Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[AnotherGuy]

Your last line reminded me of this, that you might find interesting:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/an-interesting-take-on-fictional-positioning-and-adversity-in-rpging.681692/

The video was great and I can admit that often enough, while my head is swimming with the various DM-responsibilities, it is the players at the table who are the ones who awaken furniture far more than I do.
They're constantly in that headspace looking to manipulate the fictional environment, whereas more often than not, I have to plan encounters (combat or otherwise) to awaken furniture. That is why being able to frame/colour scenes well is so important.

 

[Emberashh]

Given that the essence of a RPG is establishing a shared fiction, what else would it be?

There is no "what else". They're separate terms.

And yes, it is shared fiction, but what you're doing is inappropriately conflating the GM's share of authorship with being a violation of the Player's agency when they don't ever actually interact like that.

You're essentially conflating the agency of the Players as actual human beings living in the real world with the agency they are exerting through their characters in the context of a gameworld. Thats the difference between agency and authorship.

In a game with a more equal divide in authorship between the GM and their Players, Players will be able to exert agency beyond that of their character's agency, and thus author parts of the world into existence, and in the context of narratives, thus directly co-author that narrative.

But, as said, that has nothing to do with agency.

That does not, however, mean that a trad game is all GM authored. The GM actually has less authorship than you'd think, and thats expressed in the myriad ways trad games provide players to interact with the gameworld, regardless of whether or not theres a story involved.

These systemic interactions are what lead to emergence, not just of gameplay, but of narratives. This emergence is what stops either player or GM from wielding all control in a given narrative, because now they have to share authorship with the system itself.

Thats the real value of more robust games that can provide a lot of mechanical interactivity, as they are fundamentally unpredictable to some degree, and when done well, this unpredictability is what results in a great deal of captivating fun.

In games without this robust support, this unpredictability is hard to achieve, and many who reject it outright also do lose the ability to truly be unpredictable.

Thats the setback of trying to wrestle away authorship, as authoring some element doesn't have the same effect.

A solution to a given problem that arises organically as the sum of a near infinite amount of choices and systemic interactions is virtually always more compelling than one thats written bespoke for the situation.

Thats why all the best and most memorable parts of DND all come out of things that nobody at the table could have foreseen. But when you're just writing bespoke solutions outright, its always predictable. You always know the problem will be solved, and may be you still get a kick out of someone being creative with it, but it'll never hit in the same way.

Put another way, this can actually be likened to cheating in video games. When you remove all constraints, fun can still be had, but it can and does also ruin the fun of playing normally, sometimes even permanently.

The loss of systemic unpredictability effectively does the same thing.

And this, for the record, is actually a big reason why I do not like story first/now games. Rather than resolving the issues of bad gameplay, they just delete it in preference of generating ultimately shallow facsimiles of the desired results.

 

[AnotherGuy]

That's a mile-wide definition of railroad.

For me, it's a railroad if a) the GM provides the outcome* without regard for what the players have their characters do and-or b) if the players have no choice in what their characters do next.

* - in the immediate, as opposed to longer-term consequences.

I'm not sure I understand (a), what do you mean by "in the immediate, as opposed to longer term consequences"? Do you perhaps have an example for that?
(b) I get and totally agree.

 

[bloodtide]

I'm not sure when the notion of following "the news" came about, as a cultural practice. My guess would be the 19th century, tracking the emergence of mass literacy. My sense is that it would be quite anachronistic in a FRPG.

I mean are you just talking about newspapers or websites? If you mean news in general....you know people have been following that for as long as there have been people. But also note that newspapers were popular from the 15th century and on and plenty of people could read.

But issues of anachronism to one side, I think we can assume that the PCs, as they talk to people, are learning about who grew this year's biggest marrow, whether the local lord broke an arm falling from horseback, etc. Likewise they will know all sorts of other things by direct observation, like who has built a new shed onto their house, and how many kids the publican has, etc.

But there seems no great benefit in making any of this a focus of play. What interest does it hold?

The point of the living breathing world is to make the play not just "a game", but a "reality simulation".

Other wise, the Static World, is what you get in video games. When your character walks into the town of Highport, you can click on 'news' and read the same three news stories every time. Nothing ever happens in Highport. They did not program anything to happen.

The living, breathing world is full of action and advancement...."just like real life". Things happen all the time. And most of all, many things effect many things. Sure Lord Bob breaking his arm is just gossip. (PCs leave town on an adventure) But then the next day high cleric Ann refuses to heal it. A couple days after that, the lord announces a 'sales tax'(aka an arm tax) on all goods. Another couple of days and the gossip is the lord can't afford the high clerics "donation" to get his arm fixed. Then the Lord's wife jumps in the mix demanding all healthcare services for the lord and family should be free. The Temple refuses. (Pcs return) And on ....

So, in game play when the PCs come back to town...they find the town temple closed. The Pcs are injured and have other afflictions....but they are stuck as the temple is closed. What is going on? Well....see the above back story for starters.

But in the Interactive Only game the PCs come into the Static Town, and the DM makes a roll on the Town Event Table. The roll is an 11- Loss of Faith. So the DM says "um...um...the temple is closed", because the roll "told them" to say something like that. The players ask what is going on....and sure maybe the DM can improv the whole story of why the temple is closed. But they can't turn back time. Once the DM says "oh it all started three weeks ago". The players will say "but our characters were in town last week and they heard nothing about this? My character rolled a 20 on the Official roll Round Circle Rumor check and did not hear this common rumor?" Then the DM has to "um and ah" as they flip through the rule book look for it to tell them what to do.

This is not true.

I think it is a railroad if the framing, stakes and consequences are all provided by the GM. If they are predominantly provided by the GM, then we may also have a railroad, or at least something rather railroad-y.

So anything the GM does, or "frames" independent of the players is a railroad or something like a railroad, right?

If the characters walk to a a river and the DM on a whim says "the bridge was washed away" That is railroady.

If the characters walk to a river, and one player makes a Look Around Check, but rolls low. Then the GM is given permission to roll on the River Road Table and get "a supprise event', Then as the player rolled low, page 44 says "the GM must present the framing event with a disatvanatge". Then the GM can say "the bridge has washed away as both the players roll and the rules have given the GM permision to do that: No railroad.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because then you know how it is and can take that into account if it would affect anything else. But yeas, ultimately you don't need to determine anything until it would touch or affect something the PCs would know. And if you can BS it on the spot so that everything seems like things had been going on the whole time then fine by me. I just personally find that it is easier to think these things in somewhat real time. But I'm sure in practice many games are combination of "real" living world and an illusion of it. Mine certainly are, I'm not really that committed. Though I'm sure a lot of GMs figure out things in advance much more diligently than me.

It's all illusion. There is no real living breathing world. The goal is to make the events of play seem reasonable and plausible in a way that fits with what's been established.

I share that goal. I don't use the same methods as many here are proposing (or don't often, depending on the game).

The distinction in methods is what's important.

Um... reality? Logic? I guess there could be a setting where each location was literally an isolated bubble and the PCs were the only people who were capable of travelling between these bubbles but that hardly is a common setup.

Remote areas exist even in our modern world. People ignore news. None of this is a given. We can look at plenty of genre fiction for examples of news not spreading quick enough, especially in the absence of modern means of sharing information quickly and at a distance.

I'm not saying that nothing like a war in a far off land should ever be mentioned. I'm just saying that the whole idea of rumors is usually more about introducing plot hooks more than it is about portraying a living breathing world.

It's been stated pretty directly by many in this thread... to the point where I don't know if they see a distinction between introducing plot hooks and their idea of a living breathing world.

I mean it is not any more obfuscatory than any gaming jargon and established terms. Such things may not always be the best possible words to describe things, but once they get widely used we're stuck with them. I am not particularly enamoured with the designation, but neither do I find it any more ill defined or misleading than many other terms we use.

In any case, there are few things I find more tiresome than quibbling about semantics.

It's not semantics, though. See the following posts where I'm told I don't care about a living breathing world. Where it's treated as a method rather than a goal... a verb rather than a noun.

Here you see how the term is coopted to fit a style... which then implies that other styles are not concerned with portraying a setting that seems lived in and real in the same manner.

That's what I'm objecting to.

No need, unless you want that living breathing world you and others insist on denying the existence of.

Again, if you don't want it, say so without trying to deny its relevance to others.

The DM of the living, breathing world playstyle is far more likely to try and figure out the logical conclusion or very often multiple possibilities and determine them randomly.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's all illusion. There is no real living breathing world. The goal is to make the events of play seem reasonable and plausible in a way that fits with what's been established.

I share that goal. I don't use the same methods as many here are proposing (or don't often, depending on the game).

The distinction in methods is what's important.



Remote areas exist even in our modern world. People ignore news. None of this is a given. We can look at plenty of genre fiction for examples of news not spreading quick enough, especially in the absence of modern means of sharing information quickly and at a distance.

I'm not saying that nothing like a war in a far off land should ever be mentioned. I'm just saying that the whole idea of rumors is usually more about introducing plot hooks more than it is about portraying a living breathing world.

It's been stated pretty directly by many in this thread... to the point where I don't know if they see a distinction between introducing plot hooks and their idea of a living breathing world.




It's not semantics, though. See the following posts where I'm told I don't care about a living breathing world. Where it's treated as a method rather than a goal... a verb rather than a noun.

Here you see how the term is coopted to fit a style... which then implies that other styles are not concerned with portraying a setting that seems lived in and real in the same manner.

That's what I'm objecting to.

Dude, you just said above that it's all an illusion, and that there's no real living breathing world. In what universe does that not mean you're denying its existence?

How is telling people their preferences aren't real conducive to conversation? Has anyone here made similar claims about what you prefer? What are you actually trying to accomplish?

 

[hawkeyefan]

No. I think people inclined not to like a particular playstyle look for ways to discredit it.

I like trad play just fine. I play D&D weekly, and should be starting a Delta Green game pretty soon. I just don't have illusions that these games aren't strongly led by the GM.

I mean... Odin's balls, we're in a thread about GM agency... why is this surprising?

If you go back there, you hear about it. If it affects where you are, you hear about it. If it's a huge deal and it makes sense to hear about it far and wide (like the death of a monarch) you hear about it more. None of that seems unreasonable to me, and none of it demands the PCs drop everything and engage with the mythical "GM's story", especially if you hear about a lot of things. PCs listen for rumors all the time.

This doesn't contradict anything I've said. If the players have their characters ask about what's happening back in Oldtown, sure, have them get some information.

But if it keeps coming up even if they're trying to find out news about something else?

Or if the stakes are significant enough that no matter where they go, it's gonna come up? Yeah, these are ways the GM is trying to steer things back to their story.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I like trad play just fine. I play D&D weekly, and should be starting a Delta Green game pretty soon. I just don't have illusions that these games aren't strongly led by the GM.

I mean... Odin's balls, we're in a thread about GM agency... why is this surprising?



This doesn't contradict anything I've said. If the players have their characters ask about what's happening back in Oldtown, sure, have them get some information.

But if it keeps coming up even if they're trying to find out news about something else?

Or if the stakes are significant enough that no matter where they go, it's gonna come up? Yeah, these are ways the GM is trying to steer things back to their story.

If you assume that the GM has a selfish agenda, I'm sure you believe that. And you're welcome to that opinion, but I do not share it. This is just the well-worn, "but what if your DM is bad?" argument being trotted out once again.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's all illusion. There is no real living breathing world.

And the characters are not real either! Yes, it is all make believe. Obviously. It is real world in the same way than the characters are real people. Imaginary real.

The goal is to make the events of play seem reasonable and plausible in a way that fits with what's been established.

I share that goal. I don't use the same methods as many here are proposing (or don't often, depending on the game).

The distinction in methods is what's important.

OK. I think I get you now. Personally I care more about results than the methods, but indeed the term is associated with certain methods.

Remote areas exist even in our modern world. People ignore news. None of this is a given. We can look at plenty of genre fiction for examples of news not spreading quick enough, especially in the absence of modern means of sharing information quickly and at a distance.

I'm not saying that nothing like a war in a far off land should ever be mentioned. I'm just saying that the whole idea of rumors is usually more about introducing plot hooks more than it is about portraying a living breathing world.

Right. Obviously it depends on the situation how far the news will spread. But taking such things into account is exactly part of this.

It's been stated pretty directly by many in this thread... to the point where I don't know if they see a distinction between introducing plot hooks and their idea of a living breathing world.

If you say so. I'd say the method sort of autogenerates "plot hooks."

It's not semantics, though. See the following posts where I'm told I don't care about a living breathing world. Where it's treated as a method rather than a goal... a verb rather than a noun.

Here you see how the term is coopted to fit a style... which then implies that other styles are not concerned with portraying a setting that seems lived in and real in the same manner.

That's what I'm objecting to.

Yes, the term is associated with simulationist attitude towards the game world. Doesn't mean you cannot make your world feel living and real without being a simulationist, any more than you need to play narrative games to care about narratives. Words are tough.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Dude, you just said above that it's all an illusion, and that there's no real living breathing world. In what universe does that not mean you're denying its existence?

The illusion is a thing. It's a depiction of a world that seems lived in and dynamic. That's a thing. That's the goal. I'm not denying that.

I'm denying that one set of methods is better at achieving that goal than another.

How is telling people their preferences aren't real conducive to conversation? Has anyone here made similar claims about what you prefer? What are you actually trying to accomplish?

Your preferences are real. I never said they weren't.

But they're no more valid than mine. They don't produce a more living and breathing world than mine. Which is absolutely what is being said.

So when people say that deciding these things on the fly as needed, and only planning what's necessary leads to a less living and breathing world, that such a fictional world must be shallow and so on, I'm gonna push back against that... it's simply not true.

And then, I'll go a step further and say that the living breathing world as described by may in this thread is more about maintaining the GM's sense of the world rather than an attempt at depicting a believable world.

If you assume that the GM has a selfish agenda, I'm sure you believe that. And you're welcome to that opinion, but I do not share it. This is just the well-worn, "but what if your DM is bad?" argument being trotted out once again.

No, it's not about having a selfish agenda. Nor is it about bad GMing. I've never said a GM having a story is bad. I've pointed out multiple times that I play in such games and enjoy them just fine.

What are plot hooks? They're the start of a GM's story. They're perfectly fine ways to play RPGs. They may not be to everyone's taste, and they may not fit every game, but generally speaking, they're a perfectly common means of playing, and one many people have cited in this thread.

I don't know why you'd categorize it as bad? Seems needlessly judgmental.