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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8308777" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I've read more about the <em>impartiality </em>discussion since my post just upthread. I think most people can read the words and understand them at a certain general/abstract level. But what counts as an instance of <em>impartiality</em>? Or <em>fairness</em>? As I see it, the key point is that there are no unique answers to these questions.</p><p></p><p>The plus side of this is that every game is different and special. The downside is that humans sometimes make bad calls and play can suffer as a result. One measure of a good GM is that s/he rolls with those bad calls and cleans up the mess fairly quickly!</p><p></p><p>I should also add, it's not just <em>impartiality</em> that admits of reasonable differences of opinion over what counts. Think again of the the DW example: the boundary between soft and hard moves is not itself clearcut (is smoke on the horizon always a soft move, or can it be hard if we <em>know</em>, from the established fiction, that it <em>will </em>bring the raiders on a sweeping, pillaging raid through the valley?).</p><p></p><p>I enjoyed reading [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s and [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s example of BitD play. Suppose the barmaid was not just a potential innocent bystander but Ovinomancer's PC's sister - is that fair GMing, or pushing too hard? Or instead of an innocent, there's a person in there who is a player in some other political scheme that Ovinomancer's PC is involved in. Or that one of Ovinomancer's PC's colleagues is involved in! - so that now the challenge really becomes one about group loyalties, mediated by Ovinomancer's character having to be the one who - in the fiction - makes the call about exposing this PC to danger.</p><p></p><p>And obviously the possible alternatives can be multiplied indefinitely.</p><p></p><p>A further thought: the classic skilled play of Gygax, Moldvay etc purges all sentiment from play - even the sparing of innocents is handled not through sentiment, but by feeding into the alignment mechanics. This helps narrow the parameters both for player decision-making and for GM adjudication of what's fair or not.</p><p></p><p>Enrich the fiction, and enrich the sorts of things the players are invited to care about in their decision-making, and you better be prepared to change your methodology for adjudication if you don't want your games to be pretty short-lived! (Which even the DL authors realised, however weak their actual revised methodology may look.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8308777, member: 42582"] I've read more about the [I]impartiality [/I]discussion since my post just upthread. I think most people can read the words and understand them at a certain general/abstract level. But what counts as an instance of [I]impartiality[/I]? Or [I]fairness[/I]? As I see it, the key point is that there are no unique answers to these questions. The plus side of this is that every game is different and special. The downside is that humans sometimes make bad calls and play can suffer as a result. One measure of a good GM is that s/he rolls with those bad calls and cleans up the mess fairly quickly! I should also add, it's not just [I]impartiality[/I] that admits of reasonable differences of opinion over what counts. Think again of the the DW example: the boundary between soft and hard moves is not itself clearcut (is smoke on the horizon always a soft move, or can it be hard if we [I]know[/I], from the established fiction, that it [I]will [/I]bring the raiders on a sweeping, pillaging raid through the valley?). I enjoyed reading [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s and [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s example of BitD play. Suppose the barmaid was not just a potential innocent bystander but Ovinomancer's PC's sister - is that fair GMing, or pushing too hard? Or instead of an innocent, there's a person in there who is a player in some other political scheme that Ovinomancer's PC is involved in. Or that one of Ovinomancer's PC's colleagues is involved in! - so that now the challenge really becomes one about group loyalties, mediated by Ovinomancer's character having to be the one who - in the fiction - makes the call about exposing this PC to danger. And obviously the possible alternatives can be multiplied indefinitely. A further thought: the classic skilled play of Gygax, Moldvay etc purges all sentiment from play - even the sparing of innocents is handled not through sentiment, but by feeding into the alignment mechanics. This helps narrow the parameters both for player decision-making and for GM adjudication of what's fair or not. Enrich the fiction, and enrich the sorts of things the players are invited to care about in their decision-making, and you better be prepared to change your methodology for adjudication if you don't want your games to be pretty short-lived! (Which even the DL authors realised, however weak their actual revised methodology may look.) [/QUOTE]
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