A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

But there is a distinction. Acting like your character, doing funny accents, etc., may be roleplaying, it may be roleplaying you're doing during the game, but it's not part of the actual game. Throwing out plans to the DM and letting the DM decide if they succeed or fail is part of the game, just not one that has a formal mechanic.

Now, if the in-character discussion is basically group strategizing to get to the point where you make a declaration to the DM that they can adjudicate....I'd say that's ultimately part of gameplay, just like negotiating is during a game of Diplomacy.

“Roleplaying is not actually a part of a role playing game”. I’ve heard it all now!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But there is a distinction. Acting like your character, doing funny accents, etc., may be roleplaying, it may be roleplaying you're doing during the game, but it's not part of the actual game.

Yes it is! It absolutely is! Roleplaying your character in a roleplaying game is most definitely an actual part of a roleplaying game!

Throwing out plans to the DM and letting the DM decide if they succeed or fail is part of the game, just not one that has a formal mechanic.

Now, if the in-character discussion is basically group strategizing to get to the point where you make a declaration to the DM that they can adjudicate....I'd say that's ultimately part of gameplay, just like negotiating is during a game of Diplomacy.

All of it is part of the game. GM adjudicates what needs to be adjudicated, rules are invoked when they're applicable, all of it is part of the game.

 

[pemerton]

Let's say that the PC is a fighter who is looking for his brother, who rumor has it joined some kind of cult and ran off. The fighter wanders the land trying to find a clue to his brother's whereabouts, so he can ultimately find and save him.

This is central to the character, right?

Is it central to play? That is the question. Is the game about what the player wants the game to be about?

<snip>

Does this mean that every single thing that happens in play needs to revolve around the missing brother? No, of course not. But for it to be meaningful (and I'd argue, objectively so), it has to matter more than the PC showing up in a new town, asking around about his brother, and being told "nope, never saw this kid around here" and then roleplaying sadness at the lack of news.

<snip>

Can it be done in D&D? Sure, to an extent at least.

My only extended venture into D&D in the last 20 years has been a 6+ year 4e campaign.

In that game, I introduced a very modest degree of non=D&D tech: at the start of the campaign I asked each player to establish two features of PC background: one loyalty, and also a reason why the PC was ready to fight goblins.

Beyond that, I relied on the features of 4e D&D that are able to do bear the load of conveying theme, concern etc. So not too many missing brothers or personal tales of revenge. Rather, a cosmologically-driven struggle over the nature and future of the Raven Queen, the defeat of Orcus, the liberation of the drow from Lolth so they could return to the surface of the earth, etc. 4e's tools are different from (say) BW's, but it has them: choice of race, to some extent choice of class (paladin does better work here than, say, archer-ranger), choice of additional non-class elements like paragon path and epic destiny, etc.

In my experience it largely works. The tight structure around how XP are earned, the rate at which treasure is to be parcelled out as a component of PC build etc, all help: looked at at a sufficient level of abstraction they do the same sort of work on the GM side - for pacing, framing opposition, etc - as does the Doom Pool in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.

Now I think this raises questions about how replayable 4e is - how many times does one want to play variations on what I've just described? Or does one adapt the game to support a wider range of heroic/mythic/gonzo fantasy trope and theme? (That's my very high-level description of what @AbdulAlhazred has done.) But from my point of view, so what? Even if I never touch my 4e stuff again I probably paid less than $1 a day for it to get more than 6 years of great RPGing! Obviously WotC wants infinite replayability to be part of their marketing spiel, but that's a commercial problem for them and has no bearing on either my analysis of, or my play of, RPGs.

 

[FrogReaver]

For what it's worth, I think the cogito is a bad argument, or rather a failed argument: given that my perceptual access to the event of thought occurring is no different to my perceptual access to the event of a towel-hanging-on-clothesline-in-garden-type-percept there is no particular difference in our knowledge of the "internal" and the "external". And in both cases something more than one perceptual event is needed to warrant the inference to (i) that thought-event is a constituent of an enduring thing called me or (ii) that visual event is a constituent of an enduring thing called the towel's hanging on a clothesline in the garden.

(The above argument is not really unique to me. It's work I did a long time ago now influenced very much by AJ Ayer, GE Moore and Bertrand Russell.)

Off topic but that’s a very unconvincing argument. The whole point of descartes is that thought requires a thinker or an “I” that is doing the thinking.

 

[TwoSix]

Yes it is! It absolutely is! Roleplaying your character in a roleplaying game is most definitely an actual part of a roleplaying game!

I'm talking about invocation of color, general character thesbianism. None of that is required for play, although for many people it's de facto required or even the main reason to play. For many groups, the rules are just there to be a canvas to display their character display onto. But it's still not part of the structure of the game. If you can't grasp the difference, I'm not sure what to say.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm talking about invocation of color, general character thesbianism. None of that is required for play, although for many people it's de facto required or even the main reason to play. For many groups, the rules are just there to be a canvas to display their character display onto. But it's still not part of the structure of the game. If you can't grasp the difference, I'm not sure what to say.

I think you are using the wrong words to convey your thoughts.

That a particular brand of role playing isn’t required to play a game doesn’t mean that brand of roleplaying isn’t part of the game in which it’s being used. I think what you mean is that it isn’t part of the rule set.

 

[pemerton]

No. But I suspect that they have some sort of a close correlation to the beliefs that the character has...

Beliefs in BW are (broadly speaking) ideals or goals that animate/motivate the PC. Here are the Beliefs for my PC Thurgon and his sidekick Aramina:

Thurgon​

The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory​

I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory​

Xanthippe and I will liberate Auxol​

Aramina will need my protection​

​

Aramina​

I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse! - next, some coins!​

Thurgon and I will liberate Auxol​

If in doubt, burn it!​

Thurgon has 4 Beliefs because he has a Trait, Sworn to the Order, that permits an extra order-related Belief ie the one about being a Knight of the Iron Tower. Because Thurgon has the Faithful trait, one of his Beliefs must be about that - the one about the Lord of Battle - and if he ceases to have such a Belief he will also cease to have the Faithful trait.

Beside their connection to particular elements of PC build as just described, Beliefs play two main roles in the game, one GM-facing and one player-facing. On the GM side, they establish the paramaters around which the GM is expected to frame situations. Following from that, they provide the parameters the GM is expected to have regard to in narrating failures and complications.

On the player side, Beliefs are a marker for what to have regard to in declaring actions for your PC. Broadly speaking, when you declare and then play out actions that engage your PCs Beliefs - whether by manifesting it in play, or driving hard towards fulfilling it, or actually fulfilling it, or finding yourself conflicted in relation to it - then you earn what the system calls Artha, which is (broadly) what you might call hero points. Like plot points in MHRP, these can be spent to manipulate dice rolls and hence increase chances of success. It also plays a modest but real role in PC advancement.

Generally a player can change Beliefs at will. The GM is allowed to make the player hold off if it looks like an attempt to squib or dodge an unfolding situation rather than actually confront it.

In the situation I mentioned, the player whose PC suffered the naga's Force of Will had to change one of his PC's Beliefs from whatever it had been (I can't remember) to I will find Joachim for my master. Once Joachim was killed, the player changed the Belief - with my concurrence - to I will bring Joachim's blood to my master.

This is undoubtedly a limit on the player's agency. I as GM am getting a say over aspects of the game - ie how PC goals/thmes/orientation-to-action are signalled - that normally is reserved to the player. But it does not in anyway limit the player's ability to characterise or portray or "pantomime" is PC. I know, I was there, he was still playing his socially incompetent mad-as-a-cut-snake shamanic snake-handler from the hills!

@prabe: this is also relevant to your post upthread - about the PCs' internal life.

The effect of Force of Will on the player's internal life is spelled out in the spell description - I posted it upthread:

This spell allows the mage to implant forceful commands into the victim's mind. The words of the mage becomes thoughts - as if the victim had formulated them himself. This is a very powerful spell - the words of the sorcerer are permanently embedded and resonate against the character's personality for the rest of his days.​

The mechanical effect on play is as I've described in this post: it has no effect on the player's ability to declare actions for his PC, nor on the way he characterises/pantomimes his PC.

Now, if a player's conception of agency in a RPG is my private imaginings about what my PC is feeling and thinking then yes, FoW is a burden on that: if you're playing sincerely you have to imagine your PC feeling the forceful commands of the dark naga, and the impulse of hunting first for Joachim and now for his blood.

But two things;

(1) As @AbdulAlhazred has said upthread, this is no different from the GM telling you you see a dead-end in front of you. Now, if you're playing sincerely, you have to imagine your PC seeing a wall.

(2) I find it odd that, in playing a RPG, I would treat my private imaginings rather than the content of the shared fiction as the focus of my desire for agency. Because playing a social game based around a shared fiction is necessarily going to constrain one's private imaginings.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For what it's worth, I think the cogito is a bad argument, or rather a failed argument: given that my perceptual access to the event of thought occurring is no different to my perceptual access to the event of a towel-hanging-on-clothesline-in-garden-type-percept there is no particular difference in our knowledge of the "internal" and the "external". And in both cases something more than one perceptual event is needed to warrant the inference to (i) that thought-event is a constituent of an enduring thing called me or (ii) that visual event is a constituent of an enduring thing called the towel's hanging on a clothesline in the garden.

(The above argument is not really unique to me. It's work I did a long time ago now influenced very much by AJ Ayer, GE Moore and Bertrand Russell.)

Yeah, I think it works in the sense that it validates our own experiental sense of our existence. In my head rings out "cogito ergo sum" and I understand that, while the head, and all other things I apprehend by sensory impression, may not 'exist', that there is some sense in which I have established something, by simply having a thought. I mean, it proves nothing of my nature at all, so to me as a materialist Bayesian rationalist its not even a prior. However, since I feel that the word 'exists' is essentially ontologically empty it does what it can do, tells me I can hear myself think

 

[TwoSix]

I think you are using the wrong words to convey your thoughts.

That a particular brand of role playing isn’t required to play a game doesn’t mean that brand of roleplaying isn’t part of the game in which it’s being used. I think what you mean is that it isn’t part of the rule set.

I don't think I am, no.

The rule set is the game. Invocation of color doesn't influence the play of the game unless the DM lets the invocation of color sway their adjudication (due to good roleplaying).

 

[pemerton]

All rpgs are about playing to find out what happens...

This is obviously nonsense.

I've seen posters on this board compare what happened in their play of particular adventure paths: how did your fight at the end go compared to my groups'?

That wasn't playing to find out what happened. Two different groups, RPGing in different cities on different sides of a country, ended up in exactly the same spot after many sessions of play, such that they can meaningfully compare how that situation played out in their different games.

That may be good or bad RPGing, but it's clearly not playing to find out what happens.