A Question Of Agency?

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

This is a fallacy. Of course agency can exist without roleplay, as it exist even in games that are not roleplaying games at all. But once the game contains roleplay, it becomes one of the things people can have agency over.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know the game. I don't know the game's objective. I know nothing about FF games (never played any of them).

I don't have the design notes or any information from the designers of the game as it pertains to its design and referencing gamestates. I'd love to see their gamestate map or something like that if one exists. Do you have something like this? A reference? A citation?

I'd be very curious as to their reasoning if there was one and, from first principles, I would disagree with them. But I'd love to know the reason for the inclusion of (as you put it) a "triviality" as a cog in their gamestate map.

I think this is a 'programmer argument'. In the code that implements FF7 there must necessarily be some variable(s) that record that you did certain things in this 'date', such that different dialogs come up in some other place. In view of the existence of these variables he's insisting this has to be relevant to the 'state' of the game. Well, OK, but the argument defeats itself on relevancy. The dialogs in question have NO impact (his statement) on the further progress of the game. Zero. They are so trivial they don't even qualify as some sort of 'mini-game' on the side or anything like that. This 'state' is pretty much exactly identical to my example of the greedy dwarf, except even less relevant in that the torches never did run out, and there isn't even any chance they ever will!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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."

Funny. Is this some sort of a projection? It is not me who has super specific and limited definition of agency that contradicts common sense.

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

Quite likely. Coherent positions are easier to understand after all!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally, I am fine with the external world being beyond the control of the PCs and their internal world occasionally being subject to things beyond their control. If a character goes mad, and you have madness mechanics in the game, I really don't see an issue with the GM saying "You think this, or you feel this" or even doing things to deliberately mislead the players sense of the reality in the game world. People lose control in real life. If a game wants to emulate something, even something as simple as loss of impulse control, I am fine with that. Even more so if the game is imposing some kind of supernatural or preternatural change on the PC.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think this is a 'programmer argument'. In the code that implements FF7 there must necessarily be some variable(s) that record that you did certain things in this 'date', such that different dialogs come up in some other place. In view of the existence of these variables he's insisting this has to be relevant to the 'state' of the game. Well, OK, but the argument defeats itself on relevancy. The dialogs in question have NO impact (his statement) on the further progress of the game. Zero. They are so trivial they don't even qualify as some sort of 'mini-game' on the side or anything like that. This 'state' is pretty much exactly identical to my example of the greedy dwarf, except even less relevant in that the torches never did run out, and there isn't even any chance they ever will!

But you do agree it’s a gamestate. Which makes this gamestate example at odds with the definition I was using it to defeat.

it seems to me the problem is that a gamestate is just a state of the game (essentially all information needed to reproduce that game in the state you left playing it).and that to make it more meaningful than that requires either redefining the term or qualifying game states into further sub categories.

 

[FrogReaver]

Personally, I am fine with the external world being beyond the control of the PCs and their internal world occasionally being subject to things beyond their control. If a character goes mad, and you have madness mechanics in the game, I really don't see an issue with the GM saying "You think this, or you feel this" or even doing things to deliberately mislead the players sense of the reality in the game world. People lose control in real life. If a game wants to emulate something, even something as simple as loss of impulse control, I am fine with that. Even more so if the game is imposing some kind of supernatural or preternatural change on the PC.

I don’t particularly have an issue with a madness mechanic either. Why? Because there’s a dichotomy between my character as not mad and my character as mad. Restricting myself to the being the non-mad part of the character seems perfectly reasonable.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

I've never called it an optional afterthought. I've called SOME of it, particularly in certain methods of play, less relevant to the trajectory of the game. I don't see any way to analyze enjoyment or other purely subjective issues. I am not addressing those, can't address them, probably should NOT address them, at least not in anything like this way. All I've addressed is analysis of how we play, of what actually goes on, what is the process, what steps are taken, how, why, when, by whom. That's all.

I get that I also have observations on WHY and WHAT is being done that some people are not comfortable with. I'm happy to debate those on a factual basis, but just telling me that everything I say is gibberish isn't an effective technique. It won't lead me to say "Oh, I didn't take that into consideration." or whatever it is you would hope to achieve. Again, only facts can really be up for debate.

To the point, RP is a major feature of most RPGs. To an extent it is a necessary feature (IE even if you play Moldvay Basic in 'pawn stance' you still represent yourself in the game with a 'dwarf named Guldor' or something). Beyond that we have a lot of fun with RP, and often the decisions we make in the game that are effectual (salient) are informed by that roleplay, in at least an informal way. Some games make those informal ways formal. Its hard to understand how that would be trivializing RP...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Yes, absolutely. And this is the thing I tryly, honestly do not get. We all pretty much agreed that in a high agency game the play centers on the characters, their wishes and desires guide the direction of the game. But to me it is clear that for this to translate to player agency, the player must be able to decide those wishes and desires, and resultantly a situation where they cannot diminishes their agency (though of course it still may ve justified.) It seems super weird to me that people are arguing against this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Its not 'dictated by mechanics'. Do you think some random dice roll tossed "Lust for the Queen" into the game? Of course not. This is agreed on as a part of the game through multiple channels. The participants decided to play a genre of game which included that trope. They decided to play with a set of rules which included a mechanism which could compel the PC's actions (or at least impact gamestate resolution in some way, we never clarified the exact mechanisms). The player then selected a type of character and role for that character which would put him in the way of this kind of event. He created some goal/belief/position for that character which would put something in opposition to that (IE that he is loyal to the beautiful Queen's husband, the King). None of this is arbitrary or capricious IN ANY WAY at all.

It would make just as much sense to call the wall of a dungeon arbitrary and capricious because it blocks your character from walking north. You decided to play D&D, go into the dungeon, etc. Now you are complaining about the walls? I am not needing any imagination, nor in any doubt of, how this would be received at the table...

 

[Aldarc]

Funny. Is this some sort of a projection? It is not me who has super specific and limited definition of agency that contradicts common sense.

I'm sorry, but how is "agency over the fiction is at the level of the player" more super specific of a position than "agency over the fiction is at the level of the player in-character (with numerous permissible exceptions)"?

Quite likely. Coherent positions are easier to understand after all!

It's not a factor of any actual coherency of your position and more about possessing a basic familiarity of a prevalent position. Copernicus and Galileo were highly familiar with the geocentric models of the day, not because geocentric models were more coherent than heliocentric models, but simply because they were the prevalent models and explanations of the day.