I first mentioned the Whitehall study here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-player-agency-to-you.698831/page-137#post-9097886If time permits, can you point to a post that's part of that discussion?
I mentioned it again here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-player-agency-to-you.698831/post-9103462
@Campbell referred to sociological notions of agency here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-player-agency-to-you.698831/post-9107784
Sure, there are debates in sociology over what the precise phenomenon is that should be studies, is worth trying to give rise to in organisational structures, etc; and also debates about the best way to characterise that phenomenon.I don't agree that there is one single definition within sociology. I've seen multiple different definitions within management theory - which is a discipline of sociology.
I still think there is merit in contrasting the sociological use with the use in philosophy of action. Eg if my interest, from the perspective of management theory, is how to cultivate agency in at least some employees so as to better achieve the organisation's mission (a practical example I have in mind, though it predates modern management theory, is the training of German compared to English junior officers in the First World War), then I am not going to get very much out of going to a philosophy seminar about Anscombe or Davidson on "basic actions".
No. I'm not focused on actions the players take in general at all. I mean, we could look at a table of RPGers and note (eg) that their breathing is autonomic, that their drinking and eating of snacks is largely reflex/habitual, that one of them who is on a diet is deliberately refraining from eating snacks, that one participant deliberately raises their voice for dramatic effect in delivering a line, etc.Is it right then that what you are focused upon are actions players take without reasons for taking them?
In this respect there is probably no interesting difference between a group of RPGers, a group of boardgamers, or even perhaps a group sitting around completing a jigsaw together. But when I talk about player agency in RPGing, as I've made clear from post 211, I mean the agency that the player exercises over the content of the shared fiction. And in my view it is a truism that this agency can vary in degree, depending on the game rules and associated procedures of play. And in no way does it contradict this observation to observe that giving a player the full freedom to just tell a story would mean that there is no longer a game being played.
I think I've been pretty clear about this throughout the thread. I have focused on what I regard as the distinctive outcome of RPG play: collective creation of a shared fiction. And I have talked about agency in respect of the capacity of a player to affect that.Agency is the objective and subjective capacity to exercise self-determination through action and effort. In the context of an RPG, agency is the objective and subjective capacity to perform actions and make decision that have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the game. Note that the perception of what constitutes outcome and meaning differ between individuals.
I think it is important to not reduce agency to simply concern itself with the decision space of the player in the context of the game. One has to consider the effect of the decision. In order for agency to exist, the player must not only have a meaningful and open-ended freedom of choice in what actions to perform and which decisions to make. to act. The actions and decisions must also be able to have the desired impact.
What I have quoted here seems to rest on a frequent but wrong presumption namely, that mechanics that allow the player to impact the fiction only by means of controlling their PC are not suitable for delivering a high degree of player agency in respect of the shared fiction. The reason that that presumption is wrong can be set out by pointing to the RPGs that refute it: Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, just to name a few. AW has almost no "story mechanics" (and the ones it has are optional elements of particular PC builds), Prince Valiant has none, and Burning Wheel can easily be played without the player having to do anything but describe what their PC does, thinks and feels. (As I've given examples of upthread.)In this thread we've mostly discussed narrativist systems and how they contribute to agency. And they certainly do for a lot of players. The extent to which they provide agency is of course directly linked to how important the player considers the sharing of narrative authority and the decision space for impacting the shared fiction. Some players do not have a desired to impact the shared fiction beyond controlling a character. Earlier in this thread a poster asked me what I meant by "Story Mechanics" - and to me that refers to mechanics that allow the player to impact the shared fiction by means other than direct control of a character. In classic D&D systems I would consider character creation a Story Mechanic by this definition, and the same goes for character progression mechanics like levelling up. So Story Mechanics are not a matter of whether they are "gamey" or not.
But if we return to how agency can relate to other concepts than shared narrative authority and Story Mechanics
Or to put it the other way around, it is possible to have a RPG that follows the D&D paradigm in respect of what the players have control of, when it comes to impacting the shared fiction and yet to give the players a very high degree of agency in respect of the shared fiction. As I have posted repeatedly upthread, the way that this works is by imposing obligations on the GM when it comes to narrating other elements of the fiction beyond what it is that the PCs do.
The most typical example of this in RPGing, I think - or at least the paradigmatic example - is illusionism of the sort typical in CoC play, and in much D&D play especially if informed by the post-DL and 2ned ed AD&D ethos. This has also been discussed in the currently active "random tables and player agency" thread.Freedom without agency is a very common pattern within sociology, and it repeats within RPGs. For example, if all roads lead to Rome, and I don't want to go to Rome, then it doesn't matter how many roads there are. But on the other hand, if what matters to me is the journey, then the choice of road is highly relevant.
In this sort of play, the players are free (within limits of good taste and social harmony) to introduce colour and characterisation around their PCs. As a group, they may choose for their PCs to take the high road or the low road. But the GM will manipulate background fiction, perhaps also dice rolls, to ensure that the pre-planned events more-or-less come to pass. Given the sort of agency that I am interested in (as explained just above), I regard this as rather low player agency RPGing.
I feel that, in this paragraph, exercise of agency is being equated with having a good time. Also, I think, that *non-gamea fair number of players that I've met over the years are mostly concerned with "fun/entertainment" and/or character progression. The former is sometimes derisively consider a casual and amateurish priority - where players don't care about the integrity of the shared fiction, don't care about their ability to impact it, etc. and are thus little more than passive consumers of low-brow entertainment. It is not entirely untrue for a subset of these players - for some people RPGs are just a light-hearted pastime. They can still have plenty of agency - if they're able to meaningfully act and interact to make the game more entertaining. For example, such a player might feel deprived of agency when playing with a group that is too serious or too concerned with following the rules of the game. To an observer they may seem devoid of agency when playing with like-minded individuals, but that's not the case - because there is a decision space and a meaningful ability to impact the outcome of the game.
play social agency* (such as cracking jokes that (i) don't actually advance the play of the game, and hence (ii) irritate serious participants) is being blurred with the play of the game.
I accept that the lines here aren't perfectly clear, but we wouldn't argue that snakes and ladders becomes high agency as a game because a group of people enjoy sitting around rolling the dice, laughing at one another's wins and losses, cracking jokes based on the pictures on the board, etc.
For me, this raises a different sort of question, along the lines of "what is the game"? Is it the creation of the shared fiction, or is it the more individual act of manipulating the PC build mechanics? I've got my own strong preference in this regard.For the character progression crowd - they're much more focused on whether progression delivers tangible increases in mechanics-based character power and/or narrative character identity, than on the shared fiction or the interactions at the table. Again, this kind of play is sometimes regarded as primitive and boring by those who value other aspects of RPGs. But it is a valid kind of agency. A power-gamer may feel deprived of agency if character progression does not allow for synergistic use of mechanics - or at the very least goes beyond a simple scaling of character power. Such a player does not care about whether they can affect the narrative - but they do care about whether they can pump out bigger numbers or feel the thrill of executing some cool combo of mechanics to dominate combat.
This seems fairly obvious. But it does have fairly devastating implications for many of the ideas of agency one sees put forward in relation to RPGing, namely those which hold that it is enough to show significant player agency that a player's declared action for their PC will produce an outcome that matters to the player, while accepting that all the intentions will be those of the GM.Mateas and Stern go on to reiterate that
..the effect must relate to the player intention
In RPGing, assuming a fairly traditional allocation of participant roles, for the effect to relate to the player intention requires the GM to be under exactly the sorts of constraints I have been mentioning since post 211.
For those reading along who aren't familiar with the ideas, the notions of material, formal and efficient cause go back to Aristotle:They develop their theory via a concept of material and formal causes. Material causes are resources present in a game such as mechanics. Formal causes are goals or ideals toward which things are directed. Players introduce a source of formal causes, distinct to games. They come to conclude that
A player will experience agency when there is a balance between the material and formal constraints... An imbalance results in a decrease in agency.
As such, they characterise agency as inhabiting a "sweet spot" in design space. Sufficiently afforded and constrained on both layers.
a player in an interactive drama becomes a kind of author, and thus, as an efficient causee, contributes both materially to the plot and formally to elements at the level of character on down. But these contributions are constrained by the material and formal causes (viewed as affordances) provided by the author of the interactive drama.
* Material cause refers to the stuff that something is made of (eg the statute is made of clay);
* Formal cause refers to the arrangement or organisation of the thing (eg the statute is of a woman) - when the statue is reshaped, its form changes although its matter does not;
* Efficient cause refers to what we most often think of causation in our own mechanistic/scientistic framework (eg the cause of the statute is the sculptor).
* Formal cause refers to the arrangement or organisation of the thing (eg the statute is of a woman) - when the statue is reshaped, its form changes although its matter does not;
* Efficient cause refers to what we most often think of causation in our own mechanistic/scientistic framework (eg the cause of the statute is the sculptor).
Aristotle also has a fourth notion of cause - teleological cause - which is the reason that something happens. This is controversial in Aristotle's usage, because he imputes these sorts of reasons to non-thinking things (eg the teleological cause of the acorn is the oak tree it will grow into) - these authors, as summarised, appear to bleed the notions of formal and teleological cause, and also perhaps the notions of material and efficient cause. (Caveat: I haven't read the paper, and am relying on the summary.)
If I was going to apply the Aristotelean schema to the creation of a shared fiction via RPGing, I would consider "story elements" as material causes - who gets to decide on these? (Consider eg the role of relationships in Burning Wheel or Torchbearer.) I would consider thematic connections as formal causes - the manner in which the material causes are organised (eg who is friend and who is foe?). The efficient causes would be the processes of play whereby the participants are empowered to introduce new material causes and/or shape the forms. Teleological cause would be the "agenda" as Ron Edwards et al thought of it - ie why are we all gathered together doing this thing, rather than (say) going for a walk together, or playing bridge?