A Question Of Agency?

[Morrus]

This is naughty word unreal. A player being able to just invent any memories for their character about the setting and have those memories to be true, is a clear carte blanche to shape the setting. This is blindingly obvious.

Watch your language, please. This is a family site.

 

[pemerton]

That's fair enough, but you can't make the dead orc unless the GM has already introduced a live one. So in that sense, the players are free to have their characters engage and interact with things the GM has already established. They may be able to build upon something, or destroy something, but only if it's already there.

I think this is the expectation....players can't just decide things are in the fiction without GM approval. Sometimes, some exceptions may happen, but only through the resolution of an action check of some kind, and then only in small ways.

To continue this discussion (I think it's changed from a quibble!): I agree with you there is a common expectation, but "deciding things are in the fiction" isn't in my view the right description of it (I won't bore you by reiterating why - I know you get it).

The parallel to there has to be a live orc introduced by the GM before a player can introduce a dead orc is there has to be a swamp in a world with compass point directionality before a player can introduce hills to the north of the swamp. This is what I was getting at upthread when I talked about me and the GM having a map of the Pomarj in front of us, etc.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Seems pretty coherent to me, but of course what is presented here is some sort of a Platonic ideal of the stance. I think the full immersion stance works best in LARPs. It is trickier with tabletop, but you can do it pretty decently with the right people. It doesn't mean that you literally become unaware of the rules etc, just that your focus is not on them. But it definitely works best with rules light games and rules light sections of more crunchy games. I for example like how D&D has really little rules social situations so that they don't get on the way of IC interaction too much.

I dunno. Among the immersion-focused folks I've known, some of the actively preferred relatively crunchy games so as to minimize the degree of necessary back-and-forth with the GM they needed. They just made sure they internalized them enough that operating the game machinery could take place on an entirely different level than the "making basic character decisions" element.

 

[TwoSix]

What you're advocating for is a mode of play where the vast majority of content is introduced by the GM. In this mode of play, what the players can declare is constrained by what has or has not been established, and with any unestablished factor going to the GM.

This is indeed a popular mode of play.

I think what's frustrating, is that you constantly site this mode as "normal" and "long established" and so on, which implies that any other approach is abnormal. The fact that you can do this, without seeming to even realize you are doing it, while also appealing to others to not place some objective value on their preferred approach, is a bit tough to take.

I don't think it's particularly wrong to assert that "traditional"/map&key/exploration style play is the community understood baseline for play. And it's certainly long-established.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, there's different characters, but your claim was that doing risky things violated IC play, and that IC play is different from Actor stance, so I'm not sure how you think this distinction of there being different kinds of characters relates.

It relates to certain kinds of risky behavior. The fact is, characters who do not take certain kinds of caution at least in some game systems simply aren't in that system long, and as such are unlikely to be selected by players who understand the system in the first place, because they'd like, well, their characters to be around for a while.

As a simple example, a Mythras character other than an extreme hyper-skilled one (and maybe even that) who runs into a situation where he's extremely likely to be multi-teamed is, like most RQ derivatives, suicidal. As such, barring extremely unusual circumstances, no one who's familiar with the system is going to run a character prone to doing that unless they consider them a throwaway. Its just pointless. The system actively discourages it too much.

Here's the source, if you're pointing towards RGFA:


In reading this, I do not see the distinction you made above as choosing actions in Actor stance that are detrimental to the character because it makes for a better story, and, in fact, see In Character Stance as something you use Actor stance with. These aren't opposed, but flavors of the same thing. And, frankly, I find the concept of IC stance as presented here as incoherent in anything except a storygame. I could, perhaps, see an argument that exists in a game like Fiasco, which features free-form scene making between characters with no mechanics or GM, but not in a D&D game with all the mechanics -- unless the GM is utterly winging it and you're just doing a bit of freeform roleplay. Certainly not the situation in discussion.

I did not say a better story. If you go back you will not see the word "story" used at any point there. I said a more interesting depiction. If you don't understand the difference here, and how it relates to what you quoted, I don't know how to respond to you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Seems pretty coherent to me, but of course what is presented here is some sort of a Platonic ideal of the stance. I think the full immersion stance works best in LARPs. It is trickier with tabletop, but you can do it pretty decently with the right people. It doesn't mean that you literally become unaware of the rules etc, just that your focus is not on them. But it definitely works best with rules light games and rules light sections of more crunchy games. I for example like how D&D has really little rules social situations so that they don't get on the way of IC interaction too much.

Also note that RGFA made a distinction frequently between IC Stance and Immersion (which it sometimes called Deep IC). There could be some sharp distinctions between the two, especially in how player could or were willing to deal with genre conventions embodied in a setting.

 

[Manbearcat]

Not home but I’m briefly combing through things on my phone and just have a simple response.

The actual design/implementation question at hand is:

“How do we actualize habitation of PC in a shared imagined space that (a) doesn’t really exist and (b) therefore no one can have any actual working memory of it.”

One way is to roll dice and decide both the fiction and the memory of it as an outgrowth of the resolution mechanics (Spout Lore in DW for example).

Another way is for the player to ask the GM, the GM to tell them and for the player to then pantomime the knowing or lack of knowing downstream of the GM’s decision.

Another way still is for the GM to turn the question back on the player and have them inform all of the table’s participants to resolve their present void in the shared imagined space.

I know how I would order those 3 in terms of “effective habitation of PC”. That’s the question people need to resolve and it what help to develop first principles. A lot of people talk about the imposition of metagame in their ability to inhabit a PC. I wonder how people would order “metagame imposition” in those the procedures.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It is a question of whether the setting is under the purview of the GM, or of the players or a mix of both. I am saying the traditional way is the GM has control of the setting, and the players influence on the setting is through their character (and unless the character has a spell called 'summon hills' the character asserting a memory of hills wouldn't just make them appear).

Your opening sentence is what all this is about.

Some games work one way, others work another. Yes, the traditional or most common approach is that the vast majority of authority lies with the GM.

Other games give more authority to the players, while also likely placing limits on the GM’s authority.

I think perhaps we’re all in agreement on this.

Where I, and others, are taking exception is inserting that into something like a wilderness check. Obviously if your group is down with a wilderness check being used in that way, fair enough. But if you were to join my table, you wouldn't be allowed to make a wilderness check like that in one of my standard campaigns (and I don't think using wilderness checks that way is the way people usually expect them to be used).

This is all game and system dependent. I wouldn’t show up to your 5E D&D game and expect this to be the case. If you were to come to mine, though, you’d see things along these lines from other players.

And if we were playing Blades in the Dark, then you’d be limiting your play by not doing this kind of stuff.

But my personal preference generally is that if a GM is available, to have them fully take charge of the world outside the characters. I am not even anyway fundamentalist about this, I would be perfectly willing to occasionally play a game with a GM where it was handled somewhat differently; though granted, I'd probably be unwilling to GM one myself in that manner.

That’s fine. I do think that largely this conversation revolves around preferences.

If I were to rephrase what you said above to the below, do you see this is a a fundamental change that no linger means the same thing?

“But my personal preference generally is that if a GM is available, to reduce player agency and have the GM take charge of the world outside the characters.”

Yes, but I think your perception of agency changes a lot depending on your perception around things like whether players should shape the setting or not. You see that as an expansion of agency and agency increasing overall. Those who value a more traditional exploration based approach, would not see it as such, because, to them, it is producing a less stable setting to explore and choices are not made against the backdrop of a world that feels objective and external

I believe that these are both forms of agency. I think perhaps it’s a matter of degree, but they’re both factors of agency.

Hence why a game that allows both is granting the players more agency.

I don't think it's particularly wrong to assert that "traditional"/map&key/exploration style play is the community understood baseline for play. And it's certainly long-established.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

I think sometimes that’s part of the problem. It’s like everyone calls cotton swabs q-tips. D&D is so prevalent, so pervasive, that anything that challenges its approach to RPGing can be met with strong resistance.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Your opening sentence is what all this is about.

Some games work one way, others work another. Yes, the traditional or most common approach is that the vast majority of authority lies with the GM.

Other games give more authority to the players, while also likely placing limits on the GM’s authority.

I think perhaps we’re all in agreement on this.

Yes, we are not in disagreement on that

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is all game and system dependent. I wouldn’t show up to your 5E D&D game and expect this to be the case. If you were to come to mine, though, you’d see things along these lines from other players.

And if we were playing Blades in the Dark, then you’d be limiting your play by not doing this kind of stuff.

I agree. Again, when I showed up to play hill folk, I played according to the system and the expectations of the group. All I have been responding to is there being push back against there even being a distinction between these things (where the player narrating hills into existence is treated the same as a character swinging a sword to kill an orc). But I have no issue with systems being different in this respect. And I get there are sizable communities that are more focused on one style or the other.

For the record I don't play 5E. Mostly I play my own games, sometimes I play savage worlds or variations of OD&D (and I am often playing one shots of a variety of systems).