What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

But are those things different?

Very different. One involves the DMs desires and the other doesn't. If the DM is using his desire to just cause failure, that's a railroad. If the game environment is causing failure, that isn't a railroad. The DM set up the environment without knowing what the player was going to do or not do.

If the presence of the force field is in no way hinted at, if the player has no idea it could possibly be there, then the character cannot succeed at the attempt. In which case, the decision of success and failure has already been made. So in that sense, there is a lack of agency in the sense that the chance for success does not originate with the PC.

Success or failure is irrelevant to agency. Only whether or not the player has full control over the PCs actions involves agency.

 

[Maxperson]

In Story Now games, the GM would not place the force field ahead of play. Placing it ahead of time restricts the player because there is no way that jump will be successful. In a Story Now game, there could be a force field as a result of a very badly failed jump roll, but it wasn't automatically there. Now once it is declared to be there by the bad roll, it was of course always there in the world, but not in the GM's backstory.

The advocates of Story Now gaming don't enjoy making declarations, and having the GM tell them yes or no based on pre- written notes, or the GM's decision based on said notes. It differs from classical play, because the world unfolds based on the results of scenes, which are in turn, driven by character drives and dice rolls. The loss of player agency in classical games is not just the GM being tyrannical, or characters being forced in a single direction. It's, in my understanding, more the players feeling that they are simply tourists in the GM's world. This is where the loss of control is felt. In Story Now games, the characters' drives and motivations feed the drama and determine the direction of the story. They are not, for example, going to become key players in a war against hobgoblins because the GM thought it would be cool to do a hobgoblin war story.

The example of your character having free will in a classical game is perfectly valid, but is irrelevant to Story Now gaming, because in Story Now, you as a player have lost agency if a lot of backstory exists. Technically, pemerton is right in saying classical gaming is pretty much a Choose Your Own Adventure. It's also unfair, because a living GM can make it so complex that it doesn't really have much in common with those adventure books. The GM can also rewrite bits on the fly.

I understand the difference, but this has no bearing on whether or not players have full agency in a game that isn't Story Now if secret backstory is present. @pemerton is incorrectly saying that players don't have agency in that situation. I'm letting him know that they do.

These are two different styles of rpging. Both work and are fun. It's interesting discussing the different approaches, but trying to prove the objective superiority of one over the other? This has no end, as this thread Is proving.

@pemerton is the one who posts with superiority of style all over the place. I simply refute the incorrect statements he makes, the incorrect definitions he uses, and defend against the tone of superiority he uses for his style, and tone of inferiority he uses when discussing other styles. I agree with you that both work and are fun, and that it's interesting to discuss both.

 

[Maxperson]

This is, IMHO, a category error which stems from your fundamental resistance to understanding that the 'game world' is simply a form of consensual fiction. In a game where the GM asserts control over all fictional positioning it IS a constraint on player agency, ALWAYS.

Note that even your example doesn't work. In the real world if I put walls around you (say by putting you in jail) I most certainly have constrained your agency. This is the essence of incarceration! The very notion of agency itself would fail to hold any meaning were it any other way.

Were you to put me in jail, I would still have agency over my actions. I could make attempts to break out as often as I wanted, even if they were doomed to fail. To remove my agency, you would have to tie me down so that I couldn't attempt to act(railroad me). Here's the rub, though. Unless you are totally freeform roleplaying, there are going to be constraints on what the players and DM can do. Constraint doesn't remove agency. Only railroading can do that.

 

[Maxperson]

I am taking it here that "I" refers not to the real person Maxperson, but to Maxperson's PC in a RPG. Otherwise the example makes no sense, because being hidden backstory is a (relational) property of RPG fiction, not a property of things in the world.

Continuing from above, the word "I" here must refer to the PC. Discussion of whether or not, in the fiction, a PC controls his/her choices is largely irrelevant to analysing the play of a RPG. The play of a RPG is not an imaginary thing that is undertaken by imaginary people (unless you're playing a RPG about RPGers) - it is a real activity undertaken by real people.

No, the I in that example was me in real life. The unknown in real life equates to backstory in an RPG. Both are unknown and can cause automatic failure. Neither remove agency as I have full control over my actions in both instances.

If a player's action declaration for his/her PC fails because the GM adjudicates it by reference to some unrevealed element of framing, then it is the GM, not the player, who in that particular episode of play is exercising control over the content of the fiction. Eg the GM has determined that it shall consist of an invisible forcefield, and hence shall not include any jumpings over ditches.

Success or failure is irrelevant to agency. Agency is control over the actions of the PC. Not whether the PC can succeed or not. Only a direct railroad can stop agency, and the wall does not constitute railroading, despite your repeated statements that it does.

 

[Maxperson]

I'd VERY strongly advice, if you were to take an interest in that particular dialog, to go back and read the parts of the thread Max contributed. I think you'll VERY QUICKLY find that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is fully justified in his approach. I mean, honestly, don't bother, you can take it from me. It would be pretty tedious to do (though sometimes kinda amusing in a certain way).

[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]. Should you go back and look, you will see me posting in good faith in the beginning, arguing against the bad faith misrepresentations of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] saw that as well. After a long while, though, I got sick of all the misrepresentations(as it became apparent that he was just deliberately misportraying things) and started tossing them right back at [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] saw that as well. Then later on I explained what I was doing to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. Even after all of that, he chooses willful ignorance over truth and is portraying me the way he is posting here.

Truthfully there are times when Max also says things that are illuminating, but I half think its by accident, I just don't know. Mostly I take him to be a hard case example of a contrarian, he's just GOT to 'win' any exchange of words.

No, nothing I've done here is by accident.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Very different. One involves the DMs desires and the other doesn't. If the DM is using his desire to just cause failure, that's a railroad. If the game environment is causing failure, that isn't a railroad. The DM set up the environment without knowing what the player was going to do or not do.

Well if the DM puts a ditch somewhere and then puts something on the other side of it and then puts an invisible force field blocking anyone from jumping the ditch...I have to say I agree that such a situation is a bit whacky. What else is causing the inevitable outcome other than DM desire?

I mean, why put the forcefield there in the first place other than to thwart a PC attempting the jump? What other reason could it possobly be there?

And why not simply remove it at the time of play? If I was DMing a published module and I came across this situation, I’d probably change it. It’s a “gotcha” moment and I don’t see the point of it.

Success or failure is irrelevant to agency. Only whether or not the player has full control over the PCs actions involves agency.

I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.

So a character attempting to jump the ditch is destined to fail through no fault of his or her own. They are destined to fail because of the DM.

Perhaps if there was some choice involved on the part of the character...or if there was some reasonable chance to somehow notice the forcefield....but without additional factors like that, it seems like a removal of agency.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As far as survival and death being stakes, there is no particular correlation here to mechanical approach. BW is very gritty, but PC death is quite unlikely. (PC maiming is more likely.) It woudl be easy enough to play Cortex+ Heroic with all Stress treated as Trauma, resulting in fairly frequent PC maiming and death, but that wouldn't turn it into a logistical game - it would just make it a game with high PC turnover.

Classic D&D could be fairly easily tweaked so that 0 hp means unconscious, or otherwise out of the action for the moment, but everything else left unchanged. Now we'd have a game in which instead of hauling bodies out of dungeons to get them resurrected, we'd have the hauling of unconscious companions out of dungeons so they can regain consciousness. And instead of TPKs there would be TPC - total party captures, being held for ransom by kobolds and having either to arrange payment, or escape.

The game would have a lower PC death rate (more comprable to 4e) but would still involve tracking ammunition and treasure.

Gygax already moves the game in this direction in AD&D (with the "unconscious if not dropped below -3 in a single blow" option; plus the option granted to the GM to declare a well-played PC unconscious rather than killed) and 2nd ed AD&D took things further in this direction.

To reinforce this (because believe me it requires ENDLESS reinforcement, folks who play 'OSR-like' games or highly 'classical' styles of D&D ASSUME they have some sort of monopoly on being able to kill PCs for some stupid reason) there's NO CORRELATION AT ALL in versions of D&D. 4e, as an example, has no specific level of deadliness. There isn't even one implied in the rules, beyond the recommendations for level variation of encounters, and a general advice that seems to envisage (but not dictate) low-lethality in SCs.

Fourth Core's canonical adventure is in fact absurdly lethal. I noted in a read through that there were at least 8, maybe more, 'insta-gank' situations where even reasonable PC actions produce instant, irrevocable, and mechanically unavoidable character death. None of this 'breaks the rules' of 4e. Even those aside you have to manage at least FOUR, possibly quite a few more, level+4 encounters (and these are low heroic PCs) without any pause in order to get through. My understanding is that in tournament play no party EVER survived, or even made it halfway. Its probably POSSIBLE, I think they stated that at least someone did make it in playtest, but it would require perfect character optimization and ideal levels of tactical play, plus not losing anyone to the insta-ganks.

The point is, any of these games can really have pretty much any arbitrary level of lethality. Its all up to the tastes of the people playing the game. There are games where death really isn't a normal part of play, but in those cases the focus is probably on other, potentially difficult to achieve, goals.

 

[Maxperson]

Well if the DM puts a ditch somewhere and then puts something on the other side of it and then puts an invisible force field blocking anyone from jumping the ditch...I have to say I agree that such a situation is a bit whacky. What else is causing the inevitable outcome other than DM desire?

1000 years ago a wildmage had an unusual wild surge at that location. The locals all know about the force field. The PCs, don't though. The ditch is only 100 yards long, so it's not as if the PCs have to go past it. I would have no way of knowing that one of the players might decide to jump the ditch, rather than just walk through it, or if they will even go to the ditch. It's simply interesting backstory that they might encounter.

My desire has nothing to do with it, as I have no desire for either success or failure in this instance.

And why not simply remove it at the time of play? If I was DMing a published module and I came across this situation, I’d probably change it. It’s a “gotcha” moment and I don’t see the point of it.

Are you really telling me that things that are unknown and found out about the hard way are all "gotcha" moments? If you are, I totally disagree with that. If you aren't, there's no reason to think this is a gotcha moment based on what I've said here.

I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.

Agency is the ability to take whatever actions you wish for your PC(within the bounds of the rules) without those actions being railroaded. Nobody forced the PC to jump the ditch. That was purely the player's decision and absolutely nothing interfered with that decision, or the resulting attempt to jump the ditch. The player had full agency over his character at that point. The narration of failure due to hitting an invisible wall does not affect that.

 

[Lanefan]

To reinforce this (because believe me it requires ENDLESS reinforcement, folks who play 'OSR-like' games or highly 'classical' styles of D&D ASSUME they have some sort of monopoly on being able to kill PCs for some stupid reason) there's NO CORRELATION AT ALL in versions of D&D. 4e, as an example, has no specific level of deadliness. There isn't even one implied in the rules, beyond the recommendations for level variation of encounters, and a general advice that seems to envisage (but not dictate) low-lethality in SCs.

Fourth Core's canonical adventure is in fact absurdly lethal. I noted in a read through that there were at least 8, maybe more, 'insta-gank' situations where even reasonable PC actions produce instant, irrevocable, and mechanically unavoidable character death. None of this 'breaks the rules' of 4e. Even those aside you have to manage at least FOUR, possibly quite a few more, level+4 encounters (and these are low heroic PCs) without any pause in order to get through. My understanding is that in tournament play no party EVER survived, or even made it halfway. Its probably POSSIBLE, I think they stated that at least someone did make it in playtest, but it would require perfect character optimization and ideal levels of tactical play, plus not losing anyone to the insta-ganks.

"Fourth Core" is, I presume, a 3rd-party publisher of 4e material? (never heard of them before now)

And what's that module called, in case I ever stumble across it?

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.

So a character attempting to jump the ditch is destined to fail through no fault of his or her own. They are destined to fail because of the DM.

Perhaps if there was some choice involved on the part of the character...or if there was some reasonable chance to somehow notice the forcefield....but without additional factors like that, it seems like a removal of agency.

Again, people clearly are using this word in two different ways. Rather than fight over the meaning of a single term (which you are both using differently), just realize one of you is talking about the freedom of the player to make choices about what their character attempts in the world and one is talking (I am assuming) more about the ability of the character to shape the world or shape the story. These are very different approaches to play that both invoke character agency in different ways for what they are trying to do, and the difference isn't a minor one.