GM fiat - an illustration

[pemerton]

I will happily read the example if you can just answer my questions clearly

You claim to dislike abstraction, but want abstract answers rather than an illustration of play?

In a reply to you upthread, I posted the following from the BW rulebook:

I quote the Burning Wheel rulebook which says, among other things, that "The GM is responsible for challenging the players. . . . The GM presents the players with problems based on the players' priorities" (Gold Revised. pp 10-11)

So the answer to what prep is consistent with the rules of BW is whatever prep is consistent with what I have just quoted.

 

[pemerton]

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


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.

Inter alia.

I've also been crystal clear, throughout the thread, that I am talking about gameplay in AW (or other games, like DW, played using the same principles) and BW (or other games, say Cthulhu Dark, played using the same principles).

Genre as a guide to inference in what makes it possible, as in the CoC scenario that I have referenced (The Vanishing Conjurer), for players to infer to supernatural explanations although there is no actual rational process of reasoning that would take an investigator to such an explanation.

Genre and tropes are also what make things salient. In D&D, for instance, treasure chests are salient (both to GMs, as things to include, and to players, as things to search) in a way that things tacked or tied to the undersides of chairs and tables are not. CoC makes a lot of use of documents (papers on desks, papers in libraries, newspapers etc) but not telephone and bank records. (I've never come across a CoC scenario that involves talking to someone at the local telephone exchange; or talking to the bank manager. Maybe they're out there and I've missed them?) Etc.

I thought you were asserting that the tropes of mystery stories permit the introduction of information that undercuts what was investigated before.

In my replies to you, and in my posts more generally, I have repeatedly emphasised constraints that govern how fiction is established, and that permits inference.

I don't know why you have interpreted that as advocacy of unconstrained permissions.

 

[pemerton]

Now that particular piece of prep is only useful to us (assuming we want they above arrangement [which we should if we are playing Apocalypse World]) if it helps to either create or sustain this dynamic. Does it introduce powerful conflicts of interest that speak to the characters' passions? Does it help establish or refine PC values? Does it help to make sure the salient players in these conflict are equipped for them? If does none of those things than it's not useful prep for Narrativist play (which we want if we're playing a game meant for that).

Those are exactly the same sorts of questions that I posed to @Bedrockgames.

Asking, without specifying those things, whether or not some prep is consistent with the game's rules makes no sense. Or perhaps it's better to say, the question is underspecified.

 

[zakael19]

@Campbell in that style of game with characters having possibly conflicting goals, do the players decide how and why they are together and how their initial adventuring foray is somehow serving all their personal goals directly or indirectly?
Because I'm imagining quite a player turn-based initial session if that is not the case.

Many of these games bake in PC conflict as one of the core tensions of play, and are less interested in classic D&D "party" based narratives.

The entire Blades/Forged in the Dark offshoot is more or less a design answer to the core question Baker posed years ago to "what would it take to make a PBTA that was group-goal oriented" in fact!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Those are exactly the same sorts of questions that I posed to @Bedrockgames.

Asking, without specifying those things, whether or not some prep is consistent with the game's rules makes no sense. Or perhaps it's better to say, the question is underspecified.

Pemerton. These were my questions (and they were asked sincerely: they weren't a trap or anything).

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

And this was your response:

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 genuinely don't understand this answer

 

[pemerton]

@Campbell in that style of game with characters having possibly conflicting goals, do the players decide how and why they are together and how their initial adventuring foray is somehow serving all their personal goals directly or indirectly?
Because I'm imagining quite a player turn-based initial session if that is not the case.

I'm not @Campbell (obviously), but if you look at the Cthulhu Dark session I've linked to several times, you'll see that the PCs were never part of a "team", and that their paths crossed only from time to time and generally in an oppositional sort of way: Cthulhu Dark - another session

You'll see that an important component of my GMing was to use my control over places, NPCs, the timing of events and the like to engineer encounters between the two characters, and to establish common elements to their distinct trajectories.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You claim to dislike abstraction, but want abstract answers rather than an illustration of play?

I just wanted a simple answer to the question

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I just wanted a simple answer to the question

Good luck with that!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not going to dig into the technical bit of Apocalypse World, but instead take a higher-level view. We're deciding to play a game designed narrativist because we want a particular arrangement of things:



Now that particular piece of prep is only useful to us (assuming we want they above arrangement [which we should if we are playing Apocalypse World]) if it helps to either create or sustain this dynamic. Does it introduce powerful conflicts of interest that speak to the characters' passions? Does it help establish or refine PC values? Does it help to make sure the salient players in these conflict are equipped for them? If does none of those things than it's not useful prep for Narrativist play (which we want if we're playing a game meant for that).

We have to start with that desire and our prep should serve that. That doesn't mean a particular level of myth. It just means what we create should be fit to purpose.

Another serious question. If this is the case, how can you have the players solve an objective mystery if everything needs to relate to their subjective values, passions, etc? (and I am not saying those things are bad, I can see the value in play those would add, I just can't see how you have them functionally solving a real mystery)

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton. These were my questions (and they were asked sincerely: they weren't a trap or anything).


And this was your response:


I genuinely don't understand this answer

Your question doesn't make any sense.

It's like asking, how much does the whiskey shape the taste, if the cook has decided to make pikelets?

I mean, I'm sure in the history of the world someone has made pikelets using whiskey, but on the face of it the question I've just stated is a non-sequitur.

To repeat, here is the core relevant rule of BW, from the GM's side:

"The GM is responsible for challenging the players. . . . The GM presents the players with problems based on the players' priorities" (Gold Revised. pp 10-11)​

So when you ask a question that, to me, seems to be *Can the GM nevertheless ignore those priorities and just play a prep-driven game?" it makes no sense to me. What are you trying to find out?

And when you ask about the prep of concrete details ("would it be okay for the GM to have such a concrete detail") my answer, like @Campbell's, is: it depends. Tell me how those concrete details actually relate to what the GM is tasked to do by the game, and I will tell you whether or not it is appropriate prep.

Similarly, in this thread, @EzekielRaiden and I had a back-and-forth about what sort of prep fits with Dungeon World's principles of play.