A Question Of Agency?

[Scott Christian]

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

Yeah, I hear ya. My rule for adding very detailed setting:

• humor
• to contrast something of importance (the smell changes from stale t fresh air type of thing)
• Time management

 

[Bedrockgames]

"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.

I think you are reading too much into it. And a lot of times it feels like you are taking the words out from under us, which just makes it hard to communicate. We have to use the vocabulary we are familiar with, and this is part of my vocabulary as a gamer. I am not going to create a whole new lexicon because of this kind of objection. That said, it is a pretty lose term I think and I don't think it really is saying anything about the early days of the hobby. I am just using it as a handy descriptor more than anything else. I think it is just one of those terms that cropped up naturally. As more styles popped up, people started saying traditional RPG to refer to a spectrum of styles that are more on the exploration side of the hobby, or that don't have things like narrative mechanics in them. I think it is just a way of distinguishing styles and types of RPGs. I mean if someone tries to sell an rpg to me and markets it as a traditional RPG, I would be surprised if it included apocalypse style Moves or if it divided powers normally reserved for the GM among the players or something. But traditional as a term seems to vary a bit, so others might have different interpretations. In the context of this discussion, I've just been using it to refer to the approach that posters like myself and Crimson have described to contrast it against some of the other approaches to things like agency.

 

[pemerton]

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?

@chaochou's list seems pretty good.

Here's mine:

• Burning Wheel (judgement based on a combination of reading and experience)
• Prince Valiant (ditto; but there is a caveat - you have to be pretty keen on knight errantry tropes)
• Apocalypse World (judgement based on reading alone, much thinking about it, desire to play it)

More qualified:

* Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic (I've played a fair bit of it; it's trickier to GM than the first two above and I suspect than AW, and how that is handled has big implications for player agency)

* I reckon Classic Traveller is not bad for player agency, but I don't think it's ever going to be as visceral as BW or even Prince Valiant.

There are a lot of broadly "process simulation" systems from a broadly similar era - Classic Traveller, RuneQuest, C&S, Rolemaster, Champions/HERO, etc. From the sim perspective they are in many ways rather interchangeable - for instance, I think it's a matter of taste rather than fundamentals whether one prefers to model parry via a roll (RQ), a fixed penalty to the attack (Traveller), or a variable penalty to the attack that reflects the defender's focus on defence vs offence (Rolemaster).

But when it comes to player agency there turn out to be real differences across these systems, which I think can be pretty subtle and sometimes need actual play to bring them to light. For instance, RM's ability for a player to determine how much is risked for how big a pay-off both in melee combat and in spell casting makes it better for player agency and thematic input than RQ (and also helps explain why being an archer in RM is lacklustre in comparison to those other two options).

That said, I don't think any of them - including Traveller, as I said - are going to get into the same terrain as something like BW. That's a pretty intense RPG!

 

[hawkeyefan]

I dunno, have you re-read the setting lately, or the GM principle to portray the haunted nature of the city? Sure, Blades can easily focus on the heist and the action can drown out the horror, but I think trying a cult crew might really explore the horror of the setting. I certainly think Blades is far more into the horror envelope than, say, Ravenloft.

Sure, the setting has elements that are typically found in horror stories....ghosts and vampires and the like. I’d probably put it on par with Ravenloft in that sense. It’s kind of gothic.

And here I'll reiterate my comments to @Thomas Shey -- I think this is only true for the subset of horror that involves forgone conclusions. I think that agency can be impacted by horror -- really any theme can impact agency -- but I don't think it's required. I can easily see a horror game played in a play to find out what happens way without a foreclosed outcome.

Sure, I think there are probably different ways to portray horror. Different ways to portray different kinds of horror, even.

I think that sense of the inevitable is what I was talking about. When something seems inevitable, it’s like nothing you do matters. No choice matters.

That’s a feeling that I think can be evoked by limiting player agency.

But I wouldn’t say it’s required for horror, nor would I say that the actual conclusion needs to be foregone. There’s usually one survivor who gets away from the slasher or who avoids being driven mad by strange forces.

Yeah, from what I've seen the Cinematic version does put a number of constraints on the scenario, but I'd have to own the book to evaluate the impacts to agency. Having a specific scenario, to me, doesn't impact agency -- it's like framing, where the shape of the fiction is formed and then players make meaningful choices. So long as the outcome isn't defined, and there aren't forced plot points throughout (note that introducing a complication that the PCs can engage isn't a forced plot point), then I don't see much impacting agency here.

Having played a couple of them, they felt fairly limited as far as player agency goes. It wasn’t absent, but it wasn’t anything like Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World.

The scenario is very focused. The PCs are pregenerated, which you could change of course, but their motivations and relationships are designed around the scenario. The results aren’t necessarily predetermined....but there’s only a couple ways it could go.

I want to give it a shot on campaign mode with our own PCs and so on. See how different that experience would be. I definitely recommend the game....it’s a lot of fun, and easy to grasp the basics.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

This is increasingly a red flag for me as well.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So I appreciate the detailed reply. I think in a lot of ways we agree, and I think that mostly it's just a matter of preference in how we approach gaming. I'm gonna snip it down a bit, because I feel we're drifting away from matters related to agency, and I know we've talked about a lot of this stuff before in one way or another.

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.

There are times where it can be interesting to watch the players pause and then debate what to do about a situation, how to proceed. But I like when those moments are reserved for kind of major moments. When the decision is not a major one, I want things to move. I don't like those big pauses happening often.

This can be a product of the system, or parts of it. It can be for other reasons, too, of course.

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.

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.

Sure, that's all great. I agree about the group being the focus. But I prefer when each PC also has their own things going on, their own agenda to pursue. Focus can rotate as needed, and I would hope the players are all okay with indulging a little time spent on characters other than theirs now and again. Plus, the characters are usually invested in one another, so getting their help doesn't usually require a lot of convincing.

I think this ties into a lot of the things that others are mentioning, where the players are able to shape the content of the fiction. It's about their characters.

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

Why would that be the case? Does the player like to be bored?

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

Sure you can. People do it all the time.

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.

So let me say this....if I'm in your game, and a volcano explodes when our PCs are near it, I'm not gonna buy that this was a neutral decision. Sure, you could show me some notes that say you had predetermined that this thing was gonna blow on August 5 of whatever year.....and then I'm going to point out how you're largely in control of the pace, and the date and of possibly dropping prompts into play to get us to go near the volcano.

And if the volcano erupts when the party is no where in the area....I'm very likely not to care at all.

If the whole goal of this is to set up some kind of legitimacy to the idea of neutrality, it just seems odd.

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

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.

So you have a GM plot you want them to engage with. It's fine. Where is the player agency in this scenario? Probably to decide to go after the book in the first place. Then, most everything else is "the world" responding to what the PCs are doing.

But really, there is no "world" so it's the DM deciding what happens next. All the stuff about the necromancers and the foreign ones learning of the book (how did that happen? It seems it happened to further the plot, but I imagine it would be described as "the world responding to the PCs' actions) and then attacking the PCs and waging war on the town, and placing bounties on the PCs.....all of that is the GM having a story idea.

It's not bad. It just doesn't appear to have a high level of player agency. It's the GM constructing a story in advance around the PCs. Or at least, that's how it seems.

Backstory is fine. I think the opposition to the use of hidden backstory is more about the GM thwarting player intent because of the preconceived ideas that the GM has about the fiction, but which the player doesn't know. I think that's a different thing than using backstory to help set up current events or to establish a scenario that you'd like the players to engage with.

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.

Why would the GM ask more than one player to confirm what was to the North? Why would more than on player be attempting a check to determine the terrain?

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.

I mean, if you put a river that flows north to south, how would it later become relevant that it has to flow south to north? And how would this river only be susceptible to this if it was placed at the time of play instead of months before?

Again, I don't think anyone is saying that all players should be able to at any time determine any and all fictional elements in the setting. There are ways to allow this to work within the constraints of the game.

There's more than one game. More than one approach. It sometimes seems like you can only see things through the lens of how you play your one game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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

Not quite the same thing, no, although I think this is a relevant point.

Lucky lets' you try again by rolling another die. Lucky is not something that every player will have, but is instead a Feat that some may choose (if Feats are even allowed.....which is very often up to.......you guessed it, the GM).

Does it increase a player's agency? I don't think it does in the sense that whatever they were attempting was something that may have been achieved without the Lucky reroll if they had rolled high enough in the first place. So, no, I don't think this is really increasing the player's ability to steer the fiction so much as it's taking an existing thing and increasing the chance for success.

But in Blades, the Resistance Roll and Stress is something that every PC has. Every player will do this as part of the game. They will use this to alter the outcome of an action when there are consequences they don't want to accept. It's not an attempt to try again. It's the explicit ability to remove or lessen a consequence from a failed roll or a success with complication result.

Lucky doesn't let you alter the effects of failed roll. If you fail your saving throw, Lucky doesn't allow you to tell the DM, "no, I'm not petrified".

I think there's a significant difference.

A factor that makes the comparison between the two systems more difficult is that with D&D, almost all harm is in the form of Hit Point loss. That doesn't allow for a whole lot of variety in how to mitigate harm.....it all comes down to restoring Hit Points. Saving Throws are the main exception to this, but even a lot of them still rely on Hit Point loss as a consequence. The ones that don't are the ones that inflict a Condition on the PC. You fail a save and now you're Frightened or Charmed or Paralyzed, etc.

Blades allows for a bit more variety of consequence than that, as inflicted by the GM, so having the ability to reject that seems to me to be related to agency, no? Is there something similar in D&D where the GM says "this thing happens" and the player can choose to say "no, actually THIS happens" and the GM must honor it? That's a genuine question.....I can't really think of any off the top of my head. Some abilities or spells may fall into this category, but I'm not able to think of any specifically. Can the player actually take the reins like that in D&D as written?

So I don't think these things are really the same at all, although they may seem similar in nature at first glance.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not quite the same thing, no, although I think this is a relevant point.

Lucky lets' you try again by rolling another die. Lucky is not something that every player will have, but is instead a Feat that some may choose (if Feats are even allowed.....which is very often up to.......you guessed it, the GM).

Does it increase a player's agency? I don't think it does in the sense that whatever they were attempting was something that may have been achieved without the Lucky reroll if they had rolled high enough in the first place. So, no, I don't think this is really increasing the player's ability to steer the fiction so much as it's taking an existing thing and increasing the chance for success.

But in Blades, the Resistance Roll and Stress is something that every PC has. Every player will do this as part of the game. They will use this to alter the outcome of an action when there are consequences they don't want to accept. It's not an attempt to try again. It's the explicit ability to remove or lessen a consequence from a failed roll or a success with complication result.

Lucky doesn't let you alter the effects of failed roll. If you fail your saving throw, Lucky doesn't allow you to tell the DM, "no, I'm not petrified".

I think there's a significant difference.

A factor that makes the comparison between the two systems more difficult is that with D&D, almost all harm is in the form of Hit Point loss. That doesn't allow for a whole lot of variety in how to mitigate harm.....it all comes down to restoring Hit Points. Saving Throws are the main exception to this, but even a lot of them still rely on Hit Point loss as a consequence. The ones that don't are the ones that inflict a Condition on the PC. You fail a save and now you're Frightened or Charmed or Paralyzed, etc.

Blades allows for a bit more variety of consequence than that, as inflicted by the GM, so having the ability to reject that seems to me to be related to agency, no? Is there something similar in D&D where the GM says "this thing happens" and the player can choose to say "no, actually THIS happens" and the GM must honor it? That's a genuine question.....I can't really think of any off the top of my head. Some abilities or spells may fall into this category, but I'm not able to think of any specifically. Can the player actually take the reins like that in D&D as written?

So I don't think these things are really the same at all, although they may seem similar in nature at first glance.

I get what you're saying, though I still feel it is more of a difference of degree rather than of kind.

But let's talk about such meta pennies, veto points, get out of jail free cards.

Imagine in one game the player makes a series of decisions which ends up landing their character in a bad position and the character dies (or something else unfortunate happens.) In another system the same series of events happen, but in that the player can use some sort of meta penny to prevent the unfortunate outcome. If we understand the agency to be an ability to make meaningful choices, then to me it is far from clear that in the latter scenario the player has more agency. Yes, they can make one more choice, to use the meta penny to prevent the sticky end; but it could well be argued that their ability to do so makes the preceding choices that lead to that situation far less meaningful.

 

[hawkeyefan]

These days I am far less interested in playing these word games. I am not super interested in philosophical underpinnings of agency. Taking the conversation there misses the point which is how do we play games where the actions players take for their characters produce meaningful change in the fiction. Let's talk about that.

So I wanted to come back to this post. I'd rather take this as a prompt to give an example, to maybe try and cut down on all the back and forth in which we can all get caught up.

My group played a Blades in the Dark campaign. They were a group of Hawkers, purveyors of illicit goods. What goods? We all discussed it ahead of play, and we decided they were dealing a potent substance dubbed Third Eye. It allowed the user to experience echoes from the Ghost Field.

So one player chose to play a Spider, which is like a mastermind/schemer type of class. He was an attorney who somehow became disgraced and lost his license to practice law, and so he turned to crime. One of the goals he had was to regain his license to practice law. Through play, it quickly became established that he really didn't want anything to do with the supernatural; he was afraid of ghosts and whenever that kind of stuff came up, he did everything he could to avoid it.

Another player, who joined a few sessions in, decided to play a Whisper. This is the character type that's basically doing weird stuff with ghosts and magic and so on. The way we set it up was that the crew needed someone who could deal with that stuff, because they were kind of vulnerable to it, and it's kind of unavoidable in the setting. So this character came on board.....and then started using sorcery as a means to everything the crew was trying to do.

So as we played, there emerged a very clear point of tension within the group; the idea of avoiding the supernatural, and the idea of embracing the supernatural. And that theme was so strong that if I had to look back at that campaign and say what the "story" was about, that conflict would be front and center.

So one of the main thrusts of the game arose out of no prompting on my part as GM. I certainly took the characters and put their conviction to the test through play, but the tension was entirely of their making.

If either of them had made a different character, the campaign would have played out in an entirely different way. Almost nothing would have been the same.

I don't think that this is unique to Blades or any other game; I'm sure that there are similar examples folks can provide from their games (and I hope they do), but the method of character and crew creation, and the method of worldbuilding and prompting the players to describe things and having the flexibility within the setting to define elements in your own way.....all these things really promote that kind of play. It's one of the reasons why I find the game so impressive, and so much fun.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I get what you're saying, though I still feel it is more of a difference of degree rather than of kind.

But let's talk about such meta pennies, veto points, get out of jail free cards.

Imagine in one game the player makes a series of decisions which ends up landing their character in a bad position and the character dies (or something else unfortunate happens.) In another system the same series of events happen, but in that the player can use some sort of meta penny to prevent the unfortunate outcome. If we understand the agency to be an ability to make meaningful choices, then to me it is far from clear that in the latter scenario the player has more agency. Yes, they can make one more choice, to use the meta penny to prevent the sticky end; but it could well be argued that their ability to do so makes the preceding choices that lead to that situation far less meaningful.

That's an interesting angle, for sure.

I think it's about intent and choice at the player level, right? Do I as the player get to choose if my character lives or dies? Will that matter to play? Is this the kind of game that allows for this to be a meaningful choice?

What are the implications of my character dying? How could the game go differently if he dies here? How can the game proceed if he doesn't die?

Chances are, I'll factor all these thoughts into my decision, and I'll choose what I want to see happen.

Maybe I want to let my character die here, and then introduce another character. Maybe the group is affected by the loss of a member, and that plays into how things go from there. Maybe the new character I introduce will have a different sort of influence on the group. Maybe a change in class or heritage or similar aspect brings in elements to the game that had not previously been a part of it.

Maybe I want my character to live. How does this near death experience change him? Does it? Will his standing or position in the group shift at all? Will his outlook or beliefs or drives change? Will that impact the group, and how things go from this point? Is the character now afraid of death? Does that mean his behavior changes, and does that impact the party? Maybe he's traumatized by the event, but somehow thinks he didn't die because he's invincible, and now he rushes headlong into every danger, putting the party at greater risk more often.

If it's up to me as the player to decide if he lives or dies, it would seem I have a good deal of agency over how the fiction proceeds, no?

Assuming that the game allows for me to influence such things and the GM and other players don't just say "Damn, Tor just got roasted. Make another guy. Maybe a cleric?"