A Question Of Agency?

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The problem is, if it doesn't at least show some relationship to the players goals, then in practice their agency doesn't matter; they just get to make a choice and something happens, but it could, for all they can tell, happened if they made a different choice.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To me that almost sounds like a cheat code: "Hey, we have problem X here but if we invent and use leverage-point Y we can blow past it at no risk or cost". And so with one player-spoken sentence the problem Goes Away.

This takes away all the intrigue of determining whether leverage-point Y exists, whether it's accessible to the PCs, and whether they can put it to use...all, it seems, in the interests of allowing the fiction to develop faster.

It's as if the specific design goal is to make the game more appealing to those with short attention spans.

Are you sure you want to play the dozens on people who have a style you dislike quite that strongly? Because this post does that pretty strongly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Grrrr.... As a player the first words out of my mouth would be some version of "Why are we here, how did we get here, and why - if we don't need to be here - didn't we go around?"

AWESOME! This is so cool! And the DW GM's principles are always to love questions, and get the players to answer them too! So my response to
"Why are we here?" will be "I don't know, you tell me!" Now, I might also suggest reference to the PC's bonds as a potential inspiration for that, or at least their backgrounds (which are partly implied in class and race too). The other two questions likewise, their answers will PROBABLY illicit a bunch of world building and help to establish the momentum of the start of game.

30 seconds into the game and we're already into the realm of co-operative storytelling rather than in-character role-playing.

In all fairness, the players COULD, if they wish, 'look to the GM' At this point the GM's process is to make a soft move. I think it would be a BIT odd for the players to not even ask a question, but DW is fairly robust. A player could also invoke the Spout Lore move, which obligates the GM to tell them something, and on a 10+ the GM is also obligated to make that something 'useful to the characters'. Even with a 7-9 it would at least presumably allow a player to Spout Lore "about the Gnatbite Swamp" and put it on the GM to supply some information. Its a bit of a dodge, but not out of bounds. The GM might then respond with the spiel about the hills to the north, or something else.

Fine if that's what you want but for pity's sake own up to the fact that this is what you're doing.

Well, remember, we're talking about, specifically, the 'start of game' process. The GM is ALLOWED to ask the player's questions at any point, even later in the game, but it is particularly appropriate at the start. Obviously the players can punt to a degree, and they can pretty easily lean on the GM as much as they want. I mean, really, nobody can make someone pick up a tool and use it. The players will find that they are going to pick up some authority along the way, naturally, but it is exceptionally easy to pick one player and make them do most of it. It is also pretty common to have gritty tactical sequences of play that don't call for a lot of deciding what the world looks like. Again, if the PCs run into a 'hole in the map' in that kind of situation, then the GM can simply think about what the players are wanting to do. "Oh, they want to delve deep into dangerous dungeon levels to find some legendary lost treasure... OK, you see a stairway leading down into darkness!"

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So do posters here believe that they have agency in the real life? Just asking to calibrate some agency standards.

 

[Manbearcat]

Sometimes it just feel that people want to have rules to protect them from bad GMs, but I have hard time imagining that it will ultimately be a satisfying solution for that particular problem.

We can all be certain this is the case because for the 40+ years that TTRPGs have been a thing, poor GMs/GMing and how to fix it has been one of the primary conversation pieces from White Dwarf to Dragon to internet forums to real life!

However, all of the people you are discussing these matters with in this thread are lifelong GMs. Some of us, myself included, are pretty much exclusively GMs so we're broaching this subject through that lens.

Personally, what I want out of the games that I run (and I run many different types of games) is to get precisely the experience the participants who will be playing are looking for. In the last decade the systems I've primarily (with stray exceptions like Ten Candles, My Life With Master, Sorcerer, Beyond the Wall, Masks, Scum and Villainy, Monsterhearts, 5e, The One Ring, 13th Age) run are (starting from most played to least played):

* D&D 4e

* Dungeon World

* Dogs in the Vineyard

* Torchbearer

* Blades in the Dark

* Apocalypse World

* Strike!

* Mouse Guard

* Various Cortex+ (mostly MHRP)

* Moldvay Basic if its low level or RC D&D if its my 30 year gaming friends spare continuing game (and they'll pick one of their 3-4 characters from their PC stable).

---

On the Venn Diagram of TTRPG attributes, as GM, all of those games above (except for RC) share the following overlap:

* Holistic, intentful design with a focused premise, explicit ethos, and engineering toward executing that precisely and consistently.

* Clear, cogent (even if its a more weighty text like 4e/Torchbearer/Blades), player-facing rules that are all integrated to perpetuate the game's particular play loop.

* Enumerated GM role and constraints, clarity of authority for participants (whether its more distributed or more siloed like in Moldvay Basic), great GMing advice, and clarity of procedures and conversation.

---

Why do I want this stuff as GM? Because it lets me offload mental overhead that I don't want onto system and players (thereby investing them in the responsibility for the trajectory of play), therefore reducing unwanted stress and allowing me to be mentally fresh and focus my cognitive horsepower on optimizing my creativity and industry for the particular role of the GM in that game (building an interesting, challenging, thematic dungeon in Moldvay is different than in Torchbearer and they're both different than running a 4e Skill Challenge which is different than running a 4e combat which is different than running a Blades Score which is different than running a Dogs escalating conflict). There is never any confusion on what is happening or what has happened in a session. And finally, I get to "play to find out what happens" (even in a Moldvay Basic dungeon where I've mapped and keyed everything with high resolution) because players and system are driving play while I'm reacting and countering (which is the inverse of a lot of TTRPG play).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My impression is that a lot of actual play in the 1970s was far more relaxed about player-introduced content I've got in mind things like the famous "baby balrog" in one of Gygax's campaigns; and even the shift from OD&D being very relaxed about players making up new character types - like balrogs - to Gygax's DMG being sternly against it. And Gygax is still relaxed about the matter in his discussion of stronghold-building (from his DMG, p 93):

Assume that the player in question decides that he will set up a stronghold about 100 miles from a border town, choosing an area of wooded hills as the general site. He then asks you if there is a place where he can build a small concentric castle on a high bluff overlooking a river. Unless this is totally foreign to the area, you inform him that he can do so.​

The difference between this and the Great Masters-wise check made to establish that Aramina truly recollects the location of Evard's tower is that what Gygax describes is (i) more informal, and (ii) not gated behind a player build decision (ie spending points to develop Great Masters-wise). But there is no difference in terms of whose ideas are establishing the content of the shared fiction. Just like Dungeon World, it is an example of "drawing maps but leaving blank spaces" and then looking to one of the players to fill in those blanks.

What puzzles me is that no one seems ever to have thought the passage from Gygax worth mentioning, except for me! Whereas something basically the same but made more overt as a feature of playing other systems generates all this debate and discussion about "narrative perspective" or "narrative stance" or "narrative power".

I'm certainly not Gygax's number-one advocate, but I think that his rulebooks demonstrate a clear sense of the dynamics of player agency for the sorts of games he was running, although - like @AbdulAlhazred - I don't think he'd come up with a perfect set of tools to solve all the problems.

Yeah. I think the whole 'named levels get strongholds and followers' coupled with 'troupe play' and the fundamental origins of the game stemming from a wargame campaign where players ran countries and built fantasy armies, kind of WAS the answer to high level play. Low level play was envisaged as pretty much entirely 'skilled play' in a 'dungeon crawl' sort of mode (or hex crawl once you got to mid levels). It wasn't really envisaged that the players would regularly run groups of name+ level PCs in established parties as a single group. It was more envisaged that they would be, at best, friendly rivals and movers behind the scenes. Perhaps they would appear now and then to handle a great crisis (G1 for instance) but they would probably represent their own 'factions' and eventually retreat back to their lairs and let the henchmen do the mundane adventuring work.

So, the PCs would become 'movers' with a lot of in game agency, being able to muster armies, sweet talk or bully most NPCs, etc. As a lot of them would be either casters or have caster henchmen and powerful items, they would exhibit lots of plot power and agency. They might even build on the stronghold path to raise themselves to the level of being rulers of entire realms. I don't recall that being called out in WoG ever, but it was certainly a viable path for a high level PC.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Yes. My point is that when (usually @pemerton but sometimes others) post words to the effect that the goal of the players is to make meaningful changes to the fiction, because players naturally are going to want those changes to be beneficial to their PCs it often comes across as saying the goal of the players is to make beneficial-to-them changes only.

An example: our goal is to rescue some people trapped in a mostly-collapsed mine. I'm playing the Hobbit. Can we all agree that "I try to squeeze through the remaining passage with two goals: one, to not bring the rest of it down and two, to tow a rope through by which supplies etc. can be got to those who are trapped." is a good and valid action declaration?

If yes, there's several possible outcomes one of which on failure is that I bring the rest of the passage down on myself. Yeah, I've made a material change to the fiction but in any way have I achieved a goal either meta or not? Hell no! I've made things worse for the trapped people, killed my character, and generally messed things up - even though technically I've met the meaningful-changes goal italicized above.

 

[Manbearcat]

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. But I see that you have adamantly decided to not to understand, so there is really no point in this discussion.

I'm curious why you think "who rolls the dice indeed doesn't matter?" Can you elaborate?

Do you also believe that player-facing systems and GM-facing systems have no impact on the overall aesthetic of play and the psychology of "participants set at <some degree of> tension (one group is advocating for their PC/group goals within the premise of the system...while the other party's role is to place opposition/obstacles to their goals so skill can be tested and/or story can emerge/PC nature can be revealed)." Even if you have the most beautiful trusting relationships possible, a referee and a player are purposely going to have tension (though they aren't at cross-purposes, there is, by fundamental nature, tension) because of their respective roles. The question is how is this tension navigated/mitigated (there are several ways it can be done that don't just offload it onto social contract).

 

[Thomas Shey]

So do posters here believe that they have agency in the real life? Just asking to calibrate some agency standards.

Is it going to be manifestly unhelpful to answer "To a degree"?

 

[Thomas Shey]

We can all be certain this is the case because for the 40+ years that TTRPGs have been a thing, poor GMs/GMing and how to fix it has been one of the primary conversation pieces from White Dwarf to Dragon to internet forums to real life!

However, all of the people you are discussing these matters with in this thread are lifelong GMs. Some of us, myself included, are pretty much exclusively GMs so we're broaching this subject through that lens.

Though I should note that my lifelong GMing has made me, if anything, even more sensitive to failure states at that end of things; I personally think a lot of questionable player behavior can be traced back to scar tissue from encounters with either outright bad GMing or one of us fumbling our roll as it were.