GM fiat - an illustration

[Crimson Longinus]

If the gather information rolls go well? The obstacles are fewer or less severe. If they go poorly… well things are worse than we thought.

Less severe than what? Worse than what? There is no baseline, expect what the GM decided!

Position and Effect are, once again, meant to be clear from the situation on-screen. They’re generally obvious, and the players know what’s determining them. If they don’t, they’re meant to ask… and advocate for their opinion if it differs from the GM’s.

But the GM framed the situation!

The above is a huge difference from a GM setting a DC and having unknown factors contributing to high it is, and not having to explain how the DC is determined if asked, and also not having to set the stakes ahead of time, or make the risk even known to the players.

It is not terribly common for unknown factors to affect the DC, though it can certainly happen. But most of the time I am open about DCs. And in rare cases there are unknown factors in the time of the roll, they tend to become apparent eventually. And of course in any GM the players could question the GM's judgement if it seemed be wildly off the mark to them.

If you don’t see that… if your argument is just going to be “yeah but the GM can do whatever he wants” then we’re never going to get anywhere because that’s always the case.

If you ignore what the game is specifically telling the GM to do, clearly and loudly throughout the book, and then also in a dedicated section meant solely for that purpose… the sure, you’ve got a point, Crimson.

But if you’re aware of these principles and what they mean for play and how they inform the GM’s decision-making, then ignoring them seems like an odd way to show that.

I think that you're confused by the decision points laying in somewhat different places and the principles that guide the decision making being different. You have been talking about people being unaware of how the games they play work, but I think that actually applies to you.

But I don't think this will go anywhere.

 

[zakael19]

Less severe than what? Worse than what? There is no baseline, expect what the GM decided!



But the GM framed the situation!



It is not terribly common for unknown factors to affect the DC, though it can certainly happen. But most of the time I am open about DCs. And in rare cases there are unknown factors in the time of the roll, they tend to become apparent eventually. And of course in any GM the players could question the GM's judgement if it seemed be wildly off the mark to them.



I think that you're confused by the decision points laying in somewhat different places and the principles that guide the decision making being different. You have been talking about people being unaware of how the games they play work, but I think that actually applies to you.

But I don't think this will go anywhere.

The GM frames the situation based on the players’s actions and the outcome of the Engagement roll - controlled, risky, desperate, critical (and the book tells you very explicitly what those mean). Play proceeds from there. Is that subjective? If so - you’ve argued us around to 100% of all TTRPG play being GM fiat and we may as well just exit the conversation.

 

[innerdude]

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.

I don't particularly see the connection between "pre-authored fictional constraint" and the avoidance of GM fiat.

"The stuff I made up before prevents me from making up other stuff now" is a strange paradox. It's all made up. If the
changing of the "making up" makes the game better, who cares which "making up" manages the feat?

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.

And hence unknowable, producing an ungameable state per @Manbearcat 's assertion.

 

[pemerton]

@hawkeyefan @zakael19

I've never played BitD, and have only skimmed bits of the SRD. Based on @hawkeyefan's post 2272, plus what you've posted since, I get the following impression for how a score works:

Gather Information is used to establish/narrow the scope of the fictional situation. It seems like instead of the +1 forward in AW or DW, it allows for better position or effect in subsequent player action declarations.

*The Engagement Roll establishes the initial scene, which the players then declare actions to bring under control, or escape from, or whatever.

*Subsequent obstacles follow from the outcome of that initial scene, plus what has already been established about the score (ie via the initial planning, and/or gather information/​

What's not clear to me is: can the GM introduce new complications/obstacles that aren't already implicit either in (i) the planning, or (ii) the gathering of information, or (iii) the working out of clocks, or (iv) the outcomes of rolls?

My impression is that the general answer is no. But other posters seem to think the general answer is yes.

 

[zakael19]

@hawkeyefan @zakael19

I've never played BitD, and have only skimmed bits of the SRD. Based on @hawkeyefan's post 2272, plus what you've posted since, I get the following impression for how a score works:

Gather Information is used to establish/narrow the scope of the fictional situation. It seems like instead of the +1 forward in AW or DW, it allows for better position or effect in subsequent player action declarations.​

​

*The Engagement Roll establishes the initial scene, which the players then declare actions to bring under control, or escape from, or whatever.​

​

*Subsequent obstacles follow from the outcome of that initial scene, plus what has already been established about the score (ie via the initial planning, and/or gather information/​

What's not clear to me is: can the GM introduce new complications/obstacles that aren't already implicit either in (i) the planning, or (ii) the gathering of information, or (iii) the working out of clocks, or (iv) the outcomes of rolls?

My impression is that the general answer is no. But other posters seem to think the general answer is yes.

So Gather Info is a bit broad; on one end there's a set of Questions on each playbook that are both somewhat generic and also have a bit of specific theming (the Cutter gets "who here is the biggest threat," the Whisper gets something about opening to the Ghost Field, etc). Those are largely to help shape the conversation during a score IMO, and as I said echo AW's Clarifying moves (read a Sitch, Read a Person). The other side is like, laying the ground work to get towards the Plan and Detail for a score in service of an overarching goal (new Claims to seize, where the gang boss hides so you can arrange a special delivery a la @FrogReaver 's mail bombs, whatever). So yes, it's about shaping the fiction in a way that your scoundrel can then better action for improved position/effect; or simply creating the possibility space for a Target.

100% correct on the Engagement Roll. It's the specific design intended to bypass all the planning and frame you right into either the first obstacle, things gone bad; things kinda iffy; things going alright; or crap our plan is awesome we're through already (desperate/risky/controlled/crit outcomes).

I think your final question is pretty on the mark with how I understand the game. Harper suggests prep not terribly different from Baker's guidance I think - put together a possibility space for the score based on everything you just enumerated and any details about the world/faction/relationships that could complicate things and have them ready as brainstorming. Generally the place where you insert complications is on 1-5 rolls / misses or weak hits.

 

[thefutilist]

This is the thing where I think we're leaving the overlapping parts of the TTRPG Venn diagram; we could not swap the activities we are both calling a TTRPG and claim to satisfyingly be having the same experience.

Your thoughts on gamism are great and I get where you're coming from.

And yeah I agree, the game state split is where it turns into two separate hobbies that use very similar same tools.

 

[thefutilist]

I think you're blinded the crazy amount of GM input the narrative games constantly ask for. And unlike in the trad approach, the GM is not bound by myth for that input.

You and your group should play Inspectres. Or at least give it a try. It has a huge amount in common with Blades (to the extent you might raise an eyebrow) except is has mechanics that bind the GM to a mechanical decision they made earlier. It's one of the early examples of a Narrativist game that uses mechanical binding rather than myth binding, at least for plot related to the score. It also confirms everything you're saying.

 

[thefutilist]

less arbitrary - no
transparent - yes

4 is kind of interesting. Knowing more about the GM decision process should give the player greater control if they 'are' going for an outcome because it should give them a lever to manipulate.

I don't think it does though, or very rarely. It's more like a promise of agency than actual currency you can spend.

 

[Campbell]

There is a substantial amount of GM's Say in Blades. It's different in that it's constrained, targeted and transparent. That where judgement is applied we can see its impact. There is a substantial difference here compared to the black box we see in traditional RPG design. Both utilize a high degree of GM judgement. One just lets you see where and tells you on what basis you should be applying that judgement.

GM Judgement plays in important role in any RPG. Some of us just value focusing it or at least understand there is a substantial difference between focused GM Judgement and unfocused GM Judgement

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The GM frames the situation based on the players’s actions and the outcome of the Engagement roll - controlled, risky, desperate, critical (and the book tells you very explicitly what those mean). Play proceeds from there. Is that subjective?

Yes, absolutely it is! Like do you think that given the same initial position, different GMs wouldn't come up with different setup and complexity etc for the score? Of course they would, as there is nothing concrete in these instructions that binds them, it is just vague vibes.

If so - you’ve argued us around to 100% of all TTRPG play being GM fiat and we may as well just exit the conversation.

Now you're getting it! There of course are elements of RPG play that are do not rely on subjective GM decisions, but I have never encountered a RPG that does not require some amount of subjective GM decisions to function, and the Blades definitely is not an exception. For some reason some people seem to be unable to accept this obvious fact.