You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[chaochou]

Do you think it can be a matter of degree?

/snip

I still think there can be a difference between just following the GM's bread crumbs (to use @Hussar 's phrase) and the players being proactive in the way they realise that goal (eg by leveraging the siege).

I don't think we, as an rpg community, yet have the language to articulate certain things. Perhaps they can't be articulated. I think player choice is one of these grey areas which we each understand in our own way and yet struggle to convey.

To boil it right down: You're a fighter. I tell you you're in a room with a skeleton. It attacks. You have the choice of fighting with a mace and shield, two-handed sword or bow. You win. There's one door. In the next room is an orc. It attacks. You choose your weapon. You win. One door, next room, Stirge. Choose weapon, fight.

Most people would say this is a rubbish game. But it feature choices - choice of weapon, choice of going through the next door, choice to run away. Is this 'enough' choice? From what I remember, in Tunnels and Trolls it pretty much is! So how do we communicate what choices we want? What ensures our right to these choices? How do we articulate 'scope' as it relates to 'choice'?

Can the players be pro-active at the seige (micro-choice) within a module-set goal of going somewhere inside the city (macro-lack of choice)? I believe so. How do we communicate that this is satisfactory? How do we delineate these boundaries? What can be closed, what must be open? Do these things remain constant or shift, change, evolve?

We have mechanics like Aspects and Beliefs and procedures like Say Yes or Roll the Dice and Extended Conflicts and these things change the boundaries of our choices, I think. From where to where, though? Right now that can't be said, only experienced and illustrated through example.

I think player choice, 'player empowerment' is an 80-page thread of its own!

 

[N'raac]

also don't get what you think is going on with the "I'm the true king of this land" example. Are you saying that an RPG campaign can't be run in which, at the start of the game, none of the participants in the game no whether or not this is true, and by the end of the game some sort of resolution of the question has been achieved?

I (and I think Celebrim) am saying that this belief requires context to be meaningful. That doesn't mean we must know whether it is true, but we must know what would determine it to be true. That requires backstory. The setting could include any definition, but we also need to know what the player's definition is, and what the player would consider successful resolution. All of that sets backsory in the campaign.

As for the player not getting the story they expected - I read that and think, "Yes, that's the point. You're not meant to know what the ending is. But it's pretty likely the game will (among other things) be about what true kingship entails, and that's what you asked for when you wrote that Belief on your character sheet." But maybe I have not undertsood what you're getting at.

If the player expects one of King Arthur or King Conan and you provide the other, will he be happy? Someone earlier mentioned Jesus of Nazareth - do you think the player who wrote "True King of the Land" envisions his character's agonizing death to be a successful resolution of his belief? If he is expecting an external struggle for the throne to feature prominently, and the issue is resolved with a roll by the character who, while seaching for proof of his true lineage, is trapped by a cave-in with that absolute proof, but can never show it to anyone else, will he view that as a suitable end? "You rolled high enough to dictate that this proves absolutely you are the One True King of the Land - you suffocate in full satisfaction that your belief was correct" is, in fact, a resolution where the belief was proven 100% correct, so the player should be ecstatic, right?

I also said that I can't run a story that tests "whether the ends justify the means" - after all, as Bertrand Russell once asked, What else would? - but gave a much more specific statement of Belief - namely, "If there's a ticking bomb, I torture them until they tell me where it is."

Whereas I would say that is not a belief, but a manifestation of a belief.

 

[LostSoul]

I (and I think Celebrim) am saying that this belief requires context to be meaningful. That doesn't mean we must know whether it is true, but we must know what would determine it to be true. That requires backstory. The setting could include any definition, but we also need to know what the player's definition is, and what the player would consider successful resolution. All of that sets backsory in the campaign.

I think you need a backstory to give Beliefs meaning in the game world. I don't know if you must know what would determine any Belief to be true - I think you need some kind of idea, and I think you need to be flexible enough so that your ideas may change through the events in play.

do you think the player who wrote "True King of the Land" envisions his character's agonizing death to be a successful resolution of his belief?

I played a PC in a BW game that had a similar belief. It was something like "I believe that our people are strong, and need to be ruled by the strongest among us; since I have strength, I deserve to rule." Something like that. My PC was a Bastard, so didn't really have a legitimate claim to lordship. (The setting was somewhat dark-ages Germany/Poland, I recall. It was a few years ago.) (Found my character sheet - it was "Nobility is not in blood it is in the deed. I will carve out my own koning.")

I had that Belief for a long time and it gave me Fate points here and there. It wasn't really a major focus of play. Some of the other players asked if I should change it, but I thought that there was potential there, so I left it on the sheet.

It became a focus of play in the last few sessions. My PC was captured and tortured by an elf witch-queen who totally changed my PC's ideas about who he was and who his people were. (It was a nice culmination of everything that had happened to my PC, especially his interactions with the other, elven PCs.) I ended up leading an orc army against the last bastion of humanity in the little valley - I think that Belief changed to "My people are weak and they deserve to die. I will kill them all and burn the land." (This was actually "Men are weak but I am strong. I will kill the troll leader and take over the orcish tribe." Hmm, seems like more happened in that last session than I recall. Oh yeah - I think I led a covert ambush to kidnap a princess.)

I ended up face-to-face with one of the elf PCs; we had a Duel of Wits - I wanted him to leave the valley with all the other elves and leave us alone; he wanted me to repent for my sins. I made a few Points that all of this destruction was their fault, caused by the meddling of the elves in human affairs; he didn't listen, so I attacked him. Being an elf, he killed me pretty easily, which I figured would be the outcome. (As in, my PC knew that, and was willing to die if it meant getting rid of the elves.)

He ended up getting all Greif-y and ended up leaving the valley, never to return. I think something similar happened to the elf witch-queen; I forget exactly what - she may have locked herself up in her tower forever, killed herself, or allowed herself to be taken from the human lands.

Anyway, I thought my PC's death at the hands of his former friend was a very successful resolution of that Belief.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Does your "now" refer to "because there's a sandstorm locking down the city"? If so, then yes, you're reasserting something I agreed to several posts back now.

Yes.

As I said then, the sandstorm example is strictly analogous to @chaochou's example way upthread of how the barber shop episode can be framed in such a way as to draw the players into the street because that is where the barber shop that they care about is located.

So proximity is what matters? Because, again, the city isn't the goal of the player or PC, it's what's in the city.

But this still puzzles me.

This doesn't surprise me, since I'm still puzzled by a lot of logic on your side. However, I'm surprised we can't even understand one another. I don't know if we've had this problem to this extent before. Disagree, sure, but basic incomprehension on both sides? This is a new one.

In @Hussar's game there was no sandstorm as the PCs approached the city (which is one of your devices for making the desert relevant). There were no nomads with refugees foreshadowing or carrying information with respect to the city (which is another of your devices for making the desert relevant). All there was was an expanse of wasteland needing to be crossed.

That's all he knew of at the time. But, he had no idea if there was going to be nomads with refugees, or a sandstorm. He had no idea what was to be encountered in the desert, and he wanted to skip all of it, because it wasn't relevant. I'm asserting that he can't know that until he encounters it, since he has no idea the context of the encounters until that point (or unless the GM tells him, which didn't seem to be the case).

Yet, the siege isn't described, foreshadowed, or introduced yet, either, but it's "relevant" right away when it's introduced. Hussar cannot interact with the siege until it interrupts his journey to his goal, just like the nomads leading refugees or a sandstorm. Hussar did not know if any of these would pop up, but proclaimed the desert "irrelevant" nonetheless, even without context. Again, this is what I'm disputing.

That is not relevant. It lacks what is common to both your devices, namely, some (non-procedural) connection to the city.

I think you're shifting things back to "the city" rather than "the goal in the city." But I've said that before. And, as far as your confusion goes, see my reply, above. As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

Is this 'enough' choice? From what I remember, in Tunnels and Trolls it pretty much is! So how do we communicate what choices we want? What ensures our right to these choices? How do we articulate 'scope' as it relates to 'choice'?

Can the players be pro-active at the seige (micro-choice) within a module-set goal of going somewhere inside the city (macro-lack of choice)? I believe so. How do we communicate that this is satisfactory? How do we delineate these boundaries?

<snip>

Right now that can't be said, only experienced and illustrated through example.

Thanks. Interesting reply, interesting example (Go T&T!), I think you're right that the notion of "degree" in my earlier post isn't correct, or doesn't capture the issues/dimensions in play.

If I just keep my mind on the siege, and the idea of the player leveraging it in pursuit of their goals, I can think of ways a GM might adjudicate that which would kill the game dead, and ways that leave player choice open and meaninful. The first D&D game I played at university lasted for two, maybe three, sessions: we made our way through the GM's plot and ended up capturing a kobold. We tried to interrogate it, to get information that would lets us as PCs move from reaction to proaction - and which would also, as players, have let us start to take some control of the game. The GM played the kobold in such a way that it could not tell us anything meanignful - it was like interrogating a 3-year old - even though by the 2nd ed AD&D rules kobolds have average intelligence.

The next week the GM couldn't turn up, and in his absence I staged a coup. I offered to start GMing instead (my first Rolemaster campaign) and everyone rolled up PCs. My game was incredibly open and player driven by the standards of that place and time, but by my current standards still overly GM-driven and quite different from the games you describe (eg all the NPCs were written up by me as GM in order to drive interesting play, but the idea of following informal player flags hadn't really oxcurred to me).

Linking this slightly rambling autobigraphy back to the main topic of the thread, it's these sorts of experiences that sape my interpretation of [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s reports of his experience, and my sympathy for his attitude towards them.

 

[pemerton]

So proximity is what matters?

<snip>

That's all he knew of at the time.

I'm going to have another go.

The proximity that matters is not geographic proximity, but "story" proximity (taking it for granted that it is the player priorities, as expressed via PC goals, that determine what counts as the story) in real (not game) time.

Remember that the Forge tagline for narrativist play is "story now". Whether or not Hussar is angling towards full-tilt narrativism, I think the tagline can still be relevant - and I hope you can see that in my previous paragraph I've tried to put the tagline to work - to repeat, story proximity and real-world temporal proximity (the shorthand for which is "now").

A sandstorm around the city, or a siege, is about the city [story proximity] here and now [real time temporal proximity]. The empty expanse of wasteland is neither of those things. It may well be true that, if you go through X minutes of play following the GM's narration, you will eventually (in minutes, hours, perhaps sessions of play) get to something which is both proximate in story and real time temporal terms. But you weren't there yet, for those minutes, hours or session of play. They weren't delivering "story now".

And that's the sense in which the desert wasteland is not relevant. Yes, there could be story in there in the future of play. But there is no story there now. Whereas the siege, the sandstorm, the nomads with the city refugees - they have story now.

 

[N'raac]

I'm going to have another go.

Me too.

The proximity that matters is not geographic proximity, but "story" proximity (taking it for granted that it is the player priorities, as expressed via PC goals, that determine what counts as the story) in real (not game) time.

Remember that the Forge tagline for narrativist play is "story now". Whether or not Hussar is angling towards full-tilt narrativism, I think the tagline can still be relevant - and I hope you can see that in my previous paragraph I've tried to put the tagline to work - to repeat, story proximity and real-world temporal proximity (the shorthand for which is "now").

A sandstorm around the city, or a siege, is about the city [story proximity] here and now [real time temporal proximity]. The empty expanse of wasteland is neither of those things. It may well be true that, if you go through X minutes of play following the GM's narration, you will eventually (in minutes, hours, perhaps sessions of play) get to something which is both proximate in story and real time temporal terms. But you weren't there yet, for those minutes, hours or session of play. They weren't delivering "story now".

And that's the sense in which the desert wasteland is not relevant. Yes, there could be story in there in the future of play. But there is no story there now. Whereas the siege, the sandstorm, the nomads with the city refugees - they have story now.

The players' goals - the "story" you want "now" is not "the city". It is inside the city. We are not sure where inside the city, as the actual goal has never been clarified, but the players' objective lies WITHIN THE CITY. The city IS NOT the goal. It has been mentioned numerous times that you continuously change the goal from WITHIN THE CITY to being THE CIty. So once more with feeling:

THE CITY IS NOT THE GOAL.
THE CITY IS NOT THE STORY
THE GOAL - THE STORY - IS SOMEWHERE INSIDE THE CITY!

The wasteland, the siege and the sandstorm are OUTSIDE THE CITY. They are all obstacles to be overcome, circumvented or bypassed in order to get INSIDE THE CITY to get the story now. If the player objective is "STORY NOW", then the siege, the desert, the sandstorm and even much of the city itself should be passed over because THEY ARE NOT THE STORY.

Apologies for YELLING.

 

[pemerton]

I (and I think Celebrim) am saying that this belief requires context to be meaningful. That doesn't mean we must know whether it is true, but we must know what would determine it to be true.

OK. I don't agree with this.

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] has given a lengthy example from actual BW play.

I'll try and give an example from a Rolemaster campaign I GMed. There were not formal Beliefs in that game, but there were informal flags playing some of the same roles. One of the PCs was a paladin, and the paladin's goal was to do justice under heaven. At first, this PC (as played by the player) took that to mean upholding the laws of heaven. But then he discovered that, due to heaven's refusal to challenge certain karmic pacts that had been made at the beginning of time, upholding the laws of heaven was going to bring suffering to many whom, in the PC's view, didn't deserve it, whatever the laws of karma might dictate. So the paladin (together with the other PCs, who had their own motivations) started contesting the will of heaven. He (and the other PCs) joined forces with an exiled god and a dead god who had been driven mad through suffering, and whose mad shards still manifested in the world from time to time, to achieve a result different from those dictated by the laws of karma - which included imprisoning one of the ancient lords of karma in the very place that had driven the dead god mad.

So, in order to play a PC whos goal is to do justice under heaven, do we have to know in advance what would count as justice under heaven. I don't think so. It's a staple of film and literature, as well as (in my view) RPGing, that one cosequence of the pursuit of a goal or value can be coming to realise that what it demans is something different from what one thought at first.

Luke Crane gives an example of this sort of thing in the Adventure Burner. From memory, it goes something like this: The Belief is "I I will liberate Dro of his burdens." At first, the player has the following in mind - Dro is not a nice person, doesn't deserve his goodies, and I'm going to steal them. Then, as part of this, the PC insinuates himself into Dro's confidences, and comes to know Dro. He's got troubles to. So may "I will liberate Dro of his burdens" comes to mean that I will help Dro deal with his troubles. But then, as the PC and Dro get closer, the PC learns that Dro's biggest burden, most troubling memory, is that he is the one who had the PC's family enslaved and killed, all those many years ago (in the realm of backstory). And now the interpretation of the Belief changes again - the burden from which the PC will liberate Dro is his guilt-ridden soul. So the PC's orientation towards Dro shifts from theft, to sympathetic support, to assassination.

In other woards, what would make a Belief true I think is something that can evolve through play. And is expected to.

 

[pemerton]

The players' goals - the "story" you want "now" is not "the city". It is inside the city.

The PCs' goal is in the city.

The players' goal is to have a fun game - which includes complications - while pursing their PCs' goals.

For the PCs, a siege of the city is (perhaps, even probably) a pain in the arse - it's another obstacle.

But for the players, the siege is not a pain in the arse - it's part of the situation they are hoping to engage, a resource they can leverage, and in short promises an interesting session of trying to realise their PCs' goal.

*************

Let me come at it in a slightly different way.

Suppose a PC's goal is to recover an ancient heirloom. Having heard that it might be buried in an ancient cache at place X, the PC travels to X and starts digging.

There are at least three ways this story can unfold. (1) The rumours were false, and digging reveals nothing. (2) The rumours were true, and digging reveals the heirloom. The PC acquires it, his/her quest successful. (3) The rumours were true, but they didn't mention that this ancient cache is also Vecna's burial place - now the PC can only recover the heirloom by entering into conflict with the ancient lichking.

From the point of view of the PC, it seems to me that (2) is the most prefereable option. After that it is hard to rank - if the PC is very strong, perhaps (3) > (1), because the PC can beat Vecna. If the PC is weaker, perhaps (1) > (3), because the PC has a better chance of finding the heirloom elsewhere than of taking it from Vecna.l

From the point of view of the player, however, it seems to me that in most cases (3) > (2) > (1). The player wants to play an interesting game, and conflict and compliation in pursuit of your goals is more interesting than unhindered success.

But the player (or, at least, my players, and it seems [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) want conflicts and complications that address or pertain to their goals. Struggling with Vecna to recover my heirloom seems like a fine heirloom quest campaign; whereas, a version of (2) in which getting to X is preceded by an aduous sea voyage or desert crossing wouldn't really be an heirloom quest campaign at all - it's a voyaging campaign which Hussar has indicated he's happy to play, but doesn't want to do when he's revved up for the heirloom quest campaign.

This is also why I had a strong (if brief) response to your post upthread about teleporting past the siege into the central town square and recovering the MacGuffin. If that's all that's happening in the city - if it's just a procedural puzzle which I can solve with one or two teleport spells plus a charm spell, to cross the desert, enter the city and inveigle some NPC out of the MacGuffin - then for me at least the desert crossing is the least of my complaints. The whole game seems to have no point, no dynamism, nothing happening. It's starting to looke like nothing more than joining the dots.

I've been taking it for granted that doing whatever has to be done in the city will itself be an interesting episode of play, with choices to be made, complications to be dealt with, and player resources (including perhaps the siege or the sandstorm) being leveraged.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I'm going to have another go.

I appreciate the patience.

The proximity that matters is not geographic proximity, but "story" proximity (taking it for granted that it is the player priorities, as expressed via PC goals, that determine what counts as the story) in real (not game) time.

This makes sense to me. This is what I've been talking about when I say "relevance" (to PC goals).

Remember that the Forge tagline for narrativist play is "story now". Whether or not Hussar is angling towards full-tilt narrativism, I think the tagline can still be relevant - and I hope you can see that in my previous paragraph I've tried to put the tagline to work - to repeat, story proximity and real-world temporal proximity (the shorthand for which is "now").

A sandstorm around the city, or a siege, is about the city [story proximity] here and now [real time temporal proximity].

Which, if the city is the goal of the PC (and thus has to do with Hussar's goal as a player to interact with his PC goals), then I'd consider that relevant. If the siege or sandstorm isn't relevant to his goals (as PC or player), then it's just a "roadblock" or irrelevant complication. It does not meet the "story" portion of the tagline. We on the same page?

The empty expanse of wasteland is neither of those things. It may well be true that, if you go through X minutes of play following the GM's narration, you will eventually (in minutes, hours, perhaps sessions of play) get to something which is both proximate in story and real time temporal terms. But you weren't there yet, for those minutes, hours or session of play. They weren't delivering "story now".

And that's the sense in which the desert wasteland is not relevant. Yes, there could be story in there in the future of play. But there is no story there now. Whereas the siege, the sandstorm, the nomads with the city refugees - they have story now.

Ah! Exactly! This is exactly what I've been saying.

Okay, so, Hussar wants the PCs to cross the desert. He wants to skip it, because "big featureless sand" is about all he knows about it, and he says "that's not relevant to my PC's goals, and as a player, I want to deal with those goals. So, let's skip the desert, and get to the temple in the city."

However, this would also mean skipping the siege. He doesn't know about it as a player, and can't say he wants to interact with it (or "leverage" it?). However, since there can be an affect on his goals (as a player and PC) by using the siege, it is acceptable for it to be introduced into the game ("story" and "now").

What I've been saying, is that by him having absolute power to skip the desert, he is skipping the the "story now" scenes involving that nomad / refugee encounter. As a player, he says "there's nothing relevant in the desert", because he does not know of the siege or nomad / refugee encounter yet. However, as the GM, I know that there is a relevant encounter in the desert in the siege or nomad / refugee encounter ("story" and "now").

That is, Hussar is using metagame reasoning to skip the scene (no judgment; that's fine for many groups). However, I'm pointing out the metagame reasoning is faulty. While Hussar's reasoning can be true, it can easily be false. His reasoning of "there's nothing in the desert that's relevant ("story now") to my goals" is based on his conception of the desert, which is not what he'll be encountering if he plays through it, rather than skipping it.

Mind you, I'm not saying that he needs to sit through minutes of descriptions before going into the desert, much less hours or sessions. I'm not saying he needs to explore it, or wander around in it. I'm saying that, along the way, I go from "okay, you're go into the desert on the way to the city. You're prepared and have your spells, so you're cool and fed along the way. Three days in, however, you run across [nomads / refugees / mercenaries]."

I'm not demanding that he play through stuff he doesn't want to. I've been trying to point out that what he wants (in "story now" or "relevance") depends on context. I get that he doesn't want to fiddle around with "boring" stuff like weight or food supplies or appropriate clothing. That's fine, it's a play style thing, and context doesn't matter as much, there. But the "relevance" of the desert encounters that Hussar wanted to skip cannot be determined by him until he interacts with them, or they are described to him (perhaps from a meta context prior to encountering them).

Does all of this make sense? I'm not saying that the featureless desert of sand is relevant, and I never have. That's why I introduced the sandstorm, the refugees / nomads, the irrelevant quarantine siege, etc. I'm showing that relevance ("story now") is dependent on context, and premature judgments of relevance (judgments without context) is no way to determine if something is relevant or not.

Anyways, hopefully this clears things up a bit. As always, play what you like