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What is player agency to you?
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<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9127083" data-attributes="member: 71699"><p>I like this line of thinking. Players establishing goals is extremely effective.</p><p></p><p>When we played our Griffin Mountain sandbox, players established goals but, crucially, they didn't communicate them explicitly to their GM, and the RQ system did not explicitly make them the focus of play (notwithstanding the presumed shared goal of the eponymous quest). Players would show interest in S (standing for secret goal: a goal known only to the players) and GM would (possibly) discern S, and build out content in the direction of S (including adversaries/adversities). This wasn't narrativism - important elements were missing - but it was, rather inefficiently, PC-goal-based RPGing.</p><p></p><p>Important differences that I notice when playing TB2 or GMing my radical mod of 5e, is that a) players explicitly communicate their goals to GM (and one another for that matter), b) the creation of said goals is well-structured and meshed with progression (and players explicitly have that goal-creating job to do), and c) GM is under an explicit obligation to base structured/focused content (situations etc) on their goals.</p><p></p><p>It seems easy with hindsight to observe that players having secret goals wasn't all that efficient, although there were times every few sessions where GM would ask something like "What are you interested in or trying to do? Where do you expect to go next?" in order to focus their prep for subsequent sessions. One can easily see also the benefits of meshing with the reward system.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I certainly count explicit, structured PC-goal-driven-play as one of the key innovations in RPG (along with fiction-first and a few other things.) Writing that, makes me think also about GM-goals. That they can drive play seems obvious (whether or not one feels they ought to.) That they benefit from being structured by design equally so. And that there is a worthwhile distinction (pros and cons) between secret and open (noting that means to open them may be part of "structured".)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 9127083, member: 71699"] I like this line of thinking. Players establishing goals is extremely effective. When we played our Griffin Mountain sandbox, players established goals but, crucially, they didn't communicate them explicitly to their GM, and the RQ system did not explicitly make them the focus of play (notwithstanding the presumed shared goal of the eponymous quest). Players would show interest in S (standing for secret goal: a goal known only to the players) and GM would (possibly) discern S, and build out content in the direction of S (including adversaries/adversities). This wasn't narrativism - important elements were missing - but it was, rather inefficiently, PC-goal-based RPGing. Important differences that I notice when playing TB2 or GMing my radical mod of 5e, is that a) players explicitly communicate their goals to GM (and one another for that matter), b) the creation of said goals is well-structured and meshed with progression (and players explicitly have that goal-creating job to do), and c) GM is under an explicit obligation to base structured/focused content (situations etc) on their goals. It seems easy with hindsight to observe that players having secret goals wasn't all that efficient, although there were times every few sessions where GM would ask something like "What are you interested in or trying to do? Where do you expect to go next?" in order to focus their prep for subsequent sessions. One can easily see also the benefits of meshing with the reward system. Anyway, I certainly count explicit, structured PC-goal-driven-play as one of the key innovations in RPG (along with fiction-first and a few other things.) Writing that, makes me think also about GM-goals. That they can drive play seems obvious (whether or not one feels they ought to.) That they benefit from being structured by design equally so. And that there is a worthwhile distinction (pros and cons) between secret and open (noting that means to open them may be part of "structured".) [/QUOTE]
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