What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], what you say in reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] about player agency and the addressing of dramatic needs is good stuff.

In terms of finality of resolution, I look at it much like action movies

<snip>

In terms of quest to become King, the PC would maybe undermine his rivals, and each one so disposed of would no longer represent a threat. They wouldn't pop back up and suddenly be in contention again. The NPC might still play another part in the action, but only as a defeated rival. There wouldn't be some unrevealed backstory that subverted or reversed finalized actions. If such an NPC DID become a rival again it would be as a consequence of specific events which happened within the continuing narrative based on further actions and checks made by the PC/player. It would be EXPLICIT, although it is perfectly fine if the narrative explains it in terms of factors the PC didn't know about at the time.

An actual play example: in my BW game, two of the PCs drugged Halika to stop her going to Jabal's tower to assassinate Joachim, the demon-possessed brother. Those PCs then tried, themselves, to get to Jabal's tower, and for some reason decided to sneak via the catacombs. As a result they got lost in the catacombs, and so Halika woke from her stupor and was able to beat them to the tower.

In mechanical terms, the consequence of the failed check to navigate through the catacombs was that Halika was now able to race them to the tower. The race was resolved as opposed Speed checks. Halika won, and decapitated Joachim.

I think genre, and tone, do a LOT of work here. If we're playing a game of Noire detective stories then there's likely to be a Moll, a Damsel in Distress, a Hardbitten but Romantic PI, some bad guys, a fairly direct-seeming surface plot linking them together, and usually a nasty plot-twist somewhere along the way. There are likely to be subthemes of romanticism, betrayal, 'life is cheap', a sort of cynical world where people do things for selfish reasons, etc.

So, a GM running this game would have access for scene framing to an urban landscape, characters such as cops, detectives, thugs, probably various women who play the parts of romantic interest and/or victim (and/or betrayer) etc. They will appear in the various scenes as needed, probably starting with the classic "PI in his office having a drink while contemplating his eviction notice when a damsel walks in" or something along those lines. The exact details would depend on who the characters are, and how they're described. The choices would be fairly limited in this genre though, as its a pretty niche one.

I wouldn't think there would be a HUGE benefit to inventing endless details about 'the city'.

Another couple of actual play examples:

In my BW game, Hardby plays the same role as "the city" would in your Noir game. It has docks, it has catacombs, it has a sorcerous cabal, it has taverns (both rich ones and dives), it has a cathedral, it has bazaars, etc. These come to life as needed in play.

In my Traveller game, the PCs spent a couple of sessions on Byron, a world with no fluids, a corrosive atmosphere, and a domed city - Byron - with a tech level unable to sustain itself and a high law level. This world needed - and play delivered up - officials, police and security forces, the dome (obviously), medics (as it turned out, given there is a bioweapons conspiracy), a tavern ("The Offworlder") where the PCs could recruit a grizzled ATV driver, etc.

I just don't feel this conjectured "lack of depth" in my games.

 

[pemerton]

as far as I can tell, that specific belief was secondary to the more general belief about the brother. It doesn't even make sense by itself. So I would call it 'subsidiary'. If you think about it, this specific belief "I will get something to help my brother before leaving the town" is more about a statement of determination, of an URGENT desire vs the overall "I will save my brother" belief being potentially more long-range. Failure to achieve the immediate goal doesn't invalidate the long-range goal, and its easy to imagine that the character would prioritize the longer-range goal over the shorter (though this might be subject to how the player wants to portray his character, maybe he's so impulsive and fixated on immediate goals that he WOULD damage his own chances for a quick fix).

There is quite a bit of advice in BW books on how to write effective Beliefs. One bit of advice is - have a goal-oriented Belief that you might achieve in a session or so, so you can earn Persona from closing off that Belief. The Belief about finding a useful item was an instance of this.

they enter into a debate in which the 3 choices are discussed.

<snip>

The debate itself might be handled as a challenge in which different options can be elicited, thus producing the pass as a best choice.

In BW this would be a Duel of Wits (and there have been PvP DoW in my BW game).

In Traveller, a couple of times I've made the players dice against one another to reach a decision when the debate has been going on too long (with modest bonuses for the side with the Leader skill and the side with the Baron).

In my 4e game I once made the players dice against one another when debate about what to do had gone on interminably.

In my Cortex+ Fantasy Hack game yesterday, the PCs had split into two groups: the skinchanger was leading rescued villagers to safety in the south, while the other three PC were heading north (on the original quest) following a vision that the god-touched berserker had had (in mechanical terms, the player spent a "plot point" to create a Religious Expert resource). The scene included as distinctions Frightened Villagers and The Giants are Almost Upon Us (following on from the previous seen which had Giants Not Far Behind?; which in turn followed on from the PCs rescuing the villagers from the giants). The skinchanger eliminated the Frightened Villager distinction (in the fiction, by turning into a werewolf and bullying the villagers into some sort of discipline), whie the other group eleminated The Giants are Almost Upon Us. The berserker did this, in the fiction by leading the group on a hard run through the hills while avoiding the giants. In the fiction, this made it clear that there was no one between the giants and the group heading south, and so I spent a die from the Doom Pool to introduce a mob of giants attacking the skinchanger.

The northern group included a seer, who has Oracular Senses as well as Sorcery Supremacy, and it was not contentious that he had a sense of the giant attack taking place to the south. The players then discussed how to respond - try and teleport the skinchanger back to the northern group to save him (and thus sacrificing the villagers), or maybe teleport south themselves along a ley line. The berserker has a milestone which gives him XP for getting in an argument, and so his player was up for one, especially as it was the berserker who had had the vision to head north and who had led them around the giants. So the seer urged him to agree to come south through a teleporting mist summoned on a ley line (mechanically, inflicting a small amount of mental stress) before then conjuring the mist that the warriors stepped through (mechanically, he was able to inflict a Confused by the Mists complication on the giants as well as grant a Out of the Mists asset to the PC swordthane).

The fact that, in the story, we know the protagonists agreed after debate to take path X rather than path Y, doesn't tell us anything about how this result was achieved in play.

 

[Maxperson]

This is the basis for my comparison to "choose your own adventure" (which @Maxperson objects to).

Establishing what to do from a list of options provided by the GM is modest agency.

I still object to it, because (1) he didn't say it was of no interest only to him, and (2) even if it is only him that made that decision, that's a DM thing, not part of the playstyle. The players could indeed try to take down the Baron in my game, and in the games of others I have played under who use the playstyle.

Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, I can only assume that you mean: there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.

You are assuming, and you shouldn't. You are continually wrong about the playstyle when you do so. The playstyle is not now, nor has it ever been, choose your own adventure. Even if some DMs play it badly, and I'm not convinced @Lanefan does.

Edit:

When the feather turned out to be cursed, and hence not so useful for confronting the balrog-possessed brother, the game proceeded. When the balrog-possessed brother was decapitated in front of the mage PC - hence putting an end to his attempts to redeem his brother - the game proceeded. The player wrote new Beliefs for his PC - at the moment, they are:

I'm curious about this. Does a player have to wait for the conclusion of his list before choosing more beliefs, or can he choose new ones in the middle? If that PC had encountered a particularly nasty cleric while trying to free his brother, could he have added, "I will send the foul cleric of Bane to his master." as a new belief?

 

[pemerton]

But in your example there was no finality of resolution. You told me that failure meant the feather was cursed, and that even if he succeeded, he still needed to get the feather enchanted and more. If if the player's roll had succeeded in your example, there wouldn't have been any final resolution.

There is finality. Success is success: the PC acquires an item useful for confronting his brother. Failure is failure: the item is cursed.

The GM is not at liberty to upend or undo these outcomes by manipulating as-yet unrevealed backstory. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] outlined this in more detail upthread (in discussion of the example of "becoming a king"), and I posted an actual play illustration of the point: when Halika was drugged by the other PCs, the resultant success - Halika can't beat us to the tower - was secured until they affirmatively took an action that put it into jeopardy (by trying to sneak through the catacombs).

I don't remember seeing his example, but in your description here, the player didn't go backwards. The goal was civic order and the charm would seem(hard to tell without the original example) to have achieved or helped move that forward. The duke as an enemy would a new, but separate issue

In [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example there is a disturbance, and the PC charms a participant in that (a "harlot"), and then it turns out - due to a whole lot of GM authored and manipulated backstory - that the NPC is a spy who, being charmed, fails to carry out her mission, allowing an attack upon the duke, which then leads to the duke arresting the PCs for having facilitated said attack upon him. This is not a case of finality in resolution - the stakes of the check are not remotely clear to the players, and their success has no significance for what actually unfolds in play.

First, with your example (1), outside of the very first moment of a campaign, you would be railroading the player if you did that.

I was talking about the opening scene of a campaign, and provided a concrete example from actual play. I thought you were talking about the same thing. if you weren't, then tell me what you were talking about and how it bears upon what I was talking about.

Second, with option 2, there will usually be more to it than "you're in the town. What do you do?" Were that my game and I knew the player was going into the town to try and find an item to free his brother, I would address that in my question. It would more likely be "You walk through the gates of Waterdeep to find something that will help you free your brother. This place is well known for having just about everything somewhere, so it's seems certain that you can succeed."

<snip>

I am allowing him more player agency by not forcing him into the bazaar. He can try to seek the bazaar, a wizard, a sage, looking for a merchant guild, look for an old merchant buddy(depending on circumstances) that might have a contact, and many more options. HE gets to decide how best to try and further his goal.

First, I don't see how what you describe is significantly different from what I said - "You're in town - what do you do?" All you've done is add a bit of colour - there was colour in my description of the bazaar too, but the colour doesn't change the basic choice structure of the moment of play.

As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?

But furthermore, what does "best method" mean? What makes one method better than another? If you're running D&D, there is no "contact" rule system for finding an old merchant buddy. Are you talking about Streetwise checks? What makes those "better" than investigating the feather in the bazaar? It is completely opaque to me how you are framing and running these situations, how you are setting DCs, what information the player has about those DCs, what moves the player is able to make to affect DCs, and when the game actually gets to the crunch point of whether or not the PC finds a useful item.

How do I establish if a shop or whatever has a useful item? Generally with a roll of some sort.

<snip>

I determine the chances or DC, depending on the type of roll, and I leave it to chance.

This is consistent with my characterisation in the post to which you replied. But I don't see how it is a source of player agency that the question of whether or not they actually get to engage their player goal - in this case, finding a useful item - is dependent upon the GM making a (presumably secret) die roll.

As for what counts as a useful item, I don't really understand that question. Useful is useful. If an item is useful, it will count as a useful item.

Well, in my game the PC's goal, as established by the player, was to find an item which would be useful in confronting his balrog-possessed brother. My question is, how do you decide what counts as a useful item? When you're making your die roll to determine if a curio shop has a useful item for sale, what item are you rolling for?

In my case, the player will declare what sort of property he hopes to detect in the feather. As well as establishing immediate details about the fiction, it also contributes to the table's shared understanding of what is involved in confronting a balrog.

In my style, the players have more agency to affect their goals. They determine which way to pursue things and they do change the fiction in meaningful ways. It's just not an instant gratification process. It may take 5 scenes to complete the change in fiction that they are initiating. It's often slower(and often not), but allows them greater agency over the fiction by giving them far more options in how they go about enacting that change.

I don't understand what contrast you think you're drawing. This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the players have more agency because the GM tells them about an intersection, or about a slave being beaten. It's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.

If the players expressed goal is finding a useful item, and half an hour of play is spent getting to the pont where that goal is actually in issue, with that half hour essentially the player eliciting information from the GM ("Does anyone know whether there's a curiou shop in town? OK, can someone tell me where it is? Is it open? Does it have anything interesting for sale?"), I am not seeing where the player agency resides.

So in your style of game the players just pop around from place to place only ever doing something relevant to the story? There's never any interaction where the fiction won't change? That's very railroady.

This is contradictory. If, at every interaction, the fiction might change (ie there's never any interaction where the fiction won't change) then what is the railroad?

I also don't know what you mean by "the story". And how you are judging relevance to the story.

In any event, whether travelling from A to B requires a check depends upon whether or not anything is at stake. If it is not, then I say "yes". When the PCs in my Traveller game travelled to and from their landing ship to the market in Enlil, that was narrated in less than a minute. When the PCs in my Marvel Heroic game flew in the Stark private jet from Washington DC to Tokyo, that was narrated in less than a minute. When those same PCs wanted to sneak into the basement of the Latverian embassy in Washington, they had to establish an asset to unlock that possibility in the fiction (namely, acquire plans from the a department of planning and urban infrastructure).

This is some new definition of railroading, though, when it's railroading to say to players who declare "Right, we get into the jet and fly to Tokyo so we can break into the Clan Yashida headquarters" to respond "OK, you arrive and are standing in the streets of Tokyo outside the Yashida skyscraper. How are you going to get inside."!!

I've said more than once that to the PC, there is no difference between coming from notes and authored on the spot.

The PC is purely imaginary. I'm talking about the experience of the player.

Writing down that the innkeeper's name is Darmak and that he's a half-orc fighter with one arm is no different that coming up with it on the spot as far as the players are concerned.

This same claim has been made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. It's only true under the assumption that the GM is responsible for all content introduction into the fiction. As soon as you drop that assumption, the claim is not true at all.

For instance - if the reason the GM is talking about wolves is because one of the PCs has an ability to summon and control wolves, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about Jabal is because a player has declared a Circles check, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about the Raven Queen, or Orcus, is because a player has just declared that his Raven Queen devotee prays for guidance, it makes a difference.

The basic action of RPGing is conversation. If the conversation takes the form of the players saying to the GM "Tell me stuff", and then the GM replies, it is true that it makes little difference whether the reply is pre-scripted or not. But as soon as the players engage the fiction in some more proactive style - be that "I'm a devotee of the Raven Queen - are the forces of Orcus opposing me here?", or "We go to the market on Enlil to look for alien artefacts - what do we find?", or "While he goes south with the villagers, we're going to make a hard run through the hills to avoid the giants - what happens?" - then the difference between pre-sripted answers and genuine answers is huge.

And I say genuine answers deliberately: because in a game with robust resolution mechanics, we don't get answers to the players' questions until those mechanics are applied, and the application of the mechanics could mean that things go either way.

 

[pemerton]

I still object to it, because (1) he didn't say it was of no interest only to him, and (2) even if it is only him that made that decision, that's a DM thing, not part of the playstyle. The players could indeed try to take down the Baron in my game, and in the games of others I have played under who use the playstyle.


You are assuming, and you shouldn't. You are continually wrong about the playstyle when you do so. The playstyle is not now, nor has it ever been, choose your own adventure. Even if some DMs play it badly, and I'm not convinced @Lanefan does.

I'm not assuming. I'm doing my best to make sense of what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.

His example of the baron is one where the baron only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg a distressed peasant tells the PCs) that the baron is corrupt.

Freeing the slaves only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg the PCs see a slave being beaten) that slavery is a social problem in this part of the world.

Etc, etc.

The fact that the GM tells the players under the guise of a NPC telling a PC, or using the narrator's voice to tell the players what their PCs see, doesn't change the fact that it is the GM telling the players.

The fact that the menu is implicit - ie is generated by these moments of narration by the GM - doesn't change the fact that it's a menu.

In Lanefan's game, as in yours, the PCs can oppose the baron, or free the slaves, or whatever. The point is that the whole field of action is established by the GM, and the players simply make moves within it. They gather information (ie get the GM to tell them stuff) and choose what parts of the gameworld to engage (ie choose from the list provided, implicitly, by the GM).

My point is that this is rather modest agency over the content of the shared fiction.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't really know what you mean by this. I know that there are games where players can spend resources to mitigate conseequences - eg 4e has a version of these in some combat-relevant interrupts; and at our table we allow action point-fuelled retries or interrupt-speed augments in skill challenge resolution. But I didn't refer to any such system above.

Blind declarations in Fight! are not "after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequnces". Nor are any of the action declarations I described in relation to Cortex+.

The HeroWars and HeroQuest revised systems I described are not "after the fact" mitigations - they are bidding (ie blind declarations).

"Giving" in Dogs in the Vineyard is not blind - and it eliminates fallout but doesn't stop the fictional consequences at all - it's a trade off of yielding the fiction to preserve the character.

So as I said, I don't really know what you're talking about here.

...

Here's what happened:

1. I posted about post-hoc resolution mechanics as not addressing the agency of players to declare actions to mitigate risk prior to events.

2. You cliped my post to remove this argument, and presented post-hoc resolution mechanics as risk mitigation. You ALSO began a discussion of the Fight! mechanics in BW to respond to my separate points on tactical decision points.

3. I pointed out that you clipped the relevant portion of my first post in regards to post-hoc mitigation mechanics and how it was amusing that you would present post-hoc mitigation mechanics as a solution while intentionally ignoring my explicit comments about them.

3a. I ALSO responded to your separate comments on the Fight! mechanics.

4. You now claim confusion because my complaint about your clipping out portions of my post doesn't address your post about the Fight! mechanics, which is unrelated and temporally impossible.

Okay, that really looks good on you. Go with that.

Melee in BW is not a bad choice. Nor a good choice. It's a choice.

Let's look at this:
1. Fight! is unpredicatable and has a reasonable likelihood to result in wounding or death.
2. BW recovery mechanics for wounds are very long and punishing
3. therefore, entering into Fight! where even skilled combatants against weak foes still have a non-ignorable chance of losing weeks of in-game time to recovering means, generally, getting into combat is a bad idea. This system disincentivizes combat much more than the normal for RPGs.

It's not true that "even a simple combat in BW has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead". Most PCs will have a Mortal Wound around 9 to 11. This will require a Superb hit, or a Mark with a decent weapon. A Superb hit requires 5 successes. A Mark requires 3 successes, and it's not like you won't notice the opponent is wielding a dangerous weapon.

I would generally assume that if you're getting into combat that your opponents have dangerous weapons. This is a given, and I'm confused as to why you'd point it out.

The system is no more brutal than (say) RQ, RM or low level D&D. In fact it's lest brutal than RQ, RM or 1st level classic D&D.

1st level classic D&D disincentivizes combat as well. You pointed this out in an early post how play revolves around scouting and careful exploration because combat is so deadly. This doesn't go anywhere towards not showing BW combat isn't deadly. And in D&D, higher level combats are less deadly, but BW combat retains much of it's deadliness even through character advances as a design goal.

My BW PC has the following four Beliefs and three Instincts:

The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory.

I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory.

Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!

Aramina will need my protection.

When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle.

If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself.

When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning.​

So it's not a bad choice for me to fight to protect Aramina, to purue glory, or to interpose myself - even violently - to protect innocents.

Sorry, but are you actually saying that because you've built a character that wants to fight that this changes how the mechanics work and are built and makes combat a good choice? Or that because you've chosen it, the choice can't be a bad one? Really.

 

[pemerton]

I'm curious about this. Does a player have to wait for the conclusion of his list before choosing more beliefs, or can he choose new ones in the middle? If that PC had encountered a particularly nasty cleric while trying to free his brother, could he have added, "I will send the foul cleric of Bane to his master." as a new belief?

In Burning Wheel a player is free to change any/all PC Beliefs at any time (unless the Belief is an additional Belief resulting from a particular build element which introduces constraints; and some Belief changes can have knock on effects - eg you lost the Faithful trait if you don't have at least one Belief that expresses your faith).

The GM is entitled to veto a change, however, if (i) s/he takes the view it's an attempt to squib in the face of a challenge to the existing Belief, or (ii) s/he is about to frame a challenge to the existing Belief.

The nearest thing to Beliefs in Cortex+ Heroic is a PC's milestones. Here is a sample milestone, which illustrates their general structure:

WORDS, NOT DEEDS

1 XP when you begin an action scene with a non-attack action
3 XP when you inflict emotional stress or take mental stress via an argument
10 XP when you either foreswear conversation as useless or when you foreswear the initiation of violence​

You can trigger the 1 XP no more than once per action; the 3 XP no more than once per scene; and the 10 XP only once, which then closes out the milestone and requires the PC to take on a new milestone. You can't change milestones otherwise.

The PC with the above milestone took it on after closing out this one:

DEEDS, NOT WORDS

1 XP when you act on impulse.
3 XP when you admit to an ally that your lack of self-control scares you.
10 XP when you learn to control your impulses, or when impulsive action causes you to be stressed out.​

Coming up with effective (and moderately balanced) milestones is an important part of PC build in this system. I treat it as a negotiation between GM and player.

 

[Lanefan]

When the feather turned out to be cursed, and hence not so useful for confronting the balrog-possessed brother, the game proceeded. When the balrog-possessed brother was decapitated in front of the mage PC - hence putting an end to his attempts to redeem his brother - the game proceeded. The player wrote new Beliefs for his PC

So Beliefs are amendable - that's good to know.

Is it kosher to change them before finality - say for example could the guy have decided, after following this path for a while, that his brother was beyond hope and changed his Belief about redeeming his brother at some point before seeing brother lose his head?

EDIT: I see you already answered this, and that he (most of the time) could - again, good to know.

If there is nothing left for the character to do in dramatic terms - either success or failure is total - then the campaign is over. (As Eero Tuovinen describes in his account of the "standard narrativistic model".)

Bleah.

A campaign is always bigger than any character in it; and when one story ends another begins...if it hasn't already.

Keep in mind I come from a background of frequent character turnover, be it from death, retirement, player turnover, or whatever. But the campaign goes on.

Establishing what to do from a list of options provided by the GM is modest agency.

So you keep saying. I disagree with the 'modest' qualifier.

Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, I can only assume that you mean: there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.

The conception I'm working with is choice = agency. "You're in town - what do you do?" gives the player a nigh-endless amount of choice. "You're at a bazaar, there's a pedlar selling feathers - what do you do?" takes away all the possible choices and options (and yes, distractons) between starting in town and finding the pedlar...if the PC ever finds the pedlar at all.

 

[Lanefan]

There is finality. Success is success: the PC acquires an item useful for confronting his brother. Failure is failure: the item is cursed.

In that one scene, yes. But it's only a stepping-stone on the road to the overall success-failure finality of redeeming the brother - I think you two are looking at different scales here.

As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?

Yes, but why would they when you-as-DM have given them a hammer-upside-the-head clue that what they seek is in the bazaar - probably from the feather merchant - by framing them there?

But furthermore, what does "best method" mean? What makes one method better than another? If you're running D&D, there is no "contact" rule system for finding an old merchant buddy. Are you talking about Streetwise checks? What makes those "better" than investigating the feather in the bazaar? It is completely opaque to me how you are framing and running these situations, how you are setting DCs, what information the player has about those DCs, what moves the player is able to make to affect DCs, and when the game actually gets to the crunch point of whether or not the PC finds a useful item.

Why involve hard mechanics at all? Streetwise, DCs, etc. - don't use unless absolutely necessary! Let the player tell you what the PC does, then narrate what comes of it based on what you know about 9or have just made up about!) the city.

I'll quite often use what I call "soft mechanics", where I'll get a roll and use it as a general barometer of success - roll really well and you're good, roll really badly and you're screwed, but roll something in between and I'll scale the narration to the roll - a middling roll of 14 might get you further than a middling roll of 7 - but there's almost never a hard number binarily (is that a word?) dividing success and failure.

This is consistent with my characterisation in the post to which you replied. But I don't see how it is a source of player agency that the question of whether or not they actually get to engage their player goal - in this case, finding a useful item - is dependent upon the GM making a (presumably secret) die roll.

I'd like to think that the player isn't so selfish as to only care about the goals on his PC's character sheet, and is willing to engage in the goals of other players/PCs and with the game world at large.

I've had selfish players like that in the past. They don't play in my games any more.

I don't understand what contrast you think you're drawing. This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the players have more agency because the GM tells them about an intersection, or about a slave being beaten. It's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.

Sure it is, as it provides choice the players/PCs would not otherwise have had.

This is contradictory. If, at every interaction, the fiction might change (ie there's never any interaction where the fiction won't change) then what is the railroad?

The railroad occurs when you skip a series of possible interactions (e.g. intersections, slaves being beaten, etc.) to get to the "action" one. The fiction doesn't get the chance to be changed away from the action scene you've already decided comes next.

This same claim has been made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. It's only true under the assumption that the GM is responsible for all content introduction into the fiction. As soon as you drop that assumption, the claim is not true at all.

For instance - if the reason the GM is talking about wolves is because one of the PCs has an ability to summon and control wolves, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about Jabal is because a player has declared a Circles check, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about the Raven Queen, or Orcus, is because a player has just declared that his Raven Queen devotee prays for guidance, it makes a difference.

So the DM isn't allowed to introduce hooks, or distractions, or seemingly-superfluous information?

The basic action of RPGing is conversation. If the conversation takes the form of the players saying to the GM "Tell me stuff", and then the GM replies, it is true that it makes little difference whether the reply is pre-scripted or not. But as soon as the players engage the fiction in some more proactive style - be that "I'm a devotee of the Raven Queen - are the forces of Orcus opposing me here?", or "We go to the market on Enlil to look for alien artefacts - what do we find?", or "While he goes south with the villagers, we're going to make a hard run through the hills to avoid the giants - what happens?" - then the difference between pre-sripted answers and genuine answers is huge.

And I say genuine answers deliberately: because in a game with robust resolution mechanics, we don't get answers to the players' questions until those mechanics are applied, and the application of the mechanics could mean that things go either way.

Letting the mechanics tell the story for you is one way to go about it, I suppose, but hardly my preference.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not assuming. I'm doing my best to make sense of what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.

His example of the baron is one where the baron only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg a distressed peasant tells the PCs) that the baron is corrupt.

Freeing the slaves only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg the PCs see a slave being beaten) that slavery is a social problem in this part of the world.

Etc, etc.

The fact that the GM tells the players under the guise of a NPC telling a PC, or using the narrator's voice to tell the players what their PCs see, doesn't change the fact that it is the GM telling the players.

Yes, if for no other reason than to inform the players/PCs that there's more to the game world than just themselves and their own angst and drama.

In Lanefan's game, as in yours, the PCs can oppose the baron, or free the slaves, or whatever. The point is that the whole field of action is established by the GM, and the players simply make moves within it. They gather information (ie get the GM to tell them stuff) and choose what parts of the gameworld to engage (ie choose from the list provided, implicitly, by the GM).

But they never get to make those choices if they aren't even told they exist; and this is my point - the game world is bigger than the PCs and has more going on in it than the PCs' own drama, and as the PCs in theory would notice this it's incumbent on the DM to narrate it. And the very act of narrating it provides the players/PCs a choice as to whether or not to interact with it, even if it means putting their own drama aside for a while.