Introducing Complications Without Forcing Players to Play the "Mother May I?" Game

[Alexander Kalinowski]

The same point I made upthread applies: this is not in general true of RPGing. Eg you won't find anything in Classic Traveller that states or implies that a GM has this power. Nor in Moldvay Basic. Just to pick two examples.

Well, if you don't want to believe that is the standard modus operandi in role-playing, then I don't know what to say to you.

That goes to fictional positioning. The GM isn't just at liberty to declare that some player's PC is under a love spell.

Just as a thought experiment, watch me as a GM just declare it. There's nothing you can do to stop it, except to abandon me as a GM.

In most RPGs that I play that's actually not a valid action declaration, because it doesn't satisfy the constraints imposed by the PC's fictional positioning.

Who is the final arbiter of that? The GM. As a thought experiment, if a player draws a non-existent sword and the GM consents, what's anybody else going to do about it but get up and leave the nonsense behind?

What is a GM going to do if a player insists "I draw my sword" even though the GM has specified that there are no swords in his/her gameworld?

Continue the fiction otherwise. And if the one player insists, remove him from play ultimately. Remember that the GM is generally the one who has prepped the on-going adventure (and possibly knows the game rules far better than any player). Without him, the session either ends or ends up in collaborative story-telling by the players. But in any case not in a normal gaming session. Removing a player is, on average, less fussy.

Thanks for the pro-tip.

What makes you think that my players would declare "We take Roland to a hospital" if they were on a planet lacking any sentient life? Or indeed were somewhere where they couldn't readily ascertain the presence of hospitals?

I was writing down 2 examples with the lowest and highest probability of finding a hospital that sprung to mind.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, if you don't want to believe that is the standard modus operandi in role-playing, then I don't know what to say to you.

It is not. One-true-wayism is never persuasive.

Just as a thought experiment, watch me as a GM just declare it. There's nothing you can do to stop it, except to abandon me as a GM.

What would you do if I tied you to a chair and lit your house on fire? Proposing bad behavior seems a very poor way to make a point.

Who is the final arbiter of that? The GM. As a thought experiment, if a player draws a non-existent sword and the GM consents, what's anybody else going to do about it but get up and leave the nonsense behind?

The GM is not always the final arbiter. This is what you're failing to understand. And, in insisting that it's the GM's way or the highway, your explicitly presenting Mother May I play. Do you not see this?

Continue the fiction otherwise. And if the one player insists, remove him from play ultimately. Remember that the GM is generally the one who has prepped the on-going adventure (and possibly knows the game rules far better than any player). Without him, the session either ends or ends up in collaborative story-telling by the players. But in any case not in a normal gaming session. Removing a player is, on average, less fussy.

So, unless the players' actions are allowed by the GM, there is no game. How, possibly, can you assert this and deny MMI?

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

So Illusionism then?

Now, that's a dirty word.

A couple thoughts.

1) I’ve brought up GM covert application of Force (to dictate GM preferred outcomes, to ensure GM plot and GM preferred play trajectory) many times on these boards. I’ve been told many times that the deployment of Illusionism isn’t a go-to in certain forms of GMing (in particular, the AD&D 2e style that emerged around Dragonlance and matured with White Wolf). Yet, I constantly see it being espoused as fundamental either knowingly or unknowingly (eg; we get a play excerpt or example that has it on full display).

Force is a tool in a-many GMs' toolbox. And like any tool, it can be handled well and it can be handled awkwardly. Most importantly, I'd like you to recall what I said about MMI: when a GM abandons game world simulation, he does so out of meta-concerns. These may be well-founded or they might be capricious.

2) I think you’ll find it more controversial than you may be aware of.

I think I am aware of it. There's no accounting for taste.

3) I’m beginning to understand your difficulty internalizing PbtA games. Illusionism, “steering”, and GM preconceived plot are quite literally anathema to the ruleset, it’s play agenda, and it’s GMing principles. Those game systems are literally an answer to the question “how do we get an exciting, premise-focused, freeform TTRPGing experience where all participants at the table can play to find our what happens?”

I think your explanation of PbtA conforms exactly with my own interpretation of it, which sees this family of RPGs for the most part as story-generation games (which is not to deny that they're RPGs; they are) with snowballing Moves as their building blocks.

If you’re working off the conception that such a goal isn’t possible (I’m not sure you are, but I expect you may be), it’s going to be all but impossible to get your head around the games’ machinery. Or until you play it with folks who don’t share your predisposition.

I think I get that. My issue with PbtA is that I wouldn't want it to be my main game because I have preference for games who model the gaming-world in greater detail and thus giving more weight to certain parts of the narration. If the GM tells me in Shadowrun that the enemy orc is 7 meters away and running side-ways, I am aware of the definite mechanical implications of that. This is what I call the physics of a gaming world because, ironically, they impose a constraint on what the GM can do.
(Which, btw, a GM could overrule - in theory. But of course, the threat of players getting up and leaving might be quite real in such a case.)

 

[Numidius]

I think this is really just a difference of degree though. What PbtA sounds like to me is an approach highly focused on this question. The style we are espousing isn't nearly so focused (and doesn't particularly desire to be). If I understand PbtA based on what you are saying (and I may well not, because I haven't played it and I hear different things about it---which I assume could just be people describing the same thing differently, or people describing different incarnations of the system), it almost casts the GM the being surprised is baked into the system. That is fine if it is the case, but the GMs engaged in the style we are talking about also want to be surprised. If they didn't they'd just run something more like an adventure path or even a railroaded adventure structured around set pieces. The whole point of the sandbox is you don't know where the players will go, you don't know how they will react to situations. It is like chemistry. You put different things into play and the characters interact with them, and you react to that. It is a very exciting process in my opinion. I would definitely encourage anyone who wants some insight into this style to check out some of the blog entries of Clash Bowley on Situational GMing. I incorporate a lot of that approach into my sandbox play (I think this is the initial post on it, but he elaborates more in later entries: http://iflybynight.blogspot.com/2009/09/situational-gming.html). It is also not simply a matter of the GM deciding everything that occurs at the table. Many of us have mentioned we frequently use random tools like encounter tables, various procedures for determining unknowns etc (we just are not obligated to if we think we've got it figured out already). For example I use things like Dilemma Tables (which I roll on when things are coming to a head, and where something arises that demands immediate attention and the players and they now need to choose between two very important things, both of which usually have consequences for not being tended to). I also make heavy use of a simplified resolution system to handle 'off camera' tasks. So if players hire two thieves and send them to steal the Bone Breaking Stick, I eyeball the skill level of the thieves and assign them a dice pool, then roll against a dice pool I assign to Bone Breaking Sect's level of security (say 2d10 against 6d10 or something) to figure out if they succeed. I am not obligated to do it. But I often like doing these things and I find it helpful. I think a key difference from what I do, and what someone like Pemerton might want, is I am pretty free to make a ruling on the fly as to how this will be resolved (or if it will even be resolved mechanically). That frees me up to try and invent a lot of different approaches until I find one that fits. I like this because that is how I ended up with this dice pool method, and I am always free to discard it when it stops being useful. But the overall point here is, I genuinely like being surprised too. I just don't feel like I need it to be a central focus of the game.

I would not say the purpose of the gm in pbta games is to be surprised, but rather to see where the game will go, together with the players, given the premises, setting, pc background et al.
I guess very similar to how you describe your sandbox play style.
(Caveat: I can only speak for AW and DW)
The difference is that while it is a choice of yours to play a sandbox game centered around the Player characters (say, in 5e), in AW-DW is the default assumption.

 

[Manbearcat]

If I had one wish for conversation on this board (I have more than one), it might be that we didn’t frame TTRPG participant roles as this unprincipled construct devoid of focus and restraint...constrained only by loss of social capital (eg “All that can happen is a player walk-out”).

All of human activity (being animals that organize socially) can be reduced to loss or gain of social capital with attendant knock-on effects (loss of friendships, loss of faith in a system you represent/disenfranchisement, reputational damage which has its own knock-on effects, loss of financial capital, loss of freedom, loss of life).

TTRPG behavior isn’t unique in this (though the stakes may be lower than other losses of social capital).

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

It is not. One-true-wayism is never persuasive.

How is claiming that something is a de facto standard way of handling thing one-true-wayism? The statement was descriptive, nor prescriptive. It is either a correct observation or not.
Maybe you're a bit too fond of using that word here.

What would you do if I tied you to a chair and lit your house on fire? Proposing bad behavior seems a very poor way to make a point.

I am demonstrating that the ultimate limit to GM power is in the willingness of his players to put up with it. There is no WotC police you can call to keep an unruly GM in check. Whether a rulebook states that a GM may break any rule or not is (a priori) fairly meaningless. What matters is what the players want and how much they want it: do they want a game strictly by the book? Or are they fine with the GM going against rules whenever he sees fit? Or do they want him to go by the book but not so much that they're willing to walk out? Or maybe they are willing to tolerate smaller infractions...
So if any rule in any RPG book has any meaning, it's because the GM is delberately sticking with it or the players' willingness to make sure it's being adhered to.

Still, most of the above is a thought experiment and not likely real world scenarios, thank goodness.

The GM is not always the final arbiter. This is what you're failing to understand. And, in insisting that it's the GM's way or the highway, your explicitly presenting Mother May I play. Do you not see this?

Gentle reminder that the debate has moved to the context of very traditional RPGs. Not in the context of, say, more recent narrative games which may have different approaches to player agency and/or distributed story-telling.
And to make my point more clear with a less absurd example - I have seen GMs in games like Shadowrun or D&D go: "Ah, your characters movement rate is X... but that enemy is X+1 meters away. Ah, what the hell, you do make it into close combat. Roll for attack." The "fictional positioning" (LOL) didn't allow the PC to reach the enemy, strictly going by the rules. The GM just gave the guy a break. In traditional games, the standard mode of operations is that the GM can take such decisions. Single players can't and player consensus can't either.

So, unless the players' actions are allowed by the GM, there is no game. How, possibly, can you assert this and deny MMI?

Well, yes, if the entire group objects strongly to the GM's style, there is no game. That was part of my point. And this part of the discussion isn't so much about MMI but about whether players can declare actions or only intent. I hold that in your average RPG, it is the latter because GMs possibly can interdict the translation from intent to action. They might need a convincing fictional reason to keep the players from balking though, depending on group.

 

[Numidius]

How is claiming that something is a de facto standard way of handling thing one-true-wayism? The statement was descriptive, nor prescriptive. It is either a correct observation or not.
Maybe you're a bit too fond of using that word here.



I am demonstrating that the ultimate limit to GM power is in the willingness of his players to put up with it. There is no WotC police you can call to keep an unruly GM in check. Whether a rulebook states that a GM may break any rule or not is (a priori) fairly meaningless. What matters is what the players want and how much they want it: do they want a game strictly by the book? Or are they fine with the GM going against rules whenever he sees fit? Or do they want him to go by the book but not so much that they're willing to walk out? Or maybe they are willing to tolerate smaller infractions...
So if any rule in any RPG book has any meaning, it's because the GM is delberately sticking with it or the players' willingness to make sure it's being adhered to.

Still, most of the above is a thought experiment and not likely real world scenarios, thank goodness.



Gentle reminder that the debate has moved to the context of very traditional RPGs. Not in the context of, say, more recent narrative games which may have different approaches to player agency and/or distributed story-telling.
And to make my point more clear with a less absurd example - I have seen GMs in games like Shadowrun or D&D go: "Ah, your characters movement rate is X... but that enemy is X+1 meters away. Ah, what the hell, you do make it into close combat. Roll for attack." The "fictional positioning" (LOL) didn't allow the PC to reach the enemy, strictly going by the rules. The GM just gave the guy a break. In traditional games, the standard mode of operations is that the GM can take such decisions. Single players can't and player consensus can't either.



Well, yes, if the entire group objects strongly to the GM's style, there is no game. That was part of my point. And this part of the discussion isn't so much about MMI but about whether players can declare actions or only intent. I hold that in your average RPG, it is the latter because GMs possibly can interdict the translation from intent to action. They might need a convincing fictional reason to keep the players from balking though, depending on group.

If that fictional positioning is on a grid, then it's on a grid, not in FP.
If it's entirely fictional, who decided the enemy is exactly 7 meters away?

 

[Bedrockgames]

If I had one wish for conversation on this board (I have more than one), it might be that we didn’t frame TTRPG participant roles as this unprincipled construct devoid of focus and restraint...constrained only by loss of social capital (eg “All that can happen is a player walk-out”).

All of human activity (being animals that organize socially) can be reduced to loss or gain of social capital with attendant knock-on effects (loss of friendships, loss of faith in a system you represent/disenfranchisement, reputational damage which has its own knock-on effects, loss of financial capital, loss of freedom, loss of life).

TTRPG behavior isn’t unique in this (though the stakes may be lower than other losses of social capital).

Can all human interaction be reduced to that? I am not so sure

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

If that fictional positioning is on a grid, then it's on a grid, not in FP.
If it's entirely fictional, who decided the enemy is exactly 7 meters away?

I don't remember the specifics. Either the distance of half a grid was sufficient in that case to count as in melee range or the GM had a personal map/sketch behind the screen.

 

[Manbearcat]

Can all human interaction be reduced to that? I am not so sure

I don’t think all of human interaction is just the accrual, expenditure, and costs of social capital...but I think we could reduce it to that (in the same way I often see TTRPG participant roles reduced to that).