A Question Of Agency?

[Manbearcat]

@PsyzhranV2

I think Avery is wrong if we are talking about roleplaying games that are actually like games. Roleplaying games test our ability to position our characters within a shared fiction. For gameplay to exist that needs to have teeth. From OSR play to indie blood operas the Czege principle allows players to take on a character advocacy stance so they can use their skill at fictional positioning to achieve the game's objectives. They become things you can play well.

I really like playing For The Queen, The Quiet Year and Dream Askew. However they really feel more like shared experiences than games to me. There's no real sense of mastery there.

I personally think they 'we have moved on' narrative is often overused. I mean the OSR community shows there is real value in some wisdom of the past.

Couldn't agree more with this (both the first two paragraphs and the sentiment of the last one).

I think too often people try to bin way too many things into one category. Ultimately, whatever the original thing was becomes meaningless and impossible to untangle and talk about. While it certainly doesn't intend to do so, it makes talking about design and actually putting the thing into effect extremely fraught.

Games (a) require gamestates of which the trajectory is both (b) in the balance and (c) up for grabs (d) whereby skillfulness/effort is deployed > tested > mediated by <thing> in order to wrest that trajectory from the machinations of one participant to another.

If that doesn't exist, then "shared experience" or merely "play" is probably the term for what we should be discussing. This is pretty trivially illustrated:

* "Make Believe" is a form of "play" or "shared experience" but its not a "game."

* "Calvinball" is a term we're all familiar with because it is a "would-be game" that has degenerated to "not game" status precisely because none of (b) nor (c) nor (d) above are actually true in practice.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm not sure what you mean by defining terms specifically. I look at what you wrote and clearly read it as "I care about having full authority over the mental states of my character." This is a fine statement, absolutely nothing wrong with it as a preference, it just doesn't have anything to do with agency because there's nothing at stake to make a choice about -- it's empty calories.

I disagree. I don't accept your definition.

It's also incorrect, in that I'm certain you haven't banned or refuse to play in games that feature Charm, Suggestion, Domination, or other effects/spells which rather forcefully usurp this authority you're referencing.

That I place a high priority on something doesn't automatically mean that I need to be absolutist about it. Like if I care about eating healthy, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't ever eat snacks.

Let's unpack this. The game involves imagination, but it isn't imaginary. There are rules that are not imagined as part of the game, for instance. If we want to change the game, ie, that game involving those rules, then we have to act within those rules. You imagining your character is sad has no weight within any RPG without an action involving the rules. It is a separate thing. A different game, which is what I said about this being a meta-game where you entertain your friends but don't invoke the game rules. Now, if you state that your character is sad, and this imposes a gamestate within the rules that other players can interact with with those rules, then we're in agency land, because we're operating on choices that have consequences. If it's just you and your friend Bob having a sideline pretend game about your character being sad and Bob saying nice things, that's awesome! I do that all the time -- one of my fondest memories around games was having a 20 minute in character conversation about whether or not another character made a shot while my character was unconscious -- I played my character as not believing it and the other player tried to convince that it happened. Twenty minutes, in character, hella fun. And at no point did it involve any agency.

And I do not accept this definition. It is incoherent and it is not useful. In a roleplaying game a lot of things can happen and only some of them interact with rules. The rules are not the game, the game is the whole experience, and that experience only exists in the minds of players. Agency does not mean 'ability to interact with rules,' it means ability to meaningfully affect the events in the game, and this doesn't need to involve any rules. Hell, by your definition railroading does not affect agency as it has nothing to do with rules. And speaking of further bizarre definitions, you define acting in character as meta-game, which is pretty much the exact opposite to what is normally meant by it!

Anyway, I have no further interest to hear about your attempts to reinvent language.

 

[Campbell]

@Crimson Longinus

What you and @FrogReaver are talking about seems more like a sense of ownership than a sense of agency to me. You are talking about feeling that you have complete control of what belongs to you. Agency is about action. Acting on the external world. It's about affecting change in the outside world rather than protecting what you already have.

So I do not think you need specific mechanics to have a sense of agency. What you do need is a shared expectation that everyone at the table is committed to respecting and following the shared fiction over their personal conception of the things they "own". Those expectations are very much a part of the rules of many games. When we can disregard fictional positioning anytime it is convenient than there is no real agency.

 

[FrogReaver]

@Crimson Longinus

What you and @FrogReaver are talking about seems more like a sense of ownership than a sense of agency to me. You are talking about feeling that you have complete control of what belongs to you. Agency is about action. Acting on the external world. It's about affecting change in the outside world rather than protecting what you already have.

I don't think you are really wrong, but you are not really right either. I don't really know how one can have agency over something and not have a sense of ownership of it. After all player agency implies that it is the player making the decisions and the player facing the consequences of his decisions. So I would say agency inherently produces a sense of ownership. In which case, trying to decouple the 2 concepts to the degree that you can criticize me for conflating agency with ownership just doesn't work.

So I do not think you need specific mechanics to have a sense of agency. What you do need is a shared expectation that everyone at the table is committed to respecting and following the shared fiction over their personal conception of the things they "own". Those expectations are very much a part of the rules of many games. When we can disregard fictional positioning anytime it is convenient than there is no real agency.

A single action only has a single agent. So if another player is exerting agency over something then you are not - at least not at that moment.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I disagree. I don't accept your definition.

Yes, this is clear, however what you're proposing in it's place is not. Best I can figure it's a combination of retaining the ability to try things, subject to the GM's resolution authority, and to have full control over your character's imagined mental state, ignoring those mechanics that strip this control because you're used to them. It's not coherent when you have to ignore mechanics.

Further, neither you nor @FrogReaver has yet addressed the fundamental problem with the accusation I'm trying to control the language to win a point -- I both say that 5e has less agency AND advocate for it as a fun game to play. If my intent was to control the language to win a point, why would I then enthusiastically proclaim that I like 5e? Because my intent is to analyze play, not score points or claim a "better" game. If I lack an ulterior motive such as this, why would I use tactics that support such a thing rather than being honest and clear about what's happening in play?

That I place a high priority on something doesn't automatically mean that I need to be absolutist about it. Like if I care about eating healthy, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't ever eat snacks.

This is incoherent because we're not talking about mostly acting healthy, we're defining what it means to act in a healthy manner. You've moved the goalposts from defining agency to not caring all the time about having agency. If agency is defined by having total control over your character's "inner life" (ad argumentum), then examples of these effect must reduce that agency. It's not a matter of having a cheat day, it's an attack against the premise.

That you can be fine with such reductions is a matter of preference, but now you've adopted my core argument while trying to deny it -- reductions in agency aren't an evil, they're just part of a game, and we can like or dislike that reduction like we can any other thing. If this is the case, we don't need to do the strange definition of things such that you can try to both claim that agency is control over your character's "inner life" but the commonality of game mechanics that thwart this is not important to that agency.

And I do not accept this definition. It is incoherent and it is not useful. In a roleplaying game a lot of things can happen and only some of them interact with rules. The rules are not the game, the game is the whole experience, and that experience only exists in the minds of players. Agency does not mean 'ability to interact with rules,' it means ability to meaningfully affect the events in the game, and this doesn't need to involve any rules. Hell, by your definition railroading does not affect agency as it has nothing to do with rules. And speaking of further bizarre definitions, you define acting in character as meta-game, which is pretty much the exact opposite to what is normally meant by it!

Of course agency doesn't mean ability to interact with the rules. But agency only can exist where a choice is made and tested. There's lots of ways to do this, and when we do this, it's important to look at how that test works and who has authority over resolutions. In that case, if only one person ever has authority over that resolution after the test and it's not the player in question, then we can definitively say that this is less player agency than if the player has at least some authority in resolutions after the test. This is what I meant by interacting with the game. You imagining things in your head isn't part of the game until it's brought into test within the game. And that's where agency lives -- not in your ability to imagine a thing, but whether or not you can place that imagined thing into the shared fiction.

Anyway, I have no further interest to hear about your attempts to reinvent language.

It's funny you say this, and I address it above -- I have no motive to reinvent language, and you've yet to show that any of the ways I've used words is different from how they're normally used. You just keep asserting that I'm doing so. Please do the work.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the answer to your puzzlement is in your post, here, and the broad subject of the thread: I think many players (I'm one) would find the long-term imposition of a mental state--such as Launcelot being unable to resist loving Guinevere, and unable to resist acting on it--on their character to be an unacceptable removal of agency. Some--I'll admit I'm one--maybe find that sort of lack-of-control too reminiscent of their real lives, and play (among other reasons) so they can control something in ways they can't in reality. As you say, it's not difficult to figure out how to put character goals at risk without such impositions.

I would say that these types of games are pretty heavily focused on "what do you want to explore?" So, I can't speak to all games and GMs, but IMHO someone imposing things on you at the table which offend you or make you uncomfortable are social table issues. There must surely be many Arthurian tales which can be told where the elements you're uninterested in don't appear. Possibly some genre don't work for you, like there are possibly some I don't find to be to my taste either.

I mean, I've played with people with phobias, and I've certainly played with people who would be uninterested in RPing various social elements of real life (prejudice for example) or stories with elements of personal violence, etc. Those are all things that should be respected at any table, regardless of rules, and if a GM's answer to "don't bring this to the table" is "its part of the genre/story/setting" then that is someone who needs common decency explained to them at length...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Seems pretty trivial to depict your character as lusting after the queen but trying to keep himself in check.

Or to pass altogether given that the king beheads those who look lustfully upon the queen.

in any event I’ve lost agency if I don’t get to make such meaningful character choices.

Sure, but there's no tension there. It isn't dramatic. It isn't exploring anything, and it surely isn't anything like how people experience these sorts of feelings in real life. So how can it be satisfying and immersive? I hear all these cries about how players being part of choosing the story is anti-immersive, but here's an example of a whole class of characterizations which really doesn't work in any immersive way without this sort of process. There is no 'gain of agency' when you have to play both sides of the situation. It is no different from saying that dungeons are bad because they have walls and there's a rule that you can't walk through them!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You are trying to define terms so that they support your narrative. And it is not helpful. It is helpful for me to be able to say 'I care a lot about agency over the mental states of my character,' most people understand pretty clearly what I mean, this is a sensible use of language.


Inertial forces may not be real forces but they're real concepts. In physics that indeed is meaningful distinction, but when we are talking something like games, that that are purely social constructs, that is not. There is no 'real agency' it is not a physical thing, it is just a concept.


Dude, the whole game is just people imagining things! That's like the whole bloody point! The game doesn't exist outside the imagination of the players. That my character is feeling sad is exactly equally valid 'game state' than an imaginary door being locked, and another character saying something to cheer my character up is just as valid alteration of a gamestate than a rogue picking the lock of that door by making a skill check.

Yes, these are all game states, but lets examine this 'loss of agency' thing again. Suppose you enter into a dungeon and encounter a wall. This is a game state, right? We both define it as such. This obstacle is attached to a rule "you cannot walk through walls" (probably unstated, but lets call it a 'genre rule'). You can obviously try to argue, exactly analogously to your character mental state argument, that this is an imposition on player agency. But we will both plainly reject this specious argument, won't we? Why is it specious? Because there cannot be agency without the necessity of choice, without some obstacle to choose how to navigate, without some 'terrain' for the characters to operate within, there is no meaning to the term 'agency'. If I say to you "your character is in an infinite void, there is nothing in any direction stretching to infinity" it is plainly obvious that nothing can happen here and 'agency' is a worthless concept!

You're not 'losing agency' when someone says "You lust after the Queen" you are simply in a different game state! It isn't any different from that dungeon wall. Again, this is where, in the end, I have to entirely bow to @pemerton's argument about agency. Agency as defined as "degrees of freedom of movement within the entirety of the state space of the game fictional state." isn't meaningful. It is only meaningful to talk about agency IN RELATION TO THINGS THE CHARACTER WANTS/NEEDS/DESIRES! Or maybe something closely related to that. I mean, that can be as simple as 'gold coin' (classic D&D). It doesn't have to be.

I'm all with you on what tastes you have and being told you lust after the Queen not being one of them, fine. But in the final analysis, its "can we have a story with the elements we desire in it?" that is all that can be the measure of agency when talking about an imaginary world.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure, but there's no tension there. It isn't dramatic. It isn't exploring anything, and it surely isn't anything like how people experience these sorts of feelings in real life.

First, I don’t think it matters how people experience such things in real life. We aren’t trying to replicate real life IMO. At best we are trying to replicate our perception of real life and those perceptions can be dramatically different.

On the dramatic, I think that depends on how much forethought you put into your character. My D&D play often has me not having concluded what my character will do in a situation until right before the moment I have him fictionally do it. Assuming the scene is not trivial that provides a great deal of drama for me.

So how can it be satisfying and immersive? I hear all these cries about how players being part of choosing the story is anti-immersive, but here's an example of a whole class of characterizations which really doesn't work in any immersive way without this sort of process. There is no 'gain of agency' when you have to play both sides of the situation. It is no different from saying that dungeons are bad because they have walls and there's a rule that you can't walk through

I don’t think I follow this part.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, these are all game states, but lets examine this 'loss of agency' thing again. Suppose you enter into a dungeon and encounter a wall. This is a game state, right? We both define it as such. This obstacle is attached to a rule "you cannot walk through walls" (probably unstated, but lets call it a 'genre rule'). You can obviously try to argue, exactly analogously to your character mental state argument, that this is an imposition on player agency. But we will both plainly reject this specious argument, won't we? Why is it specious? Because there cannot be agency without the necessity of choice, without some obstacle to choose how to navigate, without some 'terrain' for the characters to operate within, there is no meaning to the term 'agency'. If I say to you "your character is in an infinite void, there is nothing in any direction stretching to infinity" it is plainly obvious that nothing can happen here and 'agency' is a worthless concept!

You're not 'losing agency' when someone says "You lust after the Queen" you are simply in a different game state! It isn't any different from that dungeon wall. Again, this is where, in the end, I have to entirely bow to @pemerton's argument about agency. Agency as defined as "degrees of freedom of movement within the entirety of the state space of the game fictional state." isn't meaningful. It is only meaningful to talk about agency IN RELATION TO THINGS THE CHARACTER WANTS/NEEDS/DESIRES! Or maybe something closely related to that. I mean, that can be as simple as 'gold coin' (classic D&D). It doesn't have to be.

I'm all with you on what tastes you have and being told you lust after the Queen not being one of them, fine. But in the final analysis, its "can we have a story with the elements we desire in it?" that is all that can be the measure of agency when talking about an imaginary world.

Almost sounds like everything is a game state which makes it a rather meaningless term IMO.

If everything is a game state then by necessity some game states must reduce agency.

In which case I don’t see how calling it a game state does anything to show that framing a character as “lusting after the queen” isn’t an agency reducing game state.