A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

My point is that these sorts of action declarations are, in the games in which they occur, precisely instances of players exercising agency through their characters by making meaningful choices within a setting. Or to be more concise: they are examples of a player playing his/her PC. When (in AbdulAlhazred's example) the GM asks the player of the ranger to answer what is to the north of the swamp? this is not an out-of-game request to a player to draw a map. It is an in-game demand that the player play his/her PC by evincing his/her PC's knowledge. When the player answers, s/he is answering in character. The question is a version of what do you do? where the action performed is recollecting and evincing knowledge.

This seems really strange to me. I think part of it is I genuinely have trouble with your communication style. I really think we are talking past each other 80 percent of the time. Clearly to a lot of people on this thread, no matter how you justify it, this feels like the player exerting a power normally reserved for the GM, because they are literally shaping the world. Now you can say, they are just 'remembering what is there' in character. That doesn't change that this is a very different way of approach ing things than some of the other posters here have. In these conversations I feel I have been happy to acknowledge your style of play, and acknowledge the things you do differently. But when I and others try to draw distinctions we make it feels like you are saying to us 'you are wrong, there is no such distinction'. I mean I can tell you honestly If I asked my players at my table, "Tell me what is to the north of that swamp', they'd look at me funny, because that simply isn't how we play (and it isn't how we play in most of my games). I am not knocking this style at all. Like I said I really enjoyed Hillfolk, and one of the things it allowed you to do was fabricate setting details in dialogue during scenes (for instance I was playing a tribesmen trying to encourage war and expansion, and I remember inventing a whole group of people we were at war with to the north). I found that extremely immersive. It didn't interrupt my immersion one bit, but I do see the difference between that and a game where the GM decides who, if anyone, is to the north (and such a game seems much more standard to me than one like we had in Hillfolk). I liked that that occurred in the hill folk game,, but I would never then argue something like "but laws was just doing something that was always there in the hobby and no one batted an eye at it". Again, maybe it existed in places like gray areas in forms that didn't leap out at us. But I can say I never saw the stronghold mechanics as being anything like what Laws was talking about.

Also I would not say that you are remembering anything in character in this case. You are inventing, then labeling it remembering. Nothing was actually recalled. If the GM had said to the player character earlier, there are hills to the north. Then the GM asked that player "What was to the north again?" and the player said "Hills". Fair enough, then you are remembering in character. But to me this feels like a post hoc justification for calling it an in character choice.

That said, I am not saying that has to be counter to immersion or something. I am just saying it is clearly a case of the player having the power to shape a setting detail (and while you could describe that as being in character as remembering, you could just as easily label it the player putting hills there because he wants hills to exist to the north).

 

[darkbard]

Well the OP liked my post, so I don't think I failed in that respect.

The OP, I presume each time they return to this website, "likes" every single post in this thread. I take that to mean something like "I have read your response and thank you for participating," not agreement with or understanding of every single post.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The OP, I presume each time they return to this website, "likes" every single post in this thread. I take that to mean something like "I have read your response and thank you for participating," not agreement with or understanding of every single post.

Maybe. I will let the op tell me if I am getting what they are saying or not

 

[Thomas Shey]

You mean characters that willingly explore dangerous, monster-filled ruins, that fight dragons, that confront eldritch horrors? This is even before we look at characters that are desperate criminals, or death-before-dishonor types, or even gallant knights on a quest. The concept that characters in our games aren't routine doing outlandishly dangerous things to focus on a narrow instance and declare that this is the difference is baffling to me.

You'd think, but people still often will play characters that deliberately get into these situation but are extremely cautious how they handle them once they're there. And of course it makes quite a difference how the game system involved handles things. There's a big difference in taking chances in Pathfinder 2e and in Mythras to use two examples extremely familiar to me right now.

You don't have Actor stance correct and are instead describing a change in stance during play. Stances are fluid and what you have here is a switch to author or director (depending on details) stance, not staying in Actor stance. There's no such thing as an Actor stance player, just as there's no such thing as an "In Character" player. It's a thing you do at times during games.

I use the stances as they originally were described on RGFA, and to the best of my knowledge, I have those quite correct.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We aren't writing a paper, we're looking for loose evidence of a trend. This is exactly making the perfect (paper quality data) the enemy of the good (doing a bit of exploration).

And I don't think a survey here would provide any useful data. You do. That's as it is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Some posters are talking about "actor stance players" and "author stance players". To the best of my knowledge the terms actor stance and author stance have no well-established meanings outside of their use at The Forge. And as used there, they are not properties or tendencies of players:

As I note, they predate the Forge; they were first used in any public way back on rec.games.frp.advocacy. And while they technically aren't intrinsically a description of a player--a player can use one approach one time and another a different time--most players have tendencies, sometimes pretty strong ones they rarely budge from, so referring to someone as, say an "Author stance player" is not inaccurate when that's how they approach play 95% of the time.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Oh snap! Yeah I just thumb the posts cause I appreciate you peeps conversing and all.

To be honest...you all lost me a while ago.

I was lead to believe that agency was giving the players actual choices that matter.

So, to borrow something I was taught on a different thread...avoid the Quantum Ogre!

So. The players come to a fork in the road. If the players choose the left fork the PCs are supposed to meet an Ogre. If they choose the right fork the PCs are supposed to NOT meet an Ogre.

If the GM has the PCs meet an Ogre no matter which fork they choose that means the players have been DENIED agency.

However the above scenario only works if those things were decided beforehand either by the GM preparing the scenario in advance, or if it is part of a published module.

The problem I have is that I neither use published adventures nor prepare scenarios beforehand. Thus I am unsure if I offer the players real agency.

I hope that helps!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Oh snap! Yeah I just thumb the posts cause I appreciate you peeps conversing and all.

To be honest...you all lost me a while ago.

I was lead to believe that agency was giving the players actual choices that matter.

So, to borrow something I was taught on a different thread...avoid the Quantum Ogre!

So. The players come to a fork in the road. If the players choose the left fork the PCs are supposed to meet an Ogre. If they choose the right fork the PCs are supposed to NOT meet an Ogre.

If the GM has the PCs meet and Ogre no matter which fork they choose that means the players have been DENIED agency.

However the above scenario only works if those things were decided beforehand either by the GM preparing the scenario in advance, or if it is part of a published module.

The problem I have is that I neither use published adventures nor prepare scenarios beforehand. Thus I am unsure if I offer the players real agency.

I hope that helps!

Some people get worked up over things like quantum ogres, but that is precisely the sort of situation where it really doesn't matter how exactly the things are done behind the curtains. It is not an informed choice, nor it is an interesting one, and whether the ogre was preplanned in one direction and the players happened to choose it, was quantum placed in either direction they would choose or just made up on the spot will not affect the player experience one bit. Don't worry meaningless small choices like that. It it is bigger things that matter; who to ally with, who to betray, what is the overall goal, do the ends justify the means, who to bang, marry or kill etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Oh snap! Yeah I just thumb the posts cause I appreciate you peeps conversing and all.

To be honest...you all lost me a while ago.

I was lead to believe that agency was giving the players actual choices that matter.

So, to borrow something I was taught on a different thread...avoid the Quantum Ogre!

So. The players come to a fork in the road. If the players choose the left fork the PCs are supposed to meet an Ogre. If they choose the right fork the PCs are supposed to NOT meet an Ogre.

If the GM has the PCs meet an Ogre no matter which fork they choose that means the players have been DENIED agency.

However the above scenario only works if those things were decided beforehand either by the GM preparing the scenario in advance, or if it is part of a published module.

The problem I have is that I neither use published adventures nor prepare scenarios beforehand. Thus I am unsure if I offer the players real agency.

I hope that helps!

you can make the decision at the fork in the road, before the players make their choice.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Some people get worked up over things like quantum ogres, but that is precisely the sort of situation where it really doesn't matter how exactly the things are done behind the curtains. It is not an informed choice, nor it is an interesting one, and whether the ogre was preplanned in one direction and the players happened to choose it, was quantum placed in either direction they would choose or just made up on the spot will not affect the player experience one bit. Don't worry meaningless small choices like that. It it is bigger things that matter; who to ally with, who to betray, what is the overall goal, do the ends justify the means, who to bang, marry or kill etc.

Well as others have said it can matter (are you giving PCs chance to scout out before they chose the path? Does your system actually have a decent set of mechanics for doing this or is it just an invitation for the scout to find themself all alone against an encounter?), but it doesn't intrinsically.

As you note bigger things tend to both matter more, be more something you can figure out if you engage with, and, honestly, more likely to be obvious if the fix is in.