A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

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?

Those most certainly impact player agency over their character. Of course not having the option of playing a charmed or dominated character could also be viewed as a lack of agency. So I think such abilities need included, provided they make sense in the fictional setting.

So IMO, It boils down to being about how forced altered mental states are best handled in a game while still allowing a player to retain control of the characters Unaltered mental state.

do you view the character as the physical body in the fictional world or as the fictional mind/soul that is animating that character. If your view is the later then domination or charm magic isn’t taking away your agency of the unaltered mind/soul.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'd suggest if you think that, you've been unusually fortunate in your set of encountered players. The rules are only a corner of the social problems that can crop up in a gaming group, and can only address that corner (and even then you have to deal with everyone agreeing what the rules say, agreeing what they're saying is a good idea, and more).

This may be true, for sure, but even when it is, the rules create some kind of starting point. If they are clearly delineated, then there's a framework in place to understand and to engage with.

For instance, my group has long dismissed any kind of encumbrance or carrying capacity rules in D&D. We just find them boring bookkeeping.....so we jettisoned them entirely. What we've put in place can't even be quantified, really, beyond being an appeal to common sense.

Now, getting rid of encumbrance/carrying capacity impacts the game in that the tactical element of having some kind of inventory limit causing decisions of how to best fill it is pretty much gone, or at the very least severely impacted. Is that sufficient reason to not get rid of the rule? Which headache is bigger; all that resource and inventory tracking, or the occasional instance where someone has more stuff than they reasonably should? It's up to the group to decide.

Maybe it gets addressed through the rules: "Hey, you found a bag of holding!" Or maybe it needs a discussion outside of the arena of rules.

And as you say, there's more than just the rules to it.....but they are the framework by which we engage the game. This is why I tend to be advocating for the use of rules and/or set procedures in this thread. It makes things more understandable. It establishes how things are "supposed" to go. Doesn't mean they must go that way.....just that this is the default expectation, unless.

So....encumbrance. We ditched it because we didn't like it. We replaced it with something that is so vague that it not only would be prone to conflict, but it would almost actively promote it. Luckily, inventory was never that big a part of our game that this mattered all that much. Honestly, this kind of worked out okay by total serendipity. We didn't realize the potential impact changing a rule could have, we just did it because no one liked looking up and counting the weight of their items.

But if we were to take a rule in some other area and remove a clearly defined method with a vague one....wow, the impact could have been huge, and likely would have caused all kinds of issues.

(I realize a lot of the above goes well beyond a response to what you posted, but it all seemed connected to the ongoing discussion)

Absolutely. But sometimes its also functionally impossible, and the attempt to do so actually exacerbates the extent problems.

Oh, sure....there will always be instances that go beyond being able to address things reasonably. Always will be exceptions.

If you're reading me as saying "Rules Don't Matter", I'm communicating poorly. As far as I'm concerned they absolutely do. I just think some things within the gaming contract are outside their reach.

No, I think I understand your point. I'm not saying the rules don't matter because obviously opinions on the rules will vary, and if opinions at the same table conflict, then you may have a problem of some sort. I think that very often the solution to this problem is beyond the rules in that a discussion needs to happen, and then a reasonable solution can be worked out.

If such a discussion isn't possible, then I think how to proceed is a bit tricky, but would need input specific to the situation and the actual participants.

 

[Campbell]

I personally take a very dim view to games trying to solve social problems at the table or casting the GM as a parental figure there to mediate conflicts between players. The conflicts games resolve should be conflicts in the fiction and not ones between players' (including the GM) different creative visions. Without functional creative relationships play is a nonstarter for me personally. A shared purpose is a prerequisite for play.

Especially when it comes to character focused play it's no fun if the other people are not into it.

Circling this back to agency I think in order for play to be meaningful our play needs to meaningfully be constrained by other people's play. This can come purely from fictional positioning, but the right mechanics may enhance it. That shared commitment to seeing where things go is essential. Walled off gardens where we only selectively choose how our stuff gets affected by play run counter to the essence of my understanding of agency.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think you've hit on it about the logical bit. It's also likely deemed okay because it builds on something already established by the GM, and still gets filtered through the GM's judgment; I don't know if a GM in such a game would not consider it beyond their ability to render a successful roll to forage effectively a failure by evoking the notes. So it might play out like this:

Player: Ranger is going to forage for food so that we don't starve out here.
GM: Okay, go ahead and roll your Wilderness skill.
Player: Wow, I rolled a 27!
GM: Very nice! You're able to determine with certainty that there is nothing to forage in this area. The flora is all poisonous, so you know not to eat that! And there is an absence of wildlife that is eerily unsettling.
Player: But I rolled a 27!?!
GM: Yeah, but there is nothing here to find; it says so in my description of the Desolate Plains. I mean....they're desolate! You were able to determine that the flora would be dangerous, so at least you don't poison yourselves.

Or something similar. Such an action still gets filtered by the GM and his notes or the module or whatever. And although some folks would say "well that's not how the GM should handle it" there are others who would say "well of course....it's the Desolate Plains, and it was determined ahead of time there was nothing safe to eat there."

And I think that a big part of the problem is that huge variance between results, both of which could be seen as supported by the rules.

Part of this, I think, hinges upon how Actions are viewed. I imagine that the default assumption when a character attempts an Action roll of some kind.....like a Forage check in this example.....most or many folks view the success/fail result to be a result of the character's performance, rather than a property of the fictional world. So if Ranger fails his roll, he has failed to find food. Which seems pretty absurd, except perhaps in the most extreme locations.

Other folks would see such a failed result and decide that it indicates there is no food to be found. So it's not so much that the Ranger failed at the most basic functions of his class, but rather that there wasn't a way for him to succeed in the fiction. This is more about the Action roll helping to shape the fictional world rather than just the character. And in many cases, I think this is preferable; I know I'd rather think of it as food is impossible to find than that my Ranger is inept.

That distinction can play a big part in this kind of thing, too, which I think can go unnoticed.

Yes, I primarily view the roll as the measure of character's performance. (Now, I might occasionally let it flavour the world a bit if I don't have the exact details figured out beforehand, and in D&D this would likely be for the reason you mention: to avoid a supposedly skilled character looking incompetent. That one might feel a need to do so is due the system being extremely swingy; more than I would ideally like. I'd also let characters who are trained in a skill to have certain level of baseline competence at routine tasks.)

And at least with the system like D&D, the roll not creating the actual setting details seems far more coherent to me. Several characters could be foraging at that same place, or same character at different times (but still in same season etc.) Certainly the same location cannot randomly appear different to different characters or at different times depending on what was rolled.

Now as for your specific example, in my book 27 failing to find anything to eat would require something more than some mundane wasteland. It would require some sort of a supernaturally barren death zone where literally nothing lives or grows. And if the characters had not realised that they had wandered into such, then this roll would certainly be a great way for them to find out, and a perfect example of a situation where it makes sense to allow the roll even though the actual thing the character tries to do has no chance of succeeding. I don't know how this would work in a sort of system that requires setting explicit stakes before the roll can be made...

 

[pemerton]

My point is, there's no point in discussing what D&D designers intended with skills, there WAS NO INTENT, except in 4e.

I largely agree with this. I was talking about the design of classic D&D (basically everything up through Moldvay Basic) which doesn't have skills other than thief ones.

But it does have the Reaction Table. So if you get a lucky roll and/or a CHA bonus, you can meet an ogre and have it be friendly, or at least not attack (What you people doing in this dungeon?) without having to use spells. Of course spells can push the situation in the players' favour - but that's their main point in classic D&D. They're rationed "hero points" given an in-fiction rationale.

Classic D&D's reaction system worked, because it wasn't really a skill system, it was more of a 'world generation' system. There were no such things as 'reaction checks'. There was no point where the player called for a reaction role. At best they could ask for 'parley', or there were a few other specific points where it just got invoked (it was a factor in loyalty/morale, and also in hiring NPCs). Its effect was very clear, it generated a stance which the NPC involved would take. Everything from there was pure RP. The DM was expected to have some fictional explanation for whatever the reaction was.

Yes, I think this is broadly consistent with what I posted. Probably the most obvious way to oblige the GM to roll on the table is to initiate a parley, as you say. That can be looked at as a type of action declaration with the prospect of triggering a reframing. The CHA mod helps ensure that that reframing runs the PCs' way.

The role in loyalty and hiring processes also sits on that framing/action declaration interface. This is a point where I think Traveller is just clearer. From Book 3 (1977), p 23:

Reaction throws are made once, upon initial encounter. . . . Reactions are used by the referee and by players as a guide to the probable actions of individuals. They may be used to determine the response of a person to business offers or deals (often Admin or Bribery expertise will be used as a DM in such cases). Reactions govern the reliability and quality of hirelings and employees. Generally, they would re-roll reactions in the face of extremely bad treatment or unusually dangerous tasks.​

Moldvay Basic, by way of contrast, has this (p B24; p B23 has the reaction roll as Step 6 of the Order of Events in One Game Turn):

Some monsters always act in the same way (such a zombies, who always attack). However, the reactions of most monsters are not always the same. The DM can always choose the monster's reactions to fit the dungeon, but if he decides not to do this, a DM may use the reaction table below to determine the monster's reactions . . .​

There is no discussion of re-checks or ad hoc modifications; that is illustrated in the example of play.

The Traveller presentation (I think) more naturally suggests extension to a resolution process. It talks about the initial encounter but goes on to talk about responding to offers (and this is reinforced in the Bribery skill description). It's not as tight as (say) AW's seduce or manipulate move. Even the Traveller descriptors on its table are more easily applicable to a wider range of circumstances (beyond encounters in a dungeon).

there was always a certain 'simulation' bent to D&D rules writing. The game originated as a tabletop wargame. With 2e they arrived at 'story teller GM' but with wargame-derived mechanics. This wasn't a 'design', it was just unanalyzed hackery, exigency piled on top of tradition to create an inchoate and incoherent 'system'.

<snip>

skills are just larded on top in a sort of simulationist reflex. There is no concept of how, when, why, or where they should be used.

<snip>

3.0 simply carried on with that. There's no coherent design reason for it. Diplomacy in 3.x is not some coherent chosen design decision that indicates that anyone was thinking about anything! IMHO 3.0 was garbage. It was written by people who didn't understand classic D&D AT ALL.

<snip>

3.5 was needed because 3.0 was a HOT MESS. Half the classes didn't work at all, casters were so OP it was not even funny, and then fundamentally at the core there was simply no workable conceptual process, no principles of design. Thus 3.5 failed as well. 4e was really invented because the designers at WotC THREW UP THEIR HANDS, plainly seeing that what they had was unfixable and was a terrible design for a game!

<snip>

5e is a bit in the middle, clearly Mike understood the problem, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to just improve the 4e approach (IE make a better SC-like system and keep the short skill list). So, now we have a lot of bad choices, but at least the list is fairly bounded. Skills are still kind of a 5th wheel without being tied to core resolution process, but at least they serve the 'RP signifier' purpose and some of them are pretty useful (IE the perception type skills and similar, and the physical skills basically do their job, the social ones are borked of course, but so it goes...).

I think I agree with this too. I don't have much experience with 3E, and have never tried to analyse it in detail. I do know that the maths for diplomacy is broken, and there seems to be no theory/process for using it that goes anywhere beyond Moldvay's example in his Basic rules of the PCs encountering the hobgoblins.

Part of what makes the Moldvay reaction table work is that the CHA bonus is capped at +2 on a 2d6 roll; and Moldvay's example of play shows a GM adding in an ad hoc +1 for a friendly greeting. Classic Traveller is similar: it's a 2d6 rolls with no in-principle limits on adjustments but in practice unlikely to have anyone with more than +4 from skills. (I would add: the existence of CHA in Moldvay tends to crowd out the room for skill-based mods as well. Traveller doesn't have anything like a CHA ability - skills like Admin and Leadership and Carousing and Liaison fill this space.)

Whereas 3E Diplomacy is set up broadly like a reaction table, with DCs to shift a starting attitude to a better attitude (and a small risk of worsening the attitude as a result), but nothing in the game design that puts a bound on the maths.

I think the 3e Diplomacy system is at least partly harking back to the classic D&D reaction subsystem. It COULD work as a version of that, although it doesn't seem like the PROCESS to use it as such was developed. That is, in 1e AD&D the reaction system is codified right into the encounter resolution process as a distinct step. The option 'parley' is specifically called out and flagged as a thing that players should consider, and if they opt for it they do so at a specific point in the initial phases of an encounter. 3.x doesn't call any of this out, so it is at best nascent.

Yep. I wrote the paragraph above before adding in your second post (quoted just now).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would say there is no reason to make a roll for something which will not decide anything. Success and failure of the 'find food' check are identical, so why roll? Just explain to the highly competent hunter/survivalist that the local area is utterly barren. Anyone who can live off the land cannot possibly fail to note that fact! In a 'classic' RPG where skills just denote success and failure there is no need to roll for auto-fail, or auto-success either.

4e had knowledge checks, which would be where a PC might make a check, but 'this area is utterly barren' seems like it couldn't fail really here either. Perhaps such a check could discern some reason for the condition.

This is where a narrative kind of system like BW or DW comes into play. Here a player can assert an intent. The result might be "the land is barren" (and fair enough, this might already be established) but it could also be "you manage to catch..." which could be the start of a whole other piece of fiction! Of course whatever it is will be edible, but do you REALLY want to eat a talking tortoise?

 

[pemerton]

Charm and dominate effects
In the Burning Wheel game I GM, one of the PCs encountered a Dark Naga which cast Force of Will on it.

Here is the spell's effect (Revised Character Burner, p 178):

This spell allows the mage to implant forceful commands into the victim's mind. The words of the mage becomes thoughts - as if the victim had formulated them himself. This is a very powerful spell - the words of the sorcerer are permanently embedded and resonate against the character's personality for the rest of his days.​

The way we handled this, in mechanical terms, was that I required the player to rewrite one of his PC's Belief to reflect the commands of the Naga. We worked out the details together.

To go back to @chaochou and @Campbell's account of agency (setting the PC's goal) this is a limit on agency: I as GM had a significant say over what is, by default, a part of the PC build that is sacrosanct to the player.

But it certainly doesn't limit the player's ability to declare actions for his PC. Those action declarations and their resolution still influenced the shared fiction in significant ways.

Foraging in a desolate wasteland
If there is nothing to eat, that is part of the framing and should follow naturally from that established fiction. As @AbdulAlhazred has said, there may well be no need to make a check at all.

There's a further question as to whether such a framing is a good one. That's an issue of judgement, and context.

Suppose the ranger PC has a Foraging or Survival ability that is in the realm of human maximum, whether that's read off the mechanical bonus on a PC sheet (as would be the case in, say, Prince Valiant), or off the fiction and mechanics together (as would be the case in, say, 4e or Cortex+ Heroic). This is a person who can find sustenance in the harshest and most difficult circumstances. So is it good GMing to frame the wilderness as literal wasteland? Or is it better to set a difficulty that is appropriately high?

Now if we're in a more gonzo fantasy game, perhaps we're not talking about an earthly desert but some barren layer of the Abyss. But then we may also be talking about a ranger who is a gonzo personality! And as AbdulAlhzard said, the outcome of a successful check might be something pretty gonzo too.

 

[Manbearcat]

I find the concept of Character Agency in this scheme to be rather gerrymandered. And in practice a constraint that is often violated - see the discussions upthread about Gather Information, Foraging/Survival, and the like - which seem to bestow Setting Authority but rarely seem to cause much controversy (because no one feels this is very high stakes and it is "logical" that the locals should be gossiping or that there should be berries to find in the foreset; cf the different response to the setting element being the unique tower of a unique wizard).

I'm also curious where the GM taking suggestions (either formally like item wish lists in 4e D&D, or informally) fits in. That seems like Setting and/or Situation Authority (depending on the content) but is not uncommon, at least in its informal modes, in ostensibly Character Agency-based play.

My iteration included the clause Player Agency excluding any Setting/Situation Authority precisely because I agree with you that, in the wild, the concept is gerrymandered. There are clearly cases of setting and situation stipulation embedded in RPGs that have either been accepted or hand-waved for expedience, or players being used to their deployment because they've used them unexamined for so long...or they were quietly excised by players. The same gerrymandering has long occurred, and we've had conversations aplenty on it, with metagame mechanics (and all of our conversations on "dissociated mechanics."

I spelled it out alongside the other two for lexicon purposes to easier examine and discuss these concepts, discuss their application within a design, to achieve some measure of clarity and attempt to prevent such gerrymandering in our conversations. I'd be glad to make revisions if they don't appropriately apply!

Some thoughts:

* Games that principally include "low resolution setting/backstory", "play to find out", and "ask questions and use the answers" fundamentally invest the players with a measure of both Setting and Situation Authority (the degree to which will vary in each actual instance/session of play, but it will be there).

* Games that include player-dictated advancement (Quests + robustly thematic Theme/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny and Magic Items in 4e, Cortex+ Milestones et al, Dogs entire character setup and dice allocation, BW and PBtA family of games) fundamentally invest players with Situation Authority.

* Streetwise in 4e vs Gather Information in 3.x have some key differences in terms of their nesting within their own system architecture and ethos:

STREETWISE - Player-facing system, codified and transparent conflict resolution, the nature of the abstract conflict resolution framework (genre logic, broad descriptor abilities, principles/GMing techniques, etc) invest players with a not-insignificant-amount of Situation Authority over both initial framing and subsequent framing.

GATHER INFORMATION - GM-facing system, GM mandate a la 2e and 5e, granular task resolution + process/causal logic, GM-block-caveat embedded in the ability ("assuming no obvious reason why info would be withheld").

Sum-told, all of the ethos and system architecture surrounding Gather Information in 3.x cleaves toward any given deployment of Gather Information having Setting and (subsequent to a successful GI check) Situation Authority subverted by the GM. Conversely, all of the ethos and system architecture surrounding Streetwise in 4e makes it approach impervious to GM subversion of Setting and (subsequent) Situation Authority for players.

Disagree?

 

[Lanefan]

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

Exactly - which is why again it comes down to trusting your GM to get it right most of the time.

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.

Allowing twhatever time it takes a scene to play out sounds like leaving this aspect in the hands of the players, to me.

By adults acting like adults?

Impatient adults, yes, who are only there for the dice-rolling.

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?

Through role-play, I suppose. I've certainly seen and done this in PC-v-PC relationships.

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.

Things is, played-as-intended isn't always (and maybe isn't often) the same as played-as-played. Kinda similar to the difference between rules-as-intended (never mind rules-as-written!) and rules-as-played.

 

[Lanefan]

I would hope that any RPG designer only pays as much heed to any mechanic as s/he feels s/he has to!

My point was that the designers clearly didn't think that "in-character talk at the table would suffice" (to quote your earlier post once again) - because they included a very important mechanic, linked to the CHA stat, which determines via that modified roll how the GM is to frame the encounter between PCs and NPCs/monsters.

As a starting point. From that initial reaction things then develop organically, largely depending on what the PCs try to do and-or how they approach it.

This is one half of exactly what I have zero interest in. What is the point of "hints from the GM" to tell the player how to solve the puzzle. Who's playing the game here, the player(s) or the GM solitaire?

OK - first you complain about there being no way to read the NPC's personality and-or motives, and then you complain again when an obvious means of telegraphing them is brought up. Which half of the road do you want?

I don't really think of play in terms of "roleplaying effort".

It is, though, in that a player (usually) has to put more thought and effort into roleplaying a scene than into saying "Just roll the dice".

The second was "external" to the immediate situation but pretty important at the table: the player (clearly) didn't want Lady Askol to decide that von Jerrel must be deported back to Ashar. And I didn't want that either! So there was no point in calling for a check that would result in such a possibility.

Why not? I mean, if there's a chance that would happen (and there's certainly stakes involved), doesn't internal fiction consistency demand such a check even though the result might not be what anyone wants?

To me, not calling for a check just because there's the potential for an undesirable result hews rather close to fudging a damage roll so as not to kill off a PC that both its player and the GM are fond of.

The point of social mechanics as I see it, and as I hope my actual play example illustrates, is not to "skip to the roll".

Agreed in theory.

However, I've seen enough players (and IME at least one GM) who think the point IS to eschew the talky bits and skip to the roll that I've come to concude that this theory isn't reliable enough in the wild to be useful.

The only way these people will roleplay is if there is no roll to skip to. (and I'm not talking about people with limited social skills here)

The problem with 3E's Diplomacy system as I have heard it described (I have almost no experience with it) are:

(1) It is weak on calling for intent, and is focused more on reframing the starting-point of the situation (eg from Hostile to Friendly) rather than on generating some response by the NPC to the PC's action (like Lady Askol's outrage being assuaged);

IME it was used, depending on the situation, for both.

(2) It's maths are broken.

Solid maths is important in any system. AW has it baked in. Classic Traveller is not quite as tight as AW, but seems mostly to work.

Can't speak to that - while I played a fair bit of 3e I generally took a 1e approach to this aspect and left as much of the math in the DM's hands as I could.