GM fiat - an illustration

[Faolyn]

@Crimson Longinus @Bedrockgames @robertsconley @Faolyn

You all have seen what’s been said about Torchbearer 2e in this thread and I think most all of us have little to no experience with that game.

Is it just me or is the impression that’s been given up till now that the camp roll in TB2e doesn’t tell the GM what specific monster comes to camp?

Like I’m not actually misunderstanding stuff this badly, right?

Yeah, as far as I can tell there's still that level of GM fiat.

D&D: GM rolls to see if there's a random encounter in the night. If there is, it occurs no matter how well the PCs made camp, because there's no "make camp" roll in D&D (there probably should be, though). The intruders are then rolled randomly from a table or picked from what's appropriate to the area. The alarm spell notifies the caster/party that something has entered into the camp.

Torchbearer: The player(s) roll to see if they make camp successfully. On a failed roll, something bad (a "disaster") happens. Presumably, the GM picks what that bad thing is; I don't know if there are encounter tables. The Aetherial Premonition spell notifies the caster/party in the event of trouble.

It seems that, in addition to picking the monster, there's one bit of fiat that D&D has that TB doesn't have: in TB, it appears that if there's an intruder, it's always a bad thing, whereas in D&D, it could be a neutral or friendly creature, or even a wandering plot hook--the thing just needs to be big enough to trigger the alarm.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, as far as I can tell there's still that level of GM fiat.

D&D: GM rolls to see if there's a random encounter in the night. If there is, it occurs no matter how well the PCs made camp, because there's no "make camp" roll in D&D (there probably should be, though). The intruders are then rolled randomly from a table or picked from what's appropriate to the area. The alarm spell notifies the caster/party that something has entered into the camp.

Torchbearer: The player(s) roll to see if they make camp successfully. On a failed roll, something bad (a "disaster") happens. Presumably, the GM picks what that bad thing is; I don't know if there are encounter tables. The Aetherial Premonition spell notifies the caster/party in the event of trouble.

It seems that, in addition to picking the monster, there's one bit of fiat that D&D has that TB doesn't have: in TB, it appears that if there's an intruder, it's always a bad thing, whereas in D&D, it could be a neutral or friendly creature, or even a wandering plot hook--the thing just needs to be big enough to trigger the alarm.

For the question I’m about to ask, let’s set aside what’s considered “good GMing”… let’s not make any value judgments like that.

Can the Alarm spell e bypassed due to GM Decision-making per the rules?

Can the Aetherial Premonitions spell be bypassed due to GM Decision-making per the rules?

Again… forget what the GM “should” or “shouldn’t” do. Just can they do it?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Except those principles are written in the book (at least in AW/GW/BitD) so they're pretty objective. Of course people are people and they don't always interpret them consistently, etc. So, of course there's variation in quality. Even good GMs now and then botch something or at least put something out there that doesn't quite end up doing what it was supposed to.

They are not objective in sense a that they produce predictably consistent results. Like here:

It really depends on a lot of factors. And as you can see, @zakael19 and I each described different ways to handle it, though there were similarities.

My reason for going with it is that it was an area of interest for the players. And it seems to fit with what’s been established and with the goal of the Score. But I just as easily could have decided there was no trap there.

Does that leave the existence of the trap in a state of superposition? I don’t know… it’s pretend.

Like does this seem "objective" to you? It is just a GM decision, seems pretty damn fiaty to me.

I guess what I'm saying is that trad principles are much more internal to the GM than Narrativist ones are.

Perhaps. But different printed games have different printed principles, some more explicit some less. Are narrativist games generally more open about theirs? Perhaps. As it is not the dominant paradigm, it makes more to be more explicit about it, to avoid people assuming it should be played like more mainstream games.

But ultimately what does it matter where the principles come from, as long as they exists? Like sure, it is nice if the book you presumably paid money for tells you how the game in it is supposed to be played, but in absence of that, you can just decide to run a game in certain way if you have sufficient understanding.

I cannot remember the last time I really did something I'd call negotiating with the GM. I guess something a bit like that happens in specific BitD situations, like if you are wanting a Devil's Bargain you might angle for a certain thing, make some suggestions, something like that. But I don't need to bargain to get what I want, I have all sorts of character resources in most games (certainly in BitD). Anyway, say I am hoping for a trap on the safe, seems like a thing I can handle well. So, I recon in info gathering and ask the question "Is there a trap on X's safe?" The fiction can be I do a favor for the local locksmith, or whatever. I tool up with a special gear designed to deal with said trap that I've already ascertained is likely to be there. How likely do you think it is that no such trap is going to be there for my sly trap handling self to work on? I didn't negotiate, I just signaled what I wanted to see in play!

The explicit negotiation was already covered by several people, but you here, and @hawkeyefan above, reference influencing the GM decision making. In a game like this I need to think "Best not mention traps, or the GM will put one in the game" or alternatively trying to feed the GM the ideas I want to see. This to me is thinking about the GM's state of mind, as you need to if you're trying to influence it (or avoid influencing as it might be.) And this is purely player metagame thinking, as obviously the characters in the game do not think that their external reality is malleable that way! And in more trad game it isn't.

In trad play it is much more fruitful for me to reason like "Mike Pockette is a rat bastard of a GM, how is he going to specifically screw my character? Aha, there's going to be an anti-magic zone around the safe!" vs trying to yank out of my already incomplete knowledge of the scenario all the possibilities that are deemed by the GM to be most versimilitudinous and likely. And honestly? The later type of GMing is, IME not the one that actually produces the best trad results to start with, though overusing it is also going to be bad. Mike Pockette is a genius level GM, he knows exactly how far to go, and exactly how to get things to fall out the way he planned it.

Why are you playing with a rat bastard GM who tries to kill your character?

I wouldn't draw the analogy too far, but my point is that most Narrativist play is much more structured in some sense as a game than the weird nebulous nothing that is non-combat play in a lot of trad games.

If the game to you is "nebulous nothing" without constant intrusion of rules, that to me suggest that the fiction is poor. What actually is interesting in a roleplaying game are compelling and complex fictional situations where characters with values, goals and established personalities have to make meaningful decisions and experience intense emotions. You don't need rules for any of this. You don't need rules to tell the GM what to say, you don't need rules to tell the player how their character feels. GM crafts interesting situations, the players roleplay their characters. That's it, that is at the core of RPGs, and to me it seems that a lot of people are unable to see this under all the extraneous junk they've piled on top of it.

 

[Faolyn]

For the question I’m about to ask, let’s set aside what’s considered “good GMing”… let’s not make any value judgments like that.

Can the Alarm spell e bypassed due to GM Decision-making per the rules?

Can the Aetherial Premonitions spell be bypassed due to GM Decision-making per the rules?

Again… forget what the GM “should” or “shouldn’t” do. Just can they do it?

The GM can do this with alarm. There's a spectrum that goes from "there are perfectly logical in-setting reasons for this" to "this required the GM to metagame heavily," but it can be easily done.

I don't know about Torchbearer. However, @Manbearcat mentioned that adventures have certain numbers of obstacles, so perhaps getting past the Aetherial Premonition could count as one of those obstacle.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Like does this seem "objective" to you? It is just a GM decision, seems pretty damn fiaty to me.

Sure, if you ignore all the points of input the player had into making it. The players chose the Score. The players chose the Approach to the Score. The players chose the Detail of the Approach. The players brought up looking for a trap.

Without all of those decisions, the GM wouldn't even be at this point of play where there's a chest they're thinking of breaking into.

Now... imagine a more traditional approach. The GM has decided what the goal of play is (solve the mystery, beat the adventure, etc.), the GM has prepped the location for play, the GM has determined the ways to proceed through the location. They have set the obstacles. They have determined if there is a trap there.

All the player input amounts to is to determine what predetermined thing the GM will tell them about.

This is why I've been arguing since the beginning of the thread that it's not GM Fiat that is a problem in and of itself (as much as any of this may be a problem for a group), but rather the layers of GM Fiat. It's not about eliminating GM decision making... it's about introducing other methods into the mix so that it's not all GM decision making.

Perhaps. But different printed games have different printed principles, some more explicit some less. Are narrativist games generally more open about theirs? Perhaps. As it is not the dominant paradigm, it makes more to be more explicit about it, to avoid people assuming it should be played like more mainstream games.

I don't see why a list of principles... of things that are meant to guide you in areas of judgment... would ever be frowned upon in a game text. The idea that it's unnecessary is an odd one to me.

Looking at D&D 5e, I think it could do with a lot of that. Especially since it seems to support so many various approaches to play. They should include principles for all of them.

But ultimately what does it matter where the principles come from, as long as they exists? Like sure, it is nice if the book you presumably paid money for tells you how the game in it is supposed to be played, but in absence of that, you can just decide to run a game in certain way if you have sufficient understanding.

Well, I personally would have preferred a lot of different advice than what I got from my early days in the hobby. Not to have to trial and error things for years until this stuff all started becoming more widely discussed as the internet came along.

The explicit negotiation was already covered by several people, but you here, and @hawkeyefan above, reference influencing the GM decision making. In a game like this I need to think "Best not mention traps, or the GM will put one in the game" or alternatively trying to feed the GM the ideas I want to see. This to me is thinking about the GM's state of mind, as you need to if you're trying to influence it (or avoid influencing as it might be.) And this is purely player metagame thinking, as obviously the characters in the game do not think that their external reality is malleable that way! And in more trad game it isn't.

Well, when I GM these kinds of games, I want them to be about what the players are interested in. Hence why I might introduce a trap in a Score that's about infiltrating a location and stealing a treasure. Because the players are the ones who decided to infiltrate the place to get the treasure.

The "best not mention traps" angle is kind of silly, though, no? I mean... there are going to be obstacles. If it's not a trap, it'll be something else. And here's the thing... just as there are GM Principles, there are also player principles. What you're describing sounds to me like something that violates several of them.

• Embrace the Scoundrel's Life
• Go Into Danger, Fall in Love With Trouble
• Don't Be a Weasel
• Take Responsibility
• Don't Talk Yourself Out of Fun

If the game to you is "nebulous nothing" without constant intrusion of rules, that to me suggest that the fiction is poor. What actually is interesting in a roleplaying game are compelling and complex fictional situations where characters with values, goals and established personalities have to make meaningful decisions and experience intense emotions. You don't need rules for any of this. You don't need rules to tell the GM what to say, you don't need rules to tell the player how their character feels. GM crafts interesting situations, the players roleplay their characters. That's it, that is at the core of RPGs, and to me it seems that a lot of people are unable to see this under all the extraneous junk they've piled on top of it.

Your one true way doesn't appeal to me. I'm glad there are other methods for RPGs to allow us both to enjoy games.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The GM can do this with alarm. There's a spectrum that goes from "there are perfectly logical in-setting reasons for this" to "this required the GM to metagame heavily," but it can be easily done.

I don't know about Torchbearer. However, @Manbearcat mentioned that adventures have certain numbers of obstacles, so perhaps getting past the Aetherial Premonition could count as one of those obstacle.

If you're not sure about Torchbearer, then how can you draw the conclusion that they're equally subject to GM Fiat?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

First, thank you for the information on the rules. They seem to be way more involved and specific than I imagined.
I am however still somewhat confused what the camp event roll actually does though. I found this bit:

"In the Torchbearer core book, you roll to determine whether a camp is a disaster, minor inconvenience, safe camp, minor break or lucky break. Then you roll on a subtable to get a specific result."

Is this correct? How specific these events are?

They could really use a good Camp Events roll, so Yfrette decides to deploy Aetherial Premonition (Ob3).

In any case, this and @pemerton's insistence that the Aetherial Premonitions is not fate manipulation in the fiction, but a warning spell made me think of following:

By my understanding of the rules, like the your quote implies, it actually does increase the change of "good things" happening. However, by the fiction, the characters would have no reason to think this, so to them it would not make sense to cast the spell to increase the chances of good things happening, as as far as they know all it does is to warn them of the bad things.

Not a huge issue by any means, but I find that narativist games often have little oddities like this that cause disconnect between the player and character decision making.

 

[darkbard]

First, thank you for the information on the rules. They seem to be way more involved and specific than I imagined.
I am however still somewhat confused what the camp event roll actually does though. I found this bit:

"In the Torchbearer core book, you roll to determine whether a camp is a disaster, minor inconvenience, safe camp, minor break or lucky break. Then you roll on a subtable to get a specific result."

Is this correct? How specific these events are?



In any case, this and @pemerton's insistence that the Aetherial Premonitions is not fate manipulation in the fiction, but a warning spell made me think of following:

By my understanding of the rules, like the your quote implies, it actually does increase the change of "good things" happening. However, by the fiction, the characters would have no reason to think this, so to them it would not make sense to cast the spell to increase the chances of good things happening, as as far as they know all it does is to warn them of the bad things.

Not a huge issue by any means, but I find that narativist games often have little oddities like this that cause disconnect between the player and character decision making.

Why do you see this as a disconnect between player & character? The player is hoping for a positive outcome from AP. The character, in setting the AP to free their mind for other tasks that might result in a positive outcome, seeks the same thing. When I see criticism like this, I think of a failure of imagination in those who can't bridge the gap.

 

[zakael19]

The explicit negotiation was already covered by several people, but you here, and @hawkeyefan above, reference influencing the GM decision making. In a game like this I need to think "Best not mention traps, or the GM will put one in the game" or alternatively trying to feed the GM the ideas I want to see. This to me is thinking about the GM's state of mind, as you need to if you're trying to influence it (or avoid influencing as it might be.) And this is purely player metagame thinking, as obviously the characters in the game do not think that their external reality is malleable that way! And in more trad game it isn't.

I don't understand this, when you play a FITD game you generally know what you're getting into; and if you dont the player's best practices tell you. You should want to face cool obstacles that make sense in the fiction and push at your character's abilities and priorities! THat's like, the entire point - going into danger and seeing what happens. The game also tells players to advocate for what they want to see in the game, both writ large ("I'd like to see us engage with the tension around labor and strikebreaking") and small ("Im so very looking forward to having demons show up"). Your choice of playbook + abilities are also this.

If the game to you is "nebulous nothing" without constant intrusion of rules, that to me suggest that the fiction is poor. What actually is interesting in a roleplaying game are compelling and complex fictional situations where characters with values, goals and established personalities have to make meaningful decisions and experience intense emotions. You don't need rules for any of this. You don't need rules to tell the GM what to say, you don't need rules to tell the player how their character feels. GM crafts interesting situations, the players roleplay their characters. That's it, that is at the core of RPGs, and to me it seems that a lot of people are unable to see this under all the extraneous junk they've piled on top of it.

Why bother with any rules then? Why not just roll a d20 and fiat everything?

The reason PBTA et al have these awesome rules is to align the overarching play of the game to the designer's artistic vision. Then you can clearly say "this is ag game about doing X" and expect that for 95% of people the game will be about doing X. There's always a small number who will ignore everything and do what they want, but as Baker says - you design for the people under your curve who follow what you write.

 

[zakael19]

@zakael19

We were discussing Blades in the Dark earlier but I think this thread has moved on. If you would like to open a blades in the dark thread where I can bring up a scenario, ask questions on whether it follows the rules and if applicable ask about rules that seem to suggest otherwise I’d be interested.

There's an existing BITD thread here. Why not toss it in there and tag me if you do.