Celebrim
Legend
[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]: I guess my basic problem with your definitions is that they are filled with weasel words and qualifiers that render them fairly meaningless. In particular I feel you've taken some fairly straight foward definitions, liberally sprinkled them with nearly meaningless phrases like 'meaningful' and 'thematically-significant' and turned them into such limp, pliant, and unrigorous things that anything can or can't meet those definitions depending on your own subjective understanding of 'meaningful' and 'thematically-signfiicant'. So forget the weasel words:
There, that's a meaningful definition. And once you remove the weasel wording, then it no longer is subjective about whether you are removing player agency. And once it is no longer subjective, the question becomes, "Why do you want to remove player agency?"
Again, this is a much clearer and meaningful definition. Now we can talk about Force without arguing over whether something is or isn't force. We can instead look at light versus heavy force techniques, and why heavy application of force might obviously be considered railroading.
Again, let's not talk about motive. There can be lots of motives good or bad for applying GM force. Let's have a clean definition, and then we can argue over something more interesting than what is railroading.
Now, the other two are more interesting. It would take an essay for me to describe what I think is wrong with the hidden assumptions in them, but again, let's just say that I think that the Forge people have been mistaken on several concepts write from the start.
Strawman. I never argued that the math on agency meant that if players lost a bit of agency, then they had none. The big problem with trying to quantify agency is that there isn't a clear way of measuring how much agency a person has. I can say though that if we are going to measure things your characters never had at any time in the outline of your narrative more than about 25% agency. I believe you outline a game with minimal agency as an accepted aspect of play. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, but don't pretend that what you are doing in the broad arc and within the scenes isn't "GM has prepared a rising conflict/climax and maneuvers or otherwise determines that character activity inexorably leads to this scenario"
So, who is doing funny math now? By your argument, so long as I don't impinge on the very narrow thing you call thematic content - which the player is mechanically limited in defining - whatever you do amounts to leaving the player with 100% agency? You've give a player a very narrow defendable peice of turf, and forced the player by social contract to agree he has little or no agency over everything else. Instead of having a social contract that says, "Your character is your own.", you are forcing the character to define very small aspects of his character as his own and to give up control of everything else.
Yes, I see that. But let's remove the weasel words. Anything resembling regular application of GM force on the player character while framing, or which encroaches on the player's automony in their decisions and mechanical resolution of those decisions is very agency adverse. As a player I stridently agree with this interpretation, and as a DM I try to avoid it as much as possible at my table. As with my discussion of railroading, as a player I might be someone understanding of a need to frame the games kickoff in a way that impinges on player agency, but after that? Not so much. Heavy GM force applied to player agency is not necesary to kick off conflict resolution or thematicly relevant storylines. You've got plenty of power as it is to control the setting and the backstory of the setting in such ways that it leads toward heightening the conflict in a natural manner. It's not like the real world avoids heavy conflict despite at least superficially appearing to contain free-willed beings with a rather high degree of agency.
As for your unorthodox technique, it's desirability is a matter of opinion, but given the constraints on your game as you've presented them that narrative authority that in your own words you are "allowing" them is IMO about the only real player agency that they have.
That is patently ridiculous. Whether or not the DM introduces an unlikely or coincidental event to the setting has nothing to do with process-simulation and adherence to methodical task resolution. Those things are about you respond to events in the setting whether coincidental or not. If the GM decides, "A major earthquake is going to occur on the 14th of August", he hasn't invalidated the approach. He's excercising his rights as a DM over setting (and setting backstory). That decision is no more a violation of process-simulation than saying that there exists in a certain mountain an abandoned dwarven mine that is overrun with goblins, or that there is a certain unlooted tomb containing fabulous treasures. The presence of the earthquake may even be said to be naturalistic, if the area is known to be prone to earthquakes. (For example, a modern game set in LA or Toyko). It's ridiculous to claim that the simulation must go down to the molecular level before determining whether something will happen, but even if it did it wouldn't prevent such things from happening because GM is perfectly within his rights to encode this event occuring back into the structure of the universe to any degree. It's just a waste to provide more than a first order degree of reasonableness to it.
It's worth noting that neither of these make particularly good stories from the perspective of those within them.
So you are trying to use this as a justification for introducing 'You are hit by a low flying airplane' or 'swallowed up by the earth and never seen again' to your failure table for mundane tasks? Could you just step back a second and view that perspective from the outside, and then tell me again about how much player agency you are willing to allow your players?
Which is just false. You have to use more subtle techniques than simply forcing things to happen, and it involves actually building a solid hook, but it can be done. Typically DMs get frustrated though by player agency, because they offer weak hooks and the players find an easier solution to the problem. Take your example of 'The player indicated a desire for a chase scene.' I believe we've so far managed at least 8 chase scenes in 50 games without me really trying hard in more than about 2 cases. If by 'reliably' you mean, it doesn't always produce chase scenes when the GM wants them, I fully agree. I can't force a chase scene to happen without taking away player agency, but I can create situations where chase scenes are likely to occur and then often do occur. You just set up situations like, "They are getting away with the dingus!", "We are in big trouble now!", "We can't fight them, they're just innocent victims!", or "Don't let him get away!" and you use mechanical resolution processes that support chases. These situations can be naturalistic, sometimes these situations just evolve naturally, and conversely players can usually initiate a chase scene when they want one simply by deciding to chase something that doesn't want to be caught. No GM force is really required. I never really have a preferred resolution, just a resolution I think is more likely than others. Chases are resolved mechanicly using 'Hot Pursuit' style rules when it makes sense, or using standard process resolution when that makes more sense.
Examples:
a) DM initiated (in as much as I'd expected running away): "There is a tsunami!" Players: "We run!" I should note that I had plans for handling 6 other player courses of action other than running through.
b) DM initiated: "The townsfolk have been mindcontrolled. They are all coming for you!" Players: "We run, using non-lethal force when necessary!"
c) Player initiated (in as much as I hadn't planned for it, but was prepared for it): "We can't let them get away with the dingus! Let's head them off at the pass!"
d) DM initiated: "We can't let her get away!" (this was a chase of a sorcerer with signficant movement related ability through a multistory foundry complex. She didn't get away.)
e) DM initiated: "We can't let him get away!" (adapted from the harbor chase in "Mad God's Key")
f) Player initiated: We're in big trouble now! (split party, got in over there head and tried to shake pursuit by fleeing over the roof tops)
g) Player initiated: We're in big trouble now! (split party, again)
There might have been a couple of minor ones that only lasted a few rounds that I forget about. Plus there was a 'chase' in sailing vessels, but that was more like 'tailing' rather than chasing in that the goal was less to catch the target than find out where it was going without alerting them that they were being followed. (The player's were pretending to be simple fishermen out for a pleasure cruise in eel infested waters, as it were.)
There, that's a meaningful definition. And once you remove the weasel wording, then it no longer is subjective about whether you are removing player agency. And once it is no longer subjective, the question becomes, "Why do you want to remove player agency?"
Again, this is a much clearer and meaningful definition. Now we can talk about Force without arguing over whether something is or isn't force. We can instead look at light versus heavy force techniques, and why heavy application of force might obviously be considered railroading.
Again, let's not talk about motive. There can be lots of motives good or bad for applying GM force. Let's have a clean definition, and then we can argue over something more interesting than what is railroading.
Now, the other two are more interesting. It would take an essay for me to describe what I think is wrong with the hidden assumptions in them, but again, let's just say that I think that the Forge people have been mistaken on several concepts write from the start.
Strawman. I never argued that the math on agency meant that if players lost a bit of agency, then they had none. The big problem with trying to quantify agency is that there isn't a clear way of measuring how much agency a person has. I can say though that if we are going to measure things your characters never had at any time in the outline of your narrative more than about 25% agency. I believe you outline a game with minimal agency as an accepted aspect of play. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, but don't pretend that what you are doing in the broad arc and within the scenes isn't "GM has prepared a rising conflict/climax and maneuvers or otherwise determines that character activity inexorably leads to this scenario"
So, who is doing funny math now? By your argument, so long as I don't impinge on the very narrow thing you call thematic content - which the player is mechanically limited in defining - whatever you do amounts to leaving the player with 100% agency? You've give a player a very narrow defendable peice of turf, and forced the player by social contract to agree he has little or no agency over everything else. Instead of having a social contract that says, "Your character is your own.", you are forcing the character to define very small aspects of his character as his own and to give up control of everything else.
Yes, I see that. But let's remove the weasel words. Anything resembling regular application of GM force on the player character while framing, or which encroaches on the player's automony in their decisions and mechanical resolution of those decisions is very agency adverse. As a player I stridently agree with this interpretation, and as a DM I try to avoid it as much as possible at my table. As with my discussion of railroading, as a player I might be someone understanding of a need to frame the games kickoff in a way that impinges on player agency, but after that? Not so much. Heavy GM force applied to player agency is not necesary to kick off conflict resolution or thematicly relevant storylines. You've got plenty of power as it is to control the setting and the backstory of the setting in such ways that it leads toward heightening the conflict in a natural manner. It's not like the real world avoids heavy conflict despite at least superficially appearing to contain free-willed beings with a rather high degree of agency.
As for your unorthodox technique, it's desirability is a matter of opinion, but given the constraints on your game as you've presented them that narrative authority that in your own words you are "allowing" them is IMO about the only real player agency that they have.
That is patently ridiculous. Whether or not the DM introduces an unlikely or coincidental event to the setting has nothing to do with process-simulation and adherence to methodical task resolution. Those things are about you respond to events in the setting whether coincidental or not. If the GM decides, "A major earthquake is going to occur on the 14th of August", he hasn't invalidated the approach. He's excercising his rights as a DM over setting (and setting backstory). That decision is no more a violation of process-simulation than saying that there exists in a certain mountain an abandoned dwarven mine that is overrun with goblins, or that there is a certain unlooted tomb containing fabulous treasures. The presence of the earthquake may even be said to be naturalistic, if the area is known to be prone to earthquakes. (For example, a modern game set in LA or Toyko). It's ridiculous to claim that the simulation must go down to the molecular level before determining whether something will happen, but even if it did it wouldn't prevent such things from happening because GM is perfectly within his rights to encode this event occuring back into the structure of the universe to any degree. It's just a waste to provide more than a first order degree of reasonableness to it.
It's worth noting that neither of these make particularly good stories from the perspective of those within them.
So you are trying to use this as a justification for introducing 'You are hit by a low flying airplane' or 'swallowed up by the earth and never seen again' to your failure table for mundane tasks? Could you just step back a second and view that perspective from the outside, and then tell me again about how much player agency you are willing to allow your players?
Which is just false. You have to use more subtle techniques than simply forcing things to happen, and it involves actually building a solid hook, but it can be done. Typically DMs get frustrated though by player agency, because they offer weak hooks and the players find an easier solution to the problem. Take your example of 'The player indicated a desire for a chase scene.' I believe we've so far managed at least 8 chase scenes in 50 games without me really trying hard in more than about 2 cases. If by 'reliably' you mean, it doesn't always produce chase scenes when the GM wants them, I fully agree. I can't force a chase scene to happen without taking away player agency, but I can create situations where chase scenes are likely to occur and then often do occur. You just set up situations like, "They are getting away with the dingus!", "We are in big trouble now!", "We can't fight them, they're just innocent victims!", or "Don't let him get away!" and you use mechanical resolution processes that support chases. These situations can be naturalistic, sometimes these situations just evolve naturally, and conversely players can usually initiate a chase scene when they want one simply by deciding to chase something that doesn't want to be caught. No GM force is really required. I never really have a preferred resolution, just a resolution I think is more likely than others. Chases are resolved mechanicly using 'Hot Pursuit' style rules when it makes sense, or using standard process resolution when that makes more sense.
Examples:
a) DM initiated (in as much as I'd expected running away): "There is a tsunami!" Players: "We run!" I should note that I had plans for handling 6 other player courses of action other than running through.
b) DM initiated: "The townsfolk have been mindcontrolled. They are all coming for you!" Players: "We run, using non-lethal force when necessary!"
c) Player initiated (in as much as I hadn't planned for it, but was prepared for it): "We can't let them get away with the dingus! Let's head them off at the pass!"
d) DM initiated: "We can't let her get away!" (this was a chase of a sorcerer with signficant movement related ability through a multistory foundry complex. She didn't get away.)
e) DM initiated: "We can't let him get away!" (adapted from the harbor chase in "Mad God's Key")
f) Player initiated: We're in big trouble now! (split party, got in over there head and tried to shake pursuit by fleeing over the roof tops)
g) Player initiated: We're in big trouble now! (split party, again)
There might have been a couple of minor ones that only lasted a few rounds that I forget about. Plus there was a 'chase' in sailing vessels, but that was more like 'tailing' rather than chasing in that the goal was less to catch the target than find out where it was going without alerting them that they were being followed. (The player's were pretending to be simple fishermen out for a pleasure cruise in eel infested waters, as it were.)
