In other words the player's hope changed the state of the fictional world before the meaning of the runes were revealed because the check was successful.
D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.
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In other words the player's hope changed the state of the fictional world before the meaning of the runes were revealed because the check was successful.
Which, as always, is personal preference and choice. I agree with you - it would hurt my sense of verisimilitude if I could wish for what was going to be revealed and I was right every time I succeeded on a roll. Same as if I'm picking a lock and the only thing different in-world between success or failure is whether the lock remains locked leads to some complication only on a failure. I don't really care if it's more "exciting" or not, I wouldn't be a fan.
On the other hand it's a game. Do what works for you and the other people at the table.
CreamCloud0
Hero
oh but it does affect what something actually is, a character can hope for something and if the dice or GM indulge, it will be that thing, their hopes can and do influence the reality they exist in.
I don't really see how this matters.
Upthread, multiple posters - including you, I think, but maybe I'm wrong one that - described the player as deciding what the runes say. My point is that he didn't. He rolled dice, and won the roll. Much as a person might enter a lottery, and win: that doesn't mean they decided.
Much as a person might choose to have their PC fight in D&D, and win: that doesn't mean that they decided.
If you now want to ask how does someone set stakes in MHRP, I'm happy to have that conversation.
How does the character know they have a chance of hitting it? I mean, if attack Bruce Lee I have no chance of hitting him.
They know that it could be a map. Just as they know that an Orc is the sort of being that can be hit.
Trying to parse out the difference in resolution by reference to these sorts of counterfactuals and statements of possibility won't work. This is because;
(1) The epistemic possibilities are the same in both; and,
(2) There are no metaphysical impossibilities at work: by which I mean that, in the real world if the runes say <X> then I can't read them to learn <Y>, whereas in fiction - as I posted upthread - metaphysics follow belief, it doesn't constrain true belief.
(2) There are no metaphysical impossibilities at work: by which I mean that, in the real world if the runes say <X> then I can't read them to learn <Y>, whereas in fiction - as I posted upthread - metaphysics follow belief, it doesn't constrain true belief.
(That is why posters who say that the player changed the fiction are wrong. There was no established fact about the strange runes, beyond them being strange runes on the dungeon wall, until after the declared action was resolved. Nothing was changed.)
There are two differences, not unrelated:
*Who gets to exercise authorial control over which bits of the fiction? Eg does the GM have sole authority over backstory?
*Must causal processes in the fiction and causal processes at the table be tightly correlated, at least where players are concerned? Eg if a player at the table does a thing that causes everyone to agree that <X> is part of the fiction, must that correlate to that player's character in the fiction bringing about <X>.
*Must causal processes in the fiction and causal processes at the table be tightly correlated, at least where players are concerned? Eg if a player at the table does a thing that causes everyone to agree that <X> is part of the fiction, must that correlate to that player's character in the fiction bringing about <X>.
All RPGing that I know of allows some player authorship of backstory that violates the second dot point: eg the player deciding who and what their PC is; the player deciding facts about their PC's family, memories, etc. But often this is low-stakes stuff. Whereas the example of the runes is something that is less low-stakes.
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Upthread, @Maxperson gave an example of a player saying their PC looked for a farrier in the village. And though Maxperson's notes didn't include a farrier, he added one in.
That is the GM responding to the player's hope. But no one supposes that, in the fiction, the PC's hope made the farrier exist.
Likewise in the runes example. The character's hope is not changing anything. At the table, though, the content of the shared fiction is responsive to the player's hope. You seem to be ignoring the difference between what happens in the fiction and what happens at the table.
The character's hope does not cause anything. That's your projection of something onto the fiction that is not part of it.
As far as verisimilitude is concerned, I have played in RPGs that adhere to "simulationist" constraints to a far greater degree than MHRP, which have been lacking in any immersion or verisimilitude. And I am confident that most of the RPGs that I GM are rich in verisimilitude and provide a high degree of immersion. And when I play Burning Wheel I know that it is very immersive.
Your experiences may be different from mine, but they don't universalise and I don't know how far they generalise. For instance, fiction writers and film makers use non-causal connections (eg emotional and thematic ones) all the time to help generate verisimilitude and encourage immersion in the fictions that they created.
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Enrahim
Hero
Have you ever played fiasco? That game is all about stuff failing spectacularly for your characters. That game has an audience. Yes, there are reasons for certain players to prefer dramatic and cool failure over having their shenanigan go exactly predictably as planned - no matter how dramatic their plans were.
All the narrated successes with consequences are of course fully consistent with the fiction, and all the failure with twists are of course also fully consistent with the fiction.
To construct a more concrete example.
The strong character is having a habit of wanting to break into random homes in densely populated areas at daytime by kicking down the doors. For some reason there tend to be a company of guards chasing him away from the still standing door whenever he fails.
Meanwhile the weak character is being more discerning. They seek out fascinating and unusual looking houses and try to kick down the doors at night. For some reason these doors tend to fall apart with a loud bang waking up everyone inside, but allowing for some time to try to dig out what might be hiding in there.
These are rules as written. You could argue that the GM should in the fiction take into account the strength of the characters to determine the degree to use the success with consequences path. But that would be putting a responsibility on the GM that is not expressed, and with absolutely no rule support.
What was the change? What did the runes say before the check was made?
Asking if a specific business exists in a village with multiple businesses, especially a business that would likely exist in almost all villages, is not at all like hoping that the runes are really the equivalent of a shopping mall map kiosk. In the village example everyone knows that the GM isn't normally going to detail out every single individual or what they do, there's no reason to. False equivalences are false.
No. Is it much like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World?
This doesn't make Fiasco sound much like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World. So I'm not sure what inference you are inviting me to draw.
This example doesn't seem very concrete to me. What game are we playing? How are stakes being established? What principles govern narration?
I mean, the RPGs I've mostly been posting about that use "fail forward" - BW, AW and 4e D&D - all have rules and principles to guide these things. (4e is probably the muddiest, but it does have them.) None of them would lead to something of the sort that you describe.
If you want to pay a silly comedy game, why would you choose any of those?
The runes didn't say anything before the check was made. Once the wish was made, the outcome was decided. If the player succeeded on their roll it was a map. If they failed it was something other than a map.
