Prep situation to create plot

[Fenris-77]

The GM still has authority and can revise as necessary:

Thefutilist: As grass approaches his workshop, he finds me outside playing with my knives.

MC: No because of X


Is much the same as:

Thefutilist: can I be outside of Grass’ workshop when he arrives back?

MC: No because of X

Both of these examples are player declarations that have some fundamental issues. The players don't get to declare that they find something, they get to declare that they are searching for it. The GM is who declares what they find. This is a very standard misunderstanding of the PbtA mechanics.

Not to mess with your exemplars, but I think this one is flawed.

 

[thefutilist]

Both of these examples are player declarations that have some fundamental issues. The players don't get to declare that they find something, they get to declare that they are searching for it. The GM is who declares what they find. This is a very standard misunderstanding of the PbtA mechanics.

Not to mess with your exemplars, but I think this one is flawed.

That seems wildly pedantic to me, what difference does it make?

 

[zakael19]

I thought this was about two PCs meeting up? If the GM wants to make a Move here instead of just allowing it (offering a opportunity?) they could (or the other PC could I guess?), but I've definitely had situations exactly like this in my PBTAs. "Hey player1, you wanted to do x right? Player 2, when player1 finds you what are you doing?" and play scene.

 

[thefutilist]

I thought this was about two PCs meeting up? If the GM wants to make a Move here instead of just allowing it (offering a opportunity?) they could (or the other PC could I guess?), but I've definitely had situations exactly like this in my PBTAs. "Hey player1, you wanted to do x right? Player 2, when player1 finds you what are you doing?" and play scene.

Yeah it’s two pc’s. One just declares they’re at the workshop when the other arrives. The GM doesn’t say anything and so the scene proceeds

 

[Fenris-77]

That seems wildly pedantic to me, what difference does it make?

The fundamental nature of the game? I'm not trying to be pedantic.

 

[pemerton]

I think the 'sim' bit of rpgs is essentially a form of disclaiming authorship and the, admittedly, subjective experience is that of the world (fiction) appearing to operate under its own causality.

Here's the Apocalypse World rulebook on Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.

In order to play to find out what happens, you’ll need to pass decision-making off sometimes. Whenever something comes up that you’d prefer not to decide by personal whim and will, don’t. The game gives you four key tools you can use to disclaim responsibility: you can put it in your NPCs’ hands, you can put it in the players’ hands, you can create a countdown, or you can make it a stakes question.

Say that there’s an NPC whose life the players have come to care about, for instance, and you don’t feel right about just deciding
when and whether to kill her off:

You can (1) put it in your NPCs’ hands. Just ask yourself, in this circumstance, is Birdie really going to kill her? If the answer’s yes, she dies. If it’s no, she lives. Yes, this leaves the decision in your hands, but it gives you a way to make it with integrity.

You can (2) put it in the players’ hands. For instance, “Dou’s been shot, yeah, she’s shuddering and going into shock. What do you do?” If the character helps her, she lives; if the character doesn’t or can’t, she dies. You could even create a custom move for it, if you wanted, to serve the exact circumstances. See the moves snowball chapter, page 151, and the advanced f*****y chapter, page 267.

You can (3) create a countdown. See the countdown section in the fronts chapter, page 143. Just sketch a quick countdown clock. Mark 9:00 with “she gets hurt,” 12:00 with “she dies.” Tick it up every time she goes into danger, and jump to 9:00 if she’s in the line of fire. This leaves it in your hands, but gives you a considered and concrete plan, instead of leaving it to your whim.

Or you can (4) make it a stakes question. See the stakes section in the fronts chapter, page 145.“Will Dou live through all this?” Now you’ve promised yourself not to just answer it yourself, yes or no, she lives or she dies. Whenever it comes up, you must give the answer over to your NPCs, to the players’ characters, to the game’s moves, or to a countdown, no cheating.​

Page 145 elaborates with:

when you write a question as a stake, you’re committing to not answer it yourself. You’re committing to let the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters, answer it.​

So option 4 is really a way of formally recording a disclaiming of decision-making. But to actually make it work requires one of the other methods. Option 3 is, as it says, a way of leaving it to the MC but not the MC's whim. Option 2 means giving it to the players.

Option 1 is the interesting one, from the point of view of "sim => sense of causality":

this leaves the decision in your hands, but it gives you a way to make it with integrity.​

What is integrity here? "Just ask yourself, in this circumstance, is Birdie really going to kill her?" When I read this, I am pointed back in the same direction as by Fantasy For Real:

This has some similarity to "living world"-type approaches, but I think it would be a mistake to equate them.

Perhaps most importantly, I think, there's no reference in the FfR instruction to likelihood by reference to imagined causation. Rather, the GM is instructed to play the responses of those affected by events. The focus is on what the NPCs want, and their perspectives or plans.

This difference is reinforced by FfR's lack of nitty-gritty resolution of the D&D-esque/RM-esque sort. Which means that the GM in FfR can more easily and clearly connect big changes in the situation to test outcomes, rather than the sort of ad hoc-ery that D&D can call for.

<snip>

There are a couple of other differences too:

<snip>

These help make the characters the centre of the situation. Not an impersonal "world in motion".

So how does the GM decide "which one will do something next"? As per what I've said above, it's not by running a model, or extrapolating impersonal causation. Nor is it by deciding what would make for a good story

<snip>

The only answer I can give at this point is aesthetic intuition.

It's about character, not impersonal causation. And, in the end, aesthetic intuition.

 

[pemerton]

there can be no expectation of "true character" versus "player imposition"... that dichotomy can't occur since the character does not exist unto their own. And your attempts to give weight as to why a character would choose any given choice are not supporting any concept of difference from the player choosing.

Actor stance and author stance are both ways of the player choosing. But they are different "modes" of, or rationales for, choosing.

This is dodging and no longer engaging.

Well, you suggested that my posts were contradicting one another. I'm pointing out that they don't.

Which game system prevents GM or player from choosing any given aesthetic choice ?

Different RPGs set out different frameworks for GM decision-making. Eg classic D&D is quite different from Burning Wheel, which (as per my post 56) is different from Fantasy For Real.

what GM (MC, ST whatever) "Principles" can you quote from a rpg that are doing active, maybe even proactive, work for you and your running of games?

In post 56 I quoted fairly extensively from the Fantasy For Real GM instructions.

I've also got a lot of good mileage out of the Burning Wheel instructions, and the Torchbearer instructions. (These two are not identical; but they are closer to one another than either is to Fantasy For Real.)

 

[thefutilist]

The fundamental nature of the game? I'm not trying to be pedantic.

I don’t know what to say, to me this is basic role-play orchestration stuff. I don’t think I’ve played a game where this would be illegitimate. Even thinking about such a game breaks my brain.

 

[pemerton]

Here’s some (hypothetical) stuff that happens after Grass leaves that illustrates more orchestration style moves.

The player of Midnight says she finds Grass. This is because the player wants Midnight to talk with Grass, not because this is any kind of weighty decision. She creates a rationale for it, Midnight wants her gun looked at. The fiction is being created to justify the orchestration.

One: Thefutilist wants Midnight to talk with Grass because the Thefutilist wants Midnight to get in on the drama. There is no current in game reason for Midnight to be talking to Grass right now. So Thefutilist concocts one ‘Midnight needs her weapons maintained and so she’s at Grass’ workshop when he arrives there.’

Let's back up this. There's nothing in AW or any other PbtA game that let's the player declare this. They can search, they can look, they can do many things, but they may NOT declare that they find.

The players don't get to declare that they find something, they get to declare that they are searching for it. The GM is who declares what they find. This is a very standard misunderstanding of the PbtA mechanics.

The GM still has authority and can revise as necessary:

Yeah it’s two pc’s. One just declares they’re at the workshop when the other arrives. The GM doesn’t say anything and so the scene proceeds

I don’t know what to say, to me this is basic role-play orchestration stuff. I don’t think I’ve played a game where this would be illegitimate. Even thinking about such a game breaks my brain.

The only sense I can make of all this is that the use of "find" has caused some confusion.

In the conjectured episode of play, Grass is not lost or hidden. What's being envisaged is that a previous scene, involving Grass, has concluded; and now Midnight's player is proposing a new scene, which opens with Midnight "finding Grass" - meeting up with Grass, mostly likely "at Grass's workshop when he arrives there".

The player doesn't have authority to insist on this new scene - as @thefutilist says, the GM still has authority over scene framing and can interject or amend - but it's not a departure from the procedures of play for the player to propose a scene, by saying something like "Midnight is at Grass's workshop waiting for him when he gets back." If the GM doesn't say anything, and if Grass's player doesn't say anything, then "the scene proceeds".

 

[thefutilist]

Here's the Apocalypse World rulebook on Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.

In order to play to find out what happens, you’ll need to pass decision-making off sometimes. Whenever something comes up that you’d prefer not to decide by personal whim and will, don’t. The game gives you four key tools you can use to disclaim responsibility: you can put it in your NPCs’ hands, you can put it in the players’ hands, you can create a countdown, or you can make it a stakes question.​

​

Say that there’s an NPC whose life the players have come to care about, for instance, and you don’t feel right about just deciding​

when and whether to kill her off:​

​

You can (1) put it in your NPCs’ hands. Just ask yourself, in this circumstance, is Birdie really going to kill her? If the answer’s yes, she dies. If it’s no, she lives. Yes, this leaves the decision in your hands, but it gives you a way to make it with integrity.​

​

You can (2) put it in the players’ hands. For instance, “Dou’s been shot, yeah, she’s shuddering and going into shock. What do you do?” If the character helps her, she lives; if the character doesn’t or can’t, she dies. You could even create a custom move for it, if you wanted, to serve the exact circumstances. See the moves snowball chapter, page 151, and the advanced f*****y chapter, page 267.​

​

You can (3) create a countdown. See the countdown section in the fronts chapter, page 143. Just sketch a quick countdown clock. Mark 9:00 with “she gets hurt,” 12:00 with “she dies.” Tick it up every time she goes into danger, and jump to 9:00 if she’s in the line of fire. This leaves it in your hands, but gives you a considered and concrete plan, instead of leaving it to your whim.​

​

Or you can (4) make it a stakes question. See the stakes section in the fronts chapter, page 145.“Will Dou live through all this?” Now you’ve promised yourself not to just answer it yourself, yes or no, she lives or she dies. Whenever it comes up, you must give the answer over to your NPCs, to the players’ characters, to the game’s moves, or to a countdown, no cheating.​

Page 145 elaborates with:

when you write a question as a stake, you’re committing to not answer it yourself. You’re committing to let the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters, answer it.​

So option 4 is really a way of formally recording a disclaiming of decision-making. But to actually make it work requires one of the other methods. Option 3 is, as it says, a way of leaving it to the MC but not the MC's whim. Option 2 means giving it to the players.

Option 1 is the interesting one, from the point of view of "sim => sense of causality":

this leaves the decision in your hands, but it gives you a way to make it with integrity.​

What is integrity here? "Just ask yourself, in this circumstance, is Birdie really going to kill her?" When I read this, I am pointed back in the same direction as by Fantasy For Real:

​

It's about character, not impersonal causation. And, in the end, aesthetic intuition.

I’m cannibalising a reply I had typed up elsewhere.


You see three interesting phenomena crop up in a lot of trad games.

A player thinks his character would leave the party but doesn’t for the sake of continued play.

A player thinks his character would attack another member of the party but doesn’t, for the sake of continued play.

A player doesn’t think his character would be interested in the ‘mission’ but goes along with it for the sake of continued play.


My interest is in what’s happening here on an aesthetic level. There is obviously an impulse the player has about the character that is then subordinated towards another goal. I’m interested in that impulse because I think it’s what creates the aesthetic phenomena of IIA (illusion of independent agency). Now if you were some devout immersionist you could look at the work of Marjorie Taylor as some kind of vindication of preference but I think that’s being a bit of a special snowflake. I think there’s an ordinary aesthetic response that occurs in the moment that we can just term an authentic response. Specifically the response isn’t done to illicit a response from the other person. In much the same with any art form really, you can play to the audience or you can be really saying something. In role-play its like an impulse or sense of ‘what would this character really do’

The ‘problem of sim’ is that this is often framed in an ontological way. Which is stupid because the obvious retort is that there is no ‘what would actually happen', there is no character. This is further exacerbated by the 2E approach to the hobby that exploded in the 90's. White Wolf games being the paradigmatic example.

Why did old sim players hate playing with World of Darkness storytellers? The world of darkness story teller is explicitly told to cultivate an attitude toward the fiction that subordinates the sim impulse in favour of a dramaturgical one. It doesn’t matter if the results are the exact same. What matters, on the social aesthetic level, is that we’re doing the same creative process to get to the results.

To the extent that PbtA principles tell you to sub-ordinate, then the type of constraint they’re going for is a different type of constraint than the ‘sim impulse.’ Whether and how much Apocalypse World does that is an open question My thesis, as shown by my exchanges with @pemerton , is that it admits orchestration is necessary to undergird the sim impulse but the sim impulse is still central to resolving situation.