A Question Of Agency?

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Yeah. You can absolutely have dedicated engines that constrain agency in one way or another (the common one being "fear checks" and the like) but you don't have to have a dedicated engine to do that. It can be done entirely with the limits of the PCs, the traits of the opposition, the constraints of the starting situation, and how things are framed.

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.

Yeah, you don't have to completely rob characters of agency for a horror game--but almost all that are actually trying for a horror effect (rather than some other genre with horror trappings or limited elements) will sharply limit how much that agency actually means when the rubber meets the road. This is most visible with cosmic horror, but its present even with things as mundane as most slasher-movie opponents.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Fictional elements existing beyond your control doesn't automatically affect agency. What's affecting agency here is the choice of a conclusion that is hard coded. This isn't necessary for a horror story, although it's the default for many traditional games. Many horror stories end with the protagonist surviving or having temporarily escaped or defeated the enemy -- lots of CoC games can end with the players "victorious," although that's not set in stone.

No, I still haven't seen a strong argument that horror requires loss of agency, just that the familiar versions of it do.

 

[pemerton]

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

Gather Information was introduced way before 3E. It was part of the yakuza class in OA. Likewise Circles (called contacts).

But I don't remember anyone writing letters to the Dragon Magazine Forum back then saying that the sea had turned orange!

(And of course Classic Traveller had a Streetwise skill back in 1977, and as I've already shown upthread it contemplates a higher degree of player agency than OA or 3E. But I've never seen it argued that Classic Traveller was any departure from "tradition".)

 

[Thomas Shey]

You know, Ovinomancer, I've concluded that our conversations are functionally useless; we spend all our time disagreeing about both premise and conclusion, and it means all we're doing is demonstrating "we disagree." At least in this thread, I think I'm done responding to you.

 

[pemerton]

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.

You're very cavalier about attributing mental states to other RPGers.

I can tell you that being able to have memories and knowledge, as a character does not shatter any "illusion of reality" when I play a RPG. It reinforces my experience of my PC indeed being Great Maters-wise. It reinforces my sense of my PC not suffering amnesia. It reinforces my sense that my PC, in having resolved that I'm not going to "finish* my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse!, is rationally oriented towards the world about her, rather than mad or quixotic in her aspirations.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Gather Information was introduced way before 3E. It was part of the yakuza class in OA. Likewise Circles (called contacts).

But I don't remember anyone writing letters to the Dragon Magazine Forum back then saying that the sea had turned orange!

(And of course Classic Traveller had a Streetwise skill back in 1977, and as I've already shown upthread it contemplates a higher degree of player agency than OA or 3E. But I've never seen it argued that Classic Traveller was any departure from "tradition".)

Pemerton I know that. I have OA and have run both the 1E and 3E OA. But it wasn't core to the game. Prior to that, you had NWPs, and in the PHB the NWPs tended to be very non-intrusive (for example Etiquette was basically a knowledge skill, it specifically said it didn't replace roleplaying). You seem to be stuck on this idea, that if it existed in some similar form before, then it won't be a problem when it becomes a bigger part of the game. I don't know why you find it so hard to accept other peoples experiences and preferences as being real things.

Look, here is what I will say about this. When 3E came out, I happily played it. But something bothered me about it. And I wasn't sure what it was. I just knew the game felt different (and I used to grumble about it at sessions). It wasn't the end of the world, but I just felt less enthusiasm for 3E sessions than I did for our 2E sessions in the 90s. And over time it became clear to me a lot of it was how the skills functioned in the game. And many times it wasn't even how the skills were written in the book, it was how they tended to actually be used at the tables I played at. I played 3E for its entire run, this wasn't a deal breaker for me, it was just me starting to realize I had a style that wasn't necessarily in line with WOTC style D&D. And that became clear to me when I started running 2E Ravenloft campaigns (after a series of 3E ravenloft campaigns) and things instantly felt like they had before. I just found once you took out things like gather information and bluff, players interacted with the setting more and dialogue went back to how we used to speak at the table.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You're very cavalier about attributing mental states to other RPGers.

Can you please quit it with this. He isn't saying anything about your mental state. He is talking about his own and other players in the game. At this point you just seem to be arguing for the sake of fighting

 

[Campbell]

Having the rules of game be binding on GM exists independently of player side dramatic editing mechanisms. Some indie games have dramatic editing and some do not. Some fairly traditional games like Mutants and Masterminds and Numenera have dramatic editing mechanics. Apocalypse World, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Sorcerer lack any kind of player authority over scene framing while having mechanics with teeth that constrain the GM's narration of events.

I just do not get conflating the two. I personally prefer games where the rules have teeth, but framing remains solely in the GM's purview.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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").

True but I still happily played 3E. I learned a lot about what I didn't like with that edition, but I played it. And I think it is very easy to encounter a frustration in a game, ask what the cause of that frustration is, then build a whole system of thought or a playstyle preference to avoid that cause. And I think that leads to overly extreme attitudes in playstyle (I know because I was locked in a "everything always has to be in character mindset". To Pemerton's point, many mechanics like this did exist earlier in the game to different degrees (and in the hobby in other RPG: and I grew up in a time when you just played lots of different RPGs, even D&D was the one you played most often because of its popularity). Also ones analysis of the 'cause' of frustration can be wrong, or slightly off. And all that can lead to a throw the baby out with the bathwater approach to play. This is just my way of saying, I think what really matters is whether you like a specific instance of something. I wasn't particularly thrilled with Gather information and other social skills as they tended to be used in 3E. Removing them, largely fixed any issue I had (and being willing to pick up older editions of the game and play those, also fixed this problem). But I think building an idea around avoiding all instances of gather information like mechanics would, and was, misguided. To use an analogy, I wasn't into the powers system in 4E, especially for martial classes. But Barbarians used to be able to rage several times a day, and that didn't bother me. I think a lot of these things when they intrude lightly, won't bother most people. It is only when they become the heart of play that it can impact a playstyle you might be accustomed to (and perhaps a style of play you are not even aware you are engaging in)

 

[Ovinomancer]

You know, Ovinomancer, I've concluded that our conversations are functionally useless; we spend all our time disagreeing about both premise and conclusion, and it means all we're doing is demonstrating "we disagree." At least in this thread, I think I'm done responding to you.

I kinda agree -- you tend to assert a conclusion and then arrange the premise to fit. Here it's that horror requires loss of agency, and the premise is traditional games where the outcome is a forgone conclusion. It's begging the question. Horror does not require the outcome to be forgone.