That Thread in Which We Ruminate on the Confluence of Actor Stance, Immersion, and "Playing as if I Was My Character"

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah I'm guessing 'negotiation' here means something a bit different from the dictionary definition? Negotiation - Wikipedia

In my game the players seek to achieve successful outcomes in the campaign environment. But I don't see how the GM's role is 'negotiation' - what successful outcome am I seeking to achieve, that requires player agreement? Participation in the game. After that my role is judge, not lawyer.

Nope, it means exactly that.

Let me ask you this -- can a game even occur without any agreement? How does that agreement occur?

The answers, for me, are 1) no, it cannot, and 2) by negotiation, of course.

 

[Umbran]

You put it in quotes, so you obviously know you just subbed in a term that made this a strawman. Why do this?

I refer to pemerton upthread, who quoted the passage I was referring to:

"So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function."

I didn't sub in anything. There is no strawman. It was in quotes because that was the literal word used. Please double-check your facts before accusing in the future. Thanks.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And if someone missed that buried in the text a nice person would just point that out politely and not be a jerk about it.

You were using terms from the article, and doing so authoritatively. It was pointed out nicely -- I said that bleed is orthogonal to skilled play and explained why. You came back swinging after that. At some point, you have to take some ownership for this. I didn't redefine any words, but you're attack me as if I did. I used the term as it was used in the article and thread you responded to, using the term, and, nicely, explained why your use was incorrect.

And negotiation has been stretched well beyond its original meaning. Here are some facts that would make something NOT a negotiation in the common language usage of the word.

1. If everyone agrees ahead of time then no negotiation occurred.
2. If no one agrees and no one is willing to budge at all up front from their position then no negotiation has occurred.

Words mean things.

Negotiation has not been stretched. It's being used exactly as defined.

1. This is a negotiation, and you need to be absolutely clear on what you've negotiated. What you're deciding is the framework to use for future conflict resolution, and what negotiation points exist there. Most problems in RPGs are when two sides have different ideas as to what was negotiated and how future negotiations will operate, and this causes conflict outside the agreed framework.
2. Absolutely negotiation has occurred -- it's just failed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I refer to pemerton upthread, who quoted the passage I was referring to:

"So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function."

I didn't sub in anything. There is no strawman. It was in quotes because that was the literal word used. Please double-check your facts before accusing in the future. Thanks.

That's not what you quoted, which was a different statement that used "core" and for which you restated almost verbatim subbing in "sole." If you meant to discuss a previous comment, you should have either made that clear or quoted it.

As for the comment, mechanics are most conflict resolution tools, and, as such, are part of the negotiation. The statement isn't one of philosophy, but one of observation. If you are not using mechanics as a way to facilitate the negotiation of what's happening in the shared fiction, what are they doing? It would be a diverting change of pace if you actually put forth an argument instead of just driving by and tossing out random criticism.

 

[Emerikol]

You were using terms from the article, and doing so authoritatively. It was pointed out nicely -- I said that bleed is orthogonal to skilled play and explained why. You came back swinging after that. At some point, you have to take some ownership for this. I didn't redefine any words, but you're attack me as if I did. I used the term as it was used in the article and thread you responded to, using the term, and, nicely, explained why your use was incorrect.

Negotiation has not been stretched. It's being used exactly as defined.

1. This is a negotiation, and you need to be absolutely clear on what you've negotiated. What you're deciding is the framework to use for future conflict resolution, and what negotiation points exist there. Most problems in RPGs are when two sides have different ideas as to what was negotiated and how future negotiations will operate, and this causes conflict outside the agreed framework.
2. Absolutely negotiation has occurred -- it's just failed.

Then we have no common framework in THIS universe because what you just said is complete nonsense.

You can't redefine words to mean whatever you want them to mean.

 

[S'mon]

Nope, it means exactly that.

Let me ask you this -- can a game even occur without any agreement? How does that agreement occur?

The answers, for me, are 1) no, it cannot, and 2) by negotiation, of course.

Like I said, by the time the game begins, the negotiation has been successfully concluded. In play I as GM am not negotiating with the players. I am in a stance more akin to a judge. The players may petition me; I am not negotiating with them.

 

[Emerikol]

I'd say this applies to you and most old school GMs. And it's an approach I find actively harmful when it comes to roleplaying.

Wow. So despite the fact my games are fun and full of satisfied players doesn't matter.

Not because of the "The GM is the final authority" part; most GMs do that in most systems it's the "character sensory input from the DM is the only real connection" part. This is a pretty narrow, low bandwidth link.

This very link is what exploded the roleplaying hobby. Instead of very narrow limitations of other games the character could do whatever he wanted in an imaginary world. It's why tabletop games still survive despite fairly sophisticated multiplayer computer games. You just can't get a better sensory input device than a good DM. It's the highest bandwidth link ever invented in gaming.

In most games not run by people "defensive of their role as GM" the GM can still create the impossible. But I have more links than just what they deign to tell me; the rules of the game provide another significant connection to the campaign setting.

I would agree that the rules and any setting info provided by the GM are inputs prior to game start that are highly helpful. And I'm fairly strict on letting the dice fall where they fall as you may know. But there is also a necessary trust that when the GM describes somethings to the players that seems on the surface to contradict other knowledge that they the players do not know the whole story. That something is at work that they do not understand. Yet.

And they would then start trying to understand the world and figure it out. And they'd work out some of the physics of the world they were in and have understandings of it. As a player I approximate this sort of understanding of the world my character in and having learned about it from others who've been living there for longer through the mechanics. Does this make the mechanics always right? No. Exception based design is a thing.

No argument here. If my players see something that seems to "break" the known rules of the universe (something scientists do in this world as well) they adjust their working model and try to figure out the underlying principles behind the cause.

And when GMs, because they are "defensive of their role as GM", use that as an excuse to deny me access to one of my key tools for understanding the world they strip me of the ability to connect with it as anything other than a blindfolded tourist with descriptions of somewhere I fundamentally am not allowed to have more than a superficial understanding of being told to me.

First the understanding is not superficial. It's the best interface in gaming. And I would agree that willy nilly ignoring the rules would be counterproductive but a slavish devotion to the rules in every instance would also be counterproductive.

One thing I notice about people who push back on my style is that they seem to have had a lot of adversarial relationships with GM. GM's need to be limited because they can't be trusted. I just don't play with those GMs.

They also strip themselves of the ability to truly surprise where they intend to. A rock floating in space is not a surprise when you don't know rocks behave differently. Rather than "wow! That's odd" it becomes "Oh. Another thing I have no frame of reference for. Is this meant to surprise me?"

Well again you go from an occurrence to making it common place. There can be no surprise and no wonder if the GM cannot contravene what is known in advance. I agree that if he contravenes everything all the time in a chaotic way then the players will get fatigued from the amount of change and become insensitive to it. I never said nor advocated. A power possessed is not by necessity a power abused. If you've been abused (and boy in some of your alls stories I have to think it was borderline real abuse) then leave that GM behind for good.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Like I said, by the time the game begins, the negotiation has been successfully concluded. In play I as GM am not negotiating with the players. I am in a stance more akin to a judge. The players may petition me; I am not negotiating with them.

I, as a player, want to kill the orc. How does this happen in the game. If you reach for conflict resolution mechanics, you're admitting that a negotiation is taking place -- we're using an agreed arbitration process to determine who gets what they want. Inputs into this are the fictional positioning I can establish as a player and the fictional positioning the GM can establish, which are themselves codified by earlier negotiation.

No one has the unilateral authority to declare what happens in the shared fiction, unless it's stopped being shared.

 

[dragoner]

Like I said, by the time the game begins, the negotiation has been successfully concluded. In play I as GM am not negotiating with the players. I am in a stance more akin to a judge. The players may petition me; I am not negotiating with them.

The Honorable Judge Mental, presiding.
I prefer negotiation as it speeds things up, in that say a player rolls badly, it's easier if they describe how they fail, and for me to build upon that. So a quick "how do you succeed or fail?" negotiation helps me figure out their expectations, it sounds more clumsy that it is in practice. We also sort of figure our roles out, I mean someone who is playing a "loot the corpse" kind of character, we all know that character is only alive until death overtakes them.

 

[S'mon]

I, as a player, want to kill the orc. How does this happen in the game. If you reach for conflict resolution mechanics, you're admitting that a negotiation is taking place -- we're using an agreed arbitration process to determine who gets what they want. Inputs into this are the fictional positioning I can establish as a player and the fictional positioning the GM can establish, which are themselves codified by earlier negotiation.

No one has the unilateral authority to declare what happens in the shared fiction, unless it's stopped being shared.

Maybe it's because I'm a law lecturer and I deal with lawyers, judges, arbitrators, that this seems so off. You keep conflating the lawyer with the judge, the player with the referee, Tony Slattery with Clive Anderson. In an RPG the referee is not trying to 'get what they want', they are adjudicating the player's attempt to get what he/she wants.

Improv actors do constantly engage in negotiation with each other, because none of them has sole authority to determine stuff. The (traditional) RPG GM when presenting the world is not in negotiation stance. Saying they are just confuses their role.