You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[pemerton]

Really nice post here pemerton

Thanks. I was a bit wary of mentioning someone 800-odd posts into a thread they've not been participating in, but I tend to regard it as a courtesy to let someone know I'm talking about their posts on another thread.

So I'm glad you found it worthwhile!

 

[N'raac]

Actually, it was the whole, "Let's detail out the minutia of how you ride the centipede" that I found completely disengaging. But, yeah, the desert isn't particularly interesting either since we have zero investment in the desert and 100% investment in the goal.

As I read your initial discussion on the centipede, the sense I got was "I do not want to play out the desert crossing at all - let us ride the centipede looking cool, avoid any and all encounters and ignore any rules issues related to our ability to actually ride the centipede, despite our ability to do so being integral to my plan."

This is why you have a group template. The group's goals are such that the city should not be disengaging since the city is a group goal. But, y'know what? I still have no problems with another player saying, "Let's skip this". But more on that later.

So every micro objective of the group should be contemplated at the outset to be included in the group template? Sounds like a very pre-planned campaign (with the players contributing to the railroad design, at least).

Well, yes. If you, the DM fail to present any desired scenes, I'm thinking that might be a problem. But, again, more on that at the bottom.

I'm not discussing the GM failing to present desired scenes I'm talking about one player cutting off a scene another player desires to play out.

Certainly I'm willing to play an "exploration" character in the next game. Exploration characters are a blast. I'm more than willing to play in either campaign. What I'm not willing to play in is both campaigns at once. Thus, the whole "Let's have focused campaigns" thing I've been harping about.

It seems more like "let's have a group of characters with complete tunnel vision" to me, but the length of these focused campaigns would be a big part of that issue. From your comments, you envision pretty short campaigns, and a three month "focused on the city campaign" followed by a two month "exploration" campaign and a four month "political intrigue" campaign strikes me as comparable to a much longer campaign encompassing three months of "focus on the city" adventures, two months of "exploration" adventures and four months of "political intrigue" adventures, so the two need not be all that different. In your model, however, an awareness that the PC's will be more focused on the specific challenges will be neeeded to design them appropriately. Characters in the longer term single campaign will need to balance character abilities where those in, say, that "political intrigue" campaign know that interaction abilities will be important and exploration skills will not, so build accordingly.

I prefer the variety, and well rounded characters and character groups, which comes with an acceptance that, sometimes, my abilities aren't the ones best suited for this challenge.

He shouldn't. Why should he? I'm willing to play things out most of the time, so, it's usually not a problem. Just as it shouldn't be a problem when, that one time, I don't want to. Again, no obligation either way.

But the GM needs to present the desired scenes. If he doesn't know what scenes you desire and don't, he can't do so effectively. And it seems like your "not desired" scenes are pretty unpredictable from where I sit - 80+ pages of several of us trying to understand why you differentiate between desert and siege seems to bear that out. Even now we're getting a "oh, it's not the desert travel I object to but the Ride Skill minutia" clarification, so we're obviously still not clear on which scenes you dislike so much you can't abide to even consider playing them out.

If you have five players and you present five scenarios and each scenario is rejected by a different player each time, your table has WAY larger issues than a veto. This is a dysfunctional table and will implode anyway. If the only thing keeping the table from imploding is some bizarre sense of obligation to the DM, I cannot see how this would actually be a fun table to sit at.

If people are veto'ing scenes regularly, again, there's some pretty serious issues at that table. Instead of simply blaming the player, why would we not sit back and try to assess where the real issue is? After all, in the Desert Crossing scenario, it's not that I'm skipping the desert that's the real issue. The real issue is how much should we enforce process simulation at the table. How important is the simulation to the group? If it's very, very important, then the player trying to veto is probably a bad fit for the group and this is a pretty good sign that something needs to change. If it's not very important, then what's the issue with skipping the scene since skipping the scene is perfectly acceptable if the party has the proper in game resources? There must be some other issue at work.

Oddly, you consider goals and objectives something the GM should be 100% conversant with, but assume the GM has no idea of party resources. If I design a desert crossing scenario for characters who have the resources to easily avoid it, then I will design it with that in mind. I would expect them to say "We will not undertake a Camel Caravan - memorize Teleport". If I have designed a desert crossing scenario I expect will be played out, then the party will not have the resources to easily, logically and practically circumvent that scene. I do look at the character sheets - I suspect you do too. So it's not so much "sure, if you had the resources you could easily circumvent this" as "if you have the resources to circumvent this, I would design it with the fact you likely will in mind". I

If you were 15th level, could you have blown by the Grell with no problems? I suggest the answer is yes. I further suggest that the choke point at 15th level would be guarded by something more challenging than a single Grell. And if your resources allow you to ignore the desert travel, the desert travel scene would be created with that in mind.

No doubt. In the sentence, "I am the true king of this land" the word "true" is doing the bridging work. A pretty common useage of "true" that is more-or-less synonymous: "I'm sure my true love is out there somewhere" - someone can be my "true love" in this sense even though I've never met them, may never meet them, and certainly am not currently in a loving relationship with them.

I come back to the rules statement that there is no guarantee your belief is correct. All we know is that the character believes this. He could believe that he can cause the sun to rise in the west, but my guess is that the dice roll will be pretty tough, so good luck making that belief turn into reality.

Anyway, in the case of true kingship you could read it as "I am the destined king", perhaps, or "By the lights of the law of nature, I am the king". And I'm sure there are other readings. Whether the possible differences of nuance between these reading matters can't be known before play starts.

Yup. One read is "I am deluded, but my faith in the fallacy is unshakeable." A lot of people believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around it. Their unshakeable belief did not make it so.

For instance, you don't need to know exactly which interpretation (if any) the player has is in mind to know how to respond when s/he declares as his/her PC's action "I walk the streets explaining to anyone who cares to listen, plus plenty who don't, that "King" Tyrannus is an imposter, a traitor, a usurper, and that the true king must be one of the people, not above them. Someone like me!" Bring on the hostile NPCs, and start rolling the dice.

As long as you accept that the resources of the King may well be adequate that those dice will fail you. Just like dancing on the mists is unlikely to have a result other than plummeting to a grisly demise on the rocks below.

A Beilef is not a statement about backstory. It's role, in play, is future-oriented.

There must be some backstory reason for your belief, mustn't there? And if you are correct, there is history in that regard. That it has yet to be discovered in no way means it is not backstory. If this were simply a statement in the player's background notes in another game, nothing stops the GM deciding he'll see how things play out, or even deciding some time into the game that maybe it would be more interesting if it turns out the player is wrong, or right, after all, despite his first inclination (and play to date) differed.

The Belief "I am the true king" is not, in the first instance, nor perhaps at all, a statement about backstory. It's an attempt to shape the plot trajectory - "This campaign is going to be about, among other things, whether or not this guy is the true king".

The history will be important to whether he is or not. Whether anyone has made an advance determination in that regard does not change the fact that you are writing in some backstory. It seems perfectly legitimate to ask why your character believes this.

If, in the course of play, it turns out that true kingship requires royal bloodline, it may be that - in the trait vote - the other players vote this particular PC the "Born to be King" trait (this trait can be acquired by starting with the Prince of the Blood lifepath, but that is not the only way to acquire it). Everything else being equal, this might well be a sign that this particular campaign is reaching its climax. But maybe not. Traits can be voted off, too - and maybe if it turns out in play that this PC is not really the true king after all, the trait gets voted off.

I believe you said this could be vetoed as well. So what happens if we establish, pretty early on, that royal bloodline is required, and your possession of that trait is voted down?

You are missing the relevance of temporality. When the goal-oriented Belief is first framed by the player, it's truth value is not known. By the rules of the game it's truth value can't be known. In particular, a GM who predetermined it's truth value (say via secret backstory), or who in the course of play set out to reveal it as true or as false, would not be doing the job that a BW GM is called up on to do.

I'd say any GM, in any game, who accepts a character for whom a central characteristic is a belief he is the rightful king, and then immediately disproves that claim categorically in play, is doing a poor job. Having accepted this as a central theme of the game, it would be good practice to provide for both possibilities.

Over the course of play the truth value of the Belief may come to be known. When it is known, that may be a sign to swap it out; or even that the campaign is finished (as per Eero Tuovinen, "The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.")

What if the player manages to ascend the throne without definitive proof of the veracity of his claim being determined? Was that a good campaign or a bad one? We never did resolve that belief. Maybe we find that definitive proof, but it persuades no one and the character dies perceived as a lunatic peasant with delusions of grandeur? Your belief says nothing about whether he will ascend to the throne, only that, by right, he should.

Which also illustrates the relationship between No Myth techniques and this sort of narrativist play. For this particular BW campaign to work, there has to be at least one "fact" about the shared fiction which is not established when play starts, and that is open to being established in the course of play - namely, whether or not this PC really is the true king of the land. If that was already authored - already established as true or false within the fiction - then the game would not be playable.

I clipped it, but didn't you say above that the belief could remain when the truth of the belief had been established? Now you say this being established renders the game unplayable. Which is it?

 

[N'raac]

But as a GM in the BW-style (though GMing a different system, 4e) it is not my job to pass judgement on this action by the PC. By all means I can use story elements to place pressure on the PC, and the player - narrate the horror of some, perhaps the nods of others, and so on. And the other players can play their PCs as they see fit. But for instance, to have the Raven Queen or Erathis turn up and express a view one way or the other - in particular, say, to have them turn up and condemn the PC as a murderer - would be a GMing error by my lights. It would be to foreclose the very issue that the player, by playing this PC in this way, is putting forward as something to be worked out by and in the course of play.

Let's take this a few steps further.

Can other followers assess your behaviour? Can the High Priest condemn the PC as a murderer, for example?

Now, perhaps the High Priest has doubts - either at the outset, or created from an impassioned speech at a trial to determine whether the PC should be condemned by the cult. How would he resolve these? Let us assume he casts a Commune spell to obtain the direct guidance of the higher power. Or let's bump his level a bit - he casts Gate to get the answer right from the horse's mouth. That is, the character has the ability and motivation to cause the Raven Queen or Erathis to "turn up". Do they stand there, dumbfounded, or express a view? How is that view to be determined, in your view?

I can also see a vision of their deity received by the character being quite relevant. Maybe the real conflict here is that the character must reconcile their bloody thirst for vengeance with their service to the Raven Queen and Erathis, because the two are incompatible.

Again, we're back to the division of duty between player and GM. The player sets the conflict in this case - it is an internal conflict, at a minimum. But who sets the manner in which the conflict is to be resolved? That division can vary a lot.

 

[Celebrim]

No doubt. In the sentence, "I am the true king of this land" the word "true" is doing the bridging work. A pretty common useage of "true" that is more-or-less synonymous: "I'm sure my true love is out there somewhere" - someone can be my "true love" in this sense even though I've never met them, may never meet them, and certainly am not currently in a loving relationship with them.

Anyway, in the case of true kingship you could read it as "I am the destined king", perhaps, or "By the lights of the law of nature, I am the king". And I'm sure there are other readings. Whether the possible differences of nuance between these reading matters can't be known before play starts.

This is a misuse of the word nuance and playing semmantic games to evade my point. "True love" is vaguely defined. "True King" is not vaguely defined. To be the true king, you must be by the laws of nature and man the one who is king. Monarchies are built in their entirety around avoiding as much as possible any question over who succeeds rightfully to the kingship. Every system of government is built to obtain a peaceful transition of power between rulers, but with monarchies thats almost their entire reason for being. For even to be in dispute whether or not you are the true king, requires at least some sort of reasonable claim on the throne by birth and some implied violence in the history of the setting. This is why the belief, "I am the true king", is inextricably linked to the player's background.

But even to the extent that you disagree, that we are even having this conversation suggests all these beliefs and such haven't helped us escape the problem of 'surprising the GM', because if the belief is a matter of interpretation then we are clearly going to have lots of disagreements over what actually pertains to the belief and what sort of scene is 'relevant' and 'interesting' to the belief and player.

For instance, you don't need to know exactly which interpretation (if any) the player has is in mind to know how to respond when s/he declares as his/her PC's action "I walk the streets explaining to anyone who cares to listen, plus plenty who don't, that "King" Tyrannus is an imposter, a traitor, a usurper, and that the true king must be one of the people, not above them. Someone like me!" Bring on the hostile NPCs, and start rolling the dice.

- emphasis added

This is clearly a person having trouble with the concept of monarchy. This is a player where I would really want to be having some long talks witht them about what they really wanted before starting play. It seems to me that they'd be much better off with a belief like, "We need a new ruler." or "The true king must be one of the people." and/or "I was born to rule." since those seem to be the sort of things that they really want to test, at least based on what your interpretation of the belief is (which is notably quite different than what mine is, assuming I'm the player).

The Belief "I am the true king" is not, in the first instance, nor perhaps at all, a statement about backstory. It's an attempt to shape the plot trajectory - "This campaign is going to be about, among other things, whether or not this guy is the true king".

My point is that there are certain aspects about that backstory that we must know before we can say anything about what that trajectory is to be. The belief itself actually shapes nothing about the trajectory. Moreover, it would I think require working out some interesting backstory before that trajectory would have much interest. You example PC initiative is I think a good example of a game that is about to fall flat and go no where. It really is over before it starts. Before that thing is interesting, it has to be reasonable in the backstory that this guy might indeed be the true king. It requires therefore, as one of many possible starting points, something like having a backstory like that of Aragorn son of Arathorn, David the son of Jesse, or of Arthur Pendragon or having a setting like 'Game of Thrones' where monarchy has gone badly wrong and the question of who is the rightful ruler really is up in the air. And even then, the PC needs a backstory that puts them in the middle of that if the belief, "I am the true king" really is to be an open question to be determined by the course of play.

What true kingship requires, and entails, can't be settled ahead of time. Otherwise there'd be nothing for play to do. The game would be over before it started.

To a certain extent I agree with you, particularly because you've shifted the meaning subtly and interestingly by using the verb 'entails'. One aspect of a monarchy is that it always maintains the fiction that the true king is in some sense 'good'. If he is the true king, then in some sense not only is he of the blood but because he is of the blood he has all the virtues that are desirable to have in a king. Of course, not being monarchists ourselves (in all likelihood) we can easily look at history and call that a fiction, but in the minds of those who live under a monarchy that myth is often percieved as being literally true and certainly within the framework of fiction it is often literally true - consider the full sense in which Aragorn son of Arathorn is The True King or the sense in which Arthur Pendragon is always The True King or perhaps even more powerfully than that the sense (here I hope I'm not breaking a rule) in which the Messiah is The True King eternally. So I think it very interesting if a game about being the king brings into play this tension between being true in the sense of being rightful and being true in the sense of having all the virtues that the rightful king is supposed to have. But before that story is even minimally interesting, there must be some way in which the character could be the rightful king. We can keep it open as to whether the character's beliefs about his heritage are true, but that's something in any other system I'd want to do only with player permission. It may be that in the prior sense that you said BW is not 'safe', that the table contract a player has to accept when he sits down to play BW is that the 'mess with me' factor is high but if that is the case, then I think it renders any claim that this is player empowering rather suspect.

If, in the course of play, it turns out that true kingship requires royal bloodline, it may be that - in the trait vote - the other players vote this particular PC the "Born to be King" trait (this trait can be acquired by starting with the Prince of the Blood lifepath, but that is not the only way to acquire it). Everything else being equal, this might well be a sign that this particular campaign is reaching its climax. But maybe not. Traits can be voted off, too - and maybe if it turns out in play that this PC is not really the true king after all, the trait gets voted off.

Again, this is part of the 'mess with me' factor being high that I can imagine players getting really upset about. One thing about the table contract that has always been operative in any game I've ever played is, "Each player's character is their own and they have sovereign and unassailable rights over their character."

You are missing the relevance of temporality. When the goal-oriented Belief is first framed by the player, it's truth value is not known. By the rules of the game it's truth value can't be known. In particular, a GM who predetermined it's truth value (say via secret backstory), or who in the course of play set out to reveal it as true or as false, would not be doing the job that a BW GM is called up on to do.

I distinguish between assigning truth to a belief in its role of forestory, and assigning truth a belief in as much as it implies a backstory. A belief like, "I will redeem my family honor", implies that the family has been dishonored in some sense and the belief is only meaningful and interesting if there is something about the backstory that could be seen as dishonoring the family. Whether or not the coming story will result in the family name being restored to a place of honor is an entirely different story. And again, the truth of an event in the backstory still leaves open the question of whether the PC should see the event as dishonorable, or questions like should you see your parents or grandparents actions as dishonoring you. Consider something like Zuko's belief, "I will restore my honor" in Avatar the Last Airbender. The truth that there is an event which has caused him to lose face (quite literally in this case) and station among his people is unquestionable. What it means and where it will lead us is however open.

as per Eero Tuovinen, "The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end."

Isn't that a simulationist process?

Once again, this remark evinces a failure to understand the role of the Belief in gameplay. It's not a statement about backstory. It's a future-oriented statement with the function of shaping the content of play (its story content, its thematic content).

I understand that. I also assert that in the case of particular beliefs, the player is asserting - probably taking for granted - that something about his backstory is true. This is certainly the case about a belief like 'I am the true king', unless we have a player who is interesting in exploring the play of a character with a belief that he knows as a player is not true. These two stances about the belief lead to two very different desires for the game, one that better be understood ahead of time if you don't want to 'surprise the GM'.

Which also illustrates the relationship between No Myth techniques and this sort of narrativist play. For this particular BW campaign to work, there has to be at least one "fact" about the shared fiction which is not established when play starts, and that is open to being established in the course of play - namely, whether or not this PC really is the true king of the land. If that was already authored - already established as true or false within the fiction - then the game would not be playable.

I entirely disagree. Beyond the fact that I completely disagree that BW is a 'No Myth' game or as to what the word 'playable' entails, regardless of the rules set employed, before this game about whether or not this PC really is the true king of the land, there must be a preexisting mythic structure in every sense of the word that makes that question interesting. Now there are lots of starting states that make that interesting. One starting state is that the concept of 'kingship' doesn't even exist in the world. No one is a king, and no one - at least until this character showed up claiming to be one - has even thought of 'kings'. Other settings where the question is interesting are implied by kingly figures like Aragorn, Arthur, David, Jesus of Nazereth, MacBeth, Richard III, Henry V, or Robert Baratheon. But without establishing a setting where the question can be played out in an interesting way for the character, the game is likely to be a dud.

Forming this sort of moral or political judgement in advance is also at odds with BW and BW-style GMing.

It's not a about forming a judgment in advance as much as it is having a framework where the question is interesting. The question of whether Jesus of Nazereth was King of the Jews is obviously one of great dispute that has never been completely resolved and over which there is much moral debate, but the question of whether a carpenter's son was the true king is only interesting within a particular framework. Besides which, it is utterly and completely unreasonable to suggest that anyone playing an RPG leave open in his mind whether something like murder has indeterminate moral value. You cannot reasonably demand that anyone playing an RPG have no conception of what is meant by words like 'justice', 'hero', or 'villain' or that they toss out their moral compasses. You can tell a story like MacBeth where the protagonist is the villain, and you can make the villain somewhat sympathetic, but you cannot demand that I not see him as the villain. Nor for that matter do I have the remotest idea where you get the basis for this claim you are making about BW, which seems to be more 'pemerton prefers' than it does any hard rule about BW enforced by the text.

Now, my best published work is on the ethics of warfare. I have strong, well-developed and (I like to think) deep views on the matter; and also on the matter of punishment. (Given board rules, I won't share them.) But as a GM in the BW-style (though GMing a different system, 4e) it is not my job to pass judgement on this action by the PC.

I think we can both agree that the GM is generally required to maintain a stance of neutrality in so far as it concerns ruling mechanically on a players actions. Just because to my mind the PC is clearly engaged in villainous acts doesn't mean that I begin ruling against them.

But for instance, to have the Raven Queen or Erathis turn up and express a view one way or the other - in particular, say, to have them turn up and condemn the PC as a murderer - would be a GMing error by my lights.

I agree to a certain extent, but perhaps not for the same reasons. In a setting that is about PCs as demigods, such direct confrontation might be appropriate. My big problem with that scene is the disparity in power between the god and the motal. It might however be appropriate to have a priest of the Raven Queen condemn the PC as a murderer, depending on the character of the priest and of the Raven Queen. If the Raven Queen condemns someone, it doesn't mean that they are worthy of condemnation. It just means that the Raven Queen believes they are. The Raven Queen may be fallable. It is entirely up to the player to determine whether he believes the judgement of the gods is just, and not to put too fine of a point on it, but that is to a very large extent what my current campaign is about.

 

[Umbran]

Totally agree with this. However, why are you not taking issue with the others then since, while my answer is, "it's best if handled rarely", their answer is, "Not a chance, this should never, ever happen and a player is a bad player for even suggesting it"?

There's only so many hours in the day, dude.

There is a common misconception that failure to speak against X implies agreement with X. I suggest you not fall into that particular trap. Reading too far into what someone *doesn't* say is asking for trouble.

I mean, you've been pretty vocal opposing my suggestion that a Dm just skip over something.

Then, I haven't been clear. I am not against a simple polite suggestion. I am against excessive expectation, the idea that the GM is somehow obligated to take you up on it; or wrongity-wrong, with wrong sauce, or a bad GM, if they don't do as you ask.

But, I've yet to see you say, "Well, yes, from time to time it might be okay for some groups."

I'm not going to dig back through an 80 page thread to see if I did. But, how about this - in the Deadlands session I ran Tuesday, I started with a fast-forward over boring investigation that was apt to be a foregone conclusion, and skipped over boring travel scenes four times. Happy?

Well, my point would be, "Don't hand the group clear cut goals and then expect to roadblock them enough that you will have time to prepare that goal."

And my point is, "Don't assume that just because you initially don't want to do it, it constitutes a roadblock."

If you have clear goals, PREP THOSE FIRST. The stuff in between? That comes second.

I believe I've already addressed this, but I'll try a different formulation. The character's goals and the player's goals are not generally equivalent. The character's goal is not just an in-game location. The characters may have been told that their goals may be achieved at a given location, but the players should be open to the idea that the scenario that meets *their* goals may not be so simple.

Thus, it is okay to ask, "Hey, GM, if this is going to be a purposeless monster-slog, can we just skip it, please? I'm just not into that today?" But, be ready for the response, "Well, there's more to it than a monster-slog, though that may not be obvious at start," or, "Well, the others are kinda into this, so I'm going ahead with it."

 

[JefA]

It can be fun as a dm to be ambushed.
Some years back I ran a group thru the Desert of Desolation series..Hickman and Weiss as I recall. good module full of "the dust rasps ypoour parched throats as you stagger on thru the heat looking for water.

Well between walking at night .. creating water.. a tarpaulin lil sanctuary cottages by the mage they spent the days picking up rays by the (small) pool and hardly any time spitting dust from parched throats

 

[Celebrim]

It can be fun as a dm to be ambushed.
Some years back I ran a group thru the Desert of Desolation series..Hickman and Weiss as I recall. good module full of "the dust rasps ypoour parched throats as you stagger on thru the heat looking for water.

Well between walking at night .. creating water.. a tarpaulin lil sanctuary cottages by the mage they spent the days picking up rays by the (small) pool and hardly any time spitting dust from parched throats

I think this is a matter of experience. A novice DM looking at the text may think the module, by virtue of being in the desert is about "Man vs. Nature". A more experienced DM looking at the module will note that first the outdoor provided map for the first module Pyramid is sufficiently small to be crossed in a few hours (under the rates of travel provided by the text), and will know that a party of 6th-7th level characters will probably have more than enough magical resources to overcome mundane challenges in comfort. Although in the particular case of Hussar's Binder, the Binder didn't have the resources suggested, in general it is not surprising for a 10th level character to have the resources that make travel (potentially of any distance) trivial and so an experience DM shouldn't be surprised by that. DMs frequently set themselves up to be ambushed by simply not being very aware and 'day dreaming' about how encounters or obstacles are going to play out (little is a worse habit in a DM than narrating PC actions to yourself when planning an encounter) without paying careful attention to how they are likely to play out.

Of course, this sort of thing can hit even an experienced DM. This last session I got rather stumped because I had forgotten that one of the PC's had the power to observe other character's dreams, and I had neglected to consider the question, "Is an unconscious person dreaming, and if so what would they be dreaming about?" when making plans. I ultimately settled on 'No', which may have been the 'right' answer in this case, but mostly it was a convienent answer given the time constraints of making things up in the middle of the session.

 

[pemerton]

Let's take this a few steps further.

Can other followers assess your behaviour?

Yes. As [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] noted upthread, NPCs may have opinions, and the GM will play those NPCs. But those opinions aren't the GM's opinion.

Can the High Priest condemn the PC as a murderer, for example?

<snip>

Let us assume he casts a Commune spell to obtain the direct guidance of the higher power. Or let's bump his level a bit - he casts Gate to get the answer right from the horse's mouth. That is, the character has the ability and motivation to cause the Raven Queen or Erathis to "turn up". Do they stand there, dumbfounded, or express a view? How is that view to be determined, in your view?

The high priest can express a view. But in the sort of game I'm talking about Commune and Gate can't exist, or if they do exist can't do what you're having them do here.

In 4e, for instance, Commune-style spells can substitute for a Knowledge check, but there is no "Knowledge:Morality" skill.

In a different campaign, which had as one key element a couple of monks and a fallen animal king defying the heavens so as to preserve humanity from an ancient karmic retribution that the gods were sworn not to prevent, the views of the gods were clear: "Don't do that!" But the monks didn't serve the gods. They served the Buddhas. And what the Buddhas thought of the situation was, in play, left up to the players of those monks. And what animal kingship required was left up to that fallen animal king.

As I've said, for me as GM to take a stand on that (including via the sorts of mechanisms you descibe) would kill the game stone dead.

I can also see a vision of their deity received by the character being quite relevant. Maybe the real conflict here is that the character must reconcile their bloody thirst for vengeance with their service to the Raven Queen and Erathis, because the two are incompatible.

That sort of thing - not so much the vision, but the conflict - is quite viable, but has to be deftly handled. In my own game, for various reasons, the PC I mentioned has also added Bane, Kas and perhaps Vecna to his list of patrons, and this certainly creates a framework for applying pressure.

The key is to lead the player into a situation in which two freely-chosen commitments/convictions come into conflict, and leave it to the player to choose. Or, if clever enough, reconcile.

So to bring that back to your example, it's very important whether or not the player sees the situation in terms of a conflict between fidelity to the gods, and vengeance. If so, bring it on. But if not, then as GM I have to back off. I can encouage the player to look for deeper things to explore in relation to the PC (as I frequently do in relation to Vecna), but it has to be the player's choice, not mine.

Again, we're back to the division of duty between player and GM. The player sets the conflict in this case - it is an internal conflict, at a minimum. But who sets the manner in which the conflict is to be resolved? That division can vary a lot.

Sure, but I was asked how BW works, and am doing my best to explain it. In BW it's crystal clear that the player makes all the choices. The GM just provides the pressure.

But the GM needs to present the desired scenes. If he doesn't know what scenes you desire and don't, he can't do so effectively. And it seems like your "not desired" scenes are pretty unpredictable from where I sit - 80+ pages of several of us trying to understand why you differentiate between desert and siege seems to bear that out.

Well, it shows you probably shouldn't GM for [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION].

But that might be as much a fact about you as it is a fact about Hussar. After all, I find Hussar's reasoning completely straightforward, and was able to correctly predict in advance of his confirmation that he wouldn't have the same response to the siege as to the desert/centipede minutiae.

So I don't think I'd have much trouble presenting desired scenes. And if I wasn't sure, I'd ask!

Oddly, you consider goals and objectives something the GM should be 100% conversant with, but assume the GM has no idea of party resources.

This certainly describes my GMing. I've got a very good idea of my players' goals and their conceptions of their PCs - especially because quite a few of these are expressed via canonical build elements (class, theme, paragon path, epic destiny), and also because these are the bread and butter of play.

Whereas they frequently catch me by surprise with their resources, even ones they've had for (real time) years of play. I guess this is because managing their resources is something I see as their job, not mine.

I come back to the rules statement that there is no guarantee your belief is correct.

Are you being misled by the word "Belief"? In BW, Belief - as an element of PC building and a tool for player flag-flying - is synonymous with "conviction". If someone asks you (the real world you) "What do you believe", they often aren't asking you to report you current epistemic state (eg "There's a person in front of me asking a question.") but rather your deep convictions, the things that move you, that you are passionate about.

That's what Beliefs in BW are getting at.

So when a player states as his/her PC's Belief "I am the true king of this land", the player is not reporting his/her epistemic state. Nor is s/he reporting the PC's epistemic state. S/he is reporting the value, the conviction, that is going to drive her PC's behaviour, and that s/he wants to have as the focus of the game.

I gave the example upthread of the film "Hero"; or the film "Casablanca" would do as well: imagine starting a BW game with the Belief "Loyalty demands sacrifice". That's just begging for the GM to push things in such a direction that the ultimate choice for the player to make, in playing the PC, is whether or not to sacrifice the relationship to the object of loyalty itself, in order to preserve that object. "To save her, I have to let her go!"

The whole point of BW play is that we don't assume a correct answer from the outset. As far as play is concerned, there is no pre-determined truth. If there was, play would be pointless. The campaign would be over before it began.

All we know is that the character believes this. He could believe that he can cause the sun to rise in the west, but my guess is that the dice roll will be pretty tough

That's not a Belief in the relevant sense. That's not a conviction, an object of passion. It's simply a report of an epistemic state.

A lot of people believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around it. Their unshakeable belief did not make it so.

Again, this has nothing to do with convictions or motivating passions. It's about epistemic states.

As long as you accept that the resources of the King may well be adequate that those dice will fail you.

<snip>

There must be some backstory reason for your belief, mustn't there?

These two things are related. The GM and player(s) will have jointly established the basic campaign premise, backstory etc. (See the BW thread for some more detailed quotes from the rulebook.) That will include making space for the players Belief to be played out and explored in a genuine way.

The GM responding to the players' inital moves in the game (say along the lines I mentioned upthread, of having the PC rabble-rouse in the streets) by having 20 guards turn up and shoot the PC would be the BW equivalent of the D&D GM who declares "As you leave the inn a red dragon breathes on you all for 88 hp damage. Sucks to be 1st level, I guess!" or who declars "Rocks fall. Everybody dies." That is, it would be the worst example of bad GMing.

And if you are correct, there is history in that regard. That it has yet to be discovered in no way means it is not backstory. If this were simply a statement in the player's background notes in another game, nothing stops the GM deciding he'll see how things play out, or even deciding some time into the game that maybe it would be more interesting if it turns out the player is wrong, or right, after all, despite his first inclination (and play to date) differed.

I don't understand your remarks about a GM deciding that a player's notes are wrong - I'm not 100% sure what that means in D&D ("We meet the mayor of GH, the GM tells us his name is Nerof Gasgal, we right that down, but then next week the GM tells us his name was actually Fonkin Hoddypeek" - are you talking about retconning?).

But as far as BW is concerned, there may or may not be history in the gameworld, but if no participant - including the GM - knows what it is, it is not currently existing backstory. You might say it's backstory yet to be written, but that's verging on oxymoronic - "backstory yet to be written" is a type of real-time scripted reveal.

But what if there is no history? Maybe the way that the PC goes about trying to prove that he's the true king of the land is by (i) proving his merit, and (ii) proving that true kingship belongs to the meritorious, and not simply the inheritors of others' glory. I can envisage quite a wide variety of games, with a variety of trajectories, in which the "I'm the true king" Belief plays out.

The history will be important to whether he is or not.

Not necessarily, for the reason I just gave.

I believe you said this could be vetoed as well. So what happens if we establish, pretty early on, that royal bloodline is required, and your possession of that trait is voted down?

Then, under this set of assumptions (which needn't hold, as I've just pointed out - kingship needn't be hereditary or historically grounded, after all) you haven't yet proven that you're the true king. But if the campaign is still ongoing, there will be future trait votes.

didn't you say above that the belief could remain when the truth of the belief had been established? Now you say this being established renders the game unplayable.

What makes the game unplayable if it is established or authored from the outset. Proving it true in play - if that happens - is what the game is about.

I also said that if the Belief comes to an end as a goal, it might continue on as a "Fate mine". But in that case, if the campaign is to keep going, the player would need to write out at least one new goal-oriented Belief. And then my same observation would be true - it would be crucial for play that the truth or falsity of the new Belief not be predetermined or already authored.

What if the player manages to ascend the throne without definitive proof of the veracity of his claim being determined?

I think you are somewhat fixating on this issue of "proof" or "veracity". But it's a red herring. I think you are also getting hung up on a type of literalism which seems to me to be missing the point.

Put to one side, for the moment, gaming. Think about the real world. The world contained a first king. It is uncertain who that was (some, eg Rober Filmer, say Adam, but obviously not all agree). But whoever it was, that person wasn't king via heredity. Not to mention the creation of kings for all the newly-formed European states of the 19th and early 20th century, plucked form the obscurity of various German noble families. They weren't kings via heredity.

Were these people true kings, or not? All of them? Some of them?

Now bring in cases of usurpation - extremely common in Germanic kingships of the post-Roman period. Heck, take William the Conqueror - was he the true king of England? Or was Harold? At the Battle of Hastings, when they confronted one another, who was the true king?

And now bring in the elements of romantic fantasy - Robin Hood, "the King and the Land are one", etc? Maybe our peasant PC makes crops flourish where they have been withering. Could the so-called king, sitting on his throne while the people starve, do that?

My guess is that the player who declares as a Belief "I am the true king of this land" has one or more of the above examples and questions in mind. S/he probably isn't calling for a game about proving priorities of birth (although even that's conceivable if s/he has the Batard Lifepath). I think it's more likely that she's got in mind some mixture of Robin Hood, meritocratic usurpation and/or the peasant's deep and genuine connection to the land and it's people.

Was that a good campaign or a bad one?

How do I know? Did we enjoy it? Was there laughter? Drama? Were voices raised and passionate arguments made?

We never did resolve that belief. Maybe we find that definitive proof, but it persuades no one

BW play isn't a science experiment. It's not about conjecture and verification.

Does the film Hero prove that loyalty requires sacrifice? Or does it prove that sacrificing yourself for politics is a folly that ruins the lives of those you love? I've got my own views (which I won't share due to board rules). But different viewers will naturally have different views. That's kind-of the point. It's not a fable for teaching children good manners - it's aspiring to be, and in my view succeeds in being, a serious work of art.

I don't expect much RPGing, including much BW play, to be as serious a work of art as "Hero". Episodes of RPG play are probably only meaningful for those who actually participate in them. But for those participants, it should produce an emotional response of a comparable sort.

 

[tomBitonti]

And an example that didn't work. In Pathfinder, alchemists can make bombs, and presumably larger batches of explosives. We had chased a troll army into a cave system and wanted to make bombs to seal them in or drop rocks or fire on them if they came out the only entrance large enough for a troll. Alas, the alchemist class (as far as I can tell, it's not a core class) doesn't have any limit on explosives, basically having an at-will bomb attack. The alchemist player was really loud and demanding and bowled over the DM. So we didn't get to fight the trolls, which I was upset at, because the troll leader was actually a cool NPC and I wanted to see if he could fight and lead troops as well as he could talk. (Said troll made a total fool of us in an earlier social encounter, we of course presuming he was only barely smarter than the typical troll.)

An alchemist can use a number of bombs each day equal to his class level + his Intelligence modifier

See:

http://www.pathfindersrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist#TOC-Bomb-Su-

An alchemist *could* make non-magical bombs, but not without a lab, and not without the necessary chemicals.

This is a good guide -- if you are using pathfinder:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/goods-and-services/herbs-oils-other-substances

Note that bombs are generally not considered a part of the D&D toolkit. My sense of the limitation is for historical and thematic reasons. Otherwise, you end up with players carrying loads of black power, and then have to deal with firearms and no ends of game changing stuff.

On the other hand, alchemist's fire is in the game, and Pathfinder, at least, has an accellerant to increase the damage from 1d6 to 2d6. If the player had the time, materials, skill, and opportunity (meaning, an alchemist lab), I don't have a problem allowing them to create lots of alchemist's fire and a launcher for a a dozen of them. That's pretty expensive for the amount of damage -- a scroll of fireball might be more cost effective -- but if it tickles the players, I don't see why not.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Celebrim]

Yes. As [MENTION=99817]The high priest can express a view. But in the sort of game I'm talking about Commune and Gate can't exist...,As I've said, for me as GM to take a stand on that (including via the sorts of mechanisms you descibe) would kill the game stone dead.

To a certain extent I wonder why. There is a certain confusion in this. Let's say we are playing in setting inspired by Greek Myth, and a characer rides a horse to death in order to reach some destination for some reason. Later, the character is shipwrecked and offers a sacrifice to a priest seeking an Oracle, and the priest Communes and comes back and says, "You have illly treated a horse, and in doing so you have offended Poseidon who is wroth with you for taking so lightly the gifts he has provided of you. You must atone for your crime against the Sea God, or you will always have misfortune on the seas." In what sense does this confirm that the character was absolutely in the wrong and committed evil by riding the horse to death? Is Poseidon in a position of absolute priviledge with regards to morality? Which of the Greek gods is so unswervingly just, good, and true that their opinion as to what is just, good, and true is absolutely sure? Regardless of how we define thier philosophy or the label the character of such beings, is there not grounds to quibble with thier judgments (if of course, dangerously)?

In BW it's crystal clear that the player makes all the choices. The GM just provides the pressure.

I guess that depends on what you mean by 'all the choices'. If you mean 'about his character', then that doesn't make BW particularly unique and if you don't mean that how is the GM to provide pressure without making choices? Beyond that, strictly speaking that is not true, as you've already concurred that BW empowers the GM to alter the players character sheet if in the GM's opinion the player is not valuing his beliefs or playing the character in a way that suggests different traits than those selected. And this is not clearly less authority than a GM would have who altered a character's alignment in a D&D game.

After all, I find Hussar's reasoning completely straightforward, and was able to correctly predict in advance of his confirmation that he wouldn't have the same response to the siege as to the desert/centipede minutiae.

In so far as that goes, I was too, but for perhaps different reasons.

So I don't think I'd have much trouble presenting desired scenes. And if I wasn't sure, I'd ask!

I don't think I'd have any trouble presenting Hussar with desired scenes either. It's presenting Hussar with desired outcomes that I think would get us bumping heads.

So when a player states as his/her PC's Belief "I am the true king of this land", the player is not reporting his/her epistemic state. Nor is s/he reporting the PC's epistemic state. S/he is reporting the value, the conviction, that is going to drive her PC's behaviour, and that s/he wants to have as the focus of the game.

I think that first that's a matter of opinion, and secondly there is nothing contridictory between a player reporting his/her epistemic state and signaling and intended focus of the game - ei my belief, "I will regain my honor", implies I have a background and maybe even a trait which implies 'dishonor' and I have a belief that implies I want to make gaining an 'honorable reputation' a focus of play.

The whole point of BW play is that we don't assume a correct answer from the outset. As far as play is concerned, there is no pre-determined truth. If there was, play would be pointless. The campaign would be over before it began.

I again think you are confusing backstory and forestory. As far as play is concerned, there is no foreordained outcome nor no set in stone answers for the player or the character, but that doesn't mean that there are no preordained truths. A character who is 'The True King' in fact may never convince everyone of this fact. He may never claim his rightful throne. Or he may decide to relinquish his claim afterall. Or he may claim it without the rightfulness of his claim being recognized. Or he may claim it and lose it again. We won't know until we play.

The GM responding to the players' inital moves in the game (say along the lines I mentioned upthread, of having the PC rabble-rouse in the streets) by having 20 guards turn up and shoot the PC would be the BW equivalent of the D&D GM who declares "As you leave the inn a red dragon breathes on you all for 88 hp damage. Sucks to be 1st level, I guess!" or who declars "Rocks fall. Everybody dies." That is, it would be the worst example of bad GMing.

I don't know if that would be the worst, since I'm reluctant to use such extreme words, but I personally wouldn't enjoy it. However, there is only a limited extent to which the GM can fend off players from disaster. If players are determined the throw themselves from cliffs, they'll eventually fall hard. A player with the conviction, "I am the true King", who commits an act of High Treason in full public view as the first thing that they do may well lack the resources to survive the results particularly if we've already established certain facts. A player who with their first act seeks out the lair of a great wyrm and decides to attempt a coup de grace is not owed success. There is only so much padding and hand holding a GM can do before ultimately he's just rail roading the player as surely as the one who forces disaster on the PC regardless of what they do.

Now bring in cases of usurpation - extremely common in Germanic kingships of the post-Roman period. Heck, take William the Conqueror - was he the true king of England? Or was Harold? At the Battle of Hastings, when they confronted one another, who was the true king?

Harold was. William's claim was dubious and he obtain the throne by right of Conquest (hense the title), but do note that not even William attempted to usurp the monarchy without asserting the fiction that he held the throne by right of birth (and all his ancestors would of course maintain the beliefs). And for all we know, William even believed he held the throne by right of birth, and certainly his conquest was seen as proof of his claim and not merely the surety of it. I invite you to analyze the scene in which Henry V is presented evidence that by right he is King of France.

My guess is that the player who declares as a Belief "I am the true king of this land" has one or more of the above examples and questions in mind.

And my point has been all along is that it is not at all clear what the player has in mind, as I think I have finally got some formal concession on. And I think we've just about got you to agree that it does indeed matter what the setting is when interpretting this belief, otherwise you wouldn't be bringing up example settings.

It's not a fable for teaching children good manners - it's aspiring to be, and in my view succeeds in being, a serious work of art.

Once again, I don't think these two things are in contridiction. Besides, ALL heroic fiction is almost by definition a fable for teaching children good manners. That's what 'heroic' means - narratives intended provide examples to live by. Just because the manners and moral judgments are alien, in this case Chinese, doesn't mean that the author was making an indefinite point. You just may not understand it. I didn't find Hero to be particularly moving, but I also am uncertain that your interpretation of the author's intent is spot on. Besides, the judgment that all serious works of art have indefinite statements about morality, even if that was the authors point, is making a very definite moral point.