D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Golroc]

Is players' + GM's agency a constant? Or is it clearly not?

I don't think it is clearly zero-sum (ie constant) nor the opposite. I think it can be zero-sum game for some styles and tables - but it can also be either more complex or just more harmonious (everyone has tons of agency!).

Though even with a rule, you still have the same page problem. Sure if the GM and players are all in step with each other, then the player will only say and suggest things the GM already agrees with. If not, you go back to the same old problem of the player vs GM type things.

This is way too far for me. This is forcing a GM to do something: and I'm never going to support that. I get that there are some GMs that just LOVE to be told what to do by the players......but it's not for me.

And i think it's bad for the game play. Forcing a GM to do something they don't want to do will often, nearly always, give a bad result. The GM is just not going to put any effort into something they are forced to do: so it will be a luke warm dull scene...at best. And that is on top of the GM simply not making the scene 'count'.

I just think of the horror that SO MANY players want to sit down and play an RPG...but the "scene" they desire to play is "getting drunk at the bar" or "shopping". As an iron fisted GM, I smack down hard on things like that. I'll do the "oh rocks fall on your character and trap them till morning so you can go shopping". But the idea the game would have a rule where the player could go "haha, I force you to let my character go shopping". And then we WASTE 1-3 hours of game time while the character goes shopping. And because I don't want to do it, it will be endless "oh...the boot shop has boots for sale" with no engagement or descriptions from me, Just and endless "the store has boots...sigh, are you done shopping yet?"

Maybe I'm privileged (or you're unfortunate, or somewhere in-between), but I honestly find this line of thought somewhat sad and disconcerting. Players and GM having such an adversarial relationship sounds like the recipe for a bad time and lots of conflicts. It's not that everyone can always get exactly what they want, but I've always found that reaching a consensus isn't that hard, and it's relatively minor differences that have to be compromised on.

Something like what you describe where the players want something that the GM doesn't, does that really happen to you? I'm not being sarcastic and please tell me to back off if I'm stepping where I shouldn't, but it sounds like you need to find different players or have serious talks about finding common ground for this leisure activity.

As a player I would never do something the GM hates (in the sense that I'd know I'm going too far - some GMs don't mind a bit of annoyance). For example, if know a GM hates urban locales and dialogue-heavy sessions, as a player I wouldn't set off to the nearest metropolis and try to start some intrigues. And from the other side of the table, as a GM, if I know players really like barroom brawls and drunken revelry, then I'll keep this in mind when preparing - I would try to accommodate this preference and mix it up with other stuff (usually the players don't all have the same narrative, thematic and interactive preferences). Not because I like being meek and giving players what they want - but because RPGs are a leisure activity. They're supposed to be fun. If I sit down at a table it means I've agreed to compromise and participate in a way that works for everyone - or if there really are big enough differences in taste, we've talked it over beforehand and know the ground rules going in.

If your players are that likely to force you into something you really deeply dislike, then I'm not sure it matters that much if you go with Story Now or some more traditional/classic/simulationist/other style. And going back to the original post and your mention that you really don't feel too good about some of the players and their characters (something like that at least), isn't this really more a problem of table harmony than agency or what system to run?

Again, sorry if I am overstepping some boundaries here, but I think it's hard to discuss these systems, techniques and concepts without acknowledging that deeper conflicts can interfere in quite profound ways. We're not robots playing these games. Trust, compromise, shared conventions and empathy matter.

 

[Campbell]

My take-away is that enjoying storygames as a GM requires a person who gets their joy primarily from fulfilling the players desires to have their PCs be the focus of everything you're doing, and giving them what they want. If anything else matters to you as much or more than that in gaming, storygames are not for you.

For me it's not about fulfilling player desires. I am not a servant GM. It's about my own empathy and curiosity about the characters the other players create. It's also about my enjoyment of deeply personal narratives. I want to know more about who they are as people, how they relate to others, but most importantly who they really are under pressure. For me these desires are mine and mine alone.

Story Now play is a crucible for the characters involved. It certainly doesn't revolve around realizing player desires or preferred narrative arcs.

I have encountered plenty of players who are more interested in exploring a world than their characters. That doesn't mean they exist to placate the desires of whoever their GM is. Not everyone gets invested in world building or gets invested in it all the time. Even in the trad games I run I personally need a context built from a starting scenario or player character connections to the setting in order to pique my interest in doing that sort of thing.

 

[pemerton]

I think there is more room for gaming the DM in the more traditional style RPGs, e.g. where people reward role play over roll play, so people really good at former can end up having Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence as dump stats, but still end up managing to convince / negotiate etc well thanks to their role play ability, whereas those not so good at that side get a bit burnt, or where ones better able to get into the DM's head / understand what is behind the illusion can make good assumptions about what will happen, or where they can do the actions they know the DM likes and so will reward (e.g. DMs who may like honour based actions more than sneaky based actions).
But like Maxperson, I Can't see how Story Now games don't have some room for it, even if it is only done by those not really getting the game, so people who like the idea of putting their own stakes into play, being able to make a story more character centred, but can't / don't want to handle when things go bad for their characters because of failed rolls etc, a few times of bad reactions to those and I Can see the DM as such starting to go softer in case of fail rolls, allow more outs etc, which is effectively being gamed.

okay this is just a hypothetical, cause i don't really know the mechanics of burning wheel other than i think they're a 2d6 system? but isn't the following a situation that could reasonably happen?
I know my GM thinks that fast-talking deceptive guys are cool, i also know that they think trying to infiltrate black-ops style is really hard, i know that if i try to fast-talk the door guard the check will probably be less riskier than it really ought to be and the successes with the CHA check will likely have greater or longer lasting effects in the game,
BUT if i tried to infiltrate, i can suspect that same GM will break down the same challenge of 'get into the building' into innumerably more and potentially harder checks, my successes will get me less and my failures will cost me more, roll to climb the wall and then roll to finish climbing it, roll to pull your gear up, roll to pick the door lock on the roof, roll to avoid the guards who heard you opening the lock/door.

From these posts, it seems that the mooted gaming of the GM is hoping for softer consequences.

But I'm not sure how that's an advantage, other than in the sense that we're imagining it might make play more fun for this particular player.

 

[bloodtide]

My take-away is that enjoying storygames as a GM requires a person who gets their joy primarily from fulfilling the players desires to have their PCs be the focus of everything you're doing, and giving them what they want. If anything else matters to you as much or more than that in gaming, storygames are not for you.

This really clicked for me when it was mentioned making the game like a movie/TV show, like Star Wars.

Something like what you describe where the players want something that the GM doesn't, does that really happen to you? I'm not being sarcastic and please tell me to back off if I'm stepping where I shouldn't, but it sounds like you need to find different players or have serious talks about finding common ground for this leisure activity.

Very often. A LOT of players have the mindset that they are the Super Special Spotlight Star of the Game and they should get Royal treatment. And there are plenty of DMs desprate for players. Though this is part of a much bigger 'people problem', where many people are desperate for friends so they use the As You Wish Player type DMing to 'buy' friends. "I'll run any kind of game you want Best Buddy Bob....if, er...I can come to your party next week...pretty please". Though a fair number of DM also just Love being told what to do as it makes things easy for them.

And a LOT of gamers, like people in general, do get obsessed with "whatever they see in fiction is reality". So a LOT of gamers are all cut from the same cloth. And that cloth is a very small one.

My house rules keep most of the "other" players out of my "real" games. Just telling a player my game is "Unbalanced and Unfair" raises eyebrows. A player will look up from their phone and say something like "Are you for real bro?", and I'll respond with a "YES". Then they leave never to be seen again.

As a player I would never do something the GM hates (in the sense that I'd know I'm going too far - some GMs don't mind a bit of annoyance). For example, if know a GM hates urban locales and dialogue-heavy sessions, as a player I wouldn't set off to the nearest metropolis and try to start some intrigues. And from the other side of the table, as a GM, if I know players really like barroom brawls and drunken revelry, then I'll keep this in mind when preparing - I would try to accommodate this preference and mix it up with other stuff (usually the players don't all have the same narrative, thematic and interactive preferences). Not because I like being meek and giving players what they want - but because RPGs are a leisure activity. They're supposed to be fun. If I sit down at a table it means I've agreed to compromise and participate in a way that works for everyone - or if there really are big enough differences in taste, we've talked it over beforehand and know the ground rules going in.

A lot of players don't care like you do. It is a player's game, the DM is just a door mat to them. And you can see their are DMs that love that spot where they put the players agency and happiness above all else.

I do accommodate reasonable requests, but I have limits. And one of my limits is shopping. Some players would send a full five hours of game time shopping: some games even do this often. It's fun for the players and DM to "shop" and customize characters. It's not my idea of a fun time.

Like one of the worst ever....was this Player Request: So the idea is a super ninja guy wandering the land and having wacky adventures. Ok, nice start. BUT the player does not want to be that ninja guy. He wants to play the girl that tags along with him and is head over heels in love with the ninja guy(but he is clueless to this). So the idea is the suoer ninja guy gets in trouble often...so the tag along girl has to, secretly, help him out. I guess this was based on an anime? And the player refused to play both characters: they just wanted to mostly sit there and do nothing, tag along....and once in a while do something. Yea....I said NOPE.

If your players are that likely to force you into something you really deeply dislike, then I'm not sure it matters that much if you go with Story Now or some more traditional/classic/simulationist/other style. And going back to the original post and your mention that you really don't feel too good about some of the players and their characters (something like that at least), isn't this really more a problem of table harmony than agency or what system to run?

Again, sorry if I am overstepping some boundaries here, but I think it's hard to discuss these systems, techniques and concepts without acknowledging that deeper conflicts can interfere in quite profound ways. We're not robots playing these games. Trust, compromise, shared conventions and empathy matter.

Not sure I'd ever use words like Table Harmony.

And all the other words. Well, my definitions might be different.

 

[Voranzovin]

My take-away is that enjoying storygames as a GM requires a person who gets their joy primarily from fulfilling the players desires to have their PCs be the focus of everything you're doing, and giving them what they want. If anything else matters to you as much or more than that in gaming, storygames are not for you.

Yes to the first, no to the second.

DMing Dungeon World is indeed more, for lack of a better term, PC-centric then your average game of Dnd. If you're into doing comprehensive world building that doesn't exist specifically to put pressure on the PCs then yeah, it's probably not the game for you.

It is, however, very much not about giving them whatever they want. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, one of the things I like best about DMing Dungeon World is that it gives me explicit permission to pull the rug out from under the PCs in ways that would be bad form in Dnd. Being the protagonists means that just about everything you try will be fraught with conflict--that's what makes you a protagonist!

By working within a framework that tells me exactly when it's time to start twisting the knife and when it isnt, I can load the PCs experience down with conflict without worrying that I'm becoming an adversarial DM. Ironically, I find that the restrictions make me feel more free.

 

[pemerton]

How far off am I if I think of the classic D&D etc. RPG player as having a goal akin to writing the part of their chosen character in a play - like being portal fantasied into that characters mind and memories but with your will. So, strictly first person dialogue (internal and external) and action declarations, but not the resulting narration. And think of the Story Now RPG player as having a goal of writing the parts about that character in a shared novel. So, both the first person things above but also the surrounding narration to shape the story more directly.

That isn't an accurate account of my RPGing exepriences.

Here's how I would describe it, from the player side:

When I was regularly playing in what would *now be described as a "trad" game - 2nd ed AD&D - my attempt to inhabit my PC, and pursue my PC's interests, had to yield from time to time to the fact that the GM was laying out a situation, with some sort of set of hidden ideas behind it, which I as a player had to engage with and resolve.

When I play Burning Wheel, I inhabit my PC, and pursue my PC's interests, and it's like being there. And "panning out" my perspective, there emerges the *story of my character (which includes my character's family and social world and concerns - it's not narcissistic or solipsistic fiction).​

From the GM side, the following, quoted, post captures nothing about my RPGing experience:

My take-away is that enjoying storygames as a GM requires a person who gets their joy primarily from fulfilling the players desires to have their PCs be the focus of everything you're doing, and giving them what they want. If anything else matters to you as much or more than that in gaming, storygames are not for you.

What I enjoy about RPGing, on the GM side, is seeing exciting stories come to life. I enjoy the imagination, the dynamism, the bouncing off one another around the table.

For nearly a decade now, triggered I think by a re-read of the Silmarillion, which itself may have been triggered by reflecting on the hyper-Tolkienesque treatment of Elves and Dwarves in Burning Wheel, I've been thinking about different variations on the Dark Elf and Petty Dwarf motif.

In my first Burning Wheel game, one of the PCs - as has been recounted upthread - was returning to the ruined tower where (as per PC backstory) he had served his apprenticeship under his (now corrupted) brother. Another PC was an Elven "ronin", who had the Belief I will always keep the Elven ways. I introduced a Dark Elf NPC, who was the virtual opposite of the Elven ways - one of his character traits was Fithy. This NPC first appeared only as the unseen cause of an effect - the player of the Elf failed an Orienteering roll to lead the PCs across the Bright Desert, and I narrated this as, when they arrived at the foothills where they were expecting to find water, the waterhole had been soiled. The effects of the Dark Elf continue to manifest - he was the one who had taken the Falcon's Claw from the ruined tower. After a session or two I established that the Dark Elf was serving a Dark Naga, who ended up brining one of the PCs under its sway. (From memory, the Dark Elf was killed in combat by one of the PCs, in the naga's caverns, though I'd have to look around my campaign notes to get the details.)

In a current Burning Wheel game, my PC is a Dark Elf, who turned to bitter grief after his spouse died. He blames his father-in-law, the ambassador at the human port of Hardby, which is why he is there.

In my Torchbearer game, the first dungeon that I designed was the abandoned dell of a Petty Dwarf. One artefact in the dungeon was an Elfstone, in which the dream spirit of the Petty Dwarf was trapped. The Elven Dreamwalker PC Fea-bella tried to drive out the spirit, and failed, and became obsessed by the stone. In a subsequent session the stone was stolen, it turns out by Gerda, a NPC Dwarven friend of Golin the Dwarf PC. In the second-last session, what had seemed like it might be the culmination in a change of relationship between Fea-bella and her enemy Megloss turned in completely the other direction, as a failed attempt to bind an evil spirit meant that it possessed Megloss. And then in our most recent session the PCs brought Megloss with them to confront Gerda the Elf-stone stealing Dwarf, Megloss killed her (after she nearly killed Fea-bella), and Golin and two other PCs (but not the Dreamwalker) killed Megloss. The Elfstone itself was left behind in Gerda's now-empty apartment (where for so many evenings she had sat brooding over the Elfstone).

So, and contra @Micah Sweet, GMing Burning Wheel and Torchbearer provides an amazing opportunity to express and explore my ideas about the Dark Elf and Petty Dwarf tropes and themes. I don't recall any one else ever posting on ENworld an example of RPGing in which those tropes and themes have been explored in a significantly more compelling fashion.

The difference in "story now" GMing compared to writing up a setting or a situation or a "story" for the players to work through, is that in my GMing I am in a type of dialogue with my players. It's not my job to decide, for instance, whether Megloss's killing of Gerda means that he deserves death. Or whether the sacrifice that Fea-bella made in order to be purged of her lust for the Elfstone (that is, letting Gerda plunge her spear into her heart, which would have been fatal had Fea-bella not had the will to live) was worthwhile.

I could give other examples: Prince Valiant, and the demands of knight errantry and court romances (eg it's not my job to decide whether or not it was appropriate for the PCs to arrange a political marriage of one of them, in order to obtain a castle as a base for their military order); or 4e, and the clash of divine order and primal chaos (eg it's not my job to decide whether it's good or bad that the PCs, even the one who opposes her, are paving the way for the Raven Queen to achieve her apotheosis as chief divinity of the cosmos). Even Classic Traveller, which is more prosaic in its orientation - still, it's not my job to decide whether the PCs are right or wrong in risking their standing and even survival in the here-and-now by going for that "one big payoff" (financial for some; exploratory for others).

So the idea that as a GM I am doing nothing but narrating things the PCs want is ridiculous. (Of course I am trying to give the players what they want, ie a fun time RPGing - what else would I be doing?) But it's not completely straightforward to have a RPG rules set that permits these questions and issues to be brought into play, and yet allow the GM to suspend judgement and let the players make their choices. In GM-driven RPGing, the GM is the one who makes the decision (eg about whether a risk will pay off) and the players' job is to work out what the GM's situation is (eg is a particular NPC amenable to being influenced; is a particular outpost too dangerous to assault; etc). This is why, upthread, I've said that AD&D is a pretty rickety system for "story now" RPGing, and hence why now I use RPGs that are better suited to it. (Classic Traveller being amazing in part because, while it was written in 1977, it can be played very much in an Apocalypse World style.)

If, as a GM, your vision of the setting is sacrosanct, and if the way situations resolve needs to reflect your judgement as to how values, opportunities, risks, etc should resolve themselves, then "story now" RPGing won't be for you. And you won't want to use rulesets that don't let you control those things.

 

[pemerton]

Changing what's going on in the background (what's in the GM's mind for a scene's set-up) seems different to me than just playing the character. Just playing the character feels like a standard D&D thing (as would the DM deciding to change something because a suggestion sounded cool). But making the DM change it is kind of what I was trying to get at (inelegantly) by talking about 1st person vs 1st person + narration during play.

This is inaccurate.

Here is the action declaration, performed as the PCs (Thurgon and his companion Aramina) enter the lands of Auxol, Thurgon's ancestral homland: I (Thurgon) am looking out for any of my family members.

That action declaration could be made in D&D as easily as in Burning Wheel.

I don't know how you would resolve it when GMing D&D. But here is how it was resolved in Burning Wheel:

The Circles check (base 3 dice +1 for an Affiliation with the nobility and another +1 for an Affiliation with his family) succeeded again, and the two characters came upon Thurgon's older brother Rufus driving a horse and cart. (Thurgon has a Rationship with his mother Xanthippe but no other family members; hence the Circles check to meet his brother.)

I didn't make a not of the obstacle, and can't remember it now. But there is a formula for setting Circles obstacles, which we would have followed.

This is an example of how a player, in Burning Wheel, can establish a situation that is interesting to them without needing to do anything but play their character.

 

[pemerton]

What you are doing as a player in both is pretty similar in my experience. You take on the experiences, knowledge, relationships, belief systems of a character and try to go after the things they desire. What differs is that there is no larger plot/adventure to pursue or focus on overcoming challenges. There also tends to be more individual focus on characters.

I would add to this - in some "story now" play the setting is very important, as it is the setting that carries much of the weight of the "meaning" or theme. (Eg this is the case for 4e D&D as I experienced it.)

In "story now" play in which setting features, the setting has to be amenable to impacts from the players in the same way as character does.

 

[Cadence]

This is inaccurate.

Here is the action declaration, performed as the PCs (Thurgon and his companion Aramina) enter the lands of Auxol, Thurgon's ancestral homland: I (Thurgon) am looking out for any of my family members.

That action declaration could be made in D&D as easily as in Burning Wheel.

I don't know how you would resolve it when GMing D&D. But here is how it was resolved in Burning Wheel:
I didn't make a not of the obstacle, and can't remember it now. But there is a formula for setting Circles obstacles, which we would have followed.

This is an example of how a player, in Burning Wheel, can establish a situation that is interesting to them without needing to do anything but play their character.

I'm obviously not getting the things in my head on the screen the way I think I am. I'll skim through BitD and see if I can find the right vocabulary or examples and try coming back when I have.

Thank you for trying to clarify for me!!

 

[pemerton]

I'm obviously not getting the things in my head on the screen the way I think I am. I'll skim through BitD and see if I can find the right vocabulary or examples and try coming back when I have.

I've not read or played BitD, so have only a passing familiarity with how it works.