A Question Of Agency?

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

It's just a mechanical fidget. Does 'lucky' feat in D&D 5E increase player agency? it's the same thing.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

Again, I can see where you are coming from. I think for me though, this isn't agency. This is more like giving you a bit of authorial power (which I would see as different from agency). Agency to me really boils down to agency within the setting.

 

[innerdude]

That illusion [that the game world exists as an "objective 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.

I don't know which poster @pemerton was quoting here, so I apologize in advance for that.

In response to this quote I would say, "Of course."

Of course it's important for the world to feel "real." To feel as if there's a sense of "concreteness" or "objectivity" to it. One of the reasons I despise "planar hopping" adventures is for this very reason --- they never feel concrete and understandable. I find them tedious to play, because it's never clear as a player what my character would implicitly be aware of, and the GM is nearly always inadequate to fill the gaps.

I also think the above quote smartly recognizes that the "objective reality" of an RPG fiction is just an illusion. The "objective reality" is the sum of the imaginations of those engaged with it. Whatever is true, must be agreed upon to be true.

The question is, who has the formal power to authoritatively state what is true in the fiction?

Traditionally, there are two arbiters of "What is true in our fiction?" --- 1) the GM, and 2) the rules.

But as I've progressed in my journey as an RPG player and GM, I am less and less convinced that it is the GM's sole responsibility to maintain that illusion, and more and more convinced that the players should have as much "fiction state arbitration rights" as possible

I would even go so far as to say I think it a bit presumptuous of a GM to think that (s)he is the only game-participant arbiter. These days I would be highly wary of playing in a group where the GM insisted that they had absolute authority over the full content of the in-game fiction.

*Edit --- Very often in my experience, when a GM insists that they have full control over the setting, play can only go so far before it breaks down entirely . . . unless the group as a whole is willing to go along as unwilling participants in an on-going Abilene paradox experiment.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Agreed it can be frustrating. That said, if it's what the characters would do then so be it - all I can do as DM is sit back, crack open another beer, and wait for them to decide what to do. If I'm a player, sooner or later my boredom tolerance will be exceeded and my character will do something rash - usually to its own detriment but hey, at least I got things moving.

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.

We do random roll for stat generation, so having too specific of a character idea going in is often self-defeating when the dice don't co-operate.

As for the kind of things they may want to see come up in play: broad-brush stuff - e.g. if I get a vibe that the players are keen on doing some adventuring in an arctic setting for a while, or that they're tired of facing undead and would like to see some variety - are usually pretty easy to accommodate. But in specific terms e.g. a character wants to sort out some drama within her family (and I've got one player who quite likes this sort of thing), I try to limit this or do it off-session as while it's going on in-session everyone else is more or less sitting there bored.

As a player, some of my characters have rather specific goals but I don't want to waste too much of everyone else's time with them and neither expect nor insist that they come up as part of party play (exception: if I-as-character can talk the party into helping with something tha'ts different, as they always have the option of saying no and if they say yes it's their own choice), and so that stuff gets dealt with off-session or in spare moments.

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 more want the party as a whole - regardless of who might be in it at the time - to be the star of its show.

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?

Hard to give a firm answer as this would be completely situation-dependent. How familiar is this city otherwise - have the PCs ever been here before, or is it their home base, etc.? But if it seems reasonable, then most likely yes.

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.

Agreed and disagreed at the same time. The bit with the nefarious gang is quite explainable in a bunch of ways: maybe the informed character had reasons for keeping this knowledge to herself; or maybe the gang or its activities is a new development since the PC's last known info; or maybe the gang has only just revealed its existence to anyone....I could come up with ten of these.

If a character was, say, a Thief or Assassin and was from or based in this city chances are I'd have given its player some broad-base info ahead of time anyway.

The bit with the hills isn't so explainable. Unless something pretty odd is going on, hills tend to be and stay where they are and thus PCs (and players) would know of their existence unless the PCs were complete strangers to the region.

These are only headaches if you let them be headaches.

Where possible - and it's never perfect but one can always try - I don't like metagame considerations to influence in-character play. Same reasoning that turns me hard away from any sort of Inspiration or Bennie mechanics; and the same reasoning that tells me PCs and NPCs in the game world are the same and should be treated the same by others.

Having player knowledge and character knowledge match, where possible, reduces one avenue where this can occur.

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.

My ideal (and if it happens in my lifetime I'll be rather astounded) would be some sort of quasi-VR system, where we could see the players at the table out of one eye and through the eyes of our PC out the other (or by raising and lowering a visor, or similar). When we spoke in-character it'd be heard - live through the air, not on a speaker - by the other players as our PC voices; there'd be a toggle if we wanted to speak normally OOC. There'd be ways of controlling our movement within the setting, much like a way-more-sophisticated version of what roll20 has. In other words, completely immersive on one hand but still live-around-the-table on the other.

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.....

And if the player says nothing lives there, which would be the most likely outcome, what then?

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.

Except without the backstory you really can't have the here-and-now story, or have it make any sense.

And in fact at the same time you're telling the micro-story of the PCs you're also telling part of the overall macro-story. In this instance what you're telling is the story of the final defeat of Sauron. And Tolkein shows this in his calendar summary at the end of the third book - he shows how this all fits in to the bigger picture.

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.

In part because if it does end up erupting under the PCs' feet I can't be accused of hosing them over. Instead, I can legitimately state the decision to have it erupt then and there was made in complete neutrality, long before the PCs were even rolled up.

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.

It's part of the backdrop, which may or may not become a relevant part of the story.

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.

OK, let's try another example - this one very timely as it's currently ongoing in my game:

I'm running S1 Lost Caverns. Party has been in the field on and off for over half a year dealing with this; and on one of their visits to town it became clear that what they were in theory doing (finding the Necronomicon, the original holy scripture for all Necromancy; I substituted this into the module in place of the Demonomicon as all its useful spells already exist in my game) could have huge ramifications for Necromancers everywhere and the local Necromancers' guild really really really wanted this book!

Unknown to the PCs, word got out. Other Necromancers' guilds eventually heard about this, took note, and took action.

Party finally finishes the adventure and heads back to town. They're intercepted before they get there: foreign Necromancers have invaded the city and started a war with the locals over who gets to end up with this book. Civilians are fleeing, if not already dead as collateral damage. Buildings are burnt. Huge rewards have been posted (though no-one's really sure by who) for each known party member. All of this catches the adventurers quite off guard - they were hoping to get back to town, get rid of this damn book, divide their treasury, get all their lost levels restored (Drelzna had a field day!), and relax for a bit of downtime. Now they have to sort their way through a war, which is what next session will probably consist of.

I can think of at least one poster here who would say this is bad design because it uses hidden backstory. Needless to say, I disagree.

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

You risk conflicting visions, for one thing. For example, using these silly hills again, what if one player wanted hills there while another wanted farmland and a third thought an ocean or very large lake would make sense; meanwhile the GM has to think "what happens if they just go north without asking" and has in mind there's just more swamp that way.

You also risk coming up with something that doesn't make geographical or physical sense. An obvious example is where someone places hills to the north, someone else places ocean to the south, and during play it becomes relevant that the river has to flow south-to-north (i.e. uphill!) so that other things can make sense. (I've seen maps in published novels do things like this and it bugs the hell out of me) Distances and therefore travel times are even easier to mess up.

Far simpler, and far more likely to be/remain consistent, if there's just one hand on the helm.

 

[Lanefan]

"Traditional" often seems to be used to mean what was regarded as canonical c 1990 ie when the trends of the 1980s had fully crystallised as the dominant way to approach RPGing. It's a superficially descriptive word that gets wielded as a normative weapon.

'Traditional' can mean differen things to different people. To me, for example, 1990 is no more traditional than 2013; you don't hit 'traditional' in my view until you're back into the early '80s. Yet to a much younger player, 'traditional' might mean 2001-era 3e gaming.

... in Shadows, for instance, there only pay-off from "beating" the "dungeon" is to be able to fly your starship away from the place without being blasted by an auto-defence laser.

Sometimes survival really is the only goal.

 

[Scott Christian]

1) Exploration: I don' think this is untrue but I do think these produce very different types of play and experiences. Again, in Hillfolk, I was able to invent geography whole cloth in dialogue. There was a genuine sense of discovery in that, which I found immersive. So I am not saying you can't have that sort of feeling with a game or GMing approach where the players can shape setting details. But I do think that is different from one where the details of the world are being created by a source external to yourself. That kind of exploration, to me, also has a sense of discovery to it, but it feels like a very different form of discovery to me. It also feels more like I am challenging the world, unlocking its secrets.

I completely agree.

2) Hiding behind a bush: I don't know about this one. I think a lot of groups would actually get their cues from the GM on that roll (ask to roll to see if there is anything to hide behind and then the GM tells them what is there on a success). However this is also one of those gray zones I mentioned before. A lot of players are going to naturally assume certain things are present based on what the GM said, so they will just say something like "I look for a bush to hide behind" or even "I hide behind a bush". But that is still entirely in the GMs power to decide if there is in fact a bush. And there is also a very big difference between a hill and a bush. A bush is far easier to hand wave. I wouldn't see the bush as setting a precedent for hills, towers and more. A lot of it I think arises out of efficiency and convenience of communication style than a conscious desire to shape the setting (the player naturally assumes a bush is present and is speaking as if that is so).

I was going from the forest example prior. If a PC hears something while walking through the forest, and rolls a stealth check, and says, I find a bush to hide in... I don't know. I have never heard a DM say no to that. I have seen stickler DM's say: "But I said sparse forest, meaning it is clear of underbrush." Then the player says, I find a tree then. Then the DM agrees. But you are correct, the DM could hand wave and say no, but I feel it's unlikely. But, they could definitely do it.

3) Even if the GM hasn't established anything, he or she can always say "there are no bushes here". Some GMs always say yes to those kinds of things. Some don't (for a variety of reasons). But I think the general sense it can help create when the GM stops and thinks about whether or not there ought to be a bush there, is it adds to the sense of a world existing external to your character.

Agreed. But, the depth of thought about a bush should be passive, no? (And I mean that from genuine curiosity.)

If I am to add a sense of a "world external," then I focus on specifics. I might describe a forest full of black currant bushes. How thick they are. How every time someone steps their boots are being died by the black berries. And how the fermented smell overwhelms the trees in the forest. But a bush, a tree, a flower is just that, no more thought needed. Or am I missing (or misinterpreting) something?

 

[Bedrockgames]

I completely agree.

I was going from the forest example prior. If a PC hears something while walking through the forest, and rolls a stealth check, and says, I find a bush to hide in... I don't know. I have never heard a DM say no to that. I have seen stickler DM's say: "But I said sparse forest, meaning it is clear of underbrush." Then the player says, I find a tree then. Then the DM agrees. But you are correct, the DM could hand wave and say no, but I feel it's unlikely. But, they could definitely do it.

Sure, but I think in that case, it is just apparent to everyone that a bush naturally would be present in the forest. So the player isn't really inventing anything. The player is assuming the bush exists and makes the statement (and if the GM has some reason that a bush wouldn't be there, the GM can say there aren't any bushes around, but there are some boulders, logs, etc).

 

[pemerton]

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

Internet glitch. I've edited out the duplicate (and triplicate, and quadruplicate).

 

[pemerton]

I imagine he's just being deliberately provocative again.

Wins thread!

 

[Bedrockgames]

If I am to add a sense of a "world external," then I focus on specifics. I might describe a forest full of black currant bushes. How thick they are. How every time someone steps their boots are being died by the black berries. And how the fermented smell overwhelms the trees in the forest. But a bush, a tree, a flower is just that, no more thought needed. Or am I missing (or misinterpreting) something?

I am not quite sure what you mean by 'passive'. I think again, this is one of those gray areas, where a GM will often paint in broad strokes and likely everyone at the table assumes a bush is present, including the GM. But I have been in games where the GM said no, there are not any bushes around (or something to that effect). I think every GM has a different method for this. Obviously we are dealing with terrain that is probably not mapped out (it might exist on the map, but it is probably at a level of detail that the GM wouldn't have mapped it out unless there was good reason to do so). My method is I simply tell the players based on what I imagine is there in the scene (usually I have a pretty concrete sense of that).

I actually don't go into deep detail describing things. I used to do that. Now I just use short, broad descriptions and try not to bore anyone with my words