Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Ovinomancer]

So a fundamental conceit important to my understanding of role playing games (related to agency) is that the fiction is shared. Once anyone introduces something to the fiction it no longer belongs to just them. You are tacitly agreeing to allow the characters you introduce or setting elements be affected and changed by what goes on in the fiction. You do not really get to decide and limit how they will be affected, although emotional safety and creative boundary stuff will apply.

This manifests itself slightly differently in more challenge focused games. The emotional state of a B/X character is not under threat, but it is also like not a focus of play. Still you can be poisoned, diseased, subjected to all manner of spells, paralyzed, turned to stone, and/or level drained. All manner of nasty things can happen to you.

For their part the referee must play the dungeon denizens with integrity and make fair impartial rulings. They must respect your fictional positioning and let things play out. They are bound by things like wandering monster tables, morale rolls, and reaction rolls.

In a more character focused environment the expectation is that everyone is playing their characters with integrity - letting what happens in the fiction affect their characters physically, mentally, and emotionally. This includes the GM. They must play the world with integrity. No gets to hold on to their conceptions of things. No character concepts - only characters.

If we are all protecting the things we think we own and setting up carefully constructed boundaries of how we will allow other players to affect them there can be no real meaningful agency over the fiction. Agency over the shared fiction is dependent on playing with people who are vulnerable enough to allow their conceptions of the setting, characters, and relationships to meaningfully change.

I think in many ways agency over the shared fiction and agency over the content we create are opposing forces. Assuming equitable relationships and not naughty word ones (where I can affect your stuff and you cannot affect mine) the more agency we have over our stuff the less everyone else has over it. Agency then becomes this elaborate maze of walled of gardens where we must carefully negotiate the ones in which we can effect each others stuff.

I think this ties back into the discussion about the fate of characters no longer in play and who owns them.

 

[FrogReaver]

When you talk about it in that way you pretty much render the concept of agency useless as a comparative analysis tool. Limitations that we accept are still limitations. The whole point is to be able to meaningfully talk about what is actually going on in any moment of play.

I suspect this is one of the problems with us communicating. I don't care whether the concept of player agency in any respect is useful as a comparative analysis tool and I don't understand why you or anyone else would either. I care about the concept of player agency itself and am willing to explore what impacts focusing on different types and mixtures of player agency has on games. I honestly don't see how this discussion and framework can't yield meaningful talk as long as all sides are willing to engage in it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I differentiate between the actual rules of the game, which in theory constrain everyone equally, and things like social contracts and houserules which can very much constrain one table in comparison with another.

I believe the important rules are the ones the table is engaging with at the moment of play. Why would any other rules matter when discussing what is happening in play? That's not to say there's not a meaningful distinction in many respects between houserules and social contracts and RAW, but I'm not sure any of that differentiation matters for this discussion. If you think it's important maybe you could elaborate on your reasoning a bit than simply stating it to be the case?

 

[FrogReaver]

If you want to talk about sums and parts, I think it makes more sense to look at it holistically, from the player facing side, answering a question like how much control do feel you have over the story you are helping to tell? People might not be able to bang out an academic treatise about exactly how their rules and table works vis a vis agency, but I bet they can answer that one question. Using specific games as points on the continuum also helps locate your game, or tastes. D&D run older-school style tends to be fairly low agency, while a game like FATE is at the higher end (much higher depending on the exact FATE game) with PbtA falling in the middle, probably closer to FATE than D&D.

1. Please don't accuse me of wanting to talk about sums and parts when I'm not the one that first made mention of that concept in this discussion.

2. The question of "how much control do you feel you have over the story you are helping to tell" is only a meaningful indicator of a single type of player agency. It doesn't address the other type/types though.

3. D&D has never been low agency. You have complete agency over your characters actions (or at least nearly so). D&D is low agency in respect to granting a player agency over fictional outcomes - but that's basically tautological at this point - you've defined agency to solely mean "control over fictional outcomes" and therefore since D&D doesn't allow for player control of fictional outcomes you say it has no player agency.

4. Even control over fictional outcomes is a dubious way of saying it - as all PC actions are fictional outcomes of some circumstance and since players control PC actions - even in D&D they do have player agency over (some) fictional outcomes.

Heck, wasn't it you that earlier sympathized with @prabe about how other games can seem a bit off to a traditional D&D player because they override a players control over his character and that's all such a player has ever known?

 

[FrogReaver]

I think in many ways agency over the shared fiction and agency over the content we create are opposing forces. Assuming equitable relationships and not naughty word ones (where I can affect your stuff and you cannot affect mine) the more agency we have over our stuff the less everyone else has over it.

Agreed. That's what I've been trying to point out. I find it pretty amazing how you are disagreeing with my posts and ending up in the same place as me.

However, I think it's also important to add that having agency over the content we create within the shared fiction provides in itself at least a small bit of agency over the shared fiction.

 

[Fenris-77]

1. I did no such thing, I was just using a holistic example. I have no idea how that ended up offending you.

2. If you wanted to ask someone who hadn't read this thread to describe the level of player agency in their game, that's the kind of question you'd ask. That's important because the nuts and bolts are, one, not interesting to everyone, and, two, pretty obviously easy to get all tangled up in.

3. It is low agency, not that that's a bad thing, and you missed the descriptor 'old school', so OSR style play, which is very low agency (by design, and that's not bad). I also defined agency in no such simple way, and in fact have gone out of my way to index just how non-single source the idea is. You also seem to be using fictional in place of narrative, which isn't helpful, narrative goes places, fiction is just made up stuff. Also, if you think D&D allows no agency to players over the narrative you have somehow badly misunderstood the last many pages of this thread.

4. Dubious. Huh. I don't even know how to respond to that. 'Fictional outcomes' is a very different thing than narrative control, or, more precisely, control over the diegetic frame. In other words, control over the unfolding of the shared story. It's way more granular and nuanced than just outcomes, which seems from your post to mean, for you, something more like action adjudication. I'm not sure though, you've got your own set of vocabulary going here.

5. Yeah, I did, specifically about control over character relative to the use of persuade type skills, which is very different in some other games than it is in D&D. What's your point?

 

[Manbearcat]

I've bolded the key sentence. It might cover a lot of ground.

If I declare an action I kill the orc and then I succeed on my action (in some systems that might be winning an opposed check; in D&D that normally means making a successful to-hit roll and then making a good damage roll) then other players can't declare as their action I talk to the orc because the fictional positioning won't let them (unless they change the fictional positioning in some way (eg in D&D that could be using a Speak with Dead spell).

In that sense any change to the fiction ramifies down the line to future action declarations.

In some systems, social conflict resolutions which, in fictional terms, brining it about that someone is persuaded or cowed or ensorcelled or the like create, in mechanical terms, hard constraints on action declaration similar to the orc being dead. This is how Duel of Wits works in Burning Wheel: if you lose, there are actions that are off the table for your character. It's also how I adjudicate Prince Valiant (the rules there are a bit more vague or incomplete than BW) as in the examples of play I posted about upthread. As far as the actual process of play is concerned, the comparison to the dead orc is literal, not analogy or metaphor. I think we all can see that, if player B declares I talk to the orc after player A's PC has killed it, the correct response is You can't - the orc's dead so in these systems. So, absolutely identically, in the systems I'm describing in this paragraph f the player declares I get ready to lead the charge after another character has won the social contest to extract agreement that he will lead the charge, the correct response is You can't -you agreed to let so-and-so lead the charge, remember?

That's not the only way of handling that sort of change in the fictional positioning. In some systems (I'm thinking some PbtA and also Cortex+ Heroic) the player might take penalties to checks that push against what the dominating character wants the PC to do. In Cortext + Heroic that sort of penalty functions (mechanically) just like injury or exhaustion - they all operate as buffs to the opposed check - and if it gets big enough then it takes the character out of play just like too much exhaustion would. In the exhaustion case the GM gets to narrate the PC collapsing for physical reasons; in the emotional or influence case the GM gets to narrate the PC collapsing from stress, or doing something else appropriate to the influence that has been exerted.

I've never played Fate, but I think the structure of compels is roughly comparable to this: if the player ignores the influence/constraint, s/he takes a mechanical penalty (in Fate, that takes the form of a resource expenditure).

Burning Wheel has another interesting mechanical framework in this general terrain: in BW each charcter has a Steel attribute, and if you fail a Steel chck you have to choose from one of four options to choose from: run screaming, swoon, fall prone and beg for mercy, or stand and drool. So the ficitonal positioning (I failed my Steel check, so my character's courage has failedi) not only precludes action declarations that would contradict that fiction but correlats to a tight mechanical constraint on what happens next. Classic Traveller has morale rules that look like a bit like this, too: if you fail the check you have to declare your character either breaking or surrendering (at some tables maybe the GM decides this rather than the player, in which case see below).

Yet another mechanical possibility occurred in my BW game (BW is a very mechanically interesting, complex and flesible system): when a dark naga ensorcelled a PC, I had the player rewrite one of his PCs' Beliefs to recognise the new situation, which then - within the structure of that game - changes his incentives in playing the PC. The analogue in D&D 5e would be changing an Ideal or a Bond.

In D&D (all editions, I think) there can be mechanical effects on a character (PC or NPC) that allow control over that character's action declarations to be changed. Rolemaster also has those effects. I imagine so do other RPGs that are to a greater or lesser extent in the mould of D&D. I suspect there are some Classic Traveller tables that run morale like this too - ie that failing a morale check lets the GM dictate actions for the PCs whose morale has broken.

From the point of view of burdens on play agency, what is significant about this last category of mechanical effect is not that it lets someone else make things true in the fiction of your PC, but rather than for the moment you can't declare actins for yur PC. It's like the PC being dead, or drugged, or utterly immobilised because bound and gagged.

EDIT: I just saw that this post is an appendix to posts that @Campbell and @Fenris-77 already made.

This post made me think on situations in past gaming where a PC vs PC agenda manifested aggressively during play and how it intersected with the conversation of agency, fictional positioning, and adjudication.

In my 2nd full 1-30 4e game, there was a Shapeshifter Druid, a Duelist Rogue, and a F/M (Bladesinger).

One of the key Paragon Tier conflicts was against the Winter Fey of the Feywild. A cadre of warrior diplomats met the 3 PCs with a series of demands. This was framed as a level +2, Complexity 2 Skill Challenge for the PCs to get what they wanted (the Winter Fey to compromise by acquiescing on the key part of their demands that the PCs weren't going to give up while accepting something else in return). The PCs failed the social conflict and it turned violent.

However, in the course of the social conflict, the Eladrin Bladesinger PC had established a potential relationship with a young Winter Fey Knight that reminded him of himself (a Ronin-like youth with potential who needed a proper master).

So in the course of the ensuing combat, the Eladrin PC wanted to (a) protect the young Fey Knight from his own allies, while (b) dispatching the rest of the Winter Fey and (c) convincing the young Eladrin to join them and accept his offer to train him and give him a way out.

So what ended up transpiring after the player declared this intent was that I had to devise a coinciding Social Skill Challenge with the life and pupil:teacher relationship of the PC Bladesinger and the NPC Winter Fey Knight at stake. In the course of doing this in 4e, a GM (as you know), has to very carefully consider (a) action economy (Standard and appropriate Immediate Actions - defending the Fey Knight against the Rogue PC's attacks) along with (b) the Level and Complexity of the SC (level+1 and Complexity 1).

Then the player has to consider all of the following:

• Their own action economy (he has to slay the rest of his enemies, protect his allies, all while interacting with and protecting this prospective pupil from his own allies).
• The relevant fictional positioning to do all of the above. More specifically, he needed to stay adjacent to the young Fey Knight so he could spend his 2 Encounter Powers to protect adjacent allies as an Immediate Action when they face attack. He spent both of these in doing so (against the Rogue PC who was his antagonist in this situation) and each earned him a Success in his Skill Challenge.
• Ultimately, he ended up winning (the 2 Immediate Action Protection moves along with a successful Suggestion move and an Athletics move accompanied by an Action Point that ended up devastating the leader of the Winter Fey in single combat) the social Skill Challenge (which was nested in the greater Combat) while simultaneously helping his allies dispatch the rest of the Winter Fey.

I didn't think of this before, but its a very interesting contrast to the what happened in the lead post. And the fact that the Rogue player was happy with this interesting arrangement (while his character was the primary antagonist and very begrudgingly accepted this turn of events) and gladly respected the mechanically cemented, thematic victory of the Bladesinger (which won the player, and by proxy the group, a Companion Character) speaks to @Campbell 's recent posts about acceptance of play (specifically mechanically cemented results) that challenges a player's conception of their character, thus lending toward a proposal of altering the shared fiction (in this case, the Rogue and his conception of "nothing but death" for enemies that threaten the lives of himself and his charges/companions; born of his time as a Naval Captain, his love of his crew, and the ruthlessness at sea of the pirates he constantly faced).

 

[FrogReaver]

1. I did no such thing, I was just using a holistic example. I have no idea how that ended up offending you.

You said "If you want to talk about sums and parts" which implies that I want to talk about sums and parts when I don't. And more importantly it read as a rather dismissive opening to whatever counterpoint you were going to make. That perceived dismissiveness and incorrectness of the statement caused the offense, but apparently based on your comment here it was not intended as such. With no offense intended I no longer take it as such.

2. If you wanted to ask someone who hadn't read this thread to describe the level of player agency in their game, that's the kind of question you'd ask. That's important because the nuts and bolts are, one, not interesting to everyone, and, two, pretty obviously easy to get all tangled up in.

I disagree and more importantly I already explained why. You are just restating the same thing here without giving one word to my objection. For your convenience I've reposted it.

The question of "how much control do you feel you have over the story you are helping to tell" is only a meaningful indicator of a single type of player agency. It doesn't address the other type/types

3. It is low agency, not that that's a bad thing, and you missed the descriptor 'old school', so OSR style play, which is very low agency (by design, and that's not bad). I also defined agency in no such simple way, and in fact have gone out of my way to index just how non-single source the idea is.

1. No one here is bound by your definition of agency. That said, I do try to address what you mean and not just the term you are using.
2. If your definition of agency is not so simple, then it's very possible I missed something important from it.
3. Repeating yourself that D&D is low agency isn't helpful. My point was that there are at least 2 types of player agency and so your statement isn't entirely correct. You could maybe address why you disagree with my point instead of repeating yourself?

You also seem to be using fictional in place of narrative, which isn't helpful, narrative goes places, fiction is just made up stuff. Also, if you think D&D allows no agency to players over the narrative you have somehow badly misunderstood the last many pages of this thread.

Hmmmm.... let me get this straight, you are telling me I've using a wrong term which I would be willing to discuss, but then you tell me that based on the term I'm not even using that I've badly misunderstood everything.

IMO it's more likely that I'm using the term in a way that doesn't align with how you use any of your terms and that to reconcile that difference you are trying to force my use of the term to align to a different term of yours even though it doens't. I mean it would be a lot simpler for you if I was simply using fictional as you use narrative. That's what I believe is happening here.

4. Dubious. Huh. I don't even know how to respond to that. 'Fictional outcomes' is a very different thing than narrative control, or, more precisely, control over the diegetic frame. In other words, control over the unfolding of the shared story. It's way more granular and nuanced than just outcomes, which seems from your post to mean, for you, something more like action adjudication. I'm not sure though, you've got your own set of vocabulary going here.

I don't think mine is particularly unique - others seem to understand me pretty well and a lot of vocabulary on this topic is based on what others have said. That said, you say "fictional outcomes" very different than narrative control. So please give me an example of a fictional outcome, or maybe even a few. I'd like to see for myself how they actually differ.

5. Yeah, I did, specifically about control over character relative to the use of persuade type skills, which is very different in some other games than it is in D&D. What's your point?

Point was Just that you appeared you understand the impact and importance of what was going on there and now it appears you are taking quite a different position.

 

[Lanefan]

First off, kudos for a well-thought-out post.

This manifests itself slightly differently in more challenge focused games. The emotional state of a B/X character is not under threat, but it is also like not a focus of play. Still you can be poisoned, diseased, subjected to all manner of spells, paralyzed, turned to stone, and/or level drained. All manner of nasty things can happen to you.

For their part the referee must play the dungeon denizens with integrity and make fair impartial rulings. They must respect your fictional positioning and let things play out. They are bound by things like wandering monster tables, morale rolls, and reaction rolls.

In a more character focused environment the expectation is that everyone is playing their characters with integrity - letting what happens in the fiction affect their characters physically, mentally, and emotionally. This includes the GM. They must play the world with integrity. No gets to hold on to their conceptions of things. No character concepts - only characters.

I'd like to throw this in here: these two things IME are not necessarily an either-or proposition.

While you're quite right that all manner of nasty things can happen to you in a challenge-focused game, one could argue the same could (and-or should?) be true - or be able to be true - in a character-focused game. That many systems seem not to have these options available is IMO a shortcoming.

And players can - and IME some very often do - allow what happens in the fiction to affect their characters physically and-or mentally and-or emotionally even in an otherwise challenge-based environment. It might not be a focus of play for the whole table, or even for the system, but it is for that player playing that character; and the system doesn't forbid it.

And one hopes that in ANY system the GM is making fair impartial rulings and running the setting and its NPC inhabitants with integrity and sincerity.

I don't know what you mean by this, however: "no character concepts, only characters". Are you referring perhaps to playing one's PC only in the here-and-now rather than worrying about its build-out over the next however-many levels? If yes, I'm with ya there! But if no, unless one's going full-on old-school and playing what the dice give you, it's kinda hard to have a character without first having a concept for it; thus my confusion as to your statement.

 

[Lanefan]

I believe the important rules are the ones the table is engaging with at the moment of play. Why would any other rules matter when discussing what is happening in play? That's not to say there's not a meaningful distinction in many respects between houserules and social contracts and RAW, but I'm not sure any of that differentiation matters for this discussion. If you think it's important maybe you could elaborate on your reasoning a bit than simply stating it to be the case?

How to put this and not go on all night with it?

If I'm reading things right, we're discussing what happens in play with regards to player agency; and how either can/will/does impact the other - right?

So, overriding influences e.g. social contracts, houserules, etc. can and often are felt in the immediate here-and-now of play. An example: if my idea for a character going in was to be Evil-aligned but I find Evil PCs are not allowed at that table, that affects my play at every moment. Or, if my idea for my character is to be a hopelessly romantic flirt and I find there's a social contract banning PC romances (or that they'll always be kept offscreen), that too will affect my play at every moment.

In both cases that constant and ongoing effect on my here-and-now play will simply be that I'm not able to play the character I wanted. I'm either playing a watered-down or amended version of the concept I first had in mind, or I'm playing something completely different because my first concept has been negated by a houserule. Either way, my agency's taken a kick in the head - I can't play the character I originally wanted and therefore I can't affect the fiction in ways I might have otherwise.

You're not always engaging with every rule. Travel rules, for example, are rather irrelevant when standing in a throne room talking to a courtier. But some rules - mostly those dealing with things like allowable character personalities, racial traits, and other 'always-on' stuff - you're engaging with at every turn. Most of the time that engagement is invisible; it's when it's not invisible that problems arise, usually to the detriment of player agency.