[Long] GM Refusal to Explain Ruling

[captain_bateson]

So, Tony's there saying, "I'm the umpire and that's my call!" and the Captain's saying, "Rules predicate the in-game reality, and you're circumventing that!"

Ethan,

Now, in one of my first couple posts after the ruling, I did write something like, "I'm asking you to live up to your pledge to follow the rules." (I can't quote the actual text because the GM has had me banned from the board and so I can't look at the message, for which I am not complaining, but simply to explain why it might not be exactly what I wrote). So, while I did become more focused on the specific rules I felt were violated as the discussion moved on, was I not on the right track at least at the beginning, do you think?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

All right, stop.

I am not going to permit the actual reply-to-reply discussion between the Captain and Tony to become a topic here. I stated that above, and I strongly recommend that both principals abide by that.

To be clear: if you post a quote from that discussion, as Tony did, or paraphrase an exchange, as the Captain did, and ask for opinions about who was justified or who was obviously out of line, no one is going to tell you. We are not here to participate in such an exchange.

I'd very much like some indicator that both folks have read my earlier post (June 24, 22:15). The third point in it is crucial: Captain, since you have made your decision about your goals for this thread, and acted upon it, then we are done here, unless there's another avenue you or Tony would like to examine.

But that avenue cannot be a blow-by-blow dissection of the exchange you two had about the situation. Bluntly, I don't think either of you were engaged in any sort of meaningful interaction - it was a fight between two people who felt injured, dressed up in a competition to see who could appear most reasonable, and best left behind. It certainly won't continue here.

Best,
Ron

[captain_bateson]

Sorry. I wasn't trying to go into a blow-by-blow account of what happened. I phrased my question badly, but I was really just asking, "Is the statement I made about the Social Contract like I think it is?" Not that anyone needs to answer now: I'm fine if this is an off-limits topic.

I guess I was continuing the discussion because I don't completely understand the practical ramifications of some of the ideas being brought up, so I was asking for clarification. Just as you, Ron, see me talking about "rights" weird, the fact that you don't think there are "rights" as such is difficult for me to wrap my head around (I've just always thought there were...maybe it's the constitutionalist in me or something!) I've read a lot of the articles here, but couldn't really seem to understand how the concepts in them work on a practical level. I was using this as a sort of in-road into understanding the viewpoints that exist here, since I now had a concrete example to work from.

I am (as you may have guessed) a very black-and-white thinker, though I try not to be. But, as much as I try, it's not always easy. For example, I'm not sure where the "not that squishy" area between rights and relativism is and what it's like. It's hard for me to see the middle ground between "I have the right!" and "If you don't like it, go play another game."

But maybe I'm asking the wrong questions. I dunno. Sorry I continued the discussion and treaded into forbidden territory. I wasn't trying to rehash the fight with Tony with my last couple posts, just understand the practical ramifications of the responses.

Sorry to continue this thread. I'll be quiet now.

[Valamir]

See there's alot of stuff all mixxed in here, and while the discussion of the social contract and player's rights and such are all good and relevant, I don't think they're getting at the root issue...the real source of the problem.


What we have is a scene between 2 PCs.  Events were described in that scene that upset the player of one of those PCs.  THATS the problem.  A player (Captain bateson) got upset by how events in the scene unfolded.

I contend pretty firmly that the whole rules interpretation question is a giant red herring.  The issue is not over the rules.  The rules are just the lever being used to pry at the real problem.

Now whether Tony recognized that the rules were just a red herring and refused to debate them for that reason, or whether Tony feels that he made a mistake and misremembered how the rule worked and now is embarassed and afraid he'll lose GM cred if he backs down now, I don't know.  But I submit that while the answer to that is highly relevant for Tony's own self analysis of his GMing, its not really material here.


What you have here is a very simple, basic disagreement over what should be happening in the shared imaginary space, where "should" is a matter of personal opinion.  

Captain B wanted the scene to go in one direction.  Tony wanted the scene to go in another direction.  That's it.  That's the issue.  Bringing the rules into it is a red herring because all that is, is an appeal to authority in the classic logical fallacy sense.  Rules are only ever invoked in discussions of what "should happen" when they happen to align with what the invoker wants to happen.


So the question that remains is what in Tony's ruling in that scene triggered captain b's reaction.  What was so horrible that it would lead to such a row?

I'm going to enter speculative mode here a bit and see if anything here triggers any thoughts.

I'm thinking that this whole issue boils down to trust: whether Captain B trusted Tony to not use his GM power to hose him and whether Tony was deserving of that trust.

Clearly the answer to the first part is that the Captain did not trust Tony to not hose him.  Very plainly he thought Tony's ruling was hosing him.

The question then becomes, should he have felt that way?  Was Tony hosing him?  If so, then yes, this is clearly a violation of the social contract and the Captain's response is understandable.

But if not, the the Captain's response is an overreaction based on a misconception about what was about to happen.


For instance, that scene could have been over.  The GM may already have resolved that the Captain's character would successfully escape.  At that point the shape changing and logos became simply flavor allowing the scene to end in a dramatically colorful fashion with the smashing of a chair by a logos tendril as the character flees.  Under this scenario argueing over whether or not the Chaos Lord could have transformed that quickly is pointless and Tony would have been right to simply dismiss such a discussion out of hand as being unnecessary.

Clearly, however, that option is not what the Captain believed was happening.  He was clearly in tactical combat mode trying to get himself an edge in what he expected to be an upcoming confrontration.  The nature of such play is that the player must be able to rely on the rules to be consistantly enforced because otherwise it becomes impossible for the player's skill at using the rules to have a reliable impact on the events of the game.  Under this scenario Tony's ruling was clearly inappropriate because it effectively robbed Capt B from an edge that he had (by the rules they had agreed to play to) earned.  Now if the scene was effectively over as in the above possibility, it wouldn't have really mattered.  But if his character's very survival was on the line as the Capt clearly thought it might be, then we can see how the issue arose...poorly handled, but understandable.


I don't know what the real scenario is, it may be far too late ever know for sure (retroactive revisions being somewhat unreliable).  If the real scenario was similar to the second one above, then you have a clear (but quite common) incident of a GMing mistake followed by an equally common reluctance by the GM to admit a mistake which lead to a wildly unnecessary and exaggerated confrontation which damaged the game.  This last fact alone points to even deeper social issues since this kind of result is fairly dramatically out of proportion to actual events.

If on the other hand, something similar to the first scenario was more accurate, then what we have is nothing more complicated than a break down in communication leading to a divergence in how two people were envisioning the shared imaginary space caused quite likely by conflicting Creative Agendas.

Is any of that remotely close?

[captain_bateson]

I don't think I am supposed to respond, Val, so please don't take my silence as a snub.

[TonyLB]

To be clear: if you post a quote from that discussion, as Tony did, or paraphrase an exchange, as the Captain did, and ask for opinions about who was justified or who was obviously out of line, no one is going to tell you. We are not here to participate in such an exchange.

You're quite right Ron.  I apologize.

I didn't consciously intend to turn this into "judge between us".  But I can certainly see how it would trend toward that if I stayed in the discussion.  I should have given more consideration to that before I posted anything.

The Captain took the time to start the discussion, and he certainly deserves to have the benefit of it.  Though there are many things I'd like to hash through about the experience, I recognize that this thread is in no way a responsible place for me to do so.

My first instinct is to revert to being only an interested spectator on the thread.  I hope that will allow the Captain the freedom to discuss matters without feeling constrained by my presence.  Unless people feel that I am overreacting to the situation, that is what I plan to do.

Again, my apologies for posting as I did.

[captain_bateson]

I don't mind you being in the thread, Tony, if it is going to continue (not sure about the continuing part, though I would like to respond to Val...)You aren't hampering me and, like you, I wasn't trying to turn this into a tit-for-tat thing, so neither of us wants that anyway.

[Loki]

Actually, Tony, while I agree that a "who shot JR" argument is non-productive, I think there's much to be gained from your participation. Valamir has asked a good question, that I think will get to the meat of your disagreement with the Captain.

He phrased it as 'was the GM hosing Captain', but a better way might be "Why did the GM prefer his version of events over Captain's".

I'd like to hear how the scene ended and if Tony was satisfied with the ending (the argument notwithstanding). Captain said that he accepted the ruling and only later decided not to continue. I suspect that Tony had a reason he made the ruling in that manner (I'm not making a value judgement--it could be a "good" or a "bad" reason). I think hearing his thought process would enlighten us as to where their expectations (the gentleman's agreement) didn't match up.

If that seems out of line, or to encourage further "what REALLY happened was" discussion, please feel free to shout me down. I'm coming late to the thread.

Note that I don't expect that we will then judge who had the better version of events--what I would like to get at is priorities.

[Walt Freitag]

So, what rights does the player have when the GM tries to enforce an assumed contract ex post facto to avoid explaining a violation of an existing contract? Does the player, once again, have to just walk away from the game? Doesn't the player have some ownership, some right to expect the GM not to make up new contracts midstream that, ex post facto, allow him or her to break existing contracts?

Captain, the problem is that you're conflating two distinct concepts related to rights: expectations, and recourse.

The phrase "the right to expect" is very misleading. You don't need a right to expect something, because no one can stop you from expecting anything, whether the data justifies those expectations or not. Expectations can come about as a result of knowledge of your rights, but expectations themselves don't establish a right. Perhaps you were quite justified in expecting that the GM would conduct play in certain ways. An explicit agreement to do so would certainly support that expectation. (I'm not saying that there was in fact an explicit agreement. I have no way to kow.)

But even then, how certain an expectation would be justified, under the circumstances? Did you know Tony beforehand, or even have an acquaintance in common? Have you not experienced that people can misunderstand what has been agreed to? Have you not experienced that people can announce an intention to behave one way (and even truly intend to), and then behave another? (I'm not saying that any of those things are what actually happened. I have no way to know.)

For whatever reason, your expectations were not met. So, what is your recourse? It's to negotiate, which you did. In this case, apparently, negotiations for agreeable resolution of the problem failed. What is your recourse then? It's walking away. Just as his recourse, at that point, is kicking you out.

That you feel you have additional rights that were violated implies that you feel you should have additional recourse beyond negotiation or leaving. But what? Do you hope to force the GM to change his behavior to start meeting your expectations? How do you plan to do that? (Gunpoint is rather difficult to arrange over the Internet. Fortunately.)

Perhaps negotation failed because one or both parties had already given it up for a lost cause. In any case at this point, either in your mind, he's unwilling to do what he agreed to do, so why would any further promises on his part be of any value? -- or in his mind, you've proven your expectations unreasonable, so why would trying harder to satisfy you be of any value?

Walking away or even being asked to leave is generally considered not a big deal here (though the former is usually better than the latter). It's something that happens in the process of finding and forming compatible groups of players. It doesn't mean anyone involved was a bad person. (Which is not to say that every player out there is a good person either.)

Many years ago when I was younger and cuter and living in a hip urban setting, often an interesting conversation with a stranger would lead to an invitation to continue the conversation in a bar, and occasionally the bar would turn out to be a gay bar. The first time this happened, confusion and surprise and guilt (after all, I'd clearly wasted the gentleman's time!) left me dithering and mumbling. For subsequent occasions I learned a very useful and reasonably classy "parting shot," which I'll share with Captain and Tony, as it's very useful in life in general:

"Oops, my mistake. Sorry about the misunderstanding."

Any chance of either or both of you making that your last words to each other on the subject? (You're both more than welcome to continue participating at the Forge, I just want to see this particular dispute end better than it looks like it's going to.)

- Walt

[captain_bateson]

I am going to risk Ron's ire <cringe> and go ahead and answer some things from Val's and Loki's posts. I hope that's okay, but I also feel that there may be more to be gained from this discussion, especially with Tony remaining in it.

Val: I think it's a bit more complicated than the choices you set down. But maybe I'm adding unneccesary baggage or something and it is simple. Let's see.

My reaction to the ruling had to do with a number of factors. First, I had an expectation of what would happen because of knowing the rules. Not specifically what would happen, but a range of possibilities. But I also had a great fear of what would happen, based on my long-time experience with the game.

A Warfare character is about to wipe the floor with a power character. The GM doesn't want anyone to get hurt, so, even though the power character doesn't have time to active his or her powers, the GM allows the power character to bring all his or her powers to bear in an instant and deflect everything the Warfare character can throw. Which does prevent either character from getting hurt, at least, right then.

But it devalues the choices the players are making, it makes points spent on Warfare or Strength of less value than points spent on powers (thus making players playing Warfare/Strength characters chumps), and it usually comes back to bite the Warfare character when the power character later decides to get revenge. The GM very rarely puts the 'GM Forcefield' around the Warfare character at the later date (I don't know why).

That was my fear. It's happened to me sooooo many times in Amber games. And soooooo many times the GM has put the Forcefield around another character but then failed to put it around mine. So that was a fear too. That I was going to hosed, yes, but not by the GM directly. By suddenly facing two other PCs in the bar because my character hadn't been able to disable one of them. I did not trust the GM to put the Forcefield around my character when the time came. I feared that the rules would suddenly reinstate themselves when it was my turn (which has happened to me sooooo many times as well).

There's also the fact that power characters can do all kinds of cool stuff that Warfare/Strength characters generally can't. So, it's very irksome when power characters get to use their abilities to their fullest, zipping around the universe and always knowing everything going on, and then, when your character gets the chance to use his or her Warfare or Strength, the GM lets the power character's abilities neutralize your character's abilities. Then, I'm left thinking, as I noted above, that I was a chump to buy Strength and Warfare, because I don't get to create Logrus tendrils or teleport or have Logrus sight or draw Trumps like the other characters, but they can effectively fight as well as my character can.

So, it is about rules. It's also about expectations created by the rules and by the GM's statements about obeying the rules. And about not trusting the GM not to hose my character. And, once I realized that the GM was not going to change the ruling, it became about getting an explanation of the ruling in order to understand "shared space" so that I could feel at least a little comfortable moving forward in the game.

Val, the scene didn't end (for me, at least). I quit in the middle of it while still fighting with the other PC, when the GM let me know that no explanation would be forthcoming. At that point, I felt that the "social contract" had been broken and so I could not continue playing. I had provisionally accepted the ruling on the proviso that I get an explanation.

That you feel you have additional rights that were violated implies that you feel you should have additional recourse beyond negotiation or leaving. But what?

Walt, first off, cool! Thanks for the response. I was asking about those rights and you gave me an answer, which I appreciate. As far as the above quote, in this particular game, it is a cooperative storytelling effort where the GM and the players jointly create the world and plotlines. As such, I had put a large investment of time, effort, and writing into those things, and as a co-creator, I felt I had, perhaps, a level of ownership in the game that made it uncool to have to walk away. I felt, I guess, I had more right (yeah, I know, bad word), or perhaps I had earned better treatment by the effort I put into the game by sharing the burden of GMing with the GM. I dunno. It's probably stupid. I had a big investment in the game and it just is difficult to walk away. What can you do, you know?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Captain B, there's no ire. The only thing I'm disallowing is a recap of the exchange you and Tony had after the event, especially if it's an appeal for agreement or justification regarding some detail of that exchange.

Everything else is still a fair Go, with full participation from you both. Folks have brought up some outstanding points for you guys to consider, and I for one am very committed to learning about how these points strike you.

Best,
Ron

[TonyLB]

I think an interesting factor in non-FTF games generally is that the social contract is often much less of a living outgrowth of nuanced communication, and much more a result of ad-hoc decisions that get calcified into precedent.

I know that I was very concerned about setting the precedent that every ruling must satisfy every player.  But that concern didn't actually filter its way up to my conscious consideration until many things had been said on both sides.

In retrospect, I believe that I should have said "Okay, I've been caught off guard by what this means about our social contract.  I'm punting this particular decision in a way designed to appeal to everybody, not to be our forever-decision.  Once we're not dealing with an emotionally charged actual example, I'd like to discuss the general issue that this raises."

Dang 20/20 hindsight :-(   Still, hopefully a useful technique that I can apply in future.

[TonyLB]

[ Posted and immediately edited to deletion, because I'm talking too much.  I'll get back to the point later :-) ]

[captain_bateson]

"Okay, I've been caught off guard by what this means about our social contract. I'm punting this particular decision in a way designed to appeal to everybody, not to be our forever-decision. Once we're not dealing with an emotionally charged actual example, I'd like to discuss the general issue that this raises."

<sigh>

Boy, I wish you had said that. I kept thinking, "If he's doing what I think he's doing, why won't he discuss the ruling or say that's what he's doing? Then, at least, there would be a basis for discussion."

I obviously didn't handle it right. I wish I knew what the course I could have taken to avoid this was (other than not getting abusive, but I think the discussion was already at loggerheads by then).

I had a pretty good idea of what was really going on, but I was afraid to say it (which is pretty funny, I guess, considering what I did say). I wonder if I should have.

All that work I did on the campaign and my character. <sigh>

[TonyLB]

In retrospect, I believe that I should have said "Okay, I've been caught off guard by what this means about our social contract.  I'm punting this particular decision in a way designed to appeal to everybody, not to be our forever-decision.  Once we're not dealing with an emotionally charged actual example, I'd like to discuss the general issue that this raises."

Whoops, realized that I was unhelpfully vague on that one.

I could have chosen to punt the decision about whether to explain my ruling:  I could have (and should have) asked that play continue, and simultaneously set up a thread where I could chat about the rules for as long as the Captain was interested in.  Then, when that was done, we could all have opened up a discussion about what sort of long-term social contract terms we wanted regarding how much the GM should explain his rulings.