GM fiat - an illustration

[AnotherGuy]

Have I forgotten asking a question in this thread? I though my modest contribution so far was limited to providing a couple of working definitions.

No. It was in the CoC thread which he had linked where you had asked how did he manage the time between the two players present before their stories converged. I imagine that kind of turn based play is quite regular when the table is still fleshing out character priorities/desires and when working out the details of how they are to converge, particularly since being in an adventuring party is not a must.

In that example pemerton only had two players but with four players it can, I imagine, get quite manic to try and figure it all out. Just seems daunting for me coming from a Trad background.

 

[pemerton]

I did read it but I am not clear what aspects of it are demonstrating the players are or are not actually solving a mystery

There is prep - as the post says, I ran a scenario from the Prince Valiant Episode Book.

And the players worked out that the merchant in the blue cloak was a ghost, whom the bandits had killed. Which is the key idea the whole scenario is based around. So I assume that that counts as "actually solving a mystery".

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton the idea to have Randal's coat stored away with the cannisters is as a result of GM fiat right? Not a failed roll.
If yes, how do you view this differently in comparison to your thoughts on the Alarm spell with a GM using fiat to narrate outcomes without dice? i.e. what if the fiat that overcomes the Alarm spell is pushing the story forward?

I can't recall all the details, but the spilling of fluid I think resulted from a failed test by Appleby's player, which then led to Randall's coat being taken to make sure no fluid got lost. (I don't remember now if Randall's player resisted that, and failed a test, or not.)

So that's how Randall lost his coat. The decision to have it travel with the cannisters seems likely something that I then did to help establish stakes in a subsequent scene, yes.

 

[pemerton]

To answer this from a non-AW narr perspective:

i) you bake the details of the mystery so that they echo and/or directly impact or provoke the PC's own issues. The PC is focused on issues around maintaining relations with their family? The murder victim also had a fraught relationship with their family. The PC is in conflict with their superiors? Those superiors have some sort of vested interest in this case.

Ii) solving (or not) this particular case may be secondary in importance to playing out the conflicts above that the case provokes

To elaborate on this:

In the BW rulebook (Revised, at least; I can't remember if it made its way into Gold), there is an example that opens the chapter on Relationships: if the PC has his wife as a relationship, and the GM has decided that a vampyr is haunting the village, then of course the vampyr targets the PC's wife!

This could be the premise for a mystery - Why is my wife so pale, and so uninterested in my company? The answer would be, because she is being seduced and having her life drained by a vampyr. But as you ( @soviet) say, and consistent also with what @thefutilist posted not too far upthread, solving that mystery would probably not be the primary concern of play. It would be ancillary to, or an underpinning for, other play goals.

 

[pemerton]

Have I forgotten asking a question in this thread? I though my modest contribution so far was limited to providing a couple of working definitions.

No, you asked a question in my old Cthulhu Dark thread, which was very similar to the question that @AnotherGuy asked @Campbell in this thread.

 

[FrogReaver]

There is prep - as the post says, I ran a scenario from the Prince Valiant Episode Book.

And the players worked out that the merchant in the blue cloak was a ghost, whom the bandits had killed. Which is the key idea the whole scenario is based around. So I assume that that counts as "actually solving a mystery".

Probably. Can you be more specific on which elements above were prepped and which were not?

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is prep - as the post says, I ran a scenario from the Prince Valiant Episode Book.

And the players worked out that the merchant in the blue cloak was a ghost, whom the bandits had killed. Which is the key idea the whole scenario is based around. So I assume that that counts as "actually solving a mystery".

Yes, if the merchant with the blue cloak was a ghost the whole time, yes

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't agree with that. Arbitrary is random selection or a whim. Fiat is probably the last thing you want to be arbitrary. In my experience, DMs give thought to their uses of fiat.

If fiat is just another word for decides (whether by principles or not) then why do we even need the word fiat here at all (just use ‘dm decides’). Fiat being a word that by at least one dictionary definition (albeit not all) necessitates arbitrariness as part of its meaning.

 

[Maxperson]

If fiat is just another word for decides (whether by principles or not) then why do we even need the word fiat here at all (just use ‘dm decides’). Fiat being a word that by at least one dictionary definition (albeit not all) necessitates arbitrariness as part of its meaning.

It's not another word for DM decides. It's a word for when the DM decides to step outside the rules or the rules don't cover something and he needs to make a decision. The overwhelming majority of DM decisions fall within the rules and are not fiat.

What it's not, is random or a whim. It can be I suppose, but that's far more likely to go wrong than right, so it's reckless and shouldn't be done.

 

[pemerton]

Oxford Languages, via Google, gives as the leading definition of "fiat" the following: a formal authorization or proposition; a decree. It gives as a second meaning an arbitrary order.