GM fiat - an illustration

[FrogReaver]

A triangent?

I was going with tangception.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In this thread, @Crimson Longinus, @Bedrockgames , and @EzekielRaiden (and perhaps also @Maxperson and @FrogReaver?) have all asserted that the play I've just described does not involve a "real" or "objective" mystery, because it was not pre-written by the GM.

I don't really want to engage with this any further, but I want to point out--again--that I DO NOT require pre-authorship.

I only require that there is SOME answer, and that that answer is not (very specifically) generated in response to the players' choices to investigate. I have (repeatedly!) said that GM pre-authorship is of course the easiest path to having some answer that is not generated in response to the players' actions, but it need not be the only way. You have repeatedly dismissed Clue(do) as an alternative, but there's nothing somehow invalid about using that method in the context of an outright RPG (as opposed to a board game with paper-thin fiction elements).

I know I've badly misunderstood points you've made in this thread, but at this point this is like the fourth time I've explicitly and specifically said I do not require GM pre-authorship. I just expect there to be a solution before the players' investigative choices, not after. I want the solution to be, to use your terminology, "causally upstream" in both the fiction AND the procedure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't really want to engage with this any further, but I want to point out--again--that I DO NOT require pre-authorship.

I only require that there is SOME answer, and that that answer is not (very specifically) generated in response to the players' choices to investigate. I have (repeatedly!) said that GM pre-authorship is of course the easiest path to having some answer that is not generated in response to the players' actions, but it need not be the only way. You have repeatedly dismissed Clue(do) as an alternative, but there's nothing somehow invalid about using that method in the context of an outright RPG (as opposed to a board game with paper-thin fiction elements).

I know I've badly misunderstood points you've made in this thread, but at this point this is like the fourth time I've explicitly and specifically said I do not require GM pre-authorship. I just expect there to be a solution before the players' investigative choices, not after. I want the solution to be, to use your terminology, "causally upstream" in both the fiction AND the procedure.

Yeah I said as well you could use a method that is random like in clue. The important thing for it being the solving of a mystery that the information be established before hand. It is easier if the GM makes it because he can weave that directly into clues so everything makes sense, but I am sure this can still be achieved through another method where things are established from the start

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't really want to engage with this any further, but I want to point out--again--that I DO NOT require pre-authorship.

I only require that there is SOME answer, and that that answer is not (very specifically) generated in response to the players' choices to investigate. I have (repeatedly!) said that GM pre-authorship is of course the easiest path to having some answer that is not generated in response to the players' actions, but it need not be the only way. You have repeatedly dismissed Clue(do) as an alternative, but there's nothing somehow invalid about using that method in the context of an outright RPG (as opposed to a board game with paper-thin fiction elements).

I know I've badly misunderstood points you've made in this thread, but at this point this is like the fourth time I've explicitly and specifically said I do not require GM pre-authorship. I just expect there to be a solution before the players' investigative choices, not after. I want the solution to be, to use your terminology, "causally upstream" in both the fiction AND the procedure.

I also agree with this.

 

[Maxperson]

I was going with tangception.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

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.

As we're picking nits, Merriam-Webster gives the following primary definition of fiat:

1: an authoritative or arbitrary order: decree

So there actually is a real difference in usage amongst posters in the Anglosphere here. And I think the pejorative connotation is pretty well established re: D&D.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Banang!

 

[pemerton]

I mean, we have explained it several times. For at least the 10th time in this thread, the only context in the way we are using "real" and "objective" is pre-authored. The way you do it is not real in that one context, but can be perfectly real in other ways.

This implies, or at least to me seems to imply, that you are using "real" and "objective" in accordance with a stipulated definition - ie = preauthored.

But my understanding of @Bedrockgames, @Crimson Longinus and @FrogReaver was that thought there were actual reasons for characterising the pre-authored mystery as "objective" and "real", and were doubting and in some cases denying that other approaches could answer to those same reasons.

I don't see is a way for authoring in the moment to be objective. Subconscious bias, as well as narrative games wanting scenes to be personally important to the characters in some way keeps it from being objective.

I don't understand why "subconscious bias" operates in the moment of play but not in the moment of prep.

And my "biases" are not primarily subconscious. They're generally conscious and deliberate: I aim to establish fiction that is interesting, often exciting, and mostly in good taste. But presumably that's also true of the person who writes a CoC module, so I don't see how a preference for this sort of stuff makes the mystery not "objective" or "real".

 

[pemerton]

As we're picking nits, Merriam-Webster gives the following primary definition of fiat:

1: an authoritative or arbitrary order: decree

So there actually is a real difference in usage amongst posters in the Anglosphere here. And I think the pejorative connotation is pretty well established re: D&D.

The definition you give is basically the same as what I posted, except it presents the two alternatives disjunctively. Or have I missed something?

 

[pemerton]

Where is the deductive or inductive reasoning in that? He didn't say that you couldn't think of an item when asked to do so.

The inductive reasoning that my post examplified is this: if a car is to be an instance of a realistic vehicle, than its means of propulsion is probably either an internal combustion engine or an electric motor.

That's not what I mean by inductive reasoning.

What do you mean by "inductive reasoning"? When that term has been used in this thread - by you, by @EzekielRaiden and maybe by others - I have taken it to have its standard meaning of reasoning by generalisation from known and/or instanced cases.

It normally contrasts with deductive reasoning (ie logical or mathematical reasoning). @EzekielRaiden has also, in this thread, referred to abductive reasoning, which is also know as "argument to best explanation". Some theorists think that this is really just a form of inductive reasoning, but that's contentious.

Any situation in the fiction that arises in a moment before all the facts are established where one of the facts that is later established would have been relevant to the DM using deductive/inductive reasoning to determine some non-preauthored detail the players 'prompt' him about.

So, to give an example:

1 hour into the session, the GM establishes imaginary fact F1.

Then an hour later, 2 hours into the session, the GM establishes imaginary fact F2.

In the fiction, F1 and F2 are related in some fashion - eg F1 is an effect of F2 as its cause.​

In the second hour, the GM can bring their full body of knowledge and reasoning to bear on deciding to introduce F2 - including inductive reasoning about the relationship between putative F2 and already-established F1.

The only difference I can see from pre-authorship is that the GM can't now revise their ideas about F1 to accommodate some candidate F2, because the moment for editing has passed. What am I missing?