A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

I don't find a need for them to work identically, but if they're completely divorced from each other I find it jarring. I'm will to have a set of social mechanics that mechanically nudges the PC in the direction it wants to go (provides carrots and sticks) but doesn't take over control, but that pretty much within its framework does take over control or close to it on an NPC

Apocalypse World seduce or manipulate is like this.

(Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP uses the nudging both ways - influence is a debuff if the declared action is at odds with the complication imposed by the influence attempt.)

 

[pemerton]

I am unsure why you assume this kind of bad faith posting in these conversations and don't assume instead that contributors who post extensive analysis and examples from their gameplay are having extended, substantive conversations and are not engaging in rhetorical showmanship.

Just to add to this:

I believe I have more actual play posts on ENworld than any other poster - certainly than any other participant in this thread and its predecessors.

In those threads I talk about how I made decisions, how actions were resolved, who (GM or player) provided what sort of input, etc. Not far upthread in this thread I talked about my tendency to sentimentality and a time when I held my nerve. In my recent Traveller threads - which anyone can get to by following links or using the site's Search function - I have talked about the place of exploration in the game, and how I've handled it in the course of drawing on 1980s modules for material for my current campaign. Anyone who wants to come into one of those threads and open up a discussion about where the players did and didn't have agency is very welcome to do so. (I've posted some initial thoughts of my own in some of those threads.)

None of this is "rhetorical showmanship". It's posting about the play of RPGs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am unsure why you assume this kind of bad faith posting in these conversations and don't assume instead that contributors who post extensive analysis and examples from their gameplay are having extended, substantive conversations and are not engaging in rhetorical showmanship.

This was sent in all directions, and I included myself in that. Online there is a tendency in my experience to get focused on scoring points, in getting the other person to adopt your view, rather than honestly engaging them and exchanging ideas that may be able to enhance the playing of the game on both sides.

Further, at times, both in this thread and many similar ones over the years you express hostility to analysis, sometimes encouraging others to skip analysis and "do what works for them" or some variant thereof. Which is it? Do you want extensive analysis via conversation or not? If you feel the kind of "real conversation" you seek is impossible in these threads, why do you become a frequent participant in them?

EDIT TO ADD: These are not rhetorical questions. I legitimately don't understand your assumptions and motivations.

I am not hostile to analysis. I like analysis. But there are modes of analysis I find frustrating or unconvincing. And I think whatever your analysis the priority is getting that to work at the table in your game. Analysis by poster A may be useful and insightful to posters A B and C, but not do much in terms of improving the game for posters D F and G. I am not saying people need to skip analysis, I am however aware of how powerful good rhetoric and intelligence are online, and aware those two things do not always equal being correct about something. I've adopted enough bad gaming ideas because someone made a convincing argument about them on the internet, to realize that. So while I come to forums for discussion about games, to get analysis and points of view, I am always a little skeptical, and it takes more than a compelling argument by an intelligent person to persuade me. I need to see the results at my own table. And sometimes in these discussions a person has a perfectly reasonable analysis but their fundamental assumptions about play are so different from mine, or their way of using language so different from my own, there isn't much I can do with it. At the end of the day I come to the forum to give my opinion, hear other opinions, share ideas, and see what I can find to use at my own table, and what I can share that will be useful for other peoples tables. Over the years I have grown a little cautious with any gaming ideas that feel like an ideology. And I have a tendency to be a little contrarian. That is just my personality. Hopefully this answers your question.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just to add to this:

I believe I have more actual play posts on ENworld than any other poster - certainly than any other participant in this thread and its predecessors.

In those threads I talk about how I made decisions, how actions were resolved, who (GM or player) provided what sort of input, etc. Not far upthread in this thread I talked about my tendency to sentimentality and a time when I held my nerve. In my recent Traveller threads - which anyone can get to by following links or using the site's Search function - I have talked about the place of exploration in the game, and how I've handled it in the course of drawing on 1980s modules for material for my current campaign. Anyone who wants to come into one of those threads and open up a discussion about where the players did and didn't have agency is very welcome to do so. (I've posted some initial thoughts of my own in some of those threads.)

None of this is "rhetorical showmanship". It's posting about the play of RPGs.

That is fine pemerton. I do appreciate that you give actual examples and that these ideas are ideas you use at your table (and that shows). But I also have posted extensively about actual play at my table (on my blog, on other forums, and occasionally here). We just have very different ideas about what works for us at the table, we use very different language to talk about games, and a lot of our fundamental assumptions are not the same. We just don't see eye to eye for whatever reason. But just because both of us have extensive actual play experience and post about it, that doesn't mean we must be persuaded by one another's arguments.

 

[Bedrockgames]

None of this is "rhetorical showmanship". It's posting about the play of RPGs.

My point was people get lost in the rhetoric. And I think on this thread, that is evident (for myself as well as you and others). And I do think you are good at rhetoric and you display that. That is fine. That isn't a bad quality. Sometimes though I find it makes it challenging to converse with you about gaming.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Apocalypse World seduce or manipulate is like this.

(Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP uses the nudging both ways - influence is a debuff if the declared action is at odds with the complication imposed by the influence attempt.)

The Cortex version is actually my preferred approach.

 

[pemerton]

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

Or didn't realize a check was important and said "yes"; the opposite of calling for a check where none is needed, and a simple enough mistake to make.

How is that a simple enough mistake to make? What even is the mistake? If the GM doesn't call for a check because s/he thinks there's nothing at stake, and the player doesn't call for a check because s/he thinks there's nothing at stake, or perhaps doesn't want to stake anything, what has gone wrong? What's the mistake?

If it turns out that the stuff in play starts to escalate, and in the back-and-forth between player(s) and GM it becomes clear that there is some conflict or crisis that is emerging, then at that point checks can be made.

I honestly have no idea what you think the "mistake" is that you're describing. Are you able to give an actual play example, where in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" game the GM didn't call for a check but it was important and the GM realised that later and it mattered?

I am assuming a situation where the GM realizes a check is likely appropriate but intentionally doesn't give one due to the very real possibility of said check producing a result she (and-or the player) doesn't want. To me this is pretty much the same as fudging a die roll, only instead of fudging a bad result into good after the roll you're preventing the bad result from ever arising by not rolling in the first place.

What you describe is exactly what happened in my Traveller game. No one was interested in finding out what might happen if Lady Askol didn't accept von Jerrel's lie, and so that issue wasn't put to the test.

The way in which this differs from fudging a dice roll has been explained upthread already:

(1) No dice was rolled;

(2) No system procedure was ignored or lied about - as I've posted multiple times, there is no when you tell a lie move/subsystem in Classic Traveller, and in our game we are extrapolating the Reaction rules and also using INT checks whereby I am calling for checks within a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" framework;

(3) As nothing has been staked, and nothing resolved, there is no finality here - just ongoing fiction that can be built on down the track (@AbdulAlhazred has explained this clearly over multiple posts);

(4) The player was a participant in the process and everything was fully transparent to him. This seems a particularly apposite difference in a thread about player agency!

I can see the desire to establish finality but as a player, why risk it if you don't have to? From all appearances you've got the finality anyway without having to chance the roll, so just be quiet and run with it!

There have been multiple posts explaining why finality matters when "playing to find out" and why, in the episode of von Jerrel's lie to Lady Askol, there is no finality.

Which brings up another point, I suppose: if the GM says yes (or no) without a check, to me that produces the exact same degree of finality as had dice in fact been rolled.

Well if you use a different set of techniques from "say 'yes' or roll the dice", "let it ride", "fail forward" etc then you might get problems. But they're not problems associated with the techniques I'm using.

And if you use a different set of techniques, whereby players can achieve finality without having to put it to the test, then players might not bother to put things to the test. To me that sounds like it might produce insipid play. But anyway that's not an issue for me as I don't use those techniques. I use the ones I've described in this thread.

 

[darkbard]

I appreciate your response here, @Bedrockgames.

Online there is a tendency in my experience to get focused on scoring points, in getting the other person to adopt your view, rather than honestly engaging them and exchanging ideas that may be able to enhance the playing of the game on both sides.

Why, though, conflate advocacy with scoring points through rhetoric as if they are identical? Advocacy need not include gamesmanship to function.

I've adopted enough bad gaming ideas because someone made a convincing argument about them on the internet, to realize that. So while I come to forums for discussion about games, to get analysis and points of view, I am always a little skeptical, and it takes more than a compelling argument by an intelligent person to persuade me. I need to see the results at my own table. And sometimes in these discussions a person has a perfectly reasonable analysis but their fundamental assumptions about play are so different from mine, or their way of using language so different from my own, there isn't much I can do with it.

Sometimes new ideas, new principles and techniques, take a while to bear fruit. If you find an argument convincing but haven't been able to make it work at the table, perhaps you haven't given the shift in principles enough time to take effect in refiguring your play. (Or perhaps they just aren't for you,.that you thought you wanted a particular desideratum in your game but it turns out you don't.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sometimes new ideas, new principles and techniques, take a while to bear fruit. If you find an argument convincing but haven't been able to make it work at the table, perhaps you haven't given the shift in principles enough time to take effect in refiguring your play. (Or perhaps they just aren't for you,.that you thought you wanted a particular desideratum in your game but it turns out you don't.)

This is one of those things its easy to not acknowledge; you can like an idea conceptually and still discover it absolutely does not work for you; that its foreign enough to your flow and style that it doesn't work for you, even though you like it in principal. This ended up being absolutely true for me with Fate.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sometimes new ideas, new principles and techniques, take a while to bear fruit. If you find an argument convincing but haven't been able to make it work at the table, perhaps you haven't given the shift in principles enough time to take effect in refiguring your play. (Or perhaps they just aren't for you,.that you thought you wanted a particular desideratum in your game but it turns out you don't.)

This is true, and it is why you shouldn't throw such arguments into the trash bin. But it can also mean it is just a good argument but not an accurate, correct, or even just not a universally applicable idea. What I find usually happens is a good argument comes along, and I don't really have a good answer to it, but my gut doesn't jive with it or it feels off somehow. And it often takes weeks or months before I figure out what the flaw in the reasoning behind the argument was. At the end of the day I am happy to hear new arguments, but I also think it is a little dangerous to allow oneself to be easily convinced and redirected by arguments and logic alone. You need to put arguments and ideas continuously in the fire and into practice to test them, before embracing them in my opinion. Particularly if someone is trying to persuade you to adopt a framework for understanding something (in this case RPGs).