GM fiat - an illustration

[Crimson Longinus]

@hawkeyefan @zakael19

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.

They can. There is no specific restraints for this. Notice how no one actually really addressed my specific examples of how it is determined what and how many obstacles are present? There is no concrete rules or guidelines for this, it is just up to GM.

Also, gather information is rather vague. You can take actions to have the GM answer questions, but how much information you get and what it is is up to the GM. It may also include the GM "offering opportunities" which are not unlike so called "plot hooks" in many other games.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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 is like how in Twenty Questions it matters when the answerer made up the correct answer. It is pretty obvious.

 

[soviet]

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.



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.

Do you... do you think people have been arguing that narr games have no subjective components?

 

[FrogReaver]

Do you... do you think people have been arguing that narr games have no subjective components?

No. I think they are mostly arguing that subjective components make traditional games be fiat but subjective components don’t for narr games.

That said there does seem to be some major pushback about whether the things @Crimson Longinus is pointing out are actually subjective, so maybe a little of that as well.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

Well I don’t think knowledge or lack thereof about how something works makes that something arbitrary vs not.

But I would agree that knowledge can provide a lever one can at times manipulate.

That of course assumes players don’t have principles that often restrict them from using that lever. (You see this in d&d games where some players know trolls need to be killed by fire but they make up actions with character knowledge only, or when they know a particular choice is not the best but they do it anyway for roleplay reasons. Etc.)

And for narr games, they have their own explicit principles that will also get in the way of players pulling such levers.

The major difference of opinion really being that because narr games make their principles explicit in the game text that they can include those principles when talking about gamefulness as if they were part of the game itself, whereas the opposite opinion is rendered for principles (no matter how binding) that are not explicitly part of the game text.

My take would be that principles no matter the source must be included in any gamefulness or gameful state analysis. That’s because principles function as constraints on what would be the best move, and thus limit the space of potential gameful moves.

In some sense this is an argument that a game like d&d as written is not a complete game. That in order to be complete we must take into account any real constraints on the actual move space at playtime.

An example, a friend is much better at basketball than me. To make our games more interesting we make a rule that he cannot use his dominant hand to touch the ball, and if he does it’s a turnover. Maybe that’s best called a house rule. But regardless, when it comes to actual play that houserule is part of the game we are playing.

 

[Manbearcat]

Well I don’t think knowledge or lack thereof about how something works makes that something arbitrary vs not.

But I would agree that knowledge can provide a lever one can at times manipulate.

That of course assumes players don’t have principles that often restrict them from using that lever. (You see this in d&d games where some players know trolls need to be killed by fire but they make up actions with character knowledge only, or when they know a particular choice is not the best but they do it anyway for roleplay reasons. Etc.)

And for narr games, they have their own explicit principles that will also get in the way of players pulling such levers.

The major difference of opinion really being that because narr games make their principles explicit in the game text that they can include those principles when talking about gamefulness as if they were part of the game itself, whereas the opposite opinion is rendered for principles (no matter how binding) that are not explicitly part of the game text.

My take would be that principles no matter the source must be included in any gamefulness or gameful state analysis. That’s because principles function as constraints on what would be the best move, and thus limit the space of potential gameful moves.

In some sense this is an argument that a game like d&d as written is not a complete game. That in order to be complete we must take into account any real constraints on the actual move space at playtime.

An example, a friend is much better at basketball than me. To make our games more interesting we make a rule that he cannot use his dominant hand to touch the ball, and if he does it’s a turnover. Maybe that’s best called a house rule. But regardless, when it comes to actual play that houserule is part of the game we are playing.

There are a lot of posts I want to get to, respond to, and I want to (again) clarify Blades in the Dark procedures because they are being absolutely butchered in this thread.

But I don't have time for that right now.

What I do have time for is to demonstrate that the game theoretical model you've proposed above just doesn't work. Here is how we do it.

* You and I are having a fight.

* There is a referee.

* The referee says "anything goes, gentlemen."

* Great. I can gouge out your eyes, bite off your nose, choke you to unconsciousness, dislocate your knee/ankle. You have to defend against all attacks.

* You, on the other hand, have secretly sworn an oath in your mind that you will neither gouge my eyes nor bite off my nose nor choke me into unconsciousness.

* I have no idea about this oath.

* Hence, we are both playing very different games from each other...but I don't even know it. So my approach to defending, to distance control, to area control, and to striking and grappling is still erroneously incorporating the information set I was working on initially. Further, you've handicapped yourself from several, extremely effective and high-stakes attacks...but only you are aware of this handicap.

* Because of my information-set disparity, I'm playing a different game than you.

* Because of your self-imposed moveset-handicap, you are playing a different game than me.

* These features have fundamentally reshaped the gamefulness of our play, both reducing it and simultaneously distorting it. Whatever integrity the execution of the blow-by-blow of the fight had, its ability to generate legitimate results, and any betting had before your secret decision have been significantly reduced...I would say outright thwarted.

 

[FrogReaver]

There are a lot of posts I want to get to, respond to, and I want to (again) clarify Blades in the Dark procedures because they are being absolutely butchered in this thread.

But I don't have time for that right now.

What I do have time for is to demonstrate that the game theoretical model you've proposed above just doesn't work. Here is how we do it.

* You and I are having a fight.

* There is a referee.

* The referee says "anything goes, gentlemen."

* Great. I can gouge out your eyes, bite off your nose, choke you to unconsciousness, dislocate your knee/ankle. You have to defend against all attacks.

* You, on the other hand, have secretly sworn an oath in your mind that you will neither gouge my eyes nor bite off my nose nor choke me into unconsciousness.

* I have no idea about this oath.

* Hence, we are both playing very different games from each other...but I don't even know it. So my approach to defending, to distance control, to area control, and to striking and grappling is still erroneously incorporating the information set I was working on initially. Further, you've handicapped yourself from several, extremely effective and high-stakes attacks...but only you are aware of this handicap.

* Because of my information-set disparity, I'm playing a different game than you.

* Because of your self-imposed moveset-handicap, you are playing a different game than me.

* These features have fundamentally reshaped the gamefulness of our play, both reducing it and simultaneously distorting it. Whatever integrity the execution of the blow-by-blow of the fight had, its ability to generate legitimate results, and any betting had before your secret decision have been significantly reduced...I would say outright thwarted.

I follow your example, but I don't agree with your conclusions on it.

First I would start with this, there is only 1 game. The game being played is one involving 2 participants. If the participants were both playing different games then there would be no room for a game here at all because there wouldn't be enough participants to fill more than the single game.

Now, let's talk about the nature of this singular game. And to do that I'm going to first introduce a slightly altered version of your example. Let's say everything is the same except the restrictive oath of the one player is known by everyone. Now there's no information set disparity - and yet the participants still don't have equal move spaces. The gamefulness is still fully there, it's just a different game than if the game involved 2 participants with no such oath.

Now let's talk introducing the information set-disparity of changing the oath to hidden. The same move space exists in both the hidden vs non hidden oath scenarios. The gamefulness is still fully there, it's just a different game than if that oath isn't hidden, just like it's a different game between no hidden oath and no oath at all.

Gamefulness doesn't require perfect information (see poker where there's hidden information from every player at the table). Or does your logic mean poker isn't gameful?

 

[thefutilist]

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?

If the point of play is to see the interaction between the PC and the GM's prep, then the GM must have solid prep that they adhere to, otherwise play is impossible.

If the point of play is to have the GM create exciting or thematic problems in the moment, then the GM having prep isn't really a concern.

In the first case the prep acts as a constraint (creates fictional positioning) that is bounded, like Crimson says, because of the following loop.


BOUND

GM sets scene

Player does something

GM is still bound by prep when doing the next thing, AFTER the player has done something


versus


UNBOUND

GM sets scene

Player does something

GM isn't bound by prep (but maybe principles or mechanics)


I prefer (as a general rule but it can be game dependant) to be bound by prep. This is because I like character driven play where the interaction between driven, ideologically motivated characters, is what gives rise to plot. Which means of course you need driven ideologically motivated characters (prep) to have an interaction.

 

[zakael19]

They can. There is no specific restraints for this. Notice how no one actually really addressed my specific examples of how it is determined what and how many obstacles are present? There is no concrete rules or guidelines for this, it is just up to GM.

Also, gather information is rather vague. You can take actions to have the GM answer questions, but how much information you get and what it is is up to the GM. It may also include the GM "offering opportunities" which are not unlike so called "plot hooks" in many other games.

Gather Information isn't vague? You have a goal for GI - "I want to meet my contact and ask them X," and then we work out it's a Sway because you're kinda leaning on your Bluecoat friend to do something shady but they'll do it; and then based on your roll (generally a Fortune roll unless there's an obstacle), the game gives you an explicit set of informational outcomes that the player should expect:

Great: You get exceptional details. The information is complete and follow-up questions may expand into related areas or reveal more than you hoped for.
Standard: You get good details. Clarifying and follow-up questions are possible.
Limited: You get incomplete or partial information. More information gathering will be needed to get all the answers

There's a bunch of suggested questions in the book that are very concrete answers that the player will get actionable info from regardless (even on a 1-3 you get a way forward). The actual words the GM says may be made up on the spot, but the overall outcome is governed by the rules. And it all feeds back to the player's goal.

Also, I thought we'd answered the "how long a score is" quite completely with the actual guidance from the book: use clocks if you want to be ultra transparent (although that starts to feel off rq); play to find out otherwise. You know the end state of the score (failure, or the Goal/Target); to proscribe a "You Must Be This Long to Ride This Score" would be to violate a bunch of fundamental design priorities of the game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Gather Information isn't vague? You have a goal for GI - "I want to meet my contact and ask them X," and then we work out it's a Sway because you're kinda leaning on your Bluecoat friend to do something shady but they'll do it; and then based on your roll (generally a Fortune roll unless there's an obstacle), the game gives you an explicit set of informational outcomes that the player should expect:

There's a bunch of suggested questions in the book that are very concrete answers that the player will get actionable info from regardless (even on a 1-3 you get a way forward). The actual words the GM says may be made up on the spot, but the overall outcome is governed by the rules. And it all feeds back to the player's goal.

How you get answers is not particularly vague. What is more vague though, how the information actually impacts the score.

What also is unclear how the GM is supposed to generate these answers.

Also, I thought we'd answered the "how long a score is" quite completely with the actual guidance from the book: use clocks if you want to be ultra transparent (although that starts to feel off rq); play to find out otherwise. You know the end state of the score (failure, or the Goal/Target); to proscribe a "You Must Be This Long to Ride This Score" would be to violate a bunch of fundamental design priorities of the game.

Yes we did, and the conclusion, that you also tacitly admit here, was that the GM somehow decides.