A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

Playstyles aren't wine

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's another thing to never choose those alternative methodologies because you have no idea they exist and could potentially, with the right analysis and effort, dramatically improve your gameplay experiences.

I think this is a really KEY point in what I was saying badly. If you have mastery of forms and you choose one and say "This is how I choose to approach this game, because my informed ideas about play lead me to play in this fashion here and now." THAT is surely exercising the greatest level of mastery of the subject! It can be any style of play. There isn't some fundamentally 'better' one, but when one says "well, only this one way can ever be best in all cases" whether for you or for everyone, etc. then you're not exercising or attempting mastery. You're just stuck in the mud!

This is why I see Picasso as the greatest of all masters of the art of painting. If you look at the ENTIRETY of his work, you can see that he mastered every style. He was the absolute and utter master of his craft and thus each and every element of his mature work is a fully and completely formed aesthetic choice. He might "just paint" and do it simply to enjoy doing it and not even care about the result, but it was always within his power to produce anything that was in his mind's eye, no matter what technique would be required.

Nobody here will probably ever master any subject to quite that degree, maybe most of us cannot aspire to even master one style of playing an RPG, but certainly we can also acknowledge the traits of great mastery and ability. Right?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And yet none of you can answer the question! How can you define "I got to join Vader on the Dark Side" when dictated by the GM as the choice that will be dark or light side as being equally empowered as a situation where the player participated directly in formulating the question at hand? Is the judgment then that 2 choices is just as much agency as potentially unlimited choices? This is the nut of the question and I have been a little puzzled by why it is avoided. I don't know what you mean by a 'linear formulation'. I don't agree with the 'straw man' statement made by @Bedrockgames either, frankly I don't even understand it at all! What 'straw man' am I erecting, what thing am I substituting for some other thing?

Just answer the question, how is less choice 'more freedom'? IMHO this is a very strange way of thinking and it is all quite straightforward!

Because there being some constrains make the choice actually matter. Having some external challenges makes overcoming them to matter. If you want ultimate freedom, then why even have the dice, rules or the other players at all? After all, they might disagree with you and place other restraints to your freedom.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think it's disingenuous, though, to say that the concept of player agency isn't connected to playstyle. In some ways, it's at the uttermost core center of the differences between play styles. Having experienced first-hand the differences between low-agency, medium-agency, and high-agency styles of play, I'm going to advocate for as much possible player agency as the GM is willing to give, every time, all day, every day. In my experience, higher-agency play leads to more fun at the gaming table, almost universally.

I never said agency isn't connected to play style (in my post I said some play styles will put more priority on agency and that agency in itself isn't necessarily what people are after in some play style---for instance adventure paths are often not as interested in agency as they are in delivering the goods the players have come to expect). You can advocate for more player agency for yourself and I won't object. Where these discussions run into issues is assuming that what is good for your table is good for everyone else's. By the same token, I think there is something disingenuous about how many are rating the 'levels' of agency. Obviously agency is being presented as a good and desirable thing here. It is creating an ought, and it seems to be the object people are fighting over to claim their style is the one people ought to pursue, and not just that but their style is somehow the best, the highest form of agency. I always get a bit skeptical when people start talking that way about their play style. Every play style can be pursued at a high level. I think saying that a dramatically focused style of play for example is higher, just isn't true. I can put just as much work, effort and nuance into exploring and maximizing the depths of play in a game focused on exploration, adventure paths, monster hunts or even murder hobo.

 

[zarionofarabel]

@zarionofarabel, can you reiterate what you meant by Agency in the OP. I feel like it would be more productive to answer the question you had about that? (since really any debate about the meaning of agency and other play styles don't really matter as much as what you had in mind when you used the term originally)

I will try!

In essence, I was wondering if I offer my players choices that matter. Choices that are meaningful. Choices that satisfy their desire to alter the narrative in a meaningful way.

I just make it all up as we play. I add elements to the narrative moment by moment and that made me wonder if I was guilty of something I think is called illusionism. As in, I instead offer only the illusion of choice because I, well, just make it all up at the table.

I hope that helps!

 

[pemerton]

That's not what "fail-forward" is about, nor is "success-plus-complication" synonymous with "fail-forward,"

<snip>

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.

Some reflections on the first point:

"Fail forward" is a label for a technique which (as far as I know) was first elaborated by Luke Crane and Ron Edwards. Here it is from the BW rules, Gold edition pp 24-25, 30-32 (and anyone can download this component of that system for free if they want to read about how it works):

Let’s start with the core of the Burning Wheel system. We call it “Intent and Task.” . . . When declaring an action for a character, you say what you want and how you do it. That’s the intent and the task. . . . By describing how his character will undertake this intent, he defines the task. Clearly stating and linking the task and intent allows player and GM to determine what ability needs to be tested. . . .​

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Descriptions of the task are vital. Through them we know which mechanics to apply; acknowledging the intent allows us to properly interpret the results of the test. . . . A task is a measurable, finite and quantifiable act performed by a character . . . A task describes how you accomplish your intent. What does your character do? . . . Once the description of the intent and task has been stated at the table, the ability needed to complete that action is usually pretty obvious. . . .​

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[W]hat happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal—he achieved his intent and completed the task.​

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This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test. . . . The most important criteria for passing a test is that play moves in the direction of the success, even if only momentarily. . . .​

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When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .​

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Failure is not the end of the line, but it is complication that pushes the story in another direction. . . . When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. . . .​

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Try not to present flat negative results . . . Strive to introduce complications through failure as much as possible.​

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Death should only be the result of failure in the rarest, most dire situations. The GM must present the players with varied, twisted, occult and bizarre ramifications of their decisions. Death is only the last resort. And more often than not, a player will let everyone know when he is prepared to risk his character’s life for success.​

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Lastly, the rules for specific subsystems, like fighting, injury and sorcery, will guide you in adjudicating the severity of a failure result.​

One thing that is fairly striking about this is the amount of effort devoted to explaining the action declaration and resolution process. It's very careful and deliberate.

The second thing is central to "fail forward": that adjudication technique (a) depends upon action having both intent and task; and (b) focuses upon intent. How the GM narrates the task outcome will depend upon the established fiction, the consequence envisaged, perhaps the mood of the table, etc. If my Circles check to come across Rufus had failed (task: I keep my eyes open for Rufus as we enter the borders of Auxol; intent: I want to meet with my brother again after many years away) maybe the GM has me meet no one; maybe I meet a man-at-arms whom Rufus has sent to tell me I'm exiled from Auxol and must leave; maybe the GM decides that I do meet Rufus, but he is charging towards me in full harness with a lance! This last option would have the GM fastening on my implicit intent that the meeting involve friendship or at least communication, rather than hateful conflict.

Some instances of "fail forward" can come close to success with complication - maybe that last possibility for a failed Circles check is in that neighbourhood - but al involve failure of intent.

In Apocalypse World and Dungeon World (and perhaps other PbtA games? those are the two I know), a 7-9 result still takes the PC towards his her goal in her action eg 7-9 on Go Aggro in AW still intimidates the target of the action, although not to the point of completely folding; 7-9 on Defy Danger in DW you are still able to act despite the imminent threat, but it will cost you in some fashion (perhaps you suffer some harm, or lose a piece of gear, or something more particular that follows from the fiction of the situation).

To move to some reflections on the second point: I think that both BW with "fail forward" and AW/DW with the prominence of 7-9 results are concerned to keep the fiction moving at a reasonable clip. There is not meant to be a lot of sitting at the table wondering what's really going on or where can we find the real action here? I think it would be a very atypical BW session, for instance, that involved the players having their PCs wandering through a town or city trying to gather information about <whatever> and moving through a series of largely unproductive interactions with largely ignorant or unhelpful NPCs. Mechanically, an attempt to gather information in this way would probably be resolved via appropriate Circles or Wises checks (maybe other social skills, if the framing made it appropriate) but if those checks failed then "fail forward" narration would mean that something more significant or dramatic happened then simply getting brushed off by a surly bartender.

I think one animating idea of these systems is that there's basically no reason why the whole of a RPG session can't be as interesting, engaging and invigorating as its high point. That's not to say that there's not rising action as well as climax; but there doesn't need to be no action at all, in RPGing any more than in other fiction media.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I will try!

In essence, I was wondering if I offer my players choices that matter. Choices that are meaningful. Choices that satisfy their desire to alter the narrative in a meaningful way.

I just make it all up as we play. I add elements to the narrative moment by moment and that made me wonder if I was guilty of something I think is called illusionism. As in, I instead offer only the illusion of choice because I, well, just make it all up at the table.

I hope that helps!

Don't be afraid of being called illusionist! It is not a bad thing if done sparingly.

Also, I think that your style of highly improvisational gameplay has a potential for rather satisfying player experience agency-wise. It doesn't automatically follow from it, but the potential is there. You kinda make things up as you go along, based on what the characters do, right? You have little reason to direct them into any particular direction as no direction was preplanned anyway. If the characters get interested in some thing that was randomly mentioned, then the story can be about that for a while. This lets the characters push the action into any direction they want and lets them do things they're interested in. And sure, you will need to create some twists and surprises or perhaps illusionise some details so that the world seems coherent and that's perfectly fine.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Don't be afraid of being called illusionist! It is not a bad thing if done sparingly.

Also, I think that your style of highly improvisational gameplay has a potential for rather satisfying player experience agency-wise. It doesn't automatically follow from it, but the potential is there. You kinda make things up as you go along, based on what the characters do, right? You have little reason to direct them into any particular direction as no direction was preplanned anyway. If the characters get interested in some thing that was randomly mentioned, then the story can be about that for a while. This lets the characters push the action into any direction they want and lets them do things they're interested in. And sure, you will need to create some twists and surprises or perhaps illusionise some details so that the world seems coherent and that's perfectly fine.

Except that by doing what you're saying, here, there's never any Illusionism. Illusionism requires GM Force -- which is the GM forcing a preferred outcome. Force becomes Illusionism when you hide the fact you're using Force through various obfuscations. If, instead, you're just following the player's interests, then there's never a need for Illusionism -- it's only when the GM has a preferred outcome (note outcome, not framing) that Force and Illusionism arrive on the scene.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Except that by doing what you're saying, here, there's never any Illusionism. Illusionism requires GM Force -- which is the GM forcing a preferred outcome. Force becomes Illusionism when you hide the fact you're using Force through various obfuscations. If, instead, you're just following the player's interests, then there's never a need for Illusionism -- it's only when the GM has a preferred outcome (note outcome, not framing) that Force and Illusionism arrive on the scene.

There are many levels of decisions. The GM may use illusionism on micro level decisions to help the players get where they wanted on the macro level. And the definition of illusionsim is not particularly clear; there was a long discussion earlier about the lying informant scenario and under what conditions it would have been illusionsim. I found that rather pointless.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I have played games in which I (as a player) had created my character purpose, and the GM was not really interested in that.

Thinking of one particular 2ned ed AD&D campaign, the GM had in mind a different purpose for my character (which was the same as the purpose of all the other characters). It ended up as a trainwreck. It's interesting to unpack a little bit why and how the trainwreck took place, I think it relates to your comment about establishing various aspects and trajectories of the fiction.

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.

If a player controls the actions of the main character of the story, it is rather weird to frame that as 'experiencing a narrative dictated by the GM.' If I am playing Luke and get to decide whether to join Vader on the Dark Side or not, that is pretty decent agency, even though I had not decided whether Vader was my dad or not.

A more general or abstract point, which reiterates what I and @AbdulAlhazred have already posted upthread, is this: getting to choose what my PC attempts seems like the baseline for playing a RPG. Without that, I'm just listening to the GM's monologue.

Choosing what my PC attempts is a way of manifesting my choice of my PC's goal. But it's only meaningful in that respect if success is on the table. If I declare that my PC joins Darth Vader, but the GM then deploys and manipulates fiction and/or mechanics to make that fail (eg uses alignment-type rules to decide that my character is now an NPC under the GM's control; has Darth undergo a sudden revelation or conversion so that joining him doesn't mean joining the Dark Side; simply declares sorry, you can't do that), it turns out that I didn't really have agency at all - I was not able to control my PC's actions in the way that mattered to me, and as a consequence was not meaningfully able to choose my own goal.

The same pattern can emerge if my goal for my PC is to find a spellbook to enhance her mastery of magic. If I declare I'm looking for the wizard's tower that I believe is around here somewhere in circumstances where nothing contrary to that has been established in the shared fiction, but then the GM deploys and manipulates the fiction and/or mechanics to make that fail (eg by fiat declaring, sorry, there are no towers around here) then again it turns out that I wasn't really able to control my character's action in the way that mattered to me. Again, my attempt to choose my own goal was thwarted.

In the 2nd ed AD&D game that I mentioned above, the GM's goal for all of us, as a group, was to resolve a complicated prophecy. The prophecy took the form of a series of verses. As a group of players we spent a lot of time and effort trying to interpret those verses, coming up with conjectures about how we (the PCs) and our actions fitted within them.

I think this shows, in a sense, how little can be required to accommodate player agency. Even if, as here, the GM was the primary author of the most salient backstory - ie the prophecy - and of the situations we encountered (many of which were straightforward 2nd ed D&D stuff - humanoid lairs, a lich, etc), it was still possible for the players to exercise agency by making sense of our actions, and our personal goals for our PCs, within the context of that backstory and those situations, by fitting it all into the prophecy.

There are player-agency-oriented RPGs that are intended to work a bit like this. For instance, Prince Valiant assumes a default backstory of Arthurian legend, and by default in that system the GM establishes the situations; but the players are entitled to impose their own goals for their PCs onto those situations (typically those should be knight aspirations, of course!) and the GM rolls with that. Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic also works if the GM presents the situations, but the players choose what they do with them in accordance with their PC milestones (which are that system's formal statement of PC goals).

What went wrong in the AD&D game I played in was that the GM simply could not let go. Not only had he set up the backstory, and was he framing the situations: he decided by fiat, in his own mind and without even sharing with us the players, what the prophecy-relevant meaning was of each action that we took. So from our point of view everything was arbitrary and meaningless.

The campaign melted down.

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.

I think this shows that we can't talk about system purely as mechanics - we also have to look at techniques of narration of consequence, and the principles that guide the application of those techniques.