Quick question on in game consequence

[DannyK]

Next session, a month later real time and a week later game time, you return to the house. One of us remembers that vase. Maybe you say something about it; maybe I just remember it. At that moment, I can roll the dice or use whatever mechanics I think apply to the situation, or I can make the decision--and at that moment it is determined that last month, a week ago in the game world, the vase broke. In one sense, at the moment I made the decision, it broke in the past.

Schroedinger's Cat.

See, this is the answer which seems to have most relevance to actual gaming, rather than philosophy or physics. If the vase hasn't been shown to be broken (by a crashing sound or someone seeing the broken pieces), then it's in a state of narrativew indeterminacy.  If the PC returns to the same house with the balcony a month later, as the GM I could:
--have the owner complain about him breaking the vase
--have the same vase there, crudely glued together from the fragments
--have the same vase there, intact, and use this as a clue to suggest the presence of Jeeves, the telekinetic butler
--have the vase there, intact, and have the owner explain that it is shatter-proof due to his remarkable invention.  

See?  I could do any of those things as a GM, and it would be valid in most any gaming agenda.

As for who is at fault -- well, I can see two levels where "fault" and "causation" operate: in character, the PC is responsible for throwing the vase off the balcony.  OOC, the player is ultimately responsible for everything he says, including his character's actions.  In my philosophy of gaming, the GM is not there to preserve or destroy nonexistent vases.

[contracycle]

Still, you might ask, why is that important? In terms of playing the game or in terms of designing one? If you believe consequence rather than descision is involved? That you will engage with someone else who shares the same sort of system as you?

I'd like to find out where I am on this in relation to general thought at the forge.

Yes.  The instruction for character action is a proposed change to the SIS which is then implemented by whatever has authority over that SIS.  That authority is essentially distributed by system.

[Marco]

As for who is at fault -- well, I can see two levels where "fault" and "causation" operate: in character, the PC is responsible for throwing the vase off the balcony.  OOC, the player is ultimately responsible for everything he says, including his character's actions.  In my philosophy of gaming, the GM is not there to preserve or destroy nonexistent vases.

I agree with this--but since, in the case where it shatters, the GM is actually the "player at the table" who "described the vase breaking" then this illustrates that the GM is seen as a facilitator of the world (i.e. gravity) rather than as an interested party who desires things like broken vases.

In short, if it doesn't make sense to be mad at the GM that's because the GM, despite being the person who's words broke the imaginary vase, is not held at fault for doing so in the process of running physics.

For that reason, I think it makes sense to see the smashing as a consequence in the RPG context the same way that smashing is seen as a consequence when we imagine the same event in reality.

-Marco

[M. J. Young]

Let me put it this way: Imagine we're sitting at a table, and I ask you to pass the salt, and you do it. In what sense is your salt passage not a consequence of my request? And how is that different from, in a game, you telling me that you're going to push the vase off the balcony?

...Even in the way you ment 'consequence' I still don't agree. Someone else made a descision to pass it to you, that's what was to be understood from the variable responces (to the request) I listed. It's so it can be understood it's a descision on the other persons part. It's not something you did, it's something they did. They may have made a descision based on something you said (your request), but that's no reason to frame it as a consequence of what you did.

I see what you're after.

Sometimes at dinner one of my sons will make a particularly bad joke, and once I get it I'll sometimes say to whichever brother is nearest him, "Hit him for me." I mention it because they never do. Usually they laugh. However, it is almost always the case that the person who made the joke will raise a defensive hand against the possibility that he would be hit, thus indicating that there is that uncertainty.

If there was a physical strike in that situation, we could argue significantly whether the boy who did it was responsible, since in one sense he just did as he was told. On a larger scale, we could argue whether executioners are responsible for the deaths of their prisoners, or whether the responsibility lies with the authority who gave the order.

These are important questions in law and morality.

Now, maybe one could design some sort of game which examined the premise of who is responsible for the consequences of actions by eliminating that aspect of system which placed the handling of seemingly automatic consequences on one specific player; I'm not sure how you'd do that. I'm also not certain it's entirely relevant to anything under discussion here. I have several times addressed what I saw as the significant points in the matter, including the aspect of whether the referee chooses to abrogate the usual consequences of any action.

The new point I see is whether there is any reward for the referee to use the same system as the player; that is, to what degree is agreement regarding system rewarded or penalized during play? The answer that has not been made yet is that agreement regarding system is rewarded by the ability to continue play. The shared imagined space relies on all participants imagining the same thing.

So the player character has pushed the vase off the thirty-story balcony toward the street below. I know that there's not a chance that the vase would survive impact with the street--what am I going to do, have it collide with three flocks of birds which slow its descent? It is absurd to think that the vase would not break. The player is now imagining that the vase is broken. The other players similarly imagine that the vase is broken. However, for no reason other than that I don't want the vase to break, I decide that the vase falls thirty stories, hits the pavement, and doesn't break. So there, I think. You thought you could break the vase, but really you're powerless to change anything in my world without my approval, and this vase proves it.

Now, whether or not that vase is broken is a discontinuity in the shared imagined space, but it may not be an important one. It may be that no one ever mentions the vase again. I'll continue imagining that it was picked up by someone and sold at a pawn shop somewhere, and the rest of you will continue imagining that it shattered into a million fragments which got swept or washed into the storm sewers. Maybe it never matters.

Conversely, I might bring it back to rub your faces in it: the vase isn't broken, because you can't break this vase, because I said so.

Either way, we've got a problem. We've got a disagreement about how the system works, and a referee who is unwilling to negotiate on that point. What are the players going to do? Accede to the idea that the vase can't be broken, along with anything else I've decided they can't change in my world? Ignore the vase and continue to play as if it weren't there, despite my assertions that it is there and is important in some way? Pretend that the vase is a replacement vase, and that anyone in the game world who says otherwise is either lying or crazy?

In the end, the players are going to pack up and go home. If the referee is going to discount any efforts they make to alter the shared imagined space which they expect to have honored, they're going to find someone else to run their games so that they can have real input into what happens.

Of course, there are acceptable uses of illusionist techniques, up to and including participationism; but in this case, the question is whether the players expected to have credibility to make that kind of change in the shared imagined space. If the players expected that they would have the credibility to push the vase off the balcony and have it break, and the referee cancelled that without a valid basis within the system, then the contract has been broken.

In essence the social contract says that we have agreed to a unified system for determining the contents of the shared imagined space. If we don't have that unified system, the game breaks down.

That means that agreement on system is rewarded by the ability to play the game. Disagreement on system is penalized by the inability to play the game, and if the disagreement cannot be amended, the game ends.

--M. J. Young

[Doctor Xero]

...verisimilitudinous continuity...

Wow!  :)

Just don't expect me to be able to say that three times fast!

*grin*

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

What were looking at here is the illusion we use in every day life for practical purposes. For example, if I buy some milk and hand over some money, I expect change. I take it for granted that it WILL be handed over.

But the thing is, it's still a descision on the other persons part. They aren't a robot...there is no 'It WILL happen' involved. But we all pretend there is, so we don't have to get ready to draw swords to get our change...we can concentrate on the bigger things instead of this tiny stuff. We also hope everyone else operates on this principle...usually they do, because in real life there are certain rewards for sticking to such a system.

Side note: And those individuals who violate such assumptions usually evoke surprise and/or fear -- the unpredictability factor is one of the causes of fear of the mentally ill, or so I have read.  (Or they are simply considered rude and therefore untrustworthy, even if they are operating legitimately within the paradigms of a different culture.)

So the player character has pushed the vase off the thirty-story balcony toward the street below. I know that there's not a chance that the vase would survive impact with the street--what am I going to do, have it collide with three flocks of birds which slow its descent? It is absurd to think that the vase would not break.
---snip!--
If the referee is going to discount any efforts they make to alter the shared imagined space which they expect to have honored, they're going to find someone else to run their games so that they can have real input into what happens.

This is why trust is such a vital issue in game-mastering.  If the players believe that the game master discounts the effort to break the vase for a legitimate reason -- AND the game master lives up to their trust! -- the failure of the vase to break becomes one more clue in the ways in which this game reality does not map exactly to real life.

Apropos both the above quotes: A game master can delight and freak out her or his players by having certain laws of physics malfunction as well, in effect telling them that the game reality character, not just any old non-player character, might be "mad".  Hehn hehn.

Doctor Xero

[Callan S.]

Hi Marco,

I have to admit that I don't exactly get this. My suggestion of an examination of "fault" was in the case where the vase fell and broke--how is there some sort of silliness there? Where does reward or punishment factor in?

I was refering to if it didn't break (I'll cover the fault for if it did break in a moment). If I'm your GM and your a player and you say you push the vase, how will it look if I say it doesn't break? It will look silly to you and everyone else, most likely. It'll be a minor (not major) humiliation if I don't follow up with what everyone pretty much expects. The threat of a small amount of humiliation is a punishment. Here I'm covering what I thought I read in your posts from earlier pages.

If it does break and someone asserts some sort of blame toward someone else over that, it's really just the same. Someones decided there is blame/minor humiliation/punishment for what's been said, and asserts it. People might decide to take up this idea and assert their own ideas on the matter.

If you (and I suspect every gamer will) hold the pusher and not the GM responsible then it suggests you (IMO, rightly) see the pusher as kind of like his character and the GM as kind of like gravity.

As I've said this several times, I don't expect you to suddenly understand what I'm trying to convey--but my question (and posed situation) has nothing to do with adjudication or invocation of system (i.e. silly outcomes). It has to do with the preception of roles and responsibilities of the GM.

Focusing on that last line, that's my point. The role and responsibilities of any user(player/GM) are not static and nailed down. Just like someone will give me change when I buy milk, they perform this responsiblity because they are rewarded for it. It isn't something they will always do regardless of everything else.

On users being like their character and GM's being like gravity, these occur if they are rewarded. The actual perception of roles, by every user present, will shape the flow of reward (or punishment).

Perhaps I've missread your previous posts, but from the first page

When the GM introduces an un-expected result the GM risks taking a role similar to that of an "unreliable narrator" in fiction. This has certain consequences for static writing but has, IME, far, far deeper consequences for RPG's.

Because the GM is all five senses of the characters--because the GM is, in effect, everything else in the world, when the GM becomes unreliable (and this is the perception of the players) then there are, IME, likely to be trust issues.

'unreliable' and 'trust issues'. These are punishments the GM faces for giving a silly result. I can't help but read your post as if this punishment will aways outweigh any reward a different narration might give (like the vase not breaking). I keep reading your posts as if your suggesting that becoming unreliable or creating trust issues is enough of a punishment to ensure a concrete foundation to the question "What happens when I say I push the vase?" and that there is no (significant) risk of any other rewards/punishments forcing another result. Was I reading incorrectly?

[Callan S.]

OK, I agree that it is an everyday expectation.  I don't agree that it is an illusion.  I don't think that a person is inescapably forced to hand me the salt or to give me change.  I don't think any normal person does.  In other words, there is no illusion here.  By the same token, I don't think anyone is disagreeing about what happens in game.  i.e. No one thinks that the GM is physically compelled to say that the vase breaks.  

I think this is simple difference in terminology.  You only consider something to be a "consequence" if it is physically absolutely certain that the result will happen.  Other people use the term to mean things like getting change -- i.e. a likely result, but not a 100% physical certainty.  I think we just need to use terms which distinguish these two.

Heya John,

It's not just terminology, it's method. If you design a game where it rewards you for jumping off a 100 foot cliff rather than face your lethal foe, but have the expectation that users will handle it the way you would expect to handle it (not jump), you will be quite divergent from the users of your game.

If you have an expectation as a designer (or even a GM...or even a player), but don't fill in the rewards and punishments to forfil that expectation, it isn't going to happen the way you'd like to expect, even if that's how it always happens in reality (and reality is why you expect it to happen that particular way).

[Lisa Padol]

In the shared fantasy, a character throws the vase off the balcony.  Then, before the players can confirm that it falls, the doorbell rings in the real world.  It's the pizza!  Players eat pizza.  One of them has a great idea for a character action.  When the players get back to the game, they forget completely to address the vase and carry on with the new, exciting idea.

What happened to the vase?

A variant of that used to happen in my Cthulhupunk campaign. The PCs would capture a person or three who were trying to kill them, usually in a hotel room. The PCs would then tie up the thugs and lock them in the closet. Players and GM would forget about this for weeks.

So, did the closet people die an agonizing death of starvation and dehydration? Were they found by the maids at the hotel? Did they learn to travel extradimensionally, hopping from closet to closet without crossing the spaces between?

Probably we just invoke a retcon, and we say that the closet people were turned over to the appropriate authorities. Less amusing, but more logical and playable for us.

-Lisa

[Marco]

Hi Marco,
I was refering to if it didn't break (I'll cover the fault for if it did break in a moment). If I'm your GM and your a player and you say you push the vase, how will it look if I say it doesn't break? It will look silly to you and everyone else, most likely. It'll be a minor (not major) humiliation if I don't follow up with what everyone pretty much expects. The threat of a small amount of humiliation is a punishment. Here I'm covering what I thought I read in your posts from earlier pages.

I can certainly imagine circumstances where the vase not-breaking will appear silly--but in most of them, that's not the case. I'm wondering why you're going there.

Marco: "I push the vase."
Noon: "It falls, spinning, and hits the ground. Whack."
Marco: "It ... doesn't shatter?"
Noon: "Nope."
Marco: "Why not? Was it porcelain?"
Noon: "Looked like it."
Marco: "Hunnh." (ponders)

I mean--the event is kinda senseless--but not humiliating. If I then go off on a boring and misguided attempt to discover what's going on, you might regret having done that--but if you were covert about your feelings of regret, I'd never know.

If it does break and someone asserts some sort of blame toward someone else over that, it's really just the same. Someones decided there is blame/minor humiliation/punishment for what's been said, and asserts it. People might decide to take up this idea and assert their own ideas on the matter.

No--I don't think you still understand. Try answering the question for yourself. Imagine that I pushed the vase, Joe the GM ruled it broke, and you were pissed about your imaginary vase being broken. Who are you mad at?

I know you think it's pointless and unrelated--but ask yourself: who would you blame?

Focusing on that last line, that's my point. The role and responsibilities of any user(player/GM) are not static and nailed down. Just like someone will give me change when I buy milk, they perform this responsiblity because they are rewarded for it. It isn't something they will always do regardless of everything else.

On users being like their character and GM's being like gravity, these occur if they are rewarded. The actual perception of roles, by every user present, will shape the flow of reward (or punishment).

You say that, I think, because you're focusing on the last line. Would you blame the GM for the vase breaking? Or me? Or yourself? If you can give me an answer to the question, I think we can go somewhere from there (and I may well be wrong)--but until you consider that, I can't explain what I'm thinking without putting words in your mouth even moreso than I've already done.

'unreliable' and 'trust issues'. These are punishments the GM faces for giving a silly result. I can't help but read your post as if this punishment will aways outweigh any reward a different narration might give (like the vase not breaking). I keep reading your posts as if your suggesting that becoming unreliable or creating trust issues is enough of a punishment to ensure a concrete foundation to the question "What happens when I say I push the vase?" and that there is no (significant) risk of any other rewards/punishments forcing another result. Was I reading incorrectly?

You're definitely reading some judgment stuff into it that wasn't there for me. I think that if the GM is arbitrary with physical laws in what is meant to be a "realistic game" that the experience will suffer--but not in terms of social approbation in many cases.

For example: You tell the players you are trying an RPG experiment. They agree to play in it without knowing what it is. You create a locked-room murder mystery and don't have any explanation as to how the bizarre seemingly impossible killing was done--but you have the PC's investigate it and toss out random clues, hoping that it'll all come together and the PC's will "solve it themselves" (i.e. take the random clues and proffer a reasonable explanation that you'll adopt).

In practice, I submit that the chances of this working are extremely low. If you try this and it leads to a night of low energy frustrating gaming and at the end, the stumped and puzzled players say "so what did happen?"

And you go "I don't know either. This was an experiment. I'm sorry it didn't work out, that's why I asked up front." If the players are really mad, it's certainly their problems (and next time they'll rightfully ask the nature of the experiment!) but it's just a failed trial.

What's your imagined scenario where arbitrary decision making that interfers with basic physical reality and expectations pays off in a serious, real-world setting?

Humor Gaming? It's expected. In a silly game if the vase bounces, that's fine. But I stipulated serious.

Protecting someone's feelings? Acceptable--but if you have the vase bounce to protect Sally's feelings and negate Sid's actions, I think you're just playing favorites. It'd be better to call the game off when the players start getting mad at each other if you feel inclined to take sides.

To prove you can? We knew you could. We hoped you wouldn't. If there was a good in-game reason or powerful within-social-contract explanation then, yeah, fine--if the vase is necessary to defeat the big-bad at the end and you have to preserve it, and a player is determined to smash it, I think a discussion with the group is a better idea than simple edict. Something has gone wrong there.

To show that in this world physics are different? Okay--but then it probably needs to be germane to the plot.

I'm sure I'm missing something--but what's the upside? What are you imagining?

-Marco

[Callan S.]

No--I don't think you still understand. Try answering the question for yourself. Imagine that I pushed the vase, Joe the GM ruled it broke, and you were pissed about your imaginary vase being broken. Who are you mad at?

I know you think it's pointless and unrelated--but ask yourself: who would you blame?

Are you asking to establish some sense of blame being apportioned generally in a consistant way, or another reason?

Depending on what the other reason is (and I'm hoping it's another reason), I may answer this.

You're definitely reading some judgment stuff into it that wasn't there for me. I think that if the GM is arbitrary with physical laws in what is meant to be a "realistic game" that the experience will suffer--but not in terms of social approbation in many cases.

Not in many cases? Social approbation is all you can have (or lack), in terms of the experience being good or suffering.

I think weve found the sticking point here. There is nothing else but social feedback of reward/punishment. Give some examples of how the experience would suffer in different ways (as you mention in your quote)  and I'll break it down as how it is still just social feedback.

[Marco]

Are you asking to establish some sense of blame being apportioned generally in a consistant way, or another reason?

Depending on what the other reason is (and I'm hoping it's another reason), I may answer this.

There is another reason: how you answer will explain to me how you see the dynamic. If you blame the GM and pusher equally I can ask you some quesions about what you would do when some of the positions are reversed.

Not in many cases? Social approbation is all you can have (or lack), in terms of the experience being good or suffering.

I think weve found the sticking point here. There is nothing else but social feedback of reward/punishment. Give some examples of how the experience would suffer in different ways (as you mention in your quote)  and I'll break it down as how it is still just social feedback.

Well, we certainly have found one sticking point. There have been times in my RPG history when I've done something other players didn't especially like (pursuing a sub-plot *I* was interested in) simply because I liked it. I have seen others do the same (with functional results).

In that case my experience of the game outweighted social approbation. In those cases breaking the game--causing play to come to a halt--would've been counter to my aims so there is clearly a limit to how far I'd push that--but it points out that the social dimension is not the sole one.*

As a GM, I find that my responsibility is different simply because my role is that of a facilitator. I've seen GMs who I felt acted in a selfish way--and I've seen that deteroriate into power-struggle (something I don't like in my gaming from either side of the GM-screen).

But still, rather than purely the social there's an element of craftsmanship and an element of personal commitment and, IMO, a very real social commitment to the group (if I'm going to play wonky with the laws of physicis in our imagined reality, I think I owe it to the very real people who've taken time out of their day to tell them I plan on bending or breaking what I see as a very common pilar of the social contract).

-Marco
* Really, IME, that's pretty common. I have always been leery of social-reinforcement vs. personal satisfaction. I'm not sure where Gamism now stands, exactly, but if everyone goes "That's Joe (sigh), goin' after the orks again ..." but Joe really digs the battle, I'm not sure it qualifies as Gamism since he doesn't get social cred for his step-on-up but since the group (IMO, rightly to a degree) tolerates it--and Joe tolerates their preferences--then it isn't dysfunctional.

[John Kim]

I think this is simple difference in terminology.  You only consider something to be a "consequence" if it is physically absolutely certain that the result will happen.  Other people use the term to mean things like getting change -- i.e. a likely result, but not a 100% physical certainty.  I think we just need to use terms which distinguish these two.

It's not just terminology, it's method. If you design a game where it rewards you for jumping off a 100 foot cliff rather than face your lethal foe, but have the expectation that users will handle it the way you would expect to handle it (not jump), you will be quite divergent from the users of your game.

OK, where is the disagreement over method?  I agree that if you (as game designer) expect that a jump off a 100 foot cliff should be avoided, then you should include rules that make the fall produce the results that you expect.  I'm looking for people who are arguing the opposite, and I'm just not seeing them.  Maybe you could give me some names?

[Callan S.]

Hiya Marco,

Okay, I still don't like the question. I don't see what I want as anything but what, after life experiences, I've decided. In pratical terms it could be considered arbitrary, so I can't see the point of balancing any arguement on it. That's what I think now, what do you think?

Well, we certainly have found one sticking point. There have been times in my RPG history when I've done something other players didn't especially like (pursuing a sub-plot *I* was interested in) simply because I liked it. I have seen others do the same (with functional results).

In that case my experience of the game outweighted social approbation. In those cases breaking the game--causing play to come to a halt--would've been counter to my aims so there is clearly a limit to how far I'd push that--but it points out that the social dimension is not the sole one.*

I think we can get somewhere now. Nope, it's still social feedback. You've simply decided how much negative feedback you are willing to soak. You may have decided you can and will soak a few sighs, but if the other players start throwing dice/the game breaks, this is too much negative social feedback.

When these guys walk off or start throwing dice at you, they're denying you further play. That's punishment, and it's delivered by social means.

By pursuing your own thing which would just result in some sighs, you were guessing that they wouldn't walk out on you for doing so. Their sighs are an attempt to stop that or communicate how close they are to walking out on you.

There is only social feedback, even if your willing and able to ignore amounts of the feedback given (like we all are), that doesn't negate the principle. Ignoring some feedback is like giving feeback yourself 'this is important to me'.

But still, rather than purely the social there's an element of craftsmanship and an element of personal commitment and, IMO, a very real social commitment to the group (if I'm going to play wonky with the laws of physicis in our imagined reality, I think I owe it to the very real people who've taken time out of their day to tell them I plan on bending or breaking what I see as a very common pilar of the social contract).

What's the main effect of lack of craftsmanship, or lack of personal commitement or lack of social commitment?

Is it a meteor from outer space falling on your head? Does the magic truncheon of justice appear and wack you (damn I've wished for this to happen to some people on public transport...scuse my humour).

Or does someone show how pissed off they are at you? And/or withdraw co-operation to some extent?

[Callan S.]

OK, where is the disagreement over method?  I agree that if you (as game designer) expect that a jump off a 100 foot cliff should be avoided, then you should include rules that make the fall produce the results that you expect.  I'm looking for people who are arguing the opposite, and I'm just not seeing them.  Maybe you could give me some names?

Gary Gygax (sp?) and Kevin Siembieda come to mind.

The 100 foot cliff is a glaring example. For the forge, it's more in terms of smaller things. I mean the cliff is a pretty obvious fix...but you can fix something without understanding the problem (and thus not recognise or fix the same problem encountered latter). Can you word the problem with the cliff, in context of this thread?

And as I brought up in my 'It must make sense' thread, in play, you might see the cliff working one way, but if someone's rewarded for doing otherwise any reliance on 'just do whatever makes sense' is not a fix at all. It's just rewarding people to have conflicting views then, as one poster in that thread said, leaving them to fight.