A Question Of Agency?

[nevin]

I think you miss that some DM's Ad lib almost everything and just keep notes to remind them what they Ad Libbed. If I need to think that far I'll worry about the innkeeper or NPC's motivations. A lot NPC don't need that much attention. A lot of my NPC's are 2 dimensional till the players do something that requires more of them. Why put that much effort into them till I need too?

Now I have a good friend who'll spend 2 weeks of his free time mapping out 25 contingencies and all the NPC's thier family, motivations etc. That works for him. Doesn't work for me. we both love each others games.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think you miss that some DM's Ad lib almost everything and just keep notes to remind them what they Ad Libbed.

No, I don't mean that.

If I need to think that far I'll worry about the innkeeper or NPC's motivations. A lot NPC don't need that much attention. A lot of my NPC's are 2 dimensional till the players do something that requires more of them.

Yes, but you're still the one who makes up that stuff once it becomes needed, right?

 

[darkbard]

Yes, but you're still the one who makes up that stuff once it becomes needed, right?

I don't understand what seems to be an insistence on binarism here, GM OR players. What about collaboration, where the GM works with the players on what they have signalled as their interests ("with" here denoting both playing to their interests in context neutral situations or in cases of successful action declaration but against such interests in the case of action declaration failure). Why such sharply defined roles?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't understand what seems to be an insistence on binarism here, GM OR players. What about collaboration, where the GM works with the players on what they have signalled as their interests ("with" here denoting both playing to their interests in context neutral situations or in cases of successful action declaration but against such interests in the case of action declaration failure). Why such sharply defined roles?

It can be collaboration, some people just seem to think that their 'action resolution' causes the fiction to manifest out of thin air without human input or something like that. But ultimately if the players are directly affecting things that are beyond the control of their characters, that is the players assuming the narrator stance, and this is simply something that a lot of players don't want to do, and it is pretty extreme to claim that true player agency cannot exist without it. I get that there is kind of soft, informal version of this, where the GM picks up the interests of the players and crafts the reality to conform to that. Most GMs do this to certain extend and it is obviously a good idea. But that doesn't force the players to actively think of these sort of things from the narrator perspective, so in that sense it is very different.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And if the PCs convince Pup to do something that weakens his followers' allegiance, I think the GM is behaving reasonably to have the followers become less loyal or shift their allegiance. The PCs have changed the situation, and the shared fiction; it's just changed (again) afterward--as situations tend to do.

Sure, that would be the players STAKING THEIR RESOURCE on some further venture. Dungeon World has a couple of moves which might be appropriate to carry out aspects of that, depending on the details. There is Parley for instance, which might come up in an attempt to enforce a bargain on the followers. Defy Danger (a CHA check version) might also be useful here. However, you have to understand the DW process. The players make a 'move', and then the GM makes either a soft or hard move (sometimes one or the other is dictated, sometimes the choice is up to the GM) in response. A 'soft' move is one that ratchets up the pressure, but doesn't require an immediate mechanical response (IE you notice that your torch supply has reached the point where you must either turn back or risk running out of light). A hard move is one which must be answered directly by one or more players (IE the floor gives way beneath you).

So, in the Pup case. The players might demand that Pup do something not in the interests of his followers (IE give them something valuable). They know this might create discord and even physical danger, but one of the PCs points out to the followers that he's in charge and there's a chance they will all strike it rich, he offers to share some of the spoils with them later on. Parley, maybe they buy it, maybe they walk out, maybe they attack! I think Bards and maybe Barbarians also have class moves that could be unleashed in this situation that specifically address getting people to do what you want, I don't remember OTTOMH.

 

[prabe]

To pick up a concrete example, what does the merchant thief Iltan marks them as potential marks actually mean?

It's not the most-likely of my examples to occur in one of my campaigns, but that aside it's framing the fiction. If the characters loot a dungeon and take their gains to a city known for thieving merchants (as in, it's established in the fiction that the merchants and the criminals are the same people there--there are such cities established as existing in my world) then I might have the PCs deal with a merchant looking to swindle them, and I might call that merchant Iltan. That wouldn't negate their success in looting the dungeon, but it would be something (someone) in the world reacting to that success.

 

[prabe]

Of course "attitude" matters. That's what accounts for @prabe's dislike for PbtA games (even though they haven't played any). But many here have been arguing for the significant role system takes in establishing relative agency; @hawkeyefan has been particularly painstaking in laying this out.

If by "attitude" you mean my inability to see "success-with-complication" as anything other than "partial failure," I'll accept that; but I read AW with an open mind, motivated by curiosity, thinking I might like it, and I read the SRD for BitD actively expecting to like the game and didn't, so it doesn't feel from the inside as though I started with an axe to grind. The fact that I came away from reading the games actively wanting not to play them (or, frankly, read them again) means at a minimum there's a severe disconnect, I'll concede.

 

[prabe]

Sure, that would be the players STAKING THEIR RESOURCE on some further venture. Dungeon World has a couple of moves which might be appropriate to carry out aspects of that, depending on the details. There is Parley for instance, which might come up in an attempt to enforce a bargain on the followers. Defy Danger (a CHA check version) might also be useful here. However, you have to understand the DW process. The players make a 'move', and then the GM makes either a soft or hard move (sometimes one or the other is dictated, sometimes the choice is up to the GM) in response. A 'soft' move is one that ratchets up the pressure, but doesn't require an immediate mechanical response (IE you notice that your torch supply has reached the point where you must either turn back or risk running out of light). A hard move is one which must be answered directly by one or more players (IE the floor gives way beneath you).

So, in the Pup case. The players might demand that Pup do something not in the interests of his followers (IE give them something valuable). They know this might create discord and even physical danger, but one of the PCs points out to the followers that he's in charge and there's a chance they will all strike it rich, he offers to share some of the spoils with them later on. Parley, maybe they buy it, maybe they walk out, maybe they attack! I think Bards and maybe Barbarians also have class moves that could be unleashed in this situation that specifically address getting people to do what you want, I don't remember OTTOMH.

Thanks. That was about how I would have expected it would work, from what I've read in PbtA games.

 

[darkbard]

If by "attitude" you mean my inability to see "success-with-complication" as anything other than "partial failure," I'll accept that; but I read AW with an open mind, motivated by curiosity, thinking I might like it, and I read the SRD for BitD actively expecting to like the game and didn't, so it doesn't feel from the inside as though I started with an axe to grind. The fact that I came away from reading the games actively wanting not to play them (or, frankly, read them again) means at a minimum there's a severe disconnect, I'll concede.

I take you at your word. My point is simply, as an experienced gamer raised in the milieu of D&D (if not necessarily that game explicitly), there is no "open mind" in the sense of a tabula rasa. Your preferences, attitudes, etc. have already been shaped by the architecture of those games you were raised in.

Did you go in with the attitude of wanting to like PbtA etc. games? Again, I take you at your word you did. But unless you had no previous experience with RPGs or even much sense of what they might be as informed by popular culture, you did not read AW and BitD without preformed notions that already shaped your response to these games.

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, D&D fell down a rabbit hole in 1989 with the publication of 2e.

In fairness, in large part due to the influence of Dragonlance and similar ventures, players and DMs in 1989 were a different breed of rabbits from 1982. Couple that with external pressures e.g. the Satanic panic and it's easy to see how and why 2e went the way it did.

So, Gary basically outlines a game of what we would now call 'skilled play'. The basic structure is that the DM (and this term, DUNGEON MASTER is not arbitrary) builds a 'MAP' and a 'KEY', which explicates a complex series of challenges for a set of players (this can also be performed using a random generator, either entirely or partially). The DM's job from there is to act as a narrator, bringing the map and key into 3-dimensional life and providing additional sensory information as needed. The DM also acts as referee, adjudicating in a neutral fashion all situations which the exploration and/or combat rules don't cover, or which their simplistic application might produce ridiculous results. The DM is also expected to guard against 'rules exploitation' in which the player's find flaws in the mechanics in order to 'cheat the world' and get what they want in some unrealistic and (here we get into a grey area) 'unfair' way.

The 1e DM is NOT supposed to be aiming at 'creating a story', not supposed to railroad the PCs into his preferred situations, etc. He's simply supposed to stand by and referee neutrally as the players guide their PCs across the dungeon or hex grid (outdoors) encountering whatever is on the map, or perhaps dealing with wandering monsters, lack of healing, and dwindling supplies (the original game actually used AH's Outdoor Survival rules to adjudicate this part).

And in all of this the story (or more likely a series of only-sometimes-related stories all at once) more or less creates itself as the campaign goes along and the DM and-or the players start tying previously-seen elements into current adventuring.

For example, the party goes into White Plume Mountain, brings out the three weapons, and dutifully returns them to their owners. During downtime a few months later the party hears tell of some noble having recently gone crazy and started killing his people; the PCs investigate and find it's the same guy to whom they returned Blackrazor and that the weapon has since cursed him. So here the DM is able to tie a past element into current adventuring; and while she could just as easily have the noble be someone previously unknown, why do that when the opportunity exists to tie some things together?

Or, the party wander around the hexes and by sheer random chance happen to meet Goblins at every turn. The players in-character start wondering why there's so damn many Goblins out here and maybe even come up with some conspiracy theories...and the DM takes one of those theories and runs with it. Suddenly what were initially a bunch of random events have germinated into the beginnings of a previously-unforeseen storyline, which will either go somewhere or it won't depending on what the players/PCs decide to do as the campaign goes on.

There are a few issues which arise in practice. First of all the DM probably wants to showcase his most fun tricks, traps, and nasty cunning challenges (all of these are 'fair play' in the skilled play paradigm of 1e). Often things won't go as planned, and thus the DM may be tempted to use a bit of force (illusionism usually) to 'set things straight'. Thus when the Elf doesn't roll well to find a secret door, maybe the DM fudges the outcome. Maybe his favorite NPC always escapes at the end of being beaten by the party, etc. too. This is where 'fun story' creeps in, because the simple 'skilled play maze' doesn't really lead to that. It can lead to a lot of fun annecdotes and whatnot, but you have to abandon that paradigm at a certain point, to a degree, to really make things like high level play 'work'. And then of course there is a constant incentive in this system for the players to undermine the game, because they are fundamentally 'playing against the DM'. This leads to another source and rationalization of pushback.

Trying to make high-level play work well in 1e is something of a lost cause IMO. That said, by the time they get to high level there should in theory be all kinds of established elements the DM (or players!) can draw on to provide continuity of story if such is desired.

And sometimes some DM force (or outright hard-railroading) can be a good thing. Other times not, and the challenge often lies in figuring out which is which.