A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes - that's one minor mechanic in a book otherwise filled with combat and exploration mechanics, which backs my assertion that the designers paid only as much heed to social mechanics as they felt they had to.

I never thought it was minor really. I mean, this was an area where players could open up a whole other dimension of play. A PC with a high CHA was suddenly like GOD, bribing the orcs, scaring away the kobolds, awing the goblins, making a clever bargain with the Ogres, etc. Heck, we WON B2 with these exact tactics! Honestly, this was the single most important avenue of player input into the game state in classic D&D AFAIK. Combat is highly uncertain and incredibly dangerous. Sneaking around and using clever spells and whatnot can work, too. Just plain knowing the ins and outs of the reaction tables and rolling on in with things stacked in your favor was FAR safer and a more sure bet.

Plus it always felt very consistent with the whole milieu of D&D, where you constantly have reams of humanoids described as working for some NPC or other. Even if your goal was to remove them from the area and destroy their power, the most effective way is to get them to do the hard parts FOR YOU.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heh - we just saw 2e's removal of xp-for-gp as TSR finally catching up to us, as we'd taken it out in about 1983.

We've also made a lot of other changes e.g. ditching weapon speed and weapon-vs-armour-type, removing or greatly raising demi-human level limits, allowing greater multi-class options and putting Humans into the same multi-classing mechanics as demi-humans; but I think if you sat in on a few of our sessions you'd still recognize it as largely hewing to the principles of classic D&D.

Or on second thought maybe you wouldn't, and now I'm quite curious whether we've in fact drifted farther than I realize.

There's a lot of stuff we ignored too. At some point, after playing for many years, we were dead bored of all the low level dungeon crawly stuff anyway and just sat around and made up adventures about our high level PCs. A lot of it still followed the rules, to an extent (combat, but I don't think we ever used speed factors and such). A lot of it was group story kind of stuff. I don't think we really truly played 2e. We used its class rules and THAC0, and that was about all. I honestly don't think we even really read the core books very carefully. Whenever we went back to low level play we also put the XP, training, and exploration rules of 1e into play.

 

[Lanefan]

How can a player make such a comparison to knw the chance of success is better if they went with the dice or just continued to role play a scene?

Easy. The player realizes the role-play is on its way to a crash-and-burn and - hoping the GM hasn't noticed yet - wants to roll.

How is the "required time" for a scene determined?

It's only determined in retrospect, by how long it takes.

But when there's players (or GMs) who aren't willing to spend that time, there's a problem.

Why would a table argument occur?

In a role-play situation that in theory involves the whole party:

Player (usually to another player): "Stop wasting time - just roll!"
Other player: "But this is a cool scene, and I want to play it out!"

Things quickly degenerate from there.

The other one, where it's a single PC in the situation:

Player: "I don't want to go through all this talky stuff - just let me roll."
GM: "If you don't 'go through all this' you're not going to get a chance to roll."

And how is that ever going to end well?

No, it's not the same.

In real life, I don't need someone else to present the information about my new boss to me. There isn't some imperfect filter between me and the real world that I have to reference in order to be able to figure things out.

In real life, my new boss may have every reason to hate me. All logic may say "this guy is awful and should probably be fired"....and yet, maybe I can click with him in some unexpected way. Maybe, despite logic (GM fiat), my boss turns out to like me (a successful Charisma roll).

I've had those bosses; and I earnestly hope I've never been that boss.

That said, there's some people (and I'm thinking of one ex-boss of mine in particular) where no matter how long you work for them you just never quite get a read on what makes them tick. Some people are just inscrutable that way.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure, but it is a really common pitfall, because the GM 'owns' the setting/fiction and thus develops a proprietary relationship with it. Also they are motivated by the fact that everything needs to be prepped. If you just spent the last week writing up the next 3 sessions worth of material, it can be a real bummer to watch it all melt in 10 minutes. NOW you ARE improvising on the fly, but without tools!

This is why I prep my settings so they can grow around the characters. Once things get in motion, the setting evolves a lot. I don't have any end goal in mind, I just sort of unleash the players onto the setting and see where things go once they start interacting with groups, NPCs, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

This. I don't know of any RP games where the player isn't assumed to have primary agency over action declarations of their character.

As designed, this is true.

As played, any sort of hard-railroad type of game or campaign or GM is likely to soon enough play merry hell with that agency, as certain action declarations will either end up banned or forced into certain not-necessarily-logical outcomes just to keep the train on the track.

Which means we can't ever assume that basic level of agency always exists.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure, but it is a really common pitfall, because the GM 'owns' the setting/fiction and thus develops a proprietary relationship with it. Also they are motivated by the fact that everything needs to be prepped. If you just spent the last week writing up the next 3 sessions worth of material, it can be a real bummer to watch it all melt in 10 minutes. NOW you ARE improvising on the fly, but without tools!

It isn't pure improv. There are principles guiding everything and a lot of it hinges on knowing the motivations of groups, NPCs, etc. I take a living world approach. And I don't really plan out adventures as much as situations and characters.

One of my frustrations in gaming was the very thing you point to here (particularly at the height of the early 2000s d20 boom. I just felt like I might as well hand in my GM notes to the players, because the mainstream style of play at the time, and the style they wanted, was very much around prepped adventures, that felt pretty linear to me. That is why I went back to the old books, really read the 1st edition DMG, and started messing around with the older modules and material (as well as the older systems). What that did for me was remind me of some of the things I came to the game for when I first started playing and it helped get me on a path where I was moving away from that frustration and enjoying gaming again. I think the keys for me were emphasizing characters, situations, the concept of the living adventure (this was talked about in the Ravenloft module Feast of Goblyns---which was building off the original Ravenloft adventure concept in that regard), open exploration, dungeon crawls, let the dice fall where they may, etc. Going back to some of those old hex crawls was helpful as well. And experimenting with different approaches to adventure and investigation. My goal was definitely to avoid the problem you are talking about here (because it bugged me probably as much as it bugs you).

 

[Lanefan]

Can we please stop bringing up lack of trust as the reason why people might prefer reflecting social dynamics through game mechanics? Almost everyone in this conversation is a GM. This is not about trust.

I'm not so sure about that. There's one or two here who over time I've come to wonder if their whole underlying issue is one of trust, as in from the player side being either unable or unwilling to trust any GM, probably due to negative experience(s) in the past.

It can't be ignored.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Easy. The player realizes the role-play is on its way to a crash-and-burn and - hoping the GM hasn't noticed yet - wants to roll.

That’s all vague. It’ll vary wildly from GM to GM. It may not be consistently applied. And so on.

It's only determined in retrospect, by how long it takes.

This again is all vague.

And that may be a fine way to run a game....but it certainly doesn’t inform the player a whole lot, and it keeps a lot of things clearly in the hands of the GM.

But when there's players (or GMs) who aren't willing to spend that time, there's a problem.

In a role-play situation that in theory involves the whole party:

Player (usually to another player): "Stop wasting time - just roll!"
Other player: "But this is a cool scene, and I want to play it out!"

Things quickly degenerate from there.

The other one, where it's a single PC in the situation:

Player: "I don't want to go through all this talky stuff - just let me roll."
GM: "If you don't 'go through all this' you're not going to get a chance to roll."

And how is that ever going to end well?

By adults acting like adults?

I've had those bosses; and I earnestly hope I've never been that boss.

That said, there's some people (and I'm thinking of one ex-boss of mine in particular) where no matter how long you work for them you just never quite get a read on what makes them tick. Some people are just inscrutable that way.

One boss like that, huh? But your approach to NPCs would make them all like that, wouldn’t it?

Let me ask you....have you ever surprised yourself? Like, you expect to hate something or someone....but what do you know, you wind up liking them? Have people you know well ever surprised you with their behavior? I would imagine so.

How do you replicate that ability to surprise...to do what’s not most likely or most obvious....with your approach?

As designed, this is true.
As played, any sort of hard-railroad type of game or campaign or GM is likely to soon enough play merry hell with that agency, as certain action declarations will either end up banned or forced into certain not-necessarily-logical outcomes just to keep the train on the track.
Which means we can't ever assume that basic level of agency always exists.

I actually think it’s best to talk about games with the expectation that they’re being played as intended, unless someone tells us otherwise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I didn't say it wasn't but that was a direct response to a poster expressing what seemed like a distrust of GMs consistency ruling on these things. Trust in the GM seems like a big factor in many of these discussions

I don't know if that was me, but I'll absolutely admit that I don't think GMs on the whole are good about consistency when they primarily have to go off their own memory. But then, I've also said before that I'll frankly admit that I don't trust any GM's judgment 100% of the time (including my own) so why should I trust their memory of something that may happen weeks apart?

(I also think when "trust" is used in these kinds of discussions, its usually overloaded; there's a massive difference between trusting someone's intentions and trusting their skills, memory, judgment or execution.)

 

[Aldarc]

I was confused as to what you were referring to until I realized you were talking about D&D. Of course! You must be talking about the Charm, Dominate, Fear, etc line of spells and abilities!

Right? Or is there about to be a "but magic" lampshade placed over this?

Yeah, I'm getting some strong Warlord discussion flashbacks from this.

By adults acting like adults?

Ridiculous. Why would they ever act like adults? They are roleplaying adults in-character, imagining what it would be like to be fully self-actualized adults who can handle social issues responsibly like others do every day outside of gaming.