A Question Of Agency?

[hawkeyefan]

CoC is the only one I know.

I would add - I don't think that GM-driven, player-participation is the only way to have fun playing a Cthulhu-esque game, though I certainly think it's what CoC itself is best for.

I've run a couple of Cthulhu Dark one-shots over the past few years and it works very well for player-driven no-myth RPGing.

I'd say that the new Alien RPG from Free League likely fits the bill. It has Campaign play for more long form, repeated session play, but also has Cinematic play, for short scenarios that are similar to a movie. The Cinematic scenarios I've seen and run remind me of Call of Cthulhu.

Not yet sure how the Campaign mode would play.

 

[Aldarc]

That's not what I meant. I didn't mean the games you play, I meant real life you living your real life. How would you rate that level of agency?

I would personally rate that level of agency as a red herring discussion that creates more problems than it solves.

I'll go as far as to say that I believe the ability to at least reduce risks is expected by the majority of players in most games. Whether that's an old school view (I don't think so, personally) is something of in the eye of the beholder.

Ironically, this is where PbtA style games arguably more old school than contemporaneous D&D, which treat combat and encounters as sport rather than war. In older editions of D&D and OSR, you reduce risks through skilled game play. In PbtA style games, you reduce risks through skilled fictional framing. You and your group make your actions clear in the fiction. You describe what you are doing and how. This makes the consequences of full success, complicated success, failure clearer and arguably less as the consequences must flow from the prior fiction established. If you know that your actions can potentially trigger moves, then you try to describe what your character is doing in ways that will result in more advantageous outcomes: e.g., roll with highest stat, create a situation relevant to a playbook ability, etc.

Edit: Not to mention Blades in the Dark where the fictional position, effect, and risk factors are mechanical functions of game resolution.

Eh. There are both virtues and problems in rolling multiple axes of resolution into one roll, and which it primarily lands in depends on what your priorities are there. At the very least if you want the mechanical process to tell you which ones succeeded at and which ones failed and not either lockstep them together or throw it to the definition of an outside party, it complicates how you have to make your resolution roll. That doesn't mean I think having more than one thing resolved with one roll is an intrinsic evil (separating out "makes the jump" and "isn't injured" seems to me to be perverse and asking for the laws of probability to make everything worse) but doing so isn't an unmixed blessing.

I am not mistaken that it is a "feature" of the game. One's preference regarding that feature is something else entirely, but "feature" is far more neutral and factual of a term to describe this dice resolution process than "fault," so maybe you should save your post for the one who is putting their thumb on the scale with loaded terms like "fault."

Also would anyone be willing to run @Lanefan through a PbtA game so he actually has play experience when talking about them in the future?

 

[chaochou]

I posted this before, but I'm going to reiterate it again. The question of agency boils down to: Who has created the purpose of my character?

Creating a purpose is not the same as accepting a quest from the GM, nor choosing from a GM provided list. It means what it says - I the player create for myself what my character is up to in this game. Otherwise someone else does.

It's an either / or situation. There's no sliding scale here - either I have created the purpose of my character or I have not.

Resolution systems then support one or other of these two binary options. Both the PbtA moves and the Burning Wheel action resolution (and both advancement systems) are designed to facilitate the GM / MC to generate new challenges as a character sets about the purpose which the player has created.

Misplaced perceptions of how PbtA or Blades or Burning Wheel work (from vocal posters who've actually never played them, it has to be said) simply reveal a baseline failure to understand that everything from those games flows from the starting point of player created objectives. To say they do nothing different from D&D is to misunderstand the entirety of what happens during play in a macro sense. Trying to pick apart the micro is to miss the wood for the trees.

And if an MC tries to create purpose for the characters in BW or PbTA to pursue they will find the mechanics fight them, and fail to facilitate their vision, at every step. The untested rejection of such mechanics is illustrative of a learned desire for GM control, covert or otherwise.

This is in stark contrast to D&D and traditional forms, in which covert GM control is inherent and the purpose of the characters is assumed to be 'whatever the GM creates for them'. Character purpose is created in secret, not by the players but away from them. Some effort may (or may not) be put into co-opting the players into accepting a vague call to action, although most players are trained to do so - and of course, the majority have never played a game which offered the alternative.

I played and ran GM-led games for 20 years. I've been running player-led games for close to 20 years. I'm not averse to different play priorities. I am averse to hearing doublespeak about player agency from posters who have clearly never engaged in it.

One final note - I wish people wouldn't conflate backstory, plot, situation and narration. Those are all completely seperate things. Authority for each of those can be seperated and transferred between rpg participants with no problem. There are a range of techniques to do this.

The fact that traditional games lump them together and call it 'GM-ing' doesn't change the fact that they are distinct and seperate parts of the game and can be moved independently between participants with no harm to consistency, immersion, plausibility, or any of these other frequently repeated (and false) claims.

 

[Aldarc]

Where I run aground is trying to square "success-plus-complication" with "fail-forward", as they seem to me to be basically the same thing under different names; only one is mitigating success (which, all other things being equal, makes the game harder on the players/PCs) while the other is mitigating failure (which makes the game easier).

That's not what "fail-forward" is about, nor is "success-plus-complication" synonymous with "fail-forward," but this misconception has been explained to you ad nauseum by now. I'm not sure why this requires 10+ posters regularly correcting you on this through 10+ posts each on the matter in 50+ threads where this has come up. It's like if someone tells you that their name is "Jack," and you keep calling them "Bob." After what point are you being rude by continuing to call them "Bob" after they (and others) correct you that their name is "Jack"?

That said, it's one which I roundly ignore in favour of the humour value and occasional in-game chaos (or tragedy!) fumbles can lead to.

The point is that critical fumbles do not necessarily flow from the fiction or more about humor/humiliation. Some GMs try to be "fair" by rolling from a critical fumble table, but this may result in a consequence that is detached or disassociated from the preceding fiction.

This is one thing that would bug me: that things are resolved at such a high non-granular level rather than digging in and sorting out the details, both in combat (as shown in the quote) and in exploration. It strikes me as a design very much geared toward a 'hurry-up' style of play, as if the game expects players (and GMs) to want to rush through any one scenario/adventure/campaign in order to get to the next.

Not my cup of tea.

It's fair if it's not your cup of tea, but I don't think that it's fair to say that PbtA is particularly concerned with a "hurry-up style of play," but, rather, it's emphasis is on a fiction-first style of play. It's more interested in what's the next state of the fiction. It's not interested in each and every granular swing of the sword. It's interested in how a scene plays out more on a more holistic and fluid level. It's interested in character choice in the fiction, i.e., "what do you do?", rather than the questions of skilled play in a tactical skirmish game. I don't think it's in a rush, but I think it is interested in maintaining forward momentum and pacing. PbtA can go tortoise: slow and steady, but constantly forwards.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And is also an extreme interpretation of the stances of others, which is of no help to either clarity or dialogue.

Two things to note here: one, this is a specific exception to the otherwise-established baseline where setting parameters are under the purview of the GM; and two (and more important), as per the bit I bolded the GM still has to give permission and retains veto power. If memory serves, however, once the GM does give permission the player then gains some narrative control over many elements of that hex other than just the stronghold itself, subject to GM veto if abused.

I'd just like to point out that this is BY FAR not the only such rule (stronghold building). There are many others in 1e, including anything to do with creating magic items, researching new spells, etc. It was certainly expected that players would suggest things like variants of clerics, different deities, races, possibly even classes. ALL of this was on the table in OD&D (which I think covers @pemerton's 'early D&D') and then things got 'tighter' in 1e, but still pretty open-ended on many things.

At least where I played, it was very common for PCs to end up with a lot of 'customizations'. These were often including stuff that the player wanted and initiated. Most of them were rooted in the narrative, but often it was a matter of "Hey, DM, can I get someone to make me a..." or "train me in...". There were even certain admonitions about things that you could NOT do, like learn how to make 'racial items' unless you were of that race (even then not really).

The point being, player input to the setting/narrative beyond the PC's actions was expected of 'good players'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

This is 'play to see what happens'. Agency might include the ability to specify some of the parameters of this situation, for example that there are trapped miners, or that there is a possible way through. The actual accomplishment of the task, probably including problem-solving and several challenges vs just a single life and death throw of dice, is the 'see what happens' part. If the hobbit fails, well, then eventually he's buried a hero and a statue is erected and his son Hobbit Jr perhaps takes up the torch!

I don't think players are automatically invested in their PCs goals in the sense of "succeed and not have any risks." When players awaken to dramatic possibilities in the game, they are much more likely to see 'higher goals'. It is a bit like the way the ancient Epicureans saw higher forms of self-accomplishment. Basic primal drive satisfaction was a low bar for them. I feel like basic "my character gets all the lootz!" is a pretty low bar form of RP. Its OK, just like eating fine food is OK, but there are more sophisticated and rewarding forms of play, ultimately. I don't mean everyone needs to go there, but a lot of players are at least willing to explore that sort of thing, particularly if they have played for a while, or have a real creative urge to their play. An ideal game can provide something for each sort, without breaking down. D&D seems to not really cater much to the more sophisticated kinds of "hey lets make a story where our characters..." kind of play. I mentioned the "everyone is doomed" on-shot I ran once. That was high concept play. It is pointless to approach that type of game like murder hobos in the dungeon, it would just be meaningless. Dying was not a negative there, and plans failing was simply a part of the concept, nope, the lifeboat won't save you after all that work to get it fixed, ah well...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am not mistaken that it is a "feature" of the game. One's preference regarding that feature is something else entirely, but "feature" is far more neutral and factual of a term to describe this dice resolution process than "fault," so maybe you should save your post for the one who is putting their thumb on the scale with loaded terms like "fault."

Also would anyone be willing to run @Lanefan through a PbtA game so he actually has play experience when talking about them in the future?

Care to point out where I said the world "fault" in the paragraph you quoted? I said there were virtues and flaws in rolling things together, and I pretty much stand by that (and I think if you believe I'm supporting Lanefan's position here, you're not paying attention).

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is 'play to see what happens'. Agency might include the ability to specify some of the parameters of this situation, for example that there are trapped miners, or that there is a possible way through. The actual accomplishment of the task, probably including problem-solving and several challenges vs just a single life and death throw of dice, is the 'see what happens' part. If the hobbit fails, well, then eventually he's buried a hero and a statue is erected and his son Hobbit Jr perhaps takes up the torch!

I don't think players are automatically invested in their PCs goals in the sense of "succeed and not have any risks." When players awaken to dramatic possibilities in the game, they are much more likely to see 'higher goals'. It is a bit like the way the ancient Epicureans saw higher forms of self-accomplishment. Basic primal drive satisfaction was a low bar for them. I feel like basic "my character gets all the lootz!" is a pretty low bar form of RP. Its OK, just like eating fine food is OK, but there are more sophisticated and rewarding forms of play, ultimately. I don't mean everyone needs to go there, but a lot of players are at least willing to explore that sort of thing, particularly if they have played for a while, or have a real creative urge to their play. An ideal game can provide something for each sort, without breaking down. D&D seems to not really cater much to the more sophisticated kinds of "hey lets make a story where our characters..." kind of play. I mentioned the "everyone is doomed" on-shot I ran once. That was high concept play. It is pointless to approach that type of game like murder hobos in the dungeon, it would just be meaningless. Dying was not a negative there, and plans failing was simply a part of the concept, nope, the lifeboat won't save you after all that work to get it fixed, ah well...

If you can't see someone else style of play as something other than a lesser approach, I don't think you can have an honest conversation. Believe me there are arguments for why a style like open exploration of a setting is a 'higher form' of RP. But I think all that is just to elevate style preference. The bottom line for most people is what do they enjoy doing at the table. But framing it as a form of awakening (akin to philosophical or religious enlightenment) I think really stretches things. You like drama. That is your preference. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make you a more evolved gamer.

 

[Aldarc]

Care to point out where I said the world "fault" in the paragraph you quoted? I said there were virtues and flaws in rolling things together, and I pretty much stand by that (and I think if you believe I'm supporting Lanefan's position here, you're not paying attention).

The post you were replying to was responding to someone who explicitly referred to it as a "fault."

 

[Thomas Shey]

The post you were replying to was responding to someone who explicitly referred to it as a "fault."

And? That has nothing to do with what my response was about.