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*TTRPGs General
Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8026386" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Sure. We all have preferences.</p><p></p><p>My point is twofold. First, i<em>f the GM is deciding what's in the box</em> then the player is not exercising agency over that component of the shared fiction. And obviously is not. Yet there are posters here - [USER=7016699]@prabe[/USER], [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] - who are asserting the contrary.</p><p></p><p>Second, if the game permits action declarations such as <em>I look in the box for the Crown of Revel</em> then the player is not being called upon to cross the line. Because the player's authorship only kicks in when the player has knowledge - that is to say, the revelation of the Crown in the box (should it occur) occurs only when the <s>player</s> PC looks in the box.</p><p></p><p>This is an important feature of a game like BW that makes it a RPG and not a shared storytelling game. The players do not have any sort of generalised or abstracted "narrative authority". And in fact have less say over the general content of the fiction than AW players - eg BW has no real analogue of <em>Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.</em></p><p></p><p>All the players' "metagame" moves in BW take the form of <em>action declarations by the player for the PC</em>. So eg Catacombs-wise is <em>using my knowledge of the catacombs, I find a path that leads me beneath the NPC wizard's tower. </em>Circles is <em>I look around the docks to see if there's anyone there whom I know. </em>Etc. It is the PC who is always at the centre of the action, even if the PC is not causally responsible for all of the established elements of the fiction (eg the PC didn't put the Crown in the box; the PC didn't build the catacombs; the PC didn't cause the NPC to be on the docks; etc).</p><p></p><p>In one of our BW sessions the PCs had arrived at a tower which - as per established backstory - had been the home of the PC sorcerer when he was studying under his brother's tuition. As part of the same backstory, the tower had been attacked by orcs and the brother, in trying to summon a Storm of Lightning to fight off the orcs, had failed in his casting and been possessed by a balrog. (How the PC had escaped to actuall be there at the beginning of the campaign, some years after those events, had not and still has not been established.) Now the tower was ruined and abandoned.</p><p></p><p>The player, at about this point, told us more of his PC's backstory: while living in the tower, as a pupil of his brother, he had been working on a nickel-silver mace called the falcon's claw. But it had been left behind when the tower fell to the orcs. Now that the PC was back, he wanted to recover the mace. So they searched the tower for it. Mechanically, this was a Scavenging check.</p><p></p><p>The check failed. So I - as GM - had to narrate some adverse outcome. I narrated that the PCs did find something, but not the mace. Rather, they found - in the area of the tower which had been the brother's workshop - a stand of black arrows, very like the one broken arrow still carried by the elven PC in memory of his former captain who had been slain by an orc shooting that arrow.</p><p></p><p>The ensuing play established that the brother had made those black arrows. The significance of this was that it revealed that the brother's evil <em>preceded</em>, in some fashion at least, his possession by a balrog. He had already been making cursed arrows that orcs would take and use.</p><p></p><p>In structural resolution terms, this is strictly parallel to the box and the Crown. But it never requires the player to separate his/her knowledge as player from that as PC. There is no meta-declaration about the location of the mace. There is action declaration and resolution. It doesn't cross Harper's line.</p><p></p><p>I realise that AW doesn't have much of this sort of resolution. (It has a bit: the Battlebabe's Vision of death is one example.) The result is a different distribution of authority over the shared fiction, with greater MC control over when the PCs find the things, places etc that they want.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8026386, member: 42582"] Sure. We all have preferences. My point is twofold. First, i[I]f the GM is deciding what's in the box[/I] then the player is not exercising agency over that component of the shared fiction. And obviously is not. Yet there are posters here - [USER=7016699]@prabe[/USER], [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] - who are asserting the contrary. Second, if the game permits action declarations such as [I]I look in the box for the Crown of Revel[/I] then the player is not being called upon to cross the line. Because the player's authorship only kicks in when the player has knowledge - that is to say, the revelation of the Crown in the box (should it occur) occurs only when the [S]player[/S] PC looks in the box. This is an important feature of a game like BW that makes it a RPG and not a shared storytelling game. The players do not have any sort of generalised or abstracted "narrative authority". And in fact have less say over the general content of the fiction than AW players - eg BW has no real analogue of [I]Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.[/I] All the players' "metagame" moves in BW take the form of [I]action declarations by the player for the PC[/I]. So eg Catacombs-wise is [I]using my knowledge of the catacombs, I find a path that leads me beneath the NPC wizard's tower. [/I]Circles is [I]I look around the docks to see if there's anyone there whom I know. [/I]Etc. It is the PC who is always at the centre of the action, even if the PC is not causally responsible for all of the established elements of the fiction (eg the PC didn't put the Crown in the box; the PC didn't build the catacombs; the PC didn't cause the NPC to be on the docks; etc). In one of our BW sessions the PCs had arrived at a tower which - as per established backstory - had been the home of the PC sorcerer when he was studying under his brother's tuition. As part of the same backstory, the tower had been attacked by orcs and the brother, in trying to summon a Storm of Lightning to fight off the orcs, had failed in his casting and been possessed by a balrog. (How the PC had escaped to actuall be there at the beginning of the campaign, some years after those events, had not and still has not been established.) Now the tower was ruined and abandoned. The player, at about this point, told us more of his PC's backstory: while living in the tower, as a pupil of his brother, he had been working on a nickel-silver mace called the falcon's claw. But it had been left behind when the tower fell to the orcs. Now that the PC was back, he wanted to recover the mace. So they searched the tower for it. Mechanically, this was a Scavenging check. The check failed. So I - as GM - had to narrate some adverse outcome. I narrated that the PCs did find something, but not the mace. Rather, they found - in the area of the tower which had been the brother's workshop - a stand of black arrows, very like the one broken arrow still carried by the elven PC in memory of his former captain who had been slain by an orc shooting that arrow. The ensuing play established that the brother had made those black arrows. The significance of this was that it revealed that the brother's evil [I]preceded[/I], in some fashion at least, his possession by a balrog. He had already been making cursed arrows that orcs would take and use. In structural resolution terms, this is strictly parallel to the box and the Crown. But it never requires the player to separate his/her knowledge as player from that as PC. There is no meta-declaration about the location of the mace. There is action declaration and resolution. It doesn't cross Harper's line. I realise that AW doesn't have much of this sort of resolution. (It has a bit: the Battlebabe's Vision of death is one example.) The result is a different distribution of authority over the shared fiction, with greater MC control over when the PCs find the things, places etc that they want. [/QUOTE]
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