A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you see it. You explained it fittingly above. You just refuse to call it agency. That’s the rub.

choosing motivations, thoughts and mental states is an exercise of player agency because these things are choices and are consequential to how the character is played and how the character is played is consequential to how the rpg is played.

I'm totally missing how anything I said established something that I 'refuse to call agency'. The problem I have isn't that what you call agency is 'not agency', although I think your analysis of it is a bit shallow in certain respects, it is just that when I extend it to other things I get told those are off limits.

And see my previous post. If you have no say in how the world you are RPing in, the narrative of things, is playing out, which material it addresses, what types of situations you face and what character traits they put pressure on, then you are largely leaving one of the primary shaping forces of character completely to the GM.

I can say my character felt powerless in childhood and wants to build an empire for himself as a reaction to that, but if that desire is never materialized in any way, or only in some passing ways that I can evoke 'in character' then I cannot really develop this theme, can I? So do I have agency WRT my character? Less than I could! Earlier you (or maybe it was @Lanefan or @Bedrockgames or @Crimson Longinus ) asserted that allowing players to assert facts, etc. would somehow compromise agency, but I assert the very opposite is clearly true (both could be I suppose, though I never was clear on exactly why having more options in the game could create less agency).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Do you realize how much of RPGing you just said happens with no agency?

Edited to add: More to my original point, I think you are acknowledging that the dice and the GM deciding are at least different, correct?

I think the point is that if some thing is out of the control of the player, it doesn't matter to the agency of the player where that control went. It may of course matter for other purposes. Like if it went to the GM, then the GM 'gained' agency.

 

[FrogReaver]

Do you realize how much of RPGing you just said happens with no agency?

Edited to add: More to my original point, I think you are acknowledging that the dice and the GM deciding are at least different, correct?

Obviously dice and GM are different - but not in relation to player agency. So not really sure the value of acknowledging that rather obvious point?

And yes. Players lack agency over many things in rpgs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think this actually might be pretty important and plays into a lot of the disagreements. I think some people think the agency in relative terms, as in player vs. the GM. So if player doesn't control something, but GM doesn't control it either, the player has more agency relative to the GM than in situation where the player didn't control the thing and the GM controlled it, even though in both situations the player's absolute agency is the same.

Does this make any sense?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think the point is that if some thing is out of the control of the player, it doesn't matter to the agency of the player where that control went. It may of course matter for other purposes. Like if it went to the GM, then the GM 'gained' agency.

So if a player has his PC try to jump a ravine, and fails his check and the PC falls and takes falling damage, the player had no agency in the matter?

Do you think that controlling the outcome is a requirement of agency?

Obviously dice and GM are different - but not in relation to player agency. So not really sure the value of acknowledging that rather obvious point?

And yes. Players lack agency over many things in rpgs.

I think that they are very different in relation to player agency. If I as a player declare an action for my PC and I know that dice will be involved in the resolution, then I will likely have some kind of information that allows me to determine the chance for success and risk and so on. The dice bring a quantifiable element to it. I have a +3 to my relevant skill, the DC is 12, etc and so forth. This means when I decide to go ahead, I am making an informed decision.

If instead of dice and math, I know that the action will need approval from the GM, then it is far less certain. There may be ways that I can possibly predict the chances....knowing the GM well is a big one.

I don't think that giving dice some sense of will really sheds any light on the matter.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Are you extending this to combat resolution? Ie are you saying you're fine if the effect of an attack on an Orc, declared by a player for his/her PC, is all beyond the control of the player and is just decided by the GM?

I am talking about setting stuff and about the internal feelings of the character, not about combat. And I am not trying to establish rules for all time with this statement. The whole point of what I said wasn't to reinstigate a debate about how much control players ought to have over the setting or not (you and I have hashed that out about as far as I think we reasonably can). It was to support the idea that there are plenty of good reasons for a player to not be in full control of their characters thoughts and feelings

 

[Crimson Longinus]

When I play five hundred it's with friends. Some are more serious than others. Some like to chat away while we play; others like to focus on the game at hand.

If I was playing in a club (are there 500 clubs? but suppose it's a bridge club) then I'm guessing there's less chit-chat when we play and more serious focus.

But if we talk about player agency in playing cards that chit-chat isn't really part of it.

Different RPG tables have different expectations about how the participants will socially interact, spend time speaking to one another "in character" about this or that.

But three things:

(1) That is obviously not what the OP was asking about. Because nothing about GM practices - including so-called "quantum ogres" has any implications for any of this stuff about table chit-chat in or out of character;

(2) All RPGers are able to do this all the time whatever RPG they are playing.;

(3) Sometime the fiction will constraint the permissible in-character chit-chat: if, in the fiction, we're all in a tavern then I can't, in character, ask another PC to admire the beautiful sky directly above us; and if, in the fiction, I'm in love with Guinevere and am an honest paladin then there may be limits on how much I can, in-character, tell the others that I hate her.

Sorry, but I really dislike this framing. This is exactly the 'RP as optional afterthought' framing that I meant earlier. The players talking in-character is not some separate thing from the game, it is a a central part of it. It is most likely the way they coordinate all their agendas, so thus important for what will actually happen in the game. And even when it is not about that, it is still just as much part of the game than anything else the characters do.

 

[aramis erak]

How do you figure?

If the outcome of something is left up to dice to determine, whose agency is involved?

Let's say I want my character to convince some NPC to help my party with a problem. This NPC is someone my PC knows, and so I have a bit of weight to pull, but it's a big ask. I'm putting my PC's relationship with this person at risk by asking for this favor.

I roll for Persuasion.......

Whose agency is involved here? That of the dice?

THe dice are a result of a decision point. The agency factor of a die roll is at the following points:
Knowing the difficulty
Knowing one or more possible outcomes of the roll
then, based upon those, deciding to go ahead and roll.

There are several decision points to get to those three.
The GM must have a difficulty in mind
The GM should have an expected game-state change in mind tied to the roll. Often, this is prescribed (esp. in conflict systems), but at many times it is situational.
THe GM may have foreshadowed the roll
The Player may have requested a roll
the player may have a specific desired outcome, which, if they do, should be conveyed to the GM.

Agency on the roll evolves from having those.
Let's look at a few cases:

• A blind, "Hey, roll a d20 and hand me your sheet" isn't a sign of agency... No agency here of the player, except for what was present in character gen.
• "Hey, I need you to to roll a notice check, and there's a bad thing going to happen if you fail" Still no agency.
• "Do you want to roll a notice check as you enter?" - implies a thing to notice. Player has some agency - look or don't.
• "If you enter, you'll need a notice roll. Bad things if you fail." Fails the realism test, but has more agency.
• "now that you've entered, What will find you if you pass the notice check?" much more agency - the player now gets to pick the opponent (within reason.) on a success.
• "You have a bad feeling. What is triggering it?" pauses for answer. "If you enter, you'll roll for your ability to avoid being surprised." Still more agency, as now you pick the source of bad feeling and know that if you opt to enter, you'll roll vs surprise. What's not said is that you can choose other than to enter and yet still engage that threat.

Now, if the GM is faithless in handling any of that in the above, player agency is nullified to some degree.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think this actually might be pretty important and plays into a lot of the disagreements. I think some people think the agency in relative terms, as in player vs. the GM. So if player doesn't control something, but GM doesn't control it either, the player has more agency relative to the GM than in situation where the player didn't control the thing and the GM controlled it, even though in both situations the player's absolute agency is the same.

Does this make any sense?

I understand what you are saying, yes. I don't know about other posters, but I wasn't particularly concerned with 'relative' agency in this way. If I start to think back into what's been said, we talked about how there need to be 'choices' in order for agency to exist, so we might think about, relatively speaking, who really gets to have choices.
Now, if we also add "and their resolution must not rest with their creator" (IE someone must pose the choice to someone else for it to really be a choice) then we get to this interesting question. If the GM only POSES questions, and the players only ever ANSWER questions, who's got the agency here? I mean, the players are exercising it, but if it is only about what the GM posed, then it is "the GM's agency" isn't it?

I mean, I'm the GM, I give you a choice between freezing cold and the lakeshore. You seem to have a meaningful in-character choice here. But if I get to chose what questions to pose, and when to pose them, are you really exercising anything? I mean, the GM seems to 'giveth and taketh away' in this paradigm.

 

[FrogReaver]

I understand what you are saying, yes. I don't know about other posters, but I wasn't particularly concerned with 'relative' agency in this way. If I start to think back into what's been said, we talked about how there need to be 'choices' in order for agency to exist, so we might think about, relatively speaking, who really gets to have choices.
Now, if we also add "and their resolution must not rest with their creator" (IE someone must pose the choice to someone else for it to really be a choice) then we get to this interesting question. If the GM only POSES questions, and the players only ever ANSWER questions, who's got the agency here? I mean, the players are exercising it, but if it is only about what the GM posed, then it is "the GM's agency" isn't it?

I mean, I'm the GM, I give you a choice between freezing cold and the lakeshore. You seem to have a meaningful in-character choice here. But if I get to chose what questions to pose, and when to pose them, are you really exercising anything? I mean, the GM seems to 'giveth and taketh away' in this paradigm.

You have agency over your answers to those questions.

where that fails to me is I know no rpgs that constantly have an either or choice that the dm gives the player. Instead it’s: the scene is this, what do you do?