A Question Of Agency?

[Fenris-77]

Makes sense. So similarly when a person signs up to play D&D their agency is not reduced by the GM deciding certain things as that is part of that game.

No. What character types might be available isn't a matter of agency whatsoever. If you think it is then when you say 'agency' you means something other than what the other people in this thread mean.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, this depends again how we define agency. If Bob is running a open sandbox where your character can do a lot of differnt things then it is in certain ways more agency than just being able to be a criminal in Blades. And it's just not that. In a very thematically tight game the theme may in effect limit the participants in genre appropriate moves and outcomes. And this is not criticism, I like thematically focused games.

I'll actually partially agree with this. If you're in a game where you could possibly do more things, then there's a possible increase in agency over one that's thematically limited. This is looking a how genre expectations engages player agency. However, we're still up against the problem of whether or not you have to seek GM approval to do the thing, and this is a much harder limit on player agency than menu choices.

Makes sense. So similarly when a person signs up to play D&D their agency is not reduced by the GM deciding certain things as that is part of that game.

Depends, and your vague wording looks like you trying to smuggle in other things. I'll agree that signing up to Bob's Campaign and it's attendant themes doesn't limit your player agency in the game, per se. How the system Bob is running apportions agency certainly does.

 

[pemerton]

I think 2 things.
1. there's still a scope issue. Being at a dead end is going to affect my roleplay in one moment or one scene at most. Your character's beliefs are going to shape your roleplay over the whole campaign.

The third sentence is not true if by "beliefs" you mean Beliefs as a system component of Burning Wheel.

This is why I have expressed doubt that you have actually read closely what I have posted about that system.

2. Whether or not you wish to acknowledge it, there's a difference between the physical and mental that gets brushed aside by you as if there is no difference at all.

From the point of view of agency over the shared fiction, what is the difference? They are both components of the shared fiction. That my PC sees a dead end in front of her affects my roleplay of my PC just as any other mental state does. A game in which all (or most) of my PCs' knowledge of the world s/he lives in comes from the GM narrating stuff too me is a game in which most of my PC's mental states are established by the GM by way of second-person narration.

 

[pemerton]

I mean, not a hard railroad, but still. APs are this, but usually not called out as such -- when they are, there's a contingent that decries the appellation.

I can report from experience that your final clause is true!

 

[prabe]

I can report from experience that your final clause is true!

I am not inclined to doubt you, but I find that ... distressing. Maybe a little depressing. It's one thing to defend 5E and/or 3-dot-Pathfinder from ... assertions the games are always railroads, but I don't see how you can look at an AP and not get that it's a railroad; I doubly don't get how you can play or run one and not get it.

 

[pemerton]

Well as a total improv GM, every time I add a component to the narrative I am applying Force, right? Simply because there is nothing written in stone before it hits the table. That means every single time I add a component to the narrative I am subtly nudging the narrative in the direction I want it to go.

I think this is hard to assess in the abstract.

When you add new components to the shared fiction, in what context are you doing it? Are you using that to resolve action declarations in ways that override the mechanical framework? That looks like force - and I don't think it takes too much of it to turn the game into a railroad.

Are you doing it when the system tells you it's your job to do so - eg a new scene needs to be framed? a failure consequence needs to be narrated? And when you do so, whose suggestions and ideas are you being influenced by?

I think a GM who repeatedly frames scenes and establishes failures without regard to player-evinced concerns is pushing towards force/railroad territory. I think a GM who establishes failure consequences by having regard to those concerns (eg in BW style) and who frames scenes having regard to what the players say or show that they want is probably not running a railroad.

I think there's an interesting noun/verb contrast here. For instance, in BW play generally speaking the players tend to provide the nouns - via their Wises-checks, their relationships and Circles checks, the entities and events named in their Beliefs, etc. But the GM has a lot of responsibility for providing the verbs - if a check fails, then one of those nouns should be put in jeopardy in some fashion; a well-framed scene will put one of those nouns at stake; etc.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am not inclined to doubt you, but I find that ... distressing. Maybe a little depressing. It's one thing to defend 5E and/or 3-dot-Pathfinder from ... assertions the games are always railroads, but I don't see how you can look at an AP and not get that it's a railroad; I doubly don't get how you can play or run one and not get it.

It's happened, here, in this thread! The charge was laid, and the counter was that you get to make choices on how you move from A to B, so it wasn't a railroad.

 

[prabe]

It's happened, here, in this thread! The charge was laid, and the counter was that you get to make choices on how you move from A to B, so it wasn't a railroad.

Yeah. I'd either forgotten that or blocked it. If you must do A, B, and C--in that order--before you do D, it doesn't matter much if at all how many roads are between them.

 

[zarionofarabel]

See, and I am one of the weird ones that thinks if the end of an adventure (and the scenes between beginning and end) is already predetermined then the adventure is a railroad. But I do realize that many people believe otherwise. Oh well, to each their own I guess.

 

[pemerton]

Like in improvisational style the players are often making decisions on things which do not have answers other than the ones GM is making up on the spot, and the players' answer is not something that can fully (or even meaningfully) inform the GM's decisions.

This is what mechanics are for.

And also just talking to one another.

In my Prince Valiant game, when the PCs are travelling from A to B we all look at the map together, be that the map of Britain on the inside cover of my Pendragon book, or a map of Cyprus that we Googled up, or whatever. And when I narrate that you come to a forest or as you pass through some badlands or whatever, we'll look at the map and work out where those events are happening.

This is close to the opposite of map-and-key play: there is no secret map behind the GM's screen. There is no tracking of miles-per-day travelled and rations and the like. There just the loose narration of time passed before the interesting event is introduced.

Suppose time actually mattered: eg suppose that one of the PCs had to get from A to B before an enemy army arrives at B to lay siege. Then a difficulty would be set - maybe an opposed check, maybe versus a fixed difficulty extrapolated from the fictional situation - and resolved via rolling for Brawn plus any appropriate skill (eg Riding if racing on horseback, Agility if running, etc).

In this sort of game the GM is quite unlikely just to decide that the PC can't get from A to B in time. That's not the sort of improvisation that "no myth" RPGing relies upon.