A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

Player agency is when a player chooses the actions of his character and those actions have an actual impact on the characters world.

By this measure the reader of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book has player agency. Which is absurd.

Triggering the GM to offer up output B rather than output B isn't agency. Even a railroad has that (unless it is so utterly degenerate that the GM doesn't even bother responding to player action declarations; but I don't think there is very much of that in the RPGing world).

 

[Manbearcat]

If it has been established in the shared fiction that the NPC spoke the truth, then where does the GM get the authority unilaterally to change that?

A fortiori, if that component of the shared fiction was established because a player succeeded in a declared action, where does the GM get the authority to just set aside the outcome of action resolution?

If my questions are treated non-rhetorically, the answer can only be: by using force (whether illusionistically or overtly) and completely disregarded player agency.

The place that the GM gets that authority is in games that place the GM's role as "lead storyteller" while giving them a mandate to ignore/change rules and action resolution results in the interest of (the GM's idea of) "a good story" and, by proxy, "an enjoyable playing experience."

That sort of positioning of GM role and that sort of authority over the propulsion of play (along with several other riders regarding how table-facing mechanics should be and how participatory/acquiescent players should be to this paradigm) is something that just gets assumed in these conversations.

The reality is, there is an enormous amount of games that not only don't support that paradigm, they actually (and with focused intent) are structured to be experiences entirely alternative to that paradigm. Then there are games that that are orthogonal to that paradigm (alternatives to the orthodox and the alternatives). We're in a golden era of diverse gaming. This is why analysis is more important than ever and assumptions of orthodoxy are less helpful than ever.

 

[pemerton]

Right. I have an example. Once I ran a one-shot (using Traveler IIRC, but really it could have been anything). In this one-shot the PCs were on a doomed space station. Nothing the PCs were going to do, no action they could take, was going to alter the fact that when the orbit decayed it burned up, and everyone inside burned up with it. This scenario was, IMHO, in no way shape or form a 'railroad' or example of 'DM force'. I admit, I didn't explicitly indicate to the players that their choices wouldn't materially change the outcome for the PCs. Still, playing through the scenario provided them all ample chances to make decisions, to explore different aspects of their characters, and to answer the question "how would I face an unavoidable death?" This is high concept RP and evoked a lot of interesting play.

Ron Edwards discussed this sort of thing nearly 20 years ago:

neither Setting-based Premise nor a complex Setting history necessarily entails metaplot, as I'm using the term anyway. The best example is afforded by Glorantha: an extremely rich setting with history in place not only for the past, but for the future of play. The magical world of Glorantha will be destroyed and reborn into a relatively mundane new existence, because of the Hero Wars. Many key events during the process are fixed, such as the Dragonrise of 1625. Why isn't this metaplot?

Because none of the above represent decisions made by player-characters; they only provide context for them. The players know all about the upcoming events prior to play. The key issue is this: in playing in (say) a Werewolf game following the published metaplot, the players are intended to be ignorant of the changes in the setting, and to encounter them only through play. The more they participate in these changes (e.g. ferrying a crucial message from one NPC to another), the less they provide theme-based resolution to Premise, not more. Whereas in playing HeroQuest, there's no secret: the Hero Wars are here, and the more everyone enjoys and knows the canonical future events, the more they can provide theme through their characters' decisions during those events.​

From the point of view of authorship - which is what we're talking about when we talk about player agency over the shared fiction of a RPG - there is no fundamental difference between past and future in the fiction. A player's goal can be to establish that his/her PC really is the child of the duke (ie a past-oriented goal), just as much as to overthrow the duke (ie a future-oriented goal). And you don't need particularly fancy mechanical systems to support this: my current Classic Traveller game has action declarations that aim at establishing truths about the past as well as truths about the future.

So playing in a context where we know the setting is a doomed space station can be just as meaningful as playing in a setting where we know the revolution has just happened.

What is anathema to player agency - as Edwards points out - is the GM using secret backstory and covert manipulation of unilaterally-imagined fiction to shape and thwart action resolution outcomes.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If it has been established in the shared fiction that the NPC spoke the truth, then where does the GM get the authority unilaterally to change that?

A fortiori, if that component of the shared fiction was established because a player succeeded in a declared action, where does the GM get the authority to just set aside the outcome of action resolution?

If my questions are treated non-rhetorically, the answer can only be: by using force (whether illusionistically or overtly) and completely disregarded player agency.

I was in a game....I believe it was D&D 3E but may have been 3.5 or possibly Pathfinder.....and the GM did not state the Difficulty Classes for any attempted skill check. He claimed that this was to maintain a level of uncertainty for the players. Then we would roll, and he would narrate the results. In some cases, success or failure was very obvious...the lock would remain unpicked, the wall unclimbed.

In other cases, success or failure was not obvious at all. Things like Sense Motive checks to determine if someone is lying definitely fell into that category. You’d roll, you’d know the total you got based on the roll plus your skill....but you didn’t know the DC that the GM set. And his narration could be really vague, like “you’re reasonably sure the captain’s not lying”.

This approach soon became obvious as a cover for him to simply decide if things succeeded or failed. It gave him enough plausible deniability to do what he wanted “without the players knowing.”

Ultimately, we absolutely knew. His campaign ground to a halt not ling after, and someone else picked up the GM reins. Since then, I’ve only ever played in one shots with him as GM, where that approach is far less irksome to me as a player.

 

[pemerton]

@hawkeyefan - what you describe in your latest post is, for me, the absolute pits.

 

[pemerton]

GM's pretty commonly set up quests and adventures...

Sure. That's why I posited, upthread, that low-player-agency games are pretty common in the world of RPGing.

I think on this, at least, @chaochou and I are ad idem.

EDIT because this subsequent post of yours also seemed relevant to this:

I am not hostile to analysis, though I feel that often these discussion become a tad dogmatic and prescriptive and lose the sight of things that actually matter for enjoyable gaming experience. And 'why does it matter?' is a perfectly valid question. If you're weighing pros and cons of various GMing methods, then it is pretty valid to ask what practical difference these actually make from the perspective of the players.

The practical difference is huge, for me at least. As player and GM.

As GM: I am not interested in writing a plot in advance, or setting up a "quest" or "adventure". That's not why I engage in RPGing as my main creative outlet (outside of my work).

As a player: I posted upthread about my Burning Wheel GM who introduced NPCs who had no connection to my PC but were of interest to him; and how I (in playing my PC) ignored them, and used the tools at my disposal (ie action declarations) to shift the focus of the action back onto the stuff I cared about.

One way to get better at GMing, or RPGing in general, is to do it.

But another way is to talk and read about it. Which is what these threads are for.

Before I read Ron Edwards's essays on The Forge, I hadn't been able to work out what it was that made my Rolemaster games good, and what it was that caused them to have moments of frustration. (Of course I could tell when I was being frustrated; but it was Edwards who let me work out why, and what techniques I could change or just let go of to alter that.)

Before I read @Campbell's posts on this forum I didn't appreciate the significant difference between how Apocalypse World works and how Burning Wheel (and other systems closer to it, eg Cortex+ Heroic; 4e D&D) work. Having learned that from Campbell has been a big help to me in running my current Classic Traveller game.

Etc.

 

[Manbearcat]

I was in a game....I believe it was D&D 3E but may have been 3.5 or possibly Pathfinder.....and the GM did not state the Difficulty Classes for any attempted skill check. He claimed that this was to maintain a level of uncertainty for the players. Then we would roll, and he would narrate the results. In some cases, success or failure was very obvious...the lock would remain unpicked, the wall unclimbed.

In other cases, success or failure was not obvious at all. Things like Sense Motive checks to determine if someone is lying definitely fell into that category. You’d roll, you’d know the total you got based on the roll plus your skill....but you didn’t know the DC that the GM set. And his narration could be really vague, like “you’re reasonably sure the captain’s not lying”.

This approach soon became obvious as a cover for him to simply decide if things succeeded or failed. It gave him enough plausible deniability to do what he wanted “without the players knowing.”

Ultimately, we absolutely knew. His campaign ground to a halt not ling after, and someone else picked up the GM reins. Since then, I’ve only ever played in one shots with him as GM, where that approach is far less irksome to me as a player.

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about above.

The less player-facing the game is, the more vulnerable it is to Illusionism (in precisely the way you described). This can be a feature or a bug depending upon what sort of experience people are looking for.

If you consider it a bug (either as a GM or as a player), then a game that is codified and player-facing is going to put you in an infinitely more secure position.

If you consider it a feature, then a game that is codified and player-facing is going to put you in an infinitely more insecure position.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is why I don't use pre-fab settings: to avoid just this, and to avoid 'canon arguments'.

Oh we don’t argue about that kind of stuff at all. Our group long ago agreed to make our own canon for any pre-existing setting, using broad strokes for most of it, and picking and choosing what elements we want to include.

When they went to Baldur's Gate, however, I ran aground: one of the players had played the video game set there and so I couldn't just make stuff up.

Sure you could have. Just tell the guy “forget what you learned in that video game.”

Were it me, if the action all takes place in one city I'd want that city mapped down to the nails before ever starting play.

EDIt to add: and were I a player running a character in that city, the first thing I'd have my PC do is buy or steal an accurate map of the place.

The PCs are inhabitants of the city, so they know their way around and no such map is needed. Now maybe the specific layout of buildings in a specific neighborhood, sure, they may not know that. But they know their way around just as anyone knows their way around their hometown.

Where to me that sort of error is close to unforgivable, and red-flags me that if the GM can mess up something this simple who knows what else is going to be messed up as things progress.

I don’t know....mistakes are gonna happen and that seems an easy one to correct, in the grand scheme. “Oops, guys the building is actually 800 by 300. My bad.” Problem solved.

A simple example: an 800' wall takes longer to run along to get around the corner than does a 600' wall, and if a character dies due to not being able to get to cover in time and then it's found later that this was due to the wall's length increasing 200' by mistake - yeah, that game's on its way over the cliff.

I mean if an error like that led to a PC death, I’d just go with the shorter length.

Honestly, this just need not be an issue at all.

 

[pemerton]

The place that the GM gets that authority is in games that place the GM's role as "lead storyteller" while giving them a mandate to ignore/change rules and action resolution results in the interest of (the GM's idea of) "a good story" and, by proxy, "an enjoyable playing experience."

That sort of positioning of GM role and that sort of authority over the propulsion of play (along with several other riders regarding how table-facing mechanics should be and how participatory/acquiescent players should be to this paradigm) is something that just gets assumed in these conversations.

If a poster in this thread is assuming that that sort of GM authority is just part-and-parcel of GMing, then they ought to conclude that player agency is impossible!

Because a necessary condition of player agency is that the GM does not have that sort of authority.

 

[pemerton]

Which takes away the option of "We go to place X without any real goal at all", which is often how exploratory play can unfold

<snip>

That, I suppose, depends on the types of goals the players set for their PCs. If a player's goal for their PC is simply to get rich or die trying, then what?

The GM decides what happens if the PCs don't do anything,

I have never played a RPG where the players don't have their PCs do things. And don't have goals for their PCs beyond Hey, GM, here I am, throw something at me!

Those sorts of players seem to not be interested in exercising agency, and so I don't think examples of play involving them are going to be very illustrative of what player agency looks like.

the GM decides how the world reacts to what the PCs do;

<snip>

as I said above, the GM gets to decide how the world reacts to what the PCs do, whether they succeed or fail.

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

The bits that I've bolded reinforce my conjecture upthread, that you are simply unfamiliar with systems that have robust action resolution mechanics. And at least for my part we do not seem to be talking past one another - your posts seem completely consistent with familiarity with "storyteller-GM" style RPGing that I would associate with games like 2nd ed AD&D, White Wolf, CoC, and that seemed to be evident in a story hour your linked to in a thread some months (I think it was) ago.

To go back to the bolded bits: in D&D combat, if a player - through the action resolution process - reduces a monster's hit points to zero by way of a sword attack, the GM does not get to decide how the world reacts to the PC's swing of a sword. The rules mandate that the GM narrate the monster being killed (or KO'ed, depending on the wrinkles of edition) by the PC's sword-blow.

Now just generalise that.

If the players succeed on action resolution, the GM is not free to decide how the world reacts. Rather, s/he is bound to honour the success. (This can't work if there is not an action resolution system that bears upon the matter at hand - see my post upthread about the weakness of onworld exploration in Classic Traveller as an example - but good RPG systems have good action resolution systems that cover at least the bulk of the action one might expect given setting, genre etc.)

This is why the sort of "unconscious railroading" you are positing is simply not possible in any system with robust action resolution.