A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

How do you figure that the description provided doesn’t fit traditional play?




The objective of the game is to slay the vampire Strahd and escape the haunted land of Barovia.



We became lost in the mists. We arrived in Barovia. We could not leave; the Mists seem to be magical in nature, and they seem to keep us in Barovia. We then encountered the Burgomaster of Barovia’s children. This prompts us to head to Castle Ravenloft to confront Strahd.

Everything is building off of what has come before.



The game ends when we confront Strahd in his castle, and either succeed in destroying him and saving Ireena and the other Barovians, or we die trying.

How do you see these factors as not applying to traditional play?

I think you have perfectly adequately demonstrated that there are specific games which both meet @Manbearcat's criteria AND operate by traditional means. What is unspoken here is what went on at the table. At step 1 how was the objective of the game established, and was there a possibility for it to evolve in different directions depending on what was found in play? Are there no other things that the players could establish or discover that would violate the 2nd principle (everything builds off what came before). Is there any third possibility for the end state of the game, or is it binary?

In a traditional game the answers to my questions would be, respectively "No, what is to be found in play is fixed, this was established when the GM was handed the module 'Ravenloft'." and "No, nothing else can be found in play, the module defines all the relevant things. Anything else that is introduced is either irrelevant, or you are not playing a traditional module anymore.", and finally "No, the possible endpoints are pre-determined by the structure of the module. There may be some variation (who survives for instance) but the eventual outcomes are already a fixed set of possibilities."

Clearly none of these three answers would meet the principles of most narrative "indie" type games. So, we must conclude that, while a description of a specific fictional runthrough of Ravenloft can produce narrative that could come from either type of game, the actual PROCESS OF PLAY of a narrative game would be entirely different from a traditional game. This is the central tenet of my own thesis, you can achieve the same end result, theoretically, but you can't achieve the same game experience. I think most of us play for the experience, not some resulting fiction.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ultimately I feel that any analysis of roleplaying games that treats roleplaying as optional aftertought is pretty pointless.

Here's the thing -- I agree with this. We're not analyzing roleplaying games in general, we're looking at a specific aspect of RPGs, namely player agency. One wouldn't question not looking at roleplaying if we were discussing how combat is resolved in various editions of D&D, and so it's not strange to set roleplaying aside when we look at another facet. Especially since this set aside is explicitly called out as a different metric that can impact a person's preferences above and beyond that of the focus of the analysis. This discussion has been like discussing the current water volume in a glass and being told we're just ignoring the water cycle -- what about rain? Yes, that's important, and related to water, but it's not the focus of the analysis -- it's outside the scope and intent.

 

[Campbell]

Ultimately I feel that any analysis of roleplaying games that treats roleplaying as optional aftertought is pretty pointless.

From my perspective it should not be an afterthought. It should be shared. It should be part of game. Not something separate.

This is why I favor centering play on characters and what they want instead of adventures designed by the GM. If character is not central to play we lack the ability to play with integrity. It becomes this layer over the game instead of being the game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

From my perspective it should not be an afterthought. It should be shared. It should be part of game. Not something separate.

This is why I favor centering play on characters and what they want instead of adventures designed by the GM. If character is not central to play we lack the ability to play with integrity. It becomes this layer over the game instead of being the game.

Yes, I agree. And that's why I also want the players to be able to decide what their characters want instead of mechanics dictating that to them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Here's the thing -- I agree with this. We're not analyzing roleplaying games in general, we're looking at a specific aspect of RPGs, namely player agency. One wouldn't question not looking at roleplaying if we were discussing how combat is resolved in various editions of D&D, and so it's not strange to set roleplaying aside when we look at another facet. Especially since this set aside is explicitly called out as a different metric that can impact a person's preferences above and beyond that of the focus of the analysis. This discussion has been like discussing the current water volume in a glass and being told we're just ignoring the water cycle -- what about rain? Yes, that's important, and related to water, but it's not the focus of the analysis -- it's outside the scope and intent.

Except you cannot separate these two things and is deluded to think that you can.

 

[FrogReaver]

How about looking at it this way, lots of things are part of 'the fiction', which I would call fairly synonymous with, at least the non-mechanical part, of the game state (IE facts about the characters and setting that are not established in some rule). Some of those things will never become 'game relevant', some will. The fiction that becomes game relevant does so by impacting some other thing that has mechanics attached to it. If that never happens, then it remains 'covert'. Maybe it will have indirect influence on something else that will be relevant, who knows? You can call it part of the 'state of the game' if you wish, it is just 'weakly coupled' to the rest. Since it hasn't done meaningful work, it could even be retconned, nobody would even know.

Yep

I don't believe these terms, and the associated analytical structure, are biased. I think they reveal some things about different methods of designing and playing an RPG that some people aren't comfortable with.

I started playing D&D in 1975. The people I played D&D with were pretty traditional players. During that time I was part of a game club that had 100's of members and where D&D was played in a VERY traditional manner (pure Gygaxian troupe play, traverse the dungeons with player skill, build a stronghold when you're powerful enough, raise an army, beat the other players in Chainmail battles with miniature armies you painted yourself). I have every respect for, and a thorough understanding of that type of play.

I also played on through the 80's and into the late 90's in games that were mostly much more "2e style GM is a story teller telling his story" style. They varied, some were closer to a sandbox, some were closer to an AP, some were just basically going where the GM wanted to go (I think I've mentioned that GM before). Mostly I enjoyed a lot of these games, ran quite a few of them, wrestled with the problems (which are very much like the discussions we are having here) and have a pretty thorough understanding of how this all works.

And then, after, not playing much of any RPG for a few years, I bought a copy of 4e when it came out and GMed several 4e campaigns, during which I learned that there were actually solutions to the issues that existed in the previous set of games. Yes, those solutions kind of preclude classic Gygaxian play (maybe not, I hear Torchbearer kind of fuses the two). Yes, they require that the GM give up his high seat as Grand Pubah of the pretend universe. They aren't everyone's cup of tea. However, even if you play other ways, it cannot hurt to at least provisionally adopt the terminology and understand it, and then use it to analyze your

How about looking at it this way, lots of things are part of 'the fiction', which I would call fairly synonymous with, at least the non-mechanical part, of the game state (IE facts about the characters and setting that are not established in some rule). Some of those things will never become 'game relevant', some will. The fiction that becomes game relevant does so by impacting some other thing that has mechanics attached to it. If that never happens, then it remains 'covert'. Maybe it will have indirect influence on something else that will be relevant, who knows? You can call it part of the 'state of the game' if you wish, it is just 'weakly coupled' to the rest. Since it hasn't done meaningful work, it could even be retconned, nobody would even know.

I think this gets into why agency over character thoughts and mental states is so critical to many of us. In the sense you describe above it’s weakly coupled. But there is a process in play where we determine what our character will do and we base these decisions quite often on our characters thoughts and mental state. In this sense it’s very highly coupled with everything that our character does in the fiction.

 

[Aldarc]

Ultimately I feel that any analysis of roleplaying games that treats roleplaying as optional aftertought is pretty pointless.

I think that you are misunderstanding (or possibly misconstruing*) the discussion at hand. An engagement with "in-character roleplaying" is a baseline assumption for the discussion. But others, like @Ovinomancer and @AbdulAlhazred, have also demonstrated the almost banal point that it's not even necessarily required for play, as playing a role may simply involve a pawn stance. And as an overwhelming number of GMs have pointed out in this forum: sometimes people aren't too invested in in-character roleplay and are just there to turn their brains off and have fun kicking down doors and shooting orcs.

I think part of the frustration, at least on our end of things, is that you sound like an American who can't conceptualize any other understanding of personal freedoms apart from an American one that includes a Constitution with the American Bill of Rights. And insisting that because some European country, for example, doesn't have the 1st Amendment that their presses don't have freedoms. Or that if their press has restrictions in one facet that they could therefore not possibly have more freedom than the U.S. press.

* I suspect that you are feeling frustrated that people refuse to accept your more limited framing of player agency, which is why you have increasingly adopted a hostile attitude of "if people don't play ball my way, I'll storm off in a huff and a puff."

Yes, I agree. And that's why I also want the players to be able to decide what their characters want instead of mechanics dictating that to them.

By this point, I think we all understand your preferences and position, and likely better than you understand ours.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Except you cannot separate these two things and is deluded to think that you can.

I can, or else you're claiming that old school skilled play is not a thing. Pawn stance is absolutely a way to play that doesn't involve any of the things you're claiming are essential roleplaying. Until you overcome this, your argument is grounded in quicksand.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is precisely what a state is and does. The problem is mostly around what should qualify as a distinct state.

I think that, in terms of analyzing basic play and game design methodology that we can consider them to be 'recognizably distinct'. Exactly what that means is going to vary based on the game. In BW, for example, it is perfectly feasible to have an 'abstract dungeon' (I recall a @pemerton example of such involving a Crypt Thing). So, the fact that the PCs are in a specific corridor and facing in a specific direction is simply color in that situation. FATE I believe has 'scene aspects' which are the relevant properties of a specific location. Any other properties of that location aren't relevant and are usually not explicitly defined. So, game state in Moldvay Basic is going to include the PCs exact location in the dungeon and the state of their torch supply. It won't in FATE, necessarily. This also means that in Basic when you traverse the corridor and turn left at the 4-way, the game state has changed. You went 120', a turn went by, the torch burned down, a wandering monster check is due, etc. In FATE such a thing might be mere color, you're still wandering in the Confusing Dark Dungeon Maze.

So, we say that state has 'teeth', when it is said to have changed it is not just "a clock ticked a few seconds in the game world", it is more like "we would describe the situation of the party a bit differently because now different choices face them." In my pretend FATE example, maybe the state changes when the PCs fail to get out before their torches burn out. Do they invoke rare and expensive magic to get light, or fumble around in the dark? Personality could become important here, the greedy dwarf was too tight-fisted with the equipment budget to buy enough torches. Maybe that factored into the GM's decision to create a "you are in the dark" consequence to the maze navigation failure.

Basic D&D doesn't really have a way to actualize that, although the dwarf player could RP something similar. Is his greediness a 'state of the game' in Basic? I would say, not really. The lack of torches, and the dwarf's bulging purse, are both parts of the state, but the player is entirely free to depict greediness, or not, at any point in the game. He's under no obligation to be consistent, nor to have any dwarf mental state at all beyond the character's knowledge of what is around him, and maybe his memory of what the dwarf did before. If he never does anything with this idea of the dwarf being greedy then did it even exist? It was just color, not game state. And if the elf player decides his character hates the dwarf because it is greedy, what of it? Again, he might use that to explain some concrete action, but he's free not to ever do so, or to even decide the elf wakes up on Tuesday and decides the dwarf is his best buddy! None of this has 'teeth'.

Moldvay Basic's process doesn't preclude RP, and it doesn't preclude actualizing that RP in terms of the conditions in the game by means of player's explaining character actions via it. It just doesn't enforce anything. Even after the fact the player may not explain why the dwarf didn't buy torches.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think that, in terms of analyzing basic play and game design methodology that we can consider them to be 'recognizably distinct'. Exactly what that means is going to vary based on the game. In BW, for example, it is perfectly feasible to have an 'abstract dungeon' (I recall a @pemerton example of such involving a Crypt Thing). So, the fact that the PCs are in a specific corridor and facing in a specific direction is simply color in that situation. FATE I believe has 'scene aspects' which are the relevant properties of a specific location. Any other properties of that location aren't relevant and are usually not explicitly defined. So, game state in Moldvay Basic is going to include the PCs exact location in the dungeon and the state of their torch supply. It won't in FATE, necessarily. This also means that in Basic when you traverse the corridor and turn left at the 4-way, the game state has changed. You went 120', a turn went by, the torch burned down, a wandering monster check is due, etc. In FATE such a thing might be mere color, you're still wandering in the Confusing Dark Dungeon Maze.

So, we say that state has 'teeth', when it is said to have changed it is not just "a clock ticked a few seconds in the game world", it is more like "we would describe the situation of the party a bit differently because now different choices face them." In my pretend FATE example, maybe the state changes when the PCs fail to get out before their torches burn out. Do they invoke rare and expensive magic to get light, or fumble around in the dark? Personality could become important here, the greedy dwarf was too tight-fisted with the equipment budget to buy enough torches. Maybe that factored into the GM's decision to create a "you are in the dark" consequence to the maze navigation failure.

Basic D&D doesn't really have a way to actualize that, although the dwarf player could RP something similar. Is his greediness a 'state of the game' in Basic? I would say, not really. The lack of torches, and the dwarf's bulging purse, are both parts of the state, but the player is entirely free to depict greediness, or not, at any point in the game. He's under no obligation to be consistent, nor to have any dwarf mental state at all beyond the character's knowledge of what is around him, and maybe his memory of what the dwarf did before. If he never does anything with this idea of the dwarf being greedy then did it even exist? It was just color, not game state. And if the elf player decides his character hates the dwarf because it is greedy, what of it? Again, he might use that to explain some concrete action, but he's free not to ever do so, or to even decide the elf wakes up on Tuesday and decides the dwarf is his best buddy! None of this has 'teeth'.

Moldvay Basic's process doesn't preclude RP, and it doesn't preclude actualizing that RP in terms of the conditions in the game by means of player's explaining character actions via it. It just doesn't enforce anything. Even after the fact the player may not explain why the dwarf didn't buy torches.

I think you aren’t going far enough down the rabbit hole.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say character thoughts and motivations are initially secret and may be revealed through play. Let’s let you play character 1 for the first half of the game and me play character 2 for the first half and then vice versa.

can I really play that same character if I don’t know his thoughts and mental states and what motivates him? I can in some sense but it won’t really be the same character. For most of the table it’s likely to be very obvious that it’s not the same character.

I don’t see how Something so unimportant to gamestate can drive something so noticeable.

or to put it in more gamestate terms. Those variables (motivations and internal thoughts) will lead the table to recognizably distinct game states in almost countless ways.