What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am just commenting on what I saw. But I said from the start, this is a very common tactic. I think the reason Pemerton gets it so much is because he is effective at it (and posts a lot). But I laid out three points for avoiding this kind of thing (i.e. use descriptive definitions, Don't equivocate, etc)

Yeah, again, you were not there in the earlier part of the thread where this whole 'agency debate' started. Pemerton explained himself pretty cogently, and then Maxperson basically took this "well, I don't like that you have this 'agency' thing in your game, I'm going to claim it as mine too!" and all of a sudden he's got his own 'definition'.

Its not even a good definition, what is it a definition of? Basically when Max claims he's got "just as much agency" in his game, he's defining agency as PLAYING AN RPG AT ALL! Its a meaningless definition! It adds nothing to the analysis at hand, so why even make this point except for rhetorical purposes? And then to accuse PEMERTON of being the one who's got a mean on simply because he actually usefully described a characteristic of his game and Max had to... I won't go down the path of characterizing Max, but lets put it this way, it wasn't useful or helpful to the discussion.

Now, sometimes we all do this, we see something someone says and it just bugs us and we try to come up with some counterargument, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. Max's didn't really work. Yet 100 pages on it lives on as a bloody flag that keeps getting waved! lol.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, again, you were not there in the earlier part of the thread where this whole 'agency debate' started. Pemerton explained himself pretty cogently, and then Maxperson basically took this "well, I don't like that you have this 'agency' thing in your game, I'm going to claim it as mine too!" and all of a sudden he's got his own 'definition'.

Its not even a good definition, what is it a definition of? Basically when Max claims he's got "just as much agency" in his game, he's defining agency as PLAYING AN RPG AT ALL! Its a meaningless definition! It adds nothing to the analysis at hand, so why even make this point except for rhetorical purposes? And then to accuse PEMERTON of being the one who's got a mean on simply because he actually usefully described a characteristic of his game and Max had to... I won't go down the path of characterizing Max, but lets put it this way, it wasn't useful or helpful to the discussion.

Now, sometimes we all do this, we see something someone says and it just bugs us and we try to come up with some counterargument, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. Max's didn't really work. Yet 100 pages on it lives on as a bloody flag that keeps getting waved! lol.

I don't know what occurred in the thread, and again, no interest in delving into a 200+ page thread. Nor am I interested in taking anyone's word on what happened (whether it is you Max or Pemerton). But I will say, even if he did define it well, I have seen most people use it to mean something other than what he seems to be saying. I can see how an argument around what agency means would develop.

I don't think your accurately describing Max's definition though. He offers a definition, I offer a definition (of how we see it used). I thought my definition was perfectly workable. It may not be how Pemerton plays or uses the term, and that is fine, but it isn't just me describing any amount of roleplaying. For us agency is about letting the players explore freely. For us it doesn't mean the setting has to respond to their wishes though. For us it is a session without railroads or similar constraints, where the GM reasonably considers any action we take or any direction we go, and will respond in a way that is sensible and probably exciting. You guys seem to think that is isn't real freedom for some reason (at least that is the impression I am getting). Gaming is pretty balkanized so people come into discussions using the same terms differently. And it isn't like I haven' been in these conversations before. There is a clique here that uses a lot of GNS terminology. But that terminology isn't widely embraced and even when it is, it often has taken on drastically different meaning from how it was used at the forge and places like it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You know one of the things that I find strange about @pemerton's claims about his specific type of player agency and his playstyle is that while it isn't decided by secret backstory... player agency is still decided by the GM.

If on a successful check the fiction the player desires is realized (example: there is a secret door) and on a failed check the fiction the player desires is not realized (example: There is no secret door)... who sets the standard for success around the said action (and thus the realization or non-realization of the player's desired fiction? Doesn't whoever decides this in turn limit or even control player agency. Unless we are talking about a game that has objectively defined criteria to meet for every action then the GM does in fact have power to limit and even negate (impossible DC's) player agency. Am I missing something here or is it specifically negation through secret backstory as opposed to say negation through setting of DC's or modifiers that counts? Because I see both as limiters of player agency.

Well, many narrative focus games determine difficulty more by dramatic salience, or set it at milieu determined values. 4e for example, DCs are mostly determined by the level of the environment the PCs are in, and that is usually assumed to be roughly at the level of the party, unless the players deliberately venture into deeper waters or paddle around in the shallow end of things. PACE provides the GM with a specific budget from which to generate difficulty levels, effectively. There is also a slush fund in that game to allow for 'raises'. Players likewise have a budget of points to spend on increased chances of success, the GM has no specific say in how hard tasks are as a general principle.

I believe similar mechanics are in effect in other games. Cortex+ Heroic has specific budgets for instance, and a Doom Pool.

Clearly GMs have some sort of input into difficulty in a general sense, they usually present options that are more or less difficult. Usually in narrativist play the players decide what stakes to wager, with greater rewards requiring greater risks.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Now, sometimes we all do this, we see something someone says and it just bugs us and we try to come up with some counterargument, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. Max's didn't really work. Yet 100 pages on it lives on as a bloody flag that keeps getting waved! lol.

Half of these online gaming discussions we invest so much time in are worthless. A lot of it is people outsmarting each other and scoring points, or winning debates but never really hearing or engaging each other. Usually people get fed up and leave, or they convert because they've been rhetorically beaten into submission. I think what Max is experiencing is something like this, where you've been dogpiled on a thread and feel like you are losing the argument, but you KNOW you are right because you know own experience at the table. I've lost countless of debates with people online about this kind of thing. But I don't let it change my mind, because I've had way too many experiences where I figure out where the flaw in the other person's logic was weeks down the line. In the intensity of an online debate, that is hard to spot sometimes. But at the end of the day, what matters is real table play. Not good sounding arguments.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No I disagree... you say 4e has set DC's that are level appropriate but it's still the DM who decides whether it's a hard/moderate or easy check and thus limits player agency through his determination of which of these to use (and in a case where you're actually determining whether things exist I wonder what the process is for determining which to use say in the case of a secret dorr nbeing in a hallway or not) ... all that aside the determination of which DC to use is DM whim.

Not really. The Rules Companion Skill Challenge rules state flat out how many of which types of checks are used in each complexity of challenge, along with how many 'advantages' the players can deploy, and how many setbacks/obstacles the GM can get. Given that the game conceives of all major plot significant events being either an SC or a Combat Encounter I think its actually QUITE explicit. Even in the original SC rules it was still stated that 'most' checks should be moderate difficulty.

I mean, 4e does allow for, and clearly anticipates, the existence of checks OUTSIDE of those used in any encounter, but in MANY cases the DCs for these are pretty fixed (IE if a monster is concealed then its Stealth is a value generated by a known objective process). Likewise rituals, a major use of checks outside encounters, are entirely cut-and-dried. Every ritual specifies the related skill, and the effects of different check results. This is pretty much true for powers as well, either in or out of combat.

Certainly there are ways that GMs can generate more or less difficult check situations, but its not as easy as just setting any old DC. Not if you play by the rules. This is, interestingly, a pretty standard admonishment to narrativist GMs, you have to play by the rules (PbtA is very explicit about this).

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, again, you were not there in the earlier part of the thread where this whole 'agency debate' started. Pemerton explained himself pretty cogently, and then Maxperson basically took this "well, I don't like that you have this 'agency' thing in your game, I'm going to claim it as mine too!" and all of a sudden he's got his own 'definition'.

Wow! The sheer amount of fabrication in this post is astounding.

First, I didn't take "agency." The definition I use is the standard definition. It's the one used by virtually everyone in this thread outside of you, @pemerton, and @darkbard. @pemerton invented a new one whole cloth for this thread. I disputed that it was the definition, but have since given up that fight and he can have his invented definition of agency.

Its not even a good definition, what is it a definition of? Basically when Max claims he's got "just as much agency" in his game, he's defining agency as PLAYING AN RPG AT ALL! Its a meaningless definition! It adds nothing to the analysis at hand, so why even make this point except for rhetorical purposes? And then to accuse PEMERTON of being the one who's got a mean on simply because he actually usefully described a characteristic of his game and Max had to...

ROFL. The fail in that claim is huge. It's a general and useful definition. And no, it isn't defined as playing the game at all. It's defined as having control over your PC's actions, which you can lose while still playing the game. Railroad anyone?

I won't go down the path of characterizing Max, but lets put it this way, it wasn't useful or helpful to the discussion.

No no. Your fiction about what I have been doing in this thread is pretty darn entertaining. I want to hear what you were going to fabricate about my character.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're addressing the specific example and not the general point. Irregardless of why the DM would/could manipulate the DC's... It is still a limiter on player agency because determining the DC is DM whim. Even if you tell the PC's what the DC is it still is determined (and thus their chance of success) by you. Like I said earlier DW is an example of a game where this is truly mitigated but in 4e that's not the case. In the same way secret backstory can limit the agency of players so can subjective DC's. It doesn't have to be a purposeful manipulation... Unless you are being transparent with how you come to choose your DC's, your players are unaware of the conscious and subconscious biases that lead to choosing one DC vs. another. That is a limiter on agency and is an unknown in the same way that secret backstory is unknown.

Much less than you seem to think. I mean, sure, in 4e as written, a GM could present the characters with impossible 200' jumps (DC effectively based on distance) mazes of hazardous terrain, etc. This is not in accord with the encounter design guidelines, and certainly not in accord with the SC mechanics. There IS 'wiggle room' though, to an extent. 4e is only a marginally Story Now SYSTEM though, and GMs using it as such need to keep that in mind. My own 'hack' of 4e is much more rigid in this regard, you really cannot generate arbitrary DCs in HoML. The most you can do is present a situation as being higher level than the party, and thus high stakes.

I do find this discussion interesting though in terms of helping to point out the significance of this feature of narrativist games.

Wait what? Unless the players can now frame their own adversaries, which I haven't seen an example of so far how is this remotely true? @pemerton has chosen the adversaries that his players have faced in the "story" as far as I can tell and a red dragon could easily be framed as opposition to numerous goals. This isn't really making any sense. unless you are now saying that nothing is allowed to be created without the players "ok" in Stoiry Now gaming... is that the case?

It is the players story, in large part, the story of their PCs to be precise. So, yeah. I mean, sure, a GM could say to himself "The characters love the village and they set themselves up as its champions, I'll put a Red Dragon in front of them and let them decide which dies, them or the village." but to me that's pretty dirty pool, though I guess it could be OK in a grimdark sort of concept game. Even then, the GM is still not empowered to simply make the thing arbitrarily difficult. If he DOES then the players are owed some arbitrarily large reward for success!

Frankly, a 'Kobiyashi Maru' scenario is not totally out of bounds, but really needs to be done in a way that works and isn't underhanded. The closest I ever got to this was setting a Traveler game on a doomed space station, without telling the players ahead of time what the scenario was. I wanted to evoke the whole experience of coming to a realization that their fate was inexorable. However, it was all new characters, a starting scenario, and I know all those players. The 'truth' was not beat into them with a stick either, the whole thing involved the process of realization and dealing with it. It was still tricky, though it turned out really well. By the time everyone died, the end was somehow fitting.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And, if they haven't? If they've stated a desire to avoid draconic entanglements?

It depends. You are into the weeds of narrative systems here. I mean, lets say the players had a choice to go mess with a dragon, and it didn't seem to really match with any of their existing goals/whatever, and nobody took the bait. In that case the GM is well-advised to drop it. Maybe the dragon can appear in some sort of other role where it could become relevant or at least apropos. It could appear as mere color.

If the players HAVE established an agenda that the GM can apply tension to with a Red Dragon, then it kinda depends. How explicitly was the 'desire to avoid' expressed? Did the PCs take actions to mitigate any chance of encountering the dragon? Did those actions succeed? Well, then that success should be respected, although the GM is free to point out that certain future actions could "rouse the dragon again" or something. Clearly the PCs wouldn't be taking THOSE actions, or it wouldn't be 'avoiding entanglements'.

So, really, it SHOULD be up to the players, but the PCs might have to do something like feed it a cute girl now and then!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Luke's toilet?

Just as an aside question: in a DM-driven game the DM can now and then introduce non-genre-convention stuff into the game e.g. a spaceship into a sword-and-sorcery setting. How could this be done (if at all) in story-now where the players can't declare out of genre and the DM has to stick with what the players are doing?

Interesting question. I'd say there should be some sort of level of consultation, or maybe the GM does it based on a knowledge of the players and what they like, coupled with the tone of the game. I mean, fantasy OFTEN mixes in some sci-fi, just look at Terry Brooks Shenarra novels.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is why I use minis, so that everyone has roughly the same idea of how the various moving parts spatially correlate in situations like this. For this set-up I'd probably make each square represent 50' or so, and place the various minis in a representational manner; it would also allow me to more clearly describe the course the wyverns were taking as they flew in (such things always get misinterpreted IME if just described or done TotM).

Here we have common ground my friend. I love me my minis and battlemat!

Also, doesn't the system limit of so few distinctions - in a scene that might have many - tend to overmuch lead the PCs by the noses to where they need to go? For example, you only mentioning as distinctions the Furniture, Desk and Box immediately tells me-as-player I can ignore the rug, the papers on the desk, the small chandelier*, the fireplace*, and the faded portraits* on the walls as they've all just been defined as irrelevant. My PC, however, wouldn't know this.

I would say 'so what' myself...

I mean, dramatically, what is the difference between "I search these 3 places" and "I search these 17 places", except one is a lot quicker and to the point. Chances are, if there's anything to be found, it will simply be found when the search progresses to that point, which it INEVITABLY will if the PCs are in a search mode (why wouldn't they search thoroughly). From a narrative standpoint, failure is not interesting in these types of situation, as a rule. If there's a time constraint, or a hazard, then I'd emphasize that over the particulars of which thing was searched in a list of things (IE make a check to search quickly enough to find X before Y happens, or make a check to perceive the hazard, then get the 'stuff').