A Question Of Agency?

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Considering that in example you wrote to demonstrate that it doesn't happen, it totally happened, I'm not convinced...

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?

You don't need to explain to me what's happening here. I understand what's happening, I just feel differently than you about the outcome. Of course I understand the reality of the game isn't really real. I said that the distinction is partly illusory, but that illusion of reality matters to some of us great deal. When the players can shape the game reality, the illusion of it being objective shatters. You might not care about that, some people care about it a lot. And pertinent to this discussion, it matters to how they feel about their choices. To me the reality of the game world not feeling objective also means that the choices I make against that reality feel less meaningful.

And this is BTW why this discussion is going nowhere. Some people treat agency as objectively quantifiable thing. It is not. It is the player's ability to make meaningful choices in the game; and what feels meaningful to each individual is subjective, thus agency is subjective. I said like page one of this thread (or thereabouts) that if the players feel that they have enough agency, they have enough agency, and a lot of people protested. But I stand by that. It is the only measure of agency that actually matters.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Considering that in example you wrote to demonstrate that it doesn't happen, it totally happened, I'm not convinced...

Where? The player didn't create the room the chest was in, nor the chest that might contain the macguffin. Their intent to find the macguffin in the chest is tested, and most likely involves complication rather than success. This is not the player inventing everything, it's the player declaring an action and the testing to see what happens when they do. The problem I think you see is that the player can achieve a goal that isn't written by the GM in some way. Given the below, this seems very clear.

You don't need to explain to me what's happening here. I understand what's happening, I just feel differently than you about the outcome. Of course I understand the reality of the game isn't really real. I said that the distinction is partly illusory, but that illusion of reality matters to some of us great deal. When the players can shape the game reality, the illusion of it being objective shatters. You might not care about that, some people care about it a lot. And pertinent to this discussion, it matters to how they feel about their choices. To me the reality of the game world not feeling objective also means that the choices I make against that reality feel less meaningful.

So long as we agree that you're fooling yourself into thinking there's a reality here and what's really happening is that the GM is telling you what happens according to their thinking. And, that's fine, some GM's deliver amazingly entertaining stories. However, if this is the case -- if your enjoyment rests upon the GM having full narrative control and spinning it out in a way that creates an illusion of a world for you -- then your accepting that your ability to make meaningful choices is entirely constrained by the GM. If the GM retains the final ability to say no, then you don't have any authority to enforce the meaningfulness of your choices. This is what is meant by lower agency -- your ability to make meaningful choices is contained within the GM's authority.

And this is BTW why this discussion is going nowhere. Some people treat agency as objectively quantifiable thing. It is not. It is the player's ability to make meaningful choices in the game; and what feels meaningful to each individual is subjective, thus agency is subjective. I said like page one of this thread (or thereabouts) that if the players feel that they have enough agency, they have enough agency, and a lot of people protested. But I stand by that. It is the only measure of agency that actually matters.

I don't see anyone quantifying agency -- where are the measurements?! Instead, we're looking at things and saying that in this case your ability to make meaningful choices is only when the GM allows it and in the other we're saying that such is not the case. This isn't an objective quantification, it's a relative comparison without quantification. It's the same way I can't measure love but can say that there's more love in a family than between despised enemies (barring juxtaposition).

It's absolutely fine to enjoy GM led play -- it is, by far, the dominate form of RPG play by market share, number of players, etc. There's nothing wrong with it. What I find distressing is that when confronted with an alternative method that increasing one aspect of play which a player might find enjoyable there's a refusal to accept that different methods have different results. In the case of agency, there are methods of play that increase it and methods that decrease it (again, assuming good faith play, there are clearly bad faith ways to reduce agency in any system). This doesn't make one better than the other -- better is a ridiculous concept outside of personal enjoyment. For instance, you find traditional play better than @pemerton does, but that doesn't make traditional play strictly better. We should be able to look at our own play and analyze it without rancor or defensiveness. I run 5e and enjoy it while simultaneously accepting that it's a lower agency game than the PbtA family. That's not a problem, and I'm not quantifying agency to say this -- I can look and see it's true! Just like I can say that there's more love between a mother and child than between fans of Highlander and Highlander 2 (I know, fictional example).

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

You're using "misadventure" significantly more narrowly than I am. I'm including things where there's obvious danger, but where the expected result is not, in fact, death.

As an example, we have Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds has a lot of tools for making your character more likely to win a fight or climb a cliff face, and yet more to make it unlikely you'll get killed if it fails to one degree or another.

It also, however, has baked into the rules open ended die results. As such the attack you expected to deal with can end up connecting even though your defense was such that it was a low incidence event (in fact, required the open-ended dice to happen even to occur) or where the fall from the (unlikely) failed climb roll ends up lethal because the dice that expected to at worst injure you mildly blew up and did so.

Other games may express these other things in other ways--critical hits, fumbled climb rolls or whatever.

As such it pays for players in a large number of games to at least limit the number of such situations because the law of large numbers and probability are not their friends.

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.

I don't think distinguishing between "preference" and "learned behavior" is especially useful in the cases I'm talking about. In most cases the risks I'm referring to are quite clear to anyone who looks at the situation and the game mechanics.

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.

That's all very nice, but in practical terms, most players want to keep playing their character. There are exceptions of course (people who like trying out new characters regularly). While even for such players there can be, effectively, "fates worth than death", death still cuts off any further exploration of their character (barring resurrection at least, and that's not much of a thing beyond the D&D-sphere). If your character gets killed because of unnecessary risks, his/her story is done. As such, I think some degree of avoidance there is going to exist as long as someone is playing in a game system where that's a non-trivial risk, and outside of some types of story games and the aforementioned games that actively discourage it, that's a rather large number of games.

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.

I expect over time you'd notice the difference because of internal preference. Within those faithful representations of the character, the Actor will tend to more consistently choose certain choices from their performative impact where the IC player won't (and may actively avoid them depending on their own natural tendencies). You might, indeed, take a while to do so--but then, I've said before that I consider on the spectrum of Author/Actor/IC at least, the lines are very blurry.

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?

In absolute terms? No. Its possible for either to chose the same choice on occasion. But in tendency, as I said, I think its possible.

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

I believe when it comes to this topic I've indicated I thought they quite were at least four links back in this conversation. Objecting because of something I've acknowledged early on seems a bit much.

 

[Aldarc]

What I find distressing is that when confronted with an alternative method that increasing one aspect of play which a player might find enjoyable there's a refusal to accept that different methods have different results.

Likewise. This, IMHO, is a huge part of the underlying frustration for some of us.

What's also somewhat silly, IMO, is that a lot of this discussion is incredibly white room and detached from actual experience. To what extent would people know or care about their criticisms of non-traditional games in actual play? A lot of this involves no actual firsthand knowledge or experience with non-traditional play. So for people who have experience with non-traditional games, a number of posters sound kinda ridiculous (much like Satanic Panic Parents talking about D&D) when talking about agency and the like in non-traditional/non-mainstream games. Some people do have experience with non-traditional games, and they may not like it, but I at least respect their actual game experience and knowledge.

I think that it says a lot about the person when they assume that players would try to break or win the game if they had the sort of agency that exists in these non-traditional games. It either reflects a negative view of players or how they themselves would approach the game. But if that were the case, then why are these games not being broken or won by said player agency? I suspect from my own experience that the amount of "cheating" when it comes to non-traditional games is probably STATISTICALLY LESS than in traditional games. But because it's a problem in traditional games, people assume that it must be a problem in non-traditional ones or take the same form as in traditional games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

There's a non-trivial bifurcation in the hobby between people for whom certain sorts of activities are walled of as the player decision/gameplay element, and those for whom it can legitimately be approached (at least in part) with mechanics and in-character traits. There's not much bridge to cross there because it turns heavily on how much importance one places on certain elements (and, in my overly trite way of sometimes putting it, whether you place more emphasis on the first or second word in "role playing").

 

[zarionofarabel]

So I have to asked because of the amount of examples of different systems being brought up.

What system (not style) do you think allows the players to have the most agency?

 

[Thomas Shey]

So I have to asked because of the amount of examples of different systems being brought up.

What system (not style) do you think allows the players to have the most agency?

I'd hesitate to answer that, because as several others have said, its pretty clear the definitions of "agency" in this thread vary, sometimes wildly.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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

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 playing real life. I'm playing a game.

I'm not saying that PCs should be suicidal. I'm saying I don't enjoy when they become overly cautious. They're brave as could be when the risk is minimal....wading into a horde of orcs because they know they have the HP to spare, but then grinding to a halt because a door in a dungeon may have a trap, and suddenly we're debating for a half hour what to do.

It's something that happens from time to time and which I find incredibly frustrating. It happened in my 5E campaign when I decided to run Tomb of Annihilation. My bold and daring PCs became tentative, overly cautious duds.

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

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).

Okay. So this aspect of gaming isn't as important to you and your group. The idea that a player may have a somewhat specific idea for the kind of character they want to play, and the kind of things they may want to see come up in play. That's not something your group worries about. That's fine.

Other groups do. I know we've discussed this in the past.....you don't want PCs to be the stars of the show, to be "special snowflakes" and for the events of the game to revolve around them.

I actually think it's essential to play with high agency.

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.

So let's say your PCs run into some nefarious organization......they know that this group is operating in the city, but not exactly what they're up to or why. Do you allow the players any kind of attempt at a knowledge check or similar to see if their character knows anything about the organization?

If so, and the check succeeds and it's determined that the PC knows something about this group, how is the impact of this (the character suddenly knowing something that they had not previously seemed to know) any different than if another game let's the player decide it through some other mechanic? In both cases, the character did not seem to know something, and then suddenly does!

It's not really an issue because there was never any reason for it to come up until the relevant thing appears, whether it's a nefarious organization, or hills to the north.

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.

These are only headaches if you let them be headaches.

What the character knows is entirely made up. It can be whatever we like it to be, per the rules and methods of the game. However, to look at it as you're describing it, the character would "know" an unfathomable amount more about their life and their world than the player can possibly imagine. If that prevented us from role-playing or from making informed decisions, then there would be no role-playing.

In my opinion, it's better to accept this fact and then craft the game with this in mind, rather than trying to craft the game to somehow try and fight that fact.

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?)

That's a good question. I'm thinking of some Powered by the Apocalypse games I know where such an action would have a roll, and then based on the result of the roll, the player can either determine X number of facts about a place, or can force the GM to reveal X number of truths about the place.

So yes, it's possible that under such a rule system, the player could have a say in what kinds of foes they may face. I don't think I'd limit it to just what the player had determined.

But then, a the same time, you have to kind of ask yourself why as a GM, when a player literally tells you what he'd like to see happen in the game, you'd decide to do something else. I think this is a big part of the gulf between our views.....

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.

If "tell the GM" is collaborative storytelling, then "ask the GM" is solo storytelling by the GM.

Neither is true, and both are a mis-categorization of the approach.

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

End up with, is the key phrase here. You've used "story" to describe things that have yet to happen. This is why I prefer to use fiction. But this just seems to be a matter of preference.

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.

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.

I think of that more as backstory. It may be relevant....it may be very relevant.....but it's not the story that we are telling when we play. That story is the story of the PCs.

Much like all the stuff about Sauron and Morgoth and all that Silmarillion stuff is backstory, but Lord of the Rings is the story of Frodo and his journey to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring.

Again, I think this is really just our preferred terms. I see many GMs use the phrase story when they have a very adventure path type game in mind, where A happens and B happens and then C, and so on. It's already set prior to play.

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.

Why would you care about this at all ahead of time? Seriously, have it erupt or not in some manner that may be relevant to the PCs. But deciding ahead of time that it will erupt on such and such a date regardless of what meaning it may have for the game.....that's not a story.

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.

No, that's fine! When it comes to agency, I think it matters quite a bit how all this stuff comes up and why the GM decides to structure things as he has. None of it is bad, by any means.

It seems like this is the GM taking existing details of the fiction, and then crafting a situation that may challenge the PCs. That's pretty much what the GM's job should be.

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.

You're just repeating what you already said. I know your preference. I'm asking why is it a long way from great?

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Yeah, absolutely!

When play revolves around player skill, having mental stats for characters seems a bit questionable. Really, they were just indicators of bonuses for certain actions or interactions, which were all based on the idea of delving into dungeons. So Charisma was entirely about interactions with henchmen and hirelings, not about trying to lie to a NPC. Your Intelligence score was about bonus spells or bonuses against illusions and so on.

But when it came time to figuring out how to navigate through the dungeon, the common expectation is that the player would use their own ability to solve problems and come up with ideas. There were, I'm certain, exceptions where even in the early days you had a player say "Torag stands there dumbfounded because his INT is a 6" or similar.

When the focus of the game shifted, these things shifted accordingly.

 

[chaochou]

So I have to asked because of the amount of examples of different systems being brought up.

What system (not style) do you think allows the players to have the most agency?

In no particular order I would look at:

• Sorcerer, by Adept Press.
• Apocalypse World, by Lumpley Games - the original Powered by the Apocalypse game, and still probably the most vibrantly conceived and written. The Veil and Urban Shadows are other quality examples.
• Blades in the Dark - a sort of second generation PbtA
• Either Burning Wheel or Torchbearer from Burning Wheel HQ