A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

But why? What I don’t understand is the immediate assumption that something’s boring just because it has to do with someone else’s character.

Like this necromancer story you have....I imagine the PC who has the book finds this situation compelling in some way. Is everyone else bored with it?

Stories are interesting or boring independent of being connected to one’s character, I’d expect. Do the players really begrudge someone else getting a little more focus as a reason to check out?

Well, this is why DW has 'bonds', in part. It provides clear linkages between the agendas of the different PCs. The players develop them, so it is really up to them how any given character's 'stuff' ties in to the rest of the party. This aspect is also pretty commonly present in other games, even 5e, where there are somewhat formalized background elements, or just in the admonitions in a lot of games to tie PC backgrounds together or create some sort of shared story logic to explain why the heck they all keep associating.

OD&D had troupe play instead, there was no permanent character roster, and the makeup of any given group was always more about agendas and which characters were not otherwise occupied at the time (hence Gygax's famous decree that time must be tracked or else!).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Can challenges and agency exist in the real life? In the real life the universe external to you is not controlled by you. How is this different from a situation where the universe external to your character is controlled by the GM?

Well, challenges exist for people in real life, and they DO make choices about what matters to them. I mean, there seems to me to be a huge difference in that real life is simply something that IS, we don't accept it or not accept it. There isn't another real life down the road we can go play in.

RPGs are clearly very different. I don't have to play in your game if you run it in such a way that I have no input into the various elements making it up beyond telling you how my PC moves his arms legs, and lips. I can go play in @pemerton's game where I can do other things. Since it is a pastime, I would do exactly that, probably. Life isn't a pastime.

So, yeah, if you want to run a life simulator, then go for it, but I don't think it will be particularly realistic, and I don't see the point. As I said in one of my other posts just now, you won't do this anyway, all you can really argue about is 'level of detail.' Beyond that, even in trad games I see very strong indications of players pushing things to where they want to go, it just isn't formalized. Nobody narrates every second of a PC's life, or every trivial decision they make, so a lot of that is simply left to the player to imagine (or not bother to imagine).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, challenges exist for people in real life, and they DO make choices about what matters to them. I mean, there seems to me to be a huge difference in that real life is simply something that IS, we don't accept it or not accept it. There isn't another real life down the road we can go play in.

RPGs are clearly very different. I don't have to play in your game if you run it in such a way that I have no input into the various elements making it up beyond telling you how my PC moves his arms legs, and lips. I can go play in @pemerton's game where I can do other things. Since it is a pastime, I would do exactly that, probably. Life isn't a pastime.

So, yeah, if you want to run a life simulator, then go for it, but I don't think it will be particularly realistic, and I don't see the point. As I said in one of my other posts just now, you won't do this anyway, all you can really argue about is 'level of detail.' Beyond that, even in trad games I see very strong indications of players pushing things to where they want to go, it just isn't formalized. Nobody narrates every second of a PC's life, or every trivial decision they make, so a lot of that is simply left to the player to imagine (or not bother to imagine).

The purpose is not to be particularly realistic, but yes, the purpose is to create an illusion of an alternate reality and an alternate life in it. This doesn't mean it cannot be an interesting and dramatic part of someone's life in and world where weird things happen. The purpose is for the player to use agency in similar(ish) manner than a person in real life would.

But yes, you definitely should rather play in Pemerton's game than in mine, as your tastes seem to be similar.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

LONG ago (several years, maybe A FEW years) didn't we have a thread, where the example was something about meeting some dwarves, and then deciding to go on a mission for the dwarves, something something. The upshot was someone, @Lanefan or maybe it was someone else, being convinced that you were railroading the players if you didn't describe every single detail of pretty much everything such that there was a choice to open this or that uninteresting door, etc. even if it had nothing to do with the story and lead noplace anyone had expressed any real interest in.

So, there is your answer. If the agenda is not "resolving the dramatic tension inherent in the PC's conflicts" or something along those lines, then it must basically be "inhabiting someone else's life" and every detail needs to be there. Of course this logic falls apart a bit on closer inspection, because nobody is gaming the choice of which of the row of three privies to frequent, or when to drink some water, or etc. So, clearly, the argument here is over "Level of Detail", with the more narrative agenda being happy to skip over, or at most summarize, any activity which isn't directly germane to that agenda (IE any doors which lead to uninteresting places are either narrated as "you find nothing interesting here", or simply never mentioned/don't exist). Other people, who also interestingly cluster in the "GM is the only narrative authority" camp, want to game out more details, although I don't know exactly what it is that the criteria is for what can be elided.

Maybe this focus on detail is just a way of recovering some form of agency for the players? I mean, if you spend much of your time deciding if the dwarf rides the pony or not, or what type of soup you ask for at the inn, etc. then clearly the GM is unlikely to impose something. I think, at least in some cases, this is the reason. GMs, at least IME, at this juncture are likely to 'blow things up', that is forcefully refocus at some point onto some less fine-grained agenda (IE while you're eating your soup an army of orcs shows up at the front gates, or something like that). I well recall a GM of bygone days for whom this was a trademark type of move. Honestly it wasn't a bad technique, but it smacks a lot more of scene framing than anything else!

In any case, if you look at things at different scales of granularity, there may be less difference between one style and another, in play, but a LOT of difference in terms of the ultimate trajectory of the game.

This is an interesting post. How things are framed affects massively the direction of the game and as such is pretty damn relevant to the agency. I really wouldn't bother to describe every doorknob and I occasionally use rather aggressive framing. But I'm not sure that a game where the GM describes pretty much everything and the characters can freely react to that wouldn't be a very high-agency game. Super boring probably though. Is it decent agency if you get to make a lot of boring decisions?

 

[Thomas Shey]

OK. This is consistent, though I'm not sure I agree with such definition of agency. But were I to agree with your definition, then I would definitely agree with your second point.

Note my earlier distinction between "player" and "character" agency. Its important in the context of how I answered.

 

[Manbearcat]

LONG ago (several years, maybe A FEW years) didn't we have a thread, where the example was something about meeting some dwarves, and then deciding to go on a mission for the dwarves, something something. The upshot was someone, @Lanefan or maybe it was someone else, being convinced that you were railroading the players if you didn't describe every single detail of pretty much everything such that there was a choice to open this or that uninteresting door, etc. even if it had nothing to do with the story and lead noplace anyone had expressed any real interest in.

So, there is your answer. If the agenda is not "resolving the dramatic tension inherent in the PC's conflicts" or something along those lines, then it must basically be "inhabiting someone else's life" and every detail needs to be there. Of course this logic falls apart a bit on closer inspection, because nobody is gaming the choice of which of the row of three privies to frequent, or when to drink some water, or etc. So, clearly, the argument here is over "Level of Detail", with the more narrative agenda being happy to skip over, or at most summarize, any activity which isn't directly germane to that agenda (IE any doors which lead to uninteresting places are either narrated as "you find nothing interesting here", or simply never mentioned/don't exist). Other people, who also interestingly cluster in the "GM is the only narrative authority" camp, want to game out more details, although I don't know exactly what it is that the criteria is for what can be elided.

Maybe this focus on detail is just a way of recovering some form of agency for the players? I mean, if you spend much of your time deciding if the dwarf rides the pony or not, or what type of soup you ask for at the inn, etc. then clearly the GM is unlikely to impose something. I think, at least in some cases, this is the reason. GMs, at least IME, at this juncture are likely to 'blow things up', that is forcefully refocus at some point onto some less fine-grained agenda (IE while you're eating your soup an army of orcs shows up at the front gates, or something like that). I well recall a GM of bygone days for whom this was a trademark type of move. Honestly it wasn't a bad technique, but it smacks a lot more of scene framing than anything else!

In any case, if you look at things at different scales of granularity, there may be less difference between one style and another, in play, but a LOT of difference in terms of the ultimate trajectory of the game.

Here is my theory on this (and you've heard this before):

You've got a group (likely the majority or at least a very large swell) of D&D players (GMs included here) that are cobbling together a huge number of D&D-isms that are often at tension, while simultaneously having left some/a lot of the necessary codified teeth of these D&D-isms behind which give the decisions actual meaning in the greater framework of play.

Constituent parts of this:

1) All doors (used here as a broad stand-in for discovery points or exploration bottlenecks) potentially need to have meaning/purpose because "time is (allegedly) a resource." HOWEVER, the structure of play has simultaneously removed (a) the tracked and table-facing Exploration Turn as the primary unit of play (replete with all of its attendant management and load-out decisions) and/or (b) there is no "wandering monsters/obstacle clock" and no "required rest cycle" (both of which are integrated with the Exploration Turn structure).

In its place you have (c) a roughly opaque, hand-waved kept time (which is no longer a codified unit of play) but (d) no integrated (and table-facing) pressure ("clocks/rest cycle").

Because this tech has been excised (or hand-waved to the point of meaninglessness because all of its teeth are gone), something must supplant it...

2) Cue "high resolution is better than lower resolution/process-sim interests" + "people are better simulators than game engines!" Supplant the prior design and aesthetic with this new approach. So we've kept the play-priority at the very top of (1) but removed the structure that actually makes it work and in its place we've anointed "GM as abstract world simulator" + "player buy-in" = roughly the same thing (or better!) as (a) and (b) above. Except its not. Its not "better" and its definitely not the same thing. Its entirely different.

3) Couple (1) and (2) above with the well-known reality that the "delve model" that works so well in Basic comes apart when outside of the dungeon (wilderness and urban environments) and as level creep occurs because the setting/situations and the attendant decision-points have so many more axes + spellcasting power creep begins outright obviating a huge number of obstacles/conflicts = the play loop comes apart entirely.

4) Now, Dragonlance + 2e + White Wolf metaplot/setting and genre tourism + "immersion/verisimilitude as apex play priority" introduces the "GM as storyteller" agenda to D&D proper. So now we have D&D players who want to bolt-on an entirely new (and deeply at tension with an existing structure that is already bursting or has burst if you're out of the dungeon/level 5+) play priority and aesthetic. However, the existing structure and infrastructure doesn't support it at all (and, again, is at tension with it in many plays), so we give the GM more authority/overhead; "GM as abstract world simulator" "GM as metaplot and/or setting/genre tour guide" + "player buy-in" = roughly the same thing (or better!) as (a) and (b) above. Except, again, its not. Its not "better" and its definitely not the same thing. Its entirely different.

5) Trying to juggle legacy play artifacts (which are still wanted) with disparate machinery and play agenda and now we've finally arrived at "Force and Illusionism are required to keep the whole thing together". The problem with that is Force and Illusionism fundamentally violate the skilled play agenda of (1) above.

6) Cue the "rules need to get out of the way" and "system doesn't matter" ethoi.

---

Roughly put:

* A properly run Moldvay Basic game and a properly run 4e game plays and feels absolutely nothing like one of these games.

* Competing agendas and system that is at tension (at best) with one or more agendas need to be curated and holistically integrated to better serve the players...or stripped down and supplanted by "GM sorts all this stuff out + we buy in" and happily lived with.

 

[pemerton]

Can challenges and agency exist in the real life? In the real life the universe external to you is not controlled by you. How is this different from a situation where the universe external to your character is controlled by the GM?

I don't understand what your point is - nor did I the last time you asked this question.

I expect to have more agency in my leisure pursuits than my work. That's part of what makes them leisure!

To draw a starker comparison: if someone were a filing clerk during the day who wrote short stories in the evening as a form of leisure and release, I would hardly expect that person to ring up her/his boss to get directions on what to put in the stories!

You also seem to be confused about attributions of causality across the real world and the fiction. In the fictional world that the character inhabits, what is the cause of things? The gods? Some more abstract fate? Impersonal, non-teleological processes of the sort that contemporary science describes? That will depend on the details of the RPG and campaign being played.


Only in a game that involves breaking the fourth wall (eg Over the Edge) will the GM of the campaign - who is a person in the real world doing real things - also be an element of the fictional world. I've never myself played a game like that. Thus, in the BW campaign that I play, the immediate cause of Evard's tower being where it was when my characters found it was (I believe) Evard; and the immediate cause of Rufus being where he was when my characters met him was Rufus and the master who directed him to collect wine.

But my understanding of this thread is that it is about players' agency, not about how we imagine the agency of the characters that they play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is an interesting post. How things are framed affects massively the direction of the game and as such is pretty damn relevant to the agency. I really wouldn't bother to describe every doorknob and I occasionally use rather aggressive framing. But I'm not sure that a game where the GM describes pretty much everything and the characters can freely react to that wouldn't be a very high-agency game. Super boring probably though. Is it decent agency if you get to make a lot of boring decisions?

My feeling is that the scale of decisions doesn't really bear on the question of agency, much. So I align with @pemerton, and I think @Manbearcat in terms of putting the axis of agency primarily on which areas of game process the players are able to participate. If their input is strictly limited to whatever their characters could do, then that is not agency over the content or direction of play. At best in such a situation the player can indirectly influence the game by way of urging the GM to present certain types of material, and the GM could potentially oblige with a process similar to the old game show where you pick different curtains to see what is behind, and the GM obliges the players by having choices they want be in the mix.

Frankly, I think players NORMALLY, in a practical sense, except in dysfunctional games, have a significant influence on granularity. However if the GM keeps refocusing on a specific level, either by only hitting certain specific 'interesting' points, or by constantly focusing down on or promoting a focus on minute details, that will tend to undermine that as well. So it requires the whole table to be in cahoots on what is interesting. Not a surprising observation of course! The point being, one or a different level of detail is entirely orthogonal to amount of agency.

Now, if you want to keep a segregation between 'in character' and other forms of player participation, I could see designing a game where the two processes happen in distinct phases. I don't know of a game which works this way, but they may, and certainly could, exist. I think that goes beyond what we're doing in this thread. Maybe we can have a think about that sometime. I like game design discussions, though most of them usually seem stuck in 1980's notions of game structure!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here is my theory on this (and you've heard this before):

You've got a group (likely the majority or at least a very large swell) of D&D players (GMs included here) that are cobbling together a huge number of D&D-isms that are often at tension, while simultaneously having left some/a lot of the necessary codified teeth of these D&D-isms behind which give the decisions actual meaning in the greater framework of play.

Constituent parts of this:

1) All doors (used here as a broad stand-in for discovery points or exploration bottlenecks) potentially need to have meaning/purpose because "time is (allegedly) a resource." HOWEVER, the structure of play has simultaneously removed (a) the tracked and table-facing Exploration Turn as the primary unit of play (replete with all of its attendant management and load-out decisions) and/or (b) there is no "wandering monsters/obstacle clock" and no "required rest cycle" (both of which are integrated with the Exploration Turn structure).

In its place you have (c) a roughly opaque, hand-waved kept time (which is no longer a codified unit of play) but (d) no integrated (and table-facing) pressure ("clocks/rest cycle").

Because this tech has been excised (or hand-waved to the point of meaninglessness because all of its teeth are gone), something must supplant it...

2) Cue "high resolution is better than lower resolution/process-sim interests" + "people are better simulators than game engines!" Supplant the prior design and aesthetic with this new approach. So we've kept the play-priority at the very top of (1) but removed the structure that actually makes it work and in its place we've anointed "GM as abstract world simulator" + "player buy-in" = roughly the same thing (or better!) as (a) and (b) above. Except its not. Its not "better" and its definitely not the same thing. Its entirely different.

3) Couple (1) and (2) above with the well-known reality that the "delve model" that works so well in Basic comes apart when outside of the dungeon (wilderness and urban environments) and as level creep occurs because the setting/situations and the attendant decision-points have so many more axes + spellcasting power creep begins outright obviating a huge number of obstacles/conflicts = the play loop comes apart entirely.

4) Now, Dragonlance + 2e + White Wolf metaplot/setting and genre tourism + "immersion/verisimilitude as apex play priority" introduces the "GM as storyteller" agenda to D&D proper. So now we have D&D players who want to bolt-on an entirely new (and deeply at tension with an existing structure that is already bursting or has burst if you're out of the dungeon/level 5+) play priority and aesthetic. However, the existing structure and infrastructure doesn't support it at all (and, again, is at tension with it in many plays), so we give the GM more authority/overhead; "GM as abstract world simulator" "GM as metaplot and/or setting/genre tour guide" + "player buy-in" = roughly the same thing (or better!) as (a) and (b) above. Except, again, its not. Its not "better" and its definitely not the same thing. Its entirely different.

5) Trying to juggle legacy play artifacts (which are still wanted) with disparate machinery and play agenda and now we've finally arrived at "Force and Illusionism are required to keep the whole thing together". The problem with that is Force and Illusionism fundamentally violate the skilled play agenda of (1) above.

6) Cue the "rules need to get out of the way" and "system doesn't matter" ethoi.

---

Roughly put:

* A properly run Moldvay Basic game and a properly run 4e game plays and feels absolutely nothing like one of these games.

* Competing agendas and system that is at tension (at best) with one or more agendas need to be curated and holistically integrated to better serve the players...or stripped down and supplanted by "GM sorts all this stuff out + we buy in" and happily lived with.

Good historical summary. I would only add that hexcrawl, leading to stronghold play, was a vital evolutionary axis which provided some flexibility in terms of what happened as PCs leveled in the original (1e and earlier/some of the Basic line) game, at least as-written. When your game began to sport PCs of level 7+ they would start moving out of the dungeon proper and move across the landscape, hexcrawling. This has a pretty structured process similar to dungeon crawling in 1e (it is just referred to the AH Survival game in OD&D, though there are encounter matrices available). Once these PCs get into stronghold/tower/whatever development then most of their 'calendar time' becomes absorbed and troupe play is supposed to refocus on their lower level henchmen/associates/alternate PCs, with the 'big boys' only reappearing in person for 'special events'.

The first modules were the G-D-Q series, which are definitely name-level and above. You can see how Gygax approached the problems of expanding character option and the difficulty of maintaining some reasonable form of skilled play. The dungeon simply becomes vast in scale and the opponents highly challenging. Eventually the various scenarios break down into more loosely connected environments, like the Vault of the Drow and its city, where 'anything can happen'. That does take a pretty long time though. Playing through that set of modules is probably a good solid 6 months or more of play! Maybe even years depending on how fast you go.

 

[pemerton]

LONG ago (several years, maybe A FEW years) didn't we have a thread, where the example was something about meeting some dwarves, and then deciding to go on a mission for the dwarves, something something. The upshot was someone, @Lanefan or maybe it was someone else, being convinced that you were railroading the players if you didn't describe every single detail of pretty much everything such that there was a choice to open this or that uninteresting door, etc. even if it had nothing to do with the story and lead noplace anyone had expressed any real interest in.

So, there is your answer. If the agenda is not "resolving the dramatic tension inherent in the PC's conflicts" or something along those lines, then it must basically be "inhabiting someone else's life" and every detail needs to be there.

<snip>

the argument here is over "Level of Detail", with the more narrative agenda being happy to skip over, or at most summarize, any activity which isn't directly germane to that agenda (IE any doors which lead to uninteresting places are either narrated as "you find nothing interesting here", or simply never mentioned/don't exist). Other people, who also interestingly cluster in the "GM is the only narrative authority" camp, want to game out more details, although I don't know exactly what it is that the criteria is for what can be elided.

<snip>

Maybe this focus on detail is just a way of recovering some form of agency for the players? I mean, if you spend much of your time deciding if the dwarf rides the pony or not, or what type of soup you ask for at the inn, etc. then clearly the GM is unlikely to impose something.

All the doors, and alleyways, and the like, ultimately don't seem to recover any agency for the players: if the GM is one narrating all of them, and all of what's behind them (door) or in them (alleyways) then all the players are achieving by engaging with them is obliging the GM to narrate more content.

The pony-riding and soup-asking-for is a different matter: as you say, that doesn't appear to be focused so much on triggering GM narration as on identifying a subject-matter of the fiction that the GM will let the players exert some authority over.

What a nightmare! You could hardly get further in stakes from Am I right that Evard's tower is about here somewhere? than Tell me about the differences between you leek and your potato soups, my good tavern-keep!

Of course this logic falls apart a bit on closer inspection, because nobody is gaming the choice of which of the row of three privies to frequent, or when to drink some water, or etc.

<snip>

In any case, if you look at things at different scales of granularity, there may be less difference between one style and another, in play, but a LOT of difference in terms of the ultimate trajectory of the game.

On levels of detail, and which to elide: I still think that this is a case of the Gygaxian form enduring past its original function.

The classic dungeon has two characteristics relevant to this particular discussion: (1) it is very sparse/austere in its detail - all its relevant architecture and contents can be spelled out in a workable, human-generated and managed, key; (2) establishes a definite sense of what is relevant and what is not.

That second is a function of tradition as much as anything, but the traditions seems to be quickly established and pretty easily teachable. For instance, doors, floor, ceilings are important in terms of their role in entry, egress, traps etc. But generally the colour of these things is not relevant - which we quickly learn from the absence of descriptions of colour of things in the sample dungeons in Gygax's DMG, Moldvay Basic etc.

Likewise we don't need to write down in the key, nor narrate at the table, every crack or lip or uneven finish in a wall: that only matters to finding secret doors or climbing walls, and in both cases can be subsumed into the roll for success.

And if a GM starts narrating the colour of room ceilings, or the cracks in the walls, that's a sign that these matter in a way they typically don't.

Where things start to go haywire is the GM who thinks one day I might run a dungeon where the ceiling colours matter and so, to avoid meta-gaming, I'm going to narrate the colour of every ceiling from the get-go. Generalise that to everything else one can conceive of being relevant - cracks in walls, poorly-finished stonework, etc - and we get an absolute nightmare. Take this out of the dungeon and into any realistically inhabited place, and it gets worse - do we really have to key, and then narrate, every bucket, bale of straw, etc in every inn and every peasant hovel?

The same point applies beyond rooms and their contents: in principle every occupant of a dungeon is established in the key and has a place on the map, but how do we handle that for a farmstead, or a village, let alone a town or city?

At which point there seem to be two main ways of going: (1) endless back-and-forth between players and GM which has the superficial appearance of action declaration and resolution but really is just the players triggering narration from the GM (what's in the room? can we find a person who will help us with such-and-such? etc etc); or (2) find a completely different approach to establishing these essentially trivial or background details that become salient only when the players express some interest in them.

There's more than one version of option (2): AW and DW do it differently from Burning Wheel or Classic Traveller, for instance. But what all have in common is that they abandon any pretence to map-and-key resolution.

EDIT: I just read @Manbearcat's post not far upthread. We seem to be on very much the same page.