A Question Of Agency?

[Scott Christian]

I would go back to the teaching thread for this question.

Can a teacher run a good class without serious prep work and guides? Yup.
Can a teacher have a memorable class experience for both the students and themselves making stuff up on the fly? Yup.
Can the teacher, week after week, provide the depth and interconnectivity of the material making it up on the fly? Doubtful.

Note: I am not downplaying anyone's game. If you are an impromptu guru, sweet. Your table is as valid as anyone else's. But having been at both tables as a player, and run both types of tables as a DM, there is not really a difference per session. But the long term accumulation of impromptu becomes noticeable, ime.

 

[Manbearcat]

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.

I'm sure that is the case for these people you describe just like I'm sure that play priorities and aesthetic preferences and turn-offs are something of a Rorschach Test (which is what I was alluding to above) just like Hit Points are.

I believe you're fairly new, but these issues are at the heart of many, many discussions that we've had over the years (which is why I alluded to this all being fraught upthread).

But this is also why I brought up "hostility to analysis" upthread. It is ok to occupy a duality of mental frameworks that are entirely at tension. You (not you, people) have a problem with this thing, but that thing (which, from first principles seems to occupy the same space) you have a problem with. A person has been abused for a long time by someone who has power over them but inhabits an emotional space (due to myriad reasons) that manifests as Stockholm Syndrome and an empathic bond results. That same person sees another person in the same place two decades later and is utterly confused by their incoherent behavior and ends up having contempt (not understanding) for them.

We are extraordinarily complex social animals capable of all manner of oddities, paradoxes, post-hoc justifications, and rationalizations.

But allowing for that, it seems particularly unhelpful (when analyzing resolution mechanics and their games for actual agency) to describe something that is unequivocally, objectively a continuum as a binary because a certain mental framework feels less good than they would like to about a thing that is fundamentally not able to be placed on either side of a distribution. And due to that discontent, the thing therefore gets binned on this side of the distribution (vs that side of the distribution or...better yet...where it should be, inside the tails of the distribution).

I mean, it tells us a biographical fact about those parties, and it may (or it may not) allow us to extrapolate like cognitive positioning for them when it comes to continuums broadly; they're all or nothing people, glass half-empty, defeat/rejection sticks with them far/far longer than it should, they have a purity test for themselves or others that is stark and possibly lacking prospects for redemption if it isn't met, etc etc.

Or, again, none of those things could be true. And it doesn't matter to the analysis because it doesn't tell us if a core mechanic does what it set out to do. In this case:

1) A bell curve of results with Success on one end, Success w/ Cost/Complication in the middle, and Failure + Mark xp on the other end.

2) Success (moving you closer to victory in the present conflict) but Cost/Complications (interesting decision-points and a dynamically evolving threat/situation as an outgrowth) is the "best" result (for the system's aims) because "trouble (with a trajectory of victory) is where the fun of the game happens!"

Now that is where the rubber meets the road with these games. There is (a) trajectory of victory (on a per conflict basis) but (b) a virtually perpetual state of dynamism and trouble until (c) the conflict is resolved (and the on-going, emergent narrative evolves with a new gamestate).

This is a fact and this was the design intent. They accomplished this.

Whether some folks don't like (b) as a design intent because they feel that a perpetual state of (not going to include dynamism here as I'm sure everyone wants dynamism...the question is how to achieve it and is a system capable of it and to what degree) trouble leaves them in a "negative cognitive workspace (lets call it)" is orthogonal to the questions of (i) design vision and execution and (ii) agency therein.

The only thing left to say about that is (actually try them first to be sure your intuitions aren't deceiving you and then if they suck) "don't play those games!"

ADDENDUM

The PBtA and FitD games are trivially hackable to change the distribution of results. PBtA - 7+ is Success, 4, 5 is SwC, 1, 2 is Failure. FitD - 4, 5, 6 is Success, 3 is SwC, 1, 2 is Failure. And/or change the default Position to Controlled and default Effect to Great! Decision-point stakes decrease and suddenly "a virtually perpetual state of dynamism and trouble" gives way to endless "bubble gum and ass-kicking and you're all out of bubble game!"

 

[Manbearcat]

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.

I've been trying to think how to address this (no one thinks a gamestate evolves and a fiction emerges exclusively of its own volition) without going through all of the various aspects of very explicit and integrated System Agenda, GMing Principles and Techniques, Conversation/Play Structure, PC Build Components, Resolution Mechanics, Reward Cycles, and Feedback Loops in these games.

How about this. I'm assuming most people have played Pictionary.

When you sit down to play Pictionary, there are codified constraints on how you can "pantomime through drawing" (no prearranged cipher- eg draw an ear for "sounds like", can't use letters or numbers or hashes for letters like hangman, no noises, and other things as well along these lines).

The GM is the Pictionary drawer. They're (1) constrained by these rules and (2) constrained by the content on the cards that they're going to try to telegraph to the players by drawing and (3) constrained by the premise and the results of play (they don't get to go Calvinball and change any of these 3 things). Now there are (4) an innumerable ways that any individual (2) can be made manifest on the sketchboard.

That (4) there? THAT is what the GM does in these kinds of games. That is their contribution. They take their (4) (creative energy, genre aptitude, and general cognitive horsepower and industry), which is (1) constrained by the rules, (2) constrained by the thematic content that has been signalled to them (by the players through their PCs), and (3) constrained by the game's premise and the results of play...and they apply that (4) continuously where the play loop calls for it (and no more...they don't draw for the other team or provide the answer to their own drawing). Through this process, the gamestate evolves organically until the game is done.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

I'm willing to accept that there's a preference thing about how a thing feels, but this argument is incoherent in that EVERY RPG does this thing, you're just used to it in the RPGs you prefer to play. Combat in D&D is all about incomplete success, often with a cost or consequence -- you successfully hit the orc, but don't kill it (partial success), and now the orc tries to hit you (consequence). Heck, upthread @prabe was discussing how and why a successful check to win over a gang by suborning the leader (Pup was the name) might be undone because the GM decides that such suborning rubs the gang members the wrong way! How is that not exactly a success with consequence -- you succeed in your action to win over the gang leader, but suffer a consequence because now the gang is surly about it?

Success coupled with cost or consequence is part of almost every RPG out there -- it's just traditionally hidden behind the GM's screen. It might not taste the same, and so not be liked, if it's out in the open, but it's not any different, really, from the things you're used to eating.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I would go back to the teaching thread for this question.

Can a teacher run a good class without serious prep work and guides? Yup.
Can a teacher have a memorable class experience for both the students and themselves making stuff up on the fly? Yup.
Can the teacher, week after week, provide the depth and interconnectivity of the material making it up on the fly? Doubtful.

Note: I am not downplaying anyone's game. If you are an impromptu guru, sweet. Your table is as valid as anyone else's. But having been at both tables as a player, and run both types of tables as a DM, there is not really a difference per session. But the long term accumulation of impromptu becomes noticeable, ime.

Teaching has a concrete and expected outcome. If the goal is to reach that outcome, then, yes, preparation helps a good deal. If this isn't your goal -- if the goal isn't to reach an expected outcome but merely have an exciting and engaging game -- then prep may or may not help. I have concrete personal evidence, and general data in that games that are structured such that prep is impossible if you're playing according to the rule systems, that this kind of game generates quite deep and interconnected games. Heck, the interlocking systems that drive Blades in the Dark are a thing of absolutely beauty in how they effectively force interconnections and depth in play. In my game, there's so many pressing demands on the Crew that there's never a moment. Last session (granted two weeks ago, timing has been bad lately), ended up with the Crew being approached by a member of the Red Sashes who demanded a service from the Crew because the Crew had tangled with the Sashes and earlier and it had come out. So the Sashes demanded payment in the form of help with their turf war against the Lampblacks, who absolutely didn't like the Crew due to some impolite words and a refusal to pay tithe to the Lampblacks (the Crew was using the turf war between the Lampblacks and the Sashes to refuse to pay either). This wasn't good timing for the Crew, because they had just caused a major supernatural event in Lord Scurlock's old manor house, earning enmity from a cult they have been tangling with for awhile now (a Demon has charged the Crew to not let the cult complete their plans -- and Demons in Blades are seriously bad news). And, because of that, the Spirit Wardens are hot to trot after the Crew, although that heat has subsided when one of the Crew intentionally got nicked, took the blame, and is currently doing a stint in prison. So, they were really hoping to put paid to the Demon's demands and that cult is seriously gunning for them, making normal activity difficult (gang wars are unpleasant). But, they were caught dead to rights, and are back in the middle of the turf war between the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes, trying to plant false orders so the Red Sashes can ambush some important members of the Lampblacks and get a leg up (the Sashes are currently losing the turf war). In the meantime, the Crew's Whisper has blackmailed a supernatural tinkerer and has a ready supply of critical parts to build the next part of his Hull so he can get his faithful dead dog (who haunts him) back. The Leech is plotting ways to get back at a priestess of the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh who did her grandmother wrong and is who caused an entire score to go sidewise when the Leech decided that she needed stabbing during a conversation with a lead they desperately needed. The Whisper is also looking for his ghost friend, who's gone missing -- likely due to the cult's activities. The Hound got cut off from his gambling vice, and is has decided that it's time to try to quit gambling -- it already cost him his career with the University. So, he's undertaking the effort to do the hard work to get back into the Universities good graces by recovering interesting artifacts and history, even if it, so far, has almost cost him his soul.

Yeah, that's a thumbnail of the things that have happened in my Blades game -- a lot of it stretching back to the start of the game. We get through about two scores a evening, so a huge amount happens -- this game moves insanely fast at times -- but they're still dealing with things that happened in the first session. And none of it, not a single bit, was planned except for the very first job offer of the game being from the Lampblacks to help kick off their turf war against the Red Sashes -- which they declined and instead did something else. And that was only to get the ball rolling and consisted of nothing more than the offer -- the actual job wasn't set.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

The different odds of success+complication vary widely in the PBTA and its related games.
For comparison
AW ≤6/7-9/≥10 giving fail, success with compilation, and success that's
+0 15/15/6 out of 36.
+1 makes it 10/16/10 of 36.
+2 makes it 6/15/15,
+3 makes it 3/12/21
Blades Best die of Xd6 similar lables
1d 3/2/1/0 of 6
2d 9/16/10/1 of 36
3d 27/98/75/16 of 216
4d 162/588/375/171 of 1296 Maximum skill
5d 243/2882/3125/1526 of 7776 Max Skill + Help or devil's bargain
6d 729/14896/18750/12281 of 46656 Max Skill + Help + Devil's Bargain.
Fourth outcome is "critical"
Ironsworn 2×1d10 vs 1d6+Modifier for 0-2 successes. 0 is miss, 1 is weak hit, 2 is strong hit. Essentially the same as AW's levels. But the odds...
+0 355/190/55 of 600
+1 271/238/91 of 600
+2 199/262/139 of 600
+3 139/262/199 of 600
+4 91/238/271 of 600
+5 55/190/355 of 600
+9 1/18/581 of 600
Sentinel Comics by default median of dA dP dC ±5 (Max boost +5, max hinder -5), A is an attribute (d4-d12) P is a Power (same) C is condition die(again d4 to d12).
Result space <1/1-3/4-7/8-11/12+
Note that it's got two more levels than the others. Basically Actual Fail/Success with major complication/success with minor complication/success without complication/success plus inflict a complication on the foe/victim...

The furthest afield that I've seen explicitly referencing AW is Sentinel Comics. It also mentions Cam Banks (of Cortex Plus/Cortex Prime).
They all presume that, largely, the action usually (in SC, always) succeeds but may have side effects (success with complication) or not do much (thus fails on intent but not action).
Technically, all of them do allow for actual failure - but only if the move is such that an actual failure is the only real way to not give the intent. (In SC, the only one I've run from the AW/PBTA spectrum, only on a result under 1 is actual failure of the task allowed. And that can only happen if there are hindrances on the acting character.)

Ironsworn's odds really should be figured to +9... because it has ways to get that much. It's almost as far afield as SC in terms of mechanical difference, but its closer in outcomes than, say, Blades.



It's worth noting that, at peak skill +3, Apocalypse World is very much "Succeed a lot." (21/36 = 7/12)
Most of the others get to that point. Blades at 5d

Success coupled with cost or consequence is part of almost every RPG out there -- it's just traditionally hidden behind the GM's screen. It might not taste the same, and so not be liked, if it's out in the open, but it's not any different, really, from the things you're used to eating.

Only if the GM's being a jerk. Why? Because the system provides only 3 results (4 if optional fumbles are used)

But also - D&D specifically limits intent rather than allowing partial success. The game ignores your intent as a player by having a process for attacks that has several very limiting intent options: Attack to inflict harm, attack to disarm, attack to force movement, attack to grapple.
Each of these has a specific built in intent and 3 of them have different mechanics from the basic harm. It is irrelevant to the mechanics whether your intent is to capture or to kill with harm, until the round you run them out of HP. And you (generally) don't know your opponent's HP until you run them out.

The only "partial success" in D&D is on attacks - and that's not from the attack roll at all. That's 3 outcomes: fail, succeed, critical. The partial success is rolling a lower than maximum damage. And even then, that's a VERY weak argument, since the D&D player's intent mechanically has no bearing upon the outcome. If they pick an attack, they will do harm (HP), do a forced movement, do a grapple, or disarm the opponent.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

And the characters are not going to investigate any of those? They were not dropped there to possibly characters to that direction? That no one at the moment doesn't know exactly know where they lead doesn't change that they're plot hooks. In improvisational game the GM often drops plot hooks and only after the players decide to follow some of them they decide where exactly they lead. Same thing here.

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.

When the thing was determined really has nothing to do with point.

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.

Right. So you as a player used a meta power to summon a setting element you had invented into the existence and then had to roll whether that meta power actually works.

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.

I have not ever player Traveller, but it seems to me that the GM setting up difficulty is the same thing than the GM determining what is possible.

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.

Words are not synonyms but describe the same situation. And it definitely is unimmersive to a lot of people, I know it is for me. This is not some absolute 'and thus it never ever should be done', but yes, it is something I do prefer not to be a central element in a RPG.

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?

Who physically rolls the randomiser or what exact sort of randomiser is used doesn't really matter here. The player is not introducing any significant setting details with their action declaration.

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

A dangerous demon is loose; maybe fight it guys? Pretty standard RPG plot. And in a good game this would probably be connected to something else (i.e. to a more complicated plot) instead of being a mere random encounter.

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

Yes, it is pretty much that.

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.

Modules by their nature must present things differently.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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).

Right. I have understood this for a while. Talk about these action resolution mechanics obfuscated the fact that what people actually meant is that they want the players to use meta level agency to edit the reality of the fictional setting. That's fine, but not something I personally want when playing a tabletop RPG.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Only if the GM's being a jerk. Why? Because the system provides only 3 results (4 if optional fumbles are used)

But also - D&D specifically limits intent rather than allowing partial success. The game ignores your intent as a player by having a process for attacks that has several very limiting intent options: Attack to inflict harm, attack to disarm, attack to force movement, attack to grapple.
Each of these has a specific built in intent and 3 of them have different mechanics from the basic harm. It is irrelevant to the mechanics whether your intent is to capture or to kill with harm, until the round you run them out of HP. And you (generally) don't know your opponent's HP until you run them out.

The only "partial success" in D&D is on attacks - and that's not from the attack roll at all. That's 3 outcomes: fail, succeed, critical. The partial success is rolling a lower than maximum damage. And even then, that's a VERY weak argument, since the D&D player's intent mechanically has no bearing upon the outcome. If they pick an attack, they will do harm (HP), do a forced movement, do a grapple, or disarm the opponent.

The part you had quoted had moved on from the combat example, so no jerkiness needed.

The fact is that if you view combat as the extended resolution mechanic it is, then the success with cost becomes absolutely apparent -- you can succeed outright, defeating your opponents without expending any additional resources (unlikely), you can defeat your opponents while suffering various levels of resource expenditure from mild to severe, and you can be defeated, either fleeing or being incapacitated or killed. It's only when you start to try to sever the individual actions as somehow independent of the whole that you get into the idea that combat isn't a success with cost mechanic but instead argue that attack rolls are fail/succeed/succeed wildly. Trying to defeat the argument about success with cost by doing this kind of analysis is exactly the kind of internalized justifications I was talking about. Combat in 5e is not the attack roll, it's the whole thing from pre-initiative through resolution, and it's absolutely chock-full of costs to success.

But, again, to move on from combat, there's also the common approach to running D&D where the GM undermines player successes that thwart the desired or expected story. Things like having a module that hard codes NPC behavior and ignoring PC successes to enforce this, or the gang example from above, these are ways the GMs, even in good faith, act to complicate the PC's lives because the binary nature of the D&D check system is, at least sometimes, unfulfilling.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Right. I have understood this for a while. Talk about these action resolution mechanics obfuscated the fact that what people actually meant is that they want the players to use meta level agency to edit the reality of the fictional setting. That's fine, but not something I personally want when playing a tabletop RPG.

Hitpoints are a meta-level agency used to edit the reality of the fictional setting. View them in this lens: The GM rolls for the orc, declares a hit, and that your PC is killed! You say, wait, I want to spend some hitpoints to prevent that, how many do I need to spend. The GM then rolls to determine the cost for this rewrite, gets a 7, and tells the player. The player sighs, and says they only have 6 right now, so the orc does kill the player (ignoring death saves for now, which are another meta-level tool).

All games have meta elements. Some you're used to, some you don't like, some you don't notice.