A Question Of Agency?

[darkbard]

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).

Just want to make sure I'm following your logic here. Is it because in crossing the bridge normally nothing is at stake (one crosses a bridge, just as one departs a tavern, without a roll), so when adding description based on the fiction (acrobatic elves do things like balance all the time) nothing additional is being put at stake? Or is there something else?

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

While fair, I still think that's a case where its causing a problem because you're not immersed enough. Its legitimate to answer that that's difficult, but its still not so much a problem with process as your inability to ignore it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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

What does "get it right" mean? There is no right answer. Without any kind of rules in play, all of it is dependent on the GM's idea. Which is fine if that's how everyone prefers to play, but it doesn't allow for a high amount of agency.

Can the player determine the outcome? Can they somehow reach a result that the GM must honor?

Is the path to success determined by the player or the GM? If I want to intimidate the NPC into acquiescence, or if I want to flatter him, or if I want to bribe him......what paths are open to me as a player?

It's not a matter of me "trusting" the GM. I trust that just about anyone can imagine a fictional reason for a fictional person's behavior.

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

So the players decide when it's enough?

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

Yeah, who wants to roll dice to determine what happens? What a stupid idea!

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

That's not what I'm talking about though.

Would you agree that in the real world, sometimes people can be surprised by their own reactions to something? They let themselves be convinced by a salesman, or they let a pretty face distract them, or they believe something told to them by someone they know they shouldn't trust? They do something that is not the most sensible or likely response. This actually happens quite often in real life, no?

So if your GMing technique is to imagine all the fictional factors that go into a NPC's thought process, and then to determine the most likely reaction in any given moment.....how do you allow for a less likely result from a NPC? The local lord who seems very unlikely to respond to a threat from a wandering adventurer....how does your game allow for this lord to have ever been intimidated by a PC?

If the answer is that you consider what the player says from the PCs perspective and decide accordingly, then it's ultimately GM fiat. It's always subject to your opinion. The player does not have any means to determine the result without your approval.

This is not a matter of trust; I would guess that you'd probably use decent judgment in most cases. It's a matter of preference. I prefer that the situation or problem be crafted by the GM, and that the resolution of that situation or problem be crafted by the players.

If the GM presents the challenge and has also determined its resolution, then the players aren't free to forge their own path, are they? they're just moving along the paths already determined by the GM.

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.

Right. But until someone says something like "we don't use encumbrance" I'm gonna assume it's a part of the game, even though I also don't use encumbrance. The starting point for discussion should the what's universal to us all, right? So that's the actual content of the text in question.

GM here should have thrown in something - even just a half-sarcastic "Good luck with that" - to indicate that foraging at best would be very difficult and more likely would be wasted time for the Ranger. Or, instead of calling for the roll she could just say "It's the Desolate Plains, man. There's nothing out here."

Having called for the roll and with the player's die producing a stupendous result, the GM here could maybe throw the PC a bone by giving something like "You got lucky - in a sheltered cleft you found one edible plant, just enough for a meal for one person; and it's probably the only one of those plants for many miles around. Do you really want to uproot it?" (while also mentioning the bits about the poisonous stuff and the lack of wildlife)

Yeah, I agree that the GM should not even have called for a roll if there was no chance of success. Or they could allow a roll and on a success, honor it.

There's any number of ways it could have been handled. Some games would have one established process for this, and would follow that process. Some games (I had 3.x/Pathfinder in mind with my example) would have far less consistent processes for play.

Good points.

It also falls under the heading of even if something is impossible in the fiction, players/PCs should still be allowed to try it anyway.

I don't know if I agree with that. I would think that if something is impossible, then the PC would likely know it, and the GM can simply point that out to them.

If it's a matter of the impossibility of the task being unknown to the player, that's where I think the problem lies. Either the GM has determined the outcome of something ahead of time, or has failed to present the fiction in a clear way, or something else has likely gone wrong.

 

[pemerton]

While fair, I still think that's a case where its causing a problem because you're not immersed enough. Its legitimate to answer that that's difficult, but its still not so much a problem with process as your inability to ignore it.

I don't agree with this. Part of what permits the real world to be understood providentially is that it presents itself in such richness, with such totality, that each person has the capacity to see a story in it that relates to his/her own convictions and ideals.

When the world is presented essentially as someone else narrating a story, already choosing what is salient and what is not, what matters and what doesn't, the situation is very different. I don't think it's possible to immerse into that. The player would have to introduce the additional material via his/her own imagination, at which point s/he is exercising setting or situation authority but in a solitaire rather than shared fiction.

It's worth noting that it doesn't go the other way: the player establishing shared fiction via narration arising from his/her place of immersion doesn't affect the GM's ability to do his/her thing, because the GM isn't expcted to inhabit a character as a player is (Vincent Baker makes this point starkly in AW when he directs the MC to look through crosshairs at the NPCs under his/her control),

And if two players collide in respect of the fiction they try to share as it emerges from their immersion, then we can turn to the action resolutio framework.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

Well, lets not get too wrapped up in 'less real'...

I would say that there is an immediacy if you can say "yes, my belief IS real" or at least define some things that happen/are true in game that relate to it (maybe they have some other explanation, this uncertainty might be useful). Anyway, remember, players don't get authority to just "make my wishes come true", at best they might stipulate things that engage their agenda. The GM will play a key role in determining what exactly it means. It could be that "Yes, indeed Corellon is real, and he's also got a chip on his shoulder for humans, OOPS!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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.

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......

Well, I would argue that the whole POINT of playing an RPG is to get to interesting situations and avoid boring uninteresting ones. I see this 'GM decision' as being akin to not worrying about some door into an uninteresting empty room. Sure, you can play that sucker out, but why? At some point you'll get back to the interesting stuff (in this case the fictional state will be different). The thing is I don't value any PARTICULAR fictional state. I value what the process is, was it fun? Was it interesting? Did it lead to play which illuminated some dramatic conflict? At some point all paths will presumably lead to that if you follow an agenda and process which leads there.

So, not dicing for some situation which nobody at the table thinks leads to what they are interested in RPing just seems like basic good practice. I don't even see it as GM fiat, because the player could have just as easily pushed the issue of who believed what. I mean, Traveler is a bit of a loose game in terms of telling you that players can just go ahead and make a check to enact their intent, but I expect that @pemerton wouldn't tell the player to take a hike if he invoked a Diplomacy check or something instead of just letting the situation ride.

I am also of the school of thought that the world is a lot more complex than people give credit for, and our understanding of social situations and personalities is a lot less than what is commonly understood. So I am dubious of anyone's ability to reason out what people might do, or what the probabilities are. I mean, we do some of this every day in real life, but mostly by following very set routine rules that tell us how to act. This works, but in really "out there" situations it is pretty famously impossible to tell what will happen. Perhaps Lady Askol is invested enough in her ideas about her lover that she's NEVER going to doubt until a cluebat hits her full in the face. This is as plausible as any other position we can take. Admittedly, that too is an assumption, your point is not invalid, it is just not somehow set in stone. Reasonable people can tell a few different stories here. Heck, since no check has been made, her belief is not actually something the player can count on. Evil GM Pemerton is perfectly within his rights to decide later that she's faking! (well, I'll let him say if he thinks that would be undermining the accomplishment of an earlier success).

There are a lot of interesting aspects of this kind of 'fiction first, zero-myth, play to see what happens' process. It isn't just "everyone imagine what they want."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Perhaps Lady Askol is invested enough in her ideas about her lover that she's NEVER going to doubt until a cluebat hits her full in the face. This is as plausible as any other position we can take. Admittedly, that too is an assumption, your point is not invalid, it is just not somehow set in stone. Reasonable people can tell a few different stories here. Heck, since no check has been made, her belief is not actually something the player can count on. Evil GM Pemerton is perfectly within his rights to decide later that she's faking!

Isn't this basically exactly the sort of situation that was discussed on the early pages of this thread with the 'GM later decided that the NPC informant was lying' example? Granted, It was so long ago that I have already forgotten what people's opinions on that were...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just want to make sure I'm following your logic here. Is it because in crossing the bridge normally nothing is at stake (one crosses a bridge, just as one departs a tavern, without a roll), so when adding description based on the fiction (acrobatic elves do things like balance all the time) nothing additional is being put at stake? Or is there something else?

Yeah, I would say it is a case of "nothing interesting happens if the Elf falls." The PC just burns to a crisp, roll up a new one. That doesn't seem like a super interesting development. Now, if the elf is crossing in order to save his lover, then maybe he can fail, fall, catch himself, and now the teetering rock is starting to fall and crush her! Can he somehow redouble his speed and still save her? Is his lack of competence at this task going to haunt him forever? I mean, there are a few possibilities, suddenly it might seem worth rolling.

 

[Manbearcat]

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.

I also have to wonder if the following two things are true:

1) Even though (a) you may not be a religious person and (b) you are clearly "piloting the ship" (so to speak), there is a process of seduction, a gravitational capture, when a figure you're working at identifying with is locked in a perceived righteous battle against a world that would make an emotional struggle of belief in providence. This is something at the very center of Dogs in the Vineyard.

2) For this to be realized, play needs to be distilled of thematically-neutral or irrelevant content because it serves to atrophy or outright sever this seduction (in the same way that some complain about other things doing the same).


When I watch media or read a book that is supposed to capture me, (2) is exactly the pitfall for me. If thematic momentum and focus is lost because its cut incoherently (in terms of tightness of and or giving expression to dramatic arc) or merely a poorly conceived ("distracted/muddled") screenplay with needless (and by needless I mean "hurtful") tangents and interludes...it_will_lose me. However, if not (and its brilliantly conceived and cut), I will absolutely be pulled into characters and their tale that I would otherwise have little sympathies with or attachments to.

My guess is, if I were to actually be a player in a TTRPG, my disposition would mirror this. I wouldn't be surprised if you're the same.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I would say it is a case of "nothing interesting happens if the Elf falls." The PC just burns to a crisp, roll up a new one. That doesn't seem like a super interesting development. Now, if the elf is crossing in order to save his lover, then maybe he can fail, fall, catch himself, and now the teetering rock is starting to fall and crush her! Can he somehow redouble his speed and still save her? Is his lack of competence at this task going to haunt him forever? I mean, there are a few possibilities, suddenly it might seem worth rolling.

I think this just gets at a fundamental divide over what people find fun and interesting. To me it is the sheer randomness of these kinds of deaths sometimes that makes the game exciting. One of my favorite sessions of 1E was one where my 1st level mage was killed in the first encounter by a stirge. To me this was a reminder that it was just a game. Stuff can just happen and be entertaining. It was a fun moment of play.