A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to say "yep, that analysis is inciteful, and in view of it we do X" where 'X' is not what I would do, Pemerton, Manbearcat, etc. would do.

That's what I've done! I've read stuff from Ron Edwards, Paul Czege, Vincent Baker etc about how to run these high-drama, emotionally compelling and even emotionally risky games - @Campbell also talks very passionately about this sort of play on these boards and in this thread - and I use those techniques to play adventure-oriented melodrama (Prince Valiant, Classic Traveller, Wuthering Heights, Cthulhu Dark) or sheer gonzo fantasy (4e D&D, MHRP and Cortex+ Heroic).

My goal isn't to particularly emulate or "be like" anyone. I just want to have good experiences. And reading those designers has helped me with that!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes, there is something to that also. I can't say much about people here, I don't really know them. My experience "on the ground" is, that is not super common. Or its like someone has tried really badly cooked peas, but if they try my really good peas, the incidence of rejection is quite small. Like, if I get people to sit down and play DW, they don't get up afterwards and say they hated it and go away. Plenty of people won't try, maybe some of those are a different category, there isn't a way to tell, but of the sample I have, the success rate is pretty darn high.

Wanting people to be at least willing to try a game, is totally reasonable. I have no problem trying a game. And I've had plenty of experiences where I went in thinking I wouldn't like a game, and ended up enjoying it. But I often think the online discourse around games has been a bigger hurdle than anything to this, because it gets so bogged down in playstyle preferences and we often create explanations for why we think we didn't like a game after the fact, then use those explanations to guide our game selection. The truth is, I can't truly pin down why I didn't like 4E for example. I can try, but fundamentally it just did too much of X, and I am not even really sure what X was. It just wasn't what I enjoyed. The problem is, I thought I knew what X was, and missed out on some good games because of it. So I do get what you are saying. At the same time, you are kind of doing the inverse, by asserting people will like things they have told you they don't like, and by telling them games can only do things X and Y, when they are clearly saying they are enjoying Z. This is the part of your argument I find a bit perplexing.

But as much as people should be willing to try games, you do need to consider the possibility that someone isn't going to like what you like, and will come away from the game unimpressed. I doesn't bother me if you dislike trad RPGs. That is a fair preference to have. I would hope it is informed by play experience and also not informed by a couple of bone-headed GMs, but it isn't really my business, and it is impossible for me to get into your head and know what your experience of trad RPGs feels like.

 

[innerdude]

So I realize I'm going back a bunch of pages in this thread, but there were some points I wanted to address from one of @Lanefan's responses.

So it's always the duty of the player to subsume what they'd really like to explore, either thematically or in-fiction?

I-as-player have no right to expect anyone else to care about my PC trying to find his impoverished sister and set her up with some of the wealth I've acquired through adventuring. It's something I and the DM can look after off-session, or with just a few dice rolls and an expense notation. If, however, I was the only player in the game I'd want us to role-play this out in some detail.

I've brought up the notion of the "Abilene paradox" now a few times. I bring it up again, because this seems to fundamentally speak to the core premise of that logical construct.

Your statement seems to imply that the desire of any player to pursue a character-driven goal is fundamentally an imposition on the other players, including the GM. By its very nature, it's "impinging upon the fun" of the group.

But suppose, just for a moment, that deep down, all of the players in the group actually wanted the option to pursue character-driven goals? But since no one has talked about it within the group, or consulted with GM on what they want, everyone believes that all of the other players are in the same boat. "Well, I'd really like to pursue Character Goals X and Y, but I guess this isn't really that kind of game . . . . Guess I'll just play along, and maybe I'll just have fun bashing orcs, I guess."

If the focus of play is on things other than "stuff the player cares about in relation to the character and the nature of the fiction," then what else is it focused on? As players, are we just to assume that character-driven goals are always secondary "to the fun"? What if "the fun" is pursuing those goals?

One of the points of the Abilene paradox is that if the current decision path is going to lead to no one being happy, then all things being equal, it's better to make a decision that makes at least one of the participants happy. If all of the other participants aren't going to be happy regardless, why not allow for at least one participant to enjoy the process?

Historically, the desire to allow characters to pursue character-driven goals has been significantly reduced/truncated by 1) GM concerns about "playing what I've prepared" / desire to maintain fidelity to a pre-scripted story, 2) a largely specious desire to "maintain the illusion to the fidelity of objective reality" within the fiction, and 3) the simple fact that if the GM is having fun, it negates the core principle of the Abilene paradox --- the GM's ALWAYS having fun running the game, even if none of the other participants are really allowed to pursue character-driven goals, because of 1, 2, and 3.

The objective reality of the game world does take precedence over everything. If it didn't, there'd be no objective reality to be found there.

But assuming the game-world reality allows for those aspects one wants to explore, the question then becomes one of priority: are explorations of aspects and elements of an individual character more important (i.e. more worth spending session-time on) than explorations of aspects of the fiction as a party? In most cases, out of consideration for the other players at the table, I'd say no. Further, I'd think that to say yes is just selfish.

Sure. So it's better to just deny all players that opportunity, for the "fun of the game"? How does this even make sense? If I'm a player being forced to subsume my character's interests in the face of other agendas/needs, how does it make any difference if I'm subsuming that desire to serve the GM's needs, or the needs of another player to actually explore their character-driven goals? Why not subsume my desires to serve the need of the other players occasionally? In "traditional" D&D play, I'm already subsuming it to the will of the GM, so how is it any different, other than at least one player actually gets to enjoy exploring their character goals?

Was the question ever asked, "Will my players enjoy this conflict/obstacle, or would they much rather be experiencing something else?"

And can that question ever truly be answered, other than in hindsight? Ahead of time, all one can do is guess.

Truly, I don't mean to offend, but this feels radically short-sighted, to the point of obtuseness. "Can that question ever be truly answered, other than by hindsight?"

Yes. By actually looking and asking for a character background. By looking at the type of character the player is running. By watching and observing how the character (through the player's investment) actually examines/explores/interacts with the fiction. There's hundreds of ways to be clued in to this.

Example from a Savage Worlds game I played in (did not GM) last year, based in the Shaintar campaign setting:

• I specifically gave my character the background of escaped slave from the northern empire.
• I took the "Enemy" hindrance, with a strong, specific dislike for a particular "secret police" organization of that empire (the major force behind the slave trade).
• I specifically sought out and fought against multiple slave companies as a prime agenda.
• I specifically took magic spells that allowed for information gathering, with the intent of ferreting out slave organizations.

Everything on my character sheet screamed, "I want to go after the evil northern empire and their slave trade."

And instead ended up doing a year-long, oft-tedious "setting tour" of Shaintar.

IME most players, if given the choice, would have their PCs avoid all conflicts or obstacles. Given that, it falls to the GM to make sure they have to go through some regardless.

Thing is, if this is the case I'll often outright tell the players this is what I'm doing, either at the time or afterwards.

Not true. Not true at all. If, as a player, I'm going to pursue a character-driven goal, I'm going to assume there will be obstacles relevant to that pursuit. Why on earth would I assume the end state its, "Okay, you win, evil slavers defeated! Now let's go hang out with the Gray Rangers because that's what the GM has prepped!"

Regardless of the reason, it's a case of the GM actively prioritizing some other interest above the enjoyment of the players. And if the players are okay with that, great! Some players are totally fine with the knowledge that the GM is going to regularly place other needs/agendas above their own enjoyment of the game. It's been that way since 1974, and will probably be that way in 2074.

And I suppose that there are some players that are willing to sacrifice some of their own dramatic interests in the name of maintaining "fidelity to the illusion of objective reality."

I'm more than willing to make that sacrifice.

Not so much sacrifice their own dramatic interests as be willing to work them in to whatever the game world provides; and accept that not everything is going to fit in every situation. As an extreme example, if I-as-player am interested in examining and messing around with how artificial intelligence impacts society I'm not likely to get much out of a medieval-based game world....but if that's what the DM has us in it's on me to accept that, and either put my AI ideas by until a better setting for them comes up or start my own futuristic campaign.

When you're not even willing to consider the notion that "narrative first" is an acceptable mode of play, it's easy to see why you're not interested in mechanics that increase player agency.

 

[Manbearcat]

However, if you "say yes" when it's not appropriate as per the system, then what?

This is Force and as @Campbell explained, you handle it the same way as you handle anything else when a participant breaks the rules and social contract.

Do you feel that @pemerton 's friend who was GMing the BW game for him ran afoul of the system directives that Luke Crane (I'm not asking for the lens of Lanefan's personal gaming ethos) laid out? If so, maybe you could lay out your evidence for this because I know what Force might look like in Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, and Mouse Guard (it would be abundantly difficult to pull off without it being grotesquely obvious)...and I'm not seeing it from what was conveyed in the play excerpt.

---

Just one thought right quick.

The concepts of "Force" should be separate from (lets call it) "Soft-balling." They are very different things, though each extremely unrewarding in the games that I've been talking about in this thread.

Soft-balling - Framing situations with weak adversity/obstacles/antagonism and/or not bringing sufficiently adverse complications to bear when action resolution calls for it.

Soft-balling is absolutely a concern in GMing these types of games. It can happen due to two things; Simple user-error (incorrect read on the situation, mental fatigue, etc) or just plain weak-kneed GMing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@innerdude great post. PCs having their personal goals is a great thing, and a decent GM obviously should take them into account. And even if you have something else planned, it usually is not terribly difficult to connect some things. And as player I certainly do not mind if some of the time the story focuses on some other character's ambitions. They're presumably a friend or an ally of my character, so why wouldn't I want to help them? Such things make the characters more connected to the world and players more invested to what's going on, so it is purely a good thing.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Other people's experiences would seem to disagree, since I've seen people discussing immersing under just that circumstances (I can't do heavy immersion face to face at all, so its moot to me).

Edit: To make it clear, I'm not suggesting you're mistaken in your own reactions here; I just think your last sentence overgeneralizes.

Don't worry, your post was clear.

My last sentence was mis-stated in this way: I intended that the impossibility of immersion pertain to playing a certain sort of religious PC. I suspect you still think it overgeneralises even on the intended interpretation. Maybe that's right: my first thought is are they really playing a PC who sees the world in terms of providential happenings?, but that's a path that can't be profitably pursued very far in this context.

I do hope I've succeeded in conveying not only my reaction, but a way of thinking about the immersion process that would mean there's no reason to think my reaction especially unusual.

 

[Manbearcat]

But all you are doing here then is discounting an entire playstyle by forcing 'dramatic consideration' into the definition of it. I can tell you that when I am playing in this manner, the plausibility I am going for isn't a dramatic consideration. If we can't even agree that my style is what I think it is, I don't think there is really any room for discussion. That is why these kinds of hard lines never advance anything (and it is why I have significantly softened my view over the years around this stuff: I realized hard line, playstyle discussions as they happen online are terrible for achieving a functional gaming table)

Full disclosure - I haven't read you guys' exchange in full so I may be veering slightly (or wholly) afield of your conversations.

I have had the "either/or dramatic/thematic challenge vs plausibility test" conversation with several people on this board, but I feel like we may have discussed this in the past? If we have, I've forgotten the meat of the exchange so maybe you'll indulge me it again?

There is definitely daylight between us, so let me just spill the entirety of my thoughts on the subject and you can tell me where we differ in process or in outcome. My process and outcome:

1) When I meet a person, hear about a person, or imagine a person, I am extremely vigilant not to rush to judgement. I find the social trope of "first impressions" to be one of the more embarrassing facets of the modern world. Its a garbage heuristic that the highly evolved chimps we are had to rely upon for hundreds of thousands of years because every stranger was a potentially lethal threat to the clan or a competitor for precious resources and mental models relied upon immediate utility/functionality rather than actual accuracy. We should be well past that no (like so many other things), but we clearly are not...so we erroneously use "first impressions" as an abstract stand-in for the ridiculous complexities of any individual we encounter.

2) Similarly, even after first impressions I look at people as extraordinarily complex organism. You meet a 40 year old, you aren't encountering x, y, z. You're encountering the entirety of the alphabet parameterizing a complex algorithm, each letter with its own coefficient. The fortune or misfortune of genes. The fortune or misfortune of being born into a healthy situation or a deeply unhealthy one. The fortune or misfortune of environment turning on the right genes or wrong genes early on in life. The fortune or misfortune of opportunity, of prejudice, of meeting the right or wrong peer group, of amplification of your better or worse qualities, of sickness/injury or health, of finding a life partner that fits/supports you (and vice versa), of the role of time and the piling on of each thing and how it intersects with the rest of the collage, of dozens and dozens of other things.

3) Stemming from (1) and (2) above, when I consider how any individual might act in a given situation, I instantiate it in my mind (perhaps 100 times, perhaps 1000). The output may look like this:

- x outcome 80 % of the time

- y outcome 15 % of the time

- z outcome 5 % of the time

Now that may be truncating the possible outcomes for a given situation (in some cases in life, it may be more than 3 likely outcomes), but lets go with that for now. Lets just say, for the sake of argument, that any given person is as consistent and predictable as this model above (I don't agree that people are). Y or z are minority responses/actions in a situation for this fictional person I have modeled (with insufficient granularity), but if I instantiated this exact exchange/event 20 times, 4 of those times its going to be y or z.

4) Stemming from (3), I have the following thoughts/questions:

a) If the x outcome (80 %) is clearly the most "plausible" response in any given instantiation and "plausibility" is my exclusive credibility test...how am I ever deriving the dynamism inherent to the social animals that we are (and that elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins etc would be)? Am I choosing x every_single_time? If not, what am I choosing and how/why?

b) When it comes to the games I'm speaking about above, the following is the credibility test GMs are expected to follow:

Is it genre appropriate and/or thematically relevant while being plausible (not most, but plausible)?

If yes, use.

if no, go back to the drawing board.

Sometimes that mix might be x, sometimes it might be y, sometimes it might be z. I like this process for the same reasons that I like Monster Reaction in 1e and Moldvay Basic/RC. I'm challenged creatively to make this work while I get dynamism in encounters/interactions with other social animals + genre appropriate/thematically relevant content.

---

I get the sense that @Lanefan 's own process (because it appears he/she maps his/her own process onto play because he/she doesn't believe system matters and doesn't appear to deviate in what he/she plays and/or how he/she plays it) will pretty much derive that 80 % over and over and over and the fact that this result is thematically neutral/not conflict-charged is a feature (not a bug) for @Lanefan and his/her group because when the 15 % or 5 % results manifest in play (which are thematically relevant and conflict charged), it feels..."earned?" "Realistic?" Something like that? I don't know.

And I also don't know how the 15 % or 5 % result manifesting in play is derived (if "most plausible" is the exclusive credibility test). I'd like to hear more on that.

If this is kindred with you, I'd like to hear more on both of the italicized/bolded things as well (if true).

 

[Lanefan]

We handle it socially. Just like any other game when someone breaks a rule. "Not cool Dave. You moved an extra space."

This assumes you-as-players even realize it's happened.

 

[pemerton]

The concepts of "Force" should be separate from (lets call it) "Soft-balling." They are very different things, though each extremely unrewarding in the games that I've been talking about in this thread.

Soft-balling - Framing situations with weak adversity/obstacles/antagonism and/or not bringing sufficiently adverse complications to bear when action resolution calls for it.

Soft-balling is absolutely a concern in GMing these types of games. It can happen due to two things; Simple user-error (incorrect read on the situation, mental fatigue, etc) or just plain weak-kneed GMing.

I've got pretty good intellectual stamina so don't tend to have the first problem. As I've often mentioned in other threads, and have discussed (I think) with @Campbell, I'm rather sentimental and so am prone to being weak-kneed. Probably one reason why my games tend towards melodrama!

I was pretty pleased with myself when I held my nerve and maintained my composure as one of my favourite PCs in our Traveller game - Maximillian "Max Attack" McMillan - was gunned down in a hail of SMG bullets as he tried to escape from the infirmary of an enemy base where several PCs were being held prisoner

 

[Lanefan]

But if the GM decides that the archivist never has second thoughts and never betrays the deal they made with the PCs, they're no robotic?

Not quite. I'm saying that after-the-moment options ought to be left open-ended; that while the archivist might have helped you at the time this doesn't proof you against later repercussions. It doesn't guarantee their occurrence either.

What? I'm not saying the player can just dictate the results and the GM has to honor them. I'm saying the player is free to attempt an action with an intended outcome, and if the dice go his way, then the GM needs to honor the dice. The same way that a player would need to honor the dice if he failed his character's save versus charm.

Am I-as-GM even allowed to use Diplomacy or Intimidate (in 3e, say) against a PC? If no, then why should PCs be allowed to use them against an NPC?

But yes, honouring the dice at the time is fine - it's why we roll them.

So let's say this is about a NPC.....instead of deciding ahead of time that he cannot be bribed because he's incredibly principled, why not let that be determined by the dice? The player has the PC attempt to bribe the NPC and rolls poorly.....oops, turns out you've tried to bribe the wrong guy. Whereas if the roll went well, then turns out the PC was talking to the right guy.

In part because I want to make decisions like that ahead of time in order to inform how I'm going to role-play this guy. Even just pre-determining an alignment gives me a general starting point.

Why block certain actions automatically?

Now, if the NPC in question was a specific NPC and his principled nature has been established in the fiction, then I think that's something else, and the GM should then alter the interaction accordingly.

I'd rather do it in reverse: alter the interaction based on the principles (or lack thereof) of the NPC and let that interaction be what establishes his nature in the shared fiction, absent prior information.

The GM.

Meaning, if I was a player in your game, I'd trust you to use your judgment to put a stop to any such wastes of time.

I'm very much a let-'em-play ref when it comes to that sort of thing, so it'd have to get pretty crazy before I stepped in.

What roll to cross the illusory bridge would be made that would be impossible? The same with the sword; what roll would apply?

Why are your examples always so bonkers?

For clarity, usually. I find non-bonkers examples often cause their own sub-arguments.

In the case of the bridge, it'd be some sort of perception check (or equivalent) to notice something fishy before you joined the fish. In the case of the sword...I don't know, I just couldn't come up with a better bonkers example on the fly.