Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[pemerton]

Effects that come from the in-fiction opposition--things like being charmed or paralyzed or petrified or dominated or frightened (I know that's a negative condition in 3.x and 5E, don't know about 4E) or whatever, coming from what my character in the fiction is encountering in the fiction, such as a harpy or a gorgon or an illithid or a dragon--do not bother me at all. They are happening to my in-fiction character in the fiction, because of other things in the fiction that are behaving according to their natures as established in the fiction.

<snip>

Effects that come from around the table--whether they come from the GM or another player--things like Compels in Fate, or the strings or whatever in Monsterhearts, or IIRC the various ways Stress is applied to characters by the GM in Blades in the Dark--bother the heck out of me, because though they represent things in the fiction (I'm clear on that, really) they aren't emerging naturally from the events in-fiction; they're emerging because someone else around the table has decided to use them to force my character's story to change.

<snip>

Whatever effect is being placed onto my character by GM as GM (not as opposition) or fellow player (not as character) by metagame mechanics does not feel to me as though it is emerging naturally from the events preceding it; it feels as though a gun is appearing onstage during the third act.

But the reason I include a Gorechainn devil in an encounter is because I want to use it to force the PCs' stories to change - eg from attacking their enemies to attacking their friends. If I don't want that I don't use the creaturre, or I rewrite it.

And in the compel case, if it's what Fate Core calls a decision compel (pp 73, 211) then the GM is playing that non-rational or habitual or compulsive aspect of the PCs' personality, making it active in the players' decision-making process and thus giving life to it at the table. As I've said I don't play Fate, but when GMing D&D 4e or Prince Valiant I will play the devil on the shoulder, and offer players bonus resolution dice for commitment/morale if they take particular actions.

What is key to making that work is that the players are confident that whatever choice they make - eg to take the compel or to decline it - the game will go on. For that reason I find your discussion of taking compels and accruing Fate points, which is expressed in the language of a serious boardgamer or wargamer, a bit curious. I fully agree that the Fate point economy won't work in a game that plays like a classic D&D module (eg White Plume Mountain) but I don't think that's how Fate was designed to be played.

An event compelt (pp 72, 211) is similar - the GM is trading on PC backstory/reputation to introduce complication into the unfolding narrative. The player can pay to buy off the complication, or can take a point and suck it up. The complication arises from the fiction - the PC's own past - and the GM is doing what s/he normally does in a trad(ish) RPG, which is drawing on all that established backstory to frame things.

I think there would be an interesting question in a Fate game about how to play out events-based compels, but to me it doesn't seem that hard to do it at the level of the fiction. Eg looking at two examples on p 72:

Cynere has Infamous Girl with Sword . . . so it makes sense that, unfortunately, an admirer would recognise her in the stands and make a huge fuss, turning all eyes in the arena her way​

As the GM starts narrating this, the player spends a Fate point and says "I pull my hood up over my face before the admirer can get a really good look" and the tne GM - understanding the mechanical significance of what has happened - narrates "The admirer sits down, not sure that it was Cyrnere after all.:

Landon has I Owe Old Finn Everything . . . so it makes sense that, unfortunately, Old Finn was captured and taken far into the mountans . . .​

As the GM starts narrating the NPCs telling Landon how Old FInn was captured, Landon's player hands the GM a Fate point while saying, in character, "Are you sure you didn't make a mistake? Finn has to be OK!" And then the GM, again understanding the significance of the Fate point, narrates something like "At that moment Old Finn walks towards you. It looks like he was out picking mushrooms in the forest. 'Nah, that weren't me what was captured. You musta got half-a-look at some other white-haired fella!'

Obviously what I'm suggesting here wouldn't be the only way to handle the refusal of event compels, but it seems fairly straightforward as one way to do it.

And if these aspects of the character are experienced as rabbits from hats, or third-act-only guns, or whatever - then that suggests to me a bigger issue, that the players haven't chosen aspects that they want to play, or that the GM is not incorporating the chosen aspects into play. A similar thing can happen with Beliefs and Instincts in Burning Wheel - the rule books and commentary texts give advice on how to fix this. I assume that similar play advice exists for Fate.

 

[pemerton]

So, what happened in the fiction was that the character read the feather's aura and discovered it was cursed. What happened at/around the table was that the player rolled dice and didn't get a result that gave him (the player) authority to declare what the feather was, so the feather's properties were determined ... I'm guessing by table concensus?

Not table consensus. I think that makes for weak play.

I prefer an approach where it is the GM's job to establish the consequenes of failure. That way players don't have to manage deciding what bad things happen to their PCs: someone else has that job.

The Burning Wheel rulebooks gives very clear guidance around this, as powerful consequences on failure are one of the main thinga that drive BW play.

Also your description of the check framing is not quite right either. The player declares that he is reading the Aura to identify it's angelic, Balrog-fighting properties. The action is declared before the dice are rolled. That way we know what is happening in the ficiton, and what character abilities are relevant (eg given that he took an augment from Ancient History, he must have established something about the history of angels in the Bright Desert to get that in).

If the player succeeds, his action succeeds: the feather has Balrog-fighting properties. (I believe, from memory, that the player was happy for me to fill in the details based on my greater familiarity with the system and hence the ways one might express Balrog-fighting properties of an angel feather. That said, it seems like that I confirmed that he was happy with Resistance to FIre as such a thing.)

So the test to read the aura wasn't about properties the feather had, as established previously in-fiction (whether in play or in notes) but instead about who was going to decide what its properties were?

Is that a more accurate description?

The negative part is accurate. The positive part not quite. The test determines whether the players intent and task come true (ie I read the angel feather's aura to learn how it will be useful in confronting a balrog) or not. The check failed, so the intent and task didn't come true - the task succeeded (the character read the feather's aura) - but the intent did not - as well of learning how it will be useful in confronting a balrog, the character also learned that it is cursed.

Two things to note:

(1) This system doesn't support making Perception or Aura-readoing or Knowledge checks just to provoke more exposition from the GM. The player has to say what it is that the character is looking for or hoping to discover. Ie it needs intent as well as task.

(2) Had the check succeeded, no curse would have been detected. That doesn't in itself establish that the feather is not cursed, although - given the degree of success would be such-and-such - it does establish that the feather has no curse detectable by such-and-such a degree of successful aura reading.

The practical significance of this second thing is that, in a system played this way (which is pretty much how I like to play RPGs, though individual systems all have their own distinguishing quirks; RPGs that can't be played like this aren't ones I play) the GM has to balance honouring success and introducing adversity, particularly on failed checks. One example: the PCs successfullly drugged a rival so she would fall asleep and not be able to follow them to a wizard's tower. Then the PCs chose to go to the tower not through the streets (where they knew the way) but via the catacombs (so as to sneak in from below). I called for a Catacombs-wise check. This failed. Hence I narrated that the PCs got lost and hence lost time. Their rival awoke, and the race was on: it turned into Speed vs Speed (the PCs lost and so the rival got to the tower first). In the abstract I can't say what sort of failure, in the context of a successful reading of the feather's aura, might have licenced revealing it to be cursed - off the top of my head a failed Ancient History check, perhaps, if it pertained to the Bright Desert and its artefacts.

I think Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World is pretty good on this sort of stuff, although he encourages pushing the players maybe just a bit harder than I default to.

if something exists in the fiction, and it wasn't put there around the table, that's something you'd describe as RPG-as-puzzle? That seems to imply that if I as a GM decide anything about a scene and don't tell the players about it, it's instantly RPG-as-puzzle

That would depend on what the point of the GM's decision is.

But if the players are expected to work it out in order to progress things, then yes - I would call that RPG-as-puzzle.

The OP seemss a good example: it seems that the players are expected to work out that the Burgomaster will go ape at them if they try and intimidate him, and to factor that into their attempt to progress matters.

Apocalpse World is, again, probably the best RPGing text I know of that explains how to use "off screen thinking" without making things into RPG-as-puzzle. The BW rulebook is not as good on it, but some of the subsequent commentary (eg in the Adventure Burner and Codex) is good. For instance, the GM might decide that some feature of the NPCs in the scene is a result of XYZ, which is something offscreen. Later on - ie in some subeqent moment of framing or resolution - that can be used as a reveal.

But there was no moment of play prior to the revel where the players were expected to work out the XYZ thing. Of course they may have done so even though they didn't have to - in which case in this sort of RPGing the GM would follow their lead.

Or the players may have conjectured that the connection is not XYZ at all but ABC, in which case - if they succeed on appropirate checks - the GM will go along with it (honouring success) but if they fail then the GM has the chance to reveal that they were wrong all along, and it was really XYZ!

This is the sort of dynamic of play I have in mind when I'm talking about a relatively high degree of player agency over the shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

From memory, Compelling a player who has no Fate points is good GMing, not bad. Following the Compel, the player receives the Fate point and is therefore able to continue to participate in the Fate economy: failing to fo so simply shuts the Player out.

I can see that. But equally shouldn't the point-less player be looking for his/her own Compels?

 

[prabe]

But the reason I include a Gorechainn devil in an encounter is because I want to use it to force the PCs' stories to change - eg from attacking their enemies to attacking their friends. If I don't want that I don't use the creaturre, or I rewrite it.

Believe it or not, we're not in disagreement about using the Gorechain Devil, exactly as you say. As the DM, your job is to introduce things into the fiction that work against the PCs. Compelling a PC feels an awful lot to me like playing that player's character, which is not my preferred playstyle and in fact feels like a violation of my expectations of play--which is probably why even reading the Fate Core book has a tendency to ruin my mood. I'm a very weird person.

And in the compel case, if it's what Fate Core calls a decision compel (pp 73, 211) then the GM is playing that non-rational or habitual or compulsive aspect of the PCs' personality, making it active in the players' decision-making process and thus giving life to it at the table. As I've said I don't play Fate, but when GMing D&D 4e or Prince Valiant I will play the devil on the shoulder, and offer players bonus resolution dice for commitment/morale if they take particular actions.

What it basically comes down to, I think, is that having my character's interior life directly manipulated--or portrayed--by the GM as the GM feels different to me than having my character manipulated by something in the fiction--by the GM as, say, the Gorechain Devil. I recognize that this is not an extremely rational position, but here I stand.

What is key to making that work is that the players are confident that whatever choice they make - eg to take the compel or to decline it - the game will go on. For that reason I find your discussion of taking compels and accruing Fate points, which is expressed in the language of a serious boardgamer or wargamer, a bit curious. I fully agree that the Fate point economy won't work in a game that plays like a classic D&D module (eg White Plume Mountain) but I don't think that's how Fate was designed to be played.

As a GM, I want players to feel that empowered to decide, too. I don't think metagame mechanics help with that--I kinda think they get in the way.

I agree that Fate probably wasn't intended to be played like White Plume Mountain.

An event compelt (pp 72, 211) is similar - the GM is trading on PC backstory/reputation to introduce complication into the unfolding narrative. The player can pay to buy off the complication, or can take a point and suck it up. The complication arises from the fiction - the PC's own past - and the GM is doing what s/he normally does in a trad(ish) RPG, which is drawing on all that established backstory to frame things.

{snipping what's actually a pretty interesting approach to Fate Point that I have no further comment on}

And if these aspects of the character are experienced as rabbits from hats, or third-act-only guns, or whatever - then that suggests to me a bigger issue, that the players haven't chosen aspects that they want to play, or that the GM is not incorporating the chosen aspects into play. A similar thing can happen with Beliefs and Instincts in Burning Wheel - the rule books and commentary texts give advice on how to fix this. I assume that similar play advice exists for Fate.

In play, and as I read the book/s, they do have a tendency to come from left field. Most of the examples from the Fate Core Book, I'd feel at least somewhat wrong-footed as a player if play followed those sequences of events.

If the reason for those mechanics is to make good stories by tying PCs' backstories and other past events into the present fiction, and I do both of those things in 5E D&D while ignoring the weaksauce Fate-Lite that is Inspiration, then I think it can be rationally said that I don't need those mechanics.

 

[prabe]

I can see that. But equally shouldn't the point-less player be looking for his/her own Compels?

As I remember it, that's the expectation.

 

[prabe]

@pemerton I won't quote your long post to thank you for further explaining that sequence in Burning Wheel, but thank you for doing so. I believe I understand what happened there, and more of what you mean by RPG-as-Puzzle.

 

[Manbearcat]

Often, however, that way the players end up more informed than the PCs.

Both the players at the table and the PCs in the fiction more or less know what sort of defensive ability a knight in plate mail and shield is going to have, as they can simply compare it with how those same defenses function on in-party PCs either past or present: "Hell, this guy's going to be as hard to hurt as Gretta used to be when she ran with us". Here the description, player knowledge, and character knowledge are quite reasonably going to agree; with the only unknown variables being any enchantments on the knight's armour bits, or on the knight himself.

When I describe a Troll's rubbery hide, though, or the thick tough-looking scales of a Dragon, I neither want nor expect the players to immediately leap to a hard numerical AC value, for a few reasons: one, the PCs do
n't think in numbers; two, the PCs probably haven't met enough of these creatures to be able to generalize; and three, thinking in numbers really breaks the 'fourth wall'.

Sure they might figure the actual AC value out after a few rounds of combat - as a player I find myself doing this far too often, and get mad at myself every time for doing it.

I'm fairly certain that you and I have had this conversation before and, if so, I wasn't convincing then (so why am I trying now!?).

When you say the above, I immediately think "this person has little to no experience as a martial actor in physical sports or combat."

I can't recall, but i think you...may be...Canadian (?) so you have some experience with hockey?

Here is the thing. I'm 42. I have been a grappler since I was 12 (so 30 years) from wrestling to Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. I have been in a ridiculous number of physical, violent confrontations in my life.

What happens at the subconscious level of a very experienced, very trained physical combatant/athlete is ALL numbers. All of it. Spatial Geometry, trajectories, relative velocities, angles of intercept, potential force and how my body should move to diffuse some of it, arcs, etc. Elite athletes have complex models of moving objects in space (including themselves; proprioception) and perform complex computations (subconsciously) in milliseconds that have amazing predictive capacity relative to a layperson.

An expert Warrior who has been exchanging blows in sparring, against target dummies with armor, real creatures in the wild with natural armor. They would have an intrinsic understanding (with just a glimpse) of the density and resilience to blows of a dragon's scale that would be well beyond the pale of your average town guard, and profoundly beyond that of a villager. They would process its agility, speed, and its ability (or not) to produce angles extremely quickly and with amazing accuracy.

If you merely inform with the sort of abstract, flowery prose that any noncombatant could grok to the same level ("The dragon's scales shimmer like steel as your torchlight cascades across it. Its mighty lungs expand and contract as it sleeps, the sound of its overlapping armored plates grating subtly against each other, creating an eerie sound. Not a single scale that you can see bears a scar of battle...though surely this Ancient Wyrm has been tested by other dragons and adventurers alike.") and model just as well ("These scales are really hard!") an elite combatant...

...well, if I'm sitting at that table, I don't feel remotely sufficiently informed with respect to the resolution of the mental model that I, while attempting to inhabit my elite Fighter, should have. I would feel completely disconnected.

 

[pemerton]

In that post I also noted that the same thing can routinely happen in D&D play - first the reaction or CHA check is rolled, and then the appropriate fiction is established. And when it comes to D&D combat, with hp ablation as the principal mechanic, the same time sequnce is practically mandatory. We don't know what has happened in the fiction until the resolution is well and truly done.

I think you are going to have to be more specific here. An example would help tremendously.

I think the combat point is pretty well-known, so I'll given a CHA/reaction example instead.

In B/X D&D and AD&D there is a reaction chart. And a PC's CHA score modifies rolls on that chart. And the rules tend to suggest that the GM should roll for a reaction when the PCs and NPCs/monsters meet.

This means that we can have the following sequence of events: the players delcare that their PCs enter a room; the GM describes the room as having some (let's say) gnolls in it; the GM rolls the reaction of the gnolls; the CHA modifier is applied; and now we know how the gnolls react to the PCs. But we don't yet know why. Nor do we know what happened that meant that the CHA of the PCs influenced the check - eg did the gnolls like the cut of their cloaks?

Suppose, further, that a player of an elf, whose PC has high CHA and speaks gnoll, responds to the GM's narration of the room occupants by saying "I greet them with words of friendship in their own language." If the roll is poor, and hence - despite the CHA buff - the gnolls react in a surly or hostile fashion, why was that? Did the elf choose the wrong words? Speak with too elvish an accent? Do the gnolls just hate elves regardless of the sincerity of their greetings?

The fiction has to be filled in to explain the outcome that follow from resolution.

This is also why many encounters in OSR-ish D&D do not require puzzle-solving. (Some do - eg from memory, hobgoblins attack elves on sight and so no reaction roll would be used. That's a puzzle for the players to solve.)

 

[Hriston]

So, what happened in the fiction was that the character read the feather's aura and discovered it was cursed. What happened at/around the table was that the player rolled dice and didn't get a result that gave him (the player) authority to declare what the feather was, so the feather's properties were determined ... I'm guessing by table concensus? So the test to read the aura wasn't about properties the feather had, as established previously in-fiction (whether in play or in notes) but instead about who was going to decide what its properties were?

I've been lurking around on this thread for a while, but I thought it might be interesting to share an example of what I think might be the same sort of thing that happened recently in my current game of 5E. The party druid and one other PC had tracked a group of giant toads to where they were found asleep in their burrows late in the day. They were a couple hours walk from the rest of the party, and as there were too many toads for the two PCs to take on by themselves, the druid player declared an action to draw upon his previous observations of such toads (It had been established earlier in play that he had seen toads like this before.) to determine whether he would have enough time to go and get the rest of the party before the toads woke up. As DM, I hadn't determined anything about the sleeping habits of giant toads. I had an idea that because it was cold they would stay in their burrows until morning, but that's all it was -- just an idea. I called for an Intelligence (Nature) check with DC of 15 and told the player if the check succeeded, then his observations would confirm that the toads would stay in their burrows all night because of the cold weather, but if the check failed, then his observations would have told him that the toads come out to hunt soon after dark no matter how cold, which wouldn't leave enough time to go get his companions. The check failed with a result of 4, and the fiction unfolded according to the failure condition. The druid decided to go get his companions anyway and continued to track them the following day.

 

[pemerton]

@Hriston, nice example! It correlates pretty closely to examples in Burning Wheel how-to-play text as well as the actual play example I posted. And I would definitely consider it to be an example of player agency over the fiction. Even though the action failed, the player's framing of the action declaration played a big role in shaping that failure consequence.

And reflecting further on that: In these sorts of resolution contexts it's interesting to think about how explicit the GM needs to be about the stakes of failure. BW "officially" advocates full explicitness every time but Luke Crane (the designer) has said that in his own games he sometimes lets the failure consequences remain implicit in the situation.

I vary in my approach depending on what I feel is implicit, whether I think going explicit will increase tension or defuse it because of the "meta" intrusion, etc. Explicitness seems the surest way to guarantee player agency but that may not be the only desideratum in a given moment of play. On the other hand, if a failure consequence catches the player by surprise - ie they didn't see it as implicit in the fiction - then that can be an "oops" moment as a GM!