D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

Okay.

So...don't you as DM put things into the world to make a more interesting narrative? Don't you write character backstories so that their narrative will be engaging and interesting rather than formlessly generic or dull?

Because people raise this Boogeyman of "players just summon entire plotlines and end entire arcs with a waive of a hand" and it is honestly incredibly tedious because I've never seen a single person actually play that way, and in the vast majority of cases, it isn't even possible to play that way in the kinds of games people discuss.

Hence, I still don't see the difference between Conan having a backstory that includes Thulsa Doom and Thulsa Doom reappearing later as an opponent without Conan specifically seeking him out and a DM adding spice to the ongoing situation by developing a connection between a current threat the party has taken interest in and the bad things that have happened to one or more characters in their past. It is, from Conan's perspective, pure coincidence that Thulsa has chosen to become a priest of Set; it makes for a more gripping experience, because the two have an emotional connection that would not be present if the Priest of Set were some random dude. And it is quite clear that the reason it's Thulsa and not Random Set Priest #6 is that it is more interesting for that connection to appear. In an improvisational form like TTRPGs, there is no need to have a fixed, planned, set, unalterable, unbending, unyielding "story" (since apparently that is what people think "story" means now...) The discovery that the warlock amassing a strange and subversive cult outside the city is none other than Pulsa Boom, Priest of Beats, who enslaved Gonad's tribe many long years ago, does not suddenly lock everything into a single, inexorable, hyperspecific chain of events. It may, of course, amp up the party's desire to fight the warlock and his cult! But perhaps they also find out that the cult is keeping something nasty imprisoned, and just killing them would be Very Bad. There is no clearly right or wrong choice here. There are just things which exist in the world, and which will bring consequences if the players succeed at changing them. Which, importantly, is not the same as "always getting everything you want forever." You can succeed at something only to find out that that success has consequences you really wish you had known about or predicted before they happened.

What consequences are the players willing to accept? What risks are they willing to take, should their efforts fail, or get derailed? What costs are they willing to pay for success? What will they do if they discover new things later which make them reevaluate? I have no idea. That's what we play to find out. That's the narrative of the game, which doesn't have this ridiculously rigid....scripting that people seem so fearful of they would actively rather play a less interesting game just to make sure it never rears its fictitious head.

When I design a world, I put interesting things in it that I hope the players will find and engage with, if their path takes them there and they want to. In session 0, I ask the players about their personal goals, and make sure that there are ways to meet those goals in the setting, again if they run across them, seek them out and/or they are interested at the time.

When the campaign starts, however, what they actually do is up to them; they engage with the setting as it exists at that starting point as they see fit, and the only way they can interact with and make changes to that setting is through the activities of their PCs.

That's the goal anyway. It doesn't always work out, and sometimes I will accept player input on minor stuff during play if what they're asking for makes sense to me in the context of where they are. As you say, I don't have perfect knowledge of the entire setting, but I know what type of stuff should be most anywhere. But for the most part, as a rule the players stick with what their PCs are capable of, and they don't do anything outside of that.

Just like real life.

 

[FrogReaver]

A hardline stance against any form of filling empty spaces is impossible--it would certainly make GMing impossible. There are, of course, poor ways of using this ability e.g. railroading, but if every GM were required to have every "empty" space perfectly filled before people ever sit down for the first session, no one would play. But the same goes for every character! We know that they must have had parents, yet those parents do not need to be strictly defined. We know they must have had a childhood, which entails things like friendships and the little (mis)adventures of youth. If you're playing a game with classes, they had to learn those abilities. Etc. Few games require absolute specificity about these things, because again, if you were required to produce Tolkien-level notes on the culture, fashion, language, religion, family history, cuisine, etc., etc. of every single character you play, people wouldn't play.

Fully agreed.

It seems clear to me that the real issue is, people are very adverse to anything which can be parsed as declaring an advantage simply because. You can make attempts at things, and you can declare context, but you can't write "this is just what happened, which is beneficial to me." That's why 99.9% of the time when people balk at this, they very specifically bring up that players are using it to their advantage. You wouldn't see such a strenuously repeated refrain unless it mattered.

I agree but I'd add that I think you'd see even more balking if what was being proposed was a similar DM side mechanic for DM's to use to establish NPC memories that disadvantage their players.

And I'm saying I've never played a game that lets you do that.

Spout Lore? You pick only what you're researching, and you only get what the GM considers "interesting and useful," with the "and useful" part only if you roll well. You cannot just declare what you want to be true. The only thing you have any control over, and that only if the GM actually asks, is where/when you learned that information. (Generally, I don't ask if the answer is "these books I just finished poring over"; it's only if the answer is actually a lived experience where it's worth asking.)

At least until the DM uses the general play loop of asking questions to allow you to add those details. Not my claim either.

That said the structure of PbtA is so different to D&D because if advantageous lore is being given by the DM or delegated to the Player in PbtA it's because the player already succeeded on a check to have pertinent and advantageous Lore. I do think that context often gets glossed over and is very pertinent to a player with a D&D mindset.

In fact, let's take a look at those Flashbacks, shall we? As I said, I've never played or even really looked at BitD, so I couldn't comment on them. I haven't played it in the last few hours, but I went looking. And it seems to me that, as usual, there's rather an overblown response here. Limitations and context are conveniently ignored or unstated and the actual, direct utility is exaggerated, rather a lot in fact.

I'm fairly certain I mentioned all those things when I first brought them up in this thread. I explicitly said they had a cost and you had to roll high and have strong enough effect to have the flashback be successful.

And I also agree that flashbacks in play of BitD don't feel like an issue - it's more when people step back and analyze games that people tend to dislike the notion of them more than they tend to be bothered by them in practice. (Kind of like when some people analyze D&D games I guess).

*Note one of the hardest parts for my D&D group to get used to in BitD was the equipment being abstract till needed. They all wanted to pre specify. I found that very interesting.

Third, and most important, invoking a Flashback DOES NOT just give you something nice. It gives you the opportunity to find out if you have something nice or not. Once the Flashback starts, the player must actually roleplay through the process of earning their benefit--just as would happen if all the prep-work scenes were done in advance. The only thing that changes is the order the group witnesses the events, and that order is specifically shifted because it makes for a better, more interesting experience and narrative.

It always baffles me how having something simply gated behind a dice roll so fundamentally changes that nature of what's happening for some people. Not saying your wrong, but i think most of us in my opinions orbit don't really find that difference to be particularly meaningful. Whether the player declares it and just gets it 100% of the time or declares it and just gets it 50% of the time, or 25% of the time or whatever the percentage is doesn't move the needle around what's occurring for us.

 

[plisnithus8]

I know what it's not:

I was reading the Agents of Dune rpg starter, and not only is the adventure highly railroaded (players often given binary choices; lists of potential answers that NPCs have for PC questions), but the box text will even have PC quotes for the gamester to read. At one point, the scenario tells the GM that it's okay to let players improvise a little but warns not to let them get too far from the plot.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Although it really shouldn't be. Players do what your bullet point says all the time, even without realizing it. They make decisions for their characters on the spur of the moment and the justification for the decision comes later.

A group's very first adventure has them going into the woods and they come upon a band of goblins. Almost arbitrarily the DM calls for initiative and the players then fight the goblins. But at no point prior to that moment did that player necessarily think about how their PC felt about goblins, the DM never specifically said how goblins were considered bu humans in the world they were playing in, and the only reason a fight happened was because of the collective unconscious of D&D players and DMs that said "Goblins-- low-level D&D enemies-- fight them!"

In this case the entire table decided on a whim to alter the reality of the world by deciding that goblins are only there to be fought. Something that up until that point had never even been thought of, let along considered true. None of us can think of everything for our characters beforehand, we always have to make snap decisions that end up changing the world without us even knowing it is happening.

Well, human-goblin relations would definitely be part of any world I run before the campaign starts; it certainly doesn't have to be hostile. In my preferred OSR games, we have reaction rolls for a situation like you describe exactly because it isn't always hostile. Even in Level Up I would certainly allow that scenario to play out differently.

So I don't ever "arbitrarily roll initiative". That being said, however, if the PCs encounter goblins and decide to attack, then that's just what they decided to do, and we go from there.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, human-goblin relations would definitely be part of any world I run before the campaign starts; it certainly doesn't have to be hostile. In my preferred OSR games, we have reaction rolls for a situation like you describe exactly because it isn't always hostile. Even in Level Up I would certainly allow that scenario to play out differently.

So I don't ever "arbitrarily roll initiative". That being said, however, if the PCs encounter goblins and decide to attack, then that's just what they decided to do, and we go from there.

Not even the customary warning that in this world you would know goblins aren't necessarily hostile to people?

 

[Micah Sweet]

To be clear, since I said it was controversial above. It's not controversial because of the action itself. I fully support players doing that, so long as they play fair (and I've never had to deal with players, whether as GM or a player myself, failing to play fair.)

The controversy comes from the thing described being either the same or "worse" as the thing being used as an example of utterly unconscionable actions. It's controversial because the claimed standard which finds fault with Flashbacks absolutely should find at least as much fault with this.

And honestly I suspect I would, for my game.

I'm not finding fault or placing supposedly objective value on any of this. There are simply things I like to see in games, and things I prefer to avoid. Others may enjoy them, and that great. No agenda here other than explaining my personal views.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, that is absolutely controversial, because I do not see any difference at all between that and how Flashbacks work. In fact, that would be more "altering the game's reality" than Flashbacks, because Flashbacks have a cost, fit into an already-established space and focus, and can't just be used to create an advantage with no roleplay or justification. Your description of "DM and player likely work together to establish details around that past experience, but the specifics don't actually have to be established" is what the Flashback is for. That is a structured way of doing exactly the thing you described!

Before I delve into a detailed answer, do you mind to elaborate on what if any difference you see with that and the third bullet point about deciding your shirt is blue?

 

[pemerton]

It always baffles me how having something simply gated behind a dice roll so fundamentally changes that nature of what's happening for some people.

D&D gates a lot of things behind dice rolls: killing enemies, finding hidden things, climbing walls, etc.

 

[FrogReaver]

D&D gates a lot of things behind dice rolls: killing enemies, finding hidden things, climbing walls, etc.

Thanks for the obvious?

Edit: on second thought this comes off much snarkier than the light hearted quip i meant for it to be. So apologies for that. I assume there's some reason you are pointing out these things and was hoping the quip would spur some additional explanation.

If you prefer I will delete (just let me know), but I also don't want you to think i was purposefully being snarky and just deleting to avoid reprimand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not even the customary warning that in this world you would know goblins aren't necessarily hostile to people?

9 times out of 10 the PCs would know that, so of course I would have informed them beforehand, at least in the campaign document I prepared and presented to the players before the campaign starts.

But yes, I probably would remind them, since to do otherwise would be read as a jerk move on my part, even if I gave them that info prior to play. IME people get touchy about stuff like that.