A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure. I guess I just think it's possible to DM 5E (because that's the version I know best at the moment) to be approximately as player-responsive in extent, if differently in kind as DW (because they really do work differently).

Why did the party choose to fight the mythic death knight in something an awful lot like a cage match?

I can't speak for anyone else's abilities but mine. I know that it is at least EASIER to GM such a game when I have a system which simply puts that stuff on the table. I could try to run a 5e game like a DW game, sure, but I'd constantly have to be trying to figure out what to do next to get it to work. 5e doesn't have an equivalent of 'success with complication' either, which is one thing that is pretty commonly used in these games. I guess if I am, again, a very sure hand at this technique I can adjudicate just the right amount of those into play, but DW just tells me when to do that itself. It also allows bonuses (hold etc) that let players mitigate that possibility somewhat. I guess I could add a 'coupon' to 5e that did that, but then what would I tie it to? Now I'm adding mechanics.

Frankly, while I have written pretty much a complete RPG, there are other people who are probably much better at it, and its a lot less time-consuming to read their material and use it. If I'm already adhering to basically a DW agenda and principles, why use 5e rules?

 

[pemerton]

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!

I see it as about managing likelihoods. Combat is centred around 8+ but involves multiple checks. Other subsystems involve a single check and distributed odds differently.

Eg once some of the presentation in Book 1 is corrected, we get further things like the basic roll for dealing with officials is 10+, with +5 for Admin-1 and +2 for each additional rank. This helps give even a single skill rank weight in the context of single-roll resolution.

 

[pemerton]

I for one still would love for you to explain why you think that Beliefs in BW do not affect how the character is being roleplayed, because even after reading the BW rules my impression is that they absolutely would.

The player can declare whatever actions s/he wants for his/her PC. The player can characterise/thespianise his/her PC however s/he likes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And to the final step, it is makes no sense to assert somehow that the player in a game where the GM asserts control over all of this stuff offers the players the same agency in the game that, say, Dungeon World does. There is no sense to it at all, it is merest sophistry!

As near as I can tell the arguments amount to "I am always free to RP my character however I want" followed by "hypothetically there might be a rule in some narrative style game which impedes this" ergo "D&D has at least as much agency as X." (where X seems to be basically any such game). Not only are all of these facts extremely dubious on their own, but they don't even add up to an argument. Nor does the tactic of trying to split agency up into multiple 'types' and then only discuss one effect of narrative game X and compare whatever the conclusion is (usually incorrectly) with all of D&D anything but a type of category error (actually I'm not sure what the right term for this is, 'gerrymandering' is certainly being misused, but it seems apt).

The truth is, most modern RPGs provide players with some sort of concrete access to defining fiction, or at the very least constraining its definition in a way which enables them to have an incontrovertible say in what it is. That is a form of input into the game which is not present in D&D and other classic RPGs. Yes, you can role play in any game, but your ability to have it mean anything is strictly limited in classic play because the fiction off of which that RP must be based is not under your control, and it has no influence on the mechanics of the game whatsoever. In fact any 'agency' whatsoever accrued by a player by means of RP in this way, must be 'leant' to the them by the GM! Yes, they can pantomime, but so can I do that in Dungeon World (actually its hard, because if I do the GM better fold it into the fiction or else he's not doing his job).

This entire topic mystifies me. While I 'get' that people have preferences and whatever, I don't really think this is about preference. It honestly feels more just about a hard feeling. Like if I have another way to play, then I'm threatening the legitimacy of the way D&D works and thus it has to be attacked. Its a sort of base tribalism kind of thing. The preferences should be respected, but the rest of it? I'm reaching the conclusion that there simply weren't good arguments there. There is no 'there' there...

It mystifies me too. Here you first decry the attempts to categorise agency in different types, and in next paragraph you clearly use the concept of setting agency to make a distinction between different types of games...

And it is perfectly possible that if there was some coherent definition of agency it might result certain games where the players have a lot of setting agency ranking pretty highly. But this thread is pretty resistant to any coherent definition. I have been told that games that don't let me decide how my character thinks do not restrict the player agency but games who don't let player spawn hills and towers wherever they want definitely do!

Also accusing me of being motivated by tribal desire to defend the honour an prestige of Dungeons & Dragons would be hilarious if it wasn't so insulting.

 

[pemerton]

Misread so edited: The player whose turn it is determines what action. In combat mechanics determine whether most actions are successful (a player could attempt something not covered under the combat actions and the DM would have a say in determining success or failure or calling for a roll in that scenario - or in the case of an NPC, the DM chooses the action and mechanics determine if it is successful.

When you say "mechanics determine whether most actions are sucessful" do you mean: if the checks succeeds the player gets what s/he wanted; otherwise not?

 

[pemerton]

I think in principle we want that same thing, we just want it done explicitly through the in game character.


Which IMO goes back to the desire to limit a players ability to contribute to the shared fiction to their in game character. I think we agree that doing this gives the game a different feel and experience?

In the following sense: part of being my character - if s/he is not an amnesiac - is knowing about the world I live in. Hence I want a system that will support that experience. Map-and-key, ask-the-GM approaches are OK for situations where the PCs are strangers in a place (eg a Gygaxian dungeon; a strange plane of existence) but break down under most other circumstances.

A game mechanic may control something.

I don't agree with this. Game mechanics are abstract rules. They can't self-actualise. In a game, it is the participants who control the play of the game - perhaps by following the rules.

 

[pemerton]

Surely you can see how one can disagree with your analysis of what the mechanics and play examples presented mean in relation to agency while fully understanding everything you presented about them?

Have you read everything I've posted about them? In that case you would know that a BW PC's Beliefs do not place any limit on actions that can be declared nor on the way the PC might be characterised.

 

[pemerton]

It might be helpful to frame some of these interactions in relation to D&D with house rules.

So let's say there's a D&D game with a house rule that says - upon their character finishing a long rest a player gains 3 points that they can use to add some fictional element to the game (restricted if it will impugne on any of another player's traditional D&D agency.)

This game has all the agency of D&D and additional agency of creating fictional elements.

On the face of it, that sounds like a terrible mechanic.

 

[pemerton]

It has seemed as though most of the time when someone has said this, they have been referring to nouns. I think the fiction is at least as defined by verbs.

Yes. Verbs like Can I see a vessel in which I might catch the decapitated mage's blood? This is why I don't agree with the assertion that Perception is essentially passive/reactive. That might be so in some RPGs, but it's not true of RPGs in general.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The player can declare whatever actions s/he wants for his/her PC. The player can characterise/thespianise his/her PC however s/he likes.

Perhaps true in most technical sense. Completely ignoring the roleplay implications of the beliefs would seem to go strongly against the intended spirit though, it specifically says they're meant to be a source of drama.