A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

This isn’t about my experiences. Why try to make this about personally dismissing me?

Because you're making false and unwarranted claims about systems you seem to know little or nothing about.

For instance, the only person in this thread - as best I recall - who has given an example of play where the notion of Belief came in is me. And I was referring to Burning Wheel, where Beliefs are a technical component of PC build comparable in some ways to Ideals and Bonds in 5e D&D.

If you actually read any of my explanations of how these work in general, and of how I adjudicated the use on a PC of Force of Will in my own game, you didn't post about it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But isn't that acting and roleplaying? This is what actors do when they immerse themselves into a character. Sometimes the fictional situation of the character an actor plays goes in a different way than the actor themselves may feel in that moment, but the skilled actor's job is to embrace the change and adapt their performance accordingly.

Do you remember the interviews of Emilia Clarke about the last season of GoT? How she was really upset when she go the scripts for the last episodes and how it took her for several days to adjust? Method actors absolutely will have issues if their characters are written in a way that go against their previously internalised mental image. They're professionals and can of course eventually make it to work, but it is unlikely that they have to do it in a moments notice like in a RPG. Also they're under million dollar contracts that highly incentivise them to not to just say 'sod it' and walk away...

 

[hawkeyefan]

No; and that plays in to my point.

And in so doing you've abdicated the agency the game gives you (or, more correctly, chosen to ignore it) over your character's personality, mannerisms, etc. Fine if you want to do so, but to then turn around and say that the agency you're ignoring doesn't really count as agency is a bit rich.

That this level of agency is (for all intents and purposes) universal across RPGs is irrelevant. It's still agency.

Yes, the game you are advocating for has the most base level of agency present in any and all RPGs.

If we're talking about the level of agency allowed by games or approaches to games, bringing the bare minimum is a bit like saying you're not broke because you have a buck in your bank account.

That might be another point of dissonance here: looking at games after the fact vs looking at them in the moment. It's way easier to be critical after the fact, for one thing, than it is in the moment; but as in-the-moment is what matters right here right now I'd say it's more important.

For my part, if I-as-player feel like I have agency in the moment that's fine; and if it turns out in hindsight later that I didn't have the agency I thought I did at the time then my reaction will vary depending on the situation and on whether I enjoyed the moments as they unfolded.

For example: ages ago I was a player in an excellent series of adventures; our party bashed its way up and down the coast seemingly in a sandbox, following clues (badly!) and occasionally blundering into an adventure. In hindsight it all turned out to be a complete railroad, but so what? I had a grand time with it in the moment and learning it was a railroad didn't sully my memories of any of it.

I would say that examination of play after the fact is a big part of how we improve play.

The fact that you actually say "it was a complete railroad, but so what?" means that you simply aren't as concerned with agency as others may be. I mean.....it's awesome you enjoyed your game, but clearly it had less agency than many other games would have, and that doesn't bother you....so I'm left wondering what your take on agency is.

 

[FrogReaver]

Complete ignorance doesn’t lend itself to analysis.

Because you're making false and unwarranted claims about systems you seem to know little or nothing about.

For instance, the only person in this thread - as best I recall - who has given an example of play where the notion of Belief came in is me. And I was referring to Burning Wheel, where Beliefs are a technical component of PC build comparable in some ways to Ideals and Bonds in 5e D&D.

If you actually read any of my explanations of how these work in general, and of how I adjudicated the use on a PC of Force of Will in my own game, you didn't post about it.

Glad we are on the same page that it was you who brought up the beliefs example. Now in that beliefs example there was the notion of a player being forced to rewrite his belief. Does that sound familiar?

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I wish you hadn't arranged those quotations so it looks as though @hawkeyefan was replying to me, there. I didn't think I was talking about immersion, particularly, but that's actually less of a problem. Sorry.

I thought that the two posts - yours and @hawkeyefan's - addressed a similar point, namely, when can a player "internalise" (for lack of a better word) the fiction the GM is stipulating as shared.

I think this is an important question. I think confining the discussion to PCs' mental states distorts the analysis.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It was a haunted house. It was a creepy portrait. The player CHOSE to make the portrait magical -- I did not. There was no magical gotach trap here, because there was no gotcha at all -- the player chose to make it magical in the context of a creepy haunter manor home (that belongs to Lord Scurlock, a being that has been alive for perhaps as long as the Emperor, ie at least a thousand years, and is known to be up to serious occult stuff). The player then CHOSE to interact with the portrait they wanted to be magic in a way that directly puts occult consequences on the table -- ie, Attune. So, yeah, to get to the part where I narrated that the portrait was doing a bad thing, we have two player choices, a lot of foreshadowing about occult things, and then a failed check which all led up to, not the portrait sucking out his soul, but that this was now on the table.

As for the GM fiat statement -- if the GM can only decide to let player actions stand or negotiate a roll, this is very different from a GM that can say yes, roll, or no. The authority to deny a thing is the control over the thing. All are, yes, exercises of GM authority, but that's not a particularly interesting observation. There's a huge difference in player authorities and agencies between the two models. Let's not pretend they're the same.

@Imaro

Actually, thinking on this a moment more, your reaction is like going to a birthday party featuring cake and ice cream, then being asked what kind of cake you like and what flavor ice cream you like, then exclaiming when served cake and ice cream, "Well, this is a surprise, there's no way I could have seen this coming, it's a total gotcha!"

 

[pemerton]

No they aren’t. Nothing I’ve advocated for has been about me or the character having narrative control over the setting.

I’ll go one further - while having narrative control over the settting is a type of agency - it has nothing to do with role playing a character.

I can't roleplay my character's admiration of the sky visible overhead if the GM has told me my character is under a roof.

It's neither here no there that that doesn't bother you. My point is that it is a limit on the sort of agency you are pointing to - ie the ability portray your character's feelings.

 

[pemerton]

Glad we are on the same page that it was you who brought up the beliefs example. Now in that beliefs example there was the notion of a player being forced to rewrite his belief. Does that sound familiar?

Do you know what a Belief is in Burning Wheel? What role it plays in the game? What effect (if any) it has on the player's characterisation of his/her PC?

 

[prabe]

I thought that the two posts - yours and @hawkeyefan's - addressed a similar point, namely, when can a player "internalise" (for lack of a better word) the fiction the GM is stipulating as shared.

I think this is an important question. I think confining the discussion to PCs' mental states distorts the analysis.

That's reasonable and fair. Getting the players to engage with the fiction is arguably the GM's primary job.

 

[FrogReaver]

Complete ignorance doesn’t lend itself to analysis.

You all tell me about the game. I analyze what you are telling me as if it was true. Unless you are intentionally misleading or doing such a poor job of explaining it to me then it’s not ignorance. You may disagree with my analysis, but that’s not really ignorance is it?