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What is player agency to you?
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9128632" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>I'm a bit unsure of what you're imagining here. You'll have to maybe explain with an example from your home game or personal playing experience? Why might it need to be a bad time (for someone)? It seems to me there are two easy solves:</p><p></p><p>(1) The individual who misunderstands the meta has it explained to them or otherwise some sort of "eureka" moment, adopts the meta, and things snap into place.</p><p></p><p>(2) The same individual either suddenly understands the meta and rejects it or proceeds to struggle with understanding the meta, yet they have a graceful parting from the rest of the group.</p><p></p><p>I'll give an example of (1) that I had in mind when composing that post. </p><p></p><p>The Agon game that I'm playing the Strife Player (GM role) here and there has three excellent players. I know one of them well and he's a swell guy and a great player. I barely know his sister but she is clearly cut from the same cloth as he. They have a third player who is a Greeks Classics professor or teacher (I'm not sure which) so she is verrrrrrrrrrrrry well acquainted with the source material that inspires Agon. She also seems to be very sweet and a very good player. However, her experience with these types of games (where play is merely inspired by myth/canon rather than playing in an attempt to hew to it or outright recapitulate it...the role of play is "creation" not "recapitulation of source material") appears to be somewhat minimal. </p><p></p><p>The play of the last Island I ran for them (an Island scenario that I devised rather than using the game's stock Islands) resolved into a moment where the PCs (I think all of them?...though it may have just been this particular player through her PC) decided to convince the habitable island's starving inhabitants to sacrifice their last viable goat of the three (the other two were the breeding stock) to Hephaestus, but not via throwing the animal into the archipelago's volcano which was their custom of yore. So here is the interesting moment:</p><p></p><p>The player calls a timeout and lets us know how such sacrfices are handled in the Classical canon. The animal is sacrificed to the god in question and rendered for a meal and celebration. Ok, that's cool.</p><p></p><p>However, we are not bound by this canon in our play. In our play, the actual conflict of this Island is about the strife over battling allegiances to a pair of at-odds gods, the fallout to the people, and the ire of Zeus in the middle. The history of these people entail a real sacrifice here and a tough decision with a particular brand of fallout no matter what you choose (sacrifice to x, sacrifice to y, don't sacrifice and face down that fate, appeal to Zeus, etc and whatever). Their customs have informed them that they can't sate their suffering of privation (the meal of the goat) and simultaneously attain proper favor of the gods; sacrifice means <em>sacrifice in proportion to the hardship you take on </em>here.</p><p></p><p>Ok, cool. No problem. She easily resolved this in her mind in the moment ("the meta snapped into place"). They just need convincing that <strong>their is another way; their customs are not the only way to sate the gods</strong>. And so did the right thing, stipulated an intent, and she went to the mechanics of the game to appeal to the fighting priests that their custom of sacrifice is not the only way; <strong>Arts and Oration Domain Test (for storytelling, culture and persuasion) and I believe one of the players marked Pathos (think harm/hit points) to bring in their Domain of Craft & Reason (for Academics, History, Scholarship) to make an appeal to an alternative custom of sacrifice and celebration (which includes feasting upon the slaughtered animal). </strong> </p><p></p><p><strong>This_is_perfect (in all ways; social contract-wise and as an example of a player grokking and employing the meta in the moment). This leads to "the best play" the game affords (and its not because they succeeded in their test...failure would have led to play equally as satisfying).</strong></p><p></p><p>I rolled my Strife Pool. I got a target number. She and her allies made their Arts and Oration Tests and resolved that scene, affirming her intent. And so it was that they sacrificed and feasted and Hephaestus was pleased. </p><p></p><p>It was a trivial grokking of the meta by the player and a cool moment of "creation" and resolution to fiction/gamestate that led to subsequent cool play and downstream strife with Poseidon and his priest, and ultimate resolution of the Island's nexus of conflict.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>That is an example of (1) above. Do you have an example of (2) in your play that you care to share? Or perhaps another example of (1)?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 9128632, member: 6696971"] I'm a bit unsure of what you're imagining here. You'll have to maybe explain with an example from your home game or personal playing experience? Why might it need to be a bad time (for someone)? It seems to me there are two easy solves: (1) The individual who misunderstands the meta has it explained to them or otherwise some sort of "eureka" moment, adopts the meta, and things snap into place. (2) The same individual either suddenly understands the meta and rejects it or proceeds to struggle with understanding the meta, yet they have a graceful parting from the rest of the group. I'll give an example of (1) that I had in mind when composing that post. The Agon game that I'm playing the Strife Player (GM role) here and there has three excellent players. I know one of them well and he's a swell guy and a great player. I barely know his sister but she is clearly cut from the same cloth as he. They have a third player who is a Greeks Classics professor or teacher (I'm not sure which) so she is verrrrrrrrrrrrry well acquainted with the source material that inspires Agon. She also seems to be very sweet and a very good player. However, her experience with these types of games (where play is merely inspired by myth/canon rather than playing in an attempt to hew to it or outright recapitulate it...the role of play is "creation" not "recapitulation of source material") appears to be somewhat minimal. The play of the last Island I ran for them (an Island scenario that I devised rather than using the game's stock Islands) resolved into a moment where the PCs (I think all of them?...though it may have just been this particular player through her PC) decided to convince the habitable island's starving inhabitants to sacrifice their last viable goat of the three (the other two were the breeding stock) to Hephaestus, but not via throwing the animal into the archipelago's volcano which was their custom of yore. So here is the interesting moment: The player calls a timeout and lets us know how such sacrfices are handled in the Classical canon. The animal is sacrificed to the god in question and rendered for a meal and celebration. Ok, that's cool. However, we are not bound by this canon in our play. In our play, the actual conflict of this Island is about the strife over battling allegiances to a pair of at-odds gods, the fallout to the people, and the ire of Zeus in the middle. The history of these people entail a real sacrifice here and a tough decision with a particular brand of fallout no matter what you choose (sacrifice to x, sacrifice to y, don't sacrifice and face down that fate, appeal to Zeus, etc and whatever). Their customs have informed them that they can't sate their suffering of privation (the meal of the goat) and simultaneously attain proper favor of the gods; sacrifice means [I]sacrifice in proportion to the hardship you take on [/I]here. Ok, cool. No problem. She easily resolved this in her mind in the moment ("the meta snapped into place"). They just need convincing that [B]their is another way; their customs are not the only way to sate the gods[/B]. And so did the right thing, stipulated an intent, and she went to the mechanics of the game to appeal to the fighting priests that their custom of sacrifice is not the only way; [B]Arts and Oration Domain Test (for storytelling, culture and persuasion) and I believe one of the players marked Pathos (think harm/hit points) to bring in their Domain of Craft & Reason (for Academics, History, Scholarship) to make an appeal to an alternative custom of sacrifice and celebration (which includes feasting upon the slaughtered animal). [/B] [B]This_is_perfect (in all ways; social contract-wise and as an example of a player grokking and employing the meta in the moment). This leads to "the best play" the game affords (and its not because they succeeded in their test...failure would have led to play equally as satisfying).[/B] I rolled my Strife Pool. I got a target number. She and her allies made their Arts and Oration Tests and resolved that scene, affirming her intent. And so it was that they sacrificed and feasted and Hephaestus was pleased. It was a trivial grokking of the meta by the player and a cool moment of "creation" and resolution to fiction/gamestate that led to subsequent cool play and downstream strife with Poseidon and his priest, and ultimate resolution of the Island's nexus of conflict. [HR][/HR] That is an example of (1) above. Do you have an example of (2) in your play that you care to share? Or perhaps another example of (1)? [/QUOTE]
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