A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

[...snip...]

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).

I hear what you're saying here. I've said it, or similar, to myself many times over the years regarding that 80% coming up over and over; and if (as in, when!) I catch myself falling into that 80% rut I actively try to get out of it by trying to come up with different alternatives if-when the same situation arises repeatedly.

"Most plausible" isn't the exclusive credibility test; though it's quite reasonable to expect that the most plausible thing is going to happen most of the time it's not going to happen all the time, and nor should it. I don't, however, see much benefit to pushing the percentage of less-plausible outcomes up too high, as in the long run doing so would stretch believability until it snapped. So yes, realistic is a concern.

A better exclusive credibility test is "Plausible at all?"; as failing this means the outcome almost certainly won't happen.

 

[Lanefan]

But of course the players will realise it's happened!

You asked "if you "say yes" when it's not appropriate as per the system, then what?" In systems that use "say 'yes' or roll the dice", it is inappropriate to say yes if the action undertaken by the PC (eg telling the lie; capering along the bridge railing) actually is important to someone at the table, rather than something with which everyone can simply go along by way of free roleplay and uncontradicted narration.

So if the GM allows something to simply be established via free roleplay and uncontradicted narration, and the player actually wanted it to matter and be put to the test, the player will know because she'll notice that s/he isn't getting the check that s/he hoped for.

Assuming the player was hoping for a check.

If the player was hoping to get by without a check, however, and no check comes it'd be a very rare player indeed who raised an issue about it. Instead, most players IME would think "Hm - I got away with that one! Lucky me!" and very carefully say no more about it. To me the Lady Askar(?) example looks like one of these.

In broader terms beyond just this example: just because a player benefits from a GM error doesn't make it any less of an error.

 

[pemerton]

By allowing one outcome to occur (whether desired or not isn't the point here) you also blocked any other possible outcomes from occurring.

That appears to be a tautology. It doesn't entail that allowing events equals forcing those events.

I also see that bridge example as being horrible GMing advice! Not for the actual example, but because it establishes an ethos of 'let the players get away with stuff' when it doesn't matter and thus to me makes it harder to suddenly have to enforce checks when it does matter.

<snip>

Players will always go along with the GM when the GM is giving them what they want!

<snip>

I'm not sure it's the player's job to determine whether or when the action should be tested. It's the player's job to declare the action, absolutely, but it then falls to the GM to decide when or if that action needs a test

All I can say is that none of this is true in the play I experience.

Players don't "get away with stuff". They understand when things are at stake and when not. They have views about whether they want to bring matters to a check now or let the fiction evolve a bit further first.

What you describe reads like KotD taken as literal rather than parody.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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).

I am not 100% sure I am understanding everything you say here. I also haven't been following Lanefan's points as closely so I am not sure how close or far apart our thinking is on this front. But reading through this a couple of times, I will say I believe my approach is not this "mathematical". I run NPCs mostly by feel (which I will address at the end of this response after laying some groundwork about my actual style of play). A lot of these discussions are very theoretical, and cover a wide range of styles. And in this thread I have been defending a few different styles of play. Presently the style I employ most often is one of two approaches. One I call a drama sandbox. So it isn't that I am averse to drama at all, I am just saying it doesn't have to be the governing priority or rationale behind choices you make as a GM (and it is entirely possible to run a game with no consideration towards drama or narrative). In this Drama and Sandbox approach the GM is trying to maximize player freedom without fetishizing it so much he or she avoids dramatic elements (this is something I was referring to when I talked about how our own rhetoric and gaming style discourse can box us in and make us more 'extreme' in our approach to play. Drama and sandbox was an attempt to escape that and reconcile my desire for an open world that feels real, and a need to have some amount of drama. The other is more of a monster of the week, one shot adventure approach (usually as a series of linked 1-10 one shots)----which usually has a pretty clear premise (you are investigating the disappearance of an official at the Four Seasons Tea House. But within that premise, the players can do what they want. But I have also been defending a style of play that eschews drama entirely and focuses on producing a living world.

See my description of drama and sandbox below to understand how I approach campaigns, but in terms of running NPCs...I am not running a series of mental computations when I play them. I am trying to inhabit the NPCs, understand their motives and goals, and basically channel them. I am not an 'actor' as a GM. My delivery is actually really dry. But what I mean is you get to know the character and understand what makes them tick, and when the players do something it starts to become clear to you how this character would act and respond. This isn't intended to simulate a living human being. And to your point about pre-judging people, or making snap judgements about people, in real life I agree. Real human beings are incredibly complex. Still as complex as they are, I can at least mentally wrap my head around the question "What would my dad do in this situation" and come up with an answer that is satisfying to me (it might not be predictive, but it is believable). But I also do treat real life and imaginary life differently. I am not worried about prejudging an NPC because the NPC doesn't actually exists. That said, I do like to understand my NPCs and feel I do a good job of undertstanding things from their point of view. Even my most over the top, evil villains, usually have some other motivation or drive that makes them relatable to the players.

It would take an extended conversation, a real conversation not one where we are trying to outdo each other rhetorically, to really give you a full take on how I run a game, how I play NPCs, and what my overarching goals are.

To clarify what Drama and Sandbox means to me, I am pasting a section from one of my rulebooks, which is the advice I have pretty much followed myself for several years now (this is from my wuxia game so everything here is oriented towards the wuxia genre). I am quite sure this is a style of play that will have little appeal to some of the posters in this thread. But I can say that it is table tested and has worked better for me as a GM than just about any other approach. At the time I wrote this I was running three campaigns which were all quite lengthy (one of them I posted 80+ sessions of on my blog). Because I was running so many regular games, I really had to abandon anything that didn't work at the table even if it was something I was intellectually attached to. This description is just one part of the GM section, so there is a lot more in there about things like fate (which is also an important principle I tend to run games by) and grudges---which were a very important fuel for this type of campaign:

...The players are free to explore as they wish, with no railroading, but the GM should introduce active elements that heighten the tension and create excitement. This can be done in the form of NPCs, events, movements, and additional elements. In a sense, this is a combination of exploration adventure and situational adventures (a term coined by Clash Bowley where you throw in a situation or complication and see how the Player Characters respond).

Situational adventures introduce complications, NPCs and other interesting elements. They build in response to the player’s reactions. The wuxia genre is filled with situational adventures. Whether it is a respected but ruthless master who has an interest in being one of the player character’s father in-law, or a misguided and reckless Martial Hero eager to impress them and become their disciple, complications tend to present themselves.

On the other hand, it is important not to go too far here. The purpose is to enhance the exploration aspect of the game with interesting developments. Respect the players’ freedom to explore and use active complications to show them there is a dynamic world at work around them.

Exploration is a key feature of the game. This obviously involves prepping locations but it requires flexibility and being able to shift gears at key moments....I give the players freedom to explore and try to build off of their choices. If they decide to investigate rumors of ghosts at the Pagoda of Golden Mercies in Kwam Metta, then I am happy to allow that, even if I had something else planned for the session.

That does not mean everything you had planned evaporates. You have to play it by ear but some elements the characters ignore might still be in play. Never railroad. Never force elements because you want them. If the players avoid the growing fiasco
with Lady Plum Blossom and the Four Finger Manual to explore Kwam Metta, and it makes sense that Lady Plum Blossom has a continued interest in them, she may come after the party or send disciples to deal with them. Even if she does not, you ought to mentally note (better yet, write down) what occurs regarding Lady Plum Blossom and the manual in case it becomes relevant later in the campaign.

 

[pemerton]

Assuming the player was hoping for a check.

If the player was hoping to get by without a check, however, and no check comes it'd be a very rare player indeed who raised an issue about it.

But now you're assuming that the GM at one-and-the-same time both thought a check was important and yet said "yes".

You also don't seem to recognise why a player might want to push things to a check - for instance, to establish finality in respect of some matter (eg whether or not Lady Askol believes the lie).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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."

I think there's a bunch of variations on this. Like one player (I admit to being the one often) creates a pretty distinct character, with a pretty easily defined and central objective that easily arises (my Tabaxi character is an urchin with no family, he has only a memento from his mother, there's a pretty clear direction here, my previous character wanted to build his own stronghold). Do other players go along with it because they want to, or because they don't want to 'rock the boat'? I mean, how to deal with a party full of agendas is an interesting question. In a game like DW there are some tools. 5e, for example, doesn't really have them.

 

[prabe]

I think there's a bunch of variations on this. Like one player (I admit to being the one often) creates a pretty distinct character, with a pretty easily defined and central objective that easily arises (my Tabaxi character is an urchin with no family, he has only a memento from his mother, there's a pretty clear direction here, my previous character wanted to build his own stronghold). Do other players go along with it because they want to, or because they don't want to 'rock the boat'? I mean, how to deal with a party full of agendas is an interesting question. In a game like DW there are some tools. 5e, for example, doesn't really have them.

Obviously this could rub against your (or anyone's) preferred playstyle, but my approach DMing 5E has been to have several pending story arcs available--some based on things the characters brought in, others based on things they've encountered since we started--and once the party has completed one they can choose another (or sometimes figure a way to work on more than one at the same time). This is made easier by the fact that A) not everyone at the table brought in a goal and B) the players have been entirely willing to solve things one at a time, knowing that their goals are still pending and might still arise as pursuits.

So, it can be an at-the-table solution, and/or it can be a more GM-driven solution. And I agree that neither approach is specifically grounded in the 5E rules. I think it helps to keep in mind that the 5E rules are intended for playing through hardcover adventures, where individual character goals are ... less relevant (and agency, at roughly any of the levels @Manbearcat laid out upthread, IIRC, isn't a consideration).

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

We already covered this. Why not let that success stand until something in the fiction calls it into question in some way?

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.

I don't think that the DM in 3e versions could have NPCs use skills in that manner on the PCs. And while I wouldn't defend the skill system of 3e D&D, I think that there is a fundamental difference between a PC and a NPC. They must be treated differently in many ways.

Now, beyond that, do I think that things can happen to the PCs during play that impacts their state of mind, and forces some behavioral consequence on them? Sure, it can happen quite often to be honest.

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.

Predetermining it means you may also be predetermining the ways in which the PCs will likely be interacting with this NPC. And that may be fine. But I think it's worth considering if you can get the same roleplay out of deciding during play. I think it may also matter the context of the NPC; certainly some should be more clearly defined before the PCs interact with them.

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.

Sure, my point is just that you can do it another way, and it opens up a different angle of gameplay.

 

[aramis erak]

So do posters here believe that they have agency in the real life? Just asking to calibrate some agency standards.

Yes, I do. More than most PCs in games I've run, but still not as much as I'd like. I can't just circle up a millionaire friend willing to spend money on me....

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Interesting thesis, but I would need data (and the 'evo devo' part, unprovable storytelling but that's just one of my annoyances ). While it is dangerous to rely too much on 'Googling' for answers to profound questions, you might find the results of a search on "are first impressions accurate" to be interesing how accurate are first impressions at DuckDuckGo and my impression of what came up is "its more complicated than that." (figures). So keep that in mind. In fact this kinda makes sense, since first impressions are probably under very heavy selection pressure. More subtly, honesty is an evolutionarily overall favorable trait. This is why humans have bare faces and visible sclera of the eye, nobody can suppress 'tells' when they try to lie, our emotions come to the surface easily etc. It is advantageous to a specific individual to be able to prevaricate, but for the WHOLE GROUP this is disastrous. It utterly undermines the value of communications and it is unlikely that language would even have arisen under conditions of rampant lying (and getting away with it at least). So all humans prevaricate, and all other humans catch them most of the time. The same is true for other basic human personality traits, we signal them, and others pick them up. This forms the basis for first impressions, which work kinda well (sort of). I agree though, we should treat them with great care, and our social conditioning is a huge problem here. Anyway... just had to say that.

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.

My own input here is just to say that I don't think this process can yield much. We know so little about the fictional world. We know little about the detailed social history of this world, of the customs and norms, of the detailed history, or even basic facts like social class and ethnic heritage, of most of the NPCs in it that we cannot even do something equivalent to a first impression, let alone some sort of actual analysis. All that is left is either some very dubious and essentially worthless assessment, like what you are doing, or to JUST MAKE IT UP. I assert that the latter is what people are doing. EVEN if they do the former, they are doing the latter, because the former is basically impossible and is just a proxy for doing the latter unconsciously. I say this for all the same reasons that you say you doubt first impressions, essentially.

---

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).

I think my thesis is simpler. People pick for entirely other reasons, which I like to generously label "dramatic effect", although I admit there are probably potentially many others. I'm quite sure people THINK they are doing some sort of "logical unbiased neutral" thing. IMHO and in my studies of how humans actually think (I mean physically and how the process works) that is literally impossible.