A Question Of Agency?

[aramis erak]

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?

If you run it as written, Burning Wheel and Burning Empires do so.
The outline of action resolution is roughly this:

1. Player gets notified it's time to act
2. player narrates an action that the GM wants rolled.
3. GM askes them
   1. What are you hoping to get out of that?
   2. What skill are you using to succeed at getting that
4. player answers, or backs down and alters narration to avoid the roll-requiring action if they don't back down
5. GM informs them of effects of failure and either that the roll is opposed or is of a specific difficulty, and if specified, what difficulty.
6. Player may assemble their dice pool
7. Player can back down at this point, before rolling, abandoning their desired outcome but not facing the result of failure, either.
8. Player who hasn't backed down rolls. If the Roll is opposed, the opposing character's player (or the GM) rolls.
9. the specified result happens, and return to narrative mode or to another player's turn.

Note that Mouse Guard and Torchbearer are slightly different in this process, because players don't always have the option to back down during the GM turn in mouse guard (nor it's TB equivalent). In the Player turn in Mouse Guard, however, it does pretty much do the same thing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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?

They had agency to take the risk. They had not agency to narrate their character directly succeeding. Which is more agency? Who knows at this point?

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

No.

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.

They're different but I don't think it can be said clearly which offers more agency from the player's perspective. It depends on the GM, it depends on the system it depends on the situation and it even depends on the player. For example in some situations I feel I have more agency with GM adjudication, as the GM can take account all different nuances of the situation, it will matter how I exactly I describe my character doing things and so forth, whereas with a roll my contribution is just a binary decision of whether to attempt the task or not.

 

[innerdude]

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 think it's more that the context of choosing thoughts, motivations, and mental states, are only precursors to enacting agency, not agency in and of themselves.

Enacting agency takes place when those thoughts, motivations, and mental states are put into the fiction through the character choosing to act.

I can see there being some potential confusion, however, around instances where the player says something as if in character that immediately establishes some "truth" about the fiction.

@AbdulAlhazred, I think, brought up something like this earlier with the elf who spent "many a long weekend dipping in the ocean," or something to that effect.

I'm not sure this qualifies as "agency," per se. Yes, we've established something about the fiction (assuming the players and GM just play along and agree that this newly-spoken "reality" is, in fact, "real"). But I think @AbdulAlhazred's point is that we haven't meaningfully altered the course of play / course of the fiction (we haven't moved play states).

Sure, we've established something "true" within the fiction, but it has nothing to do with the goal of playing to find out what happens. It's nice color / texture to the scene and character, but it doesn't have any resonance to the concept of, "What's this game about?"

Is this game a struggle between downtrodden peasants looking to overthrow an oppressive Lord? A conflict between two long-time friends fighting to "get what's theirs" in the criminal underground? A struggle for a group of rag-tag adventurers hoping to make their next big score in a murky dungeon so they can finally enjoy "the good life"?

My elf character saying, "I used to love going to the beach on weekends" is lovely color, and a good sign from the standpoint of the player engaging with their character---certainly nothing wrong with this, and overall a positive thing. It's just not evidence of player agency with respect to moving the game state.

Now --- if after saying this, the elf character says (through the mediation of the player), "In fact, you know what --- those times at the ocean are the most important things in the world to me. I'm going to go back and do everything possible to get rid of the pirates and corrupt fishing fleets ruining it." And then starts pursuing that as an agenda --- now we're moving toward game state change.

That said, I think that players can make more strongly-worded, in-character declarations that can move toward state change. Suppose, for example, a player goes on and on about their sworn enemy, the Baron von Evilhoffer, describing in great detail some set of past events or feud between them. Then we start to get nearer to the mark of player agency --- but these are exactly the kinds of things that "traditional" D&D / GMs simply don't care about (literally from @Lanefan's own mouth --- doesn't care, nor have any interest in engaging in this sort of thing). To bring these kinds of more substantial agenda "pieces" into reality within the fiction, generally takes 1) total buy in from the GM and party, 2) a system that mechanically inserts these statements into the reality of the fiction (Dungeon World has dozens of these), or both.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you run it as written, Burning Wheel and Burning Empires do so.
The outline of action resolution is roughly this:

1. Player gets notified it's time to act
2. player narrates an action that the GM wants rolled.
3. GM askes them
   1. What are you hoping to get out of that?
   2. What skill are you using to succeed at getting that
4. player answers, or backs down and alters narration to avoid the roll-requiring action if they don't back down
5. GM informs them of effects of failure and either that the roll is opposed or is of a specific difficulty, and if specified, what difficulty.
6. Player may assemble their dice pool
7. Player can back down at this point, before rolling, abandoning their desired outcome but not facing the result of failure, either.
8. Player who hasn't backed down rolls. If the Roll is opposed, the opposing character's player (or the GM) rolls.
9. the specified result happens, and return to narrative mode or to another player's turn.

Note that Mouse Guard and Torchbearer are slightly different in this process, because players don't always have the option to back down during the GM turn in mouse guard (nor it's TB equivalent). In the Player turn in Mouse Guard, however, it does pretty much do the same thing.

Step one sounds an awful lot like...
DM: "Player it's your time to act, what do you do?"

So while it doesn't use the same words, i'd say it's basically the same thing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

They had agency to take the risk. They had not agency to narrate their character directly succeeding. Which is more agency? Who knows at this point?

I'm not following here. I would argue that, succeed or fail, the player had agency in this situation. They decided what their character would do or not do, and then followed the resolution system of the game to determine the outcome.

It's all one instance, no?

No.

Okay, good.

They're different but I don't think it can be said clearly which offers more agency from the player's perspective. It depends on the GM, it depends on the system it depends on the situation and it even depends on the player. For example in some situations I feel I have more agency with GM adjudication, as the GM can take account all different nuances of the situation, it will matter how I exactly I describe my character doing things and so forth, whereas with a roll my contribution is just a binary decision of whether to attempt the task or not.

Okay, I agree that system and so forth may matter, but that doesn't mean that we cannot say which of two options may have more agency.

Part of the reason for that is because all those additional points of input are subject to the whim of another person. Sure you may phrase something in a way that makes the GM think "interesting, I'll give them a +2 for that", but another GM may say "oof, that was a bad call, I'm gonna give them a -4".

That lack of consistency means that generally speaking, players will be making decisions that are less informed, and are subjected to the will of the GM in every manner.

 

[FrogReaver]

Let's say person A has 12 apples.
Let's say another person B has 10 apples and 10 oranges.

Person B says: "I have more fruit than you". Person A replies: "yes but you don't have more fruit that I care about, I don't like oranges".

If agency were fruit this is where our agency discussion would still be after 87 pages...

 

[hawkeyefan]

Step one sounds an awful lot like...
DM: "Player it's your time to act, what do you do?"

So while it doesn't use the same words, i'd say it's basically the same thing.

Yeah it kind of starts the same. How would it proceed in D&D? Can you summarize that the way @aramis erak did for BW?

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah it kind of starts the same. How would it proceed in D&D? Can you summarize that the way @aramis erak did for BW?

Maybe, what does it matter since he posted that specifically as a counterpoint to my claim that i can't think of an rpg that doesn't ask the players "what do you do?"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

Is that significant? I mean, first of all, OFTEN the effective choices are binary. You can 'fiddle around', but eventually you go left or go right. Maybe sometimes you effectively turn back. I don't think that, or even other possible choices, really undermines the whole 'state model' of how the game itself goes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think it's more that the context of choosing thoughts, motivations, and mental states, are only precursors to enacting agency, not agency in and of themselves.

Enacting agency takes place when those thoughts, motivations, and mental states are put into the fiction through the character choosing to act.

And even under this interpretation mechanics that limit the players capability to control these mental states must effectively limit their agency as they naturally also limit the actions following from these mental states.

I can see there being some potential confusion, however, around instances where the player says something as if in character that immediately establishes some "truth" about the fiction.

@AbdulAlhazred, I think, brought up something like this earlier with the elf who spent "many a long weekend dipping in the ocean," or something to that effect.

I'm not sure this qualifies as "agency," per se. Yes, we've established something about the fiction (assuming the players and GM just play along and agree that this newly-spoken "reality" is, in fact, "real"). But I think @AbdulAlhazred's point is that we haven't meaningfully altered the course of play / course of the fiction (we haven't moved play states).

Meaningfully to whom? Why is one change in the fiction a change of a gamestate and another isn't? Sure, I can see that there are tiny additions to the fiction, and bigger ones and huge ones, and this was rather minuscule, but where it the threshold exactly? What is the method of measurement here?

Sure, we've established something "true" within the fiction, but it has nothing to do with the goal of playing to find out what happens. It's nice color / texture to the scene and character, but it doesn't have any resonance to the concept of, "What's this game about?"

Why? What if the game is about the present reminding the characters of their past and the interplay generated by that?

Is this game a struggle between downtrodden peasants looking to overthrow an oppressive Lord? A conflict between two long-time friends fighting to "get what's theirs" in the criminal underground? A struggle for a group of rag-tag adventurers hoping to make their next big score in a murky dungeon so they can finally enjoy "the good life"?

I don't know. Can it be all of these things? Who decides what it is about? Do everyone need to agree or can it be about different things to different people as long as the themes and goals remain aligned enough that the characters keep working together?

My elf character saying, "I used to love going to the beach on weekends" is lovely color, and a good sign from the standpoint of the player engaging with their character---certainly nothing wrong with this, and overall a positive thing. It's just not evidence of player agency with respect to moving the game state.

Now --- if after saying this, the elf character says (through the mediation of the player), "In fact, you know what --- those times at the ocean are the most important things in the world to me. I'm going to go back and do everything possible to get rid of the pirates and corrupt fishing fleets ruining it." And then starts pursuing that as an agenda --- now we're moving toward game state change.

Certainly the first was a step towards the second. Even if the second never happens the first establishes a potential for it. And yes, this is exactly how campaign altering things grow from things that some deride as 'pantomime'.

That said, I think that players can make more strongly-worded, in-character declarations that can move toward state change. Suppose, for example, a player goes on and on about their sworn enemy, the Baron von Evilhoffer, describing in great detail some set of past events or feud between them. Then we start to get nearer to the mark of player agency --- but these are exactly the kinds of things that "traditional" D&D / GMs simply don't care about (literally from @Lanefan's own mouth --- doesn't care, nor have any interest in engaging in this sort of thing).

D&D is an inanimate thing and as such has no opinion, and a lot of people who play it disagree with Lanafen on this.

To bring these kinds of more substantial agenda "pieces" into reality within the fiction, generally takes 1) total buy in from the GM and party, 2) a system that mechanically inserts these statements into the reality of the fiction (Dungeon World has dozens of these), or both.

Pretty much any RPG lets players to set their character's goals. Sure, some GMs let the game follow those goals, but that's an attitude issue not a game issue.