[D&D 3.5] Authority in action (split)

[clukemula]

Cool! I'm pretty sure I get this now.

So, to summarize the logic behind your Authority categories, during play there are...

...things leading up to a particular conflict.
...things that are part of a particular conflict.
...things happening after a particular conflict.
...everything else that serves as the backdrop.

Is that correct?

- Luke

edited to change thread title - RE

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

Your summary is OK as far as it goes, but stated that way, I see the potential for misunderstandings. The first is linearity - strictly within the fiction, it goes in that order, but that doesn't mean it must have been played in that order or understood in that order. The second is equivalency - lined up like that, the categories look like in-a-row ducklings of equal scale, whereas the first is bigger than and encompasses all the others, the second is bigger than and encompasses the first two, and the last two vary relative to one another.

Your use of the term "conflict" only works insofar as it's read in the most broad range possible of its meanings, and is furthermore specified to mean strictly in-fiction.

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

Hey Ron,

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this:

the first is bigger than and encompasses all the others, the second is bigger than and encompasses the first two

Would you mind clarifying that a bit?

I completely agree that the categories aren't necessarily linear in play, and they're certainly not of equal scale. That was just a rough paraphrase of the concept to make sure I had gotten it down.

And for conflict, I mean simply that there are multiple entities (player characters or otherwise) in the fiction who change Positioning (physical or otherwise) to the point that they have one or more interests become uncertain. I was under the impression that the term for this was "conflict," but I'm okay with using "fraught situations" if that's clearer.

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

I've split this into its own topic because there is only one way to do this.

Luke, pick some play-experience of your own. Any will do, as long as it was not irredeemably broken and miserable, by your standards. Tell me who was playing (briefly), in what general social circumstances, and what game it was. Choose any time in play which struck you as particularly eventful for the fiction; don't struggle to make it special in any way. Just ordinary fun play in which stuff happened.

Tell me about that and I'll tell you what I mean by the four categories. The current discussion has hit a level of abstraction - to the extent of generating bumper-sticker summaries - which I can't deal with.

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

Ron, I wasn't asking for clarification about Authority in action. I was asking for clarification about that phrase specifically, because I can't wrap my head around how the second category can both encompass and be encompassed by the first, or be both bigger than and smaller than it. The wording doesn't make logical sense to me, so I thought it was a mis-type.

Sorry if I misunderstood and that wording is exactly how you intended it to be, though. If that's the case, I'll be happy to post some Actual Play so that you can make it clearer to me.

And my apologies if I'm wearing you out with discussions you've already had many times over, many years over.

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

I realized my frustration was my fault for not splitting out inquiries earlier. Now I'm motivated.

I also understand that you are concerned with that exact phrase, and I think it's important enough (and was not discussed in the past) to merit a good thread topic. I didn't parse that phrase out of "Authorities in action," because explaining the latter can be used to target it. Or so I hope.

Anyway, here we are, and I look forward to reading about your game.

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

Oh good, then I'm definitely on board.

A few years ago several of my friends and I were into a party RPG called "Mafia," where the players were split into camps of townspeople and mafia members by the dealing out of cards. It's an interesting game, because while everything that happens during play is fictional, the characters and players are basically the same person, meaning that all character backstory, history, and relationships end up being drawn directly from the player's relationships and history. This makes for some interesting though slightly hazardous play, as in-game betrayals always have a slight possibility of being felt as real-life betrayals. Anyway, all good fun.

Play proceeds in alternating night and day phases. During the night phases, the GM has everyone close their eyes, then has the mafia members open theirs and silently choose a townsperson to kill. This ends the night phase, and everyone opens their eyes to the GM announcing which person was killed by the mafia, removing that player from play. During the day phases, the townspeople discuss who they suspect is a mafia member, and after all the suspects give speeches to defend themselves, the townspeople vote one person to execute at the end of the day phase, taking them out of play as well. This means that two people are removed from play every 24 hours in the fiction. The goal of play is for the townspeople to execute all of the mafia members, or for the mafia members to kill off enough townspeople to become equal in number with them (at which point it would be impossible for the townspeople to outlast the mafia). There was usually a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio of mafia to townspeople. Intense Step On Up play always ensued.

This particular game had about 16 players, mostly people who were friends of mine, with a few people we had just met that day and had invited to come play with us. The card I was dealt showed that I was a mafia member, so every night my fellow mafia members and I silently strategized who to kill off next; it was often people who were starting to suspect one of us, but sometimes it was just random people to throw everyone else off our scent. During the day phases, it was often every man for himself, and I had to cast blame on my fellow mafia members several times in order to save my own skin. This was all normal and encouraged behavior, because the long-term win of mafia vs. townspeople was more important.

Eventually it was just down to me and two townspeople, which meant that this day phase was the last possible day phase. One of the two townspeople was a good friend I had made during a week of training for an internship we were in, and the other was a friend from college. The friend from college was trying to cast blame on me because he just knew I was part of the mafia, and I did the same to cast blame on him. The friend from the internship didn't know what to do. He kept being torn between the two choices and honestly had no idea which person was part of the mafia and which person was telling the truth. So then I started appealing to the things that we went through during our internship training, the camaraderie that was built during that week, etc. And if we were that good of friends, how could I lie to him so easily?

Well, it worked, and we voted to execute the other guy. Which meant that the mafia had killed off enough townspeople to equal in number with them (just me and the one townsperson left), and therefore had won the game.

And that's about it. Let me know if you need any other information about play, or if you'd like an example from some other game.

- Luke

[Moreno R.]

For the people who don't know the game, here's the rules and informations: Mafia (Party Game)

I was surprised to see it called a "rpg" because... well, I have never seen any role-playing AT ALL in that game. All you do is simply LYING to the other players (there are no characters): "no, I am not the werewolf" (I always play the werewolf version, less problematic), as you could bluff at poker.  No characters, no setting, no exploration, there is only the ritual procedure of the game: close eyes, open eyes, point finger, make noise, etc.

Did you play with variant rules to make it a rpg, or do you consider it a rpg?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

I'm seeing a strategy-social game, in the same camp as Diplomacy insofar as you're drawing on real-life relationships in a daring way. In fact, the observation that only real-life relationships are raw material for strategizing is relevant, because no fiction so far can be drawn upon as a causal agent. Previous events in play are real-world only, the way a hand of poker or a choice of moves in backgammon are real-world only.

Please notice that I am not using the words "only" or "merely" or "just." It's a different activity. There already exists a huge body of theory about this activity, including game theory itself, so I have very little to add about it.

This thread isn't about the boundary conditions for what I consider role-playing. I am completely uninterested in that discussion anyway, and my boundary conditions are pretty boring and ordinary - I'd really like to discuss the issues we've raised together so far, and if you could choose an example which is so obviously a role-playing game that any attendee at GenCon would call it one, I'd appreciate it.

It's taken us, what, ten or twelve posts just to get this far? C'mon, throw me a bone please.

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

...My ineptitude in this forum continuously baffles me. Let's try this again.

A few friends and I were playing a session of D&D 3.5. We had a veteran DM running the game, and me and three other friends playing characters. All of us were close friends, but had never played D&D before as a group. This was the first session of what we had planned on being a long campaign.

We started play in a tavern, with my Half-orc bard playing for the tavern crowd for money. The tavern keeper approached one of the other characters who "looked like an adventurer," telling him that his daughter had been captured by a warlock, along with several family treasures. No other adventurers had cared enough to go after the warlock, but he agreed to do it for a price. At that, two other adventurers in the tavern piped in and agreed to go with him. After they agreed, my Half-orc finished up his performance and asked if it'd be okay if he tagged along. They let him.

The group set out the next morning in the direction that the tavern keeper had said that his daughter was being held. Our party had to camp out in the wilderness one night, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. Once we made it to the building where the warlock was, everyone got ready to kick down the door and go all apeshit on the warlock. Right before we did, though, I stopped our fighter and cast some attack bonuses on him. Then we kicked down the door, commencing an all-out brawl to the death. The warlock was in the back of the one-room building, with the tavern keeper's daughter tied up in the middle of the room. We killed the warlock and saved the tavern keeper's daughter, and he let us take a couple of the family treasures and a decent bit of cash with us as we continued our journey.

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

Now we're talkin'. I want to mention that the way you described playing Mafia was complete and informative, so as we talk about this D&D experience, I'll look for more of that of content - what the players did, how it factored into what happened in-game.

Effectively the game you're describing broke into two scenes that I can see, although if there were more, let me know. And in passing, let me mention that "half-orc bard" is one of those little antennae-twitching bits of detail which might be more relevant than it looks, later.

Scene 1 concerns "how we get together," as far as I can tell. It might even be considered a transition into play as a form of joint preparation, adding color and perceived causality to the "we're all together" requirement for play. Am I right in thinking that everyone playing knew that the point of the scene was to agree to band together on an assigned mission? Assuming I'm partly right about that, here are some more things I need to know.

How long did this scene (play in this location) take in real time? As you perceive it now, was any part of it left open to original input - i.e., the insertion of player-character priorities which would deviate from (as I perceive it) intended outcome as I describe above? Were any rolls involved at all? Any, but also specifically, perception, diplomacy, or musical performance?

Scene 2 concerns the "storm the cabin" events. Or wait, first, am I reading this right in saying that the night spent camping in the wilderness was transitional color, rather than in-fiction play - or did you have to make camp, set up watches, and all that stuff more-or-less in character?

On to the butt-kicking. I'm perceiving that all of the tavern keeper's information was good - is that right? Your opponent was the warlock by himself? Did he have specific/stated plans for her, or at least any particular reason or kidnapping her? He didn't play hostage with the daughter (bug off or she dies)? He didn't know about you specifically? More generally, he didn't have any defensive traps or anything like that set up for potential pursuers? How hard was the fight? Did any player-character get injured, and how badly?

Am I correct in thinking that the players accepted this set of events as a character-bonding experience? I'm getting that impression from the phrasing concerning "with us" and "continued on our journey." Which leads me to ask as well, And? Meaning, did you keep playing? How many sessions? Was the plan of a long campaign fulfilled?

These questions will cut straight to the one you've raised: what do I mean by Content Authority encompassing the other three Authorities, and Situation Authority encompassing Outcome and Narration Authorities. Um, I also just spotted that I'd mis-written that bit which you quoted - it should end "the last two," not the first two ...

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

Hey Ron,

And here I had fully talked myself into the idea that you were about to blow my mind, showing me why that sentence made logical sense. Good to know that my confusion wasn't unfounded; that sentence is much clearer with your correction.

Now on to your questions.

How we got together

Yes, you're right about that assumption. We all went into the scene knowing that we would end up as a party; however, we didn't know how our characters would interact beforehand, and this was a chance to see how the relationships between specific characters would kick off.

If I'm remembering correctly, this scene took about a half hour of real-time play, with no real option to deviate from the group outcome. If someone had decided to deviate, the group probably would have made a big deal about it, forced the player to comply, and likely not invited them to play with us again without an obvious change in priorities on their part.

There were a couple of rolls: my character rolled to see how much money he earned from his musical performance, and another character rolled to perceive whether or not the tavern keeper was telling the truth. I can't remember any other rolls being made.

And the night in the wilderness was kind of a mix between in-fiction play and transitional color. We did half-heartedly roleplay setting up camp, but it was mainly to provide a sense of the journey taking more than one day. There were no rolls involved as far as I recall, just "my character pitches the tents" and "my character gets the campfire going," etc. But technically, yes, we did play this as a scene.

Storming the cabin

Yes, the tavern keeper's information proved to be good. I can't remember any motives that surfaced in interacting with the warlock; if they were there, they weren't of any consequence and therefore didn't really stick out as important.

The fight probably took about a half hour. I want to say that our fighter was knocked unconscious, but that my character was able to heal him before he was killed by the warlock. I remember for sure that no one died during the encounter. I think there were a couple of surprise spells cast by the warlock during the fight, but nothing proved too difficult. I don't know that any of us were genuinely worried for our characters' lives at any point.

Yes, this ended up being primarily a character-bonding experience; the entire encounter jumps out to me as a primarily a "look how bad-ass our characters are" type of situation, and we figured that four bad-asses were better than one, and that we could probably make a living being bad-asses together, so that's what we did.

We played one more session after this (the pirate one I talked about before, with the alignment disagreement), but life took several of us out of contact with each other (people moving out of town, me getting married, etc.), and we never got to fully play through the campaign.

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

I'm not a stranger to these Life of Brian moments. I'm sure there's a cartoon out there somewhere showing armies clashing in a particularly gory mess, and there's a Biblical-looking prophet on a hillside beyond them, jabbing his finger at a page in a big text, shouting "It was a typo! A tyyyyy-pooooh!" (Shoot, I wrote a game about it, as you know!)*

The Content authority was wholly the GM's - the identity and desires and actions of every NPC, the locatio of the bad guy, the rising and setting of the sun, the size of the tavern, and so on.

The Situation Authority is interesting, because the whole business about how your characters were going to interact is just over the border of prep and play. "You all meet in a tavern" is supposed to be a long-discredited trope, but there is something to say in favor of a relatively fixed, undemanding prequel or practice-portion of play, in which nothing is supposed to be at stake, but we all learn the degree to which {how we individually choose to play our characters} will be a source of conflict.

I want to stay with that for a second, because in another group, you may have found that everyone at the table expected and looked forward to precisely the sort of social clashes between characters that your group apparently strenuously avoided. They would have come together as a group just as easily (that's the point of the scene after all, as I'll discuss below), but in terms of establishing situational content for the remainder of play, they would consider such interactions the essence of good role-playing.

That's also why I perked up a bit at the mention of a half-orc bard, a distinctly late-stage possibility in playing D&D - after all, I started right when half-orc player-characters were invented, 1977-78, and I well remember the requirement that they coud only be Anything + Evil whereas a bard could only be Anything + Good. In other words, not only was that character combo not permitted, half-orcs were originally situational dynamite, deliberately designed to be problematic. In at least some groups, even though such a combo is legal in 3.5, that legacy is strong enough for such a character's presence to prompt a bar fight then and there.

Anyway, on to Outcome Authority, which is in this case quite pre-set, and I maintain, not merely under the GM's authority, but everyone's. The scene commenced with the shared "plan" that we're all going to meet, we're going to find out what to do, we're all going to promise to do it (along with whoever the DM sends with us, which turned out to be no one in this case), and we'll all set off to do it. It ended with that plan having come to fruition.

I anticipate some good actual-play dissections of what I mean by Outcome Authority in sister threads to this one. It doesn't only pertain to scenes, just like situational authority doesn't either, but scenes are a good unit for analysis and comparison. In this case, what I'm seeing in this case is the direct opposite of games like Trollbabe and Sorcerer, in which Outcome Authority is deeply contingent on within-scene procedures and generally isn't predictable in any way. Whereas the only contingent outcomes in your tavern scene were effectively means of establishing some Color.

Narrational Authority, I don't know much about yet. It's pretty much a matter of looking at whoever described your character's success or failure as a musical entertainer, or who (I presume the DM) described the tavern keeper's reaction at your agreement to do the job in such a way that it confirmed the "yes let's do this," "here's our cue" aspect of the scene's Outcome.

So, uh, I guess the business about Content containing the other three, and Situation containing the last two, is pretty much clear, so I won't have to go into it much.

The second (real) scene looks like it was fun. Having the tough guy get knocked out and saved by a spell, and for some interesting magic to fire off a couple of times, that's solid enough D&D fight meat to occupy a session. I might have played up the girl a little in one way or another, but then again, I'm the author of Elfs and cannot be trusted. I'll run through the Authorities a little more swiftly this time ...

Content = DM, done.

Situation = mostly DM, but player-adjustable, as witness your character's tactical setup.

Outcome = here I'll say "mostly group" again to some extent, but with contingent features; it's at least possible in some groups that a martyred player-character would have been a welcome event as a bonding experience, for instance. Given the softball strategy for the warlock, I'm going to speculate that serious risk and possible loss weren't on the table.

Narrational = ... and again, I forgot to ask much about this, but considering that most D&D combat is played  Fortune-at-the-End,** I figure narration was mostly Color ... but even that is important. Do you remember any distribution of descriptions? Did anyone go "Aargh!" when their character was hit, or go "Gunch!" (with gesture) upon a good damage roll?

So! How're we doing with this? Does my construction of the Authorities seem both necessary and sufficient for talking about play? It does to me at the moment, but that's why I want some feedback and possible holes I'm missing.

Ron

*Relic, at my Estimated Prophet page

** Intriguingly, this is actually counter-textual and has been for 35 years; the one-minute round mechanics and abstract hit points encourage Fortune-at-the-Beginning, but no one ever seems to do it that way.

[clukemula]

Hey Ron,

I'm sure there's a cartoon out there somewhere showing armies clashing in a particularly gory mess, and there's a Biblical-looking prophet on a hillside beyond them, jabbing his finger at a page in a big text, shouting "It was a typo! A tyyyyy-pooooh!"

Someone should totally do a play-through of Relic where this happens.

Anyway, the half-orc did prove to be slightly problematic during play, in the sense of creating difficult situations that wouldn't have been there otherwise (i.e., weren't planned by the DM beforehand like all the other situations); a bartender refusing to serve my character comes to mind. That dynamic was intentional on my part, though; this was before I discovered/understood CA, and looking back on it, it was probably an attempt at creating Story Now play in a group of people who were playing Right to Dream. I didn't really force Premise-addressing, though, so it didn't make play unrewarding for the others.

As far as Narrational Authority in that session went, the players described their own actions, and when it came time to roll, the DM described what happened as a result of their actions (slip-ups, missed shots, magic effects, etc.). The DM also described the actions of NPCs as well as the environment.

As for the categories... hmm... I think I need to know more about Outcome Authority in order to answer you.

In this play session, would the "outcome" of rolls be part of Outcome Authority? As in, my bard played for the tavern, so I rolled to see how much gold he got, and whoever had the Outcome Authority for those types of rolls got to say how much he got (in this case, the DM)? Or is it more at the level of scenes and above (did we end up together at the end of the tavern scene, did we defeat the warlock, etc.?)? Would describing how much gold my bard got be a matter of Narrational Authority?

Oh, and do the backstories, inventory, etc. of our characters fall under Content Authority? Or is that irrelevant to Authority?

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Great questions. This is a valuable thread considering it was founded 100% on my bogus mis-typing, which you even identified as the most likely issue. (And here you were taking all the weight for inept this-and-that ...)

Let's deal with the Content first, it being biggest and foundational 'n all, at least in terms of in-fiction causes. Character back-story and intrinsic features of character concepts (such as half-orcs' standing in for black people, which is what they do*) are all content. It doesn't surprise me to have observed a tug-of-war over (i) in-rules character creation options, (ii) perceived off-kilter concepts ("my gay barbarian!"), and (iii) GM permission throughout my entire history in this hobby. It's totally about Content Authority and its importance to all the other types, but it's also all wrapped up with confusions about Creative Agenda vs. story control vs. effective preparation vs. same-page SIS needs.

But yeah, no question, the choice of character class and race was Content Authority. It's really no different from prepping the warlock's spells, after all. The question is, who had it? You'll have to think back to actually doing it. "Make up a 3.5 guy, here's the book, done deal"? Or, "Let me look it over ... OK, that's fine"? (with the latter being about content, not about checking math or Feat legalisms)

Now for the interesting part: describing actions and dialogue in or out of formal resolution mechanics is Situational Authority. Yeah. All of the Authorities can be dialed to scale, regarding in-game time and space. You dial Situational Authority really big for "adventure prep," a bit smaller for scene framing, and a bit smaller for "I get ready to fight," and even smaller for "I use my whatchamacallit Feat." All Situational modification - most of what people call play is actually Situational Authority used at various scales by various people, in tandem (well, we hope).

So that means Outcome Authority is all about results, whether a damage roll, a statement, or whatever it takes to resolve any in-fiction uncertainty at any level. "We avoid the road and stay quiet." "They ride past without noticing." The first sentence was modifying the situation; the second provided some outcome. You can put eighteen rolls and rules-details into the transition between the two if you want, and that doesn't change.

And finally, I really want to stress that Narrational Authority isn't defined as merely about talking - all of the Authorities are expressed through talking, after all. It's about the expression of outcomes, establishing their details into the SIS. In the example above, the expression is indistinguishable from the outcome itself (or if in combat, might be limited to optionally interjecting a sound effect upon seeing a high damage roll), but in many games, the procedure do include is a careful distinction. For example, in Dust Devils, Outcome Authority is thrown very strongly into the Fortune mechanic, as utilized by the player of that character (among others), but Narration Authority is not trivial in that game and takes the outcome (e.g. the suits found in the winning hand) only as a basis for high-level choices in the ultimate effects. The narrator, who is definitely not necessarily the same person as the player who won, can decide whether the aces in the hand kill the target or just knock him out, for instance.

So let's look at the gold your bard got. I think it's a lot like my simplest example abov, but it raises a subtle issue: when Outcome Authority includes a resolution mechanic, in this case a dice roll, it devolves to whoever has "the right" to say it's time to roll ... often an unconstructed rules-feature, especially out of combat, and therefore an emergent technique for a given group. But the Narration Authority is easy in this case; it goes to the DM, full stop. "I roll X." "You get Xty-X gold pieces," making the outcome into an in-game event for everyone to imagine.

Let me know if that's making sense. There's a lot of content packed into this post, I think.

Best, Ron

* Summary of race & class threads at the Forge; also, see [Runequest: Slayers] Skulls, blood, other bodily fluids for a self-portrait concerning these issues.