GM fiat - an illustration

[Manbearcat]

E.g., "reveal an unwelcome truth": The unwelcome truth is that the key clue you've been relying on thus far was false all along. How is that forbidden by either the procedures of PbtA or the genre-conventions of "whodunnit" literature?

Such a thing could quite easily be done in response to a failed Discern Realities or Spout Lore roll. I believe AW has the same moves by other names.

AW p80; GM Agenda
It’s not your job to put their characters in double-binds or dead ends, or to yank the rug out from under their feet.

AW p80; GM Always Say
Always be scrupulous, even generous, with the truth. The players depend on you to give them real information they can really use, about their characters’ surroundings, about what’s happening when and where. Same with the game’s rules: play with integrity and an open hand. The players are entitled to the full benefits of their moves, their rolls, their characters’ strengths and resources. Don’t chisel them, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha.

In DW you see this same ethos spread through the various sections of the book. The part on making moves with Traps is the exact analog we're looking for here:

DW p171; GM Agenda/Principles/Moves/Dealing w/ Common Situations
Fights, Traps, People
Traps may come from your prep, or you can improvise them based on your moves. If nothing has established that the location is safe, traps are always an option.

The players may find traps through clever plans, trap sense, or discerning realities. If a character describes an action that doesn’t trigger a move, but the action would still discover a trap, don’t hide it from them. Traps aren’t allowed to break the rules.

The long and the short of AW's/DW's "don't yank the rug out from under their feet...don't weasel...don't play gotcha" and "traps aren't allowed to break the rules" is effectively "if the fiction established and/or post-move gamestate has yielded a player win and/or firmed up their footing...do_not_rugpull...grant them their positive gamestate...do not negate established wins..." and also "be as scrupulous and generous with the truth as the rules and ethics of play allows/demands."

Or, put another way, "traps aren't an option when something (the firmed up fiction or a gamestate-attending player move of 7+) has established that the location is safe." You can sub traps out for double-cross (or equivalent) and location for person and safe for truthful (or equivalent). "Double-cross isn't an option when something has established that the person is truthful." Exact same principle.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In the case of BW, the principles are fairly straightforward: the characters establish priorities for their PCs; the GM frames scenes that put pressure on those priorities; when the players declare actions, they declare intent as well as task; if an action fails, the GM narrates consequences that negate the intent, and that reframe in accordance with the framing principle I've already stated.

My only question here is how much the priorities shape the results. For example if the GM has decided from teh start of the session that professor plum murdered Mrs. Peacock with the Knife, can the priority or anything else in this process alter that? (and would it be okay for the GM to have such a concrete detail in the session). Just genuinely curious as some of the scene framing language is not always easy for me to fully understand

 

[Umbran]

I'm never going to be down with that. To me the game is everything involved in interacting with it. The rules, the lore, the art, the prep, the other players, all of it.

We all make the distinction between the published text, and what happens at the table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We all make the distinction between the published text, and what happens at the table.

Then you agree that "the game" isn't just the mechanics?

 

[Umbran]

Then you agree that "the game" isn't just the mechanics?

I think your choice of words is needlessly confusing to those who aren't pre-introduced to your use.

To me, the game is the thing you buy in the store.

The play experience is what you get playing the game you bought in the store, in a particular place and time, with specific people, and so on.

 

[pemerton]

Are genre conventions part of the fiction?

No?

"The fiction" refers to people and places doing things and being things. As I quoted from DW, "taking an element of the fiction and bringing it to bear against the characters . . . focus[ing] on one aspect of the current situation and do[ing] something interesting with it."

My only question here is how much the priorities shape the results. For example if the GM has decided from teh start of the session that professor plum murdered Mrs. Peacock with the Knife, can the priority or anything else in this process alter that? (and would it be okay for the GM to have such a concrete detail in the session). Just genuinely curious as some of the scene framing language is not always easy for me to fully understand

Why has the GM prepped that? In accordance with what principle?

Why are those NPCs even being thought about by the GM? How do they relate to the PCs and their priorities?

I've already posted about, and linked to, a Cthulhu Dark session that involved no prep.

Here's a mystery that I ran in Prince Valiant, that did involve prep:

The PCs decided that saving even a single soul is an important thing, and so decided to take the wise woman to the Abbey of St Sigobert before going to fight Saxons. As they were getting close to Warwick, and travelling in the dark still looking for a place sheltered enough to camp without a tent, they came across a weary old man in a blue cloak. (The scenario in the Episode Book is called The Blue Cloak.) A merchant, he had been set upon by bandits who had taken his mule and his goods. He knew the game trail they had travelled down, and asked the PCs to help him. Being noble knights, of course they agreed to do so! As they travelled through the woods and down the trail, he asked about their families - learning that one was the son-in-law of the Duke of York ("What an honour to be aided by such a noble knight"), and that the other was returning to Warwick to woo the Lady Violette - and told them of his own daughter and son-in-law living in Warwick. Then, as they could hear the lusty singing of the bandits at their camp, he asked the PCs to go on without him as he was too weary to continue. The PCs were a little suspicious (as were their players) but opposed checks of his fellowship vs their Presences (even with bonus dice for suspicion) confirmed his sincerity.

The PCs approached the camp, and Sir Gerran drew his sword and called on the bandits to surrender. Their leader - wearing a very similar blue cloak to that of the merchant - was cowed, as was one other, but the third threw a clay bottle at Sir Gerran (to no effect) and then charged him sword drawn (and gaining a bonus die for knowing the lie of the land in the darkness), only to be knocked almost senseless with a single blow, resulting in his surrender also ("When I insulted you, it was the wine talking!").

The wise woman and old man, who had been waiting up the trail with the merchant, then arrived at the camp to say that the merchant had (literally) disappeared! Which caused some confusion, but they decided to sleep on it. The next morning, in the daylight, they could see that the brooch holding the bandit leader's cloak closed was identical to that which the merchant had worn. Sir Justin suggested he no doubt had multiples of his favourite cloak and fitting, but Sir Morgath had a different idea - "When you left the merchant you robbed, was he dead?" His presence roll was a poor one, and the bandits' answers that the merchant fell from his mule and hit his head and died, and that they had buried him and had intended to place a cross on his grave first thing in the morning. Sir Morgath doubted this - "You didn't give him a proper burial - his ghost came to us last night!" - and I allowed a second presence check with a bonus but it still failed, and the bandits simply muttered protestations of innocence under their breaths.

Sir Justin received a vision from St Sigobert, and by plunging his dagger into the ground at the head of the grave was able to sanctify the ground. A cross was then placed there, and the group returned to Warwick with their bandit prisoners and returned the merchant's goods to his daughter.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No?

"The fiction" refers to people and places doing things and being things. As I quoted from DW, "taking an element of the fiction and bringing it to bear against the characters . . . focus[ing] on one aspect of the current situation and do[ing] something interesting with it."

Then what am I to make of responses like the following?

And those constraints on inference - that follow from genre, trope, a shared sense among the group of what is salient, the way that things are presented in play, etc - operate as much on material introduced during the course of play as they do on material authored in advance of play.

This tells me that we are using genre and trope as the guidance for establishing what is and isn't allowed to be in the fiction. This is (one part of) why I thought you were asserting that the tropes of mystery stories permit the introduction of information that undercuts what was investigated before.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then you agree that "the game" isn't just the mechanics?

"The game" can mean too many different things. In one place, I might (mildly) insist that "the game" does mean "just the mechanics", as when I say "I'm not sure if I still want to play the same game, or if I'd prefer to play Shadowrun instead". In another, I might insist that it has absolutely nothing whatsover to do with the mechanics!

This is one of the reasons I talk about how games (of all stripes) are designed, and thus have elements of technology and technique, in addition to elements of aesthetic or taste; that design is pointed at trying to invite or foster a certain experience in those who play them; that a game design goal is distinct from the inspiration which leads a designer to begin designing; and that there can be distinct game-design-purposes toward which specifically RPGs usually tend. It's also why I adamantly insist that it is unwise to conflate (what I call) "emulation" with (what I and many others) call "simulation", for example.

If we're going to really, deeply talk about a particular TTRPG, as opposed to just lightly dancing around its contours, we're probably going to need to be more specific than just throwing around casual terms like "the game."

The experience of any game is always more than the rules of that game, because rules on a page are dead things. They require human effort to have motion, life. It is not demeaning to describe, in clear and unambiguous terms, the tools that a TTRPG uses in attempting to cultivate a particular experience in its players. Naturally, the tools that attempt to cultivate that experience are distinct from the experience itself, just as my skillet is distinct from the flavor of the food I cook with it.

Many games that (often proudly) call themselves "old-school" are of consciously minimalistic bent. Why, then, should it be insulting to note that their core, fundamental process is, itself, minimalistic? A minimalist aesthetic can be breathtakingly beautiful in the right context. We do not assert that architecture is inherently insulting for describing minimalism as...intentionally not using many elements. (As a good example, I will never like Brutalism as we actually have it--but in its highest ideals, it can actually be quite beautiful, all the more tragedy then that its boosters almost always neglect all the things that were required for those highest ideals to manifest in actual buildings!)

Or, if you prefer: The highest and most succinct tier of describing the art of swordfighting, which has more variations and beauty than I could ever know, is "by blocking and chopping, thrusting, or slicing, kill the other person first." Undoubtedly, thousands of styles, perhaps millions of maneuvers, literally thousands of years of technique and style, boiled down to a relatively pithy sentence. I suspect others, who know the art better than I, could trim it further.

To respond to that with, "But you agree that the campaign isn't just the bladework?" is...well, it's injecting an entirely different conversation in, because it (seemingly?) upsets you that someone focused on an analysis of combat isn't talking about the entirety of war every time they mention to any degree what swords do.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Why has the GM prepped that? In accordance with what principle?

Why are those NPCs even being thought about by the GM? How do they relate to the PCs and their priorities?

I am confused by your responses pemerton. I asked questions and you responded with more questions. This is part of the trouble I have communicating with you about this stuff. Your answers always feel very opaque to me. I will happily read the example if you can just answer my questions clearly

 

[Micah Sweet]

"The game" can mean too many different things. In one place, I might (mildly) insist that "the game" does mean "just the mechanics", as when I say "I'm not sure if I still want to play the same game, or if I'd prefer to play Shadowrun instead". In another, I might insist that it has absolutely nothing whatsover to do with the mechanics!

This is one of the reasons I talk about how games (of all stripes) are designed, and thus have elements of technology and technique, in addition to elements of aesthetic or taste; that design is pointed at trying to invite or foster a certain experience in those who play them; that a game design goal is distinct from the inspiration which leads a designer to begin designing; and that there can be distinct game-design-purposes toward which specifically RPGs usually tend. It's also why I adamantly insist that it is unwise to conflate (what I call) "emulation" with (what I and many others) call "simulation", for example.

If we're going to really, deeply talk about a particular TTRPG, as opposed to just lightly dancing around its contours, we're probably going to need to be more specific than just throwing around casual terms like "the game."

The experience of any game is always more than the rules of that game, because rules on a page are dead things. They require human effort to have motion, life. It is not demeaning to describe, in clear and unambiguous terms, the tools that a TTRPG uses in attempting to cultivate a particular experience in its players. Naturally, the tools that attempt to cultivate that experience are distinct from the experience itself, just as my skillet is distinct from the flavor of the food I cook with it.

Many games that (often proudly) call themselves "old-school" are of consciously minimalistic bent. Why, then, should it be insulting to note that their core, fundamental process is, itself, minimalistic? A minimalist aesthetic can be breathtakingly beautiful in the right context. We do not assert that architecture is inherently insulting for describing minimalism as...intentionally not using many elements. (As a good example, I will never like Brutalism as we actually have it--but in its highest ideals, it can actually be quite beautiful, all the more tragedy then that its boosters almost always neglect all the things that were required for those highest ideals to manifest in actual buildings!)

Or, if you prefer: The highest and most succinct tier of describing the art of swordfighting, which has more variations and beauty than I could ever know, is "by blocking and chopping, thrusting, or slicing, kill the other person first." Undoubtedly, thousands of styles, perhaps millions of maneuvers, literally thousands of years of technique and style, boiled down to a relatively pithy sentence. I suspect others, who know the art better than I, could trim it further.

To respond to that with, "But you agree that the campaign isn't just the bladework?" is...well, it's injecting an entirely different conversation in, because it (seemingly?) upsets you that someone focused on an analysis of combat isn't talking about the entirety of war every time they mention to any degree what swords do.

I agree, but it can only work if everyone on all sides drops their value judgements and accepts the validity of other points of view and perspectives without trying to prove their opinions (by any means, including trying to claim that they aren't opinions) wrong. I just don't see that happening, unfortunately.