A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

From an everyday perspective, in the real world people have actual needs, things that they must have in order to continue to exist. They also have an entire array of unconscious and involuntary elements to their psyche, personality, and physiology which largely shape their overall behavior and impose a whole set of desires, which they usually find difficult to deny, at best (imagine talking about your PC going on a diet, describing his urge to eat some potato chips is almost ludicrous, but in the real world your diet has significant impacts on your overall well-being).

The result is that imagined fantasy worlds are extremely 'cartoonish' in their character. The way elements interact and the character of the events and narrative lacks most of the character of real life, where simply fulfilling our ordinary material needs is an overwhelming consideration and we deal with mundane tasks and long term ongoing relationships as the primary focus of our lives. This is true even for a 'Thor Heyerdahl' type of guy, who had fantastic adventures. It is really nothing like the depictions of the lives of PCs in pretty much any game, even one focused on events in a world which is ostensibly meant to represent our own.

SO much this!

 

[pemerton]

Movies, novels, and plays all have the same issue but yet they manage the immerse the viewer.

This is not a mode of immersion that involves agency on the part of the viewer/reader.

However when there a creative choice to be made, I opt for the one that reflect the reality of the setting.

What about the players. Are they are allowed to make creative choices that reflect the reality of the setting? Or it is "owned" by the GM?

 

[FrogReaver]

And how would you locate the Storyteller Certificate within your framework?

I'd need more details on what all it can affect.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is not a mode of immersion that involves agency on the part of the viewer/reader.

But it does show that immersion can be had without agency. Which I find a very interesting thought.

What about the players. Are they are allowed to make creative choices that reflect the reality of the setting? Or it is "owned" by the GM?

The man is talking about his role as GM and what guides his creative choices when he makes one and you immediately jump to "aha, see, players can't make creative choices". That doesn't come across well.

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, the presence of something like the boarded up window, or the judge, are perfectly possible in many many instances of sandbox. The players ask and the GM decides, right? In some, I will grant you, the ability of the players to 'ask' is pretty curtailed, but that's on the GM, not the play style.

Right, and I have no evidence it wouldn't be, at least usually, true for any of the GMs posting here that run a 'classic' GM-centered fiction type of game. They might all explain a bonus that way, or let that be the entre into a 'score', or whatever the abstract system is asking for at the given moment. But who will posit that? I am sure a player can literally speak "Maybe there is an old forgotten boarded-up basement window" at any table. Likewise a GM can simply invent that feature

This is why I've been trying to hone in on this in relation to the play examples I posted upthread.

I give an example where the players, responding to my narration, posited that some NPCs were Celtic. I then ran with and built on that in what unfolded.

I'm interested in views on the extent to which that conforms to, or departs from, sandbox GMing norms.

there is actually a stricture against it in 'skilled play'! It is a form of 'cheating' for someone to add a way around some obstacle during play!

Now, I didn't hear, say @estar really say that Gygaxian 'skilled play' was a specific goal (at least my old brain doesn't remember him saying it particularly) so again I don't want to draw a conclusion. Just that there are some potential issues, depending on exactly what flavor of D&D you espouse. Given that 'sandbox' has been stated, my basic working assumption is that as long as the PCs are in 'mapped territory' a paradigm of this sort is in effect, the challenge is set, although there is always wiggle room to elaborate (IE how flammable is the building if the PCs decide to burn the bad guys out, this might need to be adjudicated on the fly).

Given that @estar responded to my post by talking about the challenge, I think the sort of broad Gygaxian assumptions you refer to are in play. Perhaps not self-consciously - I don't know.

 

[FrogReaver]

My players knew that I narrated a storm and the landing of their ships on the Dalmation coast. They knew that we collectively agreed they were travelling overland to Constantinople. They knew that I narrated that they came to a forest. They knew that we were working from a generic map of Europe that gives one a general sense of what is between the Dalmation coast and Istanbul/Constantinople.

This whole scenario sounds normal to me. The only question I have about it is whether the storm narration was due to fiat?

I don't think the concepts of fairness or challenge have much applicability in my RPGing, at least as you use them. I am not challenging the players in their ability to plan an overland trek. Or to avoid meeting the Bone Laird. The "challenge", such as it is, is to decide how to respond to an ancient ghost who lingers on for some reason.

This sounds alot closer to my view and it's the biggest reason I liked the post. In a sandbox I think it only makes sense to talk about something as an obstacle if the players decide to treat it as such. For example, dealing with the ancient ghost may very well have led to it being an obstacle if it stood in the way of them and something they wanted. Or the ghost could have became part of the goal as they decided to help it pass over to the next life.

From what I can tell this is pretty similar to your approach.

In my case, I narrated a forest because that was what I had in front of me in the scenario I wanted to use. It was colour, easily incorporated - surely there were forests in Dacia/Romania in the 8th century CE? - but not the principle focus of play. The focus of play was the NPCs and their ongoing status as ghosts. Celtic ghosts, as it turned out.

It does strike me that you use fiat though. It's just over what you are intending to be trivial details. I think that's fine, but interesting considering your dislike of DM fiat.

One thing to note is that in a sandbox, those kinds of trivial details can often end up mattering a great deal. If not now, then possibly later.

I would think that sometimes, even in a geography/architecture-focused sandbox, the GM must have to come up with details on the fly: colours of drapes, shapes of columns, manufacture of roofing materials, etc. Presumably most of the times these aren't very significant to what is at stake.

Fully agreed. In my experience though, when I narrate something I expect to be a trivial detail the players quite often find a legitimate use for that detail. Not always, but often enough.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, but I hope no game has added tax forms to its rules except maybe tax simulator 2000.

i don’t think that I would even go so far to say it’s only over mechanics they like. They want simulationism in the parts of the game that matter. Tax forms or bathroom mechanics just don’t matter in most games.

Matter? I guess. I find just as often its so they can fully demonstrate specialist knowledge of their own. People that really like and know guns are the ones who tend to want super detailed firearms combat rules and selection.

<snip>

There's nothing wrong with wanting that level of detail, but you only really get full value out of them, past a certain point, if you have the requisite real world knowledge.

One thing I like about Classic Traveller is that its rules for dealing with bureaucracy are nearly as detailed as its combat rules. This helps make it feel like a game set in a modern world, rather than just "D&D in space".

I find that the people who want "specialist knowledge of their own" in RPGs tend to fall somewhere between knowing too little and too much about their field or as you say "think they are" experts. I also tend to think of simulationism less as a matter of how well it simulates any notions of reality, but, rather, how well that it simulates genre.

I ran a long-running (8 year) Rolemaster campaign, starting 1990, set in Greyhawk, I treated a number of GH gods as linked in their worship practices, theology etc: St Cuthbert, Pholtus, Celestian, Fharlaghn and others (plus a couple adapted from the Newhon entry in DDG). I wrote up many pages of descriptions of church structures, theological and metaphysical commitments, etc reflecting my understanding at that time of Platonist and post-Platonist philosophy and Reformation and post-Reformation theology. When I've re-read that material in more recent years I've still been pleased by my cleverness! But not a great deal of it actually saw play, and I don't think anyone else at the table was ever interested in making sense of the competing schools of epistemology among Tritherion's priesthood.

On the other hand: in our second-to-most recent Traveller session one of the PCs prepared a report (the PC has Admin-1 and EDU 13) which provided the basis for a different character - liminal on the PC/NPC scale and on this occasion being played by me as GM - to exercise her authority as an Imperial Navy Commander and Free Imperial Knight and establish a preliminary First Contact site administration, with herself in charge and appointing another noble PC (and her lover) as Imperial Overseer while she returned to her base to seek further advice and instruction.

The player didn't actually draft the report (which in the game took the character an hour to prepare) but he described it to me and I was able to write down the four-or-so dot points.

I wouldn't expect this sort of thing to be part of the action of a 4e D&D or Prince Valiant game.

 

[pemerton]

Agreed; that said, they're not a major distraction in play, unlike some metagame. I'll quibble a bit on MHRP point 1... many times, it is referenced to ingame effects,

<snip>

Example: Spidey vs Green Goblin:
Spidey sees GG while patrolling, and wants to swing in, web, and then land into with his feet for an attack...
That requires 2 effect dice on the web powerset - so ...
Solo d8, Neighborhood Hero d8 (because patrolling), Spider-Powers: Superhuman Strength (for the punch) d10, Web: Swingline d8 (because swinging), web: weapon d8 (because pinning GG to the wall)[1pp for the second web set ability], Acrobat master d10 (to swing in in the right angle), combat master d8 (because both ranged and non-ranged attack) [1pp for second specialty]... and when the roll is said and done, if spidey wins the opposed roll, the first is the web, imposing the effect die as a complication, then a PP for the second effect die to actually hit, costing a PP... if Spidey's player doesn't spend #3 (maybe because they spent it to win the roll), then the web hits but the kick doesn't
Only one doesn't need direct linkage: the extra die kept to hit, if needed.

Agreed. Because only a few posters on this thread are familiar with the system, I was treating it as sufficient for my point that the plot point does not have to be connected to an ingame effect - eg it can be earned just for rolling 1s, which steps up the Doom Pool but needn't be connected to any ingame effect beyond "ominous music"; and it can be spent eg just to keep a third die for the total which doesn't have to be connected to any ingame effect beyond what might have occurred anyway.

But you're right that there are occasions of connection eg if the GM pays Captain America a Plot Point to have his shield bounce of a truck during a ricochet and land in the middle of the freeway (ie activates the Gear Limit) that is connected to something ingame.

 

[pemerton]

Here's Frank Mentzer's take in BECMI which is substantially different than most other official takes.

Pathfinder Second Edition, while not on brand D&D is pretty relevant. Here's it's take :

Both still ultimately feature the GM as a final rules arbiter elsewhere, although the impression I get from both is that the GM/Referee is expected to interpret the rules like a judge, not change them without the assent of the other players. This is a fairly unique perspective in the D&D space

I don't think the original (ie pre-Essentials) version of 4e D&D especially supported "rule zero" as I sometimes see it propounded. Nor does B/X, does it?

I even think it underwent change during the 3E era - in the original 3E PHB "rule zero" was a rule of PC building (check with your GM), not a rule about action resolution.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I view that is a negative as that a convention of the game rather reflecting the reality of the setting. Similarly I am not keen on how mechanics are activated like Second Wind, or the dice pools that accompanies the 5e Battlemaster variant. Both only make sense as part of a game not as a reflection of the reality of the setting.

To be clear the reality of the setting can something fantastic like a RPG like Toon which is about roleplaying characters in a cartoon world. It not about being realistic in terms of how our world works.

Nor reflecting the reality of the setting has to be detail in the way that GURPS with all the combat option is detailed. It can be highly abstract as long it can tied back to how the setting work as if you were there as the character.

So I view mechanics like "once is all you get" as a game convention.

But you don't necessarily have to. In the case of the AW stricture, it is most likely to be a simple design construct. That is, a check like that can only be taken once because it represents the total effect of the effort of the character over the entire scene in that direction. They have done their utmost, and there is simply no more that they can do. It is like saying in D&D that the thief cannot keep rolling 'pick locks' endlessly on the same lock. That check means "you fiddled with it until you reached an end state in any attempt to pick it, there's nothing more you can do."

It might also be possible to cast some other things in that light. It is probably hard to do so with something like Superiority Dice in 5e, or encounter power slots in 4e, but what about spending an Action Point in 4e, or 5e BM's equivalent? While, in a crude mechanical sense, it is depicted as an extra action, I think it is quite possible to view it as "I am expending effort at the maximum rate, which is faster than normal." You cannot do it twice because the expending, the going faster, isn't something that simply happens all at once, it is a state of going faster which results in approximately one extra action. Remember, in games with a lot of mechanical structure like this, things like actions, attacks, hits, turns, etc. all have a somewhat abstract relationship to the fictional world (unless you hold that the world actually advances time in discrete 6 second steps as soon as someone swings a sword).

This was always my argument with 4e's A/E/D/U, plus APs and whatnot. who's to say how this looks in a narrative? It doesn't actually play out FICTIONALLY anything like there being certain discrete moves and blows made, and 'extra actions' taken, etc. If you composed it into such a narrative (during play or after the fact) and then examined it, you wouldn't be able to tell for sure what resources each PC expended. Nor for that matter how many hit points anyone lost, etc. Some of those might be a little tighter than others, but even HP are pretty suspect, given how they cannot logically possibly represent any exact physical measure of damage.

Of course, none of this is to say there are no meta-game resources or mechanics. I think its clear that, considered mechanically, MUCH of the game is of this character, at least partly. Some things pretty much entirely, like PV's Story Certificates, which do seem fairly 'meta' in that they come into existence for 'table reasons', and don't represent anything fictional when used. So they exist purely in mechanical terms (this may well make my definition incompatible with @pemerton's, though I don't have a big problem with his either).

Events that potential or certain negative consequences for the character that they zero control over. In my experience it doesn't end will over the long haul if that handled through fiat. Players are far more accepting of the results if it occurred because of random generation. And they know that these tables are being used as part of the campaign. So they factor the risk into their plan.

Players are more aware than one would think that the referee just happened to create a forest in front of them to adventure in. It can be gotten away with is done sparely but done over and over it become a noticeable pattern. It doesn't mean it doesn't work for how you run your campaigns. But it does take away from running a sandbox campaign.

Why? Because it takes away from the challenge knowing the referee is creating something out of whole cloth right then and there.

As opposed to creating said thing last Tuesday? I mean, its a fantasy world, so nobody can say what "should" or "should not" appear in a given location, and hence no player can say "this would have existed along any path we took." So, you are really concerned about RAILROADING, as I see it. Now, in @pemerton's case the players had chosen to "go to the Holy Land" (I think) and they didn't pick the specific route, so there's actually no question in this case of railroading, no player choice was negated! You could argue that the overall journey is partaking of more the character of a linear adventure with one path, vs a sandbox character, and I would agree with that. Still, I am sure that Pemerton's players could say "we go around the forest", although that might have entailed some sort of other cost.

Now this doesn't mean you have to make 1,000s of pages of notes. But it helps if it already on the map, and you have a sentence or two about it, even though you have to take a breather to create something or pull something off the shelf in order to supply details if the players choose to explore it.

This is based on my observation of doing this for decades with multiple groups of players. I first noticed this when I switched from using the World of Greyhawk to Judges Guild Wilderlands in the early 80s. The players considered what happened to be more fair knowing that many details were there ahead of time. That I wasn't just making naughty word up to spite them.

Keep in mind player can and do make a bad plans. Underestimate the opposition or overestimate what they can do. And suffer negative consequences for it. In short in my campaign there is the possibility of failure. But if you are going to have possibility of failure then you need to be a fair referee. And it more fair to have a certain level details already defined about the setting. In practice it doesn't have to be much.

Yes, though all of this is founded on the core notions of Gygaxian skilled play. That there is 'success' and 'failure', and a fair referee doesn't stack the deck against the players, because they should have a 'fair chance to win'. Granting that 'victory' has a lot of gradations and is a very incremental thing that is probably only rarely arrived at fully, nor are its conditions entirely spelled out (IE get a million gold, did you win the game, or do you have to be 20th level first?). Even when ultimate victory is rarely considered at all, this ethos still prevails.

I think, in my games, there isn't a contest in which anything that can be accomplished within the fiction really equates with 'victory'. Characters could achieve their goals more or less completely, but those are just things which drive the characters, not the GAME or the PLAYERS. If the players 'find out what happens' and a 'story with dramatic pacing' is perceived in play, then they succeeded (at least if it was fun). So there really isn't a sense in which placing obstacles is 'fair' or 'unfair'. The question is "did the existence of this obstacle lead to suitable and enjoyable play?" If it did, then who would criticize it? Of course if the game botched things, then boo GM!

Because the bias is minimized as a result. So the result is perceived as more fair. Provided of course the random table itself is perceived as fair. If you say on a 1 you met a goat, 2 to 6 you met Smaug the Golden. Well players will call out you out for using a dumb ass table. Unless of course is happens to be one for around Erebor. Then it fits what been said about the locale. But if a referee uses this for the Shire well they deserve the player's scorn.

Yeah, but you do run the risk of things just becoming uninteresting. If the players are hankering for social intrigue and big-city action, and all the table coughs up are airless rocks and TL2 worlds with no spaceport and a law level of A, they are probably going to think that's boring. Anyway, I don't think it is a problem at the scale of a sector/sub-sector map because it is such a vast region, SOMETHING interesting can be scared up. But that again speaks to how much Traveler leans on "the ref can add stuff that makes things interesting" (though to be honest, TAS, patron tables, random encounters, bureaucrats, etc. goes a long way, space is rarely a snooze for long).

Anyway, as I said above, if the goal is interesting story, and the story tracks the desired themes and interests of the people in the game, then this 'bias' simply isn't a meaningful measure, in my style of play. The GM can be a total rat bastard and just lay it on thick and then dish a whole nuther load on top of that, if it results in good enjoyable play!