The rule "'fiction' determines what rules can be deployed" - definition of murk?
Frédéric (Demiurge):
Hi Callan !
I'm just wondering if this kind of system isn't working because exploration is driven by scenario prepared before the play.
This make the GM puts rythm, conflict and dramaturgy to the play (so the structure is planted before the game for the best part of it), letting rules state about what is doable or not, getting a part of credibility of the EIP.
Am I in the subject ?
Ron Edwards:
All right, now I'm stepping in as moderator.
1. Callan, please provide references to threads or other sources in which someone uses the term "fiction first." Readers can then use their own judgment to decide whether what you're criticizing, calling by that name, is actually what those people were talking about.
2. If they're not the same threads or sources, then provide references to anything which shows that "some people" as you call them are so devoted to the principle in question.
For purposes of full disclosure, I fully agree with your criticisms of what you are talking about. My favorite is more small-scale, when my character takes some damage and then, for my next action, the GM tells me that "You can't get to him, you're too far away where he slammed you." Even if the previous narrations had established that my character had been knocked away, and given that we're not playing with miniatures and hexes, where did that decree come from?
I suggest that this is two things, Murk and Railroading, with the former at the service of the latter. I further suggest that the GM is not playing "from the fiction," as you suggest, but rather "toward his current intended outcome." (Clip out my extended rant of hatred for this way of playing, including frantic jig.) I currently suspect that you are confounding "fiction first" as a term or idea with playing in this fashion, as opposed to what I think others have used the term for.
But until you point to sources as I call for above, then there's no way to assess that, because maybe this is what others have supported, and maybe it's not. I want to distinguish a valid and coherent topic of discussion from some bug up your ass about who said what, and who supported them, and how you don't like it. Or rather, to distinguish between your criticisms of certain ways to play vs. your desire to show up somebody you really want to scream "wrong wrong" at. I am currently unable to tell which this is. Providing those sources will solve the problem.
I hope that you can see I am not slapping you down. I am trying to make your thread possible.
Best, Ron
P.S. Everyone, please do not exploit my relative absence from the forums over the next week to play rats'-dance in this thread. Post fair & reasonable, and no passive-hostility either. If you fuck with me about this, the thread gets closed.
Callan S.:
Hello Ron,
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1. Callan, please provide references to threads or other sources in which someone uses the term "fiction first."
This is my term. I'm trying to get what you want in saying this - getting context from here
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I currently suspect that you are confounding "fiction first" as a term or idea with playing in this fashion, as opposed to what I think others have used the term for.
No, this is my term - other people would probably just say they 'are playing', as much as prior to the coining of the term 'lumpley principle' people would just say they 'are just playing'. I'm making up a term as a placeholder name for a behaviour that's essentially a game procedure. A behaviour they perhaps would not recognise they are doing (again, as much as say the LP). Am I given room here to suggest there are as yet unidentified behaviours, then invent a placeholder name for the suggestion/hypothesis?
I hope this covers what your getting at (I invented this term - I perhaps didn't make that clear enough, but I thought it was).
2. I could pull pretty much every thread on the front page of actual play and ask 'Why did that particular rule get called up/why didn't that rule get used?', but I'll keep it simpler for now and give a link to one of my own threads. I think you know if I pull other peoples threads, it can get personal. It's already done so once already. So I'm just giving my own account for now, but I do see this elsewhere. Whether anyone wants to see it in their play or just wants to see it in mine, whatever.
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I suggest that this is two things, Murk and Railroading, with the former at the service of the latter. I further suggest that the GM is not playing "from the fiction," as you suggest, but rather "toward his current intended outcome." (Clip out my extended rant of hatred for this way of playing, including frantic jig.) I currently suspect that you are confounding "fiction first" as a term or idea with playing in this fashion, as opposed to what I think others have used the term for.
Again, I don't think anyone else has used the term.
But let's get some mutual ground on the term 'railroading' and what your refering to in using the word. When you dream at night - if you've ever had a 'been chased by monsters' dream or similar, for example, would you identify that as railroading yourself (as there is no monster - it's an invention of your own mind), even though at the time you were sleeping, it all made perfect sense?
If you wouldn't call it railroading yourself, then your not talking about what I'm talking about at all. That's an entirely different avenue.
I'll pitch it this way - dreaming (asleep at night stuff) is perfect 'fiction first' behaviour. The 'fiction' utterly dominates what 'happens' next. The fiction deciding is you deciding, of course, whether your aware of it or not. Or atleast 'you' as much as your willing to claim the parts that make the dream as part of yourself. They are in your skull, either way.
If it feels disturbing and incorrect to say this behaviour can manifest at the gaming table - okay, I'm talking about something disturbing and feels/is seemingly incorrect. I'm talking about this behaviour, when it's allowed to control what rules are deployed, making even the most brilliant rules designs moot. See my riddle of steel example above - spiritual attributes didn't make sense to the guy who wrote the review on rpg.net, so he cut the spiritual attribute rules entirely from his actual play. Was he trying to railroad anyone? No. Was he letting his 'sense of what makes sense' determine what rules get deployed? Yes.
(I'm trying to find it - I'm finding similar, where they refer to everyone as average, with no mention of the big boost from SA, so it sounds like they skipped using them...oh wait, here s the exact one I refer to - though I'm not sure in which comment he said he didn't use SA)
It seems fairly clear cut to me. That doesn't mean it is clear cut or true by itself, of course - but if it gives some insight to my position - for as much as I can see it, I don't know why you guys can't and thus for seeing it clearly, I don't know how to describe it to anyone who apparently can't. (or maybe none of it's true, of course, to engage a bit of scientific doubt and skepticisms of even ones own claims)
And if you would describe dreaming as railroading yourself, that's really interesting and you are getting toward what I'm talking about.
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Or rather, to distinguish between your criticisms of certain ways to play vs. your desire to show up somebody you really want to scream "wrong wrong" at. I am currently unable to tell which this is. Providing those sources will solve the problem.
Well no, you wont know. You've got your life to live on what evidence you have, as we all do, but you wont know. Sorry to make a point of this, but it really bugs me when people act like they somehow really know that persons intent better than the person themselves, I suspect because they don't like stomaching the idea they are sanctioning someone for something they were not doing (though obviously I don't know this either), so they tell themselves X evidence will really prove it.
If it helps, if this were a programming forum and someone was using an if statment along with a random number generator call that would bypass a huge chunk of their lovingly crafted code on a semi regular basis, I might try to be a 'clever bean' and say so. I've seen this, done this and had this done to me on programming forums, and it works - people actually say thanks and so have I. Nobody tries to tell others they have a personal problem for pointing out a possible error in the logic of the code. What I'm trying to do is atleast productive elsewhere. Or so I describe it.
Callan S.:
Hi Frédéric, welcome to the forge!
Quote from: Frédéric (Demiurge) on August 03, 2010, 07:34:53 AM
Hi Callan !
I'm just wondering if this kind of system isn't working because exploration is driven by scenario prepared before the play.
Kind of - like a dam can only leak through holes in it if there's water behind the damn, kind of. Sorry, probably not a good description.
Imagine this - you write some really nicely designed rules.
But then you put an extra rule in front that you flip a coin at the start of the session. If it's tails, those nicely designed rules don't get used during that session, at all. This also means you might go several sessions without using them.
Okay, now take away the coin flip and replace it 'Use these rules only if they make sense in terms of the fiction'
Your going to get a similar outcome - sometimes the rules are cut from play, even for sessions at a time.
This can indeed tie into what your talking about, if I understand it - a GM prepares before the play. The rule is he doesn't use these cool rules unless it fictionally makes sense. What he has prepped doesn't fictionally make sense with the cool rules, so he cuts loose the rules, as per the accepted procedure.
What do you think?
Jim D.:
The problem with this concept is that it's so completely subjective. It feels like the "fiction first" quandary, as you phrase it, is rooted in the same nebulous decisionmaking as the "+2" debate from a couple of months ago. Ron's got a point, I think, when he says that using "fiction" to railroad your players or make the action go the way you want is bullshit.
That said, Callan, per the "+2" thread, you know how I feel on the concepts of "expectation" and "consistency", and for that matter, on whether the game as played even needs to conform to the rules on paper. But I suspect, between your original post and Ron's reply, we've raised a good point regarding the inconsistency of how rules are interpreted. In very nearly every tabletop experience I've had, the GM had a particular set of skills or rolls he relied very heavily on, while ignoring others to the point of irrelevance.
At a local university convention, a GM I played with essentially disallowed any attempt to do anything without having its parameters strictly defined. Character knowledge didn't exist, essentially; you had to know what you were doing. I played in another game that same con year, this time under the Dead Reign system (*shudder*). My character had a high Electronics skill, and I attempted to disable an electronic keycard lock. I was asked by the GM, "Well, how do you plan to do that?" Hell if I knew, I thought; assuming he meant I couldn't apply the skill, I clammed up. Another party member, with the same skill, explained the engineering details on exactly how he would manipulate the lock, and got the opportunity to check for it. In this case, because I, as a person, didn't know how to break open a keycard lock, my character didn't either, and couldn’t apply the knowledge he “should have” had. The rules on applying a skill, in this case, gave way to the GM's exhaustive knowledge of engineering principles.
The examples I provided are perhaps tangential, but they stem from the same dilemma -- a GM that refuses to apply the rules where he "should". The first GM didn't have rules in front of him to tell or even suggest when his rolls should apply, where the second GM had rules that laid out a strict procedure, but refused to follow them. The “fiction” suggested I should have been able to attempt a roll, and the GM ignored it.
Now, there's always "Rule Zero" floating around; you know, the "ignore all rules" rule that appears, in some form or other, in every RPG rulebook in the known universe? The other side of that coin is pretty much "What the GM says goes". It's clear from our earlier discussions that you have different ideas from me about how rules work in RPGs, and we have very different reasons for roleplaying. But let me try something here -- I'm going to present a devil's advocate point of view, and see if perhaps it can bring to light the "real problem".
Let's assume, for the purposes of what I'm about to type, that "fiction first" is correct -- that is, GMs should consider whether the SIS supports a particular interpretation and application of the rules before they are used. For reference, let's flesh out Ron's example a bit. An ogre packing a big, big club just whaled on our fighter, dealing a lot of damage. Fighter stands up and goes to take a swing, and the GM says, "you can't get there, you've been knocked away." Let's also assume that we're not playing a grid-based system, so the rules of movement and such aren't rigidly defined. Is the GM's interpretation correct here? If there's no rule saying the character is knocked away, but similarly, movement is vaguely defined enough that there's no rule saying he isn't, we're in a quandary. Is it possible that we could step away from the idea of GM as sole aribter of the SIS? Maybe the players (and I'm including the GM here) can determine whether the player got knocked away, and just go with whatever makes the most sense at the time -- whatever consensus can be reached. Let the fiction win, whatever that is, but don't leave it up to just one person to determine. I've played in games where the player steps in front of the GM and says "I probably wouldn't attack right now, as my head's spinning from the blow and I probably couldn't stumble to the ogre in time to strike, let alone strike effectively." (As an aside, I love players like this -- they roleplay their character so heavily that they're willing to make suboptimal decisions in service to the story.)
All right, let's change things up a bit, and probably (finally) get to the meat of your particular question. What if we're instead playing D&D 3.5, where there is a grid-based system, and the assumption is that characters are not moved around by attacks unless the text of the attack specifies that? Well, to then tell the player that his character is sent reeling and can't get to the ogre to attack him his next turn is more tenuous. The rules, of course, say that's not how it goes, and the player is where he stood the previous turn and is free to start swinging. But is it fair, if the GM and his players agree that the fighter got knocked on his ass, to tell them that they're wrong? I argue no in this instance. But it's no more wrong to say that the fighter isn't moving. Hence, the challenge.
So I just spent nearly 1000 words to come to the conclusion, "it depends". Well, on what? Those same two damn words I keep blathering on about, I argue -- "consistency" and "expectation". What you, individually, expect from a situation during a game, and what I expect, are two different things. So there's no way we're ever going to come to full agreement on this topic, just like we (amicably, I think) agreed to disagree on the "+2" point. In a funny way, Callan, I agree and disagree with you simultaneously. The sticking point is how we define "rules". If we define the rules of the game as explicitly what's written on the paper or in the rulebook, then I disagree, since I believe there are applications wherein a decision that goes against them is more reasonable. If we define the rules as the combination of what's written on the paper and whatever modifications the players agree thereto, whether explicitly or implicitly, then in that case I do agree. What's important to me is that the GM doesn't pull some reasoning out of his ass and tell me, essentially, that I can't attack because he said so, and then never use that same justification again. If I'm the only fighter that gets knocked spinning for a round, and everyone else has no problem during that same session, I'm going to be a little pissed.
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