A Question Of Agency?

[Manbearcat]

I am not sure I like distinguishing between agency over setting and agency over situation. In my view setting is subsumed by situation.

I'm going to use Flashbacks in Blades to demonstrate my thinking on this (making them discrete things):

* Flashbacks are necessarily ALWAYS Authority over Situation but not Authority over Setting (in any appreciable away):

"I moored a getaway rowboat in the canal below the 2nd story balcony in case things go tit's up (as you're evading pursuit through the Master Bedroom and about to egress through the 2nd story balcony."

* Flashbacks are necessarily ALWAYS Authority over Situation and sometimes Authority over Setting:

"I paid the Bailiff 1 Coin to house Zaltana in Prisoner Handling Room 2 (while she awaits trial) because it has a soldered cover to the sewer system in its floor."

Thoughts?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Thurgon believes in providence. The Lord of Battle will lead him to glory is one expression of that overarching understanding of the world. It would be hugely disruptive to the immersion in the play of this character for all the events that happen in the fiction - like finding tooked-for towers, or meeting looked-for brothers - to be dictated by an external force (eg mere random rolls; dispassionate GM worldbuilding) that has no connection to the inner life, struggles and convictions of the faithful.

With no offense intended, that's because you're paying attention to the metagame issues yourself. After all, your historical models were projecting Providence on events that (one has to assume) were primarily dictated by external force.

But they believed anyway. That's what made it faith.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

With no offense intended, that's because you're paying attention to the metagame issues yourself. After all, your historical models were projecting Providence on events that (one has to assume) were primarily dictated by external force.

But they believed anyway. That's what made it faith.

How is that relevant? We're talking about an RPG. Sure, one possible scenario could be that a PC has false beliefs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How is that relevant? We're talking about an RPG. Sure, one possible scenario could be that a PC has false beliefs.

Does it make their faith less real? I'd say not.

 

[Lanefan]

Isn't that metagaming? Which you're against?

GM saying to the Ranger's player "You're on the Desolate Plains, remember, so your chance of finding anything is slim to none" has the same effect.

Neither. That's my whole point.

Well I'm not going to tell you ahead of time what makes the NPC tick if your PC has no way of knowing that info. And, just like your PC, any relevant NPC is going to have their own personality and motivations in place before you meet it...they're not blank slates waiting for you-the-player to fill them in. What they are is in-game people who your in-game person has to deal with as they are.

The check isn't part of the fiction. The check is an event in the real world used to settle the content of the fiction when it is uncertain or the subject of contest at the table.

Whatever. You know full well what I mean.

There is no fictional consistency in Lady Askol believing von Jerrel's lie. That was clearly what the player wanted to have happen. It suited me too! So there was no contest at the table. Hence no need for any sort of check.

She could have believed it, or she could have not believed it; and it sounds like much would hinge on this. But instead of invoking mechanics (which you seem quite ready and willing to do most of the rest of the time) you handwaved it to suit yours and the player's desires...which would likely be fine, other than it's exactly the sort of GM force you often argue against.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't follow this at all. What do you mean by "there is a chance this might happen"? This is a FICTION, what happens is what the participants in making the fiction SAY happens.

In collaborative storytelling, yes. But if you want these decision-making mechanics in the game whenever there's an uncertain result with stakes riding on it (which there certainly were here!) you don't get to pick and choose when to invoke them.

While I would agree that a roll in combat is normally agreed upon to be the way to resolve fights, this is not nearly true otherwise. In fact we can demonstrate that by the simplest reductio. You cannot possibly know what all the possibilities in a 'realistic' world would be. No human being could possibly claim to that believably. So there is only that which you choose to put into the fiction (or roll for) and that which you don't (either because of choice or out of sheer ignorance or lack of capacity to imagine it as a possibility).

Obviously. But in real life (sometimes) and in a game setting (more often) it's easy to recognize a significant decision point that has stakes on it.

So there cannot possibly be any principle "always roll for everything that is possible." It is simply unimplementable, even in a practical "roll for some things" version. Thus to accuse @pemerton of 'fudging' here is really kind of preposterous. His avowed reason for not rolling may be related to where the participants are aiming the narrative, but that is at most just him acknowledging that some option wasn't interesting to anyone at the table.

Whether or not a particular option is interesting isn't the point. The point is whether or not it's valid, regardless of interest level. And if you're willing to skip the mechanics so as not to let the dice steer you into an uninteresting situation, doesn't that call into question the validity of those mechanics the rest of the time?

There are probably dozens of other options we could have come up with at that moment that nobody even THOUGHT to dice for. Is the result somehow corrupt because of that? Of course not.

In the example given, it's largely boiled down to a fairly binary question of whether or not someone believes a lie; with the whole direction of the near- and mid-term forthcoming fiction riding on the outcome of that question (i.e. there's significant stakes here). There's really only two options: she believes it, or she doesn't.

And it was resolved by, in effect, GM fiat. I'd have no problem with this at all were it not being done by someone who has spent ages in here arguing against GM fiat in any form......

 

[pemerton]

She could have believed it, or she could have not believed it; and it sounds like much would hinge on this. But instead of invoking mechanics (which you seem quite ready and willing to do most of the rest of the time) you handwaved it to suit yours and the player's desires...which would likely be fine, other than it's exactly the sort of GM force you often argue against.

"Saying 'yes'" isn't GM force. It's not GM force when a player in an AD&D game says My character wears a red cloak and the GM says OK.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That is exactly what I had in mind.

Going back to your first paragraph, there is definitely that aspect of 4e yielding Situation and/or Setting Authority. I can think of a few others though (and let me know what you think):

1) The combination of Quests + baked-in character thematics ensure downstream effects. If you're a Sohei Themed Monk w/ the Quest "I will recover the Phase Spider Silk Sash of my order and lay low the Yokai who brought ruin to it", the game will entail (a) what you're describing above (a waist item that lets the Monk teleport or phase), (b) a revenge and recovery arc that puts a specific form of supernatural as the antagonism to the PC's protagonism.

2) The "say yes" genre logic, broad descriptor Skills & Keywords, codified and player-facing nature of 4e ensures the following:

* If the above (1) is true and...

* I'm in a parley w/ a local lord that is hostile to me without cause and...

* We're in a Complexity 2 Skill Challenge and we're at Success 5 and...

* I construe the situation as this Lord is either (a) possessed by a Yokai or (b) an actual Yokai but (c) regardless, involved in the conspiracy against my temple in some way...if I use an Arcana or Religion check (possibly backed by a key-worded power to give me a bonus) to adjure or reveal the possession/guise or if I sufficiently challenge the "Yokai-as-Lord" w/ Intimidate (yielding a success regardless of Arcana/Religion/Intimidate), then...

* The Skill Challenge will come to a close, my intent/goal in the challenge will be realized and now we're dealing with an unmasked Yokai, the shock or exposure of its court (perhaps they knew?), and the unrest that will ensue in this Prefecture as a result.

That is pretty significant Setting Authority and Situation Authority and a 4e GM is encouraged to say yes here (and must oblige the success of the Skill Challenge).

---

This is the kind of thing that many GMs in this thread (and a huge array of ENWorld GMs outside of it) balked hard at (and that ingratiated 4e to you and I and some others in this thread).

I agree with this last paragraph. It was definitely something that didn’t appeal to me. But worth mentioning this kind of gameplay was already present ‘culturally’ by the mid-3E days with things like ‘wishlists’ of magic items (often to help character builds).

 

[pemerton]

With no offense intended, that's because you're paying attention to the metagame issues yourself. After all, your historical models were projecting Providence on events that (one has to assume) were primarily dictated by external force.

But they believed anyway. That's what made it faith.

I understand your point. I don't fully agree.

If we accept that our (real) world is the unfolding of external forces, there is no doubt that many people are able to see providential purpose in it.

But in the context of a RPG, it is in my view much harder to see the (imagined) world as not "dictated by an external force (eg mere random rolls; dispassionate GM worldbuilding) that has no connection to the inner life, struggles and convictions of the faithful" if in fact it is. It's not just that, at the meta-level, one is aware of the causal/decision-making process (quite differently from the real world). It's that that process is manifest in the events themselves, which will have the "inner life, struggles and convictions" of someone else (ie the GM) evident in them.

 

[pemerton]

Well I'm not going to tell you ahead of time what makes the NPC tick if your PC has no way of knowing that info. And, just like your PC, any relevant NPC is going to have their own personality and motivations in place before you meet it...they're not blank slates waiting for you-the-player to fill them in. What they are is in-game people who your in-game person has to deal with as they are.

As I have posted, this is precisely the sort of RPG-as-puzzle solving that holds little interest for me as player or as GM.

She could have believed it, or she could have not believed it; and it sounds like much would hinge on this. But instead of invoking mechanics (which you seem quite ready and willing to do most of the rest of the time) you handwaved it to suit yours and the player's desires...which would likely be fine, other than it's exactly the sort of GM force you often argue against.

if you want these decision-making mechanics in the game whenever there's an uncertain result with stakes riding on it (which there certainly were here!) you don't get to pick and choose when to invoke them.

<snip>

Whether or not a particular option is interesting isn't the point. The point is whether or not it's valid, regardless of interest level. And if you're willing to skip the mechanics so as not to let the dice steer you into an uninteresting situation, doesn't that call into question the validity of those mechanics the rest of the time?

In the example given, it's largely boiled down to a fairly binary question of whether or not someone believes a lie; with the whole direction of the near- and mid-term forthcoming fiction riding on the outcome of that question (i.e. there's significant stakes here). There's really only two options: she believes it, or she doesn't.

And it was resolved by, in effect, GM fiat. I'd have no problem with this at all were it not being done by someone who has spent ages in here arguing against GM fiat in any form......

It's not resolved by GM fiat. It's resolved via GM-player consensus. No player action declaration has been contradicted or blocked from succeeding.

The notion of validity that you use isn't one that I use or even fully grasp - as @AbdulAlhazred has said, there are many options that are possible but that might not be put on the table because no one thinks of them.

I have no real idea of what you have in mind with the first bolded bit. All I can do is reiterate the notion of "say 'yes' or roll the dice"; this quote is from p 72 of BW Gold (available for free online; I linked to it upthread):

Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don’t bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn’t have, needs to know something he doesn’t know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice.

Flip that around and it reveals a fundamental rule in Burning Wheel game play: When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.​

Classic Traveller is not a strictly "say 'yes' or roll the dice" system - in many ways it is closer to AW and moves. But as I posted upthread there is no when you tell a lie move/subsystem in Traveller. So I have to make a call. Is there conflict here to be resolved, such that I need to find a relevant subsystem - the most basic version being a check against a basic attribute, in this case INT?

I decided that there is not. Lady Askola accepted von Jerrel's statement that he is not psionic.

Does she really believe it? Does she accept it because she wants to believe it? These are open questions. It may be that they are put to the test, and perhaps answered, by subsequent play.

This relates to the second bolded bit. The fact that the whole direction of the fiction turns on something doesn't mean that that something is at stake. In hi Adventure Burner, Luke Crane gives the example of a player narrating his acrobatic elf walking along the railing of a bridge high over a chasm. And points out that no check is called for, because it's mere colour. There is no conflict. The fact that the fiction would be very different if the elf fell to his death from the bridge doesn't mean that we have to check to see if such a thing happens; any more than we have to check to see whether a PC trips over and sprains an ankle when s/he walks out of the tavern door (though such things are clearly possible, and would affect the ensuing fiction).

The effect of what happened in our session is that the player has been able to add new fiction: not only is Lady Askol in love with, or at least infatuated with, von Jerrel - but her attitude towards him, and treatment of him, depends on a lie. By "saying 'yes'" I've allowed the player to ramp up the pressure of the romantic situation. No conflict has been resolved by social agreement; rather, the stakes of possible future conflict have been stepped up. That's part of what a GM does, - or at least part of what I do as a GM - in modulating pacing, situation and the like.

This is not neutral refereeing. But Classic Traveller does not tell the referee that s/he has to be neutral. From the 1977 rules:

* Book 2, p 36: "When a ship enters a star system, there is a chance that any one of a variety of ships will be encountered. The ship encounter table is used to determine the specific type of vessel which is met. This result may, and should, be superseded by the referee in specific situations, especially if a newly entered system is in military or civil turmoil, or involves other circumstances."

* Book 3, p 8: "[T]he referee should always feel free to impose worlds which have been deliberately (rather than randomly) generated. Often such planets will be devised specifically to reward or torment players."

* Book 3, p 19: "The referee is always free to impose encounters to further the cause of the adventure being played; in many cases, he actually has a responsibility to do so."​

Although the Traveller mechanics are in many way rather process-simulation in their form, the referee is not expected to confine him-/herself to administering a "world simulation".