You keep saying this, but you haven't yet shown me the difference between narrating more fiction and determining action outcomes.
What is the function difference between 'we open the door to the study' and being greeted with an encounter map and 'we look for a map in the study' and being told there is, in fact, no map? Both are requests for the DM to narrate more fiction, yes?
The central conceit here really seems to be revolving around some distinction between an action declaration that you classify as 'asking for more DM fiction' and an action declaration that you classify as 'not asking for more DM fiction.' You haven't clarified the difference.
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You're approaching this from the mindset that the player should be requesting new fiction, and therefore the DM denying that request based on pre-determined notes is bad play
The last sentence is not correct. The fourth sentence - beginning "the central conceit here" is correct.
In my view the distinction is fundamental. My thinking about it is a mixture of (what I would regard as) common sense informed by experience in RPGing; and Vincent Baker's writings about "boxes, clouds and arrows", ficitonal positioning, and the fundamental act in RPGing (which is
establishing some content in a shared fiction).
This definition also completely disregards LARPing, where there's a mix of reality and fiction ongoing. Or even SCA
I'd hoped it was clear from the OP that I'm not talking about LARPing, or SCA, or cops and robbers. I'm talking about table top RPGs.
(And to ward of objections from @howandwh99 - I don't think this analysis and account of the "fundamental act" is all that apt for Gygaxian dungeoneering, which in many ways is better analogised to a boardgame. Eg while Gygaxian dungeoneering involves a shared fiction (sorry, howandwhy99) the dungeon map is a real thing, and the players are - among other things - trying to create an accurate duplicate of it by means of their play of the game. But as I said in the OP, this thread takes as a premise that mose contemporary RPGing, including most contemporary D&D play, is not Gygaxian in this sense.
Sometimes players want the GM to provide them with more fiction. "What can we see?" "How high is the ceiling?" "How many orcs are there?"
A lot of RPGing involves this, even in a game like Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic. Exploration-focused play (which a lot of D&D involes) is absolutely replete with it.
There's no canonical form of words involved. It might happen without the players asking a question at all - the players say "OK, we open the door" and then the GM just proceeds to tell them what they see beyond it.
There's no canonical requirement of action declaration either, although - if you wanted to - you could analyse most of this sort of play in "say 'yes'" terms: the player asks for more info; the GM either "says 'yes'" and just tells them stuff ("The ceiling is 15' high") or the GM calls on the player to roll the dice ("Make a Perception check!" "Oops - only a 3." "Well, sorry, the orcs are too far away for you to get a proper count - maybe a dozen or so?"). Sometimes the request for info migh generate an automatic "no" unless the player changes the fictional positioning for his/her PC ("Does the DNA of the blood match our sample?" "Are you leaving the field to go back to the lab to find out?" "No." "OK then, you can't tell").
One way to think of a spell like Detect Magic is that it changes the fictional positioning - now this PC can not only see and hear but can sense magical phenomena - and so the GM's obligations to answer requests for information change. But another way to think of such a spell is as a fiat ability, because once it's used (at least in standard D&D) the GM can't call for a dice roll to learn the info but must "say 'yes'" - that is, must tell the player all the magical stuff in the vicinity. (A lot of headaches about divination magic could be reduced, I think, if these two functions were separated - so it enhanced the PC's sensory capabilities, but didn't negate the need for a Perception or Insight or whatever check. That mightn't help with Find Traps or Detect Secret Doors, though.)
Anyway, an example of this phenmenon - providing more fiction - from my Traveller game: the PCs have to make two jumps to the planet Byron (their vessel doesn't have the range to make it in a single jump); when they arrive at Lyto-7 after their first jump, I describe it to them (a mixture of telling them the stats for the world, plus fleshing out some details, like that it's a research station).
Another example: when the PCs are going through the trinkets at the Enlil market, I'd already made a roll to establish that there was an alien trinket on sale. (Traveller is ambiguous on random content generation (eg Psionics Institute) vs content generation coming out of action resolution (eg Streetwise). I went the first way on this occasion, which I'm not sure was the best way but as it hapened no wheels fell off.) So the players, when they ask, "Are there any alien artefacts at the market", have a chance of the answer being "yes". But I didn't just "say 'yes'". The relevant PC has Education 13 (a high score) which we've already established is a doctorate in Xeno-Archaeology. So that establishes, as a matter of fictional positioning, that he might recognise alien trinkets. (The other PCs have no real chance, as they don't have the right fictional positioning. That wasn't controversial at the table.) But I called for a check - it succeeded - and so I described the alien trinket that he noticed for sale.
This is the GM reading/telling the players stuff. Now, I have preferences that this not be done from pre-authored notes. That relates to the third of the consequences of GM-preauthored worldbuilding that I mentioned in my reply to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] not far upthread; and is also described clearly in Eero Tuovinen's account of the "standard narrativistic model" that I linked to somewhere upthread: I prefer a game which is focused on stuff that the players bring to it (via PC build, evinced thematic/trope/"wouldn't it be cool if . . ." desires, etc). Whereas GM pre-authorship (which eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates
should be done without knowing anything about what preferences and PCs the players might bring to the game) tends to make the focus one that speaks to the GM.
Relating this to agency: when the game play (at some moment) is predominantly the GM telling the players stuff, then it is the GM who is exercising agency. The fact that that players pressed the button that triggered the GM's narration doesn't change that. But if the GM's narration draws upon, responds to and incorportaes stuff that the players have brought to the game, then the GM's agency is building on their prior exercises of it. Whereas if the GM is telling them stuff that s/he already worked out independently of them, the players' agency is completely absent from that moment of play.
Action declaration involving intent/stakes. Sometimes players want to change the state of the fiction through an action declaration. "I rolled a 13 to hit and 10 to damage - is the orc dead?" That's not a request for the GM to tell the player some more information about the fiction. It's a request that the fiction
be a certain way, namely, that it contain a dead orc.
Likewise "We look for the map in the study - do we find it?" Or (at least in some cases) "We need to escape before they find us - are there any secret doors?"
These situations involve stakes. Often that means conflict (as in the secret door example) but not always (in the map example there's no obvious conflict; but there is something at stake). If the check fails, the players have
lost. (That is different from the above, where there are no stakes.)
You might say - but didn't the hunt for alien trinkets involve stakes? And the answer would be "yes", which is why I don't think I handled it properly, but Traveller is not quite as robust for this as (say) Burning Wheel or 4e, and I was trying to muddle through using my best intuitions at the time as to the mechanical resources Traveller provides. In future I'd probably use the Streetwise model rather than the Psionics Institute model.
Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic have less exploratory play than conventional D&D, less than Traveller, less than 4e. As I've already posted, in many cases in BW it is degenerate for the player to ask the GM for more information, because that is an attempt to squib, by having the extra information the GM provides be a type of safety valve or an excuse to avoid a hard choice. Hence in BW if the player delcares an object reading type action (eg, from actual play, "Who made the cursed black arrows I found in my brother's room?") then, as GM, I'm entilted and often obliged to get clear on what the player would consider a loss (so in that case, the action declaration, revised in respone to GM pressue is, "I use my object reading to prove that my brother is innocent - someone else made these arrows!" and then when the check
fails I'm entitled to say "Sorry, it's bad news . . .").
Because there are no canoncial forms of words, and different games have different mechanics and different conventions, and tables have their own understandings, there are (and obviously there are) no hard and fast rules. Making sense of an action declaration, and responding to it as (i) a request for more fiction, or (ii) a desire to establish more fiction, and then (iii) working out what is at stake and what not, and hence (iv) what might be a fair or unfair framing, is ultimately a GM judgement.
In Cortex+, for intance, finding the map in the study is a fairly straightforward roll to establish an asset. Is there also an acid trap in the same secret hiding place? Well, the GM has to spend Doom Pool dice to make that the case.
In BW, finding the map is more likely to be a fairly hard Scavenging or Study-wise roll. If it succeeds, it would typically be poor GMing to introduce the acid trap.
In 4e, finding the map is probably a move in a skill challenge. Introducing the acid trap is (in my view) quite permissible if the skill challenge is still ongoing; but if finding the map is the
completion of the skill challenge then that situation is over, and the immediate adversity confronted by the players has been resolved in their favour; and so the acid trap would typically be (in my view) poor GMing.
You referenced the beholder acutal play example. The travel through the Underdark, at that point, was (I think) being resolved as a skill challenge. I can't recall whether the beholder encounter was framed as it was in response to a failure in the course of that challenge, or not (and the post doesn't say). Either way, in a skill challenge the GM has to continue framing the PCs into adversity until it is complete one way or the other - because if there's no adversity, then there's no fictional context that generates the checks that (mechanically) resolve the challenge. Splitting the party across a chasm, in upper paragon tier 4e, is in my view completely reasonable adversity and within the GM's remit. (Again, contrast Cortex+, where to split the party the GM has to spend resources from the Doom Pool.) Declaring that a PC falls down the pit would, in my view, not be fair framing. That difference is an expression of jugement based in experience running the system. Other groups might form different judgements.
Either way, there is no negation of action declaration by framing the encounter. The drow got across the chasm. And no check to avoid beholders in the underdark had been declared or resolved - that was what the skill challenge was for, and it was still ongoing.
You say that the fiction doesn't really exist. Okay, we'll leave aside the game implications of that statement for now and take it for argumentation.
Obviously the words on paper, the thoughts in players' heads, etc, exist. But the orc, the swords, the study, the map - they are all imaginary. (But see my above remarks about the dungeon map in Gygaxian play - it's a real artefact which, like a board in a boardgame, is a component of play.)
Since the fiction doesn't exist, then whatever you author into the fiction doesn't matter: it doesn't exist. Only the act of authoring is a real thing. So, therefore, all acts of authoring are the same. This is absurd
And I didn't assert it. I said:
The orc doesn't exist. There are some words about the orc. Then some more words are authored - the orc is dead, say.
The map doesn't exist; nor does the study. There are some words about the study. Then some more words are authored - the study has a map in it.
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Adding a sentence to the orc's description: it's dead; and adding a sentence to the study's description; it contains a map; are identical causal processes. And in RPGing terms, that means they are structurally equivalent game moves.
I'll assert it again: adding a sentence to the orc's description, and to the study's descriptoin, are structurally equivalent game moves. They are both acts of authorship that increase the detail about the orc and the study respectively.
If all acts of authoring are the same, then restrictions such as genre appropriateness or fictional positioning don't matter. You've strongly argued that these do matter, so that means that there is a difference in what is authored into the fiction -- some acts of authoring are preferred to others. Since those limitations are subjective -- there's not objective reason that genre appropriateness be a deciding limitation -- then it stands to reason that many things can impact what can be authored depending on the subjective choices of the participants.
This is all non-sequitur.
I am talking about
adding descriptions to established elements of the fiction. None of the descriptions I've posited contradict established fiction, depart from genre conceits, or otherwise collide with any basic constraints on good authorship. (Cf the presence of beam weapons in the Duke's toilet.) Those facts about the added descriptions are not "subjective". They are pretty obvious.
different styles of authoring can exist that serve to limit what can be authored into the fiction. This means that how the fiction is authored in game is actually based on subjective preferences of the players, and that, depending on those preferences, this can very well be a difference between killing an orc and creating a map in the library.
But the difference isn't one of structure or metaphysics (contra [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others who refer to "Schroedinger's map" and the like).
The difference is that some players want the GM's authorship practices to, more-or-less, track the real-world metaphysics of the imagined things. So the GM is to treat the map as an object which does not supervene on it's location in the study; whereas we can use mechanics to determine the death of the orc which do treat that death as supervening on the orc (rather than being some distinct event that the GM is free to author as if it were independent of the causal processes governing the orc).
Ron Edwards invented a name for this preference: purist-for-system simuationism. Some RPGs serve it very well - RQ and RM among them. My point is that it's not a preference that is inherent in having a rich, complex, "living" world. Hence the answer to "what is worldbuilding for" can't be "because otherwise you won't get a rich, complex, "living" world. And the reason for that is the structural equivalence, as acts of authorship, of introducing a new description about the orc and a new description about the map, which permits the latter just as much as the former to be an outcome of, rather than an input into, actiion resolution.
Returning briefly to the game implications of the fiction not existing -- I find this quasi-nihilist as the very concept of the hobby is creating and interacting withing a shared fiction. Stating that it's really a game of make believe and so has no impact in the real world is saying that RPGs can't engage our emotions and thoughts in ways that benefit us outside of telling ourselves a story.
Novels and movies also engage emotions. If I could ever run a RPG session that had the impact of (say) The Quiet American or The Human Factor I'd be immensely proud. That doesn't mean those people and events are real.
It's not nihilist to deny the reality of imaginary things. It's just stating the literal truth.
