The Impossible Thing

[John Kim]

We can delve through minutiae about how the GM advice text is phrased, but really I think that the difference comes more from the personality of the GMs and their own ideas.  They ran things that way primarily because they wanted to, not because it was written in some essay.

I utterly and completely disagree. Yes, personality has something to do with it, but if the text wasn't so unclear on this point, then these personality differences would have a lot less to do with the way games engaging in the Impossible Thing are run.

Well, OK.  Let's start this from the other angle.  How should the text be written?  i.e. Could you point me to an example of text which more clearly delineates the divide of authorship between players and GM?  

My experience has been that a lot of the more story-focussed books tend to spend even less effort on explaining role-playing basics.  I think they are aimed more narrowly at experienced role-players who already know what to do, so they don't have this sort of text explaining the basics.  Thus, if you have some good text to point to, I would definitely be interested.

EDIT: On reflection, maybe this should be a separate thread?

[Ian Charvill]

To give textual excerpts from one of Ron's cited examples: Call of Cthulhu (5th Ed, copyright 1992).  Where the term "investigator" appears it is coterminous with Player Character, similarly Keeper is parallel to Games Master.

p9, subsection headed Players: "A player has a duty to roleplay an investigator within the limits of the investigator's personality and abilities.  That is the point of roleplaying....  Try to develop the investigator's personality well enough that the other players can imagine what he or she would do in a specific situation. "Good old Al," they'll say, "we knew he'd do that.""

Pretty clearly the personality of the player character is indicated as no less than the point of roleplaying.

From the chapter About Investigators: p18 "Always create characters who you can enthusiastically roleplay"; p23 "It goes without saying that your [investigator] could be very different from what's written here" p25 "What schools were attended?" Who are the investigator's family? What is the investigator like?"

Not only is the personality of the investigator listed as being the property of the player (with the exception of Sanity, which is explicitly tied to a mechanic) the invention of "Deep Background" is indicated as a part of a players responsibility both in character creation and in play.

p.74, from the box-out headed Scenerio Structure: "1 A mystery or crisis is posed.... 2 The investigators become linked to the problem.... 3 The investigators attempt to define the mystery.... 4 The investigators use the evidence to confront the danger"

The easy-to-digest account of scenerio structure presumes certain responses from the investigators.   This contradicts the idea that players develop the investigators personality: if the investigators must confront the danger rather than avoid it, that must be what there personality is (curious, brave, steadfast or whatnot).

p. 160 from the Scenerios chapter "Having played these adventures, new keepers can plan their own creations."

Bear in mind the scenerios from the main rulebook are explicitly held up as models of good scenario design and hence 'how the game should be played".

p.161, The Edge of Darkness: "The investigators are all friends, relatives, past students or former collegues of the man. The exact relationship of each investigator must be decided ahead of time by the keeper and should involve some close personal bond and reason for trust."

Explicitly, and in contradiction to earlier sections which placed Deep Background in the purview of players, the keeper determines part of Deep Background for the investigators.  Also, it is such as to require particular emotional responses from the investigators - i.e. there is a right way of role playing the investigators at this point and it is determined by the keeper and not the players.  The "point of roleplaying" has been taken away from the players.  Note that this is in a scenerio set-up, and traditionally rpgs place far greater restrictions of action of players in this phase.

from various parts of the scenerio chapter: p.163 "Investigators may do as they wish but certainly one of them will want to read Rupert's journal"; p174 "Suspecting Mythos activity, the investigators decide to drive to Vermont and inspect the situation"; "the Packard and Joey Larson always get away.  Encourage pursuing investigators to return to the Blue Heaven and see what's happened."; p182 "No matter how quickly the investigators figure this out, Leroy Turner always beats them to the cemetary."

Pretty plainly, these dictate investigator actions, tell the keeper to influence investigator actions and render investigator actions irrelevent.  Nowhere in the text players are supposed to read does it tell them this goes on; nowhere does it make explicit to keepers that they will be confounding player expectations (you can argue that the advice is perfectly valid from an Illusionist perspective).

I love Cthulhu, I think it's one of the best RPGs ever written and, along with third edition Runequest, is the old-school RPG that I have the most fondness for.  It revolutionised the way I ran games when I encountered it in my early teens.  There is no question however, that contradictory advice is given to GMs and players that constitutes the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.

[Sindyr]

I can no longer keep up with this thread.  I asked that the volume be kept down so that I could have a "conversation" with one or two people about this, but everyone is talking at once.

However, even though I started this topic most recently, I realize that I do not have any right to demand my needs be catered to.

So, I guess I am stuck at my original position.
For now, I am going to have to go with TITBB being true but irrelevant since most gamebooks do not advocate TITBB.

I do not feel completely comfortable that I am right, but there are too many and too meaty responses for me to be able to wade through all at once.  The helpful replies have turned into an avalanche of noise, and I am buried under it.

So for now, this is it.  Perhaps in the future, I will open a line of private dialogue with some people here.  Perhaps I should have started with that.

So for now, unless someone has any good ideas to fix the overwhelming wall of replies that I am faced with, this is me heading out.

If anyone wants to send me any private correspondence, feel free to do so.  If I get overwhelmed by private correspondence, then I will pick one or two to engage with, and upon finishing the conversation with them, return to the next one or two.

Sorry, I just can't keep up with or handle having conversations with seven people all at once.

-Sindyr

[greyorm]

I can no longer keep up with this thread.  I asked that the volume be kept down so that I could have a "conversation" with one or two people about this, but everyone is talking at once.

Sindyr,

You have to realize as well that you aren't the only person discussing the issue between themselves on this thread: such is the nature of forum-based discussion. My response to John above could easily be ignored by you (as could a number of others), as it is a response to John.

On the other hand, I recognize a request was made and ignored, which is bad form for us here. Here's my attempt to redress that mistake:

Public forums don't work like one-on-one conversations, they're requests for discussion and information, but at the same time we have rules about topical discussions: and this particular thread was obviously written to adress the concerns of a specific individual about a specific subject, and because everyone is now talking about that subject to the confusion of the individual, it is no longer appropriately addressing their concerns (though it is on topic).

However, I believe it would be equally as bad to break the discussion into a number of different threads all discussing the same thing.

Because I don't clearly see the policy for such a situation, I'm going to say this is a moderator call, here: so, what's the policy?

In the meanwhile, short term solutions: you could decide who the two people you are having a conversation with are and thus easily filter out the replies of anyone who isn't them, or as you said, start a private conversation with those individuals so you wouldn't have to deal with doing such at all.

[Marco]

You can't do the Impossible Thing...it's impossible! But it seems a lot of the discussion is involved in trying to disprove it via example of it not occurring. Marco appears to make this mistake in his post:

even if it does, it's so obviously un-true to *the very, very, very vast majority of roleplaying* as to be easily discounted.

But of course it doesn't occur: it can't!

Sorry, Grey. What *doesn't* usually (ever) occur is GAME TEXT saying "THE GM has complete control over the story. The players make no difference. No player choices should be allowed. Oh yes, and it's still their story--a story developed by the players."*

I find it interesting that you think *I'm* the one making the mistake. Re-read my post about the believer in the Impossible thing taking zero responsibility for his or her reading of the rules that *seem* to imply it (as opposed to saying "oh, that's kinda a poor analogy").

Furthermore: TIP was originally brought into being as the fatal flaw for games like 7th Sea and VtM. If the true meaning is "let the PC choices be important" then I think some people (although not, interestingly enough Ron--whom I think has been fairly clear recently) are ret-conning TIP (essentially acting as apologists).

Show me a mandate in black and white in a major game that flat out says: Don't EVER let the players make important decisions--but it's still *their* story. If you do, I'll quite glady agree it's a paradox. Until I see that--and it's gotta be a major game that influenced your role-playing beliefs--I think it's reading too much into a poor analogy.

-Marco
* What I'm looking for is, yes, something that's THAT strongly worded. I've read all that text a million times (the, usually flailing, attempt to explain GM/Player power-splits). Instead of calling it the Impossible Thing and deciding 7th Sea is a) based on it and b) therefore flawed. Call it The Bad Description.

Edited to note: the CoC module above does railroad the players. Is that a mandate about how the game's supposed to be played? If you dismiss the seeminlgy-narrative text in VtM, why not the text in a module?

[Valamir]

Wow Marco, of all of the people who aren't getting in these threads you are the one person who is working overtime to make sure you don't get it.  Perhaps it is because you have already decided to dismiss the idea as non existant that you aren't hearing what people are saying.

Case in point

"THE GM has complete control over the story. The players make no difference. No player choices should be allowed. Oh yes, and it's still their story--a story developed by the players."

No one has said that this is what the impossible thing is.  This is you setting up a straw man that you can easily knock down.

Or case number two

Furthermore: TIP was originally brought into being as the fatal flaw for games like 7th Sea and VtM. If the true meaning is "let the PC choices be important" then I think some people (although not, interestingly enough Ron--whom I think has been fairly clear recently) are ret-conning TIP

Nope.  Again.  Nothing whatever to do with TIP.  TIP is NOT NOT NOT about saying the PCs choices are important.  Have you been reading these threads at all?

The text of the impossible thing does not say that players have no control.  In fact it repeatedly says that the players have a great deal of control.  It also repeatedly says that the GM has a great deal of control.

The unfortuneate thing is...it says this about the same things.  Meaning the control overlaps in a way that can't actually happen in game.

Show me a mandate in black and white in a major game that flat out says: Don't EVER let the players make important decisions--but it's still *their* story. If you do, I'll quite glady agree it's a paradox. Until I see that--and it's gotta be a major game that influenced your role-playing beliefs--I think it's reading too much into a poor analogy

Please.  What kind of ridiculous statement is this to make.  "You have to show me something that I know full well nobody has ever said because its ridiculous before I'll believe you.  Its just absurd.


It goes way beyond a bad description.  Its not a poor choice of words.  Its a fundamental attitude that shapes the entire game design.  The game rules throughout the text are written with the prior assumption that the GM controling the world while the Players control the characters is possible.  This is assumed to be true throughout the books.  

Is it a fatal flaw?  Has no game containing this text ever been played successfully...of course not.  No one has said that.  But you seem to be of the mind that if you can point to groups having fun with the game successfully that that's proof that there's nothing wrong with it.

That's akin to saying there's nothing wrong with Firestone Frontier tires because you point to someone who never had a problem with them.  Or there's nothing wrong with Pinto because you can point to someones Pinto that DIDN'T blow up.  Or theres nothing wrong with the electric system on an 80s Jag because you know someone who never had a problem with it.

Its ridiculous.  Quit trying so hard to prove your point, and try to actually comprehend what's being said.

If this came off as pretty harsh...well...sorry, but arguements like the one you made in your last post quite frankly piss me the hell off...and are quite beneath your normal standards of dialog.

[greyorm]

Thank you, Ralph.
Marco, for the record, "What Ralph said."

[Mike Holmes]

Sindyr,

To me it comes down to this. While your interperetations of the text in question do not see TIP, that does not mean that others do not see it. We have only anecdotal evidence to present, but that evidence says that there are people who have interpereted games, that you see as quite clearly not TIP, as TIP.

Now, perhaps that's the participant's fault for not realizing that they were going to run into problems with their "faulty" interperetations (assuming that they actually are faulty, and you're not just mentally correcting the text). But that doesn't change the fact that there are better ways to write these texts so that these "misinterperetations" do not occur.

You very much seem to have the attitude that, "well, it's not a problem for me, so how could it be a problem for anyone else?" But the obvious answer is that players play differently.

As far as that anecdotal evidence, I profer exhibit A, that being bladamson's and Bruce Baugh's comments about "stereotypical WW players." Where does this stereotype come from? These are exactly the people that are apparently not interpereting the text "correctly". One could argue that they are informed by play of other systems, but then those systems must have similar flaws for them to have gotten the opinion that this is the "correct" way to play.

Blaming it on the players is to say that we as designers can do nothing to change the status quo. That the "stereotypical player" is to blame for all the bad play. But I for one would like to believe that we can do better as designers. And this is one small are where we can improve.

I'll cut this short here, and not go into the other ramifications (as this is just the tip of the iceberg, really), some of which I've touched on before.

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

Excuse me while I leap to CoC's defence. I know you're not realy having a go at CoC, but I also think you go a bit too far in trying to make your point. I hope this is helpfull in the contexts of the overall discussion.

Quote:
From the chapter About Investigators: p18 "Always create characters who you can enthusiastically roleplay"; p23 "It goes without saying that your [investigator] could be very different from what's written here" p25 "What schools were attended?" Who are the investigator's family? What is the investigator like?"

Not only is the personality of the investigator listed as being the property of the player (with the exception of Sanity, which is explicitly tied to a mechanic) the invention of "Deep Background" is indicated as a part of a players responsibility both in character creation and in play.

It's listed as the property of the player here, but as it says '...your [investigator] could be very different from what's written here'. I think that can be fairly interpreted as supporting the idea that some aspects of character bacground may be defined externaly. It certainly does not exclude the idea that the GM might be involved in this process.

Quote:
from various parts of the scenerio chapter: p.163 "Investigators may do as they wish but certainly one of them will want to read Rupert's journal"; p174 "Suspecting Mythos activity, the investigators decide to drive to Vermont and inspect the situation"; "the Packard and Joey Larson always get away. Encourage pursuing investigators to return to the Blue Heaven and see what's happened."; p182 "No matter how quickly the investigators figure this out, Leroy Turner always beats them to the cemetary."

Pretty plainly, these dictate investigator actions, tell the keeper to influence investigator actions and render investigator actions irrelevent. Nowhere in the text players are supposed to read does it tell them this goes on; nowhere does it make explicit to keepers that they will be confounding player expectations (you can argue that the advice is perfectly valid from an Illusionist perspective).

The scenario does not dictate that a player will read the journal, it merely anticipates that one will.

I'll accept that the scenario does involve more predetermined results than are to my taste, but to some extent scenarios always do. For example in the case of Leroy Turner beating them to the cemetary, perhaps he's just got far too much of a head start? Perhaps his car is that much faster than theirs? Sometimes there realy are things that occur that are beyond the player's ability to influence, I don't think that's necesserily either unrealistic or unfair.

Finaly, the scenarios are intended to be learning excercises for new GMs and players. As such, I think there's nothing wrong with providing more hand holding, prompting and even GM direction than we might regard as beign ideal. Players still have wide latitude in how they generate their characters, and in defining huge swathes of character background. They do have at least some freedom of action throughout the scenario, but I don't think establishing some limits to that is necesserily bad.

I would like to have seen more discussion in the scenario of alternative ways the Investigators could tackle the scenario, and perhaps an alternative ending. This is actualy more important in learning scenarios than in scenarios aimed at more experienced players and GMs, who can often take a written scenario and hack it about to suit their preferences in ways the author might never think of.


Simon Hibbs

[greyorm]

Actually, CoC is a bad example because it is MEANT to be railroaded by the GM...that's the fun in it! It's pure Illusionist gaming. Now if the point is that CoC's text is unclear about this, and makes it seem as though it is not, then yes, that holds.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, I strongly agree with Raven.

I consider CoC pretty clear in this regard. If the text isn't perfectly clear (and I think it's pretty close, actually), then the adventures make it really obvious. CoC adventures are all written, "Then the characters do this, then the characters do that." They're rarely given any choices at all, and the writing's not even couched in such a way as to allow such an interperetation. Reading a CoC adventure, you become quite aware that the style indicated is very strong GM control of the flow of events.

Occasionally you'll encounter a CoC adventure that is more "dungeon" style, in that it'll be a location that the characters can rummage through for clues. But keep in mind that this style, while less restricive in action moment to moment is very restricted in overall terms. You can't leave the "dungeon" and still be playing the adventure (and yes, the library in town is part of the CoC "dungeon", or more analogous to the temple in town or something). The point is that the player never has control of what sort of issues are being addressed primarily. I even remember one CoC adventure where the GM is supposed to tell one of the players that the "damsel in distress" is an old girlfriend. Cool hook. No player control.

But that's all quite functional. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I've enjoyed such adventures immensely. Early games like CoC never promised a story. Not in any sense, nor did most people playing at the time CoC came out (1981) think that such was even possible in RPGs. Note the use of "Adventure" and "scenario" repeatedly, but never story. Think something more like a wargame (yes, even for early CoC).

In any case what the prescribed method of play is comes across well in the text. The GM has a plot. The players follow that plot, and do their best to do "realistic" portrayals of their characters by demonstrating the character's personality and background along the way.

What you have at the time approaching the advent of WW, is a movement away from this, and a felt desire for something where the players participate in creating a story. Thus the TITBB paradigm was created. They were satisfying an urge, but just not describing how to do it well.

Mike

[Ian Charvill]

Actually, CoC is a bad example because it is MEANT to be railroaded by the GM...that's the fun in it! It's pure Illusionist gaming. Now if the point is that CoC's text is unclear about this, and makes it seem as though it is not, then yes, that holds.

The 5th edition rather strikingly includes the line: "the keeper knows the entire plot of the story and presents it during play".

That the GM is in charge is made absolutely clear to the GM, I'm not so convinced it's made so clear to the players, in fact I believe the statements made to the players about being in charge of the choices their characters make runs contrary to this.

I tend to take the rather hard-line view that character - at least in the literary sense - is destiny.  The characters are defined by the story and the choices they make.  I don't see any meaningful way in which players can create a character with a personality if all of the choices are pre-ordained.  If the plot is fixed then the characters are also fixed.

[John Kim]

But that's all quite functional. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I've enjoyed such adventures immensely. Early games like CoC never promised a story. Not in any sense, nor did most people playing at the time CoC came out (1981) think that such was even possible in RPGs. Note the use of "Adventure" and "scenario" repeatedly, but never story. Think something more like a wargame (yes, even for early CoC).

In any case what the prescribed method of play is comes across well in the text. The GM has a plot. The players follow that plot, and do their best to do "realistic" portrayals of their characters by demonstrating the character's personality and background along the way.  

I'd mostly agree with this, but I would note that CoC is very different from, say, D&D in this regard.  Very early on, CoC established modules which were extremely strong in meaning.  The plots might not be player-controlled, but they were extremely interesting.  Part of the reason why it worked so well is that thematically, the PCs are not supposed to have much affect on things.  In Lovecraft, humans may stave off their doom, but the stories are primarily about the horrors, not the people.  

In Ron's taxonomy, I would guess that this represents going from Gamism towards Exploration-of-Color Simulationism.  

What you have at the time approaching the advent of WW, is a movement away from this, and a felt desire for something where the players participate in creating a story. Thus the TITBB paradigm was created. They were satisfying an urge, but just not describing how to do it well.  

I would agree with this to a fair degree, but I would add to this history a bit.  Vampire followed on from "Ars Magica" in some ways (from shared author Rein-splat-Hagen).  However, AM had many player-empowering mechanics which were not imitated in the original Vampire: true troupe-style play (alternating GMing and PCs), Whimsy Cards, player-chosen flaws, and extremely powerful PCs who were in command of their own domain (the magi's covenant).

[Mike Holmes]

All very true, John. Yes, another genre of game written like CoC would not have worked as well.

And I wasn't going to bring up Ars, because it has the potential to be a real trouble spot. But certainly, one could see VtM as backtracking a bit. OTOH, Ars certainly puts a lot of power in the GMs hands in other ways. One might argue that GM control over the effects of Improvised spells could be seen as tremendously rife with potential to "deprotagonize" characters.

But, Ars was certainly an early entrant into the race.

Mike

[Ian Charvill]

It's great the evryone loves Cthulhu!

I think it might be helpful to seperate the idea of whether a game is good or not from whether any of its text suggests The Impossible Thing.  A single, or even a few, pieces of bad advice don't make a bad game.

We're getting dangerously close to "I like game X therefore it can't suggest The Impossible Thing because that would make it a bad game, and I wouldn't like a bad game."

Are their special Forge Points [tm] for using the word synecdoche in as post?