Quote from: RPGPunditNote that there are other games where the same basic type of statement appears, written even more forcefully (ie. Nobilis).

Except that as pointed out in the other thread on the same subject, it isn't really forceful at all: paraphrased, "If you think that your railroading is keeping the players from having fun, then not saying 'no' to their suggestions should help."

Quote from: RPGPunditWhereas I am every bit an entertainer, invested in the happiness and enjoyment of my players, my "reward cycle" is seeing them satisfied with the adventure, challenged and entertained by what happens to their characters. And that's how I like it.

Yeah, but you're an attention whore.

Which is okay.  So am I.

I think most GMs are, really.

Quote from: GRIMSociopaths are arguably amoral, not immoral and therefore 'neutral'.

It depends on the sociopath/psychopath (sometimes those terms are differentiated and other times they aren't).  Add any motivation for them to hurt or kill others (e.g., sadism, a fascination with death) and you've got a pretty good recipe for immorality and Evil, since there is no moral conscience to stop them from acting on their needs and there is evidence that they do understand what they are doing is wrong.

To the original point that all people are basically good and want to do good, even where they are simply amoral, this is not true of the sociopath/psychopath.

QuoteYeah, but you're an attention whore.

That's the whole secret of GMing. The GM is totally different from the other players.

Quote from: John MorrowIt depends on the sociopath/psychopath (sometimes those terms are differentiated and other times they aren't).  Add any motivation for them to hurt or kill others (e.g., sadism, a fascination with death) and you've got a pretty good recipe for immorality and Evil, since there is no moral conscience to stop them from acting on their needs and there is evidence that they do understand what they are doing is wrong.

To the original point that all people are basically good and want to do good, even where they are simply amoral, this is not true of the sociopath/psychopath.

Clinton said people are good, he didn't say every single person is good.  He was speaking in the general.  I don't think one can reasonably extrapolate to him saying all people are basically good, that's not really what he said.

Sociopaths are about 2% of the population IIRC.  I don't think that necessarily defeats Clinton's view.  Also, arguably sociopaths are not functionally normal people and I don't think Clinton was speaking to the mentally ill or neurologically impaired.

Quote from: SettembriniThat's the whole secret of GMing. The GM is totally different from the other players.

Not in my experience. In point of fact, I've spent over 90% of my roleplaying career GMing. I've continuously sought ways to break down that notion and make play more consensual; to remove the perceived difference between GM and players. From as simple as not using a screen, to as complex as introducing new games and new styles. Something like 'Say yes or roll the dice' didn't come as a huge revelation to me, but it's certainly a good little mnemonic to examine my GMing practice.

You say you've been playing for 16 years. Well, I've been playing for 26 years. I say you've got a case of the blinkers. 'The GM is this', 'The GM is that'. Actually, the GM is whatever his group allows him to be, and that varies more than you're admitting. There is no one secret.

QuoteActually, the GM is whatever his group allows him to be, and that varies more than you're admitting. There is no one secret.

Right. There is no one secret. Mine is as good as yours. Which is w-a-y different from: You must empower your players.
I'm also a player. A lot. I don't want to have a say in game prep. I wanna explore through my character, not chit-chat and form a story-circle with talking stone and all that. It takes away the suspension of disbelief for me, if I can have a say in things, which my characrter couldn't.

Yes – but you are phrasing your position in just as absolutist a fashion as anybody you like to talk about (still not sure who that is exactly). It's not the simple dichotomy of adventure game/thematic game either. You can want a game of high adventure and still want empowerment. You can run a 'thematic' game where the players are entirely disempowered.


PS And as a player, I like to be able to have more to do and say than just following the GM's cues and trying to guess what he's thinking. Note how this description is somewhat biased and unfair – like 'chit-chat and form a story-circle with talking stone', for example.

Quote from: John MorrowAs for Christianity, Original Sin, and human nature, I often wonder if embracing Augustine over Pelagius was one of the biggest mistakes the Church ever made.

The Eastern Church didn't

QuotePS And as a player, I like to be able to have more to do and say than just following the GM's cues and trying to guess what he's thinking. Note how this description is somewhat biased and unfair – like 'chit-chat and form a story-circle with talking stone', for example.

I hate neutrality, it's a big lie. Be upfront and i'll respect you. See, now we are talking. You just don`t want to second guess the GM or adventure author? All the better, take the other games.
I myself totally loathe Carcassonne and Siedler von Catan, but I must intellectually acknowledge there are people who like that for good reasons. This does not stop me from hating Carcassonne with every milimeter of my body.

The same it is with RPGs in it's different guises: I hate character navel-looking, but see that many people love it, and they have functional stuff for them working (Thematic RPG Design Theory aka Forge). This intellectual courtesy and honesty is all I demand. I don't want people to like what I do, but I want them to acknowledge it's right of existence, like Democrats acknowledge the Republicans. No love, but acceptance of difference. As we are not competing for the running of a state, ther is no need for conflict. Live and let die.

Yes, we're getting somewhere. But you still need to understand that you're coupling things together that don't need to be coupled. I may be a player who wants to play an 'adventure story' yet wants more creative control than you are allowing for. I may be a player who likes 'character navel-looking' yet does not see the need for greater empowerment. Do you understand?

This business about 'live and let die' and 'acknowledge right of existence' is just hysteria. It really is.

QuoteDo you understand?

Totally. And you can have all kinds of mixtures. No magic pixie dust needed.

@hysteria: I like the emperor naked.

I'm fairly new to this entire forum thing, so it's with great trepidation that I offer the following two quotes:

Quote from: Clinton R. NixonSo, I'll answer your question with a straight answer, Pundit: "say yes or roll the dice" totally says that as the GM, you don't have the right to say "no" to a player for no reason. You've got a strictly defined role in the game: you either say yes, or you go to the system to bring difficulty.

Now, the slippery slope argument that will happen and has happened is basically this: "what happens when my player says, 'I want so-and-so to give me an atom bomb?'" The answer to this is simple:

- Is it within the game's realm of possibility to have an atom bomb? Ok, then, roll some dice and shut up.

- It isn't? Well, then, the group as a whole has the right to tell anyone crapping on the game to shut up.

Or put simpler - all "Forge-theory," or whatever you want to call it, requires one assumption: that all the players at the table are there to actively participate in having fun. If someone is actively trying to subvert the fun (by doing something totally out of genre, or just being stupid), then anyone and everyone has the right to tell them to shut up or go home, as you would in any social activity.

Quote from: Clinton R. Nixon(from a Forge thread about Stakes)
Story Guide: "Feel free to set nasty stakes for crazy attempts your players will want to make. There's nothing wrong with saying 'If you lose this ability check writing a song for the duke, you'll take level 5 harm in Instinct and be banned from the kingdom.'"

How is that not what we'll call "bad stakes"? It's not what you get if you lose, like a consolation prize, which is how I see this technique used all the time. It's a warning from Story Guide to player: "Hey, if you try this and screw up, this will be a consequence." The player doesn't get to say anything else, like, "Ok, but if I win, the duke's wife comes down and washes my feet."

Now I admit that I am not even a novice when it comes to the games discussed in the linked thread (Dogs in the Vinyard, The Shadow of Yesterday, etc.), so I'm just going by what I've gleaned from months of lurking.  So, again with some hesitence born of asking this of someone so well known and respected as Clinton Nixon, I ask: don't the bolded portions of the quotes contradict each other?

I understand that in the second quote, the "Story Guide" is not saying no, per se.  However, to offer the player a result so devastating that's it's crazy to even attempt it, then allow no recourse, seems to me to be the equivalent of saying "no."

The first quote has the context of responding to the age-old atom bomb question.  And it's fair to assume that we're all playing with a group of people who will not take the approach.  But the player's possible response in the second quote doesn't seem to be of "atom bomb" nature.  The player seems to be saying "OK, my character is a brazen sort.  He'd risk that level 5 harm in Instinct and banishment from the kingdom, but only if his reward for success is having the Duke's wife come down and wash my feet. That would be a sight worth the trouble."  But the Player is not allowed to say that.  What if the Player does? Is the answer "No."?

Wow. I just read this entire thread, and it cracked me up in many places.

But I think nearly everyone in the thread missed the whole point of "say yes or roll the dice," and that's because we took a few paragraphs from Vincent Baker and ignored the context around it--pretty badly, it seems.

This is a most unfortunate case of missing the forest because of a tree. The person who came closest to seeing the big picture is Pundit, but even he doesn't seem to get it imo.

Pundit is right in that this is largely about neutering the GM. By design. It gives the GM a very different role. It's a totally different philosophy, but I don't think it's necessarily dysfunctional like he thinks it is; rather, it's just a very different way to play that still walks and quacks like an RPG for the most part.

Here it is:

Traditional Model: GM knows what's up. GM is in control. GM has a plan. GM may or may not have a railroad, but GM is prepared for most things. GM most likely knows some things that are going to happen, and some things that are likely to happen. Since the GM is sharing the steering wheel, if not mainly in control of driving the car, the GM is unlikely to be too surprised. There is some chaos in the equation, but also a lot of underlying order. GM wields a lot of importance. He is not only the central hub, but basically omniscient and omnipotent. His ego is supposed to be neutral and impartial, but the game cannot go on unless his ego is also strong and empowered; after all, he's got a lot of cool shit planned.The GM is judge, jury, and executioner.

Dogs in the Vineyard Style: Other than the basic problem scenario of the story being figured out by the GM before play (such as a minister is abusing children), it's super spontaneous, to the point that the GM is not the one directing the action at all. There simply is no master plan, just a basic problem that moves with urgent speed. This would be a martial art where you do not force anything, you merely respond instinctually and welcome being surprised by the moral implications of what occurs with the players. And all of this happens very ... quickly. And this brings us to "say yes or roll the dice."

Seen in the bigger picture (the whole context) presented by Baker, "say yes or roll the dice" is actually about speed. Keep thing moving. Keep things moving toward conflict. Then when conflict happens, escalate the conflict more. Make it tense and uncomfortable. And it is largely about not saying no, although in no way does it mean that a GM can't say that a player wanting to hump a magical, flying wildebeest while turning into Lonnie Anderson is out of his fucking mind, and "Hell no."

So it's about saying yes whenever saying yes to the players moves the story forward towards something interesting and challenging. In that sense, it is a very much neutered GM, because in this approach, the GM deliberately does not give a shit about what happens, he is only there to facilitate difficult encounters and keep things moving quickly towards them, and the GM doesn't know all that much.

So in the end, both GMs are trying to do the same thing. Provide a fun world for the players to interact with and have fun with. The GM is still the glue that binds. But the first model basically involved a heck of a lot of preparation and some significant player boundaries with a "strong" GM figure. The second model starts with one seed concept or story, and then let's the players pretty much steer all of the action until it's time to roll the dice, but still only within reason. In either case, the GM roleplays the NPCs. PCs can't make NPCs do their bidding or conform to their wishes; not in the least. But one GM needs a strong, central ego because he really knows what's up and needs to make that specific reality available. The other GM needs to bend and sway like grass and is actually hoping to be utterly surprised.

In practice and in reality, I would imagine it also boils down basically to this. In the first case, the GM basically steers the plot. In the second case, the players entirely steer the plot. But this isn't about being weak, it's about how the game actually, mechanically works. It's just two different mechanisms for running a fun game. But either DM can really say no when something makes no sense.

Here's some quotes around the infamous phrase that illustrates only part of this:

QuoteProvoke the players to have their characters take action, then React! ... Don't play "the story." ... You can't have plot points in mind before hand, things like "gotta get the PCs up to that old cabin ... let go of "what's going to happen." Play the town. Play the NPCs. Leave "what's going to happen" to what happens. How though? Here's how. DRIVE PLAYERS TOWARDS CONFLICT Every moment of play, roll dice or say yes ... FOLLOW THE PLAYERS LEAD ABOUT WHAT'S IMPORTANT ... ESCALATE, ESCALATE, ESCALATE ... DO NOT HAVE A SOLUTION IN MIND

Whether or not it works really well, it is an interesting approach. In the end, it's less about getting off on enjoying seeing your players interact with the stories and scenarios you've dreamed up for them to encounter and interact with (which there's nothing wrong with, obviously). It's more about not knowing what the hell is going to happen, and allowing people to get themselves into interesting situations and continuing to humbly move things forward so that things continue to happen and escalate. Either way, it's about helping people roleplay, be challenged, roll dice, and have fun.

I don't have a 'dog' in the fight. I'm not here to defend it. I've never played it or anything like it. I just don't think anyone in this thread really said what "roll dice or say yes" really means in context to DitV. No offense. It's just that it requires a lot more context than was given.

So the problem here is that if you run a traditional game, and then let the players determine where the narrative goes, it doesn't necessarily make sense. Sometimes it will really screw things up if you let that happen. The problem is critiquing 'roll dice or say yes' from that point of view, because that guideline isn't meant to be used in a traditional game, at least not in the way it's used in DitV. It's like trying to use software on a computer that can't read it. Or, apples and oranges.

However, if the whole game functions that way, then it makes sense. And it's just a different way to run a game, one in which the GM has no major plans going in.