True but most arguments i see about it start with the assumption that any fudged roll is malicous and against them. That seems to be the spark that sets them off. I understand that I've played a few games with DM's like that. In my experience it seems to be more likely when things are fudged it's in favor of the PC's.
A Question Of Agency?
- Thread starter zarionofarabel
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True but most arguments i see about it start with the assumption that any fudged roll is malicous and against them. That seems to be the spark that sets them off. I understand that I've played a few games with DM's like that. In my experience it seems to be more likely when things are fudged it's in favor of the PC's.
darkbard
Legend
As to your first statement, it is patently untrue of many game systems. And while I agree with your second statement where "normal" denotes out-of-the-box 5E, posters like @hawkeyefan and @Ovinomancer have argued here again and again how they have brought different play principles to their 5E games as a means of increasing player agency.
And yet those games still fall short of the degree of agency afforded by other games. Whether this is good is not a matter of morality but aesthetic preference.
hawkeyefan
Legend
Okay, sure. I mean, it's a consequence of the cleric needing to heal everyone that later he doesn't have spells to deal with the necromancer. That's all that Success with Complication entails. A Consequence of some kind.
Is it that it's tied to a roll directly?
So if you decide to proceed and you make the jump, would you consider the PC having failed?
Perhaps. Or that a passive perception didn't exceed the DC to notice the guards?
In standard D&D, the guards would only be there if the DM had already placed them there ahead of time. In Blades, they are there as a complication for the roll the player made for their PC to jump to the next building. Now, a complication of this kind should follow the fiction that's been established.....so if the GM decides to introduce the presence of additional guards, maybe a rumor that more guards have been added would have been mentioned ahead of this point, but I don't think that's absolutely necessary. Other consequences may demand that something's been established.
Right, I agree that D&D is far more granular when it comes to combat. I think that's what makes it hard to compare. I'd much rather compare like actions. But doing so is even murkier. The only edition of D&D that came even close to such granularity outside of combat was 4E.
So let's say in 5E D&D, you attempt to make a jump from one building to another. It's a 30 foot drop to the alley below, where there are two guards; you don't want to alert them, or else they'll summon more guards. It's shadowy on the other side....you think it's clear, but you can't say for sure. The DM checks the distance and says this is a tough jump....and he assigns a DC of 20 for the Strength-Athletics check to get across.
You know that you need to get across based on what you and your party are there to do.
How would you expect a DM to adjudicate this? 20 or more and you land silently on the other side? Under 20 and you plummet to the cobbles below, taking 3d6 damage and alerting the guards?
If a DM were to come up with some other results based on how close you got to the DC, or by how much you exceeded it, would you accept those results? If we broadened this moment in the fiction to potentially play out more like a combat encounter, would that work for you?
How would you handle this situation as a DM?
I was just busting your chops.....I hope that didn't come across poorly. If so, I apologize, that wasn't my intent.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I could see a game which allowed a player to expend some resource to indicate I GOT THIS and the resource would simply be a way of limiting how much a given player could string successes together. In the end I suspect it would simply get 'factored into' overall success rates, but it would add a way to highlight was was especially interesting to the player and focus it on what their PC does well, is determined to accomplish, etc.
My own game has something like this, where a player can pay an in-game cost to invoke automatic success with a power used in a challenge. It serves basically this purpose, it lets you show JUST HOW GOOD Sanders is at sneaking! Furthermore 'practices' and 'rituals' use this mechanic and allow you to substitute in skill checks of a specific sort (IE if you had a practice 'be incredibly sneaky' then you could interpose 'incredibly sneaky' DEX checks into an SC in place of whatever would normally obtain there). Then pay an extra in-game cost (special camouflage paint or something) to automatically succeed. Obviously this avoids any overt complications! I'd note though that there's no way to short circuit an entire challenge, although you can certainly use this on the final success.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I can't say that I really understand this partial success discussion. Partial successes/degrees of success are just a perfectly natural thing and any system should support them to certain extent as they happen in real life all the time. Like in that jumping example not quite making it and ending up hanging from the edge of the roof instead seems like a perfectly possible outcome. Now if these mechanics 'create' completely new fictional elements that might not be even directly related to the thing the character is doing, then I can see it rubbing some people the wrong way. Like if a failed jump check caused new guards to 'spawn' etc.
Yeah, it's probably tied to it being directly tied to a roll. You try to do something and the dice say "sure but have this thing you didn't want as well" and you try to do something else and the dice say "sure and have this other thing you didn't want as well" and before long all the things you've gotten that you didn't want have penned you in and you're no longer trying to do what you wanted to do but just trying to get out from all these other things you didn't want that landed on you because the dice said so.
As I said, I'm a "this glass is one-eighth empty" kinda guy. ;-)
I might (depending on context) think the PC had screwed something up to be in such a desperate position, but I don't think I'd think they'd failed that particular check. Hope that's clear-ish.
Yeah, that's consistent with my understanding of both D&D and Blades. I think I have a strong preference for it being knowable prior to the decision to act. I think if the GM has pre-placed guards on the rooftop, then the character is existing in something more like an objective reality, and there's more possibility to do something to avoid them (like taking a different way in, after suitable reconaissance) than if "guards appear" can be the result of any action-resolution check.
I'd ask if there was a higher DC to jump quietly, or if there was the possibility of a concurrent Dex/Stealth check to make the jump quietly, possibly at Disadvantage--trusting the DM's judgment, there.
Hrm. If I missed the DC and he gave me the option to land on the other side in a clattering heap, as opposed to falling prone at the guards' feet, taking 3d6 falling damage, I might take that.
Probably about how it looks, from my answers above. Separate Str/Athletics and Dex/Stealth checks--maybe a floating Disadvantage, up to the player (do you want Disadvantage on the Str/Athletics to jump, or on the Dex/Stealth to be quiet about it?). If just the one check, maybe offering some middle ground if they miss the DC by 1 or maybe 2.
This is important: I grokked that you were kidding around, and it's OK. I make fun of my own mental issues, a lot. The gap between my own kinda-blighted outlook and everyone else's amuses me, much of the time. I didn't mean to dump a guilt-trip on you over this.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I am sorry @hawkeyefan (Re: Agency), but it really just feels like you are trying to define agency so that it perfectly fits the play style you want to advocate for. And since agency is being seen as a good thing (even a moral good I would argue as some are talking about it), I don't think that is a good way to have a discussion about this term (when it is clearly being used to mean very different things by these two posters). We have already had this discussion actually about agency and narrative versus more traditional approaches. I don't think it is worth diving into again. But I do think people trying to control the language in order to advance their preferred play style is a big reason these discussions often break down or end in tears
EDIT: Just to add here, I think it is a much better approach for you to talk about 'narrative agency', which sounds like a good term for what you are describing to me. But I don't think most people take character agency or player agency in RPGs to mean an ability to shape the narrative or plot. Certainly some might, but to me it seems like a play style concept is being loaded on to an existing term, to get people to agree with that approach. If you like narrative agency, that is fine. There is clearly an appetite for it out there, and the more clear you are about that as a play style approach, the more people you will win over to it. But I think this business of getting play style preferences into things by stealth is something we should really abandoned on both sides of these debates. It isn't good for the hobby, it isn't good for discussion and it just makes people hostile towards play styles they might otherwise enjoy.
EDIT: Just to add here, I think it is a much better approach for you to talk about 'narrative agency', which sounds like a good term for what you are describing to me. But I don't think most people take character agency or player agency in RPGs to mean an ability to shape the narrative or plot. Certainly some might, but to me it seems like a play style concept is being loaded on to an existing term, to get people to agree with that approach. If you like narrative agency, that is fine. There is clearly an appetite for it out there, and the more clear you are about that as a play style approach, the more people you will win over to it. But I think this business of getting play style preferences into things by stealth is something we should really abandoned on both sides of these debates. It isn't good for the hobby, it isn't good for discussion and it just makes people hostile towards play styles they might otherwise enjoy.
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So far, I'm willing to presume that @hawkeyefan (among others) is genuinely baffled by my feelings/preferences on success-with-complication, and trying to figure them out.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
But this is THE WHOLE WAY classic D&D has worked, since Gygax day 1, see? This is not some small "people thing", this is THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE OF HOW D&D (except 4e, sort of) HAS BEEN DESIGNED. It is INTENDED to work this way. Its not some minor nit that gets addressed at the table. Sure, highly conscientious and skilled DMs and players can negotiate past this, but why isn't it just better to design a game from the ground up so it isn't going to happen? There are VERY few players in RPGs where they aren't interested in addressing at least some stuff that THEY care about.
In a DW game, I'd have just set myself on an agenda of building that freehold at the edge of Greenvale. Once I built a stronghold, it would have required AT LEAST the imposition of a doom (with all attendant need for PC failures in adventures and prior signs and signals) in order for it to become at risk! Nor were the participants in this game inexperienced or anything like that. D&D simply doesn't help you here, and even sometimes actively thwarts such attempts. I posit that, people's resistance to change aside, something like DW's approach is just objectively much more likely to produce good results. I think this comes back to @Manbearcat's assertion of not having ever heard the "complicated success is failure" meme before. It often feels like these memes just arise in response to any suggestion that there are ways to improve RPG play beyond 1977 levels of technique. It really feels like stubbornness a lot of the time.
I haven't asserted anything to the contrary of what I've bolded.
My point is simply that people are talking is not a fact about the PC's action, anymore than people are building are.
If you think it is not "logical" or "natural" that a fantasy gameworld should contain wizard's towers built by notorious wizards, well, that's on you!
Here are the difficulties for a Wises check in Burning Wheel:
Common knowledge of the subject, Ob 1; an interesting fact, Ob 2; details, Ob 3; uncommon knowledge, Ob 4; rare details, Ob 5; bizarre or obscure details, Ob 7; freaky or specific details, Ob 8
I don't remember now what the obstacle was for the Great Mastters-wise check that I made to settle the accuracy of Aramina's recollection of Evard, but it would have been Ob2 or maybe Ob 3.
The basic issue of agency, in my view, is this: if I have a character who wants to recover magical treasure (at the time, one of Aramina's three Beliefs was I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse) then - if I have agency as a player - I will be able to pursue this goal in a meaningful way. There are different ways of operationalising this. Burning Wheel uses a mechanical framework that includes Wises checks, Scavenging checks, Circles checks, Resource checks, etc. Dungeon World uses a less formal framework of techniques and principles. From p 164:
Ask questions and use the answers
Part of playing to find out what happens is explicitly not knowing everything, and being curious. . . .
Think about time when asking questions: ask about what came before, what is true now and what might happen in the future.
Ask the Cleric about the gods, Ask the Wizard about magic and then switch it up—maybe the Thief has some ideas about the gods, too?
A game in which the player of the cleric learns about the gods only by asking the GM or making checks to learn the GM's notes; in which the wizard learns about other great wizards and their towers only by learning what is in his/her notes; is probably going to be a low-agency game.
EDIT:
This is what I call playing a RPG. Assuming that we are interested in whether the play of a RPG involves more or less player agency, defining agency as simply the baseline act of playing seems like it will be unhelpful.
The claim about skill use is generally true. But the bigger issue is addressed in the 4e PHB (p 258):
Sometimes a quest is spelled out for you at the start of an adventure. The town mayor might implore you to find the goblin raiders’ lair, or the priest of Pelor might relate the history of the Adamantine Scepter, before sending you on your quest. . . .
You can also, with your DM’s approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character’s background. For instance, perhaps your mother is the person whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring. Quests can also relate to individual goals, such as a ranger searching for a magic bow to wield. Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign’s unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.
You can also, with your DM’s approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character’s background. For instance, perhaps your mother is the person whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring. Quests can also relate to individual goals, such as a ranger searching for a magic bow to wield. Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign’s unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.
And from the 4e DMG (p 103):
Player-Designed Quests
You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!
You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!
This clearly contemplates that the player will introduce goals for his/her PC, including facts about parents and fortresses and the like. But it is closer to Dungeon World - informal principles ("say yes") and techniques (conversation between player and GM) - than to Burning Wheel's formal framework of skill checks.
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