A Question Of Agency?

[Crimson Longinus]

Not sure what "it" is here. My first guess is that your saying that there's no difference between a choice the players make and a choice the GM makes for the players. If so, then I think we're way too far apart here to discuss -- your position is anathema to my concept of games in general, much less RPG theory. I hope this is not the case.

In practice in any RPG the amount of influence the GM and that players have on the outcome of any given situation varies, and there is not some optimal ratio that one always has to adhere to and agonising over it is pretty pointless, and possibly detrimental for actually achieving desirable outcomes. If the GM is more concerned over some theoretical purity that is unperceivable to the players anyway, rather than what actually is fun then that is not good.

 

[FrogReaver]

While true, it's too shallow a statement to say much. If there was one choice that would have changed things, then you can say this, the same as if there were myriad choices that did so. It's not a very good yardstick to evaluate agency. This is essentially an OR gate over all choices in the campaign -- it could have been a total railroad except for one thing.

Huh? Let’s take the railroad except 1 thing and apply my test.

Let’s test 10 events from the campaign. 9 of those events will be ones where whatever happens was going to happen either way. The other was agency allowing one.

My test answers each of those questions correctly. It’s not shallow at all, instead it’s quite robust.

And most importantly it answers the OPs question by being able to show agency in absence of preplanning anything.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why does it matter?

I’m with you. Agency for agency’s sake isn’t something to strive for.

My favorite example is a railroad with no agency that leads the players to an interesting situation where they have complete agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That's just it - in the two examples I gave there'd have been no chance to detect a lie anyway, as in both cases the NPC legitimately thought she was telling the truth. Advantage: no need to retcon anything as nothing would have played out any differently.

That said, GMs still need to be careful with this sort of thing as it'd be so easy to mess it up and simply invalidate previous play (as per your example of had the NPC been lying from square one the PCs might have had a chance to detect it); and that is bad.

But it is a retcon, as you label it. The example in question was specifically about a detail that was true but then later the GM decides to make it a lie.

Revealing that it was simply a mistake is a means of explaining the contradiction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But it is a retcon, as you label it. The example in question was specifically about a detail that was true but then later the GM decides to make it a lie.

Except really not, at least not from my point of view. Why you assume that it is the default that the NPC is speaking truth? Their liar/truthful status was merely undetermined.

 

[prabe]

I really don't see any evidence for this.

You don't need to, and I wouldn't expect you to, as our experiences, expectations, and preferences around TRPGs are radically different.

But there are no paths, let alone paths leading to the same place. In those games, I (as GM) am not the sole or even principal decider of what happens next. That is determined via action declarations and action resolution.

The GM decides what happens if the PCs don't do anything, and the GM decides how the world reacts to what the PCs do; and paths are sometimes visible (if not obvious) in retrospect, because all we can see looking back is what happened, not what could have.

The mechanism that you are positing seems to pertain to a game that lacks robust action resolution mechanics: you refer to the PCs acting in ways to change the fiction, and then you posit that it is the GM who reacts to those actions with the first thing that comes to mind. But where are the players' action declarations? If those actions are being declared, and they succeed, why is the GM getting to make up whatever fiction s/he likes?

I dunno. "Action declarations" seem kinda implicit in "actions" in a TRPG context, and as I said above, the GM gets to decide how the world reacts to what the PCs do, whether they succeed or fail.

This is actually very consistent with what I posted upthread:

I don't know what systems you are familiar with besides D&D, but it seems - on the strength of what I've quoted - that you're not all that familiar with systems with robust action resolution.

I'm most familiar with D&D, sure--5E is what I've been dedicating brainspace to lately, but I've played every edition from 1st through Pathfinder (skipped 4E because none of the groups I was playing with gave it a go). I've run Fate, for about a year--everyone seemed to be enjoying it until things accrued and I abruptly wasn't--and I've played it some outside that. I've played some CoC, some various White Wolf style games, some Champions, a lot of Mutants & Masterminds 2E, and smatterings and handfuls of other games. I've bounced hard off (in the sense that I don't particularly ever want to read anything about them again) Gumshoe (specifically Esoterrorists), Apocalypse World, and Blades in the Dark--the last left me particularly irked because I really wanted to like it, but didn't, at all (on reading).

I think it's just--as I said--that our experiences, expectations, and preferences are so radically different that we end up talking past each other, and I at least find that immensely frustrating, because it never seems as though you understand anything I say.

That's not a strong advertisement for the utility or importance of GM prep!

I dunno. I feel much more confident as a GM if I've prepped things, even if the PCs go off and find/do other things, because I've thought about where they are and where the game-world is, and I'm better able to improvise. Also, it was more a dig on my own writing than a comment on GMing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Down a rabbit hole we go...

So, if my players go off in some random direction without asking me about it then that choice was not informed and thus they lack agency because I could just make up whatever and they wouldn't know any better. Sounds fair.

However, if they ask me to provide details about where they might go and I give them info about it, then they have agency because they are informed about the possible consequences of going there. Sounds fair, as long as the info I gave them is correct.

What if the info I give them comes from an in game source, such as an NPC, then later I decide that the NPC was lying and the info they got was wrong. Then I could make up whatever and they wouldn't know any better, but then does that mean they lack agency because of the fact that they made an informed choice based on an in game lie?

Again, look at this from a NARRATIVE perspective. What are the PLAYERS asking for? If what they want to do is play to find out what happens when their characters confront the guy who killed their friend, then lying about it so that doesn't happen is kind of a dick move, right? If instead the players want to play to find out what happens when the PCs are betrayed, well, then obviously the lie cannot possibly be disempowering them! In fact it is simply a necessary component of the desired narrative structure.

Characters don't exist. They cannot have agency. When you try to talk about agency from a character perspective, it never makes sense. It cannot make sense. I mean, we COULD talk about whether, fictionally, a certain character had control of his or her fate in a given circumstance, and that might be INTERESTING, but it has nothing to do with the agency of the PLAYER. IMHO this is what makes these kinds of discussions difficult.

Now, there's a position that some will take that says they never ever want to be in 'player stance' and deciding anything based on their motivations and understanding of the game as a player, that it is some sort of anathema to RP. IMHO this is a 'unicorn' type of philosophy. Nobody is ever really entirely in 'character stance'. Every aspect of play is heavily influenced by gamist considerations and by practical considerations that form the 'game contract' between the game's participants.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, there's a pretty big pea being hidden under this mattress, and that's the assumption that the player choice is uniformed. This almost never happens -- players are making a choice to go in a "random" direction not because they are actually random but usually because there's some other motive at play. Perhaps they don't like what's otherwise available, so the choice is on to not choose any of what's already up. Or, they're engaged in some level of metaplay where they think their thwarting a GM plan they don't want, or, maybe they are random. In each of these cases, though, the players are exerting their agency.

This is key. ALL forms of interaction at the table between players and the GM, all decisions they make, everything they direct their characters to do and say, and every use they make of the mechanics of the game, are saying something. At least in games (like D&D, which seems to be assumed in this thread) which lack any formal mechanism for managing and controlling the plot, and have no explicit principles and process aimed at narrative/plot development, this is the ONLY form of communication the players have! They can outright say to the DM "we want our players to engage in a desperate endeavor which they believe is ultimately futile." but few players really think in such conceptual narrative terms very often. Yet that might be, at some level, what the players are asking for! This sort of plot could arise pretty naturally out of the goals, imperatives, and process of play in, say, Dungeon World, where the DM's imperative is to "turn up the heat, and then play to see what happens." In D&D things are a lot more nebulous. So PLAYER AGENCY is only REALLY achieved when you pay pretty close attention to the players and what they're communicating, and then test your assumptions, read their responses, and go with what they seem to be asking for. Its an imperfect process, and D&D generally is thus a somewhat imperfect narrative experience.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In practice in any RPG the amount of influence the GM and that players have on the outcome of any given situation varies, and there is not some optimal ratio that one always has to adhere to and agonising over it is pretty pointless, and possibly detrimental for actually achieving desirable outcomes. If the GM is more concerned over some theoretical purity that is unperceivable to the players anyway, rather than what actually is fun then that is not good.

Well the entire thread began because @zarionofarabel wanted to know if his style of GMing allowed for meaningful choices for his players. So I’ve been approaching the conversation with the expectation that agency is desired by those that are playing.

If it’s not desired, then yes, I would agree with you that worrying about the level of agency allowed in a game would be pointless. But I don’t know how that really helps.

Much as in the same way if a GM asked how to craft compelling intrigue scenarios for his game, and I decided to post “agonizing over how to incorporate intrigue is pointless because dungeon delving can be perfectly satisfying” kind of misses the point.

Except really not, at least not from my point of view. Why you assume that it is the default that the NPC is speaking truth? Their liar/truthful status was merely undetermined.

The example was literally what if a NPC told something and it was true and then the GM later decides to reveal it was a lie. It’s about the GM altering what’s established on a whim.

I’m sure that you’ll cite how if the actual status of the information’s truth was not known to the players, then how can their agency be affected....and that’s a relevant question. But it absolutely may be affected (may, not must.....we lack sufficient detail to really say for sure) because of how it was handled in the moment. The mechanics of play that were engaged in that moment cannot be changed as easily as the fiction can to explain away this change.

To give a more specific example, let’s say that in the moment of play when the NPC gives the PCs the information, one of the players asks for some kind of check to determine if it’s true. Now, depending on the game, the result of such a roll could be definitively known to the players, meaning they know if this information is true or not. In other games, perhaps they don’t know if they’ve succeeded; the GM simply says “you think he is telling the truth.”

If this information is important to the players so that they can make informed decisions in play, then not letting the results stand is absolutely subverting their agency.

If that doesn’t matter to you, that’s fine....but that doesn’t mean it’s not what’s happening.

 

[prabe]

To give a more specific example, let’s say that in the moment of play when the NPC gives the PCs the information, one of the players asks for some kind of check to determine if it’s true. Now, depending on the game, the result of such a roll could be definitively known to the players, meaning they know if this information is true or not. In other games, perhaps they don’t know if they’ve succeeded; the GM simply says “you think he is telling the truth.”

If the players/PCs have made an effort to determine that the NPC is telling the truth, I'd be very reluctant to change those particular facts; I think the only time I would is if there were other facts that conflicted with them, and I felt more strongly about those.