A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm thinking more of "We're playing cops in Chicago in an urban fantasy setting" and the player decides at one point he's more sympathetic to Faery and decides he's going to run off and join them. He's effectively decided that he's going to step outside the scope of the campaign and should be in no way surprised if his character gets mostly ignored after that, unless the GM just feels like, effectively, running one game for him and one for everyone else.

Right, and I would consider that 'more agency', but I think @pemerton was talking more about something closer to my example. Also, we all find that simply giving PCs choices between scenarios invented BY THE GM is pretty constraining and 'low agency'. Now, you didn't really specify who got to come up with the parameters of 'run off and join them'. None of us demands that to be entirely in the hands of the player, it is normally expected she'll be bound by things like genre conventions, established setting, and that the tone and whatnot will be respected. So, assuming Faerie is an established part of 'Fantasy Chicago' or at least in keeping with the parts already established, then I'd think the player is just exercising agency in adding that element to the story, or utilizing it if it already exists. Not all games will provide much room for this. Some are pretty tightly focused on a specific set of elements and adding others isn't really sticking within the realm of the game/genre itself, but at least in 'kitchen sink fantasy' like D&D this is rarely a big concern (tone might be).

And no, his character should NOT be 'mostly ignored', that's exactly the problem! If the GM's attitude towards players wanting to engage with the game in certain ways is "that's not in MY plan, stop doing it" (passively or actively) then maybe that is a game I'm not going to stick with (pretty surely). I don't expect things to be entirely my way, why is that expected by any participant in the game?

And I'm just saying that without some limits on that, you have "We have a wide open world game in Setting X" or nothing. Even in a module series game, you ought to go in with the idea of trying to stay within the scope of the module, or why are you even telling the GM you're going to play there?

Well, OK. I mean, I don't disagree with you that if someone says "I'm going to run a campaign where the PCs go through B2, A1-4, and then GDQ" then I know what I'm signing up for. That's perfectly OK. But usually its been more like we all agreed to play AD&D and then every time our characters decided to try to go north instead of south somehow we ended up going north anyway (or something like that, you get it) because 'B2' was to the north and by gosh that was the only thing we were going to get to choose to do.

I guess what I'm saying is, at the point where someone decides their character's agency is always more important than whatever the game is avowedly about (and makes no effort to build a character where said agency will tend to still keep them within some bounds) that they've pretty much decided only a narrow sort of game is acceptable. And they ought to at least be really up-front about the range of decisions they feel is appropriate so a GM can go "Shine on you crazy diamond, but do it somewhere else."

I put it at least equally on the GM. If they are going to restrict my input to the game to a small area and expect that we will just play a game that is about whatever they are interested in, that's fine, but count me out, EVERY TIME. I been there, did it for years, not going back! And this is why I want to see narrative front in center in whatever set of rules we use, because in my long and extensive experience of TTRPGs that's the only reliable way to get what I want. Even when people are willing to do something close to that with, say, 5e, it doesn't entirely work out. The rules and play process are just not designed for it and actively undermine it.

 

[Aldarc]

It can. But any system that is telling me that my mental image of my characters inner life is mistaken is definitely seriously limiting my agency.

At the very least it's telling you that the state of the character's fiction and your understanding thereof has changed. But unless I am mistaken, your ability to make action declarations for your character and capacity to roleplay that character remains unchanged.

Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. You are your mind, not your body. A mind without a body would be a person, a body without a mind wouldn't.

I thought Cartesian Dualism died in the 1950s with Ryle? What's it doing rearing its ugly head here as if it were still relevant?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think prep is only part of it, though. Even if I had a game that was mostly improvised with extent material, I'm just not always interested in going off on a tangent a player wants to (and that's even assuming he gets everyone else to go along). I agree that the degree of offswing their interested in pursuing should be presented upfront, though. I'm just kind of getting the feeling from some responses in this thread that that, well, doesn't matter to some people, or at least takes a lesser priority than pursuing whatever they decide in-play is their gig.

I'm just talking about some sort of basic equality. Every time any of us suggests that players should have any formal mechanism of input into what the subject of the game is at the table it is like "ANATHEMA!" I just instantly see that scene at the end of Body Snatchers! Every person at the table is a human being with interests and a creative mind. "I'm just not always interested in..." applies equally to them! Obviously if a WHOLE GROUP is constantly saying to one player "Oh, stop it, we want to go loot Billy Bob's Basement of Horrors" and the other guy wants to chase after the Elf King's Daughter, well, then they will have to figure it out. No rules can really solve that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

At the very least it's telling you that the state of the character's fiction and your understanding thereof has changed. But unless I am mistaken, your ability to make action declarations for your character and capacity to roleplay that character remains unchanged.

So your play characters so that their portrayal and their decisions are completely disconnected from their feelings and desires? Very strange.

I thought Cartesian Dualism died in the 1950s with Ryle? What's it doing rearing its ugly head here as if it were still relevant?

Hard problem of consciousness remains as one of the biggest problems (or perhaps the biggest) of philosophy.

 

[pemerton]

We were talking about games that impose feelings, desires etc on characters. I think you yourself referred to some mechanic that altered character's virtue or some such. These are the things the characterisation is based on. I am not merely talking about freedom to express, but the freedom to choose what is being expressed.

What games do you have in mind?

I referred to an effect in Burning Wheel which required a player to rewrite a Belief. That had no effect on how the player characterises and pantomimes his character. So I don't think that is an example.

As I said, I do not know of any RPG which puts limits on the ability of a player to characterise and pantomime his/her PC.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I referred to an effect in Burning Wheel which required a player to rewrite a Belief. That had no effect on how the player characterises and pantomimes his character. So I don't think that is an example.

How? How the character's beliefs do not affect the characterisation and portrayal of the character?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I can see the latter situation. I've rarely seen that particular combination of setup (theoretically open world but actually packed down tight) but I'm sure it could happen.

What I've seen MOST often is a situation where the GM has some setting, purchased or of their own devising, and they simply resist all urges to incorporate into it any element that is of someone else's devising. I mean, mostly these sorts of GMs will grant you a relative in your backstory, maybe a minor bit of geography (IE some facts about your home village or something). But every other element is coming from them, and if not then some way or other they're absolutely determined to put their stamp on everything, even if it negates whatever the point was for the story. Many of them actively work against any plot workings that 'rocks the boat' of how they've laid out the world in any way. Want to help your sister get her father-in-law appointed head of the Trade Guild? Forget it. Its always explained away as something like "Well, how can you really expect to make a difference, you're just some guy." (some variation of this). "What are the chances you could pull off bold political maneuver X." It is sort of the 'chump' theory of PCs. Its weird too, because OTOH your expected to be some fantastical fighter that can chop up horrible monsters before breakfast, lol. I've never been able to fathom this mentality, but it is pretty prevalent.

 

[Aldarc]

So your play characters so that their portrayal and their decisions are completely disconnected from their feelings and desires? Very strange.

No, I'm saying that I am not opposed to discovering and evolving what those inner feelings and desires of character may be through emerging play and recontextualizing my growing sense of the character, particularly if those desires, values, and the like are mechanically tested through play. Maybe my character in the fiction learns or experiences something surprising about themselves and/or their own passions, and in the process, I learn something new too as their player, and I adjust my roleplay accordingly.

Hard problem of consciousness remains as one of the biggest problems (or perhaps the biggest) of philosophy.

Maybe, but Cartesian mind-body dualism is mostly been discarded on the wayside in favor of more holistic approaches that incorporate cognitive science, biology, medicine, psychology, etc. without viewing the mind and body as dichotomies.

What games do you have in mind?

I referred to an effect in Burning Wheel which required a player to rewrite a Belief. That had no effect on how the player characterises and pantomimes his character. So I don't think that is an example.

As I said, I do not know of any RPG which puts limits on the ability of a player to characterise and pantomime his/her PC.

Possibly Pendragon or Prince Valiant.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

First off, I think you're reading my statement of token play as critical of it. I'm not. I'd argue an awful lot of RPG play is token play with a small veneer of characterization over it. As long as its not disruptive I consider that as viable a form as any other. I'd say I play in that mode myself some times, and like any other stance, all kinds of people use it on occasion mixed with other stances.

The part of char-op I'm referencing is specifically the idea of searching for the "best" way to do a particular general build. While not limited to token players, it certainly supports them as do games that actually let you do that, because it means that mechanical engagement actually matters.

I don't think that's unfair, actually, as long as you could get around the way the mechanical bobs worked.

I think I just don't believe I've ever seen what I would personally call 'token play', at least not in the past 25 years or so. This may be just a definitional thing, but if I have a player who says things like "My dwarf does X." I don't really consider that to be non-roleplay. It is 3rd person, for sure, but so is a lot of fiction. I also don't think that players who are in the habit of that are necessarily not inhabiting their character or creating a personality for it. They're just expressing themselves a bit differently. Maybe this is more common in some games than others, I really don't know.

I think 4e is a little extreme in terms of having a huge number of options which have complex rules interactions. You can certainly play without being 'sub-optimal' while ignoring all but the most basic ones though, so it is pretty tolerable. Our own game, which started out as hacked 4e, has lost a lot of this character, and I like that better myself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Huh? This is utterly baffling. The definition of agency doesn't require anything at all. This is like saying that the definition of speed requires that everything be a racetrack. It's a strawman -- you're attacking the definition being used by claiming that it requires maximization, when this is belied even in the very post of mine you quoted (and repeatedly elsewhere in this thread by many).

If it requires that the player chase his agenda no matter what the campaign is actually about, then I stand by my opinion. Otherwise, as I said, you need to go in keeping your agenda, whether at start or later, in the context of the game.

As I said, in the police game, does the player expect to be able to leave the police and still play in the campaign? If not, he's obviously constraining his agency to one degree or another, or being very careful to set up the character so its a nonissue (and some people seem to have a problem with that, too). If he does expect to do that, then he's essentially defining every campaign structure into a sandbox.