Prep situation to create plot

[pemerton]

We had rules issues in both of our sessions but I think we were/are in the process of ironing out the knots. It makes it harder to criticise parts of the game (magic) when other parts weren’t really working like they should have been.

The obvious issue was that we didn’t have the rules for elan/picklets nailed down in session one (and I was dead on my feet). In session two Verly was actually dead so I couldn’t use the elan/picklet rules.

I think today's session was tighter from a rules standpoint. And also from a situation standpoint.

Like the game says on the tin, it's helping me work on my GMing skills!

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Ah! I see. Ok. Well, I think I have talked ad nauseam about how Apocalypse World very very clearly handles and improves upon "how game provide stakes questions" and "players role in setting stakes". I can go back and revisit that if folks are interested, but to me those are pretty much the defining functions of a well done PBTA game.

It's been a while but.... Burning Wheel...eh... it gives you rulings, not stakes. Sorcerer gives stakes, no rulings (and not much of anything else either). Most games overall give you rulings and no stakes, like D&D. the GM has to set the stakes, if any, and most games like D&D don't even ask for that prior to the roll in all cases, but maybe some inconsistent). This is all fine, not really a dig. More of a comment that typically its up to the fiction/GM to set and define and generate new stakes.

... these rules permit a player to introduce new backstory that creates new stakes questions; but not to create new story elements that simply resolve or dissolve stakes questions.

This feels like a shots fired at BitD, which is fair, as it is designed to assume competency, so introducing new element is designed to resolve stakes or dissolve obstruction. It answers this with the design principle of "Introduction of new things that resolve conflict is less important than pacing and plot progression."
- Which, to me, makes it a fair 'counter' to the value assumed in "stakes resolution generative means".

And then we have Pasion de las Pasiones which is WHOLE HOG, on the train of "create new story elements that add states or new questions." Like... that is so huge in that game, it's most all of what it is. And its great! And its counter to BitD would be "competency is assumed, but pace comes from interesting things that may not advance/resolve the stakes/plot (by complicating it)"

 

[thefutilist]

I think today's session was tighter from a rules standpoint. And also from a situation standpoint.

Like the game says on the tin, it's helping me work on my GMing skills!

Yeah I think last session really did what I thought the game was designed to do. Some general notes:

How transparent (and in motion) the various factions were, really shows how the in play decisions created the plot in reference to the various ethos of the characters.

It really was full of theme almost from the get go. Tragic, darkly comic, hopeful? and an ending that was both understated and affective.

It shows how hard moral choices are emergent. Pogly murdering the Captain and being captured led to Verly being caught between her friendship and her emissary mission. I was sweating.

As a person I had harsh moral judgements about Pogly but found him sympathetic. The reverse was true of Verly.


Some stuff to ponder:

When Verly tried to shame Manee we went to the dice for a persuade roll. My general role-play ideology is to have the GM make the decision for Manee but were I in the same situation as @pemerton I might have gone to the dice. It would have felt like I was determining too much BUT I think that intuition is probably wrong and the GM should determine that much. Anyway I think it’s far less black and white than I often make it out to be.

One of my critiques of no-myth is that it can change how solid the NPC’s ethos is. FfR is interesting because you have to ask how much the retroactive continuity shift changes what you think of the NPC and how differently you then play them.

I’m very tepid (well maybe actively dislike) the magic system. It barely came into play this session which confirms my viewpoint.

 

[thefutilist]

And then we have Pasion de las Pasiones which is WHOLE HOG, on the train of "create new story elements that add states or new questions." Like... that is so huge in that game, it's most all of what it is. And its great! And its counter to BitD would be "competency is assumed, but pace comes from interesting things that may not advance/resolve the stakes/plot (by complicating it)"

I’ve not played or read Pasion but given Brandon Leon-Gambetta advocates for everything I hate in rpgs’, I don’t doubt it’s emblematic of the no-myth, generative resolution style.

There is an interesting question, to me anyway, as to when situation play becomes no-myth. If we played GURPS in the situation style, what changes in essence to make it into Pasion.

The big thing seems to be the attitude towards imagined fictional constraints. The simmyness of the fiction in terms of those constraints.

Does the warlord Noxious show he’s violent because the GM makes a move ‘attack directly’, and then has the fiction justify it. Or does the fiction suggest to the GM that this is what Noxious would do. Is the fiction leading or generated in hindsight.

If it’s generated in hindsight, on what basis do you decide what Noxious does? How do you pick a move?

The trad model falls into the sim, fictions leads camp. Except for the fact that the majority of it is railroaded and generated to justify the GM’s idea of where the plot must go. The usual sim cry of ‘what would actually happen, is no good at all because it means nothing. Yet constraint, sim, is to me the essence of the medium.

So this might be the core of where the two styles ‘disagree.’

 

[RenleyRenfield]

So this might be the core of where the two styles ‘disagree.’

I think I follow you here, but correct me if I misinterpret your ideas....

Let's start where I think there are two ideas you are talkin to that are getting mushed together.

The big thing seems to be the attitude towards imagined fictional constraints. The simmyness of the fiction in terms of those constraints.

Does the warlord Noxious show he’s violent because the GM makes a move ‘attack directly’, and then has the fiction justify it. Or does the fiction suggest to the GM that this is what Noxious would do. Is the fiction leading or generated in hindsight.

If it’s generated in hindsight, on what basis do you decide what Noxious does? How do you pick a move?

First, this skips a beat, and mixes up its conclusion.

No Myth simply states "nothing you haven't said to the group exists."
- Which means that "decide what Noxious does" = is not relevant to No Myth, or to PBTA or GURPS, or ...anything.

Because we are not:

• introducing anything new
• waiting for players to insert their impositions
• constrained by what Noxious 'must' do via fiction.

The situation is "You are meeting with Noxious to negotiate, and he is likely to attack you because you stole from him."
- This is a valid situation in any rpg pretty much whatsoever. and can be no myth relevant if we consider how its resolved overall, not just Noxious' action here.

In GURPS/D&D the representation here is that "the players have nothing that they or the GM did not explicitly state to have brought to or prepared for the situation which has not been stated/discussed by players and GM now or before the situation started."

In PBTA/BitD the representation here is that "we assume there are more things that could have happened before this, so the players get mechanics to insert into the fiction anything which they could have ostensibly prepared, brought, or established and that need not have been discussed at any point."

BOTH are equally plausible.

One is establishing relevance first and asking explicit preparation of players.
The other is set up in the preparation in the rears when the simulation calls for relevance.

But both resolve in a way that is plausible to the situation, we are just changing the emphasis from preparation vs. resolution.

Simulation asks a person, the player, and the GM too - to be as competent and engaged as their character, forcing limitation by real-world intellect. This is D&D and GURPS et al. But 'collecting bottles' is not always interesting... however situationist it is.

• personal note, at its worst: I find this comes up as chosen gameplay when GM is holding too tight to their plot, and not allowing risks and opportunity.
• personal note, at its best: it gives a sense of gritty accomplishment "I outsmarted the game" vibes. (not all of us are able to generate drama, so its nice when the simulation does.)

Dramatization asks a person to make the scene carry interest above and beyond mere resolution. If this were a movie, would it be exciting to watch. This is PBTA, FitD et al. But always choosing what is 'bombastic' is not always realistic or practical... however dramatic it is.

• personal note, at its worst: I find this comes up as chosen gameplay when GM is not sure how or when to make things resolve in a compelling way.
• person note, at its best: this allows for players to depict characters far more competent than they are. (not all of us are Navy seals or MI6 operatives.)

 

[pemerton]

This feels like a shots fired at BitD

I'm not saying anything about BitD, at least not on purpose: I've never played it, and have only read some bits of the rulebook. It's my attempt to summarise @thefutilist's reason for disliking no myth and generative resolution. My own favourite FRPG is Burning Wheel, which does permit generative resolution at least to some degree - although there's probably an open question about the degree to which resolution in BW is generative, depending on what one takes to be implicit in an already-established situation, as opposed to what one takes to be genuinely/fully generative. (This was discussed a bit more in this thread - Generative resolution - which you might remember as prompting you to similar questions as this thread has!)

It's been a while but.... Burning Wheel...eh... it gives you rulings, not stakes.

<snip>

typically its up to the fiction/GM to set and define and generate new stakes.

I'm not sure what you have in mind here.

The trad model falls into the sim, fictions leads camp. Except for the fact that the majority of it is railroaded and generated to justify the GM’s idea of where the plot must go. The usual sim cry of ‘what would actually happen, is no good at all because it means nothing. Yet constraint, sim, is to me the essence of the medium.

The return of the implicit!

I was re-reading the generative resolution thread from earlier this year (linked just above). I think the constable example, from Torchbearer 2e, is a long way from the Spider example from the Magpie website.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

I'm not saying anything about BitD, at least not on purpose: I've never played it, and have only read some bits of the rulebook. It's my attempt to summarise @thefutilist's reason for disliking no myth and generative resolution.

Ah, yes, that makes sense. I should amend my statement to be merely "this could apply to BitD", not that you or anyone is specifically picking on that game. I am just offering it up as 'sacrifice'

I'm not sure what you have in mind here.

I'm up to nothing major there, just a simple attempt to set context across games or terms I am familiar with in case its relevant here.

I thought it sounded like there my be desire for @thefutilist to try something like Pasion de las Pasiones for some unrealized desire to see a system that "permit a player to introduce new backstory that creates new stakes questions; but not to create new story elements that simply resolve or dissolve stakes questions." , which I feel it does well.

 

[thefutilist]

I think I follow you here, but correct me if I misinterpret your ideas....

Let's start where I think there are two ideas you are talkin to that are getting mushed together.


First, this skips a beat, and mixes up its conclusion.

No Myth simply states "nothing you haven't said to the group exists."
- Which means that "decide what Noxious does" = is not relevant to No Myth, or to PBTA or GURPS, or ...anything.

Because we are not:

• introducing anything new
• waiting for players to insert their impositions
• constrained by what Noxious 'must' do via fiction.

Most of my contention is really around the first point. How does the GM make decisions for Noxious?

No-myth is generally framed as ‘nothing exists that isn’t spoken’ but it’s more than that because of constraints and notions we have around character. I don’t think it’s as easy or pure as I often make it out to be but there is an extent to which you fix a character in your mind. This isn’t real in terms of the group being aware of it and yet it does provide constraint.

Here’s a hypothetical that hopefully demystifies that a bit. After the first session of Apocalypse World I go away and think about Noxious, only I write down all the stuff that’s true’. So he’s got a body part he follows around, a paragraph of backstory and a clock. Then I’m called away on business and so I hand my prep over to another GM. They’ve got similar constraints. Similar because they’re going to interpret that clock and paragraph differently to me. The way they act within those constraints will be wildly different between me and the new GM but there are constraints.

So what degree is there a dance or interplay between what I’m inspired to have Noxious do given the constraints and what I have Noxious do given the need to put forward something impactful? It’s a hard question and there’s tech out there that addresses that in different ways.

In a lot of PbtA advice I’ve seen, Noxious remains essentially a cipher by which the GM pushes buttons. I’m thinking predominately of Magpie games advice.



That’s relevant to my second major point of contention which is what’s being brought in by the GM. You’re talking about a lot of player stuff like whether they’d have a car waiting or whether they’re carrying C4 with them. Depending on the granularity of the resolution they can just declare that stuff and I’d kind of expect them too.

The cleanest example of what I’m advocating against is in the following Magpie text in the how to choose a move section.

Picking the Right GM Move in PbtA: Part One

In the Powered by the Apocalypse community, we’ve gotten used to a few pieces of terminology we use regularly—in particular, we talk a lot about soft and hard moves. Steve Segedy of Bully Pulpit Games wrote a post all about soft and hard moves, aptly titled “Soft and Hard Moves in The Warren...

magpiegames.com

On a miss the GM states the villain has captured the PC’s brother. That rubs me the wrong way for all sorts of reasons but at its core it's retroactively determining situation (creating a reveal). What are the constraints on the GM though, what's the GM's job? To me it's throwing out the primary constructive constraints of roleplay games.

 

[thefutilist]

The return of the implicit!

I was re-reading the generative resolution thread from earlier this year (linked just above). I think the constable example, from Torchbearer 2e, is a long way from the Spider example from the Magpie website.

I got into a tangent in that thread. Posting here instead of there.

The Torchbearer example requires generating facts because the trigger is a skill use with no necessary opposition. In contrast to Apocalypse World which requires pre-established opposition, I.E. it’s conflict resolution.

Where the line got blurry is that implicit threats can constitute conflict but they do so by stacking a bunch of stuff together. My argument against that is really just raising an eyebrow.

More formally I’d try and look at what the escalation line is. I wish we had standardised terms for the following:

Intent – tactics/means. What are the means in conflict with, such that different tactics/means do actually constitute a separate arena of conflict and therefore produce a different meaning within the resolution.

Or more simply.

If I’m buying something and I use my money skill, it suggests that money is the means by which II gain my intent (buying something), and failure means my tactics/means is somehow insufficient. Which leads to switching arenas (ok I’ll steal it instead).

That’s not the case with the TB example because the resolution established nothing about the means. Or if it did. Yeah I get the stuff anyway but failure means the sergeant comes. Then really we’re dealing with what power the GM has to introduce more stuff and nothing to do with whether the means are tested.


The blurry line would be retroactive establishment of means, which is fine in some cases but fatal in others.

Verly goes to the merchant to buy some food and so we test money. I fail and so we establish that she doesn’t have enough coin on her. But given her usual positioning she could probably give away a gold ring or something.

If Verly fights the goblin and loses and I (or you) establish a reason why. Then we might be in dangerous territory because eliding the precise nature of the why has a different effect on building meaning/theme than a continual justification for loss.

 

[FrogReaver]

I got into a tangent in that thread. Posting here instead of there.

The Torchbearer example requires generating facts because the trigger is a skill use with no necessary opposition. In contrast to Apocalypse World which requires pre-established opposition, I.E. it’s conflict resolution.

Where the line got blurry is that implicit threats can constitute conflict but they do so by stacking a bunch of stuff together. My argument against that is really just raising an eyebrow.

More formally I’d try and look at what the escalation line is. I wish we had standardised terms for the following:

Intent – tactics/means. What are the means in conflict with, such that different tactics/means do actually constitute a separate arena of conflict and therefore produce a different meaning within the resolution.

Or more simply.

If I’m buying something and I use my money skill, it suggests that money is the means by which II gain my intent (buying something), and failure means my tactics/means is somehow insufficient. Which leads to switching arenas (ok I’ll steal it instead).

That’s not the case with the TB example because the resolution established nothing about the means. Or if it did. Yeah I get the stuff anyway but failure means the sergeant comes. Then really we’re dealing with what power the GM has to introduce more stuff and nothing to do with whether the means are tested.


The blurry line would be retroactive establishment of means, which is fine in some cases but fatal in others.

Verly goes to the merchant to buy some food and so we test money. I fail and so we establish that she doesn’t have enough coin on her. But given her usual positioning she could probably give away a gold ring or something.

If Verly fights the goblin and loses and I (or you) establish a reason why. Then we might be in dangerous territory because eliding the precise nature of the why has a different effect on building meaning/theme than a continual justification for loss.

I think you’re basically pointing at something real in the ‘means vs intent’ framing: sometimes what’s being tested isn’t just whether you succeed, but whether a particular method is adequate in that situation.

This notion of method adequacy is the key addition. It means failure isn’t only ‘you don’t get what you want,’ but potentially ‘this approach doesn’t work here,’ which is a different kind of claim about the fiction.

The recurring ambiguity then isn’t really task vs conflict. It’s whether ‘means’ are being treated as stable, testable constraints during resolution, or as flexible post-hoc explanations for outcomes. That slippage is what produces the sense that the ground is shifting after the roll.