A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

I appreciate your response here, @Bedrockgames.



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

I am not equating them. Advocacy is fine. I have been advocating many positions on this very thread. The issue is taking it to an extreme. Online conversations lend themselves to extremes. And I think you see this on pretty much any forum. It is reasonable for people to come into a thread and promote X style of play, or game Y. But at a certain point it does become point scoring. And you see that in these arguments where people eat at the corners of one another's posts (for instance taking a stray comment and ripping it apart, while ignoring the meat). I think it is particularly the case when people are telling you they are not interested in what you are advocating and you persist in advocating for it (something I am guilty of as much as anyone else in this thread). And you also see this when we lose sight of the original purpose of our advocacy in the first place and just start debating finer and finer details. It is also about intent. It is one thing to advance a position because I think it is true or helpful, but gaming is all about taste. There are very few things to do with RPGs that are universally true and should adopted by all gamers. So I think an important thing to ask yourself is: Are you giving someone something that is genuinely useful for them, or are you just trying to get them to think like you. If you are just trying to get people to think like you as an end unto itself, I would say that is an extreme form of advocacy that isn't really healthy or useful.

It also burns bridges. There are plenty of things I could probably find helpful that posters like yourself and Pemerton use in your games. But if we are so focused on defeating the other side (and I would argue that that has been the case in much of these discussions), that just causes people to resent you rather than listen to you.

I will give you an example of what I mean. I have no interest in adopting the forge framework for analyzing RPGs. I also don't have much interest in playing Dungeon World at the moment. I also have a style of play I enjoy and when people make points like that style doesn't really exist, or is always actually doing something I don't think it is doing. All that does is irritate me and not want to listen to the person. So when we went down that whole drama and narrative detour, I found that quite frustrating and the longer it went on, the more I really didn't want to hear what advocates of the view were saying. But I am actually in the market for a good mechanic to hand the players narrative-drama powers in limited ways. There is definitely room for us to discuss playstyles and games in that respect. Perhaps I might not want to run a campaign of DW or AW, but it is possible there is a mechanic in one of those games (or one of the many that have come up that would suit my current problem). Presently I am trying to run a series of two shots based on specific wuxia movies. The game will follow pretty traditional RP conventions with the GM having traditional GM authority. But I want to give the players a tool to take some kind of dramatic control briefly when it feels like the game is not advancing towards a conclusion. Because it is a two shot, with the first session used for picking a movie and players vying for roles, and the second session used for playing the adventure, it is pretty important we hit a dramatic endpoint in that second session somehow. So I want the safety valve there, and I want something that gives the players the ability to direct things a bit in key moments. So I am all ears for a mechanic like that which I can kludge to my existing system (provided it doesn't govern all of play or something and can exist in limited moments of the game).

 

[pemerton]

Examples of GM agency and player agency
In my last four Classic Traveller sessions, the PCs travelled from Novus to the ice world Zinion, found the location of an ancient alien site by interacting with a cult, stopped another exploration team beating them to it, allied with them, and have established their temporary control over the site.

Full write-ups are in their own threads.

But here is some of what was GM agency:

* The existence of the Annic Nova with its Aliens onboard, including that it was from 2 billion years in the past.

* The naval contingent on Novus, including Lady Askol.

* The general details of Zinion, including the lack of submersibles.

* All the layout and most of the details of the alien pyramid complex.

* Introducing the NPC team as a complication (starting from a starship encounter roll and then playing on the PCs' relative lack of care about their communications).


Here is some of what was GM responding to evinced player thematic/trope interests:

* The Annic Nova as an alien spaceship.

* The psionic elements that I added into the Annic Nova as written.

* The way the NPC team has been died into the system of noble governance in the Imperium.


Here is an example of the GM responding to implicit player suggestions:

* There being an alien civilisation to be found on Zinion.


Here is pretty straightforward player agency:

* When the player searched for a Psionics Institute and made the required check, although the world of Zinion is too small in population to actually have a branch, they encountered a cult with connections to psionics, which let them get the information they needed.

* In the pyramid complex, being able to use psionics to open doors.

* Seducing Lady Askol and bringing her with them.

* Establishing a (tentative) alliance with the NPC team.


This illustrates why I've described my recent Traveller play as having more exploration and less player agency than (say) Burning Wheel.

 

[Radaceus]

I think the prep-work all depends on whether your running a published module/adventure path, or running a homebrew campaign, the latter taking a little more prep work to get going, but the homebrewed world evolves and parties come and go, time marches on, the world grows and the prep-work lessens.

I find that I improv/ad lib most of my sessions. The players never follow according to plan(s); less so after 30 odd years (almost 40 years!? yikes!!). I keep cliff notes, a story board bullet pointed, random tables (encounters, plot hooks, items, etc), draw up or grift a few maps, mark a few X's on them, and proceed. This is even the case with published modules, because either the PCs have played them, read them, Dm'd them, or a combination of the above. ( i.e. I ran Storm king's thunder in conjunction with Tyranny, and threw curve balls at them continuously as the Cultists caused as much trouble as the Giants, culminating in a new Draco-Giant war...endgame overload!)

I might spend a few days before or after session 0 scoping a rough idea of their journey to end goal, but after that its pretty much all off the cuff, especially encounters.

EDIT:
I failed to comment on player agency.
In my campaigns, the players decisions decide the progression events, and work their goals into the story, and use their backgrounds as much as possible to help solidify their purpose int he campaign

 

[hawkeyefan]

Where to me there's as far as possible no difference between PCs and NPCs. They're all equally a part of the game world, and that I'm running some and the players are running some has - or should have - no bearing on how they interact or operate.

I don’t think this is remotely true. I don’t see how it even can be true, regardless of play style or GMing approach or what game you’re playing.

The PCs are significantly different from NPCs just by virtue of the fact that the game is about them. They’re the focus of each and every session. Most NPCs will appear once. Some will appear occasionally. Maybe a handful will appear with regularity. The PCs are the ones appearing in every single session. The game doesn’t exist without them.

If that’s not the case, I’d be really interested in hearing why not.

To me that’s a clear and fundamental difference that I’d expect would absolutely relate to the level of agency present in a game. If you can’t acknowledge that the characters played by the players are the stars of the show, then yeah, I can see how concerns in agency may arise.

And also, is you actually view a GM playing a NPC as the equivalent of a player playing a PC....then how is your entire GMing approach not in violation of how you expect your players to play?

How can you reconcile an approach that considers PCs and NPCs equally important, but expects the participant running the characters to do so with radically different expectations? Like, player knowledge should be limited to what the character knows as much as possible so that the player doesn't give themselves some kind of unfair advantage.....but the GM is expected to easily and perfectly separate character and GM knowledge to always render sound judgment.

I can’t even see how any of this holds together.

Which means that if you can use Intimidate (or any other social roll) on an NPC, so should an NPC be able to use it on your PC with exactly the same degree of effect. Given that, and given that having it work this way would hammer player agency into the ground, it's a pretty easy call to just strip such mechanics out of the game wherever possible and to oppose them wherever they arise.

Same reason I rarely if ever use reaction rolls.

Well, no, that’s not the only way to handle it. Far from it. There are many ways to do so, plenty of examples have been given. Plus, if you simply accept that PCs and NPCs are fundamentally different, then none of this needs to follow.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I thought I wanted NPCs, Monsters and PCs to function identically until the d20 boom....then any d20 game became a huge time sink in terms of prep for me. It also felt constrictive to making creative choices as a GM. I think it is fine to have them function the same. But it really ought to depend on the kind of game you are working with. There is definitely something to be said for the ease of prep and the creative freedom provided by having NPCs and monsters function in a different way from the PCs (even if that difference is simply that NPCs and monsters don't require as much meticulous building or adherence to the rules that govern PC creation).

 

[aramis erak]

The problem is that strongly immersive players are, best I can tell, sufficiently uncommon its hard to say whether its unusual or not, since there seems to be a fairly diverse set of things that do and do not work for them. The sample-size makes it hard to draw good trend-lines.

I'd caution on that extrapolation - I've known a number of players who found me not supportive enough of their immersion, and they went looking for a different style of GM. It's one of several criteria upon which differences of preference self-segregate upon.

Not every group goes for deep immersion. Indeed, I've had a group that prefered to play D&D 5E as a tactical minis game with connected fights. (I was so glad they were a 1-shot at the FLGS.)
Not every group goes for minis on maps, nor for theater of the Mind.

 

[aramis erak]

It's the players' job to advocate for their character and in so doing gain what advantage they can, and IMO this advocacy includes pushing the envelope of the rules.

It's the GM's job to push back. That's why a GM's role is often referred to, in part, as that of referee.

This seems conflicted somehow - the GM is supposed to be a fan of the PCs yet at the same time is supposed to go hard-ass on them? (I forget who posted above how 'weak-kneed' GMing doesn't work in those types of games)

I mean, it's one or the other: either you're legitimately-but-fairly trying to screw them over (or kill them) and thus forcing them to fight back or you're not; and IMO doing this well requires a mindset of really being their opposition, not their fan.

Depends on the particular campaign and-or GM. A GM running a true sandbox game might very well have such things in some places, and it's on the PCs to pick their spots and find things they can handle, even if only by trial and error.

Heh - we used the pre-gens. There's six of them. Of those, three finished the dungeon and survived, despite (or more like, because of) the DM running bets among our friends as to which room would be our furthest point of advance before the TPK!

OK, I get this.

Yeah, not buying this.

Over the history of RPGs, chances are that 98+% of all players' first exposure came through D&D. What this means is that by the time those players get to any other RPG, chances are that most of the "random naive people" have been winnowed out; and many of those players who remain just stick with D&D because it gives them what they want.

Players who look for other RPGs usually have a clear idea of what they want that D&D doesn't give them, thus ensuring a higher success ratio for those games as the participants are both already experienced in RPGing and are more invested in making their new game work in hoopes it can give them what D&D didn't.

In short, comparing success rates isn't really fair on any level.

Of the about 30+ new players I introduced to RPGs (of over 400 players I've run for), only 2 were D&D first; one of those was my youngest daughter. The other was a kid who showed up at AL night by coincidence, and decided to try it after I explained what was happening. (2 more AL players had not yet played, but were rules familiar.) Couple years later, he was a regular. As was his mother... who, upon seeing how D&D worked, decided to join the fun.
I've used Star Wars (WEG and FFG), L5R 5e, Tunnels and Trolls, and Traveller (Classic and MegaTraveller) as my go to games. A few were WFRP - in one case, wife of another player. Two were Pendragon. One was Twilight 2000 1E. One was Alien. Several have been various trek games.

I'd say your odds are likely off by a few percent. Especially given the number of Germanic countries where DSA and Demon och Dragoner dominated until the late 1990's... due to native language availability. Japan had T&T and Traveller from fairly early; the few Japanese RPGers I've met started with one of those, not D&D. Again, it's what they had available in.

More recently, there have been several Spanish games written by and for the Spanish speaking world... and they were cheap and available when even the Translations of D&D were not.

And, given the import duties, combined with degrees in board and RP game design... Brasil is having a renaissance of its own RPGs since the end of 4E D&D... and it's not the only place in South America doing likewise. (I've read that Argentina is a hotbed of RPGing. Ironically, D&D is supposedly popular with the Cartels in Mexico.)

England had a variety of homegrown games, too - Dragon Warriors, Fighting Fantasy, and several others in the early 80's. Many Brits started with non-D&D RPGs.

At one point, yes, 98%+ ... but that's 30 years ago and beyond... Now, between OSR, local companies, and Pathfinder, it's probably 80%, maybe less, for the worldwide numbers. And dropping, as Sweden's RPG industry is flourishing, and their translations to English, coupled with one of the more interesting licenses (Alien) and a couple lesser known but definitely interesting ones (Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood)... with beginner boxes in both languages and book distribution in multiple channels.

A few small companies have even been able to pay most of their proprietor's bills.

If there is one game worldwide you're likely to find players for anywhere you go, it's D&D. But Paizo, FFG, Modiphius, Cubicle Seven, and Fria Ligan have starter boxes with compelling adventures in exciting licenses that are migrating people from other fandoms into RPGs outside the traditional route.

Be interesting to see who starts with the Dune starter box.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

Fate has that effect on many. I like it as a player. I dislike it as a GM... Constant adjudication issues. Too many chances to not see eye to eye on whether an aspect is relevant or not.

(In a very similar way, I like the Houses of the Blooded engine in its Blood and Honor form, despite some of the very same issues, because the GM is almost just another player. It's not GMless, but it can easily be done so if the players are good with PVP.)

 

[Aldarc]

Probably. I'm not really familiar with it though.

It's meant to emulate teen monster melodrama (e.g., Twilight, Teen Wolf, etc.), but also "your changing body, hormones, and you." So you don't get control over what or who turns you on. You may think of your character as 100% Straight, only to find your character turned on in play by someone of the same gender. Or even think of yourself as 100% gay, but find yourself suddenly attracted to someone of the opposite gender. It's meant to capture the irrational and unexpected qualities of our emotions. You may want 100 percent control over what your character thinks and feels, but I think that reflects a control over our thoughts, emotions, and psyche that we humans simply don't naturally have.

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.

Whereas Fate works for me as both a GM and player. I've been more a fan of Cortex as of late, but that's not a snub on Fate.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's meant to emulate teen monster melodrama (e.g., Twilight, Teen Wolf, etc.), but also "your changing body, hormones, and you." So you don't get control over what or who turns you on. You may think of your character as 100% Straight, only to find your character turned on in play by someone of the same gender. Or even think of yourself as 100% gay, but find yourself suddenly attracted to someone of the opposite gender. It's meant to capture the irrational and unexpected qualities of our emotions. You may want 100 percent control over what your character thinks and feels, but I think that reflects a control over our thoughts, emotions, and psyche that we humans simply don't naturally have.

But then we go back to determinism and free will. Ultimately do we really have any agency? But we like to pretend that we do, both in a game and in the real life.

But I don't think I would like that game. (Not issue with the sexuality aspect per se, my characters rarely would be placed in either extreme end of the Kinsey scale.) I have my mental models of my characters, and sometimes they produce results that might surprise me. But when my mental model says one thing and the system says another that is super jarring and I hate that.