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*TTRPGs General
Dealing with agency and retcon (in semi sandbox)
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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9071612" data-attributes="member: 6690965"><p>I'd avoid using "character" to prevent confusion, as this is very much a player facing concern, and I don't think we're dealing with a TTRPG specific concept. This isn't related to the player/character relationship, this is entirely down to gameplay decision making. There are very high ludic agency games that are entirely abstract, like Go.</p><p></p><p>I don't actually think stake setting is the problem either, really. It's much more to do with how quickly one iterates that loop, and how much space there is for different sets of actions between each time you evaluate results. Put simply, I'd say you need enough space between setting a victory condition and evaluating it to declare multiple actions, those actions need to result in divergent board states, and those actions need to have differing impacts on success/failure for agency to be possible. Then you can start quibbling over how different/complicated/numerous the optimization cases need to be, and you're getting into sliding scale territory.</p><p></p><p>The narrative concern is assuring the player that what they are interested in is at stake in a conflict and might even extend to ensuring the player has the ability to affect the outcome of a conflict. The ludic concern is assuring the player that their choices will affect the evaluation of the conflict. You could do the former without evaluation at all or with completely arbitrary evaluation; imagine a system you provide an intent that defines success and a stake that defines failure and resolve every check with a coin toss.</p><p></p><p>Ludic agency requires space before evaluation where the player can input actions, and that different sequences of actions influence evaluation differently, and that ideally more than 1 sequence of actions that succeed and or fail.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 9071612, member: 6690965"] I'd avoid using "character" to prevent confusion, as this is very much a player facing concern, and I don't think we're dealing with a TTRPG specific concept. This isn't related to the player/character relationship, this is entirely down to gameplay decision making. There are very high ludic agency games that are entirely abstract, like Go. I don't actually think stake setting is the problem either, really. It's much more to do with how quickly one iterates that loop, and how much space there is for different sets of actions between each time you evaluate results. Put simply, I'd say you need enough space between setting a victory condition and evaluating it to declare multiple actions, those actions need to result in divergent board states, and those actions need to have differing impacts on success/failure for agency to be possible. Then you can start quibbling over how different/complicated/numerous the optimization cases need to be, and you're getting into sliding scale territory. The narrative concern is assuring the player that what they are interested in is at stake in a conflict and might even extend to ensuring the player has the ability to affect the outcome of a conflict. The ludic concern is assuring the player that their choices will affect the evaluation of the conflict. You could do the former without evaluation at all or with completely arbitrary evaluation; imagine a system you provide an intent that defines success and a stake that defines failure and resolve every check with a coin toss. Ludic agency requires space before evaluation where the player can input actions, and that different sequences of actions influence evaluation differently, and that ideally more than 1 sequence of actions that succeed and or fail. [/QUOTE]
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