A Question Of Agency?

[Ovinomancer]

@Manbearcat could you perhaps elaborate what you think makes it so force-proof? I am not talking about forcing some specific outcome on any specific test, I'm talking about the overall trajectory of the game, and to me it seems rather obvious that the person who provides information, frames the scenes, sets the odds and decides the consequences has considerable power over it. And sure, if the GM pushes too hard, it becomes noticeable, here probably easier than in some other games. But heavy railroading is always noticeable.*

Deja vu! I made this exact argument -- like nearly verbatim -- to @pemerton a few years ago. I went looking for it, but couldn't find it, but I did find the thread where I started to realize I was missing something. That featured @Manbearcat, @pemerton, and @Campbell patiently explaining it to me. I think @hawkeyefan was near the same place as me in that thread. It was another long one, Judgement Calls vs "railroading", from March 2017. Man, I read me then and see someone that has started to think there may be something outside of the valley, but hasn't yet climbed the mountains to see.

Anyway, remanence aside, this is a very similar argument to what I made. And, it makes sense, if you don't really synthesis the entire play process (which is hard coming from a D&D mindset!). The reality is that it's impossible to railroad the game -- it's glaringly obvious and the players can just step all over you. This is because the players are the ones that determine what the game is about -- they pick the scores, they pick the ways they free play investigations, they pick the actions. The GM is powerless to even have a say until and unless the players have picked what play will be about. Sure, the GM might try to use the failure conditions to direct play, but this becomes obvious if they're introducing entirely new elements to the fiction that aren't related to what the player is about. Same with framing -- if you're dragging in unrelated elements to a score frame, it's blindingly obvious. There is no subtle way to direct play because your opportunities to do so aren't reliable or often available. The players really do drive what happens -- the GM is reacting to the players, there's little to no opportunity to direct the players.

Oh, and speaking about framing, in that original haunted painting example, if I as a GM would have wanted a player to go investigate whether the painting is magical, I would have described the room in the same way. When you describe things it is pretty easy to get people focus their attention to what you want and even draw the conclusions you want. it is not 100% guaranteed, but especially if you know your players you can do it rather reliably.

*( And if some crazy mentalist genius could do it in manner that it is not noticeable at all, and I as player would feel that I have awesome agency,
I wouldn't care.)

Really? I mean, my intent was convey "haunted house." I usually reach for cliches because they do the job very quickly in these cases. So, peeling wallpaper, dilapidated furniture, odd creaks and groans, the feeling everything is slightly askew, and paintings whose eyes seem to follow you. This is pretty unoriginal stuff, and I don't see how you can say that this directly players to investigate the paintings. The only reason the painting was even looked at a second time was because one player decided it was a good opportunity to engage in their personal mission and made it important. The painting was a detail in the "theme" description. The entire other half of that scene setting was describing the guard at the end of the hallway with a candle on a table, muttering about how creepy the house was and that he was between the PCs and their goal.

This is another critical point about how Blades and similar games frame scenes -- there isn't any "empty" framing, which it's just a description of an area or room. Scenes are about action, so the focus of the scene is the obstacle or threat that's present. You add flavor to the scene to bring it to life or encourage a larger theme (like a score in a haunted house), but the focus is the obstacle. So, yeah, this wasn't a description of a hallway where the players then decided which direction they go down the hallway, this was a scene featuring a guard blocking further progress that included a description of the hallway the guard was in and some details to reinforce the larger theme of the score location.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Crimson Longinus, @pemerton,

I found it! It was in that thread, many pages later:

Oh, come now, you really can't imagine it? Take your example of the imprisoning of you player. You said that the consequence for the failed check was that the player couldn't escape on their own. Fair enough, but you picked that consequence. You could have easily allowed for the player to escape, but by doing so it would now directly harm something else they cared about. Say they had a belief about a fellow rogue, and in their attempt to escape, they placed that rogue in danger of their life. That's a manipulation you could pull by choosing the consequence according to something you want to have happen.

For further examples, if none of the player beliefs involved demons, but you really like demons and want demons to be a part of the game, you can then have consequences for failures rolled by the players in regard to their beliefs involve demons. Like when your player investigated the tower for the mace, you chose finding cursed arrows, but you could have had a demon appear, instead. Bam, you're now influencing the direction of the game with your preferred narratives. Sure, the players still get their licks in, as they have to engage their beliefs for a roll to occur, but you can frame the outcomes in terms of demons or demon related things. Soon enough, you'll have players proposing replacement beliefs in terms of demons. And now you have the game you wanted.

Can you force the exact outcome you want? No, not with BW. But you can most certainly shape the game strongly according to your desires as DM.

I mean, pretty close, right? Sigh, that was less time ago that I thought. I really, really thought this! I do not anymore, because now I've actually run these systems and see exactly how nearly impossible it would be to not be blindingly obvious about it! I suppose, if I was a highly manipulative mentalist as @Crimson Longinus postulates, I could, but that's super scummy -- I don't want that, nor would I enjoy finding out someone was manipulating me like that, especially over a game. This would have HUGE fallout, personally.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Ovinomancer then perhaps it would be useful to explain why the arguments you made then do not actually apply?

Like I certainly see how rairoading with Blades is quite a bit harder than in a more GM driven game (though no myth approach is fertile ground for illusionism,) so this will make a GM who want to do that disinclined to run the system in the first place. This has probably a far greater effect than mere absolute limits of the system.

As for framing, it always affects the players' behaviour and it good to be aware of that. Your options are to affect their choices either consciously or subconsciously. Not affecting them at all isn't an option.

 

[FrogReaver]

So I read Blades in the Dark SRD. Seems like a solid game and the rules support the themes they're going for. The claims of it offering great player agency seem a tad overblown though. When deciding the position, effect, consequence and harm etc the GM has to make similar judgement calls than in most other games. Sure, there are guidelines, but so does every game. Now the GM is more restricted in certain ways, but less so in others. For example detailed combat mechanics of many other games do not rely so much on the GM's judgement than similar situation would in the Blades. And of the GM still frames the scenes which has major impact on the direction of the game. It also seems that information gathering works rather traditionally; the GM provides the information gained. With all the judgement calls the GM has to make in Blades, I have no doubt that a tyrannical GM could railroad the play whilst still following the rules. Now I don't believe that in practice this would usually happen; the GM who respect the spirit of the game and makes sensible calls based on the fiction results this game running just fine. I just feel that GMs who run more traditional games are not judged with similar charitability here.

It doesn't sound like reading the game changed any of your positions about it. Could it be that you had enough understanding of it to analyze it all along?

 

[FrogReaver]

I think narrative momentum would point to yes as the more the players affect the narrative, the more the affected narrative is a result of their agency. Does that even make sense? Well, it does to me! Hahaha!

I think in some sense you are correct. As long as players can make meaningful decisions in the game then the longer the campaign goes the more agency they are exercising, such that if the game went on forever, such players would exercise an infinite amount of agency.

If a system requires/enables Force and a GM's propensity to deploy Force is a function of time...then it nears a virtual certainty that longer campaigns will tend to decrease player agency.

I also think in some sense you are correct. As long as the GM is using force then the longer the campaign goes the more force he will have exercised, such that if the game went on forever, the GM would exercise an infinite amount of force. However, I would have to disagree with your final conclusion. In even the most force heavy games, players have some meaningful decisions they can make, and as noted above, if those games go on long enough as well then that's an infinite amount of agency.

All this leads me to the conclusion that a game where the GM exercises an infinite amount of force also can offer players an infinite amount of agency.

That is, the amount of force doesn't appreciably affect the amount of agency (assuming agency is being measured as the sum of all individual instances of agency). So let's drop out of the infinite a moment and start talking finite game lengths using this measurement of agency as I would like to show the results aren't appreciably different.

So in a finite duration game (where players can exert some agency) what are some ways we could increase the total number of instances of player agency?
1. Increase the duration of the game.
2. Increase the pace of the game.
3. *Transform instances of GM force into instances of agency (though this would change the trajectory of the game - which may also change the pacing or duration of the game - which could result in us measuring more or less agency at the end of the game).

What this means is that removing force doesn't necessitate an increase in the total number of instances where a player can exercise agency in a game - and that's true in both infinite and finite duration games.

So I ask is there a better way to measure agency? I think there is but I don't think many here will particularly like the conclusions my alternative measurement leads to either. So does anyone else have any recommendations?

 

[hawkeyefan]

@Crimson Longinus, @pemerton,

I found it! It was in that thread, many pages later:

I mean, pretty close, right? Sigh, that was less time ago that I thought. I really, really thought this! I do not anymore, because now I've actually run these systems and see exactly how nearly impossible it would be to not be blindingly obvious about it! I suppose, if I was a highly manipulative mentalist as @Crimson Longinus postulates, I could, but that's super scummy -- I don't want that, nor would I enjoy finding out someone was manipulating me like that, especially over a game. This would have HUGE fallout, personally.

Ha yeah, I imagine that was about when I decided to stop assuming D&D can do everything and decided to look at some of the games people were mentioning that I was not familiar with. I’m pretty sure @Campbell described a character for his Blades game and that made me check that game out. After reading it, I knew something significantly different was going on, but not exactly what.

I then watched John Harper’s actual play videos and was pretty much blown away. That led me to Powered by the Apocalypse games, and on from there.

I imagine if I look through that thread there will be a lot of talk on my part about mechanics not being needed and how not everything needs to be so gamey, and the like.

It’s surprising to me that was only 3 years ago. I have to guess based on the timing that thread is directly responsible for me branching out with my games.

 

[FrogReaver]

For those not as versed in mathematical infinites I think this analogy might help.

There are an infinite amount of numbers. There are also an infinite amount of odd numbers and an infinite amount of even numbers. If I remove the infinite amount of even numbers I am still left with the infinite amount of odd numbers.

(Odd numbers representing player agency and Even numbers representing the force that takes away agency).

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Ovinomancer then perhaps it would be useful to explain why the arguments you made then do not actually apply?

Like I certainly see how rairoading with Blades is quite a bit harder than in a more GM driven game (though no myth approach is fertile ground for illusionism,) so this will make a GM who want to do that disinclined to run the system in the first place. This has probably a far greater effect than mere absolute limits of the system.

As for framing, it always affects the players' behaviour and it good to be aware of that. Your options are to affect their choices either consciously or subconsciously. Not affecting them at all isn't an option.

No myth is not fertile ground for Illusionism -- it literally prevents it because the GM has no preplanned outcomes they need to Force onto players in a hidden way! No Myth explicitly means this.

As for why the arguments I made no longer apply, it's simply because your, like I was, are looking at the single moment in play where the GM narrates either scene framing and/or failure states. However, these things aren't isolated -- they are embedded in the larger context which is player driven, not GM driven. The mistake made here is keeping the same ideas that the GM has the only authority over the setting and outcomes -- this is no longer true. Nor is the GM solely responsible for the obstacles faced. While this appears true, the actual truth is that the when the GM frames an obstacle it's a direct reaction to a player declaration. If you frame things that aren't part of the player declarations, it's obvious you've done so and a clear violation of the ethos and rules of the game!

One of the other things I see you might have gotten wrong are the guidelines of the game. If you're still in D&D mode, guidelines are pieces of advice that GM is intended to ignore when they don't suit the GM. They're literally more suggestions than rules. This is not so in Blades -- these guidelines are how you are supposed to play the game at all times! Breaching a guideline intentionally is moving into bad faith play. These guidelines are actual rules of play. There's often a good bit of leeway in how you might use them, but you are to keep within them during play, not ignore them when convenient.

As for framing, of course it affects player behavior -- this is trivially obvious. However, the framing of the portrait in that case was a minor detail -- the focus was entirely on the guard. That minor detail became important not because I was making it so in describing it, but because a player had a goal that they thought they could turn that detail into. If it hadn't been described, that player would have looked for something else to do the same thing to because, as we discussed later after the session, they saw an opportunity in raiding Lord Scurlock's abandoned manor house as a chance to lift something that would aid them in their effort to get back into the University's good graces. If I had described a small statue, that would have been it. Had I not described something, the player would have asked after something, thus making it relevant and prompting me to narrate that something. I get that you're trying to say that placing the portrait drove the player to investigate it, so therefore it was the same as a GM driven game where the GM has pre-planned the portrait, but the fundamental difference here is that it was the player that wanted something and so latched onto the flavor description -- there was no plan by me that portraits in the manor were anything at all. Heck, if the player just wanted to take it for coin, it would have gone in a completely different direction!

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ha yeah, I imagine that was about when I decided to stop assuming D&D can do everything and decided to look at some of the games people were mentioning that I was not familiar with. I’m pretty sure @Campbell described a character for his Blades game and that made me check that game out. After reading it, I knew something significantly different was going on, but not exactly what.

I then watched John Harper’s actual play videos and was pretty much blown away. That led me to Powered by the Apocalypse games, and on from there.

I imagine if I look through that thread there will be a lot of talk on my part about mechanics not being needed and how not everything needs to be so gamey, and the like.

It’s surprising to me that was only 3 years ago. I have to guess based on the timing that thread is directly responsible for me branching out with my games.

It was for me! I picked up Blades shortly after that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It doesn't sound like reading the game changed any of your positions about it. Could it be that you had enough understanding of it to analyze it all along?

This is a terrible take. @Crimson Longinus' questions have changed after reading the rules, and we're moving in a new direction in discussion. Stick your head in the sand if you must, but maybe stop bragging about it?