A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

But relating to discussion of agency, a system dictating how the character must feel certainly is a huge imposition on the player agency. The character's feelings and motivations are the very core of the player agency.

To link this to my post just above, and the one before that that @hawkeyefan replied to: if imagining or even giving voice to those feelings and motivations doesn't actually change the play of the game - if it's just set dressing - than I don't regard it as core to player agency. In that broader context it seems rather peripheral.

A concrete example: I think it would make zero difference to player agency in a standard run at the Giants modules to use as a backstory that the PCs are all Geased and magically compelled, rather than that they are bossed around by a king.

Likewise for Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan: replacing the gas on the lower level with a magical compulsion timer would not affect the agency of the players in any significant way.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To link this to my post just above, and the one before that that @hawkeyefan replied to: if imagining or even giving voice to those feelings and motivations doesn't actually change the play of the game - if it's just set dressing - than I don't regard it as core to player agency. In that broader context it seems rather peripheral.

A concrete example: I think it would make zero difference to player agency in a standard run at the Giants modules to use as a backstory that the PCs are all Geased and magically compelled, rather than that they are bossed around by a king.

Likewise for Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan: replacing the gas on the lower level with a magical compulsion timer would not affect the agency of the players in any significant way.

I don't agree at all. You simply arbitrarily declare some things to be meaningful and some not. The things what you dismissively call 'characterisation and pantomime' are the core of the play to a lot of people, and being in charge of that is the sort of agency they care about. Now you are perfectly free to value other things, but you don't get to decide that agency only means controlling the things you personally care about.

 

[Rune]

So I don't prepare plots, or adventures, or stories, or scenes, or anything for the PCs to encounter in advance. What I do is come up with stuff on the fly as the game is being played.

I do have a world that the PCs adventure in, sometimes a published setting, such as the Forgotten Realms or the Star Wars Universe. Sometimes a homebrew world made up in my imagination based on the players desires and the premise of the campaign as decided in Session Zero.

Between sessions I do daydream about the Imaginationland that the campaign will take place in. I wander around in it and see the sights. I fly above it and watch as the peeps that inhabit it go about their lives. I think upon what has happened so far in the established narrative and how that has affected the world and it's inhabitants.

But I don't write anything down, or get stats ready, or prepare encounters for the PCs to take part in. I just imagine stuff between sessions, at times even dwell on aspects of the established narrative to make sure that I have that part of the story that was told at the forefront of my mind for the next session.

So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.

So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Do your villainous NPCs have motivations, agendas and the resources to act on them?

If so, you have stakes. If you can build on those stakes such that the players can get a sense of their progression, you establish relevancy (and urgency).

At that point, yes. The players have meaningful choices in how (or whether) to deal with them. As long as there are consequences, of course. Every decision they make needs to have some sort of consequences.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't agree at all. You simply arbitrarily declare some things to be meaningful and some not. The things what you dismissively call 'characterisation and pantomime' are the core of the play to a lot of people, and being in charge of that is the sort of agency they care about. Now you are perfectly free to value other things, but you don't get to decide that agency only means controlling the things you personally care about.

I don’t think that’s what @pemerton was saying. I think it’s about those character traits being meaningful to play.

If my fighter with a haunted past begrudgingly accompanies the party to the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, how is that different from my fighter who’s a happy go lucky scoundrel who’s in it for the coin?

If essentially all that’s different is that with one character I speak in a glum manner and occasionally make reference to past horrors, and with the other I act upbeat and make jokes....they’re not meaningfully different.

It may be that this kind of thing is common or that many consider this the extent of roleplaying; that’s fine. It’s just not the kind that @pemerton enjoys. He wants the character traits to be more than window dressing. To be central to play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don’t think that’s what @pemerton was saying. I think it’s about those character traits being meaningful to play.

If my fighter with a haunted past begrudgingly accompanies the party to the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, how is that different from my fighter who’s a happy go lucky scoundrel who’s in it for the coin?

If essentially all that’s different is that with one character I speak in a glum manner and occasionally make reference to past horrors, and with the other I act upbeat and make jokes....they’re not meaningfully different.

It may be that this kind of thing is common or that many consider this the extent of roleplaying; that’s fine. It’s just not the kind that @pemerton enjoys. He wants the character traits to be more than window dressing. To be central to play.

I at least get the distinction there, though in that case I think it behooves the player to chose character traits that will still keep things within the intended scope of the campaign (as in, are unlikely to make the character, essentially, walk out of the campaign. Sometimes that will happen unexpectedly, but if it happens frequently I have to conclude either the player, the GM or both are failing to communicate what the campaign is about).

Of course there are people who are super-resistant to the idea of campaign scope, too, but I can only generate so much sympathy for people who want wide open worlds or nothing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don’t think that’s what @pemerton was saying. I think it’s about those character traits being meaningful to play.

Meaningful to whom?

If my fighter with a haunted past begrudgingly accompanies the party to the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, how is that different from my fighter who’s a happy go lucky scoundrel who’s in it for the coin?

If essentially all that’s different is that with one character I speak in a glum manner and occasionally make reference to past horrors, and with the other I act upbeat and make jokes....they’re not meaningfully different.

They are completely different characters! How on earth is that not meaningful? They will interact with their fellow PCs in different manner, creating a drastically different social situations, evoking different emotions in the players at the table. And of course their differing personalities and motivations would be likely to result different decisions on many occasions.

It may be that this kind of thing is common or that many consider this the extent of roleplaying; that’s fine. It’s just not the kind that @pemerton enjoys. He wants the character traits to be more than window dressing. To be central to play.

They are central to the play!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed.

More than once (many more times than once) I've seen posters on this board saying that they can "roleplay" playing Monopoly. By which they mean, I think, narrate away or tell a story as they move their token around the board.

If this gets to count as roleplaying, it would be roleplaying with almost no player agency.

For my part, I'm inclined to the view that token play (or "pawn stance") doesn't cease to be that simply because the player of the pawn occasionally does some "characterisation and pantomime" (which I think was @Manbearcat's phrase upthread), if that narration and storytelling doesn't actually change the gamestate - the shared fiction - in any significant way.

I would say that you cannot ever call Monopoly, as-written, an RPG, no matter how much you role play while playing it, because of exactly this, there's no impact of the fiction on the game state. In this sense even a basically 100% 'pawn state' play of D&D is STILL an RPG, because whatever the player describes for fiction at least has some impact on the game state (hopefully, I am hard pressed to believe there's a D&D game that is truly not RP at all). RPGs require a 'closed loop' where mechanics and narration of fictional actions interact and produce narrative and a meaningfully evolving game state.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What about when a player allows their character conception to dictate the course of events rather than some sense of optimal play?

Do you think that token/pawn play cannot allow for meaningful roleplaying? Or just that it would take the players and GM some work to try and add some of it to play?

I think the flaw there is that playing in such a way is not really playing the game 'by the rules'. While the rules of zero-sum type competitive games (for example) don't usually explicitly state that the goal is to win and that making optimal moves is a principle of play, that doesn't mean it isn't true. I think you are 'breaking Monopoly' when you, for example, land on a property which makes economic sense to buy (almost any of them at almost any time) and you don't purchase it. That's really just about the only decision point you HAVE in the game, except for when and where to deploy buildings. Playing to some other agenda is a lot like playing D&D and deciding your PC is going to be a barkeep instead of an adventurer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My mental image of my character is not directly the same thing than the character's self image. The latter is only a part of the former.


And if that works for some people, great. It definitely does not for me. But relating to discussion of agency, a system dictating how the character must feel certainly is a huge imposition on the player agency. The character's feelings and motivations are the very core of the player agency.

I think this, again, points out an area where pure 'character stance' play runs into a limitation. In narrative type games the player has a whole other role, so it is quite OK if they 'step out' of the role of being sole authority about what their character does/feels/is, at least potentially. Most RPGs don't do a lot of this, but Monster Hearts, and a few others, have used it as a way to address some specific agenda. Paranoia was an early example of this (though it lacks any narrative mechanics) where the 'Computer' would just arbitrarily 'do things' to your PC and it pretty much didn't matter what choices you made or what the player wanted. Of course that was the whole IDEA of that game, that the characters were utterly helpless pawns.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Meaningful to whom?

To pemerton.

I would likely prefer play along those lines myself, although I’d likely be open to other approaches as well.

They are completely different characters! How on earth is that not meaningful? They will interact with their fellow PCs in different manner, creating a drastically different social situations, evoking different emotions in the players at the table. And of course their differing personalities and motivations would be likely to result different decisions on many occasions.

Because what makes them different is unlikely to determine the events of play such that play goes differently. Meaning that play is not about these characters and their traits.

They are central to the play!

How so? I mean, I’m not saying it can’t matter. And I’m not saying that such character portrayal can’t be entertaining for what it is.

But I think that, if you look at it with a mind toward the kind of agency for which @pemerton has been advocating, then the difference is clearer, and is consistent. It’s not that he wants to be free to bring these things up during play, it’s that he wants them to be what play is about.

That’s my understanding of it, anyway. If I’m far off, I’d sure he can correct me.