GM fiat - an illustration

[Manbearcat]

Can you be more concrete about what you actually mean here. Can you describe what sort of things you wish a s player to know about the GM decision making and what concrete impacts knowing or not knowing those will have?

I think that will run too long (more time than I have certainly in terms of writing things out). Let me try this.

I'm imagining a game of Dogs in the Vineyard. In Dogs in the Vineyard the players know the following:

* The premise is a "Wild West That Never Was" where young, not remotely ready, gun-toting paladins of The Faith perform their hierarchical stewardship, as the Bridal Falls community navigates a (real and metaphorical) wilderness of Sin large and small, and possibly even Sorcery and Demonic Influence.

* The GM has very specific demands and constraints. This is fully known. They generate a Town, ripe-to-bursting with relevant situation, actively reveal the Town through play, thereby provoking the players to mete out council, mercy, ceremony, or swift judgement.

* The GM should be escalating affairs to conflict and the players should be responding in kind. There is no turtling. There are clear stakes, there is escalating, there is folding, and there is fallout.

* The conflict resolution procedures and the attendant Fallout + Reflection schemes (attrition and advancement) are all table-facing entirely.

There is no veil, there is no obscurant decision-making. There is clear, distilled premise, clarified stakes, council, violence, adjure & rebuke (for all values both material and spiritual), and aftermath. And folks know how situation-state and attendant gamestate moves at every moment of play.

Now let us take all of that. Veil or mute it incrementally until the guiding principles for each moment of play for each participant become sufficiently opaque that various parties don't know why what is happening is happening and don't know exactly how to achieve some alternative situation-state and attendant gamestate from the one they're currently afflicted with. Imagine:

* Is this Town pregnant with Sin or is this just a mundane session of 4 hour play where we mill and saw and shovel and engage in benign council untethered to shepherd and flock, sin and malign influence? Don't know.

* Ok we're just talking? What does that mean mechanically? What if they don't seem apt to give? What does that even look like mechanically and what work will escalation to physical do in order to get them to calm the eff down and concede? Don't know.

* Ok, I know Heresy when I see it. This is it. Does the GM agree? Don't know. Ok, Heresy is 3d10 add, right? Don't know.

* What kind of Fallout am I taking if I have to Take a Blow (put 3 or more dice in to See a Raise)? What value? Don't know. What are the implications of that value fiction-wise and procedure-wise? Don't know.

I hope it is clear that as "Don't know(s)" accumulate, the problem I'm describing amplifies along with that accumulation. At some point (and very quickly for me), the proverbial Rubicon is crossed. As the gameful space reduces, my signature upon play reduces and at some point (very early on imo), I'm just impotently requesting the GM change the situation-state to my desired state (likely with only social coersion/pressure as my operating means) rather than actually playing a game where I'm a potent actor aggressing a fiction and an attendant superstructure to achieve my desired ends.

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That is all I have for today. I've gotta go.

Be well.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah. To me it is weird that people think nar games are somehow less GM driven than trad ones. In my expereince in many nar games the GM is not bound by myth nearly the same degree than in trad games, and the common consequence mechanic constantly asks new input from the GM that they just make up on the spot and it can be nearly anything. I feel that in such game I am way more mercy on the GM's whims than in more trad game. (At least assuming that both games were run with similar level of rigour and consistency.)

Yep. That was my experience with Blades in the Dark as well, though some nar games may rely really heavily on myth (i'm certainly not familiar with every nar game).

I'd also add that in non-nar when the GM is picking the DC for a player action - there is a fairly intuitive process there - he looks at the fictional situation, tries to account for how hard it should be to succeed/fail, then sets a DC to match that level of difficulty. If the DC is drastically outside the players expected range given the description, the player may question the GM about it, possibly the GM left out some important details, or possibly the GM and player disagree about how difficult such a task should be. In any event the table usually decides how to best proceed, either ret con, take such into account for future DC's, play on and talk through more in depth later, etc.

A similar thing also happens when the GM feels that the failure/success of a player action isn't best modeled by a single die roll (or whatever the system standard resolution method is). Again, this process is fairly intuitive. Similar things to the above can happen.

It cannot be stressed enough that players in these style of games sign on for the DM to make such adjustments because they don't want the mechanics dictating odds of success that don't conform to the fictional situation. *Also wanted to add, players in such games are often okay with not having exact probabilities during play, because such isn't information their character would have and they want to make decisions from that stance as much as possible.

 

[AnotherGuy]

My style of play has resulted in a functionally gameful space for myself and those I play with for 40+ years. That's some pretty robust and vigorous testing of that playstyle. I've also been able to act upon my desires to inflict change on the game state. Assuming I succeed at my check, get my spell off, etc.

So while my style of play might not work for Manbearcat, that it does work for myself should be proof enough that it is possible to have a functionally gameful space for others. It's functional for me, but not functional for him.

Out of interest Max, have you (as the primary or even sole DM) ever considered/feared whether much of your game is illusionism? This phrase may seem crude but it gets the job done - like a self-masturbatory exercise in a way.

Mainly because in D&D we as DMs have rather looser constraints fewer principles that help steer us or the storyline.

EDIT: To answer the question for myself - I have, hence my attempts to inject different techniques/ideas from some of the other games talked about online.

 

[FrogReaver]

Mainly because in D&D we as DMs have rather looser constraints fewer principles that help steer us or the storyline.

I don’t agree with this part. D&D has lower system constraints and principles than narrativist games. However, it has greater fictional constraints due to typically having more fictional details pre-authored. It also often has just as stringent (if not more) principles (albeit personal ones instead of system ones). Those principles of d&d DMs are just often much more nuanced and situation dependent.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I don’t agree with this part. They have lower system constraints and principles.

If you're talking about D&D being far more system heavy - I would agree.

They have greater fictional constraints due to having more fictional details pre-authored.

Isn't this balanced out with our lore / prepping / secret backstory etc?

They also often have just as stringent (if not more) of personal principles albeit much more nuanced and situation dependent.

I'm not sure I'm understanding by what you mean by personal principles.

Just so that we are on the same page - my knowledge of AW, DW, BitD, Stonetop...etc is predominantly from posts here. I am certainly not an expert.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you're talking about D&D being far more system heavy - I would agree.


Isn't this balanced out with our lore / prepping / secret backstory etc?


I'm not sure I'm understanding by what you mean by personal principles.

Just so that we are on the same page - my knowledge of AW, DW, BitD, Stonetop...etc is predominantly from posts here. I am certainly not an expert.

I went back and updated my post to remove pronouns so it would be more clear. Hopefully it is now. I have experience with blades in the dark but no other narrativist game, other than what is detailed about them here.

 

[NN]

Sure but thats DiV.

How does the play meta and gamable space work in The Village Of Hommlet ?

 

[Pedantic]

I don't have enough time to answer in extreme detail, but here are my thoughts on this. This dovetails with what would be my response to @Maxperson in his response to me, so I'm just going to tag Max here.

My interest, no matter what I'm doing when it comes to any games (TTRPGs, sparring in martial arts, playing ball sports, playing parlor/board games, etc etc) is a vigorously engaging, premise-addressing, gameful space (which necessarily means both transparent and binding refereeing principles and play meta).​

That will mean different things for different games (sometimes very different). But let me be clear, I think (a) the idea that a GM's decision-making & the attendant processes they mediate can be consequentially principled while simultaneously being obscured is a rejection of the sort of the vigorously engaging, premise-addressing, gameful space I'm pointing at. The point of participant principles and constraining procedures/rules in a game is that they are shared to be mutually understood in order to give rise to the nailing down of the play meta (the premise and boundaries of play and what undergirds them) and the particular gameful space it entails.

I think a little more exploration of "gameful" is necessary here. Addressing the premise doesn't have a lot to do with the gameplay loop in question, and mutual understanding of how the game is to function is great, but doesn't actually have any bearing on the quality of the underlying game design. That the GM is in some way constrained about what they'll introduce next and how doesn't really do the player any good if they can't manipulate those declarations. "Gameful" isn't predicated on knowledge, so much as agency, and even then it's not enough to guarantee that the player's choices will matter. They have to matter in regards to getting what the player wants, thus that you can make moves that drag you toward victory.

[...]I'm not playing a game in this scenario because there is no functionally (reliably able to be well-understood and aggressively acted upon to inflict my desires upon the gamestate at each and every moment of play) gameful space for me as a participant. I'm engaging in play for sure, but I'm 100 % locked-in on my position on what is necessary to rise to being even the floor of a gameful space...and not robustly knowing how the gamestate moves from here to there and/or not being able to index how premise injects play with meaning, momentum, and purpose at each and every moment of play...because either of them are veiled within some seminal participant's idea-space of which I don't have access to? No. An obscured play meta and/or obscured/shifting orientation to central phenomena or play handles is a killshot.

There are two points in here that I just don't think we can accept as axioms. Firstly, it's wild to expect to be able to consistently "inflict your desires upon the gamestate at each and every moment of play." I'd argue that most games are about adapting a limited set of tools to pursue a long-term desire to the best of your ability, and are intersting largely because you cannot make the gamestate do what you want it to do without consistent manipulation of events towards a desired end. And then usually you're then dealing with either coping with new unknowns that complicate whatever you're try to achieve, or you're in active competition with someone else trying to achieve the same thing or something incompatible. The whole reason we pursue strategies and not just "declare what I want to have happen again" is because the gameplay is interesting when it's not obvious.

Secondly, "not being able to index how premise injects play with meaning, momentum, and purpose at each and every moment of play" is such a nar specific priority; I can imagine someone being bored that it's not happening if that's what they came to the table for, but I don't think that has anything to do with the gameability of what's going on. That's just the usual disagreement over the properly planned heist. I think it's fine if the gameplay was in the planning in that scenario, and the player just gets what they wanted if the proposal was ultimately strategically sound.

In fact, my idea of what is constitutive of a gameful space is actually anathema to this Sim-Immersionist cornerstone priority of play because it entails engaging with both a transparent play meta and, instead of intentionally reduced/muted/veiled handles, transparent and vigorous gamestate-attending handles at every moment of play.

I think this is sidestepping the point. The transparency of the meta is absolutely a nice to have thing, but I'm not persuaded it leads to an interesting evaluation of play. The criteria to see if a player's strategy worked and got what they wanted, the interesting "here to there" part of play can be perfectly clear, but if the player doesn't have a strong impact on the case they made to get there (and wasn't presenting with many interesting decisions to prioritize along the way), then it doesn't matter.

Transparency is well and good, and absolutely can help with making the gameplay more engaging, but it isn't sufficient by itself. If you can buy better gameplay with secrets, then you should.

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That is likely to ruffle some feathers (but it should be clear in all my conversations throughout the years...I've said that in so many different ways). But that is my full-bore, honest position on all things "game" and TTRPGs in particular.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think because Fiat has a strong connotation of decree or proclamation, people tend to see it as mostly meaning 'the GM decides this happens'. Rather than 'the GM decides how to resolve what happens'. Fiat sounds like "The GM decides what happens next". So personally I think it is better to use ruling and talk more about what that can mean

In any realistic analysis of how play happens in actual games, these are basically the same thing. AT MOST a GM here may find themselves constrained by things established but unrevealed. Even then the GM decided that stuff at some point.

This brings up another point made by some posters earlier, that Narrativist GMs have more constraints on them. Clearly the opposite is true in most cases.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In any realistic analysis of how play happens in actual games, these are basically the same thing. AT MOST a GM here may find themselves constrained by things established but unrevealed. Even then the GM decided that stuff at some point.

I would say these are very different things and if you aren' making a distinction your analysis will be deeply flawed

This brings up another point made by some posters earlier, that Narrativist GMs have more constraints on them. Clearly the opposite is true in most cases.

This does seem to be true and I think it is why there is often a strong point of contention between games in the style and more trad games. I don't think there need be a hard line between them, but constraining the GM, at least from a trad perspective, is taking away the very thing that makes RPGs feel so boundless