GM fiat - an illustration

[Sepulchrave II]

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

A disjunctive clause does not relegate the status of the second definition; both are coequal in applicability. Especially in a dictionary. "Arbitrary" is a primary definition of fiat according to Merriam-Webster.

You are using fiat in an exclusive way. That's why people keep having problems with your definition.

 

[hawkeyefan]

A disjunctive clause does not relegate the status of the second definition; both are coequal in applicability. Especially in a dictionary. "Arbitrary" is a primary definition of fiat according to Merriam-Webster.

You are using fiat in an exclusive way. That's why people keep having problems with your definition.

Should we not think about the arbitrariness from the players' perspective? That it is unexplained to them and therefore seemingly arbitrary?

If not, when is anything ever actually GM Fiat?

 

[pemerton]

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.

Clue(do) is a tangent. We can treat it, and I have mostly been treating it, as a particular variety of GM pre-authorship. For instance, in a RPG with random determination the GM would need to learn what the random determination was, if they were to then use it in all the ways this thread has talked about them using it. And so random determination, say from a chart or draw of cards, would be no different from walking into a game shop and randomly choosing a CoC module to purchase.

Now, if in fact you are saying that a GM can GM a mystery in an "objective" fashion although the answer is unknown to the GM, because it is hidden inside a sealed envelope, then I have misunderstood your claim, apologise for that, and am interested to learn how you envisage this taking place.

But if that's not what you are saying, then as I said the idea of the GM learning the solution by picking one from a hat rather than writing it up themself is not a relevant detail for the discussion in this thread, for the reasons I just set out.

As for you insistence that there has to be a solution before the players' investigative choices - why? You seem to treat that as being entailed by is not generated in response to the players' actions, but both phrases have ambiguous plural phrases - choices, actions. And their plural character is not trivial in discussing RPG design: key to "moves snowball" in AW and DW, for instance, is that the outcome of previous player choices/actions affects future framing. Conversely, what is key to the DL modules is that future framing is largely independent of the outcomes of previous player choices/actions.

I posted, not far upthread, an instance of Cthulhu Dark play. At the start of the session, I asked the player of the butler Appleby why Appleby was in London. He told me it was because his master, the Earl, was missing, and hence he (Appleby) had come to London to try and sort out some paperwork.

That establishes a mystery - what has happened to the Earl. Given that, until play started, no one at the table had ever heard of Appleby or the Earl, let alone had heard that the Earl was missing, it follows that no solution could be generated prior to play. You seem to assert that therefore, of necessity, things cannot be "real"/"objective". But what's your reason? I mean, in play I - as GM - started to form ideas about what had happened to the Earl, which I developed as play unfolded and the players' action declarations demanded more responses from me. I used my developing ideas - of lycanthropes, the links between East African were-hyenas and Central European werewolves, the Earl's lycanthropy - to help shape what I said as I contributed to the shared fiction. One of the players worked out, based on the "clues" that I had provided, that lycanthropes were involved. The players, as their PCs, compared documents that strongly implied - via phrenological resemblances - that the Earl was a were-hyena; and this implication was later confirmed more directly.

Where is the lack of objectivity/reality? Why do you count the inferences drawn on the basis of the hints and foreshadowing I introduced during play as lacking in "objectivity", when you would count exactly the same inferences drawn in exactly the same way on exactly the same experience of a shared fiction as objective, if I'd done all my decision-making in advance?

 

[pemerton]

A disjunctive clause does not relegate the status of the second definition; both are coequal in applicability. Especially in a dictionary. "Arbitrary" is a primary definition of fiat according to Merriam-Webster.

You are using fiat in an exclusive way. That's why people keep having problems with your definition.

I'm using fiat in a fairly loose way, but one that for most posters for most of the thread seems to have been clear enough. Not many posters seem to have been confused by the difference between the sort of decision-making required by the Alarm spell, and the sort of decision-making required (or not) by the Aetherial Premonitions spell.

 

[Maxperson]

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 understand why "subconscious bias" operates in the moment of play but not in the moment of prep.

It can, but once written down and set in stone, it become an objective part of the mystery prior to any investigation. In the moment, it's a creation and wasn't set in stone prior, so has no objectivity.

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".

Because that's not what objective means. "Interesting," "exciting," and "good taste" are all subjective.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Should we not think about the arbitrariness from the players' perspective? That it is unexplained to them and therefore seemingly arbitrary?

If not, when is anything ever actually GM Fiat?

I don’t have any skin in this game philosophically, I’m pointing out differences in usage and reasonable inferences which can be drawn from words.

To insist on a singular meaning for a word when it has a parallel negative connotation runs the risk of it being construed as a dog-whistle.

To me, all of these ludic preferences seem to be based on divergent modes of cognition, especially on-line vs off-line processes. It’s why these positions always seem so intractable.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

I believe the point was that your citation implied that any arbitrariness is an entirely secondary meaning, less common than the primary one. Their citation puts the two meanings on completely equal footing--meaning the word is as likely to be pejorative as it is to be merely a neutral descriptive.

Outside of academic/technical applications (e.g. "for any arbitrary integer n..."), I can say that when I use the word 'arbitrary" it has at least some amount of implied criticism, at least when applied to human authority figures. Arbitrary action on the part of an authority, at least to me, implies caprice, either the unserious/irresponsible use of authority or the domineering/dictatorial use thereof.

 

[Maxperson]

Should we not think about the arbitrariness from the players' perspective? That it is unexplained to them and therefore seemingly arbitrary?

If not, when is anything ever actually GM Fiat?

Player perception has no bearing on whether something is arbitrary or fiat.

As for being unexplained, the players should have trust in the DM. Players that do won't assume something unexplained is arbitrary. They will assume that it has a reason that they have not yet discovered. Players that don't trust the DM shouldn't be playing in that game.

 

[pemerton]

I can say that when I use the word 'arbitrary" it has at least some amount of implied criticism

Yes. "Arbitrary" is not normally a term of praise!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Player perception has no bearing on whether something is arbitrary or fiat.

As for being unexplained, the players should have trust in the DM. Players that do won't assume something unexplained is arbitrary. They will assume that it has a reason that they have not yet discovered. Players that don't trust the DM shouldn't be playing in that game.

Yeah, that all sounds ridiculous to me. Expecting to understand the processes of play and what the GM is doing and what rules or principles are guiding him… that doesn’t sound like a big ask for a game.

That doesn’t mean the GM needs to explain very single thing… but clearly this stuff matters. If you found yourself in my game or vice versa, we’d clearly have different expectations unless we discuss beforehand.