"Unconscious" accomodations for TITBB

[Marco]

OK, it sounds like in your game, the PCs were a relatively unified force, and the primary external conflict was the PCs vs your NPCs.  (It's pretty darn common.)  Given that as a basic assumption, then yes, the split of control is going to tend towards 50-50.  

That's basically true, yes. They had other stuff going on but they were not against each other.

I suspect you're treating that as being inherent, though, rather than as a very common practice.  As I said, I expect the 99.9% player-directed extreme would be LARP-like.  i.e. There aren't NPC opponents, but rather PC-vs-PC conflicts.  Imagine if in your game, some of the players were controlling organized crime and some of them were controlling the vampires.  

Agreed. An all-characters-are-players-LARP with only referee-GM's won't have TITBB issues like more traiditonal forms of roleplaying do. That's one of the solutions I mentioned.

Given that organized crime were NPCs, though, there is still a spectrum of possible divisions of control.  Within the vampires-vs-crime conflict, how well-informed were the PCs?  My experience is that in such conflict scenarios, control is based heavily on information -- moreso than ability to win.  i.e. Even if the vampires are hugely outnumbered, they can at least control the direction of the game if they know where their opponents are and what they are attempting.

Well, let's talk about this: I didn't make any specific effort to control information. They started with the underworld characters they saw and 'worked their way up.' The key element to their success was to make sure that the crime-bosses didn't understand what they were up against. So I wasn't hiding information--I worked out a syndicate map based on what I thought it'd be like and they got their intel as they saw fit and took out targets as they needed (and responded when they were hit back at).

I think that the division of PC-Empowerment will be seen as very, very different based on what the player is looking for from the GM.

(a) If I had said THIS IS A BAD DIRECTION for the game and made the criminals powerful and deadly and clued in the PC's then I'd be using my GM-power to drive the game away from that, yes? To "control the story away from it."

(b) If I had said MAN, THAT'S A COOL DIRECTION FOR A STORY--I'll make sure I have some great pacing and a premise-laden backstory for them to get in and mess with then I'd be using my GM power to get them into 'my story.'

(c) If I said WHAT DO I THINK IT'D BE LIKE then I'm using my GM power to 'run the world' and the story that evolves from that may be said to be co-written (or you can say it's not a story at all if that moves you).

I think the percpetion of PC-power will be different for players who find (a), (b), and (c) dysfunctional.

I think that Joe, who wants to always be the one doing his things,  will find A to be a reduction in player-power although you've said that if I didn't interfer with your playing of your character (you could suicide against the mob if you wanted) then it wasn't controling the story.

I think Fred, who wants to play in an imaginary reality, might find (b) disempowering since I'm taking his actions in a virtuality and turning them into story with a preponderance of 'meaning' that is completely artifical and thus, meaningless.

I think Phil, who wants a Narrativist sotry, might find (c) disempowering since I've taken his action and turned it into something that may not have the premise he wants firmly grafted into it and may not evolve in the always interesting manner of a tight story.

So I don't think that player-empowerment comes without a perspective and an expectation of what the GM oughta be doing.

-Marco

[M. J. Young]

Certainly most people would say the GM runs the world and the PC's run their characters isn't impossible but people regularly come here and say "I tried it and, of course, it failed--it's impossible."

Just in case there is confusion here, I would like to call attention to the fact that what is stated here is not the same as The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, and I cannot recall anyone ever saying that the division of credibility described here--"the GM runs the world and the PC's run their characters"--is in any way impossible.

The breakdown occurs when the referee controls what happens in the story and the players control what their characters do. That is, the referee may be thinking,

A stranger at the inn will hire the party to travel through the Ghost Hills to the castle of Baron Tudony, where they will have to retrieve the Black Rose. It's kept in the courtyard in the center of the well-guarded castle, so the only way they can get it is to go over the walls. They'll successfully avoid the Baron's air defense, take the Rose, and then travel back to the inn. On the way  up, they'll have these encounters, and on the way back they'll have these encounters, which of course they'll easily overcome.

The players meanwhile might be thinking,

Wouldn't it be neat to get a ship and go after pirates?

The point is, if the players can choose what they're going to do and how they're going to do it, the referee can't decide what's going to happen in the adventure ahead (except, as the module example implies, in Trailblazing). If the referee can plan the adventure in any detail at all, then the players have surrendered their ability to control their characters to a significant degree.

I recognize that it's perfectly plausible for the referee to create the stranger, the Baron, the rose, the castle, the defenses, and the other encounters, specifically with the player character abilities in mind, and so suggest that the characters go on this adventure. The problem that arises is that the direction given to the referee means he has the power to make this the adventure that will be played, while the direction given to the players means that they have the power to decide what sort of adventure they will have.

I'm not certain that misunderstanding existed, but I didn't want it to be allowed to continue if it did.

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

Given that organized crime were NPCs, though, there is still a spectrum of possible divisions of control.  Within the vampires-vs-crime conflict, how well-informed were the PCs?  My experience is that in such conflict scenarios, control is based heavily on information -- moreso than ability to win.  i.e. Even if the vampires are hugely outnumbered, they can at least control the direction of the game if they know where their opponents are and what they are attempting.

Well, let's talk about this: I didn't make any specific effort to control information. They started with the underworld characters they saw and 'worked their way up.' The key element to their success was to make sure that the crime-bosses didn't understand what they were up against. So I wasn't hiding information--I worked out a syndicate map based on what I thought it'd be like and they got their intel as they saw fit and took out targets as they needed (and responded when they were hit back at).

Well, it's useful to know about your methods/efforts, but I was looking for something different: the actual level of information that the players had.  Even if you weren't making specific effort towards it, the results of circumstances can force the PCs into a narrow range of actions and/or reactivity.  Oftentimes it is realistic that a character doesn't have control over his own fate.  Put another way, rgfa Simulationism is not synonymous with PC proactivity.  It is a useful though not necessary technique for proactivity.  

In the past, my solution has generally been to design the PCs so that they have considerable resources -- particularly for information.  

I think that the division of PC-Empowerment will be seen as very, very different based on what the player is looking for from the GM.

(a) If I had said THIS IS A BAD DIRECTION for the game and made the criminals powerful and deadly and clued in the PC's then I'd be using my GM-power to drive the game away from that, yes? To "control the story away from it."

(b) If I had said MAN, THAT'S A COOL DIRECTION FOR A STORY--I'll make sure I have some great pacing and a premise-laden backstory for them to get in and mess with then I'd be using my GM power to get them into 'my story.'

(c) If I said WHAT DO I THINK IT'D BE LIKE then I'm using my GM power to 'run the world' and the story that evolves from that may be said to be co-written (or you can say it's not a story at all if that moves you).

I think the percpetion of PC-power will be different for players who find (a), (b), and (c) dysfunctional.

I think that Joe, who wants to always be the one doing his things,  will find A to be a reduction in player-power although you've said that if I didn't interfer with your playing of your character (you could suicide against the mob if you wanted) then it wasn't controling the story.

I think Fred, who wants to play in an imaginary reality, might find (b) disempowering since I'm taking his actions in a virtuality and turning them into story with a preponderance of 'meaning' that is completely artifical and thus, meaningless.

I think Phil, who wants a Narrativist sotry, might find (c) disempowering since I've taken his action and turned it into something that may not have the premise he wants firmly grafted into it and may not evolve in the always interesting manner of a tight story.

So I don't think that player-empowerment comes without a perspective and an expectation of what the GM oughta be doing.

I think you have a good point here.  I have a few disparate comments:

[*] I didn't use the term "empowering", and it seems to me a slanted term.  No one would say they enjoy being "disempowered" -- because that implies rights that are supposed to be theirs being taken away.  I prefer Aaron's sliding scale of GM-direction to player-direction, which is more neutral and descriptive.  
[*] Control is not a synonym for enjoyment.  i.e. A player may have a high degree of control over the story and yet still not like it.  Conversely, it seems reasonable to enjoy something even if you don't have control.
[*] I most certainly did not say "if I didn't interfer with your playing of your character then it wasn't controling the story."  That sounds like absurd nonsense.  Story is a combination of character, plot, and setting.  The spotlight character is an important part of that, but not the totality. [/list:u]
You seem to be setting up "empowerment" as a term relative to what the player wants (i.e. to Phil, "empowerment" means something different than to Joe).  I would prefer a different terms for what different people are looking for.

[Marco]

Well, it's useful to know about your methods/efforts, but I was looking for something different: the actual level of information that the players had.  Even if you weren't making specific effort towards it, the results of circumstances can force the PCs into a narrow range of actions and/or reactivity.  Oftentimes it is realistic that a character doesn't have control over his own fate.  Put another way, rgfa Simulationism is not synonymous with PC proactivity.  It is a useful though not necessary technique for proactivity.  

In the past, my solution has generally been to design the PCs so that they have considerable resources -- particularly for information.  

Ah, I see. Well, firstly--it was a change of direction during an established game: the PC's were already created so it was going with what they had established already (i.e. they had contacts in the Vampire world but very little in the mundane).

Information-wise they were about two steps behind me: as this was during a game, I was working to stay ahead of them (the first case it caught me off guard with zero prep and I made some stuff up based on what I thought seemed reasonable). After that, I made a tree-diagram with a few spotty notes (Jack. Smart, runs night-club. 5 armed security).

Their intel was based on questioning people at various places in the hierarchy.

I think you have a good point here.  I have a few disparate comments:

[*] I didn't use the term "empowering", and it seems to me a slanted term.  No one would say they enjoy being "disempowered" -- because that implies rights that are supposed to be theirs being taken away.  I prefer Aaron's sliding scale of GM-direction to player-direction, which is more neutral and descriptive.  
[*] Control is not a synonym for enjoyment.  i.e. A player may have a high degree of control over the story and yet still not like it.  Conversely, it seems reasonable to enjoy something even if you don't have control.
[*] I most certainly did not say "if I didn't interfer with your playing of your character then it wasn't controling the story."  That sounds like absurd nonsense.  Story is a combination of character, plot, and setting.  The spotlight character is an important part of that, but not the totality. [/list:u]
You seem to be setting up "empowerment" as a term relative to what the player wants (i.e. to Phil, "empowerment" means something different than to Joe).  I would prefer a different terms for what different people are looking for.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Can you elaborate more on this:

Well, first of all, yes. I do have considerable power over the direction of the *story*. Depending on how you define "game", maybe that is in the GM's hands (i.e. the GM can "beat" the PCs, no contest). But the story does not consist of what the location is, or even whether the good guys wins. By playing my character, I can make this situation range from Monty-Python-esque comedy (trading quips against the GM's straight men) to dramatic psychological revelation (a lot of dialogue or monologue about how this feels).

In the context of a game where your presentation of your character (dialog, emotions, personal behavior, etc.) is not infringed on but the GM is controling locality and what I called "direction of the game?"

Although Aaron's scale does seem pretty intuitive for fantasy, how would you apply it to a modern-day detective game?  It would seem the detectives are informed in the general sense, free in the sense most western countries mean it, and powerful with police powers--but the nature of the game is still that the GM thows myseries at them.

-Marco

[Marco]

Certainly most people would say the GM runs the world and the PC's run their characters isn't impossible but people regularly come here and say "I tried it and, of course, it failed--it's impossible."

Just in case there is confusion here, I would like to call attention to the fact that what is stated here is not the same as The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, and I cannot recall anyone ever saying that the division of credibility described here--"the GM runs the world and the PC's run their characters"--is in any way impossible.

I think that if you're not invested in reading a great deal into the analogy posed by TITBB's text that is what it's saying.

The problem is that when someone explaining TITBB says "it's not possible for both the GM and the Players to control the story at the same time" (which is what I have been told is impossible) that means absolutely nothing concrete.

The problem rests with the fact that 'Story' and therefore control-of-the-story in an RPG context isn't defined. When we use the term 'Story' to refer to anything specific, it becomes an argument of semantics. What 'control of the story' means is entirely up for grabs since story (as has been pointed out) can mean many different things to many people and even with context it isn't clear.

In a Narrativist perspective, TITBB is impossible because the raw Narrativist defintion of story precludes the GM from having anything that could be considered 'control' over it.

This isn't anything but tautological: it's very possible to look at a presumably Narrativist game and say that, indeed, the players were playing in the GM's story and the GM was, in fact, controling it.

It just depends on whose standard you want to use. I could certainly make that case for the Sorcerer game I linked to (what I could strongly make the case for was that the GM expected the players to play in a story he controlled and when they tried not to, there were problems, just like 'TITBB predicts.')

I could also make the case that a script-doomed CoC character in a bog-standard investigative game controls the story by how he responds to his pre-determined fate making it either a tragedy, a triumph, or a commedy.

Ultimately, to my recollection where I have seen it, the Impossible Thing text doing nothing more than setting up a very, very high level distinction between the Player and GM roles. Roles that can be as easily described as "The GM runs the world and the players play their characters."*

Look at your four solutions: the GM and Player roles, at a high level are all identical. Even in Playing Bass, the players aren't running NPC's doing prep-work on the mystery, and so on in a traditional game.

Even in Participationism, the players are still playing their characters.

-Marco
* However, this doesn't give one much of a semantic feel for the idea that an RPG can somehow somehow 'create a story.' It also doesn't acknowledge that prep-work for a game, even a Narrativist one, is in some ways, like authorship and that running a game is often, in some ways, like story-telling.

It also isn't as easily grasped by people new to roleplaying ('what does run the world mean?')

[Marco]

A stranger at the inn will hire the party to travel through the Ghost Hills to the castle of Baron Tudony, where they will have to retrieve the Black Rose. It's kept in the courtyard in the center of the well-guarded castle, so the only way they can get it is to go over the walls. They'll successfully avoid the Baron's air defense, take the Rose, and then travel back to the inn. On the way  up, they'll have these encounters, and on the way back they'll have these encounters, which of course they'll easily overcome.

The players meanwhile might be thinking,

Wouldn't it be neat to get a ship and go after pirates?

I wanted to look at this separately. I'm not sure where the "standard for control" is set here--but maybe we can figure that out. If the players say "let's go after pirates" and the GM says "okay."

1. If the GM pulls out his 'pirate adventure' that he had also cooked up, does that mean it reverts back to being his story?

2. If the GM stops play and makes a pirate adventure does that become his story then?

3. If the GM runs things off the cuff in a reactive manner, does that make it the PC's story?

ALSO:
(a) If the GM says: I'll present those pirates in a way that has a lot of premise--the female pirate is the character's sister whom he believed was dead, etc, etc.--does that make him any more or less the 'author' of the action? What if the player feels pretty shanghaied by this revelation that seems really the hell unlikely and is just there to push the game into the 'GM's story'?

(b) If the GM works out pirate encounter tables and trade rotues and sea and wind tables and then runs it 'virtuality,' will this make it less the GM's story since he's more of a referee and less of an author?

(c) If the PC's get to go after the pirates but the first pirate they run into is Black Beard and he takes them captive after trashing their ship and hauls them to the lost island of goodies and makes them march down into the ancient tomb, does the fact that they went after the pirates make it their story? What if it was a natural (all rolls on the table) result of his work on pirates, routes, and weather charts--i.e. played fair. What if the GM just determined that that would happen, but once in the dungeon they are totally in control of their actions?

I don't think that story control is any kind of a clear thing when the dynamic of play is a complex feedback cycle.

Once someone told me that TITBB was a question of "who drives." Having thought about it for some time, I don't think there's an easy answer to that--in, say, a somewhat evolved Playing Bass game where consequences of the player's former actions are in motion coming back to them, who does drive?

-Marco

[John Kim]

[*] I most certainly did not say "if I didn't interfer with your playing of your character then it wasn't controling the story."  That sounds like absurd nonsense.  Story is a combination of character, plot, and setting.  The spotlight character is an important part of that, but not the totality. [/list:u]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Can you elaborate more on this:

Well, first of all, yes. I do have considerable power over the direction of the *story*. Depending on how you define "game", maybe that is in the GM's hands (i.e. the GM can "beat" the PCs, no contest). But the story does not consist of what the location is, or even whether the good guys wins. By playing my character, I can make this situation range from Monty-Python-esque comedy (trading quips against the GM's straight men) to dramatic psychological revelation (a lot of dialogue or monologue about how this feels).

In the context of a game where your presentation of your character (dialog, emotions, personal behavior, etc.) is not infringed on but the GM is controling locality and what I called "direction of the game?"

Sure.  My point here was that this is still potentially somewhere on the sliding scale -- i.e. the players still have some input/control, though obviously not total.  When I said that I have "power", I didn't mean to imply 100% total power, but rather partial power -- maybe less than 50% even, but more than, say, 25%.  (Obviously the numbers are semi-arbitrary.)  If my PC was free to go anywhere in the world, then I would have more control.  

You're right that "story" is a vague term, though.  I give a definition in my Narrative Paradigms essay, but it's still quite subjective.  I would take the analogy of a known story from literature -- say Hamlet, for example.  Imagine if Hamlet had tried his best to walk away from the castle and survive, but was captured, hemmed in, or otherwise forced into various events which lead to the deaths in the finale.  I think most people would say that is a very different story from Shakespeare's version.  

Although Aaron's scale does seem pretty intuitive for fantasy, how would you apply it to a modern-day detective game?  It would seem the detectives are informed in the general sense, free in the sense most western countries mean it, and powerful with police powers--but the nature of the game is still that the GM thows myseries at them.

Well, first a few caveats.  The criteria (informed, free, powerful) are relative.  They also aren't definitive -- i.e. all three can be true and in practice the game is still GM-directed.  Well, I would say that pretty much by definition, in a mystery scenario the PCs / players are not well-informed.  i.e. They don't know what is going on.  Also, I meant free in a practical sense rather than legal (i.e non-slave).  If they are more-or-less obliged to take a case that is offered to them, they aren't free in this sense.  Lastly, western police powers are designed to strictly limit power to the individual policeman to protect against the sort of abuses which occur in a police state.  So, no, I wouldn't call this powerful, either.  Let me offer two examples of modern-day campaigns:

1) A modern military action game.  The PCs get extensive and largely accurate briefings on what their target will be.  They also generally have the upper hand in the fights (i.e. they generally succeed with low PC casualties).  Here the PCs are well-informed and powerful, but not free since they are following orders.

2) A superhero game.  The PCs are poorly informed -- i.e. they will go on patrol and generally be surprised by what they find.  They are, however, free and powerful.  They are free -- i.e. no one is requiring them to be superheroes, and they're not subject to police procedure (or even many civilian laws).  They are clearly powerful.  

Now, there are still many ambiguities which you cite.  This isn't rocket science, but I think the distinction (i.e. spectrum of control) is still useful.  I don't think that there is any way to, say, objectively distinguish a 50-50 split of power vs a 60-40 split.  But hopefully we can refine it.

[Marco]

Sure.  My point here was that this is still potentially somewhere on the sliding scale -- i.e. the players still have some input/control, though obviously not total.  When I said that I have "power", I didn't mean to imply 100% total power, but rather partial power -- maybe less than 50% even, but more than, say, 25%.  (Obviously the numbers are semi-arbitrary.)  If my PC was free to go anywhere in the world, then I would have more control.  

I want to think on the rest of your post and respond later--since I think you make a very good, clear case for examining power-struggle issues in a specific context.

But I wanted to address the idea of a gradient of power-sharing as a general possibility.

I don't think that everyone would agree with the idea that "PC power" rightly expressed as a percentage.

I don't remember the thread (I don't think it was a TITBB thread specifically)--but the term "control of the story" (or whatever the exact terms were) was meant in the 100% boolean sense. In other words, if one person was in control of the story the other person couldn't be.

That was why TITBB was 'impossible.'

Now, if we define power as 'control of the story' but look at it as a range of percents then we can see that two ways.

1. If we have (somehow) decided that there's a 75% GM-power, 25% Player-power split then three out of every 4 story decisions are made by the GM.

Under that defintion it is impossible for two people to be in control of the same decision at the same time--but we have to figure out what a 1:3 decision split means in terms of players being main-characters and GM's-being authors.

That isn't clear. Truly it seems like even a massive 3:1 edge would still make the characters co-authors in a meaningful sense (or 'main characters' in terms of the impossible text).

Really, it isn't clear at what point 'being a main character' becomes impossible because your input to the game didn't pan-out. If the GM overturns one of your decisions out of 100, does that count you out for the whole 'story?' I wouldn't think so--but then I think there is a lot more complexity to looking at power-sharing than just asking 'who drives.'

2. The other way to look at a power-sharing split is that the GM offers one kind of input to the context of the decision and the player offers another kind. In this case it is probably not really possible to say either "who has control" or "what the percentages are."

The idea of a player's portrayal of his character in a scrpitedly-doomed CoC game to make the game a commedy is this kind of split. One observer could say he has 100% control of the *story* while another observe might put the player at 0%.

But it's clearly not impossible for each player to give their input at the same time and each see themselves as empowered story-creators from the same event.

I believe that both versions are profitable ways of examining power-sharing in traditional RPG's. But if either are possible then it's no longer clear why "the GM being the author of a story" where the players "are the main characters" is impossible since clearly there's simply a gradient of story-control at play and even if the GM has 90% it isn't proper to call him 'the author of the story' nor to say that the players make no authorial decisions.

Note: It seems to me that in your examples you are making a substantiallly philosophically different and very valid point about what the PC's are like compared to their opposition and how much ability they have to 'turn down' a 'mission' (or whatever).

I think this is very much a profitable thing to look at with respect and I'll address that after I've thought about it some more.

-Marco

[Marco]

Well, first a few caveats.  The criteria (informed, free, powerful) are relative.  They also aren't definitive -- i.e. all three can be true and in practice the game is still GM-directed.  Well, I would say that pretty much by definition, in a mystery scenario the PCs / players are not well-informed.  i.e. They don't know what is going on.  Also, I meant free in a practical sense rather than legal (i.e non-slave).  If they are more-or-less obliged to take a case that is offered to them, they aren't free in this sense.  Lastly, western police powers are designed to strictly limit power to the individual policeman to protect against the sort of abuses which occur in a police state.  So, no, I wouldn't call this powerful, either.  Let me offer two examples of modern-day campaigns:

1) A modern military action game.  The PCs get extensive and largely accurate briefings on what their target will be.  They also generally have the upper hand in the fights (i.e. they generally succeed with low PC casualties).  Here the PCs are well-informed and powerful, but not free since they are following orders.

2) A superhero game.  The PCs are poorly informed -- i.e. they will go on patrol and generally be surprised by what they find.  They are, however, free and powerful.  They are free -- i.e. no one is requiring them to be superheroes, and they're not subject to police procedure (or even many civilian laws).  They are clearly powerful.  

Now, there are still many ambiguities which you cite.  This isn't rocket science, but I think the distinction (i.e. spectrum of control) is still useful.  I don't think that there is any way to, say, objectively distinguish a 50-50 split of power vs a 60-40 split.  But hopefully we can refine it.

Okay: having thought about this, what is, IMO, being measured is the level of direct in-game force (not Force--just ... force, effect, etc.) that the situation is likely to apply to them.

It's measured in things like the combat-match-ups and patrons and the amount of hidden knowledge in things they do.

I want to apply Aaron's measure to two game's I've written up here (which you have read):

1. After The War: we had very little knowledge of the situation, were free in that we had no authority figures pushing us around, and were quite powerful.

However, the starting situation concerned a problem which we were wrapped around: we couldn't connect to the network. If we chose not to engage with that, we could--but there would be consequences (we would be facing an unsatisfying life).

In this game we were highly inclined to work around the GM's situation--but on the other hand we were proactive and so powerful that even the high-end bad guys had real trouble dealing with us.

It certainly felt like we were highly autonomous as we outwitted and out gunned our opponents and took the battle to them--indeed, decided even to fight it and decided who we would save.

But on the other hand, if we'd decided to go treasure hunting in the south seas the game would've collapsed in that (a) nothing would be prepared and (b) our characters just weren't relevant to that.

So in one sense it's very 'low' power and in another, very high.

2. Salga Del Mundo: In this the characters had almost no knowledge. One had a patron that she had to keep moderately happy but the other did not. They were mostly free and their power was substantial: the scientist was excellent at science and the mystic artist was well regarded.

They were not powerful enough to push around the mayor or commander a power-station without help.

Again, I'm not sure how to measure this. If they had decided to leave town, they could've--there would have been serious consequences but I wouldn't have stopped them.

Also: they were almost entirely pro-active in their actions--to the extent that their lack of knowledge (they didn't ever address the mystery of the three personailties) was immaterial. They addressed their problems in a manner mostly unrelated to a large body of my hidden knowledge.

How would you rate these games on Aaron's continium?

-Marco

[John Kim]

I believe that both versions are profitable ways of examining power-sharing in traditional RPG's. But if either are possible then it's no longer clear why "the GM being the author of a story" where the players "are the main characters" is impossible since clearly there's simply a gradient of story-control at play and even if the GM has 90% it isn't proper to call him 'the author of the story' nor to say that the players make no authorial decisions.

Well, I agree with you 100% (smirk) that control should be considered as a gradient/spectrum rather than a binary choice of GM-author or player-author.  However, to be charitable to TITBB as a concept, I think even assuming a spectrum, games may imply contradictory levels of control.  i.e. If a game does imply a 50-50 split of control, that is not TITBB.  However, using the percentages analogy, a game might imply 90% GM control and also 90% player control.  That would be TITBB.  

I think there are cases of such contradiction.  My feeling is that a linear-plot game like _Deadlands_ embodies this.  The advice to the GM suggests laying out a fixed sequence of scenes.  However, the advice to the players doesn't express that the players should follow the GM's lead for where to go.  Arguably, Feng Shui does a little better at this, since it is clearer to the players that they are supposed to proceed on to the next set-piece action scene.  

Then again, I am perhaps biased because I don't like linear-plot games.  A more charitable reading of Deadlands would be that it is trying to suggest a workable split of control, but perhaps not expressing it well.  

Note: It seems to me that in your examples you are making a substantiallly philosophically different and very valid point about what the PC's are like compared to their opposition and how much ability they have to 'turn down' a 'mission' (or whatever).

I think this is very much a profitable thing to look at with respect and I'll address that after I've thought about it some more.

Thanks.  Maybe there should be a separate thread on "player control of plot/story/game given a traditional GM role".

[M. J. Young]

If the players say "let's go after pirates" and the GM says "okay."

At that instant, the rest of the post becomes irrelevant. What you have there is a subjective interpretation of the text that eliminates The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast by assuming the two sides are supposed to compromise. Nothing in the text says that they are to do that.

If the referee says, "O.K.", he has just decided that he's going to give control of the story to the players on that point. That's a compromise; that's a decision that he is not going to control the story.

He could as well say, "I'm sorry, there are no ships available." If somehow the players make ship available, he can say, "You wander up and down the coast for a month, and then find you are completely out of supplies and funds. Coming back to port, you remember that you were offered that job of going to get the Black Rose." In essence, if the referee takes his instructions completely seriously, he is perfectly justified in saying, I don't care what kind of adventure you or your characters want to pursue, this is the adventure that I've planned, and you're going to do that or nothing.

And in essence if the players take their side of it seriously, they are perfectly justified in saying, We don't care what you may or may not have planned, we're going to take off and do what we want in your world.

As soon as you propose any way at all of resolving this conflict, including "so the referee decides to go with what the players suggest" (or "so the players decide to go with what the referee suggests") you have provided a resolution to the impossible thing that replaces what it really says with what you think it means.

Again, the problem is that it is just as reasonable to suppose it means the referee goes with the player's choice as it is to suppose that it means the players are stuck with the referee's plotline. However the tension is resolved, that becomes this gaming group's distribution of credibility. The book didn't give that to you, and ten different gaming groups might each come up with a distribution of credibility different enough from each other that players who moved between them would be completely off balance in how they were supposed to play--from "No, man, we can't do that because the referee wants us to do this" to "What do you mean, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to do what you want--I don't have anything prepared."

Every time you attempt to demonstrate that TITBB does not exist, you provide an assumed resolution to the problem. No one is saying that people don't find resolutions to the problem. They're saying that they do find resolutions to the problem, but these are the resolutions that are developed by individual groups, not the instructions in the game, and the players think that they're doing what the book instructed (and that anyone not doing it the way they do is doing it wrong). TITBB does not stop people from playing. It forces them to create their own system and tricks them into thinking that's what the book told them to do.

If the referee thinks that he has every right to force the players to go into the ghost hills for the black rose, and the players think that they don't have to do what the referee prepares but can go off hunting pirates if that's what they want, the game breaks down unless someone compromises. As soon as someone compromises, you've created the precedent for distribution of credibility in that game. The way you're playing has nothing to with the text of the book. It has to do with your decision regarding how to interpret the text such that it works for your group.

"Unconscious accommodations for TITBB" is exactly what this thread is about: you read the text, recognize that it can't mean what it says, and immediately impose your interpretation on it, but then think that that's what the text says. It isn't.

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

As soon as you propose any way at all of resolving this conflict, including "so the referee decides to go with what the players suggest" (or "so the players decide to go with what the referee suggests") you have provided a resolution to the impossible thing that replaces what it really says with what you think it means.

"Unconscious accommodations for TITBB" is exactly what this thread is about: you read the text, recognize that it can't mean what it says, and immediately impose your interpretation on it, but then think that that's what the text says. It isn't.

I think there are a few ground rules which need to be established for discussion:

1) We need to establish what text is being discussed.  On the one hand, there is the text of real games like Vampire: The Masquerade or Deadlands.  On the other hand, there is the phrasing invented by Ron when coining the term TITBB -- and other phrasings since then.  These are not the same text, nor do they have exactly the same meaning.  

2) We need to establish how you define "meaning".  There is the intended meaning of the author, a variety of literalist interpretations of an isolated phrase, and the perceived meaning by actual gamers who read and play the game.  For example, Deadlands starts a chapter with "You're the Marshal".  Now, if we go with a brain-dead literalist interpretation, everyone who sees this concludes that they are the Marshal for their actual game.  So the game has a "problem" that anyone who reads that page thinks they're the GM and the game dissolves into arguments.  

As far as I'm concerned, the relevant answers are the intended meaning (singular) and the actual perceived meanings (plural).  Now, if all the actual gamers who read Deadlands come to the same conclusion, and that conclusion corresponds to the intended meaning of the author -- then as far as I am concerned the author successfully communicated his point, and I could care less about some pedant who claims that the "real meaning" is different.  

Now, as it happens, I don't think this is true.  I think that the Deadlands text is vague and does in fact lead to conflicting interpretations -- and indeed, the author may well have intended different interpretations among players and GMs.  But the important thing in my mind is how the actual text is actually read, not some hypothetical conflict over interpreting hypothetical text.

[Marco]

At that instant, the rest of the post becomes irrelevant. What you have there is a subjective interpretation of the text that eliminates The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast by assuming the two sides are supposed to compromise. Nothing in the text says that they are to do that.

Telling me what the text says with regards to compromise assumes I share your opinon of what those words mean.

I *don't*--I can clearly see that the context is an RPG where words like 'author' and 'main characters' are undefined.

The idea that "The GM is the author of the story and the players are the main characters" has some specific meaning with regards to power-split or is the basis for a concrete social dynamic is a very specific reading of that text that is, IMO, untennable.

It doesn't address issues like compromise. It doesn't touch on power-division issues like Playing Bass or Illusionism or any of that. Those are all far below the level than the analogy goes.

Here's some text from TROS:

"Finally, there's one more rule that every Seneschal (and player) should know by heart. It's the most important rule: the Seneschal is always right. That's right, we said, "THE SENESCHAL IS ALWAYS RIGHT!" You are in charge of the game."
The Riddle of Steel, pg 233

This doesn't use analogies like "author" and "main character"--this tells readers that they have no recourse nor right to argue or question the GM.  Since it's the "most important rule" it means that the GM can decide to have a peasant boy beat my SA-firing wizard with a small twig and I have no complaint?

That having read the simplist, and "most important" rule, I needn't read any others?

I find the idea that this text has any kind of significant impact on the game whatsoever to be pretty strongly reaching. TRoS is  sometimes considered coherently Narrativist here: as a stated rule this should destroy it.

Available data suggests it doesn't.

-Marco
[ Here is a link that discusses some other text in games: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5917

There's plenty of text that, IMO, ain't great advice (CoC makes some assumptions that are only modestly reasonable. GURPS seems slightly confused in places). However none of this is as presumably damaging as TRoS's advice and none of it is the analogy in question either.]

[contracycle]

I *don't*--I can clearly see that the context is an RPG where words like 'author' and 'main characters' are undefined.

Then you are going to struggle through life because words are almost never defined in the same text as they are used.

The idea that "The GM is the author of the story and the players are the main characters" has some specific meaning with regards to power-split or is the basis for a concrete social dynamic is a very specific reading of that text that is, IMO, untennable.

Umm, thats the point.  It is not concrete and cannot be, even though it appears reasonable enough at first glance.

It doesn't address issues like compromise. It doesn't touch on power-division issues like Playing Bass or Illusionism or any of that. Those are all far below the level than the analogy goes.

Well of course it does not becuase the texts we are discussing predate these concepts, and these concepts are local to the Forge.  This is not the first time you have made this error of projection.

Once again I fail to find any coherence in your argument - it appears to be another objection for the sake of objecting.

[Marco]

Gareth,
There's a real issue of talking about power split, of different people's ideas about how to achieve working power-splits, and what things like 'control of the story' means.

However, a tacit acceptance that game book-text is significantly responsible for dysfunction makes the foundation of discussion here overly simplisitc.

When I can show you:
1. Posts here where TITBB's verbatim text was used to functionally explain RPG-play to a batch of new players.
2. Examples of 'who-drives' (or 'who controls the story' or whatever) problems in Sorcerer play where that text doesn't exist and the GM is a Forge regular.
3. Text from TRoS, a well regarded, often-seen-as-Narrativist game, that would seem to have at least as dramatic an effect as the actual TITBB 'quote' yet doesn't seem to seriously impact people's impressions of it.

Then I think it's obvious that the situation is a lot more complex than it's been considered here. Part of that reason is the sacred-cow that if the GM is "in some way the author" then the players cannot be said to be in some way "the main characters."

I submit John's two points (that we, mostly, do not discuss real game text and that discussions center on what the 'real meaning' of the words* are) make it pretty damn clear that any actual issue is being avoided.

The idea that "The GM is the author of the story and the players are the main characters" has some specific meaning with regards to power-split or is the basis for a concrete social dynamic is a very specific reading of that text that is, IMO, untennable.

Umm, thats the point.  It is not concrete and cannot be, even though it appears reasonable enough at first glance.

That's not the point.

The TITBB's (The Forge's) reading of these words is a one-true-wayism particular to The Forge. That one-true-way is that the absurd interpertation is the only one that can reasonably said to be correct.

MJ argues that the idea that being a GM is often in some way like being an author and that being a player is in some way like being a main character is an unconscious revision of the text.

MJ tries to tell me what the 'the text is really saying'--but that's just like some roleplayer telling me I'm playing wrong because I'm not playing a game his way.

That I can get another, reasonable, meaning from TITBB's text means that the foundation of TITBB is faulty. Not because we might disagree about what it is saying--no. Because one side of the argument (you) claim I'm unreasonable to read the analogy the way I do.

You've no foundation for that claim. A GM who does the prep-work of a relationship map can, indeed, be seen as the 'author of the story' and the players who play in that scenario can be seen as the 'main characters.'

MJ isn't saying the text could mean something else, he's saying that the text cannot be interperted the way I have and that my doing so is an unconscious re-write of the words.

Claiming that one has found the only true-way to read or do something is endemic to roleplaying (among other things) but it shouldn't be mistaken for a convincing argument.

It doesn't address issues like compromise. It doesn't touch on power-division issues like Playing Bass or Illusionism or any of that. Those are all far below the level than the analogy goes.

Well of course it does not becuase the texts we are discussing predate these concepts, and these concepts are local to the Forge.  This is not the first time you have made this error of projection.

Once again I fail to find any coherence in your argument - it appears to be another objection for the sake of objecting.

Well, I think the focus is on the analogy and not on the actual text. I've quoted a supposed rule from TRoS and we could discuss the impact of that. We're not doing it.

Why not? Because we're arguing about the proper reading of an analogy--one that must be taken out of context in order to say anything specific.

Here is some text from Kult:

"A planned adventure doesn't mean that the Game-master should dictate the actions of the player charaters. If they don't act in the way you had hoped, you will have to adapt and change your adventure to accomodate them."
--Kult (2001) pg 286

It also says:

"If the characters do something that threatens to ruin the adventure entirely, give them a prod in the right direction. Send in an NPC with guiding information, or invent an incident that points to where yoy want the acton to go ... Role-playing isn't fun if you are stuck ... But remember [be discrete] at all times, the players must feel that they are in full control of what their characters choose to do."
--Kult (2001) pg 286

Now, I can choose to read this as contradictory. I can say that having a 'right direction' means the GM is controling the story and giving the players an illusion that they control their characters. Does this really have a dramatic impact on players and GM's? I don't know (I tend to think not so much--I suspect the way that the description of GM-player interaction in the combat section of a traditional game is more important than the how-to-GM advice for a lot of people).

If we want to discuss what impact this might have on players then that's a fine discussion.

We can even discuss 'what it means to be in control of the story' since I guarantee that there will be fertile ground for analysis. I think with all the work that has presumably done here, even Forge posters will disagree about what these basic concepts mean.

In order get to that, though, we have to get away from just blaming the impossible thing for dysfunction and leaving it at that (when there are Actual Play examples to the contrary). Claiming you 'really know what it's about' or 'really know what it means' is really not looking at the fundamental underpinnings of the problem which can exist in any traditional game without that text.

It's just finding an acceptable target to pin the blame on.

-Marco
* "The GM is the author of the story and the players direct the actions of the protagonists."

This is from the glossary. We will have to take it for granted that it's in reference to an RPG. I understand that it was first attributed to AD&D--some similar text at least. However, I think, for instance, that games like Kult and Vampire, both of which are supposed to be conceptually based on this idea, do things very differently with regards to meta-plot, splat-books, and advice: just saying they all have the same irrational basis is, again, IMO, unproductive simplification.