Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[pemerton]

@pemerton

For more character focused games I am a pretty big fan of what John Harper calls the line in Apocalypse World. Basically when called upon either by the GM or the rules players get to have a say about things their characters may have experienced. They do not get to have a say over things their character would have no way of knowing.

What's in the box is over the line.
Why do you hate Plover is under the line.

Sure. We all have preferences.

My point is twofold. First, if the GM is deciding what's in the box then the player is not exercising agency over that component of the shared fiction. And obviously is not. Yet there are posters here - @prabe, @Lanefan - who are asserting the contrary.

Second, if the game permits action declarations such as I look in the box for the Crown of Revel then the player is not being called upon to cross the line. Because the player's authorship only kicks in when the player has knowledge - that is to say, the revelation of the Crown in the box (should it occur) occurs only when the player PC looks in the box.

This is an important feature of a game like BW that makes it a RPG and not a shared storytelling game. The players do not have any sort of generalised or abstracted "narrative authority". And in fact have less say over the general content of the fiction than AW players - eg BW has no real analogue of Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.

All the players' "metagame" moves in BW take the form of action declarations by the player for the PC. So eg Catacombs-wise is using my knowledge of the catacombs, I find a path that leads me beneath the NPC wizard's tower. Circles is I look around the docks to see if there's anyone there whom I know. Etc. It is the PC who is always at the centre of the action, even if the PC is not causally responsible for all of the established elements of the fiction (eg the PC didn't put the Crown in the box; the PC didn't build the catacombs; the PC didn't cause the NPC to be on the docks; etc).

In one of our BW sessions the PCs had arrived at a tower which - as per established backstory - had been the home of the PC sorcerer when he was studying under his brother's tuition. As part of the same backstory, the tower had been attacked by orcs and the brother, in trying to summon a Storm of Lightning to fight off the orcs, had failed in his casting and been possessed by a balrog. (How the PC had escaped to actuall be there at the beginning of the campaign, some years after those events, had not and still has not been established.) Now the tower was ruined and abandoned.

The player, at about this point, told us more of his PC's backstory: while living in the tower, as a pupil of his brother, he had been working on a nickel-silver mace called the falcon's claw. But it had been left behind when the tower fell to the orcs. Now that the PC was back, he wanted to recover the mace. So they searched the tower for it. Mechanically, this was a Scavenging check.

The check failed. So I - as GM - had to narrate some adverse outcome. I narrated that the PCs did find something, but not the mace. Rather, they found - in the area of the tower which had been the brother's workshop - a stand of black arrows, very like the one broken arrow still carried by the elven PC in memory of his former captain who had been slain by an orc shooting that arrow.

The ensuing play established that the brother had made those black arrows. The significance of this was that it revealed that the brother's evil preceded, in some fashion at least, his possession by a balrog. He had already been making cursed arrows that orcs would take and use.

In structural resolution terms, this is strictly parallel to the box and the Crown. But it never requires the player to separate his/her knowledge as player from that as PC. There is no meta-declaration about the location of the mace. There is action declaration and resolution. It doesn't cross Harper's line.

I realise that AW doesn't have much of this sort of resolution. (It has a bit: the Battlebabe's Vision of death is one example.) The result is a different distribution of authority over the shared fiction, with greater MC control over when the PCs find the things, places etc that they want.

 

[pemerton]

I believe many of us were interpreting that outburst differently than that, and the state of the fiction sure did change after that remark, so there seems to at least be a case for agency. .

What control has the player exercised? The player has forced the GM to say something. All RPGing involves that - otherwise it would be monologue, not conversation. But the player had no control over what the GM said. That is why I say the player exercised no agency. In my post not far upthread I've explained in some detail how this contrasts with the ability of an AW player to force the GM to make constrained and binding choices about what s/he says next.

Did you note that I said that changing the story directly doesn't feel like agency? That's because agency is over the character's actions and thoughts and responses and emotions. Authorship or narrative authority is about writing or re-writing the fiction more directly. Your character opening the box because you (and the character) expect to find the Crown of Revel inside is agency; your character opening the box and finding the Crown of Revel inside because you the player made a relevant check is re/writing the fiction to place the Crown of Revel inside the box--that's authorship/narrative authority.

Here is a typical example of D&D play:

GM: you see an orc - it's charging at you with its axe!
Player: OK, I draw my sword and fight back!
<dice are rolled as per the combat rules - the orc's hp number is reduced to zero, the PC's hp number remains above zero>
GM: Good stuff, you've killed the orc. What now?​

The player has re/written the fiction to include a dead orc. That is agency over the shared fiction.

As far as the process of play is concerned, the Crown example is no different:

GM: you find a box - it's about a foot square and 6" deep?​

Player: so big enough to hold the Crown of Revel?​

GM: Yep!​

Player: OK, so I open it and look inside.​

<dice are rolled as per the (at this point hypothetical) searching-for-stuff rules, and the player succeeds>​

GM: Cool, you open the box and see the Crown of Revel inside.​

Identical degrees of agency in both cases.

Contrast:

GM: you find a box - it's about a foot square and 6" deep?​

Player: so big enough to hold the Crown of Revel?​

GM: Yep!​

Player: OK, so I open it and look inside.​

<GM consults notes - they state that the box is empty>​

GM: Sorry, you open the box and there's nothing in it, certainly no crown.​

And we could set up a parallel example of a combat:

GM: you see an orc - it's charging at you with its axe!​

Player: OK, I draw my sword and fight back!​

<GM looks at notes, which record that this orc won't be beaten in melee but takes those it defeats prisoner>​

GM: Sorry, you're no match for the orc. It knocks you down with its axe and binds your hands and feet with cord. Now you're a prisoner of the orcs.​

In both these examples, the player doesn't exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction. I think the second example would be pretty controversial at a D&D table - though there are example of it in canonical D&D material like the Slave Lords modules. The first is what you and @Lanefan are advocating for in respect of looking in boxes.

The two examples are stricly identical in degree of player agency over the shared fiction.

Now, the character might--should, really--shape the story or world through their actions, and their actions should be the result of their responses to previous events. That's still not the same thing as authorship/narrative authority, though, because it's the character's actions and decisions that are changing the world in the fiction.

I don't understand why you use the word agency to describe your preferences as to when you want the GM rather than the player to exercise agency. It is very confusing.

If you said When it comes to revelations about things and places I prefer that the GM exercise agency then I would follow quite clearly. @Campbell has said a version of just this in a recent post not far upthread.

I have a preference for authorship/narrative authority to lie mostly in my head as the GM, but that's because I find it easier to keep the facts/stories/world straight if I made all (or at least most) of it. I find that as a GM the world gets murky and less coherent (for me, in my head) as more people author it. I'm probably most comfortable as a player with a similar distribution of narrative authority, probably for mostly-similar reasons (plus a belief that the players have mostly-complete authority over their characters)

This is pretty clear. The bit that confuses me is when you say that the GM exercising this sort of control over the shared fiction also counts as an example of the player exercising control over the shared fiction.

 

[prabe]

I'm really just echoing @Campbell here, but I don't get this.

Yeah. I misunderstood the brainer move being used.

When it is the MC who is the other participant who gets to make the decision, then as @Campbell has said s/he is obliged to follow the relevant principles and to stick to his/her agenda. That is to say, the MC's agency is constrained. But the game rules make it clear that, at this point, it is the MC who has agency in respect of the shared fiction. All the player can do is put the other participant to the choice. The game even spells this out (p 109):

The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.​

Yup. I agree, the GM was perfectly within the rules and spirit of the game to make that choice. In the example of play, there's no real indication why Isle is willing to accept such grievous harm in order to resist, and the player seems surprised, which kinda indicates maybe there's nothing previous in the fiction to indicate it, or maybe the player just missed it. In any event, it's a perfectly good GM move, same as having the BurgerMaster call for his guards when a PC insults him.

No. The whole point of announcing future badness (in Dungeon World this is called revealing an unwelcome truth) is to enable the players, via their PCs, to do something about it.

Actually, best I can tell, the point of the move is to give the characters something to react to. There's no way the characters can prevent it, because it doesn't exist in the fiction until the GM makes the move.

I see very few accounts of 5e D&D play taking place as transparently as AW. To go back to the OP situation, I also don't see that 5e D&D has anything like go aggro or seduce/manipulate that allows a player to put those sorts of constraints on a GM's narration of what a NPC does. I really find the whole comparison a bit odd.

And I don't think AW looks as transparent from the rules and examples of play therein as all that and all that. All that emphasis on misdirection seems to be pointing in the opposite direction as transparency to me.

Why are we talking about the character here?

We are talking about the character, because the character is the reason for and the method of playing the game. Even Adventure World says so, talks about how hot and dangerous and otherwise compelling they are.

Characters change that world by acting on it.

Exactly so, and the players changing the world by anything other than their characters' actions is meta.

The obvious difference from 5e D&D, and again pointing back to the OP, is that the D&D player has no way to make the GM make a binding choice, and reveal it and stick to it. The player can't oblige the GM to reveal truths about the burgomaster's feelings and intentions (ie there's no analogue to Read a Person). The player can't oblige the GM to make a choce for the burgomaster of either relenting in the fact of the PC's desire or sucking up harm (ie there's no analogue to Go Aggro). In the OP's example the player clearly didn't know what the burgomaster was thinking or feeling and had no way beyond GM discretion of learning that; and the OP clearly was not able to force the GM to a choice in respect of the burgomaster's conduct - the burgomaster got to call the guards without suffering any harm from the attempt to threaten his life.

So, I'd say that if the GM is running the world properly, their choices should be binding, whether the player wants to make them so or not. That could be considered a principle just as binding as the principles in AW. I'll admit the rules don't have a lot to say explicitly about handling this, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to allow an WIS (Insight) check to get a read on the BurgerMaster: The PHB says specifically, "Your WIS (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move.". It wouldn't be unreasonable for the insult to be a CHA (Intimidate) check, or if you were trying to make him your enemy it could be a CHA (Persuasion) check to make him more hostile to you (the rules only cover making people friendlier but I see no reason you couldn't choose the opposite). No, there's no mechanism other than resolving an attack for a character to do damage to another, so there's no way for them to hurt the BurgerMaster other than to attack him--which they arguably did, when they tried to grapple him and take him hostage. The rules are different.

 

[prabe]

What control has the player exercised? The player has forced the GM to say something. All RPGing involves that - otherwise it would be monologue, not conversation. But the player had no control over what the GM said.

Well, the player had his character insult the BurgerMaster. The BurgerMaster reacted by calling his guards. The state of the fiction changed. Obviously, the character altered the shape of the coming fiction by his actions. Might not have been the outcome he wanted, but oh comma well.

Here is a typical example of D&D play:

GM: you see an orc - it's charging at you with its axe!​

Player: OK, I draw my sword and fight back!​

<dice are rolled as per the combat rules - the orc's hp number is reduced to zero, the PC's hp number remains above zero>​

GM: Good stuff, you've killed the orc. What now?​

The player has re/written the fiction to include a dead orc. That is agency over the shared fiction.

As far as the process of play is concerned, the Crown example is no different:

GM: you find a box - it's about a foot square and 6" deep?​

Player: so big enough to hold the Crown of Revel?​

GM: Yep!​

Player: OK, so I open it and look inside.​

<dice are rolled as per the (at this point hypothetical) searching-for-stuff rules, and the player succeeds>​

GM: Cool, you open the box and see the Crown of Revel inside.​

Identical degrees of agency in both cases.

Actually, no. The player in the D&D example has re-written the present, through his character's actions. The player in the Crown example has re-written the past (somehow the Crown got into that box) outside of his character's actions. This seems like a pretty clear difference to me: The former is agency, the latter is narrative authority.

Contrast:

GM: you find a box - it's about a foot square and 6" deep?​

Player: so big enough to hold the Crown of Revel?​

GM: Yep!​

Player: OK, so I open it and look inside.​

<GM consults notes - they state that the box is empty>​

GM: Sorry, you open the box and there's nothing in it, certainly no crown.​

And we could set up a parallel example of a combat:

GM: you see an orc - it's charging at you with its axe!​

Player: OK, I draw my sword and fight back!​

<GM looks at notes, which record that this orc won't be beaten in melee but takes those it defeats prisoner>​

GM: Sorry, you're no match for the orc. It knocks you down with its axe and binds your hands and feet with cord. Now you're a prisoner of the orcs.​

In both these examples, the player doesn't exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction. I think the second example would be pretty controversial at a D&D table - though there are example of it in canonical D&D material like the Slave Lords modules.

I think you're right that the second would be grounds for an argument at a D&D table--it looks like a combat, which the players expect to resolve like a combat.

I think the first might not generate argument, depending on the table. Depending on how important the Crown of Revel is, and whether it's a goal or a key (which aren't metaphors we've been using, but which I hope are clear) a DM might insist the PCs search the right box, or the right room, or the right house; I think a table might have sorted those expectations before going looking for the Crown of Revel; I think it'd be a good idea if they did.

No, neither case is allowing narrative authority. The first isn't robbing anyone of agency--they chose to come to this room and look in this box, they can look in other rooms and other boxes, they can try to figure out how they came to be wrong about finding the Crown in this box in this room; especially if they determine they've been led astray, the story might well go interesting places, and there'd be agency. The second case appears to be more of a problem, agency-wise, simply because it looks like a combat but apparently isn't going to resolve like one; it feels as though the GM has taken charge of the story, perhaps just for a moment.

Maybe these cases aren't so identical as you think.

The first is what you and @Lanefan are advocating for in respect of looking in boxes.

I don't think I'm advocating for it as hard as you maybe think I am. It's my preference (though as I've said I'm flexible about needing to get the right box, room, or building) but I don't think I've said it's wrongbadfun or anything like that--I think I've been very careful not to, because I know attacking people's tastes and preferences can feel as though you're attacking their person, and I'm not trying to attack anyone.

I don't understand why you use the word agency to describe your preferences as to when you want the GM rather than the player to exercise agency. It is very confusing.

If you said When it comes to revelations about things and places I prefer that the GM exercise agency then I would follow quite clearly. @Campbell has said a version of just this in a recent post not far upthread.

I certainly prefer it as a GM--for reasons I think I've stated, of finding it easier to run if all the facts (or revelations, if you prefer) are coming from my own head.

I think I use the word agency because I understand it to mean control over character actions and decisions, not (to use your word) revelations. I think of revelations (and similar declarations) to be narrative authority.

This is pretty clear. The bit that confuses me is when you say that the GM exercising this sort of control over the shared fiction also counts as an example of the player exercising control over the shared fiction.

So, first, I might have been unclear in trying to say that as a player, I prefer if the GM is at least mostly responsible for the world (declarations and revelations) so long as he's consistent about it. (It actually irritates me when the GM is inconsistent about these things, which might not surprise you). If that was the clarity problem, you can stop here.

If that wasn't the clarity problem, then perhaps I wasn't clear about players having complete authority over their characters. I mean, it's D&D so there are effects like charm and dominate, but outside of those (and they've come up a total of maybe three times in 75 sessions between two campaigns) I don't run the characters, and I don't take away the player's control (authority) over the characters, and I ask for backstories for the characters and work with the players on fitting those backstories into my world. I do not tell them what their characters feel, emotionally, and I do not lead them around by the nose to follow some grand story I have laid out for the campaign.

Is that clearer, or did I guess wrong about what you didn't understand?

 

[pemerton]

In the example of play, there's no real indication why Isle is willing to accept such grievous harm in order to resist, and the player seems surprised, which kinda indicates maybe there's nothing previous in the fiction to indicate it, or maybe the player just missed it. In any event, it's a perfectly good GM move, same as having the BurgerMaster call for his guards when a PC insults him.

<snip>

it wouldn't be unreasonable to allow an WIS (Insight) check to get a read on the BurgerMaster: The PHB says specifically, "Your WIS (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move.". It wouldn't be unreasonable for the insult to be a CHA (Intimidate) check, or if you were trying to make him your enemy it could be a CHA (Persuasion) check to make him more hostile to you (the rules only cover making people friendlier but I see no reason you couldn't choose the opposite). No, there's no mechanism other than resolving an attack for a character to do damage to another, so there's no way for them to hurt the BurgerMaster other than to attack him--which they arguably did, when they tried to grapple him and take him hostage. The rules are different.

No one disputes the rules are different. One difference is the degree of transparency.

The player in AW knows that if s/he succeeds on the Go Aggro check, s/he is putting the GM to a choice. What does the player in 5e know? That "it wouldn't be unreasonable" to allow various checks? Or that the GM might make a decision unilaterally without framing checks?

Well, the player had his character insult the BurgerMaster. The BurgerMaster reacted by calling his guards. The state of the fiction changed. Obviously, the character altered the shape of the coming fiction by his actions.

The character didn't change the ficiton. The character exists within the fiction and does not author it.

The GM changed the fiction. S/he did so because s/he was prompted to by the player's action declaration.

I don't think AW looks as transparent from the rules and examples of play therein as all that and all that. All that emphasis on misdirection seems to be pointing in the opposite direction as transparency to me.

It may be that you have misunderstood what "misdirect" means. From AW pp 110-11, 153:

Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. Maybe your move is to separate them, for instance; never say “you missed your roll, so you two get separated.” Instead, maybe say “you try to grab his gun” - this was the PC’s move - “but he kicks you down. While they’re stomping on you, they drag Damson away.” The effect’s the same, they’re separated, but you’ve cannily misrepresented the cause. Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible. . . .

She rolls+sharp and hits with a 7–9, so she gets to ask me one question from that move’s list. “Which of my enemies is the biggest threat?” she says.

“Plover,” I say. “No doubt. He’s out of his armor, but he has a little gun in his boot and he’s a hard f*****. Mill’s just 12 and he’s not a violent kid. Isle’s tougher, but not like Plover.” (See me misdirect! I just chose one capriciously, then pointed to fictional details as though they’d made the decision. We’ve never even seen Mill onscreen before, I just now made up that he’s 12 and not violent.)​

Misdirection is Vincent Baker's term for the MC (=GM) establishing fiction in response to the resolution of declared actions. The MC does not explain his/her real world reasoning. Rather, s/he establishes and narrates fiction that generates the outcome to which s/he has reasoned in the real world.

This is part of what establishes transparency from the players' point of view: the player knows the fiction. There isn't secret or unrevealed fiction that the GM is nevertheless using to make resolution decisions (contrast what you and @Lanefan are advocatig for in this thread)

best I can tell, the point of the move is to give the characters something to react to. There's no way the characters can prevent it, because it doesn't exist in the fiction until the GM makes the move.

This is wrong, and again suggests misunderstanding.

Here are some examples of announced future badness (AW, pp 111, 116-18, 128):

Maybe your move is to announce future badness, but for god sake never say the words “future badness.” Instead, say how this morning, filthy, stinking black
smoke is rising from somewhere in the car yard, and I wonder what’s brewing over there? . . .

“[A]nnounce future badness,” for instance, means think of something bad that’s probably going to happen in the future, and announce it. . . .

The most important and versitile setup move is announce future badness. If you don’t have another move already at hand, announce future badness:

“Someone’s in there, you hear them moving. What do you do?”

“‘Oh, hey, Keeler, Ribs is looking for you.’ What do you do?”

“She’s about to figure out where you are. What do you do?”

“Dude you have a split second before that thing gets its teeth into your arm. What do you do?”

“‘Hey boss, it’s cool, but I don’t think everybody’s happy. There’ve been more fights down in the stews, I think somebody’s maybe trying to move in on somebody else’s biz.’ What do you do?”

“You hear a dog outside, sniffing and whining. ‘You found something, boy?’ What do you do?” . . .

The MC move for pushing is announce future badness. “Wilson, you’re down collecting the day’s water from the well and do you feel like reading a charged situation? Something seems off this morning.” “Keeler, Dog Head does what you say, but, it’s like, he keeps looking at you for a minute after you give him the order. What do you do?” “Bran, while you’re working, just for a few seconds all your lights dim and the constant low hum of your workspace? You hear it just start to slow. Everything kicks back in after just a second or two and you can keep working. What do you do?”​

The badness is threatened. The GM doesn't need to know what it is - we can see this in the examples, where eg the GM may not have decided yet why Bran's workshop lights dim, or why Ribs is looking for Keeler. The players may react to prevent the badness, or allow it to mature. That's their prerogative.

The clearest analogue in standard D&D play of announcing future badness is the GM narrating what the PCs see when they open a door.

The player in the D&D example has re-written the present, through his character's actions. The player in the Crown example has re-written the past (somehow the Crown got into that box) outside of his character's actions. This seems like a pretty clear difference to me: The former is agency, the latter is narrative authority.

<snip>

they chose to come to this room and look in this box, they can look in other rooms and other boxes, they can try to figure out how they came to be wrong about finding the Crown in this box in this room; especially if they determine they've been led astray, the story might well go interesting places, and there'd be agency. The second case appears to be more of a problem, agency-wise, simply because it looks like a combat but apparently isn't going to resolve like one; it feels as though the GM has taken charge of the story, perhaps just for a moment.

I have bolded some key phrases.

The past and the present are descriptions of the fiction. I am consistently trying to talk about the real world. (This is slightly ironic in the context of your remarks about AW on misdirection, given that you seem to be misdirected in your analysis of RPG play by treating properties of the fiction as if they're properties of play.)

Your choice to give different sorts of labels to acts of authorship doesn't seem relevant to the point I am making - that point is that, in both cases, action declaration leads to new fiction being narrated (dead orc, Crown found in box). What I'm intrerested in is who has the capacity to establish that new fiction? You do not appear to be contesting my conclusion in that respect. When you say that "there'd by agency" all you mean is that there would be action declarations that provoke the GM to narrate new stuff. The players wouldn't be establishing the contet of the ficiton.

What they would be doing is figuring out stuff that the GM has made decisions about. Which is what I called, upthread, RPGing-as-puzzle-solving.

I think I use the word agency because I understand it to mean control over character actions and decisions, not (to use your word) revelations. I think of revelations (and similar declarations) to be narrative authority.

<snip>

as a player, I prefer if the GM is at least mostly responsible for the world (declarations and revelations) so long as he's consistent about it.

<snip>

perhaps I wasn't clear about players having complete authority over their characters. I mean, it's D&D so there are effects like charm and dominate, but outside of those (and they've come up a total of maybe three times in 75 sessions between two campaigns) I don't run the characters, and I don't take away the player's control (authority) over the characters

But why, when I talk about player agency in respect of the content of the shared fictin, do you read my words through your peferred terminology?

When I read your paragraphs quoted just above, what I read is that you prefer a game in which there are large swathes of the fiction in respect of which players do not exercise agency over its content.

 

[prabe]

No one disputes the rules are different. One difference is the degree of transparency.

The player in AW knows that if s/he succeeds on the Go Aggro check, s/he is putting the GM to a choice. What does the player in 5e know? That "it wouldn't be unreasonable" to allow various checks? Or that the GM might make a decision unilaterally without framing checks?

The player in AW knows the GM will make a choice but has no control over what the decision will be.

The player in 5E knows the GM will make a choice but has no control over what the decision will be.

I do not see a difference between the two conditions. I do not see a difference in agency.

The character didn't change the ficiton. The character exists within the fiction and does not author it.

The GM changed the fiction. S/he did so because s/he was prompted to by the player's action declaration.

Well, if I wanted to play the game and ignore the character I'd play something like Gloomhaven or Eldritch Horror or Pandemic (all of which I like, for what that's worth) where the "character" is just a bundle of abilities with a picture attached. That is neither how nor why I play TRPGs, though.

To be more responsive, at the same level of remove: The fiction changed as a result of the player's decision, which rounds to the player changing the fiction. Since the decision ended up being an action that the character takes, it works just as well to think of the character changing the fiction, since the action and the result are connected in the fiction.

It may be that you have misunderstood what "misdirect" means. From AW pp 110-11, 153:

{snip}

Misdirection is Vincent Baker's term for the MC (=GM) establishing fiction in response to the resolution of declared actions. The MC does not explain his/her real world reasoning. Rather, s/he establishes and narrates fiction that generates the outcome to which s/he has reasoned in the real world.

This is part of what establishes transparency from the players' point of view: the player knows the fiction. There isn't secret or unrevealed fiction that the GM is nevertheless using to make resolution decisions (contrast what you and @Lanefan are advocatig for in this thread)

"Misdirect" seems to mean one of two things. It either means describe what you're doing in terms of the fiction (as in, having NPCs put PCs in different places, rather than saying "they separate you"--the principle is, IIRC "Make your move but never speak its name" or something close) or it means something more like narrative sleight-of-hand, where the connections between cause and effect, action and result, are muddied, to keep the players (and I suspect ideally the GM) guessing. The former is less about transparency than immersion; the latter is ... well, I don't entirely grasp what the point is, but I don't think it can be fairly be said to be about transparency.

This is wrong, and again suggests misunderstanding.

The badness is threatened. The GM doesn't need to know what it is. The players may react to prevent the badness, or allow it to mature. That's their prerogative.

The clearest analogue in standard D&D play of announcing future badness is the GM narrating what the PCs see when they open a door.

Sure. Or however else a GM might be having the excrement hit the fan. Pretty standard stuff, then.

The past and the present are descriptions of the fiction. I am consistently trying to talk about the real world. (This is slightly ironic in the context of your remarks about AW on misdirection, given that you seem to be misdirected in your analysis of RPG play by treating properties of the fiction as if they're properties of play.)

We've been talking about TRPGs, yes? A form of play that focuses around emerging story? The fiction that emerges is a property of play and the entire point of the play. I'm surprised you can be so dismissive of it.

Your choice to give different sorts of labels to acts of authorship doesn't seem relevant to the point I am making - that point is that, in both cases, action declaration leads to new fiction being narrated (dead orc, Crown found in box). What I'm intrerested in is who has the capacity to establish that new fiction? You do not appear to be contesting my conclusion in that respect. When you say that "there'd by agency" all you mean is that there would be action declarations that provoke the GM to narrate new stuff. The players wouldn't be establishing the contet of the ficiton.

What they would be doing is figuring out stuff that the GM has made decisions about. Which is what I called, upthread, RPGing-as-puzzle-solving.

How'd the characters get there? What'll they do next? Aren't the answers to those questions fictional content? Didn't the players/characters have input to those answers? Aren't the characters in the fiction trying to figure out what's going on in the fiction?

It can be played in any number of ways, all of which are fine and valid and really do make sense as design decisions--it makes as much sense to have the player narrate what's in the box as it does to have the GM do so--but they lead, I think, to different types of stories emerging.

But why, when I talk about player agency in respect of the content of the shared fictin, do you read my words through your peferred terminology?

For the same reason that when I talk about "player agency" as "authority over the character" and "narrative authority" as "altering the fiction/facts of the world (including the possibility of changing facts outside of the character's control)" you read them through your preferred terminology. It's how I think about it.

When I read your paragraphs quoted just above, what I read is that you prefer a game in which there are large swathes of the fiction in respect of which players do not exercise agency over its content.

And I think you think "content" here means "what's in the box" whereas I think "content" means "what the characters do." In the example of the Crown or Revel being/not being in the box, there's no way the character has any control of that, whether the Crown being in the box is decided by the GM, erm, deciding, or as the result of an action-resolution check (where a success allows the player to put the Crown in the box). I'm not inclined to deny that I find it easier to play if I'm not having to think so much outside my character, nor that as a GM I find it easier if the facts of the world (such as whether the Crown of Revel is in the box) are in my head as opposed to yet-undertermined, but I don't think I've been impervious to the idea that others might prefer it otherwise.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The player in AW knows the GM will make a choice but has no control over what the decision will be.

The player in 5E knows the GM will make a choice but has no control over what the decision will be.

I do not see a difference between the two conditions. I do not see a difference in agency.

This isn't quite right, though. In AW, the GM is waiting on the player's action and the resolution to determine what happens next -- the player constrains the GM into narrating the result of their play and the mechanics constrain how the GM can introduce new fiction. This style of play greatly constrains the GM's ability to Force outcomes, because you just can't plan the kind of play that occurs or it's immediately obvious.

In 5e, the player's action doesn't constrain the GM because the GM decides all of the fictional particulars of the action and can adjust those to the GM's thinking of how the scene should play or what fictional elements the GM has prepared but not yet introduced into play.

As an example, take the OP's situation. The player insults the Burgomaster. In AW, this would either work or would have to go to the mechanics. The player would use the Go Aggro move. The GM's narration would then be constrained by the result of the roll -- they couldn't have the Burgomaster call for the guards except on a failure or as part of a partial where they still give the player something they want. Even if the GM chose to have the Burgomaster suck it up, the situation would then resolve with the Burgomaster at a disadvantage due to getting hit/hurt/held whatever. It certainly wouldn't start with the players at the disadvantage because the odds just shifted.

In 5e, what happens is entirely up to the GM. They could try something like the above, but the resolution mechanics in 5e don't really work very well for that kind of play, so it's kludgy. Or, just as easily, you end up with the OP situation, the guards are called because the player trips across the GM's prepared responses. In the first case, the player's agency is the same as in AW, but it's entirely at the GM's whim -- they GM has to allow this vice in AW the game says that's how it works. In the second, the player didn't have agency because there was a secret established fact that prevented any outcome except the GM's prepared one (in this case, the GM that wrote the module).

These are pretty different outcomes from your oversimplification. I mean, you roll the dice in the first one but not the second should be a pretty clear indication of something different here.

Well, if I wanted to play the game and ignore the character I'd play something like Gloomhaven or Eldritch Horror or Pandemic (all of which I like, for what that's worth) where the "character" is just a bundle of abilities with a picture attached. That is neither how nor why I play TRPGs, though.

To be more responsive, at the same level of remove: The fiction changed as a result of the player's decision, which rounds to the player changing the fiction. Since the decision ended up being an action that the character takes, it works just as well to think of the character changing the fiction, since the action and the result are connected in the fiction.

I very much want you to tell my Blades players that they aren't playing their characters any more than when we play Gloomhaven (which we also do, fun game). Characters don't exist, it's only ever the players that change things. Point in fact, next time you RPG, wait for your character to do something and see what happens.

This is a common response to games that don't use atomic task resolution systems by people that like atomic resolution systems. By atomic resolution, I mean at the smallest step you resolve specific actions that are fully encapsulated. 5e is often atomic in it's resolution, especially when dealing with those elements with good rules. Take a trap. I commonly see in 5e that you have to notice the trap, which is a perception check that only serves to notice the trap. You then have to investigate the trap to see how it works. This is usually presented as a singular investigate check. Then you disarm the trap, which, again, is a singular roll that only determines success/failure at this one task. Each of these is essentially separate, or atomic, and each doesn't work to move the fiction forward except by the very narrow task it's designed to operate on. This, though, gets the label of playing through your character while a different game, that might treat a trap as an outcome of another failed check and will treat dealing with it very similarly, gets the label of meta or not as character focuses. It's a false distinction. I get you like what you like, but your issues aren't this character thing, or else you have a very bad grasp of the play involved.

"Misdirect" seems to mean one of two things. It either means describe what you're doing in terms of the fiction (as in, having NPCs put PCs in different places, rather than saying "they separate you"--the principle is, IIRC "Make your move but never speak its name" or something close) or it means something more like narrative sleight-of-hand, where the connections between cause and effect, action and result, are muddied, to keep the players (and I suspect ideally the GM) guessing. The former is less about transparency than immersion; the latter is ... well, I don't entirely grasp what the point is, but I don't think it can be fairly be said to be about transparency.

No, quite simply, it's "tell a story about what happens, don't just state a move name." By "make your move but never speak it's name" the intent isn't to muddy the game, but to force fiction to occur rather than bland mechanics. "Tell of future badness" is a terrible things to say in game -- "um, there's some bad stuff coming," doesn't work at all. "There's a massive crash downstairs, and you hear many heavy boots entering the building," makes things much more specific and gives the game engine those critical details that it works on. The intent here is the exact opposite of obfuscation or misdirection, it's a push to narrate evocative fiction so the players can both feel in the fiction and change the range of options.

Out of time, so I have to stop here.

 

[prabe]

I very much want you to tell my Blades players that they aren't playing their characters any more than when we play Gloomhaven (which we also do, fun game). Characters don't exist, it's only ever the players that change things. Point in fact, next time you RPG, wait for your character to do something and see what happens.

I was responding more to the idea that the character doesn't matter in the creation of the fiction. I can see how one might infer that I was saying that BitD or AW players don't play or care about their characters, but that was not my intended meaning.

Well, the entirety of the fiction doesn't really exist, does it? More to the point, I have been surprised by my fictional character's fictional actions and decisions in both the recent and distant past, and I expect to be so surprised again. Every now and then I'll stop and wait for the still, small voice of the character, just to make sure I'm on the right path.

 

[prabe]

This isn't quite right, though. In AW, the GM is waiting on the player's action and the resolution to determine what happens next -- the player constrains the GM into narrating the result of their play and the mechanics constrain how the GM can introduce new fiction. This style of play greatly constrains the GM's ability to Force outcomes, because you just can't plan the kind of play that occurs or it's immediately obvious.

In 5e, the player's action doesn't constrain the GM because the GM decides all of the fictional particulars of the action and can adjust those to the GM's thinking of how the scene should play or what fictional elements the GM has prepared but not yet introduced into play.

So, how exactly does the player control which choice the GM makes, or even know what the GM's options are? The GM in AW doesn't seem to me (as someone who's just read the rules a couple times) to be all that much more constrained than the DM in 5E.

As an example, take the OP's situation. The player insults the Burgomaster. In AW, this would either work or would have to go to the mechanics. The player would use the Go Aggro move. The GM's narration would then be constrained by the result of the roll -- they couldn't have the Burgomaster call for the guards except on a failure or as part of a partial where they still give the player something they want. Even if the GM chose to have the Burgomaster suck it up, the situation would then resolve with the Burgomaster at a disadvantage due to getting hit/hurt/held whatever. It certainly wouldn't start with the players at the disadvantage because the odds just shifted.

In 5e, what happens is entirely up to the GM. They could try something like the above, but the resolution mechanics in 5e don't really work very well for that kind of play, so it's kludgy. Or, just as easily, you end up with the OP situation, the guards are called because the player trips across the GM's prepared responses. In the first case, the player's agency is the same as in AW, but it's entirely at the GM's whim -- they GM has to allow this vice in AW the game says that's how it works. In the second, the player didn't have agency because there was a secret established fact that prevented any outcome except the GM's prepared one (in this case, the GM that wrote the module).

So, I'll let pass that by the DM deciding what happens, that's technically going to mechanics.

So, the AW player Goes Aggro and rolls. 10+ The BurgerMaster sucks it up (breaks) and calls for the guards. On a 7-9, the BurgerMaster "barricades himself securely in" and calls for the guards. On a miss, the BurgerMaster calls for the guards. A bad-faith GM can work inside AW just as easily--maybe more so, if the players believe otherwise--as a bad-faith DM in 5E. And the vibe I get from the book seems to me to encourage bad-faith (or at least dickish) GMing.

This is a common response to games that don't use atomic task resolution systems by people that like atomic resolution systems. By atomic resolution, I mean at the smallest step you resolve specific actions that are fully encapsulated. 5e is often atomic in it's resolution, especially when dealing with those elements with good rules. Take a trap. I commonly see in 5e that you have to notice the trap, which is a perception check that only serves to notice the trap. You then have to investigate the trap to see how it works. This is usually presented as a singular investigate check. Then you disarm the trap, which, again, is a singular roll that only determines success/failure at this one task. Each of these is essentially separate, or atomic, and each doesn't work to move the fiction forward except by the very narrow task it's designed to operate on. This, though, gets the label of playing through your character while a different game, that might treat a trap as an outcome of another failed check and will treat dealing with it very similarly, gets the label of meta or not as character focuses. It's a false distinction. I get you like what you like, but your issues aren't this character thing, or else you have a very bad grasp of the play involved.

I don't see how the character's success/failure on a resolution determining whether the door is trapped--meaning literally that the trap is present on one result and not on another--can be anything other than meta. If doors are only ever trapped if you look for traps, why would you ever look for traps? That's probably not the best example ... Anyway, I actually do understand the playstyle, and I even see the appeal of something like Gumshoe where you always find what's there to be found but you might not understand it correctly (and I realize that Gumshoe might not be exactly the right style of play, where the declaration "I open the box, looking for the Crown of Revel" is an action-declaration that can be resolved, which on a result favoring the player means the Crown of Revel is in the box--I can see the appeal of that, too-- finding the Crown of Revel isn't the point, figuring out what to do with it is). Meta elements don't always need to detract from focus on the characters, but focus on the characters doesn't mean the player or the character has agency. While the player might have used the game's mechanics to put the Crown of Revel in the box, there's no in-fiction way for the character to have done so; I find that mechanics like that push me out of character rather than pulling me in. Those mechanics to me feel far more focused on story than on character/s.

No, quite simply, it's "tell a story about what happens, don't just state a move name." By "make your move but never speak it's name" the intent isn't to muddy the game, but to force fiction to occur rather than bland mechanics. "Tell of future badness" is a terrible things to say in game -- "um, there's some bad stuff coming," doesn't work at all. "There's a massive crash downstairs, and you hear many heavy boots entering the building," makes things much more specific and gives the game engine those critical details that it works on. The intent here is the exact opposite of obfuscation or misdirection, it's a push to narrate evocative fiction so the players can both feel in the fiction and change the range of options.

Describing things in-the-fiction is good GMing, I agree. I don't think of it as "misdirecting," though. There is a fair amount of explicitly-encouraged jerking-around of the PCs by the GM, it seems. But I've been pretty clear for a while (at least in my head) that I'm not antagonistic enough as a GM to run any of these sorts of games. I'm happy to instigate, but after that I'm very hands-off.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I was responding more to the idea that the character doesn't matter in the creation of the fiction. I can see how one might infer that I was saying that BitD or AW players don't play or care about their characters, but that was not my intended meaning.

Well, the entirety of the fiction doesn't really exist, does it? More to the point, I have been surprised by my fictional character's fictional actions and decisions in both the recent and distant past, and I expect to be so surprised again. Every now and then I'll stop and wait for the still, small voice of the character, just to make sure I'm on the right path.

In terms of agency, the character does not matter at all. Being a construct that cannot make choices, it lacks the fundamental requirements to have agency. Instead, the character is a vehicle for the player's agency. Whether or not a game or a player chooses to treat the character as a pawn or decides to advocate strongly for the character is a completely separate issue from agency.