A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

I think that this touches on an important part. Yes, in many ways, I think a lot of the conflict in this discussion is based around where power normally resides among participants of the game; with the GM, or with the players. I think @pemerton is simply pointing out how some examples of players wielding narrative control have existed all along. It's not that folks who are advocating for a more traditional, D&Desque mode of play have a problem with the concept.....it's more that they are incredibly selective about where it applies.

I get what Pemerton is saying but I have already responded to that line of argument. You can't just project current concepts back onto gaming, taking edge cases and gray areas, and say therefore these are the norm of play. I never said there weren't exceptions or areas of the game where this stuff might lightly intrude. But a player being able to declare a hill exists isn't lightly intruding (especially when the position seems to be this should be the standard way things are done). I am not saying it is bad, or less fun. But I think it is obvious to most people when we say traditional play, we mean play where the GM has the authority to author this stuff. Now we are simply invoking the term, traditional play, so we have a handy term for what we mean. I am not particularly interested in debating the nature of traditional play. This is the problem with debating posters like you and Pemerton, we enter discussion in good faith and it just feels like a rhetorical word game, where you dissect the language we use in order to take the ground out from under us. It never feels like an honest discussion. And it is always the same group of posters making the same points and fighting about the same style issues. I don't have any issue with your style. I have pointed to games I like that get into hat kind of style. But I can still make distinctions between ways of approaching the game. There is a difference between how I would normally play D&D and how Hillfolk handles things. And saying, well some of those things vaguely existed in D&D's past doesn't make my statement any less true (especially since it was clearly not the norm to run D&D in the style of something like Hillfolk). Maybe Pemerton was doing those things. Like I said many times, things weren't homogenous back then and I encountered all kinds of tables. But there were norms. There were things that would make people do a double take if you proposed them. For example I knew a guy who had a co-GM, and that is how he ran is campaigns. Nothing wrong with it all. His campaigns were great. But it wasn't the norm, and it certainly be something we would have told people before hand so they knew the game was going to be different. And it produced a very different feel in play. Some people loved it, but it wasn't for everyone (because it wasn't the experience they came to expect from the game)

 

[pemerton]

I am not saying you aren't playing a character or that you are not roleplaying. I am saying there is a key distinction to be made between shaping the world through the actions and words of your character and shaping the world through the words of the player

These two sentences are in obvious contradiction!

You are just taking an action your character take take in the setting, your influence on the setting is through your character. On the other hand, declaring a hill exists is not being done through your character. I think this difference is pretty clear and obvious

What you call "declaring a hill exists" is what I call "remembering that a hill exists". Which is something my character does.

I prefer not to play all my characters as if they suffer from amnesia.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because there isn't anything to remember. You haven't experienced that aspect of the region yet, so yes, from the approach I am coming from, the player would ask the GM if there are hills. In real life you don't ask because you are actually remembering. In the example you give, you are not remembering anything. You are inventing and calling it memory

Okay.....but if I hit an orc with a mace, me in the real world is actually hitting the orc?

I think you're making a distinction between a physical action of the character and a mental action of the character. No one is actually swinging a mace, no one is actually remembering.

Or you're making a distinction between established elements (the orc) and those that have yet to be established (the terrain north of the swamp). This is perhaps a more reasonable distinction, but then we get back to the idea that geographical elements can be established by players through actions taken by characters. So I don't know how strong this argument is.

It really seems to boil down to "only the GM can establish new elements; players can only interact with what's already been established"; would you say that's right?

If so, would you then acknowledge that a game that allows a player some manner of establishing new elements is one that has more player agency?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Hawkeyefan has really got it right here, in my view.

Asking the GM what do I remember and being told some information, and then later on reciting that back is not (in my view and experience) remotely immersive, nor is it anything like remembering in character. It's just playing an effective puzzle-solving game.

As I've posted upthread multiple times - but had no response to from any other poster - what it does remind me of is the experience of having amnesia. Because - and I am saying this from experience - when you have amnesia then you need someone else to tell you what it is that you know and (should) remember.

This too.

Pemerton, you don't have to find it immersive, or enjoyable. I am just pointing out there is a distinction to be made here.

I get that you had amnesia. Games are not real life. You sometimes ask the GM for information and personally I don't find that all that jarring. If you do, fair enough. But doing so means I am still limited to acting on the world through my character. If your solution tot he problem of being able to access your character's memory of off screen events is you should be able to make memories up and have them be real in the setting, there is nothing wrong with that, but that is you, the player shaping the setting, not your character shaping it. I really don't see how this could be described in any other way. But if you disagree, we just have to move on because we have a fundamental disagreement about what these things mean I guess.

 

[pemerton]

Because there isn't anything to remember. You haven't experienced that aspect of the region yet

But my character has been there, or has heard about it. (I know that Houston is south of St Louis, though I've never been to either.)

I'm playing my character, not playing some sort of puzzle-solving metagame.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure, as I said it can depend on edition and approach to play.

But I'd say that, inherently, the fiction involves the PCs doing dangerous things, no? They're delving into dungeons or chasing down cultists or fighting dragons and so on.

For me, nothing is more frustrating than when players get very tentative with their PCs because they're concerned about something that could potentially be risky to them.

I think that D&D is specifically designed to support heroic, risk taking attitude (the latter editions in particular.) The hit points work as a safety buffer; unlike in real combat, one lucky hit is not gonna drop you (except at low levels.) And save or die effects have mostly been removed too. If things start to go badly, you usually have several turn to try to rectify the situation or flee. It of course is far from save, but compared to more realistic systems it is pretty safe and more importantly predictable. I think this is a big part of the appeal, whether the players realise this or not.

 

[pemerton]

This is the problem with debating posters like you and Pemerton, we enter discussion in good faith and it just feels like a rhetorical word game, where you dissect the language we use in order to take the ground out from under us. It never feels like an honest discussion.

Are you serious! I've posted multiple times that you are not giving good-faith descriptions of my RPGing, and you double down. I point this out and ask "Are you sure, given how much you complain about the way other posters describe things?" And now you double down again!

You're not the only person here trying to post sincerely. If you can't imagine the difference between playing a character who is an amnesiac and playing a character who remembers the world they inhabit, that's on you, not on me or @hawkeyefan.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay.....but if I hit an orc with a mace, me in the real world is actually hitting the orc?

I think you're making a distinction between a physical action of the character and a mental action of the character. No one is actually swinging a mace, no one is actually remembering.

Or you're making a distinction between established elements (the orc) and those that have yet to be established (the terrain north of the swamp). This is perhaps a more reasonable distinction, but then we get back to the idea that geographical elements can be established by players through actions taken by characters. So I don't know how strong this argument is.

It really seems to boil down to "only the GM can establish new elements; players can only interact with what's already been established"; would you say that's right?

If so, would you then acknowledge that a game that allows a player some manner of establishing new elements is one that has more player agency?

If you hit an orc with the mace, you the player are not hitting the orc.

I am making a distinction between exerting power on the setting through your character (whether that be what your character says or does) and exerting power on the setting through your declarations as a player. In real life, I can say "I have a fort on the hill next to my house" all day long, but saying it doesn't make that fort exist. My memory of the fort is only valid if the hill and fort exist. The same in a setting. In a traditional style of play, the player asks the GM "is there a hill there"----the GM is the system for deterimining the objecting reality of the geography. Now you can play a different way. I am not saying playing differently is less fun, less immersive for you, or bad. I am saying if you allow the hill to exist because the player says, even if it is in character, "there are hills to the north", then that is distinct from how many on this thread play the game (and I would argue probably distinct from how most people play----but who knows, maybe that is changing).

 

[hawkeyefan]

I get what Pemerton is saying but I have already responded to that line of argument. You can't just project current concepts back onto gaming, taking edge cases and gray areas, and say therefore these are the norm of play. I never said there weren't exceptions or areas of the game where this stuff might lightly intrude. But a player being able to declare a hill exists isn't lightly intruding (especially when the position seems to be this should be the standard way things are done). I am not saying it is bad, or less fun. But I think it is obvious to most people when we say traditional play, we mean play where the GM has the authority to author this stuff. Now we are simply invoking the term, traditional play, so we have a handy term for what we mean. I am not particularly interested in debating the nature of traditional play. This is the problem with debating posters like you and Pemerton, we enter discussion in good faith and it just feels like a rhetorical word game, where you dissect the language we use in order to take the ground out from under us. It never feels like an honest discussion. And it is always the same group of posters making the same points and fighting about the same style issues. I don't have any issue with your style. I have pointed to games I like that get into hat kind of style. But I can still make distinctions between ways of approaching the game. There is a difference between how I would normally play D&D and how Hillfolk handles things. And saying, well some of those things vaguely existed in D&D's past doesn't make my statement any less true (especially since it was clearly not the norm to run D&D in the style of something like Hillfolk). Maybe Pemerton was doing those things. Like I said many times, things weren't homogenous back then and I encountered all kinds of tables. But there were norms. There were things that would make people do a double take if you proposed them. For example I knew a guy who had a co-GM, and that is how he ran is campaigns. Nothing wrong with it all. His campaigns were great. But it wasn't the norm, and it certainly be something we would have told people before hand so they knew the game was going to be different. And it produced a very different feel in play. Some people loved it, but it wasn't for everyone (because it wasn't the experience they came to expect from the game)

I have no problem with anyone's style of play. You can play any game however you'd like, and if you're enjoying it, that's awesome.

I can also enjoy different games for different reasons. I mentioned the Call of Cthulhu games my buddy runs.....very low on player agency, but still a lot of fun. For me, I prefer agency, but it's not always the end all be all.

I would like for you to keep in mind that I am placing no moral weight on agency as it exists in gaming, at least not beyond my own preference. A game having more agency is not a better game.

I am simply trying to point out that there are degrees of agency, and the most popular approach to gaming....one I'm perfectly fine with.....has less agency than what other approaches actively work to promote and attain.

Many won't agree with what I see as a simple fact, and I think it's because that traditional approach is so ingrained that when a game does something else, it's not "normal" or it's "bad" or "leads to inconsistency".

 

[Bedrockgames]

Are you serious! I've posted multiple times that you are not giving good-faith descriptions of my RPGing, and you double down. I point this out and ask "Are you sure, given how much you complain about the way other posters describe things?" And now you double down again!

You're not the only person here trying to post sincerely. If you can't imagine the difference between playing a character who is an amnesiac and playing a character who remembers the world they inhabit, that's on you, not on me or @hawkeyefan.

Because you are asking me to agree with you that the sea is orange. We disagree about what these words mean. I am not going to alter my sense of that, because you have a playstyle preference. I think I have been extremely accommodating to your positions Pemerton. But I am not going to say what you are describing is you shaping the world through your character, or say it is a typical traditional mode of play, when I just don't see it being so. Now we can disagree on that. It is no big deal for us to disagree. But I feel like you are just insisting I agree with you