A Question Of Agency?

[prabe]

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.

Thank you for clarifying your meaning and for taking me at my word.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's actually a big part of the problem, I think, for some people; its not only that success-with-a-cost exists, its what the game wants to produce, so the mechanics put a thumb on the scale. Which means the vast majority of successes to them actually feel more like "mitigated failure", and that feels incompetent to them. They constantly want to aim for the unmixed successes, but relatively rarely get it.

What's interesting about this is that a game like Blades in the Dark, which uses success with complication, actually directs the GM to always treat the characters as competent. Even in complete failure, it's against the directions of the game to narrate the character acting incompetently. No one screws up because they did a dumb, or are inept -- when complications or failures occur, it's because the other guy got lucky, was better, or the situation wasn't exactly as they thought it was. The feeling of competence in Blades is one much higher that I usually see in D&D games where success is binary. This is one of the things I've absolutely brought back into my 5e games -- PCs are competent at all times. Even when they do outlandishly unwise things, they do so with competence.

There's a good bit of "feeling" about games that those doing the feeling haven't actually played.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

I know I’ve said this elsewhere, but it seems at least a bit relevant here.

When I introduced Blades in the Dark to my group, it was my usual players (friends of 30 odd years and long time RPGers) and one player’s nephew, about 15 years younger than us and whose RPG experience was almost entirely through video games. He’d played Pathfinder a handful of times, and not much else.

He grasped Blades in the Dark much more quickly than my long time players. He just didn’t have as much to unlearn and was less certain of the way things were “supposed” to go.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

People who are competent (even hyper-competent) deal with failure and setbacks constantly. Master-level climbers and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu players suffer setbacks and complications that they have to overcome (injuries, equipment failure, mental fatigue/distraction leading to suboptimal outcome, technical soundness failing in a challenging situation 1 in 20 times, misjudged route to success - applies to both, etc). Its all "success with complications." In my martial life (which includes BJJ among other things) its overwhelmingly success with complications despite being very accomplished. In my social and intellectual life, its, again, overwhelmingly "success with complications" with a smattering of successes and failures. By my reckoning, "success with complications" being the engine of the snowballing nature of PBtA games both (a) makes for compelling play and (b) comports with the experience of being a social animal thrust into competition/conflict with other social animals.

So, in this, I think one of a few things are happening (or both):

1) Your calibration of "failure" vs "success but complication/cost" vs "success" is off (I remember we had the discussion prior about the AW example and I don't think we ever had a meeting of the minds...so my guess is this is part of it).

2) The GM you've seen run it (I don't believe you've played it?) wasn't doing their job correctly.

AND, honestly, with PbtA (or at least DW, I'm less familiar with the other flavors of this system) its hard to see how it would really WORK without the core being 'success with complications'. The game is SUPPOSED to snowball. It wouldn't be that interesting if the PCs plan to raid the Orc Temple simply went from success to success. They would waltz in, achieve their goals, and waltz back out! That might, now and then, be fun, but it isn't a formula for an interesting game (and I doubt more traditional D&Ders would see it that way either). So, in the (nearly) zero-myth world of DW, where there is just a sketch-map of the Orc Temple, only sufficient to support the motive for a raid (relate it to PC Bonds), the 7-9 rolls are what drives the narrative!

Each time a PC makes a move and gets 'success with complication' they move deeper into the Orc Temple (after all, they succeeded). At the same time the GM made a move, and their mission got a bit more complicated. The ranger wasn't able to erase their tracks as they crossed the clearing, and the party begins to notice things are getting quieter in the woods... The thief killed the sentry at the bridge, but his body slipped off into the river and floated downstream. When they arrived at the place where the secret entrance was supposed to be, they discovered that the sketchy dude they bought the map from lied to them! Now they're searching for the back door way in, but orc patrols are clearly on the hunt for them. Can they still get in? Can they still get back out? Tune in next week!

 

[Thomas Shey]

What's interesting about this is that a game like Blades in the Dark, which uses success with complication, actually directs the GM to always treat the characters as competent. Even in complete failure, it's against the directions of the game to narrate the character acting incompetently. No one screws up because they did a dumb, or are inept -- when complications or failures occur, it's because the other guy got lucky, was better, or the situation wasn't exactly as they thought it was. The feeling of competence in Blades is one much higher that I usually see in D&D games where success is binary. This is one of the things I've absolutely brought back into my 5e games -- PCs are competent at all times. Even when they do outlandishly unwise things, they do so with competence.

There's a good bit of "feeling" about games that those doing the feeling haven't actually played.

I suspect you're assuming anything the GM could do with a flawed-success system that would make the people I'm talking about feel competent when it happens. There's not. You're seriously underestimating how much they'll focus on any downside.

 

[pemerton]

Attitudes matter more than the system though. You can easily have a high player agency game with a completely traditional system. It merely requires that the players are proactive, declare goals, take initiative; it doesn't require giving them reality editing powers.

I take it that by "system" here you mean mechanics - not mechanics + techniques.

In which case it depends a bit on mechanics. I run Classic Traveller - I think that gets to count as a "traditional system", given it's from 1977 (though I do incorporate some elements of some of the later supplements). It does have the Streetwise mechanic I've described upthread, which some may regard as "non-traditional", and it encourages the referee to work with the player to make sense of superficially contradictory upshots of random world generation, which some may regard as a "non-traditional" degree of collaboration in background and world-building.

I think my Classic Traveller game has quite a high degree of player agency.

I don't think it's easy to run a high player agency game with Gygax's AD&D, though, unless that is going to be very traditional dungeon-crawling. There aren't the mechanics, for instance, to support a high agency urban intrigue game (eg nothing comparable to Classic Traveller's Admin, Streetwise and Bribery skills).

EDIT: I just read @AbdulAlhazred's posts about AD&D. They explain really well, in more detail, my reasons for the paragraph above this one.

 

[pemerton]

Until something in the fiction happens to make it so. Not just the GM deciding “it’d make sense for this sage that they convinced to work for them to betray them now” because the GM can just as easily decide “this sage they convinced to work for them still remains totally loyal to then because he knows what the alternative would be”.

You point to logic...and yes you may perhaps be able to justify the GM’s whim in the fiction. But that doesn't mean it’s not the GM’s whim.

Now, if the PCs treat the NPC sage poorly, or something similar happens, then sure, the door to betrayal is open.

But to resort to “well, unbeknownst to the PCs the necromancer reached out to the sage and promised him power if he betrays the PCs” is absolutely sidestepping any kind of player agency.

And again, it’s fine to do that if it’s the preferred mode of play....but you can’t say that there’s a high degree of player agency going on.

This is a good example of the contrast between high and low player agency.

The second example involves the GM inventing, unilaterally in his/her imagination, a fictional event - the necromancer reaching out to the stage - which then serves, in the GM's imagined fiction, as the reason for the sage's betrayal.

At the table, what we have is (i) the players' recruiting the sage (via whatever action resolution mechanism permitted this) and then (ii) the GM deciding the recruitment has failed or been subverted. The fact that the GM can, in his/her imagination, come up with a reason in the fiction why that might have happened, doesn't affect this basic analysis.

And of course in a game with high player agency the GM can still exercise that sort of imagination. It just happens in a different way. If the players fail a check in which their PCs are relying on the sage, then the GM might narrate that failure as the sage's betrayal. Subsequent play might reveal that the sage has been suborned by the necromancer. But it all happens "downstream" of action resolution, as part of the narration and embellishment of consequences; rather than as an "upstream" input into action resolution that determines what the fiction will look like independently of the players' checks.

 

[pemerton]

AND, honestly, with PbtA (or at least DW, I'm less familiar with the other flavors of this system) its hard to see how it would really WORK without the core being 'success with complications'. The game is SUPPOSED to snowball. It wouldn't be that interesting if the PCs plan to raid the Orc Temple simply went from success to success.

<snip>

in the (nearly) zero-myth world of DW, where there is just a sketch-map of the Orc Temple, only sufficient to support the motive for a raid (relate it to PC Bonds), the 7-9 rolls are what drives the narrative!

Yes. I posted about this upthread.

None of the critics of "success with complications"/"partial failure" in this thread have said they want a game with no complications/challenges.

What they have either said, or very strongly implied, is that they want the introduction of those things to be solely under the GM's control independent of any mechanical system (and associated techniques) designed to ration or pace or manage that process.

This is why this discussion about complication-introduction is highly salient to the thread topic of player agency.

 

[pemerton]

You are overtly focusing the form over function. Of course plot hooks in a pre-written module that is meant to be usable by anyone who happens to pick it up will be presented differently than those generated by a GM who knows their players and characters. But here 'who is the master' and 'why is Rufus getting wine' are clearly plot hooks (albeit the latter barely qualifies) and in essence are not different than 'what are the orcs doing here' from my earlier example.

They are not "plot hooks". There's no plot. They don't hook anyone onto anything.

In the shared fiction, there is the master. That's it. In the real world, no one knows who the master is, what his motivations are, why Rufus serves him, why he wants wine.

This is not a superficial difference from H3 Pyramids of Shadow. It's a fundamental one.

At some point a human being has to make a conscious decision about these things.

Who denies that? We're talking about who makes the decision, at what point during play, under what constraints, following what principles? The answers to those questions tell us whether or not the players have agency.

In H3 Pyramid of Shadows, the GM/module author has decided who the NPCs are, what their motivations are, what actions they will take in relation to the PCs and even (as per my quote upthread what the PCs will do.

In the example of play I posted, I the player decided that Rufus was a salient NPC. The GM was then obliged to bring Rufus onto the stage because I succeeded on a Circles check. Consistent with the established backstory (ie that Rufus was Thurgon's ineffectual older brother still living in Auxol as "puppet" count), Rufus referred to "the master". Rufus's interactions then followed the outcomes of action resolution: Aramina shamed him (successful Ugly Truth, failed Steel); Thurgon failed to push him from shame to action (failed Command check to negate the Hestitation resulting from the failed Steel check); Aramina failed to get any concession of coins from him (failed Command check to have him hand over some coins).

Some of what happened was authored by me (the player), some by the GM. None of it was authored in advance; it was determined via play.

Being able to find out whether there is someone willing to sell weapons is a different thing than being able to dictate existence of certain things.

<snip>

Who came up with the idea that the tower could even potentially exist? Who determined that Edward exist and that he would live in a tower instead of a Winnebago? Who determined which exact results of the dice result the tower being there and which would result something else? You're again just trying to obfuscate the decision making process under mechanical jargon. 'Action resolution mechanic' is just a mathematical construct, it does nothing unless a human being set the axioms for it.

<snip>


Same questions than with the tower. Who decided that it was even a possibility that Edward was sorcerer, or evil? Why are we rolling for that and not whether he is a peaceful florist? Where do these concepts come from?

RPG action resolution mechanics are not mere mathematical constructs. They are processes for determining the content of a shared fiction.

I, playing Thurgon's sidekick Aramina, declare a Great Masters-wise check: Isn't the tower of Evard the black somewhere around here? (I may have been reading Heroes of Shadow (I think it is), a 4e supplement that discusses Evard, around that time.) The GM set the difficulty in accordance with the rules for setting the difficulty of a Wises check. I succeeded, and so Aramina does indeed have a correct recollection of the matter.

You have also mis-stated the Traveller mechanic. Here it is, from Classic Traveller Book 1 (1977):

The referee should set the throw required to obtain any item specified by the players (for ex-ample, the name of an official willing to issue li-censes without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+). DMs based on streetwise should be allowed at +1 per level. No expertise DM = −5.​

The referee doesn't first decide whether or not success is even possible. The player specifies the item, the referee sets the throw. If the throw succeeds the player finds the item.

Being able to find out whether there is someone willing to sell weapons is a different thing than being able to dictate existence of certain things. And if the players can do that, they are considering things from narrator perspective. You have given them power to summon things into being, and they certainly are aware of that. The claim that true agency requires the players to have reality editing powers is rather extreme one. A lot of people wind such highly unimmersive.

<snip>

Players using the narrator stance.

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.

Upthread you criticised dogma. Now you're trotting it out. You shift between "perspective" (a type of mental state, I guess), "stance" (a type of orientation in action) and "power" (a type of capacity) as if they're synonyms, and assert that it is "unimmersive" for players to have an impact on the fiction that is something beyond their character doing XYZ here and now.

If that were true, why is immersion not ruined by the players "to hit" roll determining what the Orc does or doesn't do with it's shield?

That's pretty effective plot hook! The characters must instantly respond!


<snip>

Are you trying to say here that the GM (based on their knowledge of the PCs motivations) set up a plot hook for which the PCs would be likely to respond?

An attack by a demon is not a "plot hook". What's the plot? What's the hook.

I mean, it's your prerogative to use "plot hook" as a synonym for establishing an element of the shared fiction to which the players might respond, but that's not the standard use, that's not how it's used in modules like H3, nor when posters on these boards say players have a duty to follow GM plot hooks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Anyway, I think your framing of this is rather weird. You're super focused on 'action resolution' and mechanics. Those are ultimately a tiny part of a RPG. Outside resolutions of specific actions there is shitton of other stuff the GM (or someone) has to make up, (what is there, what they're doing, what are their motivations and million other things) which affect the direction the game massively. So how decides these things? Either the GM sets up these, which in effect is them setting up 'plot hooks' etc which according to you is lowering player agency, or the players decide these, which is the players assuming the narrator stance.

I've noted a few places where different posters have said something along similar lines. I don't really agree. In games like BitD, DW, and I expect BW as well, there is nothing except action resolution and the direct fallout from it. In DW, for instance, the GM is advised to build sketch maps and develop 'fronts', which are a type of meta plot where there can be 'clocks' which can regulate and structure making GM moves to an extent (and might even answer some "what if the PCs just go off and don't deal with this," if that is even interesting).

Mostly everything is pretty focused on what the PCs can see and what is in arm's reach of them. There are not a "million other things." That is an observation drawn from a completely different process of play. Nor would anything except what the players are interested in doing "affect the direction massively." Why would it? The players and their characters are what the game is ABOUT. That is the whole point. There REALLY ARE no plothooks in a pure 'zero myth' kind of play. Of course, you are correct, even DW allows for SOME GM decisions about the world, but DW isn't really a hard 'players invent the narrative' game, at least not directly.

In fact, if you read DW carefully, you will come to understand that the GM is, technically, 'in charge of' the contents of the world. She creates Fronts, Steadings, Maps, etc. HOWEVER, while the GM is allowed to have a 'campaign concept' (which is going to center on a Campaign Front presumably) the GM is not supposed to simply impose this idea on the players. She might not even have such a concept going in. She's supposed to ask questions, note what the answers are, and investigate the players and what their characters are like. If the players want to know something about the world, the GM LETS THEM SUPPLY THE ANSWERS (IE if a player asks about who rules the land, turn it back "Well, I don't know, who is it?"). Only AFTER character generation should the GM really start to define some fronts and such. They should reflect what the players want (there is likely to be at least an initial Adventure Front, but it might be something fairly small scale).