A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

If the goal is for the players, through their PCs, to be able to meaningfully impact the fiction, why advocate for techniques where the GM (overtly or covertly) decides what that impact is?

Note however that "meaningfully impact the fiction" does not equate to "impact the fiction in ways that match what the players/PCs want", though it seems this is an equivalence you often assume. Obviously the players are going to want their impacts on the fiction to fall in line with their desires, and it's on the GM to counter that. Otherwise, all you've got is "We win. Let's go home." which is neither challenging nor exciting nor fun.

The players/PCs do something. The GM* then determines, either by mechanics or fiat, what the impacts of that 'something' are. Seems simple enough to me.

* and 'GM' here also includes the rules-based game state e.g. the thing which makes an Orc collapse on being taken down to 0 or less hit points.

 

[pemerton]

Who rolls the dice indeed doesn't matter. Who gets to decide what is rolled for, when, and what are the possible outcomes matters quite a bit.

What do you mean, then, by player agency?

To put it super simply, it is that the actions of the characters matter.

If I, playing a character, conjecture "Isn't Evard's tower around here somewhere" or if I, playing a character, say "I'm looking out for Rufus as we enter the borders of Auxol", and nothing can flow from that because the GM has unilaterally decided that Rufus is not about or that there is no such tower, then on this occasion my actions don't matter.

Hence by your own account I, as a player, don't have agency on this occasion.

And generalising the point: the only actions that will matter, on an approach of unilateral GM control, will be actions directed towards elements that the GM has introduced. Just like H3 Pyramid of Shadows that I quoted upthread.

That is low-player-agency RPGing.

EDIT:

Except this ignores the issues of things like railroads, linear adventures, GM fudging, etc. These are all obstacles to agency.

H3 Pyramid of Shadows is a railroad.

If the GM sets things up so the players can (say) choose between H3 or H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth, now maybe we have a choice between two railroads.

But ultimately if (i) the goal of play is to experience a story in a "living, breathing world" and (ii) we are not just going to have the GM decide the key elements of it, the players need to be able to have input.

There are different ways this can be done: taking suggestions (as Gygax mentions in relation to strongholds; as is a big part of PbtA-type games; as 4e D&D allows for in player-defined quests), or action resolution frameworks (which BW and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic emphasise), or sheer player stipulation (off the top of my head I can't think of a RPG that allows this for key elements of the shared fiction - OGL Conan allows it for peripheral elements).

Without it - if the GM just unilaterally decides whether or not there are bluffs overlooking rivers, or wizard's towers, or family members to be engaged with - then play becomes an exploration of the content of the GM's mind.

 

[pemerton]

Note however that "meaningfully impact the fiction" does not equate to "impact the fiction in ways that match what the players/PCs want", though it seems this is an equivalence you often assume. Obviously the players are going to want their impacts on the fiction to fall in line with their desires, and it's on the GM to counter that.

This looks like a description of freeform cooperative storytelling, though in a slightly adversarial mode.

My preference is to use mechanics and associated principles and techniques to decide whether or not the PCs win or are countered.

 

[darkbard]

Note however that "meaningfully impact the fiction" does not equate to "impact the fiction in ways that match what the players/PCs want", though it seems this is an equivalence you often assume. Obviously the players are going to want their impacts on the fiction to fall in line with their desires, and it's on the GM to counter that. Otherwise, all you've got is "We win. Let's go home." which is neither challenging nor exciting nor fun.

Come on, man, you've participated in way too many of these discussions to state something like this. You know very well that PC desiderata, when in question, are put to a mechanical test. And you also know about the Czege Principle and how your framework would be a clear violation thereof.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Playing a non-accomplishment oriented RPG of the sort I have described, but confining Gygax's bluff-overlooking-a-river technique to the case of strongholds, would be a mistake. With the change of play purpose, it would be sheer reaction or dogma to not use the technique in other contexts where it can serve the same purpose, of establishing player-driven "starting points".

I don't think this is reactionary dogma. I think the reaction comes before the dogma actually. This is something where I would say you ought o be cautious. Obviously it depends on what one is attempting to do. I wouldn't want to stop you Pemerton from applying this corner principle to other parts of the game. But I do think when you have a rule or principle like this relegated to a part of the game like it is here, you shouldn't assume it will have the same impact if it is made more ubiquitous. When 4E came out, I objected to a lot of the class powers, a lot of the ways healing worked and a lot of the assumptions behind many of the rules. Many people rightly pointed out, these things existed in parts of the game already. But my reaction, I think, came about because aspects of play that didn't bother me if they came up rarely or happened with this one class or situation, bothered me a lot when they came up all the time. Now not every player is going to be bothered by pcs being able to create plot or geography in the setting but many will be. And those who are bothered by it, are going to react a lot more to it than would if it were just part of the stronghold system.

Now, where I will agree with you is that things have become very dogmatic around play style issues and we often project them back onto the past. There is a throw the baby out with the bathwater mentality that can arise when people are engaged in these discussions and decide they don't like mechanic X because it is that darn mechanic pemerton is always advocating. And then maybe they don't realize the issue they actually have isn't itself, but the quantity of that mechanic. I encounter this a lot in these discussions. We can get closed minded around playstyle. I am trying to avoid doing that here myself. I think what you are advocating can certainly be a fun way to play. I think where I tend to get irritated is when the argument seems to be 'well you say you like X, and this is the most X you can possibly have, so you will love this approach" or when things just get muddied because we are dealing in edge cases to justify something always being a certain way, or suggesting they ought to be. But we should also be mindful a lot of that dogma is because of these kinds of exchanges people like you and I have on these threads, where things get heated, egos get in the way, and people try to advance their play style over others (not saying you are doing that in this instance, just this is something that happens in these discussions all the time).

 

[innerdude]

[hawkeye fan asks: "So let's say we do it this way, and there's a success on the Athletics check and a failure on the Stealth check. How would you describe that outcome?"]

Probably exactly how you think: You made the jump, but you attracted the attention of the guards below. This isn't exactly the same thing as having guards on the rooftop because you rolled a complicated success on a straight jump, IMO; among other things, by making it two checks you made the various failure-states pretty clear.

(And if I'm playing that pair of checks I almost certainly take Disadvantage on the Stealth, because being noticed is literally less painful than falling.)

And I don't think there's anything wrong with this approach. It's certainly valid, depending on desired playstyle. I've done much the same thing hundreds of times.

Having some actual play experience with Dungeon World (and having recently read through Ironsworn, which appears to be a much-improved take on fantasy Powered by the Apocalypse that solves many of the problems I had with DW), it could equally be valid to have the GM frame the check as follows:

GM: "You can definitely accomplish the jump across the chasm to the other side of the battlement. However, it's a decent distance, and you're going to have to exert some energy and moxie to make it across without making noise. There's guards posted all along the battlement, and there's absolutely a risk of being heard if you make that jump. What do you do?"

Player: (Probably asks if they can mitigate the risk of being heard, if there's some other plan of action that doesn't result in alerting the guards, etc.)

GM: "Based on the situation and your proposed action --- leaping across the chasm --- there doesn't appear to be much room for error. If you're skilled enough, maybe you can do it; otherwise, your proposed action is definitely going to incur some risk."

Player: (Declares they go through with it).

GM: "Okay, you're triggering an 'Overcome Obstacle' move, using Agility. Make your roll!"

Result: On a strong hit (i.e., full success), no problem; player is on the other side without calling undue attention. On a weak hit (success with complication), player leaps across but can't do it skillfully enough to avoid the extra trouble of alerting the guards.

How is that meaningfully different than calling for two separate rolls? Is it the illusion that the player "still has control" because they can try to mitigate the problematic outcome by having a separate stealth check? What if the GM secretly attaches a penalty modifier to the roll? Has the GM exerted any less influence over the fiction / reduced the player's agency?

Or is it better for the player and GM to have a very clear view of what's at stake when the dice hit the table, and they agree to let it ride?


As a side note, one of the most powerful things I discovered in playing DW (and again reading through Ironsworn) is the notion of having clarifying questions/conversations around EXACTLY what is happening in the fiction. What is the player's position in the fiction? What's nominally at risk for them? What's their status relative to those risks? The idea that it's my job as GM to give the player the clearest possible view of their position resonated strongly with me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A choice of mechanics is one way to communicate expectations but not the only one (and definitely not the best.)


This is disingenuous and frankly condescending framing. That the players do not have ability to directly edit the fictional reality doesn't mean they're spectators. @Bedrockgames explained this couple of posts ago better than I could, and more politely than I at this point would bother to.

Nobody is saying that the players are necessarily spectators, you're kind of excluding the middle here. What I would say is that player agency is improved when the game is DESIGNED to make room for it. One of the problems when discussing D&D specifically, and this is exacerbated when someone calls it 'normal', is that D&D didn't start out this way.
D&D started out as purely an almost wargame-esque crawl that involved skilled play ONLY. So, yes, the players had agency only to control their PCs within the limits of what the PCs could do or know. The DM OTOH was absolutely limited to what was on the map, key, and wandering monster table. ANYTHING the DM produced outside of that, or ANY time they fudged a roll or deliberately judged a situation based on their own agenda and not an honestly neutral standpoint, was illegal in that game. Now, DMs still had a lot of leeway, and players really limited agency, but the players DID have that protection! The DM wasn't allowed to sic a wandering monster on them just because he thought they were being putzes, or because his favorite NPC was going to get offed, or whatever. It happened, but all of that was bad DMing and it was pretty well stated, certainly the 'culture' of D&D, including articles in SR/The Dragon, talked about it.

But then 2e came along and just told the DM to become a 'storyteller' and stop worrying about the rules so much. Meanwhile the players were given nothing, they were expected to simply continue to inhabit OD&D's dungeon crawl aesthetic with no change. The fact that the OD&D aesthetic included "hide the numbers from the players" just made it even worse. You could run 2e by the book and simply utterly make up everything as DM in any way you wanted. Not that this was usual, but the game, and subsequently 3.x and 5e offer no better situation for the players as a guarantee.

I simply offer that this is a poor situation and we can design games better than that. and more relevant to the OP, playing the way 2e tells a DM to run a game is pretty likely low agency, but clearly we all don't agree on what that means...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If I, playing a character, conjecture "Isn't Evard's tower around here somewhere" or if I, playing a character, say "I'm looking out for Rufus as we enter the borders of Auxol", and nothing can flow from that because the GM has unilaterally decided that Rufus is not about or that there is no such tower, then on this occasion my actions don't matter.

Nonsense. Character may still learn the state of the affairs. "No, the tower isn't here," "no Rufus isn't here." Then you have a new state of affairs to base your next decisions on. It is also possible that you learn other information, such as "no Rufus isn't here, and in fact no one has seen him in days. His friends are a bit worried. They say he head been acting strangely." The action to seek information mattered: information was gained. The player just wasn't able to dictate the specific content of that information.

And generalising the point: the only actions that will matter, on an approach of unilateral GM control, will be actions directed towards elements that the GM has introduced. Just like H3 Pyramid of Shadows that I quoted upthread.

In a sense that the player controls their character and the GM controls the setting outside their character.

That is low-player-agency RPGing.

Still no.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think you haven't fully seen my point, and I'm optimistic that if I make it clearer you might actually agree with me!

I've bolded a bit of your quote that I agree with but that needs more consideration. In my post that you replied to I said that Gygax's rulebooks demonstrate a clear sense of the dynamics of player agency for the sorts of games he was running. In the sort of game he was running strongholds play one sort of role, and NPC wizard's towers play a different sort of role. Whether or not the latter exist in the fiction is under the purview of the GM. This is because, in the sort of game Gygax was running (as best I can tell from his rulebooks and my knowledge of the historical record), finding a NPC wizard's tower, with its promise of lore and spellbooks, is itself an accomplishment. Whereas finding somewhere to built your stronghold is more like a starting point than a finishing point.

I think again you are overstating the case. I am not saying there isn't a kernel of agreement here, there is. But this is a mechanic that predates the discussions about agency, and it is a challenging aspect to nail down because stronghold play is very different from the rest of the game (when you are dealing with strongholds, that effects things like timescale too and there is just a lot being glossed over). I honestly think he is just venturing into difficult territory (strongholds were always a tricky part of the game) and doing his best to provide adjudication advice). It is very easy with Gygax to get too caught up in holding him to task for each thing he said, and assuming that builds a set of clear assumptions that are unchanging over time. But just reading the DMG alone, you get the sense that a lot of what gygax was doing was thinking out loud and evolving in response to feedback.

It is also important to keep in mind, regardless of what Gygax said, people often played the game in a totally different way than the letter of his words. Norms did emerge.

I have to admit though I am a little confused by your point about accomplishments. I am not really seeing how that connects here

 

[prabe]

And I don't think there's anything wrong with this approach. It's certainly valid, depending on desired playstyle. I've done much the same thing hundreds of times.

Having some actual play experience with Dungeon World (and having recently read through Ironsworn, which appears to be a much-improved take on fantasy Powered by the Apocalypse that solves many of the problems I had with DW), it could equally be valid to have the GM frame the check as follows:

{snipping for space; apologies}

How is that meaningfully different than calling for two separate rolls? Is it the illusion that the player "still has control" because they can try to mitigate the problematic outcome by having a separate stealth check? What if the GM secretly attaches a penalty modifier to the roll? Has the GM exerted any less influence over the fiction / reduced the player's agency?

It's not much different. The example you give is substantially clearer than anything I remember seeing in either AW or the BitD SRD. At that point it comes to the statistics of the various games, and the fact that PbtA and BitD are built around complications accruing as a result of the players' dice rolls. If (in D&D) the DM doesn't make the DC clear to the player, or if he attaches hidden modifiers, then he's being less transparent with the player than I'd like (though table expectations might exclude direct reference to DC, so maybe not).

Or is it better for the player and GM to have a very clear view of what's at stake when the dice hit the table, and they agree to let it ride?

I certainly think that clear stakes are important, the more so as the failure states get more unpleasant.