A Question Of Agency?

[darkbard]

My analysis is disagreed with but no coherent reason is given.

Actually, no. You've been given multiple coherent responses but, because you stubbornly refuse to educate yourself about the topics under discussion, you have no means of understanding their coherence.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So here’s the flow of what is happening.

A mechanic and play example from a game I’m not very familiar with is presented. Some analysis is done regarding that example and mechanic with the claim that this demonstrates X. I offer my analysis saying it actually demonstrates Y. My analysis is disagreed with but no coherent reason is given. Instead I am told, you don’t have the credentials to talk about this. The problem there isn’t me or my supposed lack of credentials. It’s the lack of a coherent rebuttal.

You're not being told you lack the credentials -- there's no credentials anyone here has on this topic. You're being asked to understand the topic you think you're analyzing. It's painfully clear you lack this understanding -- the ways you try to "analyze" things make fundamental mistakes that can at least be learned with a few minutes of reading. Honestly, at this point, if you had read the passages (they aren't long) rather than continued to argue that you don't need to understand a thing to critique it (what a strange claim!), you'd have saved time and effort. AND, you'd be better equipped to make whatever argument you want in a much more salient way. As it is, you're spending time defending your ignorance as a virtue. It looks very foolish.

@prabe doesn't like the kinds of play you're trying to critique, but he at least has made the effort to understand them, and his points are very good and salient. Yours, sadly, are often so mistaken about fundamental things that they are not even wrong.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And D&D is not? I mean, fundamentally, if you're going to break a game down to this level, it's utterly unfair to say that Blades is Quantum Ogres because people decide things and 5e is not because... people decide things? The difference here is that you're assigning a value statement to single player prepared material as being good and that unprepped, multiple player input material is bad. It's a value statement about your preference, where you apply different standards of analysis to validate the underlying preference. It's entirely circular logic coupled with special pleading -- if you applied the same analysis to 5e, you'd end up with quantum ogres. As such, this is useless except as a circular reinforcement of your pre-existing biases.

I did not make value statement, I just described what's going on. I have no doubt that Blades can be fun and engaging game if the people are invested in the fiction. Even quantum ogres are not inherently a bad thing, reskinned or not.

No, you didn't, and if you read the rest of that paragraph, you'll see I discard this statement as obfuscation. I did forget to add the (ad argumentum) to is, so that is my bad. I was using your concept for the sake of the argument and showing how it fails, not agreeing with you. I could have worded that better.

Constraints are accepted, yes, but, again, player agency cannot be viewed on subdivisions of play -- this leads to obfuscation of what's going on and only enables flawed arguments that less agency exists in this narrowly defined context so it's the same or worse as the preferred arrangement.

"Nuh-uh, you are," is not a flattering mode of argumentation, nor one that convinces anyone except fellow travelers. If your intent is just to get @FrogReaver to once again like your post, by all means, continue. If your intent is to engage in discussion, this is a failed approach. You should consider this.

No, subdividing agency allows one to make flawed arguments about the game such that they can claim superiority in one capacity by ignoring the effects in others. For instance, your continued claims that there is player agency in being the sole controller of your character's mental state (outside of allowed exceptions, naturally, special pleading be damned) allows you to claim more agency, despite the fact that this is empty in the broader context because you have no agency to actually enforce this on the rest of the game. You've claimed agency, and winning agency, in an act that is ultimately irrelevant to the rest of the game -- as shown by me previously that I can get the same level of choice and action in game without acting in-character at all.

This is the trap of subdivided agency. The games discussed are not separate silos of activity placed next to each other -- they interconnect at multiple points. Treating agency as something that can be evaluated in distinct silos totally ignores these interconnects and the ability of one to affect another or not. If I can imagine my character however I want, but can't place that into the game without someone else's permission, then I am not actually exercising much player agency at all, especially since I can imagine my character in any RPG equally well.

Yes, different forms of agency can influence each other. That's why I place high value on agency over character's mental states as agency limitations placed on those are usually effectively also agency limitations on actions following from those mental states. In any case, I don't understand why you want to make discussing things and describing games harder. It seems that you're merely interested in ramming through you mental framework that is detached from the actual experience of people playing roleplaying games.

It wasn't mocking. It was silly, but that's because I have a silly streak, not because I was mocking anyone other than my own strange choices.

And, no, it's not the same thing. The same thing would be if the player reminisced and then was able to establish that there was water down that passage and that was a true thing. Here, the GM provided that -- it was entirely decided by the GM. The player acted onto that, they didn't really choose it, and made choice not based on the player's interests, but instead molding their character to the GM's prompts. That's not exercising agency, even if it can be fun, because no choice is being made in reminiscing in-character that impacts the gameworld.

Your problem is that you seem to only recognise narrative authority to control the setting as agency. In your Blades example that was present, albeit in a small way.

The only choice is to go down that passage, and it's based on very little that's agency enabling. Bob the Fighter made the choice based on things Bob the Fighter could control, at least in part, because Bob the Fighter knew they had a potion of water breathing and this was a way to exert control over a situation involving water. Fynn just playacted against the GM established fiction and made a choice that was barely better than random.

Better how?

Now, was Fynn's action more entertaining to the table and the player? Most likely, but not definitely. If that's the axis you want to value, then, absolutely, do so -- I usually put weight on this as well, and not a little. But it doesn't create player agency within the game to do so -- Bob's player has the same agency as Fynn's player, and Bob's player made a choice that enabled future agency via control over options in the fiction while Fynn's player just entertained everyone. Again, if you like that kind of thing, great and awesome and please go get all of it you can!

Of course it is an use of agency. The player uses their agency to introduce an event 'my character reminisces about their childhood and waxes poetically about it'. Now the fiction has changed, it contains this new element.

 

[FrogReaver]

Actually, no. You've been given multiple coherent responses but, because you stubbornly refuse to educate yourself about the topics under discussion, you have no means of understanding their coherence.

So let’s suppose some reason was given that you believe is coherent and I do not. It’s still an issue solely rooted in a disagreement about terms and analysis. The larger game as a whole had no bearing on that discussion.

Now let’s suppose the objection is due to some additional mechanic that wasn’t introduced in the example or mechanic summarization provided. If that other mechanic was important to the discussion it’s still not my fault it wasn’t introduced originally.

Like seriously, it’s common knowledge I’ve not played those games. To engage me in a conversation about them is a defacto agreement that you are okay with my lack of knowledge about them. You don’t get to 1000 posts later start demanding I have more knowledge to have this discussion.

 

[innerdude]

So here’s the flow of what is happening.

A mechanic and play example from a game I’m not very familiar with is presented. Some analysis is done regarding that example and mechanic with the claim that this demonstrates X. I offer my analysis saying it actually demonstrates Y. My analysis is disagreed with but no coherent reason is given. Instead I am told, you don’t have the credentials to talk about this. The problem there isn’t me or my supposed lack of credentials. It’s the lack of a coherent rebuttal.

The problem is that your responses indicate a lack of comprehension of the full context implied by the mechanics being demonstrated.

You're misapprehending significant components of the mechanics in question, because you've either not fully understood the context of what's being presented, or you're purposefully re-aligning the context to fit what you already know, when the game/mechanics in question do not logically follow from your preconceptions.

@PsyzhranV2's suggestion to go read Ironsworn is a good one. Ironsworn is a direct descendant of Dungeon World, but tweaked and tuned using influences from Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Fate, and other things. It moves away from trying to fit into "classic D&D tropes" into a more gritty feel. Having played Dungeon World and read through Ironsworn, my impressions of Ironsworn is that it's a fantastic, improved distillation of what Dungeon World is trying to accomplish. And it's free.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Note that every other edition does have a standard method; only Classic doesn't. But it has several basic modes in the core and others in early adventures (1-4)
Mode 0: Physicals as hit points; damage is marked against them. Different subeditions of CT have differences on the details...
Mode 1: if att <X, DM-z, if att ≥y , DM+1 or DM+z , DM+ Skill, 8+ succeeds, conditional mods apply.
Mode 2: 2d for N+, DM+(skill × X) (See Vacc Suit in Bk1 p22; Note the lack of attribute.)
Mode 3: Xd for Attribute or less (not used in the core, but implied in Book zero, and used in a couple adventures.) (Exemplar: Bk3 p37, entry Seismic Quake)
Mode 4: if sum of applied attribute exceeds some threshold, the action succeeds (Twilight's Peak, p25)
Mode 4a: One in Twilight's peak is if the sum of strengths of PC's on the ladder crosses a value, the ladder breaks... (ibid, p26

Many have touted this as a benefit of CT; many others have cited it as CT's biggest problem.

For those curious...
2300 and Mega use attribute/5 as equivalent to a skill for task purposes (called an asset). Compared to CT, the sigma on skill levels is a little wider in MT, but typical levels are comparable, as the raise in skills per term is proportional to the larger number of non-weapon skills. T:2300 and 2300AD (same game, 2 editions) actually has a bit lower sigma on skill levels, and comparable numbers and levels to CT.
TNE used 1d20 ≤ (att + skill)×(DiffMod). More skills (about 20% more) but about 50% more skill levels
T4 and T5 both are (Difficulty)d6 ≤ (Attribute+Skill) (in T5, skill is broken into Skills and knowledges, but you get to add one skill and one of its knowledges.
Mongoose uses a d20 inspired modifier table and is 2d6+Stat+Skill+DiffMod for 8+...
T20 uses the standard d20 mode, Traveller for Hero uses standard hero, GT and GTIW use standard GURPS modes.
Cepheus Engine uses the Mongoose model (from the Mongoose SRD).

Of all of them Mongoose really works best, and is in fact identical to the version we invented for ourselves way back in about 1978 or so. T4/5 don't give skills enough weight. Dunno about TNE but it seems like it would have the same issue. Plus I never liked using anything but d6 in Traveller, TRADITION MAN!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another example of Mode 4 is found in the module Shadows. (STR to force electro-mechanical doors.)

A variant of Mode 3 - maybe it's its own mode - is when the whole of the attribute serves as a DM together with skill expertise levels (see donning a vacc suit during explosive decompression in Book 2; and first draw in Book 1).

I use two further variants of Mode 3 that are extrapolated from (i) the handling of infection in Annic Nova and (ii) Andy Slack's rules for toxins and disease in early White Dwarf: one is 19+ on 3D + attribute; the other is 10+ 2D + half-attribute.

For Vacc Suit under Mode 2, I step up the throw required by 1 and allow a +1 DM if DEX 6+ and +2 if DEX B+; this is a generalisation of an idea found in Double Adventures 1 and/or 2 (I'd have to dig back through to see which one).

As to the benefit/problem aspect I think we fall on different sides of the position: for me, these different subsystems in Classic Traveller is one of its big strengths.

Can't say I see a benefit to heterogeneity here. I mean, I have no real opinion on non-player-facing stuff, or what happens during the lifepath process, but in play? Last thing I want to do is be explaining/figuring out/looking up some other dice system. Every one of them outputs a probability of success as a result, and can extrapolate to 'more or less success' fairly easily. Settle on one!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A lot of RPGing involves character development, which is something like ongoing PC build. And there are some approaches to character development in which it feeds off actual play - RuneQuest is a famous example.

So I guess I don't really feel the force of this distinction. It seems a little arbitrary.

Agreed, though D&D has generally kept them a bit separate, at least since the later 2e era where you got all the kits and sub-classes and whatever that all got picked pretty much at chargen. 3.x, 4e, 5e, they all seem to segregate it too, though it is an ongoing process. Certainly you can work things such that the two are unified to whatever degree.

One of my goals in HoML was to explicitly unify them. You gain 'boons' via play, in a purely narrative fashion, and the acquisition of each 'major boon' marks the advancement to a new level. So there is technically no such thing as 'character build', though the mechanics are pretty much like other modern D&D's. I guess if somene else ran it they might work it pretty much like 4e, but the way things are laid out it is natural for it to just be an organic process that flows purely from narrative elements.

 

[innerdude]

Quick addendum ---

For context, my primary, "go to" system is Savage Worlds, but I played BECMI as a teen, and played a significant amount of D&D 3.5 and GM'd Pathfinder 1e in my 20s.

Believe me when I tell you that despite some glaringly obvious mechanical differences, D&D and Savage Worlds are very much cut from the same cloth in terms of playstyle / expected kinds of player and GM engagement. They're both very "traditional," discrete task resolution systems. Mechanics providing added player agency over the content of the fiction (with a few minor exceptions) are largely absent.

At a certain point in the past 5 years, driven by the fact that the stuff @pemerton and @Manbearcat were talking about in these forums sounded completely outlandish and obtuse, I decided I actually wanted to really find out if this whole "narrative-driven" style of play was a real "thing," or just mental vaporware.

So despite never having tried any of it before, I picked up and tried Dungeon World. I bought Burning Wheel Gold and read it. I bought and ran a one-shot of Fate Accelerated. I just recently discovered and read through Ironsworn multiple times. I've read other Powered by the Apocalypse systems (Masks, Scum and Villainy).

I don't claim to be an expert on narrative-driven RPG techniques at all. But I've learned and explored enough to know that it really is a "thing", and that the techniques, when followed, drive play in the directions being described. And that in my experience, the techniques described enhance the enjoyment of play.

Significantly.

 

[Manbearcat]

I've heard that about it, and if I didn't dislike dungeon delves so strongly the game would be more of a temptation for me. ;-)

Once again, just quickly skimming so nothing of much quality to say. Just wanted to address this.

Dungeon World isn't a delve game. It doesn't do anything like Moldvay Basic (its structure doesn't deliver that sort of play at all...Torchbearer is that game), its merely a love-letter to the broad tropes of D&D (but the foreward of Moldvay Basic, which is nothing like the game, was probably what inspired Koebel and LaTorra).

Dungeon World is pulp Fantasy Heroic D&D with strong archetypes and snowballing danger and discovery meeting the fellowship and journey quality of LotR (Bonds + Journey mechanics). It also lends itself toward robust, Big Damn Heroes. In this way, its very much like a PBtA version of 4e D&D.

While my Torchbearer games are all Crawls/Camp/Town, I've never had a single dungeon delve featured in all my DW games (though there has been some subterranean and complexes/ruins play); probably 600 and change hours of play?

EDIT - I just read your preferences post. To be honest, your preferences sound absolutely perfect for Dungeon World. However, if Blades and AW turn you off as a system, you're probably not going to like DW.