A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

Not specifically, perhaps, but you've intuited the larger point:



I think @Crimson Longinus is trying to draw some sort of parallel about our individual philosophies about agency in the real world as shaping our gaming agendas, but I think any such point is tenuous, at best.

Well it strikes me that some form of determinism is obviously true, in the sense that human behaviour, like other animal behaviour, is the consequence of interactions between biochemical processes and external input/stimuli. Whether this is compatible with free will (along GE Moore lines - ie that free will simply equals would have acted otherwise, had I chosen to do so) I don't have a firm view on, given I haven't read any of that literature for over 20 years.

If we move from metaphysics to sociology, it's clear to me that I - as described in my post upthread - have more agency than (say) a peasant farmer or a factory worker: it's true that the farmer has a degree of immediate control over their economic and social life that I lack (given I live in a mass society), but that immediate control is utterly blunted by the bigger picture inability of a peasant society to control its own conditions of existence. Conversely, the factory worker is part of a society that is able to exercise that sort of control, but s/he is not having much say over it. In that sense, at least, I'm a classic middle class intellectual.

I don't see that any of this has much bearing on the analysis of RPGing, though, for the reasons I and @Manbearcat have posted. RPGing is a leisure activity, like other gaming. Some games involve no agency beyond the choice to participate (eg Snakes and Ladders); others do. I don't really want my leisure time to be spent hearing what someone else thinks makes for an exciting fiction. I've got ideas of my own I'm keen to pursue!

I don't understand why you are talking about triggering the GM to reading their notes. I have not advocated for that. Most of the time I don't even have notes.

Hence "if nothing has been written, to ad lib something as if it had been written up".

The fiction comes from somewhere. Either the player narrates it, or the GM narrates it. There are various ways to allocate that task, and to set constraints on it. What you are arguing for is unless the fiction is the player's character performing an action, the GM narrates it. So all the player can do is say I do X and then trigger the GM to say something in response.

As I said, it's a structured version of Dad, tell us a story about XYZ.

I don't know how the combat rules of games like D&D and Runequest fit into your model - I'm guessing that you don't resolve I attack the Orc with my spear by just expecting the GM to make something up in response, even though the Orc is (in the fiction) a part of the external world which is outside the character's control and hence, per your account, fictions about the Orc are to be established by the GM and not the player of the character.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Lanefan, your claim here is simply not true.

Actual play example: in Burning Wheel, my PC's sidekick has the Belief I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse. That establishes an agenda. Then I delcare an action for her: I think I recall that Evard's tower is around here. The resolution of that action will geneate something that is germane to that agenda. As it happens, I succeeded on the check and so what happened was we came upon Evard's tower. Had it failed, the rules of the game require the GM to introduce something into the fiction that will challenge the character's Belief while not giving effect to her intent - so maybe we stumble upon Evard's tower but see someone heading off with all the spellbooks in a cart, or maybe we find the tower but it is locked with the books inside, or . . .

Another example: the PCs in my Classic Traveller game are trying to disrupt a bioweapons conspiracy. They are in orbit about the world of Enlil - one hub of the conspiracy - en route to Olyx, where the chief conspirators are based. I roll a starship encounter - there is a patrol cruiser arriving at Enlil. Consistently with my self-imposed agenda, I (i) decide that this vessel contains conspirators, who (ii) have travelled from Olyx, and (iii) broadcast sufficient information to the starport authorities on Enlil that the players are able to infer (i) and (ii).

This followed on from a patron encounter in the previous session, where the encountered patron was determined - by rolling - to be a diplomat, and I had narrated this patron's purpose in approaching and engaging with the PCs to have them assist against the conspiracy by travelling to Olyx.

In other words, everything that is introduced into the fiction as part of the game engine's devices to propel things forward - patron encounters, starship encounters, etc - is germane to the players' agenda for their PCs.

And I certainly didn't decide how the PCs' interactions with the conspiracy would resolve!

Right. So you want to roll dice for things that many GMs are capable of coming up without the rules telling them to. Introducing elements that are related to the characters' motivations, challenge their values etc is pretty basic gamemastering regardless of what rules you are or aren't using. Dice rolling in itself does not really increase anyone's agency. But if it works for you, then that's great.

 

[pemerton]

In real life you also have an imagination. This imagination allows you to...

...imagine your PC having all those senses, inputs and cognitions noted above as 1) and then use what you imagine your PC perceiving through those inputs/cognitions to inform what you have that PC do, and why.

Which means [your PC in the fiction vis-a-vis the game world] and [you in real life vis-a-vis the world around you] can thus be seen as at least vague equivalents; and I think* this is what @Crimson Longinus is trying to get at: that because you in the real world can't create hills to the north just by saying they exist, nor should your character in the fiction be able to.

* - CL, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.

This is all confused.

In @AbdulAlhazred's example, the character is not creating hills to the north. S/he is remembering them. And the player is imagining that s/he is remembering them.

And of course the character in the imagined world is (more-or-less) like me in real life. That's why s/he can remember things.

 

[darkbard]

Well it strikes me that some form of determinism is obviously true, in the sense that human behaviour, like other animal behaviour, is the consequence of interactions between biochemical processes and external input/stimuli.

Absolutley; I didn't mean to imply any disregard for determinism in the way you outline it. That said, we're a long way from the Unified Theory of Deterministic Preferences in RPG Aesthetics.

I don't see that any of this has much bearing on the analysis of RPGing

That is the greater point, with which I wholeheartedly concur!

 

[hawkeyefan]

As long as they're talking in-character I'd never want to curtail it.

Oh man. Hours of people talking in character about how to open a door. Like I said....even Tolkien knew to skip to the point.

Where had that been part of an RPG where Frodo etc. were all PCs I'd expect all of it to be played out, at least in terms of everyone's ideas and possible solutions and so forth. This is where play of an RPG differs from reading a book or watching a film; particularly as in an RPG the party in this case would be free to make other choices (e.g. go somewhere else, or abandon the mission, or whatever) absent knowledge of the future, while in the book Tolkein already knows what the future holds and just has to get there.

If it takes more than a few minutes to decide what the options are, then I’ll likely try and speed things up a bit, for sure. Not to deny anyone some input, but to keep the game moving. I’d just summarize the established options, and maybe add one of my own or two, depending on the circumstances.

In this case I don't have to worry about that, as it's a one-player game!
Often yes, IME.

It's not that someone's getting more focus in itself, though, it's what that focus is on. If a single PC is off scouting for the party and thus all the focus is on her then everyone's cool with it. But if a single PC is playing out his family drama that has nothing to do with the party, then yeah...it's check-out time.

I don’t mean having extended solo scenes between one player and the GM while everyone watches. I mean having an actual adventure of some sort that matters to one or more characters and in which everyone can participate.

Your necromancy book scenario might be a good example of what I’m talking about if there was more than one PC, although I expect it would have come about on a different way.

It's more work up front before the campaign starts, no question there - but (to use one of my favourite phrases) it's work I only have to do once. The payoff is that it means less work later during actual play.

I fear we’re moving further from the topic of agency, but I just don’t see it. I only have to do the work once...when I introduce it into the game. Thereafter, I’ll have to remember it for future reference.

This description would also seem to apply to your months’ ahead of time determination.

Situationally dependent. I suppose it comes down to me advocating for consistency of the fiction, the players advocating for their enjoyment, and we meet in the middle somewhere.

Okay, fair enough. I lean toward always going with the enjoyment of the game, but that’s preference. Thanks for sharing that though, I was curious.

Most of the time I'd already know which way the river flows. Most such information comes simply from the map - where is the high ground, where is the low ground, odds are pretty good a river flows from one to the other.

It's a game, yes, and part of that game involves free-form downtime.

It may. It depends. My 5E downtime isn’s a formal phase of the game or anything, but we tend to handle it in a high level manner, unless there’s a strong reason not to. It’s more like a player declaring a goal, and then we talk about it and decide if it’s something that happens or if a roll of some kind is needed, or what...then we move on.

In Blades in the Dark, Downtime is a formalized phase of play, and has established procedures for any activities the PCs want to pursue. So there are always mechanics involved...but we also tend to roleplay some of these scenes a lot more. This is where I find a lot of the world information and detail that may come up; by asking questions and then building on the answers (this is one of the principles of play offered in the book).

But even the most robust such scene would not dominate an entire session.

 

[pemerton]

Oh man. Hours of people talking in character about how to open a door. Like I said....even Tolkien knew to skip to the point.

<snip>

If it takes more than a few minutes to decide what the options are, then I’ll likely try and speed things up a bit, for sure. Not to deny anyone some input, but to keep the game moving.

Upthread, @chaochou defined player agency, for present purposes, as being able to set and meaningfully pursue the PC's goals.

@Manbearcat defined it as being able to change the gamestate.

Talking in-character about how to open a door - especially if, in fact, the door is a perfectly ordinary door that leads nowhere of any interest to anyone at the table - is not either of those things.

That's not player agency. More like player agony!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is such a weird thing to say. It is like saying that the actions the main character takes have no influence to the direction of the story. This is obviously not the case.

And what bugs me about this discussion is that people just lump all games where the players do not have formal, rule-backed meta control into one category, whilst in reality that is the vast majority of all games being played. There are massive differences in how agency is handled and manifests within that category.

I don't see how they don't all fall within a type. I mean, you LITERALLY right here defined the category! How can you criticize us for caring about this distinction? I mean, you can certainly have your definition of agency where players have agency by the mere fact that they have PCs in the game and play them. Fine, but can you not at least see that when that is the only thing the players have (at least formally) as a role within the game that there are many things they are excluded from, and that those things are pretty reasonably also considered under the rubric of 'agency'? I think that is a very reasonable position to take. Beyond that, again, we consider this distinction to be the one upon which we make a significant division between RPGs. So it isn't 'just lumping', it is focusing on what matters to us, and the distinction IS meaningful, regardless of what terminology you use.

Isn't this just playing the game traditionally from in-character perspective and then chatting after the game what was cool and interesting and the GM taking that into account for the future? (And I'm stuck to 90's at most, though more likely to noughties!)

Well, I am of the school of thought that games should be explicit about their process and agenda, and their mechanics. I mean, sure, we could play D&D this way, in an informal sense. Lots of people probably do! That is still not quite the same as explicitly playing a game which puts that into 'rules'. I tend to prefer the latter. Maybe, long ago, there was a time when I hadn't conceived of such mechanics (hadn't witnessed them in explicit enough form to realize they could exist, I'm no genius) and just saying "we're playing D&D like so" would have been the pinnacle of what I could think of. That day is long past, so something like 5e doesn't satisfy me anymore. I mean, I can play it, but that is more because I'm kind of easy-going when it comes right down to it, not because it is what I REALLY want from a game.

 

[Lanefan]

Upthread, @chaochou defined player agency, for present purposes, as being able to set and meaningfully pursue the PC's goals.

@Manbearcat defined it as being able to change the gamestate.

Their ability to change the gamestate (in this case, by opening a door) isn't in question.

Might be different if the door was locked and they didn't have a key, but let's for these purposes say they've good reason to believe the door is unlocked (e.g. there is no lock present) and unbarred.

Talking in-character about how to open a door - especially if, in fact, the door is a perfectly ordinary door that leads nowhere of any interest to anyone at the table - is not either of those things.

It is, in that they're talking about whether they want to change the gamestate or leave it as it is. And unless I-as-GM have something come through the door from the other side and force their hand (and, by the by, impinge a bit on their agency), it's entirely their decision to make.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You think that you you have narrative-level meta control of your life in the real life? Or perhaps that you have no agency in the real life? The latter of course if perfectly possible in a sense that free will could be an illusion, but in that case no agency could exist in a game played by individuals lacking free will either, so whole point is moot. The former seems exceedingly unlikely.

I think the position they (@pemerton anyway) are taking, and which I fundamentally agree with, is that the game doesn't 'exist' in the same sense that real life does. Furthermore, the game IS a part of real life. If we have agency in real life (free will) then whatever rules and process we accept when we do something (play a game) is clearly giving up some, or even all, of that to someone else. Since characters REALLY do not exist, and thus cannot have agency themselves, it is a category error to say that they do, or to compare what they don't have to what we may/may not have in the real world.

I 'get' what kind of comparison you are trying to make, but it isn't meaningful. I can't have agency as a player because my PC has 'pretend agency' in the game. I can have some agency in that I am allowed, by the game 'rules', to direct the PC's actions in the fiction. However, I do see this as the uttermost minimum of agency that can formally exist in games and still have players that are playing at all (they would otherwise just be an audience). So it is pretty meaningless to talk about how this is a lot of agency. It is rock bottom in that scale.

 

[Lanefan]

If it takes more than a few minutes to decide what the options are, then I’ll likely try and speed things up a bit, for sure. Not to deny anyone some input, but to keep the game moving. I’d just summarize the established options, and maybe add one of my own or two, depending on the circumstances.

Deciding/determining what the options are doesn't usually take long. Deciding which of those options to pursue can sometimes take ages, depending often on the particular mix of players and-or characters at the time.

I don’t mean having extended solo scenes between one player and the GM while everyone watches. I mean having an actual adventure of some sort that matters to one or more characters and in which everyone can participate.

In which case we're probably talking about different things. I'm talking about what you refer to as extended solo scenes that may or may not have anything at all to do with adventuring.

An adventure driven by the goals of a single character can be fine; though I've learned the hard way to avoid these as DM because inevitably the key character will die at the first opportunity, leaving the rest of the party doing something (or worse, stuck somewhere*) not of their choosing.

* - the only TPK I've ever DMed was one of these: the adventure was a quest put on one character, the rest of the party came along to help. They got sent to a demi-plane (I was using a 3e-era module whose name I forget at the moment), and once there the quested character perma-died in the very first combat! The rest of the crew said screw the mission and just tried to find a way home, but got wiped out in the process.

I fear we’re moving further from the topic of agency, but I just don’t see it. I only have to do the work once...when I introduce it into the game.

Cumulatively, I think it's more work: each time you introduce something you have to vet it against all that has gone before to make sure it fits. When doing it ahead of time all that vetting can be done in one fell swoop.

Probably worth noting that when I'm doing all this I'm designing with intent of a campaign lasting five or ten or fifteen years and trying to come up with something that'll hold up that long. Were I just designing for a single AP or a short campaign I wouldn't be nearly as fussy with it.

It may. It depends. My 5E downtime isn’s a formal phase of the game or anything, but we tend to handle it in a high level manner, unless there’s a strong reason not to. It’s more like a player declaring a goal, and then we talk about it and decide if it’s something that happens or if a roll of some kind is needed, or what...then we move on.

It's not formalized here anything like it is in, say, BitD; but it happens regardless for a number of reasons:

--- treasury valuation and division. Party treasuries are identified, valued and divided in town, and this process can take several days in-game and sometimes two sessions at the table particularly if a player misses a session and can't do their claiming.
--- training. This doesn't take long at the table but often takes 7-15 in-game days, plus any travel required.
--- other stuff. This can include personal matters for a PC e.g. family stuff; catching up on news and developments here and elsewhere; interacting with other parties or characters (in a multi-party game) and maybe switching characters in and out; looking for the next mission if one hasn't already presented itself; characters playing practical jokes on each other, etc.; all on top of the usual wine, (wo)men and song that adventurers seek out during downtime. Amount of both table time and in-game time these things take is highly variable; sometimes near zero, other times quite a lot.