A Question Of Agency?

[hawkeyefan]

I agree there are people happy to play railroads and some agency can exist in one. I don't agree that it is a spectrum with railroads on one end and games with mechanics allowing players to shape the setting on the other end (for the reasons I have already stated)

I wasn’t saying that the those are the ends of the spectrum, just that there was a spectrum and that those things likely influence where a particular game may fall on that spectrum.

I don't see that as being agency. If you add another thing you can do to D&D, like I don't know, players can get XP by winning relay races with one another or something, that allows you to engage the game in another way but it doesn't add any agency.

I mean....as a player of Excite Bike you can choose to play the existing tracks, or you can design your own to play. Or your buddy can design one for you to play.

Aren’t these meaningful choices for a player? In so much as anything is meaningful when playing Excite Bike?

I wouldn't say I have more agency though. I would say I have more game options. But my concern with agency is about what I can do in that world. This would especially be the case if the track creation element were done so that it was live during play. If I could change the layout of the city for example as I was driving, I would actually consider that counter to my agency

Sure, I think that any such creative ability would have to be balanced in some way. Again, I don’t think anyone is saying players should have carte blanche over the fiction.

To drop the video game analogy, what about mechanics like Hero Points or Fate Points or the like? These are player based resources more so than character resources, and they’re often used to sway the fiction of the game. They’re also a limited resource.

 

[Campbell]

We can talk about techniques until we are blue in the face, but if our principles are not locked in vagaries of technique are meaningless. Are players prepared to play genuine protagonists with compelling dramatic goals like they are driving stolen cars? Are GMs prepared to provide honest adversity? At the end of the day what matters most when it comes a player's ability to make decisions that have an impact on the fiction is a shared commitment that we are playing to find out what happens. Everything else is window dressing.

I would be more than happy to address questions of play techniques once we are on the same page about the goals of play, but until then it is all empty posturing. Either we are committed to following the fiction or we want to guide it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play a more guided experience, but we should be able to talk about that openly without shame.

These days I am far less interested in playing these word games. I am not super interested in philosophical underpinnings of agency. Taking the conversation there misses the point which is how do we play games where the actions players take for their characters produce meaningful change in the fiction. Let's talk about that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

How so?

Adventuring is at its roots a get-rich-or-die-trying proposition. The PCs are bold and daring in being willing to undertake it at all, but they'd also want to be at least somewhat cautious as to how they go about it in order to reduce the 'die-trying' odds and thus increase those for 'get-rich' - right? Simple self-preservation and all that.

I prefer bold and daring to mean bold and daring.

Not bold and daring when there’s little risk and then cautious and timid when there is risk.

Just a preference, though.

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.

I’m not sure what this means. You sound here like player and character knowledge being in alignment is a bad thing, but then you go on to say they should always be as close to one another as possible.

Is a player in your game free to decide background elements for their character? Can they decide what their character knows in some way? Must all of this flow from the GM?

In the game, however, there's player knowledge and there's character knowledge;

Wha? My character will be interested to learn all that I know. I’ll make it his top priority!

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.

This seems pretty much impossible. Sure, something like hills being north of the swamp is an individual thing that may or may not be addressed before play in some sense. But there’s simply no way to establish everything a character knows prior to play. Therefore, some of it will have to be established through play.

Some prefer mechanics in their games that allow for this that goes beyond mere “ask the GM”.

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?

A RPG is a conversation where the participants create a shared fiction. I don’t like to use “story” because it kind of implies a set sequence of fictional events.

Setting is an element of the fiction.

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’m cool with all this, and it’s largely how I approach my games (though not always).

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.

Okay so there’s a few things here that jump out at me.

First, thank you for acknowledging that this is a level of agency that you don’t allow.

Second, what story is there that doesn’t involve the PCs?

Third, setting aside the question of agency, what would be so bad if the player decided there are hills to the north? I mean, if the GM decides there are hills to the north, that’s fine, but if a player does, it’s awful. Why?

Can’t the PCs go adventuring in the hills either way? What would be disrupted by this?

 

[pemerton]

We can talk about techniques until we are blue in the face, but if our principles are not locked in vagaries of technique are meaningless.

<snip>

I would be more than happy to address questions of play techniques once we are on the same page about the goals of play, but until then it is all empty posturing.

Techniques have to be informed by principles if they are to be more than just shibboleths (= empty posturing?).

This is why I think the endurance of "map and key" resolution is in many ways a relic. Because the technique lingers on although the principles that gave it meaning - ie that the GM is locked in, and that the players can "win" by working with the information obtained from having their PCs move through the mapped architecture or terrain - have largely been abandoned.

Are players prepared to play genuine protagonists with compelling dramatic goals like they are driving stolen cars? Are GMs prepared to provide honest adversity? At the end of the day what matters most when it comes a player's ability to make decisions that have an impact on the fiction is a shared commitment that we are playing to find out what happens. Everything else is window dressing.

Either we are committed to following the fiction or we want to guide it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play a more guided experience, but we should be able to talk about that openly without shame.

You're setting a high bar here!

I don't know if my play measures up. As a player I get close to my characters; as a GM I'm tender-hearted. (Moreso, I think, than my BW GM. He can be pretty brutal!)

In my most recent BW session, the climax was my (ie Thurgon's) meeting with my mother, Xanthippe. In the real life of the session, this followed the ultimately unsuccessful encounter with Rufus. In the fiction, it took place after we had crossed the borders of Auxol and come back to my ancestral home. Here's what happened next:

The GM narrated the estate still being worked, but looking somewhat run-down compared to Thurgon's memories of it. An old, bowed woman greeted us - Xanthippe, looking much more than her 61 years. She welcomed Thurgon back, but chided him for having been away. And asked him not to leave again. The GM was getting ready to force a Duel of Wits on the point - ie that Thurgon should not leave again - when I tried a different approach. I'd already made a point of Thurgon having his arms on clear display as he rode through the countryside and the estate; now he raised his mace and shield to the heavens, and called on the Lord of Battle to bring strength back to his mother so that Auxol might be restored to its former greatness. This was a prayer for a Minor Miracle, obstacle 5. Thurgon has Faith 5 and I burned his last point of Persona to take it to 6 dice (the significance of this being that, without 1 Persona, you can't stop the effect of a mortal wound should one be suffered). With 6s being open-ended (ie auto-rolls), the expected success rate is 3/5, so that's 3.6 successes there. And I had a Fate point to reroll one failure, for an overall expected 4-ish successes. Against an obstacle of 5.

As it turned out, I finished up with 7 successes. So a beam of light shot down from the sky, and Xanthippe straightened up and greeted Thurgon again, but this time with vigour and readiness to restore Auxol. The GM accepted my proposition that this played out Thurgon's Belief that Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more! (earning a Persona point). His new Belief is Xanthippe and I will liberate Auxol. He picked up a second Persona point for Embodiment ("Your roleplay (a performance or a decision) captures the mood of the table and drives the story onward").

Turning back to Aramina, I decided that this made an impact on her too: up until now she had been cynical and slightly bitter, but now she was genuinely inspired and determined: instead of never meeting the gaze of a stranger, her Instinct is to look strangers in the eyes and Assess. And rather than I don't need Thurgon's pity, her Belief is Thurgon and I will liberate Auxol. This earned a Persona point for Mouldbreaker ("If a situation brings your Beliefs, Instincts and Traits into conflict with a decision your PC must make, you play out your inner turmoil as you dramatically play against a Belief in a believable and engaging manner").

We finished the session there

I don't know what the GM would have done if that check had failed. But I'm glad I didn't have to find out!

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Those all used pre-established settings so much of the GM's work there is already done. You-as-player might have some reading to do, but that's it.

But even were Middle Earth a homebrew setting, is it infeasible for the GM to provide your Hobbit with a map of the Shire? Or Eomer with a map of Rohan and surrounds? Or Aragorn with a map of...well, lots of places?

Maps can provide a huge amounf of information all at once, and infer a great deal more.

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.

Only if the players aren't given some info up front such that their PCs' knowledge better agrees with their own.

Before starting my current campaign I made sure I had half-decent maps ready of a) the realm the PCs would be starting in (in some detail), b) maps of surrounding realms and areas, and c) a broad-brush overview map of about half the continent i.e. about as far as a typical educated PC would be likely to know of.

As the campaign's gone on and PCs have expanded their horizons through travel, I've provided maps of the new areas (often because the first thing the PCs do when reaching a new area is try in-character to procure a map somehow).

It falls apart as soon as that assumption is abandoned.

At some point I'll be putting this to the test, as is happens: chances are good that the next campaign I start (whenever that may be) will in fact start with the PCs waking up one morning with no idea where they are and no memories other than their own (but not each other's) names. My idea with this one would be to run a harder-line but much shorter (10 adventures?) story path than I usually do (with player buy-in up front, of course), and eventually as the campaign goes along the reason they were at their starting point and how they got there should become apparent.

And this whole idea came from a suggestion from a non-gamer friend over beers one night!

 

[Lanefan]

Second try on this - computer died halfway through the first try...

I prefer bold and daring to mean bold and daring.

Not bold and daring when there’s little risk and then cautious and timid when there is risk.

In real life some people have dangerous jobs, and could be considered bold and daring just for doing those jobs each day.

That doesn't mean those people aren't going to use every safety mechanism they have in order to reduce their risk, does it?

I’m not sure what this means. You sound here like player and character knowledge being in alignment is a bad thing, but then you go on to say they should always be as close to one another as possible.

If I said it's bad I mis-spoke; it's always good.

Is a player in your game free to decide background elements for their character?

Much of this - hometown, family make-up, etc. - is done by random roll; not everyone worries about it until-unless their character looks like it's going to last a while. After this, players are free to string those randomly-generated elements together however they like, subject to veto (which I'd usually only do in cases of abuse or in cases where what the player is doing clashes with something already established).

Can they decide what their character knows in some way? Must all of this flow from the GM?

Depends what it is they want the character to know, and the context. When faced with some sticky problem in the field I don't want someone just deciding they know the answer; but if it's been established ahead of time that the PC has this knowledge then cool - run with it. If there's doubt, we roll; and if the player doesn't have the info then I'm forced to give it.

All info as regards setting flows from me at some point unless I've given permission otherwise. If you-as-player want to write up all the details about your home village that otherwise hasn't entered play yet, chances are I'm not gonna stop ya.

Wha? My character will be interested to learn all that I know. I’ll make it his top priority!

The knowledge gap causes problems in either direction. If the player knows more than the PC (e.g. the old fire-v-trolls debate) then metagame headaches arise. If the character knows more than the player then the player can't properly role-play the character or make truly informed decisions for it. Thus, keeping player knowledge of the fiction and character knowledge of the fiction in close alignment is beneficial. It'll never be perfect, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless.

This seems pretty much impossible. Sure, something like hills being north of the swamp is an individual thing that may or may not be addressed before play in some sense. But there’s simply no way to establish everything a character knows prior to play. Therefore, some of it will have to be established through play.

Agreed, though broad-stroke things like the placement of ranges of hills (that are close enough for the PCs to see if they just look that way!) really should be given ahead of time - particularly to the player of the PC who specifically has local knowledge.

Question: would you allow local-knowledge-guy to tell you what monsters live in those hills as well? (in other words, can the players set their own enemies?)

Some prefer mechanics in their games that allow for this that goes beyond mere “ask the GM”.

Thing is, once you move from "ask the GM" to "tell the GM" you're into collaborative storytelling - which, as I've said before, is fine as long as it's recognized as such.

A RPG is a conversation where the participants create a shared fiction. I don’t like to use “story” because it kind of implies a set sequence of fictional events.

You're always going to end up with a set sequence of fictional events! It's called the game log.

As for the participants creating a shared fiction, I see it that one participant is responsible for creating the scenery and backdrop and then all of them including that one are responsible for creating the story (or sequence of events) that happens within it.

Okay so there’s a few things here that jump out at me.

First, thank you for acknowledging that this is a level of agency that you don’t allow.

Second, what story is there that doesn’t involve the PCs?

Story that happens elsewhere that may or may not affect the PCs either at the time or later; or story that affects a different group of PCs (in a multi-party campaign); or story that led to the situation being what it is now i.e. history.

Hypothetical example using my current setting: I might have a line in my pre-campaign setting notes saying a dormant volcano about 40 miles west of Praetos City is going to erupt on Auril 30 1085. The campaign starts in mid-1082; I-as-DM have no idea in hell what they'll be doing or where they'll be on Auril 30 1085 or even if the campaign will go that long. They might be a thousand miles away, in which case the eruption might never affect them at all. But if for some reason they happen to be wandering around west of Praetos at the time they're in for a world o' trouble. Is this sort of thing bad campaign design? I don't think so.

Another actual example from my campaign: a party found a way to access a city that sank beneath the sea 1000 years ago (actually 1082 years; the sinking started the current calendar!), and found sort-of people still living there. On returning to the surface they presented this means of access (a device called The Way) to the current head of the ruling council of the city whose population is mostly made up of descendents of survivors of the sinking. Much celebration ensued. Party moved on to other things.

A year later they return to that city, but unknown to them things haven't been static while they were gone. The head of that ruling council took advantage of all the euphoria over The Way's discovery to quietly, quickly, and with no small amount of luck bump off all the other council members and declare herself Empress. She's still pleased with the PCs who brought her The Way, along with their associates, meaning the PCs now find themselves with a friend in the highest of places. Is this sort of ongoing backstory bad campaign design? I don't think so.

Third, setting aside the question of agency, what would be so bad if the player decided there are hills to the north? I mean, if the GM decides there are hills to the north, that’s fine, but if a player does, it’s awful. Why?

If the GM decides there's hills to the north ahead of time and appropriately works this in to the players' up-front knowledge, it's great.

If either the GM or the players decide on the spot that there's hills to the north yet a PC in-character already knew they were there it's a long way from great.

 

[Lanefan]

This is why I think the endurance of "map and key" resolution is in many ways a relic. Because the technique lingers on although the principles that gave it meaning - ie that the GM is locked in, and that the players can "win" by working with the information obtained from having their PCs move through the mapped architecture or terrain - have largely been abandoned.

While this might be the case among the cadre of people with whom you play, I disagree that those principles "have largely been abandoned" by the gaming mainstream.

You're setting a high bar here!

Glad I'm not the only one who thought this!

I personally play some of my characters like stolen cars (they're usually the one-hit wonders), while playing others to be the ones who steal the damn car and then sell it for whatever they can get, and - rarely - one or two who might be the cops chasing the car thief down.

But I try to avoid angst-style drama if I can. I much prefer either tragedy or comedy.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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

I know for me, these kinds of Skills introduced a lot of issues for me as a player when 3E first came out. It wasn't like it was a deal breaker or anything, but skills like gather information, bluff, were aspects of the game I found irritating

 

[Bedrockgames]

Aren’t these meaningful choices for a player? In so much as anything is meaningful when playing Excite Bike?

Not in terms of agency. They are great options to have available and enhance the game a lot. But they don't enhance my agency during play....they just give me another thing I can do. I just don't see how building an excite bike track, fun as it is, is a matter of my agency

 

[Aldarc]

This seems pretty much impossible. Sure, something like hills being north of the swamp is an individual thing that may or may not be addressed before play in some sense. But there’s simply no way to establish everything a character knows prior to play. Therefore, some of it will have to be established through play.

This is one reason why even why solid chunks of the OSR community kinda rejects the idea that they can be separated. It's also at odds with skilled player play. And it is also one reason why some OSR-inspired games simply dump mental stats like Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma because it again goes against skilled player play.