A "theory" thread
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
We could follow up this example. Suppose instead there is some context and the player says 'Cool. Can I hear anyone snoring?'
This takes us away from action resolution methodology and into other important areas - such as authority distribution and goal setting, amongst others.
Can I hear anyone snoring?
Firstly, whose job is it to answer? Traditionally, it's considered the GMs job to answer, but it needn't be and I've played games in which it isn't (or needn't be).
If we look at the traditional method for answering, it's done roughly like this:
Does the GM have a note of sounds of snoring at this place?
If not;
Does the GM imagine there is anyone / anything here?
What time does the GM imagine it is?
Does the GM imagine that the person / thing here might be asleep at this time?
Might that sleeping thing be a thing which snores (in the GMs imagination)?
At that point, with some conception in their own mind of the situation, the GM asks a player to roll a dice and uses that to make some decision about what parts of their conception of the situation they will reveal to the player, and in some instances what inaccurate parts they might include.
Everything in this approach is about the GMs conception of the situation, and how close the GM permits the player to get to matching their own conception. It relies on very high levels of GM authority and reactive play.
Some variation of this approach would make up the overwhelming number of cases in D&D, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller and many other games.
A shared conception approach
Apocalypse World would not handle the situation in the same way. Nor would Burning Wheel. Both games would force player and GM to drive towards the question 'Why does it matter?' and also towards the even more vital 'Who gets to say why it matters?'
Neither of these are straightforward, but would in almost all cases involve some kind of ongoing conversation to reach a new understanding of why this now matters.
For example, in Apocalypse World you can read a sitch but only if the situation is charged. So the MC would need to ask the player 'Are you thinking you're in danger right now, or getting ready for something awful to happen?' Or the MC might ask questions and build on the answers: "You know who sleeps here, right? Who is that? And what do you owe them?"
These questions ask the player to define why their character is in this situation, what matters to them, what they want and what might be at risk. The MC doesn't assume the authority to answer the question - the player's question (about snoring) is a starting point for finding out more about the player character, their intent and goals.
I could talk some about Burning Wheel, and how that might also be handled. But i think the differentiation here is sufficient for now.
Last edited:
@chaochou
Excellent post!
As GM, I should already know the answer to that, as I've framed a situation to put pressure, or at least to meaningfully speak to, a Belief.
I would want to know why the player cares about the snoring. (Which might mean asking them!, if they haven't already made it clear.) I can imagine it being an attempt to learn more about the framed situation and associated consequence-space (eg the action is in a tavern - is there anyone else there asleep?). But I can also imagine it being about their being another potentially significant actor in the situation - which means maybe it's a Circles check. There are other possibilities too.
I think upthread (or maybe in some other recent thread) I mentioned that some games make the evaluative/normative orientation of the fiction relevant to framing and resolution. Your (chaochou's) post I see as (among other things) digging down into how that works - ie the "shared conception" results in part from the player providing evaluation and normativity. My thoughts on the BW possibilities are trying to do the same.
Excellent post!
In the Burning Wheel context, my first question (as a spectator) is "What Belief is implicated in the current situation?"
As GM, I should already know the answer to that, as I've framed a situation to put pressure, or at least to meaningfully speak to, a Belief.
I would want to know why the player cares about the snoring. (Which might mean asking them!, if they haven't already made it clear.) I can imagine it being an attempt to learn more about the framed situation and associated consequence-space (eg the action is in a tavern - is there anyone else there asleep?). But I can also imagine it being about their being another potentially significant actor in the situation - which means maybe it's a Circles check. There are other possibilities too.
I think upthread (or maybe in some other recent thread) I mentioned that some games make the evaluative/normative orientation of the fiction relevant to framing and resolution. Your (chaochou's) post I see as (among other things) digging down into how that works - ie the "shared conception" results in part from the player providing evaluation and normativity. My thoughts on the BW possibilities are trying to do the same.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
@chaochou is it even POSSIBLE for a player to ask "Do I hear snoring?" in classic D&D? It is NOT an action declaration, nor does it map to any comprehensible action! If you are listening, then you will hear whatever it is there is to hear (modulus some check perhaps). It may be snoring, and the GM should probably -in keeping with the system's conceits- simply answer "you hear X." I could see a player asking this sort of question in classic D&D if they EXPECTED there to be snoring, but the only way such an expectation could exist is on the basis of something the GM has already conveyed to them.
I think this illustrates how DEEP the difference is between these types of system.
I think this illustrates how DEEP the difference is between these types of system.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
I'm really not sure what 3 is supposed to mean - what does a linkage between fictional positioning and regulatory and constitutive rules mean? What's an example of such a linkage?
Perhaps its 2. regulatory and constitutive rules for updating the fictional positioning?
clearstream
(He, Him)
It's a reference out to the background discussion of "fictional positioning" which you can find on Vincent Baker's preserved Anyway archive (follow the links from the 1st block "Dice and Clouds" and the 4th block "Positioning Real & Fictional".)
- A link from system-to-system is something like roll a damage die and subtract the number from your hit points (change to system state).
- A link from system-to-fiction is something like if you take more than 4 damage, you are knocked down (change to fiction state, and perhaps also change to system state.)
- A link from fiction-to-system is something like "I run up the hill to higher ground" and gain a +2 circumstantial modifier to hit.
clearstream
(He, Him)
Whether it is or not, they can and do. So that's mystifying...
Yes! So your example started with 'Suppose the GM provides a context'. I think it's obvious that the process - and the participants - in this step of 'creating context' is a fundamental component of what gets called 'playstyle' and the experience of play.
Here's a traditional (and well-regarded) example of one method of this 'creating context':
"Adventurers from a foreign land find themselves in Barovia, a mysterious realm surrounded by deadly fog, and ruled by Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire and wizard.... a fortune teller named Madame Eva sets them on a dark course that takes them to many corners of Barovia, culminating with a vampire hunt in Castle Ravenloft."
This tells us a few things. The players' characters must be adventurers. The characters are foreigners, so they are not allowed pre-established knowledge or connections to this place or its people - this establishes the GM as the gatekeeper of all information about the setting and situation. It is unequivocal about what the adventurers' task is. And it says, in broad terms, how the adventurers will accomplish this task.
I'd contrast with how my group establishes new games. Since you mentioned Burning Wheel, I'll give an example of that. The conversation went a bit like this:
Me: "How about a game set in a folklore-ish medieval England?"
Player A: "Could be good, sort of fantasy Robin Hood?"
Me: "Sure? Like corrupt officials and a greedy and overbearing local lord?"
Player B: "That works if we're going to be a sort of resistance movement or fugitives."
Player C: " We might start out just normal folk who become fugitives."
Me: "Oh, so we could create a remote woodland village with you as some of the common folk and have some tax collectors arrive, and see what develops."
Player A: "Can I run the local mill?"
Me: "Maybe the harvest has been really poor this year."
Player A: "Right! So I'm struggling and we've been out poaching in the deep woods."
Player B: "In that case I'd be the woodsman and hunter who knows those lands - maybe I'm helping you out because I'm hoping to marry your daughter."
Player C: "It would be great to have a minor landowner, but my lands were seized and I've been sheltering in this village with the local priest."
To be clear, that's a sanitised and precis version of half an hour or hour of knocking ideas about, but I think the points of difference in this version of 'establishing context' are obvious. The characters aren't 'adventurers'. The themes and content of the game have been established by the players. The game doesn't assume homogenous goals amongst the player characters - one is struggling for money, one wants a wife, both have been poaching, one has an ongoing conflict around their lands and a relationship with the church. And the characters are not strangers in their own adventure - their deeds and actions are rooted within a community they implicitly know and understand something about.
It's an interesting question! How does one stop a player asking? Does the GM say 'You're not allowed to ask that."
It would seem to me that classic dungeon crawling assumes players will ask clarifying questions with the aim of getting their conception of the situation to match the GMs ever more closely, until they feel confident to pursue a course of action.
Last edited:
I think @AbdulAlhazred's suggestion was that the GM interprets it as a declaration that "I listen" and responds to that. I think what he had in mind is that the player has no real authority or capacity to make snoring salient as opposed to any other sort of noise.
clearstream
(He, Him)
I agree on that and it is worth pointing out. I was thinking of my own typical experience in DMing D&D. Even where adopting a heavily DM-curated stance, players say and ask things all the time that put me on the spot to say whether X is true (X being something I might not have even considered prior to that moment.) For that reason, part of what @AbdulAlhazred wrote did not seem right to me.
I don't know if this is interesting, or a dead end! However, experience is that when a game is run using what I outlined as 'the traditional method' the players will ask all kinds of questions which defy either documentation or any procedural method of determination. Is the doorframe made of oak? Do the cooking utensils we found have maker's marks? Can I find pine cones here?
I agree that in such a style the player has no authority to make these things salient. The problem is that the GM can't prevent such enquiries in games built around learning the GMs conception of the fiction. It's a breakpoint in the authority structure.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
My emphasis, obvs. I'm just chiming in that for me that's one of the most interesting spaces in RPG play. When it's not the players making things salient or manifesting things into existence, and it's outside the scope of GM prep and their immediate authority. I think that's where a lot of the good quantum foam in any given session comes from.
niklinna
no forge waffle!
Interesting! Could you elaborate and/or give an example? What falls outside of the scope of all that? I'm particularly curious about the "immediate" in GM's "immediate authority".
I'm not sure how to map the limits of this kind of "soft" player inquiry/declaration, but it definitely maps to my experience of play. Arguably this is a question of clarity, not introducing new elements to the fiction, creation requires detail be explicated from existing fictional elements.
I'm certain we can determine there's some limit that's outside the player's ability to prompt, but I'm not sure how to define that neatly.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
Well, for quantum foam I really mean to use the technical term "awesomesauce", or perhaps "world lubricant", but that sounds odd. Don't call it that.
I think what I mean is that there's sometimes a space in a game where the "authority structure" (whether that leans toward GM authority, or games with a more collaborative approach) does, as @chaochou says, break down. Suddenly no one knows if there are any pine cones on the forest floor, or if this particular wooden frame's made of oak or ash, or if these are the same goat-herders you saw from a distance three sessions ago.
By immediate authority I mean details that are perhaps too zoomed in, too fine grained, or just too ephemeral/mundane for the GM to have put in their prep. So the GM can't look at their notes to find out. The players have asked questions that do need an answer, and everyone is caught in a moment where it's Schroedinger's X. It's like a rugby scrum, in a way, two teams leaning into each other, balanced, with the ball bouncing around somewhere inside. An observer knows the ball is there, but can't say where.
Instead of this being a failure state, point of contention, or opportunity for the GM to re-assert authority ("Give me ten minutes while I research the types of wood used in Norse door frames and the density of pine cones in mixed forests"), it can be a fantastic opportunity to explore the emergent properties of a setting. Burning Wheel does this with the Die of Fate. Questions from the GM and players that can be formulated along the lines of could it be the case that...? is it possible and logical that X might happen...? are resolved by rolling a d6. On a 1, it happens. Maybe the odds get adjusted, if the group thinks that 2-in-6 or 50/50 is a better probability.
Here the immediate authority of the GM has broken down, the players can only ask questions of the environment, so the answer to the question is ceded to the die roll. And the game (not just Burning Wheel, any game can add this mechanic in with a coin toss or whatever), the fiction, the world-in-motion is taken out of the hands of the group. Many of the most memorable tangents and zig-zags and out-of-left-fields in the games I run have happened because of this "quantum foam", as I call it.
You feel me fam? Or am I talking rubbish?
niklinna
no forge waffle!
Yes this makes eminent sense, thank you for explaining!
It reminds me of the first session in a campaign where we were trapped in a cellar with skeletons attacking and someone asked if there were any tubs of butter. The GM was a bit perplexed but said sure why not, and so we dumped the butter on the floor and the skeleons slipped and fell. We joked about "the butter trap" for the rest of the campaign! This is not exactly what you're talking about perhaps, but it's pretty close. Also it was literally lubricant.
Last edited:
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
Every game benefits from a little lube! Glad you understood what I'm getting at, and any given game's moments when the "tub of butter" comes out is a fine way of putting it!Yes this makes eminent sense, than you for explaining!
It reminds me of the first session in a campaign where we were trapped in a cellar with skeletons attacking and someone asked if there were any tubs of butter. The GM was a bit perplexed but said sure why not, and so we dumped the butter on the floor and the skeleons slipped and fell. We joked about "the butter trap" for the rest of the campaign! This is not exactly what you're talking about perhaps, but it's pretty close. Also it was literally lubricant.
So what are the general limitations/parameters on this kind of addition to the fictional world? I have a couple thoughts on some basics principles.
- Players make suggestions that are vetted/approved by the GM.
- These suggestions most not contravene existing established framing.
- These suggestions must elaborate on or provide additional detail to an existing element of the fiction.
- These elements must relate to something the player characters can perceive with their senses.
JAMUMU
go, hunt. kill haribos.
I don't think vetted/approved by the GM is the gist of what I was aiming at. I think it's when both the players and GM honestly don't know/aren't sure. So the randomiser determines whether the addition happens.
