A Question Of Agency?

[PsyzhranV2]

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?

Never mind design principles and techniques; just going by the whole "GM vs player" argument that's been going on for several hundred posts, I feel that by definition, the answer to the above would be "GMless games". Fiasco, Dialect, Dream Askew, The Quiet Year, For the Queen, Beak Feather and Bone, Ironsworn in co-op mode, etc. I'll also mention solo games, such as Thousand Year Old Vampire, as something worth consideration, if just for the experimental value (hey, it didn't win all those Ennies for nothing).

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

This ties into your point about skilled play.

That mode of play cultivated the idea that you should angle for any and all advantage in order to overcome the obstacles your character faced. This mindset has kind of carried forward in one form or another through the successive editions. But it doesn't always make sense to have that mindset. For some games, sure.....but if skilled play of the old school dungeon delving sort is not the point of play, the further you move from that mode of play, then always hedging for advantage becomes increasingly pointless.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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?

Ha this is a gas on the fire kind of question.

I'm sure that the answers will vary quite a bit. I have my ideas about what I'd place near the top. But I also know my experience with games isn't really broad enough to give a complete answer.

I can say, of the games I've recently GMed, that I'd rank it as below, highest player agency to lowest:

• Blades in the Dark
• D&D 5e
• Alien RPG (played in cinematic mode)

Blades is very much an open world for the PCs to explore and interact with as they will, and which is also designed to be specifically about their characters and their crew.

D&D involves a lot more GM control of the fiction, but my approach attempts to mitigate that a bit, and give more power to the players to determine what happens in play.

Alien had a very specific scenario that the PCs had to engage with. We even used pre-gen characters with built in motivations.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Never mind design principles and techniques; just going by the whole "GM vs player" argument that's been going on for several hundred posts, I feel that by definition, the answer to the above would be "GMless games".

Though not one I think I agree with, I think that's an entirely defensible argument.

 

[Thomas Shey]

• Alien RPG (played in cinematic mode)

I've argued earlier in this thread (or perhaps in its twin over on the RPGPub) that traditional horror is all about screwing with a person's sense of agency. They're virtually at odds.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

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.

This is a great insight, Aldarc. I thought a bit about my experience with different game systems, and yes, it rings true. I then started wandering if the difference was due to difference in players versus the system itself. I'm leaning to the latter, because I play a range of systems including Fate and D&D4E with the same people so have some data points there.

Also, thinking of the way I play, the I play D&D4E I am thinking more about "winning the encounter" than I am when playing Fate. In the latter I feel much more excited when I fail as I'm pretty sure it'll lead to something interesting -- or more precisely, I have enough agency that I can dictate the terms of failure so that it becomes interesting. In D&D4E the consequences of failure in a scene are typically well-defined and not subject to influence -- and also typically boring -- so if I had some method of breaking an encounter -- I have to admit I might be tempted to use it; much more so than in Fate.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Though not one I think I agree with, I think that's an entirely defensible argument.

It certainly is. I tend to think of GMless games as another category of game....and for some of them, the distinction seems obvious. But then you have something like Ironsworn where you can play co-op or solo, and yet it still recognizably functions like a RPG.....and then the distinction becomes far less clear.

I've argued earlier in this thread (or perhaps in its twin over on the RPGPub) that traditional horror is all about screwing with a person's sense of agency. They're virtually at odds.

That's a good way of looking at it, I think, if we think of agency as empowerment. Horror is absolutely related to not having control......to outside forces having their way with you. A good way to emulate that feeling is to limit what a player can do.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've argued earlier in this thread (or perhaps in its twin over on the RPGPub) that traditional horror is all about screwing with a person's sense of agency. They're virtually at odds.

You did make that claim as a follow up to a point that traditional Call of Cthulhu is low agency (and I agree it is). I'm not seeing the general argument -- in fact, I think it's the system that trad CoC uses that mostly restricts agency. The Alien RPG, from what I've read (I should buy it, honestly, just don't know when I'd get to play it), uses the Year Zero engine, which definitely runs more towards the play to find out side of the street that any of the traditional systems. I don't see how horror, as a genre, would necessarily restrict agency. I've run horror in my Blades game very recently (Duskvol is, after all, the Haunted City). Zombies that stutter step through space and time, malevolent elemental entities, ghostly possessions, kidnappings of ghosts(!), creepy doomsday cults, and the ever-present oppression of constant night. This is part of the Blades milieu. Not every game focuses on these elements, and I didn't intend to, but that's where play went due to player actions.

So, tl;dr, I don't think there's anything endemic to horror that requires attacking agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

You did make that claim as a follow up to a point that traditional Call of Cthulhu is low agency (and I agree it is). I'm not seeing the general argument -- in fact, I think it's the system that trad CoC uses that mostly restricts agency. The Alien RPG, from what I've read (I should buy it, honestly, just don't know when I'd get to play it), uses the Year Zero engine, which definitely runs more towards the play to find out side of the street that any of the traditional systems. I don't see how horror, as a genre, would necessarily restrict agency. I've run horror in my Blades game very recently (Duskvol is, after all, the Haunted City). Zombies that stutter step through space and time, malevolent elemental entities, ghostly possessions, kidnappings of ghosts(!), creepy doomsday cults, and the ever-present oppression of constant night. This is part of the Blades milieu. Not every game focuses on these elements, and I didn't intend to, but that's where play went due to player actions.

So, tl;dr, I don't think there's anything endemic to horror that requires attacking agency.

I can see the relation here, as I posted in reply to Thomas above.

I think that Blades in the Dark is not really a horror game. Yes, it has horror elements for sure, and you can ramp that up or down to have moments of horror in the game. But I don't think it as a game is actively trying to depict a horror story.

The inevitability of the end, the fact that our efforts ultimately don't matter....that's what horror is about. The guy in the hockey mask is going to get you, the universe is filled with mysteries that don't care about you and will either consume you or drive you mad if you even glimpse them.

I can see the correlation to removal of agency in that regard, for sure.

But about the Year Zero engine....I don't think that this rules system itself is about limiting agency. I've played other games that use it (Tales From the Loop being the big one) and it definitely had a more play to find out mentality.

I don't think that in the case of Alien the restriction of agency is a product of the system so much as the setting, and the mode of play. We were playing in "Cinematic Mode" which is about having a one shot type game where there is a specific scenario, the PCs are expected to take part in it, and when that scenario ends, play is over. We used pre-generated characters with built in motivations that shifted a bit from Act to Act, with three Acts in total.

There's agency in that the players are free to decide how they go about addressing the scenario, and how much they play to the built in motivation (they're rewarded for using it, but not punished if they ignored it). So it's still a fun and engaging game.....I'd recommend you pick it up if you're at all a fan of the Alien films. And I expect that Campaign play would be much more open and allow for more agency on the part of the players.....but I haven't yet played a Campaign game, so that's just a guess based on what I've read.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You did make that claim as a follow up to a point that traditional Call of Cthulhu is low agency (and I agree it is). I'm not seeing the general argument -- in fact, I think it's the system that trad CoC uses that mostly restricts agency. The Alien RPG, from what I've read (I should buy it, honestly, just don't know when I'd get to play it), uses the Year Zero engine, which definitely runs more towards the play to find out side of the street that any of the traditional systems. I don't see how horror, as a genre, would necessarily restrict agency. I've run horror in my Blades game very recently (Duskvol is, after all, the Haunted City). Zombies that stutter step through space and time, malevolent elemental entities, ghostly possessions, kidnappings of ghosts(!), creepy doomsday cults, and the ever-present oppression of constant night. This is part of the Blades milieu. Not every game focuses on these elements, and I didn't intend to, but that's where play went due to player actions.

So, tl;dr, I don't think there's anything endemic to horror that requires attacking agency.

See Hawkeyefan's post above yours. I think almost all horror (almost because you have the genre of action-horror, which I think lands in a different space) is about things beyond your control, possibly beyond even your understanding in some cases, and still trying to find a way to engage with it. That loss of control (and thus agency) is a big part of what makes horror, horror.