A Question Of Agency?

[prabe]

And every one of these is accomplished in Dungeon World's mechanics/process.

{snip}

So, in these kinds of narrative games, generally speaking, there may be things which happen where the explanation is consequences of PC actions in the past, as simple 'living world, stuff happens', or even as someone gunning directly for the PCs (and this could simply be introduced by the GM, not necessarily a consequence of anything). The focus is always on how these situations relate to the premises and goals of play.

Sorry to snip, trying to keep it limited to what I'm directly responding to (but genuinely thank you for explaining DW further).

Since I don't actively prep more than about a session's worth of material at a time--about what I expect the PCs to encounter in a session--I keep track of a lot of ideas in my head that are sorta pending. (Though there was one situation where I kept track of time while the PCs were out of town, so I'd know how long ago things had happened when they got back--this is not my usual approach.) From what I read of AW (which I realize isn't exactly DW, and which I bounced off of pretty hard so my understanding might be skewed) it's a more-formalized version of my approach to things; it really didn't seem likely to generate different stories than the D&D games I run (setting settings aside), and your description of how the ideas I floated could be brought into a DW game doesn't change that impression.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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 understand what you're saying but, well, to be really blunt, I think a discussion of this topic that does not engage with the psychology of perception when it comes to these things is largely useless. After all, at the end of the day, this is not any more a case of biased perception than what leads to a concern or not for a degree of agency in the first place. Some people care a great degree; some people really, really don't. And what things draw the line where that happens are almost entirely internal and how it feels to them. Otherwise, as I noted, any improvisation whatsoever would be unacceptable, which is largely impossible outside a very narrow kind of game.

So I think the concern for agency and where someone sees it being impaired is an almost entirely internal matter, and ignoring where people draw these lines leave any analysis as pointless.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So I think the concern for agency and where someone sees it being impaired is an almost entirely internal matter, and ignoring where people draw these lines leave any analysis as pointless.

I think you have a valid point; perception matters and will ultimately determine one’s preference.

However, I don’t think that such perception is absolute. I do think that perception can change. Especially when that perception is based on admittedly limited information or experience.

I know that my perception on games and how they work has changed due to discussion with others. I’m pretty sure I’m not special in that regard.

 

[nevin]

I think agency is all about perception. If the players are able to make changes and feel that those changes were good, by thier goals and perceptions they feel they had agency. If every single thing they do boomerangs back with bad, or pain in the ass consequences then it's very easy to percieve that as the DM actively screwing over the Players attempt to exercise thier agency. Some DM's get so wrapped up in how cool consequences are that they loose sight of the fact that if every action has negative conseqences , (usually because it's an easy way to keep the players off balance), then at some point you lose all ability to motivate them because they are screwed no matter what they do.
If you get burned no matter what you do then it doesn't matter what you do. That's really not much different that putting the game on rails and taking away all agency.

 

[pemerton]

In games like BitD, DW, and I expect BW as well, there is nothing except action resolution and the direct fallout from it.

Agreed.

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."

<snip>

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.

Certainly in AW, the fronts are built by the GM after the first session.

There are many ways the players in a RPG can influence the subject matter of the fiction: action declaration and resolution; sheer narration; suggestions to the GM; formal signals via PC build (eg Beliefs in Burning Wheel or Milestone in Marvel Heroic RP); etc. DW is at the less "formal" end of any spectrum of such methods.

Whatever method is used, there's just no need for the GM to make up other stuff that doesn't relate to play except as part of the GM's private imagining about what is happening in the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

I didn't mean that (in the example) having Pup's followers resist forcefully was supposed to be the inevitable result of the PCs' suborning Pup. The idea was always that it'd be because of something the PCs did after suborning Pup. It might be a consequence of the original check, if the result allowed, or it might be the result of a subsequent one. Or (in a game with fewer/different mechanical restraints) it might happen when the PCs did something the GM thought Pup's followers would particularly resent. In at least the latter, it is in principle possible the PCs wouldn't trigger the rebellion.

Here, in the sentence that I've bolded, we see a clear statement of the position that GM agency should predominate: it is not any mechanical or player-driven process but rather the GM's thought that determines what happens in the fiction.

I think a discussion of this topic that does not engage with the psychology of perception when it comes to these things is largely useless. After all, at the end of the day, this is not any more a case of biased perception than what leads to a concern or not for a degree of agency in the first place. Some people care a great degree; some people really, really don't. And what things draw the line where that happens are almost entirely internal and how it feels to them.

<snip>

I think the concern for agency and where someone sees it being impaired is an almost entirely internal matter, and ignoring where people draw these lines leave any analysis as pointless.

The thread topic is not who enjoys Dungeon World? or who wants agency? It's about whether certain techniques thwart player agency.

That topic is (in my view) actually much more interesting than a discussion of who enjoys what. Learning what someone else enjoys doesn't give me any useful understanding about how to GM or play a RPG. Learning how various techniques relate to various possibilities of agency does.

I think agency is all about perception.

<snip>

If you get burned no matter what you do then it doesn't matter what you do. That's really not much different that putting the game on rails and taking away all agency.

I don't know of any RPG that (i) supports a high degree of player agency and (ii) can produce the result you get burned no matter what you do.

Based on my own experience, I would associate you get burned no matter what you do with 2nd-ed style D&D play, or a style of play using or influenced by CoC or some approaches to White Wolf. And I would associate with very low player agency and very high GM control over the content of the fiction, with action resolution making little or no contribution to that content.

 

[prabe]

Here, in the sentence that I've bolded, we see a clear statement of the position that GM agency should predominate: it is not any mechanical or player-driven process but rather the GM's thought that determines what happens in the fiction.

I'll grant that it's not mechanical, in that there's no check that results in it happening, but if it's in response to something the PCs do, how can it not be player-driven? You are acting as though I'm saying it should happen regardless, and I'm not saying that; I'm saying it should happen if the PCs do something that makes it happen. Merely taking control from or of Pup (in your example) wouldn't--I'd be inclined to say shouldn't--be enough; it should happen if/when the PCs do something after taking control that goes against the followers' interests or desires.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The math indeed is a bell curve with the basic distribution putting about 45-50 % of the outcomes in the Success w/ Cost/Complication range then 25-27.5 % on the tails (or about 2/3 success rate). Obviously as resources are brought to bear, you use your better score, you get help, odds will increase (and vice versa).

This is by design as you noted. Success w/ Cost/Complication is the snowballing engine, the primary content creator, the beating heart of the PBtA games.

I think you COULD make a PbtA type of game work even without the 7-9 complication mechanism. At least in DW a LOT of the moves the GM makes are "Make a move when the players look to you for what happens next." Since DW is particularly focused on exploration that might be more true of it than AW or other PbtAs, I don't know. In any case, the 7-9s are definitely the place where the GM generally applies the most direct and immediate pressure.

 

[pemerton]

I'll grant that it's not mechanical, in that there's no check that results in it happening, but if it's in response to something the PCs do, how can it not be player-driven? You are acting as though I'm saying it should happen regardless, and I'm not saying that; I'm saying it should happen if the PCs do something that makes it happen.

First, and for clarity, the PCs do something that makes it happen means, in this context, the GM decides that something happens in the fiction.

Second, and following on, and as you point to in the first sentence, the GM decides that something happens in the fiction in response to something the PCs do.

Third, and assuming that it is the players who are narrating what it is that their PCs do, we therefore have the GM decides that something happens in the fiction in response to the players deciding that something happens in the fiction.

That cannot count as player-driven. Because if it did, then every time the players declare an action for their PCs in response to some framing or event or situation that the GM narrates we would have something that is GM-driven! And no one in this thread has been arguing for that.

The bigger picture: for the players to effect the fiction by prompting the GM to narrate stuff is a minimum condition for their being a RPG at all. Without that, it's just a monologue from the "GM" - and I use the inverted commas to signal that such monologuing wouldn't really be GMing at all, as there would be no game taking place.

For such prompting to actually count as player agency to any meaningful degree, the player needs to be exercising some influence over what it is that the GM narrates. There are 101 ways that can be done - as per my post 355 not far upthread - but all of them put constraints, informal or formal, operating in respect of both timing and content, around the GM's decision-making process.

 

[Aldarc]

I understand what you're saying but, well, to be really blunt, I think a discussion of this topic that does not engage with the psychology of perception when it comes to these things is largely useless. After all, at the end of the day, this is not any more a case of biased perception than what leads to a concern or not for a degree of agency in the first place. Some people care a great degree; some people really, really don't. And what things draw the line where that happens are almost entirely internal and how it feels to them. Otherwise, as I noted, any improvisation whatsoever would be unacceptable, which is largely impossible outside a very narrow kind of game.

So I think the concern for agency and where someone sees it being impaired is an almost entirely internal matter, and ignoring where people draw these lines leave any analysis as pointless.

If you want to talk about the psychology of a complicated success, I would say that I often feel that I have a greater deal of agency when it comes to PbtA games than in traditional D&D games. This is because (1) success still happens, (2) complications are often negotiated from the fiction, and (3) a number of PbtA hand players the ability to decide (in part) what happens when it transpires. In DW I may decide what ongoing effects or issues may wizard is facing as a result of the complicated success when casting a spell. This is not dictated to me by the GM. Even though it triggers a GM soft move, there is also a player-facing component. That's often more psychologically satisfying to me than the GM dictating my character's errors or incompetency.