A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

One could say you can control something and explore it. Depends on microcosms.

There is no actual difference of having a group of players succeed on a roll and telling the GM there are hills to the north, and players succeeding on a roll and telling the GM they find a big enough bush to hide in. One is rarely done in RPG's. The other is done all the time.

But, the former needs some compliance from the GM if they have already established the terrain, drawn the maps, and set up the area with hints and clues, quests and dangers, treasure and NPC's. The latter, I have never seen a DM refuse so long as it is passes the "common sense" test, ie... in the middle of a sandy desert and hiding behind a bunch of oak trees.

1) Exploration: I don' think this is untrue but I do think these produce very different types of play and experiences. Again, in Hillfolk, I was able to invent geography whole cloth in dialogue. There was a genuine sense of discovery in that, which I found immersive. So I am not saying you can't have that sort of feeling with a game or GMing approach where the players can shape setting details. But I do think that is different from one where the details of the world are being created by a source external to yourself. That kind of exploration, to me, also has a sense of discovery to it, but it feels like a very different form of discovery to me. It also feels more like I am challenging the world, unlocking its secrets.

2) Hiding behind a bush: I don't know about this one. I think a lot of groups would actually get their cues from the GM on that roll (ask to roll to see if there is anything to hide behind and then the GM tells them what is there on a success). However this is also one of those gray zones I mentioned before. A lot of players are going to naturally assume certain things are present based on what the GM said, so they will just say something like "I look for a bush to hide behind" or even "I hide behind a bush". But that is still entirely in the GMs power to decide if there is in fact a bush. And there is also a very big difference between a hill and a bush. A bush is far easier to hand wave. I wouldn't see the bush as setting a precedent for hills, towers and more. A lot of it I think arises out of efficiency and convenience of communication style than a conscious desire to shape the setting (the player naturally assumes a bush is present and is speaking as if that is so).

3) Even if the GM hasn't established anything, he or she can always say "there are no bushes here". Some GMs always say yes to those kinds of things. Some don't (for a variety of reasons). But I think the general sense it can help create when the GM stops and thinks about whether or not there ought to be a bush there, is it adds to the sense of a world existing external to your character.

And agin, I want to be clear here, I am not saying this is the only and best way to play. I am just saying there is this distinction, and particularly when it comes to things like players creating setting details, it really does seem to be the norm for that to either be left to the GM or for player created setting details to be part of corner aspects of player

 

[Lanefan]

Not really. What you've described is the player remembering a detail shared with him by the GM.

What if the GM hasn't shared with the PCs what's north of the swamp yet? But the PC has been established as knowing the region. Does the GM substitute as the PC's memory? So that the player has to consult the GM the way the PC would consult his mind?

If so, would you say that the GM or the player has agency here?

In real life, I don't have to consult anyone else to decide what I know or remember.

That's because in real life you're combining the roles of both player and character and thus their knowledges are always exactly the same.

In the game, however, there's player knowledge and there's character knowledge; and ideally these should always be close to the same as possible. Which means in this example if the PC's been established as knowing the region then the GM should have told the player ahead of time - at least in broad strokes - what that knowledge consists of. And a range of hills to the north counts as a pretty broad stroke in my books, meaning that because the character knew about the hills before he was asked, so should have the player.

If the player is allowed to say "Being familiar with the area, I know that there are hills to the north, and we can escape the swamps and the lizardmen there" (and I'd expect this declaration to be tied to a check of some kind, or other use of mechanics) isn't this a case of the player having more agency over the fiction?

In a negative sense, yes; if those hills had not previously been established somehow.

There's another conflict in terminology definition starting to rear its head here: does 'fiction' mean story or does 'fiction' mean setting?

For me, I generally support the idea of players having agency over the story as pertains to their PCs. I want them to proactively do stuff and make me react. I want them to tell me where they're going and what they'd like to do when they get there.

I do not support the idea of players having agency over the setting, nor over the story where it does not (at the moment) pertain to their PCs: those things are the purview of the GM, and while she's free to delegate this purview to players on occasion (e.g. the 1e stronghold rules, or allowing a player to write up their PC's home village) IMO she should never do so lightly and must always retain an absolute right of veto.

 

[Lanefan]

These two sentences are in obvious contradiction!

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.

There'd be no worry about amnesia if the GM had simply told you-as-player the damn hills were there ahead of time such that your player-knowledge better lined up with that of your PC.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

And I know that Canberra is roughly southeast of Perth, even though about 90% of the diameter of the planet is the closest I've been to either.

How do I know that? Because I've looked at - wait for it - a map.

Your character's been to these places in the fiction, or heard about them, and this is best represented in the real world by - wait for it - the GM drwaing you a map, which you-as-player can then refer to and - as time goes on and you explore more of the setting - add to.

 

[Lanefan]

The dead Orc wouldn't have existed in the game, until the player declared that s/he attacks it with a mace.

Uh - it would have existed as a live Orc, wouldn't it?

There's a difference between changing an established part of the fiction (e.g. making a live Orc dead via application of sword, or causing a room to burn via application of fireball) and bringing something into existence that previously wasn't part of the fiction at all.

Your action declaration is I swing at the Orc with my sword. This presupposes you have 'sword' written on your character sheet as a carried item: you can't just have a sword appear from nowhere, nor an Orc to swing it at, just by declaring this action - both Orc and sword must first be established as being present in the fiction. I can't see this as being controversial in any way.

Well, same goes for the hills.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, this is what I've been saying for two posts. Glad we agree

I think this is a poor default assumption. The only way that you could consider this a default assumption is if you're also assume a low-agency game where players are often denied sufficient information until they've asked all the right questions or performed the right actions to learn enough that they can overcome the puzzle the GM has posed, usually in form of deadly dungeons. This kind of play doesn't lend itself to deep characterization overly much.

I don't see how, honestly. Whether players have the right information or not, there are plenty of games--I think I'd argue the majority--where simple misadventure can kill the incautious. There's matters of degree of course, but outside of games with baked in genre conceits against player death (like superhero games), it harder to find mainstream RPGs where death isn't a risk than is. You can have various metagame tools to mitigate it (various hero point and luck mechanics) but even those are usually dependent on a player taking some care with their character. For example Savage World Bennies are designed so that you can buffer the risks involved, but its still not a game that rewards not paying some attention to your character's survival.

This is imputing more to the Actor stance that what is presented in either the short definition I quoted or the longer discussion that birthed that post. There, actor stance is about evoking the character to the maximum amount when given a choice for that character. You've added some choice where the actor changes the character to make a better performance, but that's not evidence by the concepts as presented. In fact, that appears to be more Director stance -- changing the character to get a better performance outcome -- than actor stance, which is focused on faithfully portraying the character.

No, I did not. I've twice no pointed out all the choices are character appropriate. That all the player is doing is choosing the one most interesting to portray. If you're going to argue with my interpretation, at least respond to what I'm saying, not what you're hearing in your head.

All three choices are faithful to the character. There is no "change" going on.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Good that the concept is recognised. The issue may be avoided for your satisfaction, but necessarily for mine.

Well, it doesn't happen at all, assuming good faith play, so I'm not sure how much less of it happening could be to your satisfaction.

You have simply moved the decision from a GM to a randomiser. I don't see how the player's agency is improved at all. Furthermore, the latter would definitely feel to me like I had less agency (albeit it can be argued that this is somewhat illusory.) In the first case I explored clues in objective reality and based on that concluded where the macguffing was. If I would be correct, I would feel accomplished and if not, well, then then I obviously missed some clues or misinterpreted them and I can try to do better. My decisions mattered and I did something real (or at least it appeared so to me. It really doesn't matter what the GM did behind the curtains if I never know it.) In the latter case the reality does not appear real, it is generated by me rolling the dice, there was no correct answer to be found, it was just ad lib and RNG. Perhaps it could make a nice story, but I would feel that my actions really didn't matter.

The GM in the first example could use a randomizer as well -- this isn't the issue, and I may have occluded things by mentioning mechanics. The difference is that in the first example the player's agency is entirely limited to finding out what the GM thinks. Don't get me wrong, this can be hella fun -- there's a few GMs out there I love to be entertained by. But, if the only thing that can happen revolves entirely around what the GM thinks, then there's a limit on agency here. Again, this is fine.

In the second example, the player has the ability to see that it's their intent that's at stake -- we find out if what the player wants is true, not the GM. This is a major shift in what your choices can actually affect in the game, and comes with a concatenate increase in agency. Now the player's choices are not constrained entirely by what the GM thinks! Mechanics aren't the issue (although they are part of the system that avoid the Czege Principle). We haven't put anything off to the dice, we've agreed that we're playing around what the players choose to do instead of around what the GM thinks.

This is, as I say, does NOT make one game better than the other. It's a differentiator that goes into an individual's evaluation. Why would I not want to play a high agency game? For one, they make increasingly weighty demands on the player. If we've agreed that we're playing around what the player thinks, then the player has to do that and takes on a larger share of the burden for the game. People might not like this, or, they think that it's more fun to explore the GM's thinking than their own contributions. That's awesome! Again, looking at games and evaluating agency isn't a final metric of better or worse, it's a data point that goes into your consideration of what you want out of the game (hopefully fun!). Knowing more data points improves your decision making and understanding. That's it.

Finally, I've bolded a statement above. Can you show me where, in objective reality, I can find the listing of the contents of the chest in the example? Heck, can you tell me where, in objective reality, the chest is? We're talking about a game of make-believe. What you're calling "objective reality" is really just whatever the GM imagined. I think we can agree that the first example works entirely if the GM is running from a published module, or has extensive home-brew notes, or is winging it but maintaining authorial control. Regardless, it's still what one person imagines. GMs are not privileged to create "objective reality" over anyone else. If the GM can imagine it, why can't the player do it instead?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't see how, honestly. Whether players have the right information or not, there are plenty of games--I think I'd argue the majority--where simple misadventure can kill the incautious. There's matters of degree of course, but outside of games with baked in genre conceits against player death (like superhero games), it harder to find mainstream RPGs where death isn't a risk than is. You can have various metagame tools to mitigate it (various hero point and luck mechanics) but even those are usually dependent on a player taking some care with their character. For example Savage World Bennies are designed so that you can buffer the risks involved, but its still not a game that rewards not paying some attention to your character's survival.

A few things, here.

Firstly, simple misadventure is not a thing. In life we have accidents, but there are no accidents in any RPGs I'm aware of (there could be one that implements a mechanic to check for accidents, I suppose). Instead RPGs are full of intent -- players choose actions with intent, and, in traditional games, GMs choose outcomes with intent. Suggesting players should be careful playing characters because accidents could happen is obfuscating what is actually happening in games and the reasons why players choose to play how they do.

And, again, I absolutely reiterate that if a player is playing cautiously to keep their character safe from misadventure, then usually because they've been accustomed to a style of player where the GM is stingy with information until various actions to pry it loose are taken. Again, I'll grant this is fairly common, but it's a mistake to assign this to a player preference when it's learned behavior. I had the hardest time deprograming one of my players of this playstyle when I switched to providing information much more freely.

Secondly, the focus on death as the primary consequence to avoid is a very narrow focus. The worst things I've ever done to characters and the worst things ever done to mine didn't involve character death at all. No amount of being careful around the deathtraps is likely to mitigate these kinds of harms because they stem from failure at larger resolution things, not lack of care in the moment.

No, I did not. I've twice no pointed out all the choices are character appropriate. That all the player is doing is choosing the one most interesting to portray. If you're going to argue with my interpretation, at least respond to what I'm saying, not what you're hearing in your head.

All three choices are faithful to the character. There is no "change" going on.

You're right, I did, apologies. I did because this, I find, is really hard to grasp. You're effectively saying that, from the outside, there's zero indication of stance -- I couldn't tell an actor stance portrayal from either of the IC versions because all are faithful representations of the character. Even internally, I think it would be hard to tell (if not impossible, see my continued disagreement with the foundations of IC stances) the difference -- you're imagining how the character would react to a thing and doing that. I suppose the counter is that the actor is weighing various choices while the IC is doing it impulsively, but that's just saying that IC is the impulsive version of actor, not actually calling out a serious difference. I mean, can I tell the difference between being conflicted over how to react to a thing in IC stance and being conflicted over how to react to a thing in actor stance?

These hairs are getting increasingly fine. Rather than continue to split them, feel free to have the final word on the matter.

 

[pemerton]

Uh - it would have existed as a live Orc, wouldn't it?

We are talking about establishing a shared fiction. The change in a fiction from live Orc to dead Orc is no bigger or small; no greater or lesser; than the change from dunno to what's north of the swamp, but given the swamp's not the edge of the world there must be some landforrms there to what's north of the swamp is some hills. It's just changing the shared fiction.

RPGing requires filling in details of the fiction, changing details of the fiction, adding to the fiction. That's what it is! (Typically. Sometimes it's a type of small unit wargame. But I haven't done that sort of RPGing for 30+ years, and I don't see it as very common among ENworlders.)

Another example: the PCs enter a town. A player asks Are there any mules for sale? Until that moment the GM has not given this any thought (if you're the GM who always writes up the stables in towns, make it duck eggs or limestone or some other thing that doesn't appear on the key to your map). She can say yes. She can say no. She can make a roll. In some systems - eg Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller - she can call for a check.

I reckon that the mule example would barely raise an eyebrow at most D&D tables. And if you said, instead of the GM saying yes or no, we always call for a check unless it makes no sense at all, just like combat, I reckon some people might see that as a quirky option but I don't think it would cause any wild uprisings. It would just be an urban variant on foraging rules using Survival skill.

Am I right to remember Evard's tower is around here is no different. The only reason I can see for the uprising is because (i) it contains a proper name ("Evard") and (ii) people think towers are somehow a bigger deal than mules (or food gathered in the wilderness).

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 (because they as players can assert things about the setting which would seem to undermine the weight of their choices).

I have no idea how it undermines the weight of my choice to go to Evard's tower to first undertake the process of recollecting the existence and location of Evard's tower. Rather, the second seems like a precondition of the first.

If you get to define both the conditions, and the reaction to those conditions; define both the question and the answer; then, yes, in a sense you have more freedom. But I wouldn't say that you necessarily have more agency. Agency, at least in the context of a game, is making meaningful choices, and I feel that it is the limits that make the choices meaningful.

You are basically characterising RPGing here as solving puzzles (or perhaps in some context, especially combat ones, as solving optimisation problems), and the meaningfulness consisting in doing that well.

Here are the Beliefs and Instincts with which Aramina commenced play:

Beliefs
I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse!
I don't need Thurgon's pity
If in doubt, burn it!

Instincts
Never catch the glance or gaze of a stranger
Always wear my cloak
Always Assess before casting a spell

Knowing the location of a wizard's tower, which might contain spellbooks, isn't defining both the conditions and the reaction to those conditions. It doesn't both ask and answer a question to any greater extent than rolling to hit both asks and answer the question is the Orc dead yet.

Knowing the location of a wizard's tower does allow meaningful choices to begin, though. Because we can now find out what will happen to Aramina in her quest for spellbooks.

I took all that more as challenging the common assumptions. @pemerton is being a bit provocative perhaps, but it’s because he has something to say.

There are games that don’t see a distinction between the types of actions you’re talking about. So if that’s the case, then it’s true that there doesn’t need to be such distinctions, and their existense and or use is solely a matter of preference.

<snip>

Maximizing may not be the right choice. But a game that has the basic character control level of agency that you’re mentioning....I’m free to have my PC go where and do what I would like him to....and then also adds the ability fore as a player to shape the setting in some way....isn’t that adding to the amount of agency I have as a player?

The evidence that I am provocative is that some other posters seem provoked. I do my best to be mild-mannered in response to the provocative things they post!

There seems to be an assumption that the Evard's tower action declaration "asks and answers" a question in a way that the I attack the Orc action declaration does not. I don't see what that assumption is grounded in, though. Playing Aramina, I want to be in the vicinity of Evard's tower. So I declare an action. Playing Thurgon, I want to be in the vicinity of a dead (rather than live) Orc, so I declare an action. Both express a player's desire for the contents of the shared fiction.

To characterise the difference cannot be done in terms of process, or abstract description of "narrative persepctives" vs <something else?>. I've repeatedly explained how and why these are in-character action declarations.

The difference has to be characterised in terms of content. It's OK for players to declare actions which have, as their outcome, imagined changes to things that are already established as existing in the fiction, but nothing beyond that. With the exception of Gather Information checks, Survival checks to forage, and the like. But those don't involve proper names and unique locations. As far as I can tell that is what causes so much outrage about the Evard's tower example. Proper names and unique locations are - it is supposed - the GM's prerogative.

A coda, by the way: in a framework in which only the GM can establish unique locations and/or proper names, I'm not free to have my PC go where I would like him/her to. If I want him/her to go to a wizard's tower to look for spellbooks, I can't do that if the GM doesn't establish any within my PC's scope of access. Exercising this sort of control over elements of the shared fiction is a pretty common way, in my opinion and experience, of constraining player agency.

Of course, if the GM is prepared to take suggestions then player agency is restored. But now we're back with my mules example above: the difference between taking suggestions, and putting it under a mechanical umbrella, is not nothing but (in my view) hardly warrants the difference between wild uprising and placid acceptance.

 

[pemerton]

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.

In this thread I've noted on departure from it that dates from 1977: Classic Traveller Streetwise checks.

AD&D Oriental Adventures had two departures from it in the Yakuza class: a proto-Gather Information mechanic, and a proto-Circles mechanic.

3E made Gather Information mainstream. I think D&D has dropped Circles, though.

It's not a coincidence that we see these departures from map & key resolution in the context of urban scenarios (Streetwise, Gather Information, yakuza having contacts, and the like): the mechanics are attempt to handle the obvious fact that a character who has local knowledge and standing should know stuff and people, and that there are at least two gameplay reasons why all that needs to be knowable independently of GM mediation via second-person narration:

(1) There's too much of it to make GM second-person narration feasible;

(2) GM second-person narration means that, in effect, the GM starts playing solitaire - which is simply not a viable outcome of having a thief/thug/rogue/yakuza-type PC in the game.

And I know that Canberra is roughly southeast of Perth, even though about 90% of the diameter of the planet is the closest I've been to either.

How do I know that? Because I've looked at - wait for it - a map.

Your character's been to these places in the fiction, or heard about them, and this is best represented in the real world by - wait for it - the GM drwaing you a map, which you-as-player can then refer to and - as time goes on and you explore more of the setting - add to.

The idea that, before playing someone who knows the city, or the lands roundabout, or whatever it might be - eg the Grey Mouser, or Aragorn, or any of the Hobbits in the Shire, or Eomer in Rohan - I am going to wait for the GM to tell me everything that my PC does or might know, is just utterly infeasible, for the reasons given.

As I already posted upthread, the map-and-key approach to resolution begins from the assumption that the PCs are strangers to the place in question. It falls apart as soon as that assumption is abandoned.