A Question Of Agency?

[Thomas Shey]

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.

What I do is present a premise and then say why it applies to the situation at hand. If you want to see it the other way around, that's on you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How about spending a Bennie to turn a lethal attack that would kill a PC into just a hit that knocks them out? Some games have elements like that. I'm not really familiar with Savage Worlds, and I know it may vary from version to version, but what about that?

Its possible but unreliable there. You can spend a Bennie to do what's called a "Soak" where you roll a Vigor test to bleed off one or more wounds. If you aren't horrificially overkilled here (and in the most recent version, that's no longer a thing) you're pretty likely but uncertain to do so (even a PC with a D6 Vigor, which is dead average, has a 75% chance and it just goes up from there). It'll still leave you injured, but not dying (and not even taken out of the fight).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I play games like Savage Worlds which have Bennies. I think the light nature of savage worlds makes these not be such a big deal to me. But overall, I am not super into hero points and fate points. However, I am not even sure it is about in or out of character stuff, I just don't like players spending points to avoid death and things like that. I would much rather the system be built so the death level functions appropriately to the setting or genre without the use of such points. But some people like these things. I don't have a particularly strong view on them as they aren't something I would ever actively complain about at the table.

Often they're a way to have the overall system produce results that seem correct in the "mundane" cases (i.e. with rank and file humans, and even the PCs some of the time) while recognizing that action adventure heroes seem to generally have a thumb on the scale. Among other functions, they serve some of the properties of level elevating hit points (producing a sense of pacing so the player can see when he's getting near the point where he's genuinely at risk) without baking it into the overall system and producing sometimes ludicrous results.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The Player can block the consequence determined by the GM. They have limited means to do so, and the resource they use is also used for other things, so this may be a major decision on their part.

How would you view that?

I don't really see that as adding agency. I see it adding survivability. But to me agency has to include the good and bad things that come from your choices. This sort of usage seems like it would mitigate things like making a decision to face a lethal foe on your own. I like having those consequences in play. Again to be clear here, I am not super against these or anything. I just don't see them adding agency and they are not my favorite mechanic in the world to begin with.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't really see that as adding agency. I see it adding survivability. But to me agency has to include the good and bad things that come from your choices. This sort of usage seems like it would mitigate things like making a decision to face a lethal foe on your own. I like having those consequences in play. Again to be clear here, I am not super against these or anything. I just don't see them adding agency and they are not my favorite mechanic in the world to begin with.

Yep. If bad-naughty word-mitigation bennies increase agency, then by the same logic having higher skill bonuses or more hit points would too.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yep. If bad-naughty word-mitigation bennies increase agency, then by the same logic having higher skill bonuses or more hit points would too.

I think Hawkeye's argument is it increases agency because the spending of the Benny is a meaningful choice (correct me if I am wrong Hawkeye). I can see where Hawkeye is coming from, it just doesn't register as adding agency for me (to your point about agency being a pretty subjective notion).

 

[Lanefan]

@pemerton - is there any particular reason why between posts 802 and 808 you've posted the same thing four times? Computer glitch?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yep. If bad-naughty word-mitigation bennies increase agency, then by the same logic having higher skill bonuses or more hit points would too.

I think if you viewed it from a certain angle, you could argue the do.

Bear with me here. Often besides making choices meaningless, the other way to defeat agency is to just, well, give someone no choice. If you're underground, trapped in a cell, and the GM's ensured there's only one way out, and that once you get there, there's only one path that isn't a dead end, you can make any decision you want, but none but one matter.

Similarly, the more your abilities (or lack thereof) constrain your options, the less meaningful agency you have. So if your character has a lot of different functional ways to address a situation, his meaningful agency is expanded.

I know its not usually what people are talking about when they're addressing agency in these threads, but its hard to see a clear difference in practical terms between "All your theoretical decisions lead you to the same place" and "you really don't have a decision at all."

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think Hawkeye's argument is it increases agency because the spending of the Benny is a meaningful choice (correct me if I am wrong Hawkeye). I can see where Hawkeye is coming from, it just doesn't register as adding agency for me (to your point about agency being a pretty subjective notion).

Well, it's partly that. But it's more that it's the player that gets to decide. The GM says "this is what happens" and then the player gets to decide "no, actually THIS is what happens".

I mean, as a player, if my character is facing death in the fiction of the game, and it's me who decides if he lives or dies.....how is that not agency?

These kinds of mechanics are ones that give the players the ability to more directly steer the fiction beyond just declaring actions for their character.

 

[darkbard]

@pemerton - is there any particular reason why between posts 802 and 808 you've posted the same thing four times? Computer glitch?

I imagine he's just being deliberately provocative again.