Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7114944" data-attributes="member: 42582">Ron Edwards once made <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.0" target="_blank">this post</a> about authority over the content of the fiction, and scene-framing - and it seems relevant to this thread:Content authority - over what we're calling back-story, e.g. whether Sam is a KGB mole, or which NPC is boinking whom Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content, although notice it can apply to player-characters' material as well as GM material - and look out, because within this authority lies the remarkable pitfall of wanting (for instances) revelations and reactions to apply precisely to players as they do to characters Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . . There is no overlap between those four types of authority. They are four distinct phenomena. Do they have causal relationships among one another? Of course. The easiest version is top-down reductionist: because content is consulted, a plot authority decision is made, and then a situational authority decision/presentation must be made, and finally narrational authority must be exercised. I assume that for you, this is the most easy and familiar construction, and you're used to conducting them (or at least constructing them, idealistically speaking) as a single causal sequence in this order, with one person in charge - it's a "thing," perhaps the thing you call GMing. . . . The real point, not the side-point, is that any one of these authorities can be shared across the individuals playing without violating the other authorities. . . . in the Jasmine game . . . I had a bunch of NPCs. Whatever happened, I'd play them, which is to say, I'd decide what they did and said. You should see that I simply gave up the reins of "how the story will go" (plot authority) entirely. . . . in the Jasmine game, I scene-framed . . . That's my job as GM in playing The Pool. By the rules, players can narrate outcomes to conflict rolls, but they can't start new scenes. But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing), and the players and I sharing authority over narrational authority, which provided me with cues, in the sense of no-nonsense instructions, regarding later scene framing. And similarly, like situational authority, content authority was left entirely to my seat at the table. There was no way for a player's narration to clash with the back-story. All of the player narrations concerned plot authority, like the guy's mask coming off in my hypothetical example above, or in the case of the Jasmine game, the one suitor becoming a popular rather than sinister guy through his actions. . . . That's a Trollbabe technique that is specifically permitted by the rules [eg "in an interrogation scene, a player might be able to say, 'I want to roll to find out what his connection to the mafia is,' and if he is successful, then the victim of the interrogation is involved in the mafia, period"], which is to say, the GM is bound by the rules of the game to add elements into the back-story, continually, based on the conflicts that the players bring into it. If the players don't want to do any such thing, they frame no such conflicts in this manner, and if they do, well, the GM's job is to cope. . . . But note - that is a technique of a specific game, and not even a required one within it. It does not exist in The Pool's rules, and in fact, is defined out of them given the rules that are there. . . . You gave him [a player whom the GM found disruptive] narrational authority ("describe how you're involved") and he took situational authority ("am I or am I not involved"). That's all there is to that story, right there. . . . Well, let's look at this again. Actually, I think it has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. Or if we are playing a game in which we do "next person to the left frames each scene," and if that confidence is just as shared, around the table, that each of us will get to the stuff that others want (again, suggestions are accepted), then all is well. It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared] I[maginary] S[pace] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.In the "standard narrativistic model", the GM has full situational authority. But authority over content is distributed - eg the players, in building their PCs, establish elements of backstory (eg the existence of groups they belong to, allies and rivals, etc). And the GM is obliged to make this player-authored stuff part of the game, ie part of the framed scenes.Narrational authority belongs to the player in declaring his/her PC's action, but shifts to the GM in the event of failures, while remaining at least in part with the player in the event of success (eg at a minimum the PC has got something of what s/he was hoping for); and these exercises of narrational authority establish new material ("consequences") that, again the GM is expected to incorporate (via situational authority) into new situations.If the GM is usurping narrational authority around action declaration or consequences of success; or is disregarding the obligations that govern his/her use of situational authority, including the duty to have regard to player exercises of content authority and narrational authority; that will be evident. (Hence, as I've said, no illusionism.)If the GM doesn't do any of the stuff in the previous paragraph, but nevertheless includes stuff that wouldn't have been there but for the GM wanting it to be there (eg Darth Vader, a dark naga, a renegade elf, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s war of orcs vs hobgoblins) then we might have a great game!But if the GM is not exercising his/her narrational and situational authority well - no one is interested in the consequences, the scenes fall flat, etc - then the game is not delivering "story now". Whether or not people keep going along with it (which is a purely social matter, nothing to do with RPGing as such) it's going to be a failure from the "story now" point of view. And that failure won't be secret either - "falling flat" with an audience (the players) isn't something that can happen without the players noticing.</blockquote>

Verification