Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Side note: thanks to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] for saving me loads of typing these last few days.
Lanefan
You're very welcome!
Side note: thanks to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] for saving me loads of typing these last few days.
Lanefan
A gameworld isn't a real world. The real world has objective existence, and I can literally interact with it. A gameworld is a fiction, which is authored by the game particiaptns who then tell one another about it.That doesn't restrict their agency at all! They declared an attempted action (thus exercising their agency) and were told that action failed.pemerton said:Here's one way that B2 restricts player agency: if a player declares "I want to meet an alchemist in the keep" then, as the module is written, that action will fail.
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Just like reality, in that regard - if I go to the mall and look for a hardware store, no matter what I do if the mall doesn't have a hardware store I ain't gonna find one there.
I'm not sure how refusing to acknowledge the existence of "story now" RPGing also qualifies you to be an expert on what it does and doesn't involve!If neither I nor the players acknowledge their existence then yes, they might as well not be there.
No one disputes that fictional outcomes in a GM-driven game might be the same as in a player-driven game. They might be the same if someone just told a story also.From a DM-driven standpoint this could be achieved by sending the party into B2 and simply adding an item into the cultists' treasure that gives protection from demons. (thus when the confrontation later occurs the balrog's powers are migitated or blocked, though the possessed brother can still beat him up conventionally)
I thikn what make Eero Tuovinen more of an expert than you on DitV, Sorcerer etc is that he has read the rules for those games and played them. Whereas you - as you just posted - have not.No, and it's irrelevant whether or not I have done so when analyzing Eero's text for what it says and implies.pemerton said:Have you ever played, or even read the rules for, the games he mentions? (Sorcerer, DitV, HeroQuest, etc.)
Lan-"and by the way what is it that makes Eero any more of an expert on this stuff than the rest of us?"-efan
And the closer that game world is set up to resemble a real world in how it operates the better: more consistent, more believable, and easier to relate to.A gameworld isn't a real world. The real world has objective existence, and I can literally interact with it. A gameworld is a fiction, which is authored by the game particiaptns who then tell one another about it.
You misread me, I think. I'm not refusing to acknowledge the existence of story-now RPGing - it'd be mighty hard to do that around here! - but I am denying that player agency is solely (or even mostly, or even significantly) defined by how much control the players have over the content of the fiction.I'm not sure how refusing to acknowledge the existence of "story now" RPGing also qualifies you to be an expert on what it does and doesn't involve!
I can acknowledge the existence of both X and Y while at the same time saying that one of them is IMO built on a foundation of loose sand.Or to put it another way: a general prerequisite to discussing the difference between X and Y (eg GM aiuthorship of setting vs storynow) is to acknowledge the existence of Y as well as X.
Or to rephrase: the difference between having just the item you need handed to you on a platter because your successful action declaration authored its existence, or the serendipitous joy on realizing this item you found on a seemingly-unrelated adventure is in fact exactly what you've been looking for all along.But RPGing is an activity, and what is relevant to the play experience is the nature of the activity.
The difference between confronting a situation in which you find out if an item is the one your PC needs, and having the GM tell you "By the way, this thing you found - it's good against balrogs", is pretty marked.
On those games, yes. But taking what he's read and trying to apply it to gaming as a whole, which is what he's doing in that eassy? I can do that too. So can you.I thikn what make Eero Tuovinen more of an expert than you on DitV, Sorcerer etc is that he has read the rules for those games and played them. Whereas you - as you just posted - have not.
The impression I got was that he was trying to apply his theories to all RPGs, including all versions of D&D.I would also say that it's highly relevant to reading a description of the technques of those games that you haven't read them. Eero is not posting an abstract description of something he dreamed up one day. He's posting an account of an actual type of GMing. If yoiu think what he describes applies to traditional AD&D play, then that's enough to show that you've missed his point!
Here is a quote from an actual play report:if the holy sword is but a stepping stone to the PC's real goal of eventually defeating Orcus in single combat, then what I posit could still be true: simple success on an action declaration could put a holy sword in the PC's hands. Me, I'd rather be able to flat-out say 'no' to this and instead build an adventure or two or six around the locating and recovery of such an item.
Attention now turned to the Aspect of Orcus - it had been trapped by channelling power from Vecna, and the player of the invoker/wizard had already pointed out that Vecna would be alerted if the PCs tried to steal secrets from it; now, a successful Religion check (made easily against a Hard DC, with a +40 bonus) allowed the invoker/wizard to make contact with Vecna and ask him to rip information of a secret entrance into Thanatos from the mind of the Aspect
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With the secret entrance into Everlost, Orcus's palace of bones on Thanatos, now acquired, all that was required was to cast the Planar Portal to teleport there: I read out to the players the description of Thanatos and the palace from the MotP, and they were glad they hadn't tried for a frontal assault
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The session ended there, with the PCs stepping through their portal into the secret way into Orcus's throne room.
I took pity on the players, who have not had a treasure drop for a long time, and decided that the Raven Queen intercepted their teleport to Thanatos to give them some power-up items (some other gods also got in on the action, for a few blessings etc).
The GM deciding that there is no secret door in this particular passage 10 years before play does not affect player agency, any more than the DM declaring that in this pseudo-medieval fantasy world there are no space ships, and no, you can’t have one.
If you are playing a standard narrativist model game, however, then some of these things remove player agency. Because by design, some of these things are within the agency of the players, and some of these scenarios or mechanics take that agency away.
That does not apply in other games where the agency that the player has, by design, is different.
If you want to design a football game where the players can alter the circumstance of scoring, or where they can make decisions they are currently within the realm of the referee, you have not altered the agency of the players in the original game. They still have 100% player agency, even though there is now a game that gives them more options.
You, and others, continue to attempt to assess the agency of the players by the lens of your specific game or game model. I have a problem with that because the implication is that others are “doing it wrong” or it raises the possibility that players who don’t make the distinction between games expect something different from other gameplay models.
But I think you are entirely wrong about what constitutes player agency in other games. The goals of the design of the game, the goals of the GM, and the players all help define what agency the players want/get, along with what agency the GM wants/gets.
Maybe call this step "pre-framing"?
I see it as somewhat essential in terms of providing player/PC choice in how (or if!) they approach a given situation.
Here, for example, the party on hearing that pre-frame might back off a hundred yards and cast a bunch of fire-protection spells before advancing further; or send an invisible scout ahead to check for the presence and-or deployment of any foes while the noisies stay put; or take steps to mitigate the smoke's effect on thier breathing, etc. If they're just plopped into the room and the giants see them right away, bang go those options.
Lanefan
Eh, I guess. I mean, I don't put a huge stock on the way I stated it myself. I'm happy to state it as "the GM needs different players", as that is equally the case. I don't really 'take sides' in those sorts of questions, normally. I just see it as a failure of consensus on agenda. The group should be reformed with different people in it.It says a lot that you'd frame it that way - that the players need a new GM rather than I-as-GM need new players, which is equally the case. Couple that with the fact that if I really dislike running what I'm running I can arbitrarily shut it down (and have, in the past) and it kind of implies a very player-centric view; that the players need for a new GM outweighs my need for new players. Interesting.
Well, I don't see why in a Story Now game this wouldn't or couldn't also transpire. If said weapon is understood to be powerful and rare, wielded only by an extremely elite type of person, then I would say genre convention would virtually dictate that acquiring it would be a difficult task.If the holy sword is the end goal they yes, this all applies.
But if the holy sword is but a stepping stone to the PC's real goal of eventually defeating Orcus in single combat, then what I posit could still be true: simple success on an action declaration could put a holy sword in the PC's hands. Me, I'd rather be able to flat-out say 'no' to this and instead build an adventure or two or six around the locating and recovery of such an item.
True, but the "rocks fall, everyone dies" criticism gets bandied about all the time - might as well chuck the other extreme out there once in a while.
Lanefan
I don't think you're saying anything different here than I am. Its a matter of technique of play, perhaps also bearing on narrative pacing and some other things, but not a matter of agency.That's not entirely accurate. I would already have told them about the flagstones on the floor, so I've taken care of my duty to inform them. Since I'm not rushing them from place to place, they would have every opportunity to say, "I examine the flagstones near me to see if one is raised or uneven." Since there's no way in hell that I pre-authored the individual flagstones, I'd tell them okay, fine, and set a DC so that they can find out the answer.
With the intersection, it's not a matter of scale so much as a matter of change. As I mentioned above, I would tell them if the flagstone passage turned into a smooth cave like floor. Similarly, when going down a passageway, an intersection represents a change in the environment that I would alert them to.
The problem I have is that if they don't get the "front porch" scene, then unless the players are expected to declare all manner of moves in advance about what might possibly happen, the DM is railroading the players through places by making decisions for the PCs. If they are expected to declare those moves in advance, the game becomes a giant game of chess where you have to stop the momentum of the game so that the players can strategize about every situation they might encounter and give the DM a plan. That wastes a bunch of time on things that the players won't ever encounter. Most of the possibilities won't turn out to be the true situation.
As I said in a post written after yours here I think that the players are well within their rights to call a halt to the GM's construction of the next scene and ask about precautions and whatnot.
It's different. If I have to tell the DM all the different actions I take in response to all of the possibilities that I can think of, I'm wasting a whole lot of time and thought on stuff that will never be relevant. In a normal DM facing game, you might take precautions against possibilities, but not in the same way. We aren't going to spend a lot of time thinking of strategies to use if the baron is a vampire, if the baroness is a vampire, if the kid down the block is a vampire, etc., or maybe one of them is a lich and all those strategies, or maybe one of them is a...As for the thing about wasting time in these preparations. I find it odd that you would say this when the whole GM directed mode of play is rife with these kinds of possibilities, and the main goal in developing Story Now and No Myth techniques was to avoid this problem! I don't stopping outside the fire giant cave to allow PCs to 'suit up' for a coming encounter is exactly a waste. There are no 'might have beens' in Story Now play, things are encountered because of reasons.
YOU took pity on them and YOU decided to intercept the teleport to give them items. How is that not YOU engaging in DM agency?In one episode of play, we have both (i) the players establishing a secret entrance via successful resolution of declared actions, and (ii) items that are useful for defeating Orcus being handed over in a minor transition scene!