Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Ovinomancer]

please don’t accuse me of bad faith.

As I absolutely did nothing of the kind, I will file this away for the future as something to continue to not do.

If you mean pointing out that you haven't established a framework to support your assertion that agency over character action declarations is a separate thing from general agency, that's not an accusation of bad faith. It's an invitation.

Let me be more clear: I do not think you are arguing in bad faith. I would not say so.

 

[FrogReaver]

Let me be more clear: I do not think you are arguing in bad faith. I would not say so.

Thank you, but telling me I’m arguing to support my playstyle is kind of the same thing, right?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Thank you, but telling me I’m arguing to support my playstyle is kind of the same thing, right?

Goodness, no. It being in favor of your playstyle a dishonest thing to do? I certainly wouldn't ever think so. It's a pretty normal thing to do.

 

[FrogReaver]

Goodness, no. It being in favor of your playstyle a dishonest thing to do? I certainly wouldn't ever think so. It's a pretty normal thing to do.

to me it would be so I apologize for taking your intent wrong.

I am after the truth, not support for a particular playstyle. I am also for challenging your framework as I think there’s a better for explaining what we are seeing.

 

[prabe]

I'd like to really drill down on the first sentence. As you and I both said, these examples from the FATE SRD really look like things a D&D GM just decides. That's a big indication of the difference in how FATE frames things. In D&D, a player that had one of those statements attached to their character has either written it into their backstory or had it occur in play. On that front, they're pretty much the same as the FATE character. However, in D&D, the GM unilaterally decides when those things enter play as complications. In FATE, it's more of a negotiation. The GM proposes the complication, based on the trait, to the player. If the player agrees that this looks like something that would be true, they earn a FATE point. If they do not, they must pay a FATE point. This is pure incentive to lean into the traits you've chosen for your character. True, if you've spent all of your FATE points (presumably in doing awesome things), you cannot decline the Compel, but you're still going to be incentivized with a FATE point to lean into the traits you've chosen for you character.

If I'm playing, chances are I've used up all my Fate points failing to do awesome things, or at best not sucking, because dice and I do not get along. But that's not super-relevant.

If the GM is using Compels to push the story to result how they want it to, then the GM has missed the point. FATE is about making play about the characters, good and bad parts, and Compels are just ways to enable that.

In my opinion, from having looked through a few Fate books, and having run Fate for a while and having played it a few times, Fate makes a lot of noise about being about the characters, but it's really about the story; they're not the same thing, and Fate seems to me to be entirely willing to throw the characters under the bus for the sake of the story.

That said, I see how the GM proposing actions for your character or negotiating a scene change with the player for their character can be jarring or not fun mechanics for everyone. That's fine. You do not have to like FATE, and I'm not asking you (or anyone else) to do so nor am I pitching FATE to you for reconsideration. I, personally, am not terribly fond of FATE -- I find it a bit too muddy for my tastes (which is funny because I like 5e, which is also muddy but in different ways). But, we should be discussing how games do things absent preferences. And FATE Compels are very distant from D&D Dominates except in very grossly simplified ways, like both remove agency to some extent. That's not a useful comparison statement.

I actually don't disagree with you that Fate Compels are dissimilar to a D&D PC being charmed or dominated. I've answered @FrogReaver a few times explaining how and why I see them as being wildly different.

 

[Ovinomancer]

to me it would be so I apologize for taking your intent wrong.

I am after the truth, not support for a particular playstyle. I am also for challenging your framework as I think there’s a better for explaining what we are seeing.

Which is? This difference is that I come to the conclusion that agency was abridged in the OP because the player attempted an action that could have multiple outcomes with the fiction as established and the GM's notes, but the GM selected a specific outcome that thwarts the action. We don't know the player's intent, so this is a missing variable. If the player wanted to move to a fight, then this action by the GM was essentially saying yes. If it was anything else, then agency is abridged.

Your argument is that there's a division of agency, one of which is agency over declaring actions. In this framework, agency over declaring actions isn't abridged because the player was allowed to declare the action. Therefore agency wasn't abridged.

The issues I have with your argument (and correct it where it is wrong, please, I've done my best) is that I disagree that it's a valid to separate agency over declaring actions from agency in general. I've followed this up by showing the definition of agency used by many to be not only making choices but also having the ability to see those choices come true. Not guarantee, but ability. In this framework, declaring an action is a necessary but not sufficient part of agency. If I cannot declare actions, then I have no agency. If I can, then we have to continue to look to see if agency is sustained. My framework includes yours, it just continues to go further. Applying this to the OP, we can see that the player did indeed declare the action -- so we're good so far, a choice was made and a proposal was made. However, the GM decided unilaterally to say no. The player has no ability to see the declared action come true -- no chance at all. And so, agency is not present.

And, that's not, in and of itself, bad. It just is. We need to go to look to see if this instance of play enforces the play goals the table wants or if it runs counter to them. I can't say if the action was good or bad for the OP's table, although indications are that it was bad as at least one player expressed unhappiness. I can say it would be bad at my table because it wouldn't enforce my table's play goals -- specifically mine, as I strive to avoid hidden dead-ends in my prep and play. That's just my preference.

Secondly, even if we do accept your premise that agency over action declaration is a separate thing, we still need to evaluate the separate agency involved in the resolution. If we accept that agency is fulfilled at the action declaration stage, that doesn't mean other kinds of agency were denied. In this case, the GM choosing to auto-fail the action means that the player has no agency over the fiction -- again, there's no chance this action could ever succeed due to the GM's appraisal of the fact pattern. So I could, accepting your argument as true, say that agency over action declaration is present and uninhibited, but I would be wrong to say that all agency is present and uninhibited in the play example.

Finally, if we make and accept the argument that only agency over the character's action declarations matters, then we're left in the position that a railroad has exactly as much player agency as a fully-open sandbox (to stay with D&D styles of play). Both involve the same amount of being able to declare actions for your character.

In summation, even if your argument is accepted that agency means being able to make action declarations for your PC, it has some pretty major hurdles to overcome to be a meaningful tool to evaluate how games work. On the other hand, my framework handles all of this without having to invoke separate bundles of agency and do separate analyses. The key component to my framework, though, is that it is not a value statement. The value regarding the reduction or increase of player agency is if it meets the play goals of the game. I'd clearly say that GM deciding auto-failure is an important tool in 5e to meet the play goals and play structure of the game. I can't say that saying no is a bad action absent context. I find a tool it better when it can make an assessment that is both differentiating (which I don't find yours to be) and nonjudgemental. A tool should be informative, like a ruler. I can measure a piece of wood and I'll get an answer from a ruler. I might not like the answer, though, which is a value judgement that ruler didn't make.

 

[Maxperson]

OK, but what about gain of agency? Shouldn't that be just as bad? (I ask because nobody ever mentions it)

What;s good for the goose is good for the gander: you-as-player gain agency if your PC Dominates an NPC.

In this case agency is more or less zero-sum: what's lost by one player is gained by another. Easier to grok in a PvP situation - if Maxperson the Wizard Dominates Lanefan the Fighter, you gain exactly as much agency as I lose.

I'm not really gaining agency, though. My capacity to declare actions to affect the fiction is unchanged. What has changed is that my have another tool to do it with. Before I had fireball, and a bunch of other spells. Now I have those and this guy over there named Lanefan as an option for a while.

It's more like you and I both being free, then I lock you in jail. I've taken your freedom, but I don't get extra freedom in return.

 

[Maxperson]

Um, if you can't say that a game has flaws (and all games do), then the claim is that a game is perfect. Surely you aren't advancing that?

As @hawkeyefan had repeatedly said, he both runs and enjoys running 5e. I also run and enjoy running 5e. It has flaws. So what? Do you need it to not to?

Yes, 5e has flaws. No, having descriptions isn't one of them.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If I'm playing, chances are I've used up all my Fate points failing to do awesome things, or at best not sucking, because dice and I do not get along. But that's not super-relevant.

Oh, tell me about it. I only crit when the party is facing mooks that suddenly turn into supermen because my dice go hot. Meanwhile, BBEGs roll 1's and 2's.

In my opinion, from having looked through a few Fate books, and having run Fate for a while and having played it a few times, Fate makes a lot of noise about being about the characters, but it's really about the story; they're not the same thing, and Fate seems to me to be entirely willing to throw the characters under the bus for the sake of the story.

I honestly see this as the general issue of people not trying to play the game as the rules present but instead how they think a game should go. You see this even in D&D, where people just know how to run D&D and don't really bother to find out how the newest edition does things. I think a lot of people play FATE with a mindset from a different game, and not one that embraces the rules of FATE. I also think there's a lot of GMs that like to run games about their story rather than the characters'. This isn't at all limited to FATE.

But, it does lead into my dislike of FATE. You can play a game in FATE that is about the GM's story, or that uses the mechanics to force players into Compels rather than make them a fun part of the game, and the system doesn't fight you hard enough. It's muddy enough that the system can support this kind of play without it being obvious it shouldn't. This makes discussions about what games do hard when FATE comes up because FATE isn't super clear about what it does and a lot of people have had bad interactions with it. I was told, in another thread, that one poster played FATE exactly like a D&D dungeon crawl and just didn't bother with Compels at all. I was stunned, but, when I looked at the system again, I saw how you could do that. You have to ignore some things, but not too many, and the system doesn't fight back in obvious ways.

Contrast this with Blades, which will absolutely fail you if you try to run a D&D-esque dungeon crawl.

So, I fully understand how you've come to your understanding of FATE, and that's without even considering the differences in our play preferences.

I actually don't disagree with you that Fate Compels are dissimilar to a D&D PC being charmed or dominated. I've answered @FrogReaver a few times explaining how and why I see them as being wildly different.

Cool.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not really gaining agency, though. My capacity to declare actions to affect the fiction is unchanged. What has changed is that my have another tool to do it with. Before I had fireball, and a bunch of other spells. Now I have those and this guy over there named Lanefan as an option for a while.

Which has more or less doubled your ability to express agency over - well, anything; while reducing mine to near zero other than what you specifically permit me to have.

It's more like you and I both being free, then I lock you in jail. I've taken your freedom, but I don't get extra freedom in return.

Wrong analogy.

It's more like you've taken my stuff, meaning now you've got two people's worth of resources while I have none.