Does it matter if something comes from prep or not?

That’s something we argued about on the Discord, somehow, in the context of how Blorb (a play style insisting on strong prep) relates to FKR (a play style centered on GM benevolent authority). To me, it’s obvious: it can matter quite a lot! (And also, that Blorb and FKR are different, but not necessarily incompatible things.) So, yes, this is an incredibly inside baseball post that will be interesting to, what, 3 people tops. You’ve been warned. Anyway.

A Bad Thing that sometimes happens when we play Adventure Games is when the GM invalidates a player’s choice by changing the world on the fly. This is a core element of railroading: I don’t want the group to travel east, because the cool story I planned happens west, so when they decide to turn east, boom, volcano! Lava everywhere! You can’t go east! Or when they decide to mind control the evil lich with the amulet of mind control I forgot they’d found and stored 17 sessions ago, haha, the evil lich has an amulet of anti mind control! Your mind control spell goes pling! That’s bad, obviously, right.

And it’s slightly less, but still bad if this post hoc invalidation is good for the characters. Well, first of all the railroading GM thinks they are doing the players a favour by herding them back on track. But the GM can also make the player’s victories feel hollow by making them guaranteed. If I like you and you pick the right door and that’s when I decide the treasure is behind the right door and the trap behind the left, because I like you, I’m cheating you. Now maybe sometimes you want to be cheated. But the point is, it’s obviously different if I ad hoc decide the treasure is behind the right door, because I like you, than if the treasure was always behind the right door, regardless of how much I like you.

Is this truly about ad hoc vs prep? To clarify, where I see the main problem is when the GM decides to ad hoc change the world in response to player choice, thereby invalidating the choice. Prep is here merely a tool to avoid doing that, and something being prepped or not would usually make the difference between player choice respecting and player choice invalidating. If I decide during prep that the lich has this anti mind control amulet, or when it’s in the module, then I’m not cheating you when you try to play that trick and it fails. If the monster manual says liches are immune to mind control, then I’m not cheating you when your spell bounces off of him. But if I decide the lich can’t be mind controlled in response to you pulling up that magical item I had forgotten about, then I’m cheating.

There is also a degenerate case where a GM can prep player-invalidating choices. For example, the prep itself can say “whenever the players deviate from the correct path, boom, volcano!” That’s prep, but it’s still ugly cheating. But generally, prepping properly – prepping a hard world, as Blorb demands – immunises the GM against invalidating player choices.

Clarifications

Clarification. That is not to say there aren’t plenty of situations where making things up can be totally fine. The point is that making facts up reactively tends to invalidate player choices, and that’s bad; whereas exactly the same fact when coming from prep – when prefiguring the player’s choice – would not be a post hoc invalidation. So: the exact same fact-of-the-world can be very different depending on whether it was reactively made up on the spot, vs. coming from prep.

Clarification 2. I’m not saying giving the lich an anti-mind control decide is good. I’m saying it’s different whether I’ve decided during prep I want the lich to be immune, versus when I’m a sore loser who doesn’t want to see this cool lich mind controlled and the grand finale I had planned forgone by a smart idea the party had and so I invalidate the party’s plan.

Clarification 3. I’m not saying the GM changing the world – or perhaps deviating from prep – is inherently bad. In particular if the choice is not made to invalidate a player’s choice, but as something that follows from the internal logic of the game world – that’s a different matter.

Clarification 4. I’m also obviously not saying the more prep the better, or everything needs to be prepped, or anything like that. I am, very precisely, saying merely this: whether a fact about the world comes from prep or is made up on the spot can matter; for example, if a fact is made up in response to a player choice and invalidates said choice, then that is quite different than if the fact preceded the player’s choice.

And Blorb?

So, this whole thing came about because I think Blorb and FKR aren’t incompatible, while actual adherents of FKR as well as of Blorb tend to, well, first of all they tend to be different people, and second of all they tend to disagree. So I’m probably wrong. Nevertheless, I personally think there’s much to learn in the Blorb teachings – such as the above insight, which is merely spelling out some implications of idiomdrottning’s “No paper after seeng rock” Blorb principle – and I’m also quite into FKR. I also think idiomdrottning’s essay on FKR was not very good. It missed what FKR is.

Because, what is FKR? It’s, perhaps, playing with the GM as the interface to the world, and ultimate authority, with any other material, such as rules, as mere tools and accessories. I think it would be categorically false to claim FKR is somehow anti-prep or incompatible with prep. FKR can be played low prep, but there is nothing intrinsically low prep about it, maybe beyond the fact that you may have to write down fewer numbers relating to game rules.

I also think it follows from that that Blorb is not, in fact, incompatible with FKR defined thusly. A GM can prep extensively, and prep a hard world densely coated with facts, and stick to them throughout the game, and then referee the actual game with an FKR mindset. You can after all take a prewritten module – that’s a lot of prep! – and play it FKR style. You can prep a world, and then play that world. Actually that does seem quite FKR Adventure Game-y to me, and good even.

Update: when I wrote this, I hadn’t yet read this essay by idiomdrottning herself which articulates similar thoughts.