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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Dealing with agency and retcon (in semi sandbox)
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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9070728" data-attributes="member: 6690965"><p>SCs have almost no ludic agency, and I know you've read my arguments to that effect before. The optimization case as a player is trivial: argue for your highest value skill, or if your DM is transparent about the E/M/H DCs, do some math and conclude that it's still probably best to argue for your highest value skill. SCs begin by removing an entire dimension of agency from players, when they ask the DM to set what % of success any given check will provide, regardless of what actual action was taken.</p><p></p><p>We can have the sim argument yet again if you like, but from a gameplay perspective the best possible case is a set of actions that produce objective outcomes, thus that players might choose between multiple action chains of various lengths and risks, perhaps with a side of resource management, to achieve their goals. Moving from a situation, as you said where the "GM has complete and utter say as to what sort of set of successes[...]must be strung together" to a situation where the GM has merely decided the number but not description of those successes is not a meaningful increase in player agency.</p><p></p><p>Iterated dice rolling is at best, a pretty bad game and most often not a game at all.</p><p></p><p>Ludic agency has nothing to do with "the stakes" of an action, and everything to do with player expression in picking a strategy. At best, stakes, as you're using the term, allow for the player to engage in risk assessment, which is only interesting if they can formulate a reasonable estimate of future risks between them and victory. Once again, it is this conflation of ludic and narrative agency I'm objecting to. Collapsing the game down, thus that players can rapidly suggest their proposed victory/failure conditions necessarily undercuts the available gameplay space.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 9070728, member: 6690965"] SCs have almost no ludic agency, and I know you've read my arguments to that effect before. The optimization case as a player is trivial: argue for your highest value skill, or if your DM is transparent about the E/M/H DCs, do some math and conclude that it's still probably best to argue for your highest value skill. SCs begin by removing an entire dimension of agency from players, when they ask the DM to set what % of success any given check will provide, regardless of what actual action was taken. We can have the sim argument yet again if you like, but from a gameplay perspective the best possible case is a set of actions that produce objective outcomes, thus that players might choose between multiple action chains of various lengths and risks, perhaps with a side of resource management, to achieve their goals. Moving from a situation, as you said where the "GM has complete and utter say as to what sort of set of successes[...]must be strung together" to a situation where the GM has merely decided the number but not description of those successes is not a meaningful increase in player agency. Iterated dice rolling is at best, a pretty bad game and most often not a game at all. Ludic agency has nothing to do with "the stakes" of an action, and everything to do with player expression in picking a strategy. At best, stakes, as you're using the term, allow for the player to engage in risk assessment, which is only interesting if they can formulate a reasonable estimate of future risks between them and victory. Once again, it is this conflation of ludic and narrative agency I'm objecting to. Collapsing the game down, thus that players can rapidly suggest their proposed victory/failure conditions necessarily undercuts the available gameplay space. [/QUOTE]
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