A Question Of Agency?

[Crimson Longinus]

It seems to me that the rules are the means by which players tend to exercise their agency on the game. Absent the rules, what let's them effect change? The most common answer is that the GM lets them do so. And if something I want is ultimately up to another to decide, it's hard to argue that I have a lot of agency in the situation.

If the GM adjudicates the situations well, respecting the agreed upon themes of the game, doing their best to keep the game fun for everybody then you have plenty of agency. And if you don't trust them to do that, why are you playing with them?

I think that's what it boils down to.

And for clarity, by "rules" I don't just mean mechanics, but also processes and/or techniques of play.

I mean if you define 'rules' vaguely enough that we are actually just talking about principles, then sure.

 

[prabe]

I'm not sure why you would "come to regret this?"

Because I kinda backed out of this and don't really feel like arguing about it again. Arguing about gaming has a tendency to beat up my ability to enjoy it (and arguing about GMing is likely to work as a block on my ability to do the prep my table and I expect me to have by Wednesday).

For clarity, when I refer to "system" I mean every single thing that is in that book, so Principles (or lackthereof) must be included. Holistic, intentful design is extremely important to me.

That's clear and reasonable. I guess I'm willing to take things I like from where I find them, and leave the things I don't like behind.

 

[Lanefan]

It occurs to me that we have slightly differing notions of 'game state' here. I would say that opening a trivial door, for example, which leads to nothing, and doesn't change the fiction in any real way is, at best, an utterly trivial change. For practical purposes, working from the narrative fictional positioning perspective which is how I normally think of these games, it isn't really a change at all. In, say, 1e AD&D it might accrue some minor significance as some resources and a wandering monster check might take place. Even 2e lacks these processes and its ethos would fairly say "just get on with it."

So, you see 'agency' here, but I see nothing. Even if the door HAS significance, how it is opened is FAIRLY trivial and doesn't involve any real agency, given that the significance is the same no matter how it happens.

In the eyes of the GM, yes. In the eyes of the players/PCs, however, for some reason that door has become significant; and who am I to deny them the opportunity to work themselves into a tizzy over nothing?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In the eyes of the GM, yes. In the eyes of the players/PCs, however, for some reason that door has become significant; and who am I to deny them the opportunity to work themselves into a tizzy over nothing?

The strength of less-prep dependant and more improvisational style is that when that happen you can make that nothing to actually be something!

 

[hawkeyefan]

If the GM adjudicates the situations well, respecting the agreed upon themes of the game, doing their best to keep the game fun for everybody then you have plenty of agency.

Not really. Someone could run a pure railroad and respect themes and do their best to keep the game fun for everyone.

And if you don't trust them to do that, why are you playing with them?

I likely wouldn’t be, but I’m not trying to discuss this solely from my own view.

Lots of people play in public games or in pick up games over the internet or at conventions...or they play with actual friends who may or may not be the best at playing or GMing. They could be in a game with a new GM, watching them learn the ropes.

There could be lots of reasons people would be playing with GMs who may not be great at everything.

I mean if you define 'rules' vaguely enough that we are actually just talking about principles, then sure.

No I mean actual principles put forth in the rule book. They aren’t rules per se, but they clearly lay out what to do and what not to do as a player and a GM.

You’ve probably heard a lot of them here in this thread; “play to find out” and “say yes or roll the dice” are two of the big ones. I quite like “ask questions and build on the answers” and “hold on lightly”. Those have been really helpful to me.

 

[Lanefan]

If you're actively listening, then you shouldn't be forgetting. As you are forgetting, then you likely weren't listening to begin with.

Listening is one thing. Remembering is another, particularly after I've then listened to ten more things.

That said, I don't think the stop would be particularly hard or any harder than players jotting down notes or adjustments on their character sheet.

A player tuning out for a moment to write something down doesn't stop the game. The GM tuning out does.

And if PCs are spending two hours talking between themselves about opening doors, then you should have plenty of time to write.

Yes, when times like that arise I've got time to do whatever the hell I want. But they don't arise that often...

I'm not a fan of explanations that rely on exceptionalism, because they beg to be disproven through evidence, and they often are as exceptionalism is seldom true. This is something, for example, Hasbro discovered when they did research on how people play Monopoly and the house rules people used. How many times when playing Uno with strangers is spent clarifying house rules? Or how about variations of sports, whether on the professional or amateur level? Hard and fast rules are often guidelines when it comes to a number of games. RPGs are not an exception. Stop trying to privilege your hobby.

Perhaps the only place I've ever encountered the idea of house rules* outside of RPGs is Monopoly, and then it was just one variant.

* - as opposed to where the rules say "choose one of these several options", as any of those options is still within the rules as written.

But I think that you nevertheless miss my meaning. I think that rules and rules interactions should be meaningful. Rules get in the way, for example, every time that you roll the dice in PbtA because it forces a hard move or soft move by the GM or at least a new state of fiction. The rules get in the way when you play BitD because the rules require that the GM establishes the Position and Effect based upon the action of the PCs. But these rules create meaningful and purposeful game play, such that it cultivates a different experience from playing a D&D game of a thieves' guild in a city.

I'm thinking more of rules getting in the way when I-as-player am engaged in role-playing my character arguing with the Baron and the rules pull me out of character to roll some social-interaction dice. To quote the colour-guy from the Toronto Raptors' TV broadcasts every time a Raptor blocks a shot: "Get that gaaabage outta hee!"

 

[Lanefan]

And I would say that anyone claiming too many rules is a problem and then expounding about D&D being an ideal example of a game is very strange! I mean, pretty close to every narrative game out there has 10x less rules than 5e D&D does...

Fair point, though even within D&D there's versions that are significantly more rules-heavy (3e) than others (0e), and any of 1e, 2e or 5e can be made somewhat rules-lighter than written without a whole lot of work (5e even presents options on how to do so).

But yeah, none of 'em would ever qualify as truly "rules-light" ..

 

[Lanefan]

@Lanefan , your TTRPGing tastes and positions taken are LARP-influenced as well or no?

Not specifically - the only LARP-like thing I've ever done was Braunstein, and that was 30+ years after I started playing D&D. Oh, and one 'True Dungeon' knock-off at GenCon around the same time.

That said, on thinking about it there's little doubt some influence comes from the (dubiously-successful-at-best!) stage-acting I did for several years in high school.

Edit to add: role-player vs roll-player certainly comes up in our crew, and never in a friendly manner.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not so sure about that... I know it was done fairly commonly in the late 1970's, because I was part of a game club that had 200+ members, and that was exactly how it worked! There was a shared world, various GMs ran adventures and the milieu included a whole level of play that was just people raising armies, fighting wars, etc. Most of the individual adventuring was driving towards that. Higher level PCs adventured to eliminate threats, or to gain treasures that would help them with their empires. Other adventures were mostly involving lesser ranked characters who were either in service to the 'big guys' (former henchmen turned PC usually) or at least they were getting quests from those name level and higher PCs (often, not always).

And I gamed all up and down the West Coast during the same period, and while people occasionally had homesteads of some kind (a castle, an inn they owned, one of my characters had a ship) management of same was never a big part of it. Given the spread of that, I'm pretty comfortable saying what I said, unless you want to claim wide areas of California, Oregon and Washington were aberrational (they were in some ways certainly, in that they largely grew out of SF fandom with some wargamers mixed in rather than the inverse you got around Lake Geneva, but I don't think that's the answer by itself). In addition I was in communication with some scattered groups in other areas (notably around MIT) and the situation was not vastly different with them.

I suspect it was pretty analogous to the 'Lake Geneva Tactical Game Society' "Great Kingdom" campaign, which is memorialized in Gygax's WoG product from CA 1982.

Now, who can really say what people were doing in CA? That was the land of 'Arduin Grimoire' and they did invent a bunch of different play styles. I've also heard of other significantly 'variant' types of 'D&D' that were played in the 70's in different places. Usually it was some particularly energetic and imaginative DM. Still, even a lot of these included strongholds and armies and such as elements of play. Wilderlands of High Fantasy was certainly set up with that in mind (this was the first commercial game world AFAIK).

Included, yes. Focused on it to the exclusion of dungeon crawling and outdoor adventuring, no.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And I would say that anyone claiming too many rules is a problem and then expounding about D&D being an ideal example of a game is very strange! I mean, pretty close to every narrative game out there has 10x less rules than 5e D&D does...

Honestly, even some pretty rules heavy games do unless you don't consider the wide swath of exception based bits rules.