no-fiat divide isn't a useful razor, or rather it's an insufficiently useful razor. I don't generally find the critique of "processes of play" useful; it encourages a substitution of the process for the machine. It does not matter (except in quite specific aesthetic targets) whether we use dice or cards as a randomizer, or if a board game has hexes or squares to mark spaces. Those are technologies that are used to provide players with points of interaction within a game, and there may be a reason to use one or the other in the delivery of particular gameplay, the interesting decision laden here->there states I described earlier, but the mehcanisms aren't in and of themselves, those experiences.

Pages and ages ago, I presented "GM extrapolates from established facts" as such a technology precisely because it enabled specific kinds of gameplay loops. The problem that drives this whole discussion comes from substituting one kind of gameplay for another under the guise of adjusting/progressing the technology used to deliver gameplay. If we disagree on the deliverables, no amount of discussing the process of delivery gets us anywhere; this is what seems to have been the source of the "real mystery" disagreement.

I think that's actually the source of nearly all the major disagreements that have been had in this thread and all the other mega-threads.

Years ago I worked reviewing credit card application. There was a systemic process in place, but for a subset of applications meeting certain requirements we would do a judgmental review. There was no algorithm for determining approval/counter/decline once we got to the judgmental review stage, but we would reach justifiable decisions based on the facts we would gather during our review. These weren't fiat decisions. But there also wasn't a process a computer could follow to make these decisions.

The point being, there's more than just process or fiat. There's also judgement. Which is one reason why trying to analyze RPG play solely through processes fails. So much of the gameplay relies on judgement (and that seems to be true for any style, but especially so for many non-narrativist games).

*Note one thing I notice you do above is present the term "GM extrapolates from established facts", but that happens in narrativist games too, it's just more of their facts get established differently and at different times than in a typical non-narrativist game. Which highlights part of the problem - different RPG Games are similar enough that the same 'natural language' used to describe one can also be used to describe another, just with different meaning. We've encountered this with agency, with 'real mystery', and countless other discussion terms. Currently there just doesn't seem to be adequate language to both speak plainly while also providing clarity. I would love to do that, but the tools for it just don't seem to be present.

 

[pemerton]

I was responding more to the general points you were making about tropes, stereotypes and myers briggs than any specific call of cthulhu scenario

But surely you're able to engage in discussion about more general features and trends?

I mean, replace The Vanishing Conjurer with any other CoC scenario and my point still stands: a player who does not bring their metagame understanding of CoC as a genre has no hope of solving the mystery, as solving the mystery requires them to form beliefs for their PCs, and declare actions for their PCs, that no rational person would arrive at (stuff like the existence of cults, and ghosts, and aliens, and other dimensions, etc, etc). The Vanishing Conjurer is just one particular example of this general point.

 

[pemerton]

As @Umbran pointed out, what you said was "Clue(do) has no fiction".

Here is the post:

Clue(do) is not "pawn stance". Clue(do) has no fiction, no player characters, and hence no stance.

As has already been posted, multiple times, Clue(do) is simply a logic puzzle turned into a board/parlour game, with the flavour text of a murder mystery overlaid.

The post notes the existence of the flavour text.

So here is one possible interpretation: I contradicted myself within the space of two short paragraphs.

Here is another possible interpretation: by "no fiction", a phrase occurring as a premise to the conclusion that the game has no stance, I meant has no fiction as a part of the gameplay. And thus is like other board games, and is unlike RPGs.

Obviously I have an opinion on the best interpretation. But you do you.

 

[pemerton]

no one is saying you can't do this, they are saying this doesn't seem like you are actually solving a mystery

And I take @grankless's point to be that what they are saying is without foundation: that compiling clues by reference to genre, trope, stereotypes and common sense so as to conjecture a conclusion is the same sort of process whether or not there is also a pre-established correctness condition.

To put it another way, I take the point to be that the existence of a pre-established correctness condition doesn't change the actual process of game play, the way that the players engage with and think about the fiction, etc.