A look at skills

[M. J. Young]

Dauntless--

In regard to "credibility", when it's used here at the Forge it generally means exactly this: the degree to which the words said by any individual participant are accepted by all as stating the reality in the shared imagined space.

Rules have zero credibility, because they cannot speak. What rules have is called "authority", and that in this sense: an authority is any external resource to which participants may appeal to defend the credibility of any statement.

Thus if there is a rule that says any character that falls into water deeper than six feet deep must make a constitution check or he will drown, that rule printed in the book is meaningless. It requires all of these things to happen:

[*]An event occurs through which the players agree that one of the characters has fallen into water (which may itself require the application of other rules in this same manner).[*]It must be accepted that this water is greater than six feet deep (which might be determined from another authority such as a module or map description, or might be announced by the referee, or might come from some other source).[*]Some participant must reference the rule--the critical step in the process, for until someone involved in the game references the rule it is not actually part of the system at all, and has no hope of becoming part of the system, because the book cannot speak.[*]It must be agreed by all participants that the rule applies. Note that it might not be, if the character involved happens at this moment to be twelve feet tall.[*]The required action must be taken, and the roll interpreted to determine the outcome. Again, it is not the roll of the dice that are part of the system, but the fact that people rely on their credibility to speak the results into the shared imagined space, relying on the authority of the dice to reinforce that credibility.[/list:u]I'll mention that in terms of what happens in the shared imagined space there is functionally no difference between:

[*]The referee decides that the character doesn't drown and says so.[*]The referee rolls the dice against a character stat and having interpreted the dice as indicating survival, announces that the character does not drown.[*]The referee cross-references a chart in the book against a character's stat and a water danger rating to determine that the character does not drown, and says so.[/list:u]In every case the piece of this that determines what happens in play is that a person announced an outcome. In the first case, he did so solely on his own credibility, a right conferred upon him by agreement of the players that he can make such decisions. In the latter two cases he did so based on an appeal to an authority, his credibility granting him the right to determine how and when the authority applies.

That said, let me suggest you study a copy of Multiverser. All of these questions are addressed within that book, including the matter of how to determine what your math skill enables, resolving the breadth and depth of skills, and several other matters you address. It's too much to copy here (and too late), but I think you would find it quite helpful overall.

I also think you should look at Universalis, because you've got a very odd idea about that game. You'll find that it is a highly structured approach to group cooperation in story creation--it is not like "an ad-libbed or improv drama with no director to give pointers".

You should look at some narrativist games, too--Sorcerer, certainly; Legends of Alyria if you can get a copy of the pre-release version; others can recommend more. It sounds to me like you're trying to create a game system which the referee will use when he doesn't know what to do and will ignore when he knows where he wants to make the players go. You'll find that ultimately conflicted. Understand how games work in which players cooperatively create story. It might not be at all what you want, but at least see what's happening there.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[Dauntless]

I haven't actually played Universalis, other than reading the blurbs about it...so that was the impression I got.  It does seem intriguing though, so I'd like to give it a shot.

As for what credibility and authority are....it seems a bit odd to talk about rules having authority.  Afterall, rules can't speak, so how can they have authority?  In the end, it still takes some person to enforce credibility...hence, rules in and of themselves have no authority.  I think a better term for rules might be guidelines or arbitration.

But your explanation makes sense.  In traditional games, we simply give stewardship of reality to the GM.  Credibility was solely an internalized aspect of every player whether in their own minds they accepted the reality descriptors or not.  But they could not externalize the credibility (other than bitch and moan) in order to get the GM to alter reality so to speak.

Having a situation in which the stewardship of the imagined reality is communcal would make for some interesting dynamics I would think.  Chaotic perhaps, but also the possibility of synthesizing some neat stuff.  If credibility is the acceptance of the imagined reality, and if the players are granted a means to externalize this credibility to affect the imagined reality, then in essence, the players affect the imagined space indirectly.  It's still an odd concept for me to understand without actually playing in this style, but it's intriguing enough for me to try out a game like Universalis.

[M. J. Young]

...it seems a bit odd to talk about rules having authority.  Afterall, rules can't speak, so how can they have authority?

Rules have authority in the same sense that cases have authority as precedent in law: they are the authority to which appeal is made to establish that which is agreed. Similarly, we would say that the Bible is the authority to define that which is Christian, the Koran that which is Islam; that the writings of Herodotus and Josephus are authorities on Roman history; and that Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is an authority on the physical nature of the universe. The rules are the authority to which we appeal to settle questions of how to resolve in-game questions; they have authority in that sense, to which we appeal.

In traditional games, we simply give stewardship of reality to the GM.  Credibility was solely an internalized aspect of every player whether in their own minds they accepted the reality descriptors or not.  But they could not externalize the credibility (other than bitch and moan) in order to get the GM to alter reality so to speak.

Having a situation in which the stewardship of the imagined reality is communcal would make for some interesting dynamics I would think.

Actually, except in the cases of illusionism and participationism, there is always a shared control over the imagined reality. The traditional delineation is that character players control what their characters do within that reality (which is indeed part of the imagined reality, and may be the most important part) while the referee controls everything else. Understanding that this is the standard "distribution of credibility" in traditional play gives you room to consider to what degree it might be altered.

An example I've used before might be helpful here. The characters enter a room, and the referee announces that it appears to be a lady's bedroom. One of the players says that he's going to examine the dresser, looking at the knick-knacks on it, and going through the drawers to see what size and sort of undergarments, nightwear, and other clothes are there. In fact, the referee never said that any of those things were in the room; he merely said that it appeared to be a woman's bedroom. The player drew from that that it must have a dresser, that there must be some sort of decor on the top of the dresser, and that there would be clothes in the dresser, because all of these things are part of the image that brings to his mind. Probably that fits what the referee had in mind, and it will go unchallenged.

In a game in which player credibility was more restricted, the player would have had to ask whether there was a dresser, where it was, whether there was anything on it, whether he could open the drawers, what he found inside, and what he learned from examining all these things. On the other hand, if we give the players more credibility, the player might have said that he finds a carefully wrapped packet of letters tied in a yard bow, probably love letters, which he carefully pockets to peruse later--not too great a stretch, as many women keep such letters in their underwear drawers for privacy, even though many do not.

In none of these cases is it chaotic; it's a matter of determining how much the player is allowed to assume/invent about his surroundings versus how much he must specifically hear from the referee before proceeding. If the referee says the door leads to a room, we all assume it has walls, floor, and ceiling, and that it is of the same materials as other rooms in this area, unless he says otherwise. We have created that part of it by inference. The question is how much are we permitted to infer and how much we must be told outright.

So I dare say you've played in this style already; you just didn't realize it. Everyone in the game has a measure of credibility to influence the contents of the shared imagined space, and knowing how much credibility each participant has is the essence of system, even in "traditional" play.

Hope that helps.

--M. J. Young