A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Because my initial reaction is summed up by "Put FrogReaver on the never game with list."

Essentially, unless you're foreshadowing the traps heavily, it's a situation that I'm shocked to find someone seriously considering as fun.

Traps as occasional spig for color or a dash for spice? Sure.
As the meat of the module? Idiocy.

Traps are the worst possible kind of thing for player agency - they're almost always roll-to-avoid, and as run by most GM's either noticed or not with semi-blind rolls. It turd the dungeon into a push-your-luck experience. Which is precisely what I didn't like about many D&D modules.

But, as I noted above, it isn't the CONCEPT of "a trap" that is bad. If you watch 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' the opening scenario is a famous trap sequence that is clearly very successful. Each trap serves a clear purpose. The first ones foreshadow, you see a dead guy or two, slain by traps. Next Indiana overcomes a couple of fairly straightforward traps, which serves basically as character building (we see what a daring do whip-wielding guy he is). Finally the 'big trap' springs and escalates the action to a frantic escape! The previous traps now do double duty as suspense heighteners, can Indy and Co avoid them while escaping pell mell from the giant boulder. This is all great stuff.

The typical modern "haha, you failed Perception, take 12 damage from the poison dart and make a save." kind of BS we get today is just utterly lame and sad. So if you fill your dungeon with the former, GREAT! If you fill it with the latter, BOO! Clearly the rules in modern D&D surrounding 'traps' (as a generic term) are flawed... I believe a narrative type of game can handle traps quite well. All the functions I mentioned above are pretty straightforward.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not engaging in criticism but analysis.

When I play a CoC one-shot I'm not expecting to get to (i) decide what my PC wants and then (ii) act on that. I'm expecting to be either directly told what my PC wants (via a pre-gen) or to be presented with a scenario which makes it easy to ascribe wants to my PC that will mesh with the scenario (which is something @AbdulAlhazred mentioned a page or two upthread).

The fun of play is in performing my PC - characterisation and pantomime - while the GM describes what happens and narrates my descent into madness.

Now let's consider the Curse of Strahd, accepting for the moment @hawkeyefan's sketch of it upthread:

It seems to me that, if a player decides that what his/her PC wants is to charter a company of mercenaries, that is probably not going to happen in this campaign. (See also @Ovinomancer's actual play observation upthread, about his PC background in a Curse of Strahd campaign.)

When we say that this player is free to decide what his/her PC wants, what is the nature of that freedom? S/he can write it down on her PC sheet. She can grumble her way through the campaign, in character, about being trapped by the mists when she should be back on the Sword Coast (or wherever) leading her company of freebooters. But when the push comes to shove of actually playing the module, it seems that that stuff will not really matter. Similar to how the backstory and desires of PCs in the Giants modules don't really matter to most of the play of those adventures.

I don't really see how a RPG could prevent a player from doing that sort of free-characterisation of his/her PC, and so if it is a manifestation of player agency at all it seems to be a component of a baseline.

It could certainly be compatible with playing a total railroad.

Hence why I don't really understand how it addresses the topic of this thread as raised by the OP.

I THINK maybe I begin to understand the real nut of the objection to any notion of narrative play which might involve the player's being restricted from just "free-form RP" of their character to construct any sort of element they want at any time in the character's head/motivation/decisions.

If you have played for decades in a paradigm where THE ONLY agency is "what is in my character's head and how he moves his arms and legs and speaks." then clearly you want to hold on to that! You're also used to that as the only outlet. The AP or module or whatnot is simply mostly out of your hands. The world belongs to the GM. You're just a tiny cog in a much bigger wheel (Planescape is REALLY EXPLICIT about this at a setting level, but Greyhawk, FR, etc. pretty well embody this too). Short of playing for years and negotiating the weird and kind of broken upper level play of classic D&D, you're not going to achieve anything of really major lasting import in the world.

Now, when you propose that FoW could rewrite a PC belief of a BW character, that was greeted as virtually anathema, and extended to rejecting the whole concept of 'beliefs' as a concrete game element (probably based on the old "hold your cards close to your chest or else the GM will use them against you" thinking). This came about because the idea that you, as a player, could be gaining something from this hasn't been factored into these people's thinking, not in an organic way. They're taking "the GM is going to impose a belief on me." and (maybe unconsciously) applying it to a paradigm of RPG process that doesn't involve any other agency to the player. You're attacking his last bastion of independence, and he's going to die on that battlefield before giving ground.

I mean, I know, people are going to say, "yeah, but I know about these other types of games, I've dabbled in them, etc." but again, it goes back to my Spock quote "2 dimensional thinking, Captain..."

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'll agree that there aren't mechanical means for a DM in 5E to make characters feel things (outside the usual charm-spell exceptions), but I've found that a skilled DM can get the players to feel things--and I've found that works just as well, without the dissonance I mentioned above.

I think this is a really interesting point.

When this happens, and the DM evokes some kind of emotional response from you that hadn't been there a moment before, do you feel like you've lost control of yourself? Do you feel like something has been imposed on you?

I have played games where players could do those sorts of things, and I've run them. I have found that I ended up not liking them as much as a player--mainly because they came with mechanics that imposed emotional/mental states on my character, leading to that dissonance; and some of the victories I achieved by rewriting the world felt ... cheap--or as a GM--my reluctance to generate the dissonance in my players' minds that I find so unpleasant makes me not the right person to GM those games, and I find it easier to keep the world consistent when I only have to remember what I've figured out, not what others have added.

I can absolutely understand your preference, even if I don't entirely share it. I do think that the times when some kind of emotional state is imposed on a PC are meant to emulate the kind of response you describe above as a player. It's not about mind control so much as evoking a feeling.

Now, I don't want to assign a motive to this, but I would expect that at least a part of this response is about the idea of "no one else controls my PC but me" which seems so ingrained as to be absolutely assumed by many in the discussion.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I THINK maybe I begin to understand the real nut of the objection to any notion of narrative play which might involve the player's being restricted from just "free-form RP" of their character to construct any sort of element they want at any time in the character's head/motivation/decisions.

If you have played for decades in a paradigm where THE ONLY agency is "what is in my character's head and how he moves his arms and legs and speaks." then clearly you want to hold on to that! You're also used to that as the only outlet. The AP or module or whatnot is simply mostly out of your hands. The world belongs to the GM. You're just a tiny cog in a much bigger wheel (Planescape is REALLY EXPLICIT about this at a setting level, but Greyhawk, FR, etc. pretty well embody this too). Short of playing for years and negotiating the weird and kind of broken upper level play of classic D&D, you're not going to achieve anything of really major lasting import in the world.

Now, when you propose that FoW could rewrite a PC belief of a BW character, that was greeted as virtually anathema, and extended to rejecting the whole concept of 'beliefs' as a concrete game element (probably based on the old "hold your cards close to your chest or else the GM will use them against you" thinking). This came about because the idea that you, as a player, could be gaining something from this hasn't been factored into these people's thinking, not in an organic way. They're taking "the GM is going to impose a belief on me." and (maybe unconsciously) applying it to a paradigm of RPG process that doesn't involve any other agency to the player. You're attacking his last bastion of independence, and he's going to die on that battlefield before giving ground.

I mean, I know, people are going to say, "yeah, but I know about these other types of games, I've dabbled in them, etc." but again, it goes back to my Spock quote "2 dimensional thinking, Captain..."

This is exactly this. As a recent(ish) "convert" this is absolutely the issue. It's a combination of a lack of paradigm shift and last line defense.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Thanks for the kind reply. Part of what has made me so frustrated in the past, I think, is that it has sometimes felt to me as though there was an inability/unwillingness to believe that someone could play/read/understand games written around these concepts and ... not prefer them. Which can seem (from the point of view of someone who doesn't prefer them) to be something in the direction of elitist--not saying that's the intent, to be clear.

The thing is, in many instances what I'm reacting to are the play examples in the rulebooks. I'll be reading a game book and coming to understand the mechanics, and there'll be a play example (which one can think of as "this is how the game should be played/run") and I'll hear an audible snap when I would completely disengage as a player if a GM did that--if a GM did what the rulebook is telling them to do, essentially.

I think we've discussed this, and it's hard to glean play from examples if you're not already in the mindset. Honestly, from experience, it's really hard to quickly present all of the things that go into a play experience such that the zeitgeist is grasped.

I'm inclined to think that lots of folks who play TRPGs are shaped as much by bad experiences as by good ones, when it comes to what they want to play--what they think they'll enjoy. I'm working hard as a GM not to be a negative example.

Mine is peppermint. Specifically (and it's a trial this time of year) candy canes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, the whole concept of 'Perception as a skill' is IMHO problematic. That is, if something is worthwhile to interact with in the story, then gating its appearance on a random check, with the result essentially being a 'change of game state' (IE the narrative goes 'left' or 'right' at this point, figuratively) seems like a very odd idea. I mean, its fine to have an indicator that some characters are 'perceptive' and others are not so perceptive. I can then narrate "As you walk down the corridor, Joe (the perceptive one) spots some odd scrape marks on the floor." Now we have spotlighted this aspect of that character, and that's cool. Joe would also be likely to take an action like "I look for something I can make a torch out of in this area." or "I search for another exit from this room." where success is going to produce the desired result.

The problem is, how perception is used in say, 5e, seems unrewarding. "Oh, you go down the corridor, sorry you take 10 points of damage because you can't see the trap." Huh, yeah, wow. Even if I get a check, the results of failure aren't really interesting. I mean, the cool part is interacting with, and overcoming, the trap, not just being told you were too much of a dolt to even see it, please bandage yourself. This is also what leads to the dull vanilla sorts of traps I see these days. Its just a toll bridge, you pay to walk here. No skill is involved at all! No interesting story is generated, at all.

At least in the old old days before thief skills appeared (or at least before they were interpreted like Perception) you looked carefully at everything (it was assumed in the exploration movement rate). There was no such thing as "not finding the trap." You saw SOMETHING. Now, what is it? How does it work? Can I fiddle with it and make it so I'm safe from it? If it was a small mechanical/magical mechanism, THEN 'remove traps' could be engaged to figure it out and disarm it. The exact wording in Greyhawk is: "remove small trap devices (such as poisoned needles)" So, basically it was just a test of dexterity mixed with some very specific experience with this sort of thing. You couldn't just roll dice to disarm a large mechanical/magical trap, and such things were almost invariably 'puzzles' to at least some degree, requiring reasoning power and several steps in order to overcome. The terminology reflected this, as all types of "puzzle, trick, or trap" were lumped together in terms of their role in the game as challenges.

So, I guess it isn't bad to have "Perceptive" be a trait, and it can have a 'degree of ability' associated with it, call it training or whatnot if you will, but it would be intended to flag how the narrative could proceed, not as a 'gate' that your character had to pass through to get a preset 'reward'.

I don't really disagree with this and the old school trap solving is a good example of the sort of situation where GM adjudication might result the player having more agency than just handling the whole thing via a roll.

 

[Imaro]

Well, the whole concept of 'Perception as a skill' is IMHO problematic. That is, if something is worthwhile to interact with in the story, then gating its appearance on a random check, with the result essentially being a 'change of game state' (IE the narrative goes 'left' or 'right' at this point, figuratively) seems like a very odd idea. I mean, its fine to have an indicator that some characters are 'perceptive' and others are not so perceptive. I can then narrate "As you walk down the corridor, Joe (the perceptive one) spots some odd scrape marks on the floor." Now we have spotlighted this aspect of that character, and that's cool. Joe would also be likely to take an action like "I look for something I can make a torch out of in this area." or "I search for another exit from this room." where success is going to produce the desired result.

I don't think it's odd at all. As long as one isn't creating a single point of access to progress around it along with making it uncertain whether any character will actually notice it... it actually serves quite well as a reward for character/build choices. In D&D 5e your score is your indicator, the only difference I see between what you are stating in your post and what D&D provides is that it's not an off/on indicator but instead an indicator with gradations. The DM always has the option of deciding no check is necessary or that a characters skill is high enough that there is no uncertainty. A roll only comes into play if there is uncertainty in whether Joe would notice something... Many like that uncertainty, that feeling of chance affecting the game world, something which an on/off indicator with set results just doesn't provide.

The problem is, how perception is used in say, 5e, seems unrewarding. "Oh, you go down the corridor, sorry you take 10 points of damage because you can't see the trap." Huh, yeah, wow. Even if I get a check, the results of failure aren't really interesting. I mean, the cool part is interacting with, and overcoming, the trap, not just being told you were too much of a dolt to even see it, please bandage yourself. This is also what leads to the dull vanilla sorts of traps I see these days. Its just a toll bridge, you pay to walk here. No skill is involved at all! No interesting story is generated, at all.

I'm not sure your assumption about how Perception is used with traps in 5e is accurate, at least if one is following the advice and rules in the DMG. The basic structure of trap interacion as laid out in the DMG is...
1. Detect it (Perception check/Passive Perception/Any action that clearly reveals the traps presence) NOTE: Usually some element of a trap is visible to careful inspection
2. Understand it (through skill check or description)
3. Disarm/Foil it (skill check or improvised actions)

The DMG goes on to discuss different Danger levels of traps (Setback/Dangerous/Deadly) and how to set them. As well as complex traps (They have an initiative, a turn, 1 or more actions and creates a dynamic challenge).

If a DM is choosing not to let characters detect or interact with traps via fiction well they are ignoring the DMG advice and system on traps. that's a failure of application of the system not a failure in the system itself.

At least in the old old days before thief skills appeared (or at least before they were interpreted like Perception) you looked carefully at everything (it was assumed in the exploration movement rate). There was no such thing as "not finding the trap." You saw SOMETHING. Now, what is it? How does it work? Can I fiddle with it and make it so I'm safe from it? If it was a small mechanical/magical mechanism, THEN 'remove traps' could be engaged to figure it out and disarm it. The exact wording in Greyhawk is: "remove small trap devices (such as poisoned needles)" So, basically it was just a test of dexterity mixed with some very specific experience with this sort of thing. You couldn't just roll dice to disarm a large mechanical/magical trap, and such things were almost invariably 'puzzles' to at least some degree, requiring reasoning power and several steps in order to overcome. The terminology reflected this, as all types of "puzzle, trick, or trap" were lumped together in terms of their role in the game as challenges.

So, I guess it isn't bad to have "Perceptive" be a trait, and it can have a 'degree of ability' associated with it, call it training or whatnot if you will, but it would be intended to flag how the narrative could proceed, not as a 'gate' that your character had to pass through to get a preset 'reward'.

I think perhaps you are assuming how traps work as opposed to having actually read the section in the DMG on them in 5e as almost everything you are stating in the above section of your post is a part of discovering and disabling traps in 5e. Again if a particular DM chooses to ignore the rules and advice well that's on the DM not the rules system.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't really disagree with this and the old school trap solving is a good example of the sort of situation where GM adjudication might result the player having more agency than just handling the whole thing via a roll.

Sorry, but this is utterly confused. How on Earth can putting the entire decision process into the GM's hands generate more agency than a die roll that the player is aware of, can plan for, and can call for?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think this is a really interesting point.

When this happens, and the DM evokes some kind of emotional response from you that hadn't been there a moment before, do you feel like you've lost control of yourself? Do you feel like something has been imposed on you?

Absolutely not, this sort of thing is the best! But I use this as stepping point to try to better explain my dislike of certain sort of personality mechanics. Can you feel a feeling on command? Some people genuinely can, but I most definitely can't. The feelings my character feels are result of my mental model of them interacting with the situation and me immersing to that. So if that process produces one feeling but the mechanics say the character should feel something else then that's jarring and I can't immerse to that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't think it's odd at all. As long as one isn't creating a single point of access to progress around it along with making it uncertain whether any character will actually notice it... it actually serves quite well as a reward for character/build choices. In D&D 5e your score is your indicator, the only difference I see between what you are stating in your post and what D&D provides is that it's not an off/on indicator but instead an indicator with gradations. The DM always has the option of deciding no check is necessary or that a characters skill is high enough that there is no uncertainty. A roll only comes into play if there is uncertainty in whether Joe would notice something... Many like that uncertainty, that feeling of chance affecting the game world, something which an on/off indicator with set results just doesn't provide.



I'm not sure your assumption about how Perception is used with traps in 5e is accurate, at least if one is following the advice and rules in the DMG. The basic structure of trap interacion as laid out in the DMG is...
1. Detect it (Perception check/Passive Perception/Any action that clearly reveals the traps presence) NOTE: Usually some element of a trap is visible to careful inspection
2. Understand it (through skill check or description)
3. Disarm/Foil it (skill check or improvised actions)

The DMG goes on to discuss different Danger levels of traps (Setback/Dangerous/Deadly) and how to set them. As well as complex traps (They have an initiative, a turn, 1 or more actions and creates a dynamic challenge).

If a DM is choosing not to let characters detect or interact with traps via fiction well they are ignoring the DMG advice and system on traps. that's a failure of application of the system not a failure in the system itself.



I think perhaps you are assuming how traps work as opposed to having actually read the section in the DMG on them in 5e as almost everything you are stating in the above section of your post is a part of discovering and disabling traps in 5e. Again if a particular DM chooses to ignore the rules and advice well that's on the DM not the rules system.

I feel you're eliding some very important bits -- in the above, you're assuming that the GM is using their discretion in a specific manner which isn't actually required. I'll agree it's good GMing, but that doesn't change that when looking at how the game actually functions, all of the above is up to the GM. The GM determines if there's auto-success, auto-failure, or uncertainty. If uncertain, the GM calls for the check and sets all particulars for that check. Once the check is made, the GM has sole authority to narrate the result, and is not actually restricted in doing so except possibly by the social contract at the table.

If you present a play example only from a specific adjudication, then you're missing how else it can work. And I utterly disagree that a GM choosing to not let characters detect or interact with traps via the fiction is ignoring DMG advice at all -- the game explicitly says all of this is up to the GM's judgement and gives the GM explicit authority to determine that a given course of action fails outright. Should they do this? Different question, and here I'll agree with most of what you post -- it's good advice.