Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[prabe]

Why are you talking about the character? I'm talking about whether or not the player has agency in respect of the shared fiction. If you're saying No they don't and that's fine, well OK. But can we at least get the analysis clear?

Because the character is the means through which the player shapes or changes--or whatever verb you care to use--the story. Changing the story some other way doesn't feel to me like agency--it feels like some sort of authorship or narrative authority.

Here's the action declaration: I look in the box for the Crown of Revel. Here's the role of the GM: To narrate what happens if the check fails. And to provide framing more generally.

It's not mysterious.

And it's clear that you and @Lanefan would interpret and resolve this declaration differently. You would interpret it as stating what the PC hopes to find and resolve it that if the check succeeds, they find it. @Lanefan would interpret it as a check to open the box, and the "for the Crown of Revel" is why; if the check succeeds the box is opened, but the Crown of Revel is only there if it would be there. I'd probably interpret it roughly the same way @Lanefan would, though I suspect I'd be more generous about whether they'd find the Crown of Revel--If they're in the right room it's certain; if they're in the right building, it's possible--but I'm less about the granular details than he is. I don't think either of you is wrong, here.

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, not all aspects of the setting, at least not in all games. Apocalypse World, for instance, encourages the GM to look to the players for setting detail on a regular basis. Not crowns in boxes maybe, but setting details all the same. I do the same in most games, including D&D. It gives me a chance to play off player ideas for stuff.

The crown in the example above is something a little different, a hidden detail might be the right word, and different games lean into prep and hidden detail to very different degrees. D&D leans into it heavily, while Apocalypse World does not. That said, in neither case does a player get to dictate the location of the crown. Some games might support that particular kind of narrative authority for a player, but not the games we've been talking about so far. Sometimes I don't know the exact location of the crown-in-a-box either. I might know that it's at the Dukes summer house, and I might know that it's probably still sealed inside the box that prevents people from divining it's location, but I might not know exactly where. I might use a particularly good search roll, or even a failure of some kind to introduce the box at an appropriately dramatic moment. I usually have a fall back position though. Like, if nothing else happens, the box can be found in the armoire in the Duke's bedroom. That's assuming that the crown is something the party was searching for in the first place, of course. I know some people will cry illusionism here, but it's really not.

 

[prabe]

I've numbered these for reference.

1 - There are a number of instances in the play examples that at least look like refusing to honor success on the rolls, and if those are the examples in the book I have to presume a GM might think it was OK to not honor success or even worse (and this also shows up in the play examples) punish a character for succeeding.

2 - Many of the GM moves seem based as much around GM whim as around any sort of actual consequential or causal logic, and the idea that you're always supposed to be setting up at least the possibility of a harder move seems to contradict the idea of the GM not-planning, and Playing to Find Out What Happens--at least to contradict that as much as a GM having an idea of what's (probably, based on knowing how these players are playing their characters) going to happen in a given session or story arc.

Lets discuss one example of each of these from Apocalypse World. I have a pretty strong guess as to what is happening here (it likely has to do with discretizing component parts and examining them in isolation rather than integration of the whole), but lets dig into it to be sure.

If you would, cite a page for both 1 and 2 that provoked you toward this takeaway and then share the machinery of the provocation.

I assume you're talking about the example of Marie the brainer. What do you see as "success not being honoured"?

And what do you see as "whim"?

It'll be far easier for me to reply to both these at once, so ... that's what I'm doing. This isn't an attack (or even really a defense) but I notice and find it interesting that you both picked up on the same two things. In a way, I'm glad, because it makes it easier to respond to both of you at once, both logisitically and psychologically. @Manbearcat I honestly do not understand what you mean by "machinery of provocation" in this context, but I'll try to explain my reasoning and if that's not what you're looking for we can figure out what words will convey what you want to me?

Yes, the primary example of not honoring success is, as @pemerton deduced, the play example of Marie the Brainer, from the section "Rules of Play: Moves Snowball" which my pdf shows as being page 152 of the MC's Playbook (from the 1E stuff available for free, the file says it's 1E-1up). What I see as "success not being honored" is that the PC managed a full hit--a 10 on the roll--and didn't even get part of the result they were looking for. There's the description of when the same character sends people out to bring back Joe's Girl and they break her in the bringing back, but there's no action resolution described there, just the GM being a dick. Heck, you could argue it's a principle of the game--Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards; if success isn't always going to succeed, where's the agency?

An example of GM move demonstrating planning? "Announce future badness." (I'm looking at "Your Moves" on page 116 of the same pdf.) If it's going to be bad in the future you're kinda saying there's nothing the PCs can do about it. I'm not saying it's bad, and I'm not saying there's more Force in it than there is in, say, D&D 5E; I'm saying it's the same.

 

[Campbell]

A couple things :

Apocalypse World does not utilize intent. When you do something that triggers the move it happens. The rules tell us what happens. They do not tell us if you achieved your intent.

Much like go aggro which it is based on direct-brain whisper projection represents a threat to do violence when your character is fully committed to do so. On a 10+ the person you are threatening gets a split second to either give in or force your hand and suck it up (meaning violence happens). In this Marie is saying follow me with an implied or else. They choose the else. That is what success means in this instance.

The reason you announce future badness is so players have an opportunity to do something about it. The MC in Apocalypse World is basically sparring with the players. You make threats and follow through based on the fiction when things do not go their way. You should have a pretty good idea about the sort of consequences that are possible. Now the GM does have the latitude to certain things about the way things go down when you roll a 6-. It's not really a game about micro-fiction. We kind of just hit the highlights.

If you look at the MC moves and assume an MC is just using them as their whims dictate I can see how you could draw the conclusion that it is a game that is highly susceptible to GM Force. Doing that is literally against the rules though. The game provides the GM/MC with tremendous latitude, but only to do certain things. Your agenda, the things you always say, and your principles are meant to be binding. They are like rules.

I do agree that games that resolve player intent (Burning Wheel, Blades in the Dark) rather than tell you what happens (Apocalypse World, D&D spells/combat) have a higher amount of player agency over the shared fiction. I have a fairly strong preference for games that tells you what happens despite this. In a future post I will go into why.

 

[prabe]

Apocalypse World does not utilize intent. When you do something that triggers the move it happens. The rules tell us what happens. They do not tell us if you achieved your intent.

That's an interesting distinction. I've always figured that what you were trying to accomplish matters, and should have some bearing on adjudication.

Much like go aggro which it is based on direct-brain whisper projection represents a threat to do violence when your character is fully committed to do so. On a 10+ the person you are threatening gets a split second to either give in or force your hand and suck it up (meaning violence happens). In this Marie is saying follow me with an implied or else. They choose the else. That is what success means in this instance.

If you look at the MC moves and assume an MC is just using them as their whims dictate I can see how you could draw the conclusion that it is a game that is highly susceptible to GM Force. Doing that is literally against the rules though. The game provides the GM/MC with tremendous latitude, but only to do certain things. Your agenda, the things you always say, and your principles are meant to be binding. They are like rules.

Fair enough. In the case of Marie the Brainer it still looks like "gotcha" play and the DM being a dick. (The former of which is specifically called out as against the GM's Agenda.) I realize it's an example of play, but there's no real indication of why Isle would choose "the else" in this instance, and it doesn't seem as though Marie's player felt there was any reason to expect it.

Apocalypse World makes a big deal of its agenda and its principles and it says it tightly constrains the GM, but reading it from the outside, more than little skeptically, none of those things seems to be more than a suggestion. The Agenda, for instance, is pretty much the GM's job in any game, any campaign, and many of the Principles aren't bad advice, either. However, the Principles include "Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards" which sounds to me an awful lot like the opposite of allowing the players/characters to have agency. (Maybe because "intermittent" is such a bad word in my previous line of work.) In the breakdown of "Sometimes, disclaim decision-making" there are suggestions for what amount to rationalizing your decisions, which is kinda the opposite of not-deciding.

I know from having had these sorts of discussions about other games that an outsider (defined as someone who doesn't like and/or play the game in question) pointing out that the game doesn't look all that different from other games, looking at the rules, rarely goes over well. It rarely works out well when these sorts of opinions come from someone who's played the game, either. I'm genuinely not trying to convince anyone that their experiences are wrong--if in your experience Apocalypse World never involves GM Force, I absolutely do not doubt you--I'm just attempting to answer the questions of what I saw that looked the way they did.

 

[Campbell]

@prabe

There were several people who remarked that the way Apocalypse World instructed you to run the game was not novel - that they had been doing so all along. In the context of roleplaying game design I think it was fairly novel to see it enumerated in text. The agenda and principles it lays out are almost directly opposed to established wisdom enumerated in games like AD&D Second Edition, Vampire - The Masquerade, Legend of the Five Rings, et al. What little direction Fifth Edition provides does not point to that type of agenda. It is not the agenda of Burning Wheel. It is not the agenda of B/X.

Here's what Apocalypse World has to say about how to read it's text:

That’s you, the MC, Apocalypse World’s GM.

There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these as rules. The whole rest of the
game is built upon this.

It's pretty explicit that it is offering instruction rather than advice. Some people will always assume that they know how to play and run roleplaying games and pretty much ignore the text. I am pretty much not interesting in playing any game with that sort of person. Besides if instruction on how to play the game is taken as mere guidelines we might as well give up on game design as it pertains to roleplaying games. In that case we are all pretty much playing one game with different coats of paint. I find that beyond boring.

I think what these enumerated agenda, principles, et al. do is set expectations for play. If I am a player in an Apocalypse World game and I think the GM is not acting being a fan of the player's characters during or after the session it is socially acceptable to bring that up. A year or so ago I was in a Blades in the Dark game that I initially enjoyed, but could tell based on the way the GM was adjudicating consequences that and setting position/effect that they were pulling for certain outcomes mostly to deliver a level of power fantasy for the other players. I was able to have a fruitful discussion about play expectations. Ultimately that GM opted to let everyone know they were basically hacking the game and I stepped out.

That's the other thing. When the machinery of play is transparent it becomes really easy to tell when GM Force is being applied. Because there is no hidden layer of rules that players are not privy too there is nothing to hide behind. Any game that has a meaningful GM role is going to provide them with enough latitude to exert pressure towards certain outcomes if they run a game without discipline. Stripping away that obfuscating layer makes it hard to apply GM Force in an artful (deceptive) manner.

The final thing is that the rules will fight you when you try. The ability of a player in Apocalypse World to get real actionable information about what is going on in the fiction can not be overstated. You have no ability to change target numbers or fudge dice. You are bound by player moves.

So the most common issue I see in Powered by the Apocalypse games are GMs being too soft. A common refrain at our tables is "That was your hard move?"

Note: Not trying to convince you it is the game for you. I expect it is most likely not.

 

[prabe]

@Campbell I agree it is almost certainly not a game for me. As with BitD, my first reaction was to figure out how I could get a character killed quickly, which is probably about rejecting one or more premise (setting or something in the mechanics). I know myself well enough not to play the game when I get those kinds of messages from the depths.

I'm less disappointed about AW than about BitD. I really, really wanted--and kinda expected--to like BitD; I had no such expectations of AW, but I was curious. I suspect it's connected to some contrariness at my core: I really want to immerse in the character and engage with the setting and the story, and the harder a TRPG works to make me do those things, the harder I resist.

While I don't disagree that TRPGs have real differences, I also believe they have real similarities. They might have different priorities, but overall I think they have similar goals. I don't think that means the games are boring.

I really don't know where my approach to GMing comes from, other than trying to run games I'd kill to be a player in. That's not super-helpful, because I don't really know how, when, or where I developed my preferences as a player, either, because--as you point out--it's really not the way most of the games I would have played or read as a newer gamer would have played.

 

[Lanefan]

It's pretty explicit that it is offering instruction rather than advice. Some people will always assume that they know how to play and run roleplaying games and pretty much ignore the text. I am pretty much not interesting in playing any game with that sort of person. Besides if instruction on how to play the game is taken as mere guidelines we might as well give up on game design as it pertains to roleplaying games. In that case we are all pretty much playing one game with different coats of paint. I find that beyond boring.

All RPG rules are, in the end, only guidelines until and unless a) houserules and b) GM rulings are banned somehow.

That's the other thing. When the machinery of play is transparent it becomes really easy to tell when GM Force is being applied. Because there is no hidden layer of rules that players are not privy too there is nothing to hide behind.

The problem there is that if the machinery is that transparent (which is the wrong term, better would be "out in the open") it's also always in my face - as a player I can't ignore it and hope it goes away.

Any game that has a meaningful GM role is going to provide them with enough latitude to exert pressure towards certain outcomes if they run a game without discipline. Stripping away that obfuscating layer makes it hard to apply GM Force in an artful (deceptive) manner.

Nothing wrong with some artfully-applied GM force here and there in any game.

Sometimes the GM actually does know what she's doing, and uses Force to gently direct things to what is untimately a more interesting and better game. It's when GMs do it badly that things go wrong, and I suspect some people's views are clouded by one too many bad experiences in this regard.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Let me share the last scene from my Blades game this last weekend (I ended up running Blades due to a last minute on-call from one of my players). First, a brief setup -- the PCs were burgling an apartment to steal an engagement ring so they could gain a loyal fence. The fence had sold the ring, then found out it was the ring of a gang's leaders mother, and so was in a bad spot he couldn't get out of. Turns out he sold the ring to the nephew of a rival gang and he had given it to his fiance. The play was to get the fence out of trouble so he'd owe the Crew, and also to stoke up the war between these two rival gangs. So, the launched their burglary with disguises to look like the rival gang, in case they were spotted.

At the end of the caper, two of the PCs were rapidly exiting the apartment via the fire escape because someone was entering the apartment. There were a few of the rival gang around (the nephew was actually in the building checking out the apartment on a lower floor -- I thought maybe because he wanted to live close to the girl's parents, but it never came up, so I don't really know why - hold on lightly and all). The PCs got a partial success on their Prowl to escape detection, and so made it to the alley below before the alarm was raised. One gang member was chasing down the fire escape and another was at the mouth of the alley. The PCs decided to leg it, and declared that they would split up, so no group led check. One PC made a success with complication, and managed to escape with a twisted ankle (harm 1). The other PC... much more exciting.

So, to play. The player has declared that they're legging it. Since the gang members are fairly distant to start, I marked the position as Risky (default) with Standard outcome (again, default). The player rolled Finesse, and bombed it. Like critical failure bombed it. So, I narrated that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't shake this guy -- he must run every day or something -- and, after a few minutes, the ganger had closed the distance to almost grab range and had pulled his long knife. This was my 'soft' move -- I escalated the danger and placed the PC in a 'do something about this now or else' situation. The player then marked equipment for an alchemist bandolier (the PC is a saboteur), and tried to have their PC throw acid in the ganger's face (the PC is also Not Nice), Pushing for an extra die. I marked the position as Desperate (you're throwing acid in the face of a guy trying to stab you sounds kinda desperate to me) with Great Effect (landing acid in the face is a sure way to stop someone). The player rolled, and failed again. Since I had already made the 'soft' move, I paid it off. The ganger, a trained fencer, deftly ducked the acid and slashed his blade down the PC's extended throwing arm! Harm 2, deep laceration to the right arm. The PC decided to resist, and rolled Insight, say that the ganger telegraphed the slash so the PC was able to pull back at the last minute. They rolled resistance, and got a 6, meaning no cost in Stress to modify this outcome. I downgraded the Harm 2 to Harm 1, shallow gash to right arm, and narrated the PC seeing the move at the last minute, yanking back and causing the acid to fly wide but saving their arm! Regardless, the situation was largely similar, but I reframed that the interaction had opened the distance a bit, so the player decided to have the PC run again.

This time, though, the player changed tactics. Instead of a foot race, which because of established fiction that the ganger was an excellent runner (he'd already run the PC down once), the player declared they were going to lead the chase into a crowded area, like a market. The player suggested Survey, and I marked it as Risky, Standard (again, back to default). [Sidenote: if the PC had tried to outrun the ganger again, I would have set the outcome as limited -- you might open the distance a bit against a good runner (the PC wasn't established as athletic), but not much and not for long.] The player rolled, and nailed it -- full success. So, I narrated that they had burst into the main market for the neighborhood, and the ganger had followed but had to quickly conceal the knife, letting the PC slip a bit further ahead. The player then had a stroke of genius (and some good luck), and declared that their character was now going to do the 'lift new clothes while walking through a market and change outfits to blend in' move, classic in so many spy movies. Again, we set Position as Risky, but I really like this idea and thought it would work really well, so I set Effect as Great. The player rolled Finesse and got another outright success! I narrated that the PC deftly slipped through the market, shedding their rival gang disguise and picking up a few items to replace it, so that, finally, they stood gazing at a table of goods while the chasing ganger walked right past them. The PC then made their way, without further incident, back to the hideout.

At the end of the session, the player of the saboteur (the PC in the above) exclaimed, "I f-----g love this game! I was sweating the whole time, wondering what the hell I was going to do next!" A better compliment could not have been paid to a GM.

 

[hawkeyefan]

All RPG rules are, in the end, only guidelines until and unless a) houserules and b) GM rulings are banned somehow.

I suppose this is true in the mos literal sense that yes, ultimately, none of us have to play any game exactly as described in the book. However, I think that all of us would likely agree that certain rules or practices are more concrete than others.

When you look at a game that offers specific principles for both players and GMs, these are meant to be more than suggestions. These are intended to be something considered at all times by the respective party.

The problem there is that if the machinery is that transparent (which is the wrong term, better would be "out in the open") it's also always in my face - as a player I can't ignore it and hope it goes away.

Games have mechanics. These should not send participants running for the hills crying about verisimilitude.

There's a case to be made for withholding some game mechanics at times......maybe exactly how difficult a task may be is unknown to the person attempting it, and so the DC that the GM sets for the task is not announced to the players. I can understand the appeal of that, even if I don't generally follow that practice.

Now....there is also a case for sharing all of the mechanical details of a game because it makes the chances and stakes known. There are no unknown rules that the GM can hide behind, as @Campbell explained.

For me, looking at these two approaches, I see both are perfectly valid. I prefer to share more to keep the game more clear for all involved, even if it's at the cost of some immersion or verisimilitude (such loss is minimal, in my experience, but opinions vary).

Nothing wrong with some artfully-applied GM force here and there in any game.

Sometimes the GM actually does know what she's doing, and uses Force to gently direct things to what is ultimately a more interesting and better game. It's when GMs do it badly that things go wrong, and I suspect some people's views are clouded by one too many bad experiences in this regard.

I wouldn't say that GM Force is never good, or can never be used effectively....so in that we agree. However, I believe the means in which the GM is able to apply force matter. What limits are in place, what principles guide the use, and so on?

To say "a GM may use Force if it leads to a more interesting and better game" is very broad. It's hard to quantify, and also what is "more interesting" and "better" is subjective.

This is why it helps when there are principles in place that limit how a GM can apply Force, and how they can exercise their other authority within the game.