RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Crimson Longinus]

That is not a well-formed action declaration in any RPG that I'm familiar with. Do you have any in mind?

It is literally what your example of "I open the safe to find dirt on the supervillain" was about.

 

[pemerton]

Then it is not GM's secret backstory, is it?

It's secret at the start of the session. It is used in framing and adjudication.

I presented an actual play example not far upthread, from Prince Valiant rather than DitV - the Blue Cloak. Here it is again:

Sir Justin "the Gentle", so named because of his deads at the Abbey of St Sigobert, was gifted a fine silvered dagger that had been blessed at that shrine.

<snip>

The PCs decided that saving even a single soul is an important thing, and so decided to take the wise woman to the Abbey of St Sigobert before going to fight Saxons. As they were getting close to Warwick, and travelling in the dark still looking for a place sheltered enough to camp without a tent, they came across a weary old man in a blue cloak. (The scenario in the Episode Book is called The Blue Cloak.) A merchant, he had been set upon by bandits who had taken his mule and his goods. He knew the game trail they had travelled down, and asked the PCs to help him. Being noble knights, of course they agreed to do so! As they travelled through the woods and down the trail, he asked about their families - learning that one was the son-in-law of the Duke of York ("What an honour to be aided by such a noble knight"), and that the other was returning to Warwick to woo the Lady Violette - and told them of his own daughter and son-in-law living in Warwick. Then, as they could hear the lusty singing of the bandits at their camp, he asked the PCs to go on without him as he was too weary to continue. The PCs were a little suspicious (as were their players) but opposed checks of his fellowship vs their Presences (even with bonus dice for suspicion) confirmed his sincerity.

The PCs approached the camp, and Sir Gerran drew his sword and called on the bandits to surrender. Their leader - wearing a very similar blue cloak to that of the merchant - was cowed, as was one other, but the third threw a clay bottle at Sir Gerran (to no effect) and then charged him sword drawn (and gaining a bonus die for knowing the lie of the land in the darkness), only to be knocked almost senseless with a single blow, resulting in his surrender also ("When I insulted you, it was the wine talking!").

The wise woman and old man, who had been waiting up the trail with the merchant, then arrived at the camp to say that the merchant had (literally) disappeared! Which caused some confusion, but they decided to sleep on it. The next morning, in the daylight, they could see that the brooch holding the bandit leader's cloak closed was identical to that which the merchant had worn. Sir Justin suggested he no doubt had multiples of his favourite cloak and fitting, but Sir Morgath had a different idea - "When you left the merchant you robbed, was he dead?" His presence roll was a poor one, and the bandits answers that the merchant fell from his mule and hit his head and died, and that they had buried him and had intended to place a cross on his grave first thing in the morning. Sir Morgath doubted this - "You didn't give him a proper burial - his ghost came to us last night!" - and I allowed a second presence check with a bonus but it still failed, and the bandits simply muttered protestations of innocence under their breaths.

Sir Justin received a vision from St Sigobert, and by plunging his dagger into the ground at the head of the grave was able to sanctify the ground. A cross was then placed there, and the group returned to Warwick with their bandit prisoners and returned the merchant's goods to his daughter.

The scenario doesn't work if the players know all the backstory at the start. It works by the GM actively revealing the backstory in play.

As my play example illustrates, there can be mystery, and uncertainty, and disagreements among the PCs (and their players) as to what is going on, with one being right and the other being wrong. The action resolution is conflict resolution. But there is no risk of an action declaration contradicting the backstory.

And this relies on low myth! Regardless of when or at what door the PC listens, they will hear something about what they wish to hear and it will be plot relevant. This simply is not what happens in a high myth game. In a high myth game the contents of rooms would be predetermined, and that would inform what the PC hears.

Why, in a high myth game, would the presence of every person in every room at every moment be determined? And what they are saying? And who is visiting them?

Classic dungeons are full of random encounter charts, and % chances of being in lairs, and so on.

That's before we get to urban scenarios, like those in DitV.

Even if an urban module has a description for what is happening in the kitchen in the middle of the day, does the same description apply at night? And is exactly the same thing happening in the kitchen at midday, day after day after day? Game systems like classic D&D and CoC use various heuristics and techniques to generate events and room content in these circumstances. So does DitV: it's just that those in DitV are sensitive to player intents, and to questions of what is at stake, in a way that those in classic D&D and CoC are not.

 

[pemerton]

It is literally what your example of "I open the safe to find dirt on the supervillain" was about.

That action declaration is not "I discover that X is Y". It was "I break into the safe to find the dirt on the supervillain".

I break into the safe . . . requires fictional position: that a safe exists; that the PC is in a position to break into the safe.

. . . to find the dirt on the supervillain requires fictional position: that the dirt exists; that it not elsewhere; that it might be in the safe.

How is all that fictional position established? The answer will be different in different RPGs.

Have you read the example of the Blue Cloak? The body of the merchant is buried in a shallow grave near the bandit's camp. The merchant whom the PCs meet is a ghost. The bandits are the source of the "dirt" (as in, they are the ones able to confess to what they have done).

By actively revealing the backstory in play, the GM contributes to the fictional position necessary for the players to declare actions for their PCs that will reveal the dirt. Having run the scenario, I can report that it is not particularly hard to GM, and nor is it particularly hard to apply the rules of Prince Valiant to resolve the sorts of actions the players are able to declare.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

. . . to find the dirt on the supervillain requires fictional position: that the dirt exists; that it not elsewhere; that it might be in the safe.

And that is limiting the action declaration based on secret myth!

 

[clearstream]

And that is limiting the action declaration based on secret myth!

Is it right that by your lights it doesn't matter if that limiting is through GM saying "no" (however couched), players saying "no" to themselves, or management of play and/or gamestate so that certain action declarations are not conceivable or not permissible?

 

[pemerton]

If people in the town have been losing faith because rumours about heretical papers that are claimed to prove that the prophet is a fraud and the faith is based on a lie, it is perfectly reasonable for the PC to confront the mayor who is clearly part of this heresy and have a goal of "I compel him to divulge the truth about the location of heretical papers."
Except that the prep might say that it is only the undertaker that knows the location of the papers, thus the mayor does not possess the truth to divulge.

And that is limiting the action declaration based on secret myth!

To begin with a general statement, I hope it's obvious that different RPGs give different answers to the general question, how is fictional position established. And that even the same RPG might answer the question differently in different contexts: for instance, in MHRP it is generally the GM who establishes fictional position in Action Scenes, but the players enjoy a lot of leeway to establish fictional position in Transition Scenes.

Today I played in a session of Burning Wheel. No one just declared "I stab the Orc", because at no point did anyone's fictional position include their PC's proximity to an Orc. How, in Burning Wheel, do we establish that fictional position includes proximity to an Orc? Not just by making an Orc shows up roll: there is no such roll. The GM has to frame it, or a player succeed at an appropriate Circles check.

"I compel so-and-so to divulge the truth about such-and-such" depends upon the fictional position including that they know the truth or at least that it is possible that they might know the truth. How is this fictional position established? In DitV there is no "such-and-such NPC has such-and-such knowledge" roll. What NPCs know is under the GM's control.

But in DitV, the GM is actively revealing the town in play. Thus, if the undertaker has the secret information, the GM will be revealing that. From p 139:

The PCs arrive in town. I have someone meet them. They ask how things are going. The person says that, well, things are going okay, mostly. The PCs say, “mostly?”

And I’m like “uh oh. They’re going to figure out what’s wrong in the town! Better stonewall. Poker face: on!” And then I’m like “wait a sec. I want them to figure out what’s wrong in the town. In fact, I want to show them what’s wrong! Otherwise they’ll wander around waiting for me to drop them a clue, I’ll have my dumb poker face on, and we’ll be bored stupid the whole evening.”

So instead of having the NPC say “oh no, I meant that things are going just fine, and I shut up now,” I have the NPC launch into his or her tirade. “Things are awful! This person’s sleeping with this other person not with me, they murdered the schoolteacher, blood pours down the meeting house walls every night!”

...Or sometimes, the NPC wants to lie, instead. That’s okay! I have the NPC lie. You’ve watched movies. You always can tell when you’re watching a movie who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. And wouldn’t you know it, most the time the players are looking at me with skeptical looks, and I give them a little sly nod that yep, she’s lying. And they get these great, mean, tooth-showing grins — because when someone lies to them, ho boy does it not work out.

Then the game goes somewhere.​

The GM will also have in mind the following principle, from p 138:

If nothing’s at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they’re doing. Just plain go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they’re there. If they want it, it’s theirs.

Sooner or later - sooner, because your town’s pregnant with crisis - they’ll have their characters do something that someone else won’t like. Bang! Something’s at stake. Launch the conflict and roll the dice.​

The core of DitV play is not discovering what is wrong. It's doing something about it. This is why the rulebook emphasises the need for the GM to withhold judgement about the players' responses, while also pressing them “really? Even now? Even now? Really?” (p 141). For instance (pp 122, 124),

Your goal in the next town is to take the characters’ judgments and push them a little bit further. Say that in this past town, one of the characters came down clearly on the side of “every sinner deserves another chance.” In the next town, you’ll want to reply with “even this one? Even this sinner?” Or say that another character demonstrated the position that “love is worth breaking the rules for.” You can reply with “is this love worth breaking the rules for too? Is love worth breaking this rule for?”​

So if the GM is following the principles of the game, it won't come about that the players think their fictional position includes that the mayor might have the information, although the GM knows (from prep) that in fact it does not, because only the undertaker has that information. The GM, with the goal of driving play towards conflict by actively revealing the town in play will have communicated this.

If things have got to the point where the players are confused about fictional position, such that they think it is possible that the mayor has the information even though prep states that only the undertaker has it, then as I said the GM has made an error.

The difference from CoC is obvious, I think. It's basically the opposite: CoC takes it for granted that the players will share the judgement of the source material that the cults and blasphemous truths and so on are horrible, to be destroyed or hidden or avoided; and the principle goal of game play is to learn exactly what is going on.

Whereas in DitV, the GM is expect to reveal what is going on so that the players can then form a judgement about it.

The same is true of The Blue Cloak. The point of the scenario is not that the players, as their PCs, work out that the bandits murdered the merchant. It's what they do about this. What does it mean to be a knight errant in the time of King Arthur?

 

[pemerton]

I'd posit that success on intent only goes so far as what the character can reasonably try to perceive and-or control with regards to that intent. That said, this almost falls under the 'corner case' heading; as something happening that's this uncontrollable by the character would probably be fairly rare.

If the player can succeed on the check, yet unrevealed aspects of the backstory produce failure of goal, then we do not have conflict resolution.

Whether that is good or bad depends on whether one wants conflict resolution or task resolution.

Could the GM here just not mention the magical trap at all if the scout got lucky and didn't trip it, such that it's still available to be triggered when the rest of the party comes to catch up with the scout (and to avoid the players having to meta-knowledge their way either around the trap or into it)?

This depends on the details of the resolution system. MHRP, Apocalypse World and Torchbearer 2e (just to pick three systems) all approach this differently.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Is it right that by your lights it doesn't matter if that limiting is through GM saying "no" (however couched), players saying "no" to themselves, or management of play and/or gamestate so that certain action declarations are not conceivable or not permissible?

Different ways of doing this certainly matter. I just want to first establish that such blocking is happening, and then we can proceed to discuss different methods of accomplishing it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To begin with a general statement, I hope it's obvious that different RPGs give different answers to the general question, how is fictional position established. And that even the same RPG might answer the question differently in different contexts: for instance, in MHRP it is generally the GM who establishes fictional position in Action Scenes, but the players enjoy a lot of leeway to establish fictional position in Transition Scenes.

Today I played in a session of Burning Wheel. No one just declared "I stab the Orc", because at no point did anyone's fictional position include their PC's proximity to an Orc. How, in Burning Wheel, do we establish that fictional position includes proximity to an Orc? Not just by making an Orc shows up roll: there is no such roll. The GM has to frame it, or a player succeed at an appropriate Circles check.

Right. So there actually is an an orc shows up roll, just like there is make a wizard's tower show up roll. With monster-wise or some such the player could make an orc to show up. "I recall the Blue Skull orcs prey upon travellers in these woods..."

"I compel so-and-so to divulge the truth about such-and-such" depends upon the fictional position including that they know the truth or at least that it is possible that they might know the truth. How is this fictional position established? In DitV there is no "such-and-such NPC has such-and-such knowledge" roll. What NPCs know is under the GM's control.

Which means that the player action declarations are limited in their subject matter by the secret myth.

 

[clearstream]

Different ways of doing this certainly matter. I just want to first establish that such blocking is happening, and then we can proceed to discuss different methods of accomplishing it.

For the sake of argument, say it were conceded by all that such blocking is happening. What would come next?