NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8228173" data-attributes="member: 42582">The cause-and-effect that leads to the creation of fiction is not the imaginary causation that is taking place in the imagined world, but the actual causation that is taking place in human brains. When it comes to mainstream RPGing, we can put those brains into two broad categories: GM and player. In other words, we can identify which participant did the authoring, using what sort of process.This is a special case, for RPGs, of a general phenomenon in the playing of games: people participate in games not just to learn how the state of the game unfolded over time, but to be part of the causal process of driving those changes in the state of the game. When I watch two other people play chess, that is not the same experience as when I play chess. And when I say that I play chess I don't mean that I move the pieces in accordance with someone else's directions - I mean that I make the decisions about what moves are made.When [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] says that protagonistic RPGing requires that the GM not engage in naturalistic extrapolation to oppose the PCs, he means just what he says: when the players declare actions for their PCs, the GM does not engage in naturalistic extrapolation - which is to say, authorship in accordance with certain principles - in order to specify what happens unless that is done so as not to oppose the PCs ie unless the GM says "yes" to what the players want for their PCs.If the GM does not wish to say "yes" to what the players want, then the system mechanics are to be invoked. One upshot of this may be that the players fail their checks, in which case the GM has to narrate consequences. That is a point at which naturalistic extrapolation has a role to play, though it is not the be-all and end-all (eg sometimes an enemy force suddenly appearing over the horizon will be a more exciting consequence than having one's tools break before the job can be completed, even though the latter consequence might seem more naturalistic and less contrived).For example: a player wants her PC to acquire a new sword. The current situation has the PC in a town where there are apt to be blacksmiths, sword-shops etc. And so the player says, "I buy a new sword." Now in my Prince Valiant game we've already spent too much time on this mundanity at this point, and so I just say "yes" and ask them to change their PC sheet appropriately. (The one mechanical wonkiness in Prince Valiant, for which Greg Stafford apologises in the rulebook, is that it requires the players to keep track of money on their PC sheets just like in D&D, even though that is completely irrelevant to the game play.)But in Burning Wheel it's fair game to lean hard on this as GM rather than just say "yes", especially if the issue of access to armaments has been a recurring concern in play. (In my actual BW game access to arms hasn't been an issue, but access to enchanter's tools has.) BW is a game that typically does care about the nitty-gritty of gear load-outs. So the GM can say, OK, you want a sword? Make a resources check! And the GM is even free to say And as you know there's a war on here, so swords are in high demand - add +1 Ob to that check. The player, in turn, has stuff she can do on her side to buff her dice pool. Eg she might respond In that case, I'm going to go down to the local watering hole and ask the off-duty soldiers there for the name of a quartermaster whose loose with his supplies - and thus make a Soldier-wise check to get a bonus die on the Resources check. Or the player can spend Fate or Persona points to boost her dice pool or get re-rolls. Etc.If the check ends up failing, the GM is free to narrate You call in all your favours and contacts, but there's not a sword to be found for love or money. That's a naturalistic consequence. She could even transition into the next scene: But you do get a visit from an aide to the local captain. They've heard you've been trying to procure military goods illegally, and want you to come down to their headquarters for a little chat. That's a naturalistic consequence too. The key feature is that the consequences are not only consequences in the fiction; they're consequences in the game play, consequent upon the resolutions of declared actions. They are not used to block or dictate the outcomes of declared actions.I don't understand this.Gameplay is typically not algorithmic, in the following sense: the algorithm is punctuated periodically by external inputs (ie participant decisions).There are some exceptions, such as snakes and ladders and similar children's board games. And there are games that do call for decisions but are so easily solved that for anyone but a child they do not really require decision-making: noughts-and-crosses is one example, and Monopoly tends to be another.But RPGs are highly non-algorithmic because decisions about the content of the fiction have to be made all the time. And making those decisions is very different from being told what is happening in the fiction. This is further intensified in a RPG by a deliberate design feature that equates player decisions at the table with choices made by a protagonist in the fiction (ie the whole conceit of the player character). And some RPGs have systems that often float somewhat above the fiction - I'm thinking especially traditional D&D combat - but still involve participant decision-making that will shape the future state of the game.The fact that there is (1) a hypothetical episode of GM stipulation of the fiction that yields the same fictional content as (2) an actual episode of game play that involved decision-making by multiple participants, action declarations and the resolution of those, does not remotely show that the game play of (2) didn't matter or is valueless.There's another way to work out that stuff - using checks, much as I described in my example above of the purchasing of a sword. Classic Traveller also relies heavily on random content generation (eg encounter tables).And the key word is desired. The reason that no one watches Warhol's Sleep isn't just because they don't have a spare five hours. Even people with lots of time on their hands want to engage with something more interesting. All the same considerations that inform writing, and film-making, as far as what makes for interesting stories is concerned, can inform RPGing. As its very label suggests, protagonistic RPGing is not indifferent to these things. It is about the focus of play being player-authored PC dramatic needs. Unless one of the PCs is a banker, fluctuations in interest rates, however important to events in the imagined world, are simply not going to figure as something engaged with in play.</blockquote>

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