RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[pemerton]

Right. So there doesn't need to be such action declaration in a mechanical sense

OK, I'm glad we've reached consensus on this point at least!

but one must be possible in a sense that fictional events of the characters looking in the safe and finding it empty can occur. Which I also feel is in many genres pretty dramatically reasonable thing to happen, either as a setup for finding the real location, or as a revelation that the characters were fooled. (Perhaps the latter in not something that usually happens in DitV; I don't know.)

I tend to look at these things from a fairly cinematic point of view. The characters are at an impasse, they have no dirt. They looked in the safe, nothing was there. What would happen now? Obviously, in a fairly action-oriented genre, there would be some kind of reveal. Some NPC would show up, or another clue would be discovered pointing at the REAL location of the dirt.

In an RPG scenario the first part would simply be explication on the part of the GM. The players would be directing their PCs to find the dirt, and the GM would allow that, having searched the Mayor's safe and not having found it, they encounter the Secretary, who reveals that the dirt is in the keeping of the Mine Owner, and probably some other new plot elements are developed to explain that and likely to add pressure on the characters to act on the information, etc.

Subject to the possibility that I posted about above - of the players putting the location of the dirt at stake, and then losing - I don't think this sort of thing is part of DitV play. Nothing in the rulebook suggests it. The core principle is to actively reveal so as to drive play towards conflict.

So, if the players lose some crucial conflict it makes sense that the mayor might take the papers from the safe and flee with them into the hills. And the GM might even, if they want to rub the players' nose in their loss, narrate them rushing to the mayor's office to find the safe open, and see that the mayor's horse is no longer tethered to the hitching rail outside.

What you describe, @AbdulAlhazred, seems to me more apt in a low/no myth game with an investigation component: the players have their PCs look in the safe buth then fail, and hence instead of finding the dirt they hoped for, the GM narrates a twist or complication: they have to deal with the new NPC, go elsewhere etc.

 

[pemerton]

The myth does not only contain things like location of information and objects, it also defines things like motivations and attitudes of NPCs.

The latter is the focus of prep in DitV.

The Blue Cloak - the Prince Valiant scenario I've mentioned a few times now - has prep that involves both those things, and also the location of the murdered merchant's grave.

 

[FrogReaver]

@clearstream

I was going to respond more directly to your post but I’ve not had a chance yet and want to get this idea out.

Your recent posts don’t seem to be specifying precisely which myth is being maintained. Due to that lack of specification you pivot between the myth elements and non-myth elements as stakes in your conflict resolution examples.

When that specificity is included all the weirdness goes away and what’s happening becomes perfectly clear. When there is binding myth then that myth cannot be staked for conflict resolution.

Note: Myths of the form ‘it’s probable this is fact’ are not binding.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What you describe, @AbdulAlhazred, seems to me more apt in a low/no myth game with an investigation component: the players have their PCs look in the safe buth then fail, and hence instead of finding the dirt they hoped for, the GM narrates a twist or complication: they have to deal with the new NPC, go elsewhere etc.

That is certainly one possibility.

 

[clearstream]

@clearstream

I was going to respond more directly to your post but I’ve not had a chance yet and want to get this idea out.

Your recent posts don’t seem to be specifying precisely which myth is being maintained. Due to that lack of specification you pivot between the myth elements and non-myth elements as stakes in your conflict resolution examples.

When that specificity is included all the weirdness goes away and what’s happening becomes perfectly clear. When there is binding myth then that myth cannot be staked for conflict resolution.

Note: Myths of the form ‘it’s probable this is fact’ are not binding.

I'm not 100% sure I understand your argument here. I've intentionally provided contrasting examples. Perhaps I have not always been clear enough in labelling them?

I believe recent conversation has shown that it is both commitment to imagined facts and to how you will treat those facts that counts in play. Supplying sufficient resources to sustain many modes of play, regardless of the abundance of prep.

This better explains for example the over two hundred pages of myth in PbtA game texts such as Stonetop. To me, it suggests additional utility, found in how you match practices to text.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

OK, I'm glad we've reached consensus on this point at least!

I said on page 78:

For example in case where the players were looking the papers from the wrong place the GM could just say without any roll, "you open the safe but the papers are not there." This is saying "no" as the intent of the player was not just open the safe but find the documents.

So not resolving the situation with the mechanics of the action resolution was my suggestion from the get go.

 

[clearstream]

The myth says that the will is not in the safe, nor anywhere near it. The myth also says that the will is the only thing that contains the relevant information. CR, the player stakes finding the will in the safe and succeeds.

Precisely. It is made clear the sort of work required to paint oneself into a corner!

Reflection on the play to get to this point aligns my intuitions with yours. With unusually stringent commitments in place up front, we don't submit it to resolution. No up front commitment was made to keeping the Will's location hidden, so GM can actively disclose it, heading the problem off at the pass.

I could add - "and the Will's location cannot be disclosed." But that makes the chosen stakes quite surprising, so it must be "only false locations for the Will can be disclosed". No commitment has yet been made to conceal those falsehoods as such, so GM can actively disclose them as misdirection. I could prep the necessary concealment... but haven't we already gone past the point of plausibility?!

 

[pemerton]

I said on page 78:

For example in case where the players were looking the papers from the wrong place the GM could just say without any roll, "you open the safe but the papers are not there." This is saying "no" as the intent of the player was not just open the safe but find the documents.

So not resolving the situation with the mechanics of the action resolution was my suggestion from the get go.

I took @AbdulAlhazred to be saying something else:

At no point is it necessary for there to be an action declaration who's intent is to reveal some fact such as @Crimson Longinus is thinking of.

This is not the non-use of resolution mechanics. This is the non-framing of an action declaration.

As I also said to @AbdulAlhazred, to me this does not seem to me to be the sort of play DitV aims at. And I continue to take the view that, in DitV, if the players are having their PCs look for information in a place that the GM's prep specifies it cannot be found, something has gone wrong: the GM has failed to actively reveal the town in play.

"If nothing’s at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they’re doing. . . . If they ask for information, give it to them." (p 139). If the GM is adhering to this principle, the players won't come to have a false belief about where the documents are located.

Suppose the GM has a NPC lie - as per p 140,

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.​

So the players won't have their PCs look in the safe, with the players hoping to find the dirt. Perhaps they open the safe to prove a point that the documents aren't in there. Maybe we even collectively narrate a colour scene, in which the PCs confirm their suspicion that they have been lied to, by checking the safe. (And maybe this is the sort of thing @AbdulAlhzared had in mind.) What we don't have is a situation in which the players believe something is at stake - that the documents might be in the safe - when in fact it's not.

And there's a reason for this, within the context of DitV as a RPG: it's not a game about finding stuff out. It's a game about responding, judging, and imposing one's will on a conflicted social, emotional and spiritual situation.

 

[clearstream]

I took @AbdulAlhazred to be saying something else:

This is not the non-use of resolution mechanics. This is the non-framing of an action declaration.

As I also said to @AbdulAlhazred, to me this does not seem to me to be the sort of play DitV aims at. And I continue to take the view that, in DitV, if the players are having their PCs look for information in a place that the GM's prep specifies it cannot be found, something has gone wrong: the GM has failed to actively reveal the town in play.

"If nothing’s at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they’re doing. . . . If they ask for information, give it to them." (p 139). If the GM is adhering to this principle, the players won't come to have a false belief about where the documents are located.

Suppose the GM has a NPC lie - as per p 140,

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.​

So the players won't have their PCs look in the safe, with the players hoping to find the dirt. Perhaps they open the safe to prove a point that the documents aren't in there. Maybe we even collectively narrate a colour scene, in which the PCs confirm their suspicion that they have been lied to, by checking the safe. (And maybe this is the sort of thing @AbdulAlhzared had in mind.) What we don't have is a situation in which the players believe something is at stake - that the documents might be in the safe - when in fact it's not.

And there's a reason for this, within the context of DitV as a RPG: it's not a game about finding stuff out. It's a game about responding, judging, and imposing one's will on a conflicted social, emotional and spiritual situation.

I agree with what you say here. It's what I wanted to imply with "heading the problem off at the pass". The proposed case denies GM resources by examining resolution in isolation, whereas resolution is part of a fabric of play. It's justified to refer to that fabric in analysing resolution. An apparent fault with resolution may be accurately diagnosed as a fault in framing and invoking it, which themselves rest on prior play.

I know you've pointed that out: resolution has meaning only in the framework of play. Relating to my thoughts on TR, which deny that anyone resolves tasks for their own sake; granted you might demur.

 

[FrogReaver]

Precisely. It is made clear the sort of work required to paint oneself into a corner!

Reflection on the play to get to this point aligns my intuitions with yours. With unusually stringent commitments in place up front, we don't submit it to resolution. No up front commitment was made to keeping the Will's location hidden, so GM can actively disclose it, heading the problem off at the pass.

I could add - "and the Will's location cannot be disclosed." But that makes the chosen stakes quite surprising, so it must be "only false locations for the Will can be disclosed". No commitment has yet been made to conceal those falsehoods as such, so GM can actively disclose them as misdirection. I could prep the necessary concealment... but haven't we already gone past the point of plausibility?!

Question -
How does the GM actively reveal the fact that the will is in the safe before the players open the safe?

If an NPC tells them, fictionally how do they know it’s currently still there? How do they know the NPC isn’t lying? Etc. in short - how is this a true reveal of binding myth?

I think what actually happens in play is that binding myth is very rarely something that can be preemptively revealed to the PCs. The PCs must go to the location to sense firsthand the thing that was described, because until then it’s not binding. *One can get around this with meta reveals of such binding myths but that’s not how most RPGs are played. Most treat anything revealed indirectly to the PCs as non-binding until the characters can directly ‘see it for themselves’.