A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

A proposed new agency framework:

A. Agency is having the ability to affect the outcome of something via your choices and skill.
1. Thus, agency is always in relation to something.
2. Since agency is about the ability to affect the outcome then you either you have agency over something or you don't because you can either affect the outcome or not. It's a binary state.
3. One can have agency over any number of things.
4. More agency is thus having the ability to affect the outcome of more things via your choices and skill.
5. Losing agency over one thing may entail that one later gains agency over any number of other things. Thus, making predictions over what will be more or less agency essentially futile because what appears to be less agency now may end up being more agency later. The best we can do is count the number of things one has agency over at the varying end states. This can be summarized by saying agency is not 0 sum.
6. Then there is also the element of pace. How often is there a decision point where you can exercise your agency over something? Or over a particular something?

 

[FrogReaver]

Because it doesn't undermine or change the outcomes of action declarations? Because it builds on player-signalled priorities for the game and their PCs (and so is a form of "taking suggestions)? Probably other reasons too, but they're the first I thought of.

GM force is not a synonym for GM authorship.

As @Manbearcat uses the term - and I believe he's the one who brought the term into this thread - it's about the GM perturbing the (ostensible) method the system uses for turning participant inputs into shared fiction.

For my part, when I think of GM force I think of the GM making unilateral decisions about the fiction that have the effect of either blocking or altering what would otherwise be player contributions mediated via the action resolution mechanics.

That would seem to suggest that classic railroading isn't an exercise of GM force. That is a DM framing a scene such that there is only one reasonable path to go down isn't using force because it's just GM authorship and because nothing he's doing is undermining or changing the outcomes of player declared actions.

 

[pemerton]

That would seem to suggest that classic railroading isn't an exercise of GM force. That is a DM framing a scene such that there is only one reasonable path to go down isn't using force because it's just GM authorship and because nothing he's doing is undermining or changing the outcomes of player declared actions.

What do you mean by "only on reasonable path to go down"? That is probably going to be the result of secret beliefs about the fiction that the GM then uses to shut down certain action declarations - ie it is not just framing.

 

[Lanefan]

This is such an odd statement.

So the only meaningful actions a player (through their character) can take are ones that directly interface with the illusion of "objective" in-fiction reality?

This is also an odd statement, though; in that if the players (through their characters) aren't interfacing with in-fiction reality then what on earth are they interfacing with?

Any action that directly addresses a character's in-game concerns/agenda are made null and void if they aren't first parsed through whatever "illusory fictional objective reality" filters (read: GM say-so) are deemed necessary?

This doesn't quite parse.

If you're saying that characters' actions are by default constrained by in-fiction reality, that seems both obvious and non-controversial.

If you're not saying that then you'll have to elaborate a bit.

 

[Aldarc]

This is how I approach D&D - that the accomplishments (and thus the story) of the party are more important than those of the individual characters - and yet I regularly catch hell for it from certain posters here....

I suspect, however, that players are not advised in your games to play their characters like stolen cars.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have never GMed Blades in the Dark. Nor have I read the rules. My knowledge of it is based on (i) others posting about it, and (ii) its resemblance in certain respects to Apocalypse World and Dungeon World.

That said, I am pretty confident that a GM of BitD is expected to have regard to the motivations that players establish for their PCs. I think @Ovinomancer was doing that in the actual play report he posted (about the haunted house and the painting). But the GM is not expected to nudge the game in certain direction, and doesn't really have the resources to do so. I'm not sure about preplanned cool elements - there is a pre-established setting (Duskvol) and so I imagine that does at least suggest some cool elements. But I don't think they're meant to be secret from the players.

Most importantly, in the context of a discussion of participant agency in RPGing, I don't think the GM is entitled to declare that a declared action fails by reference to the GM's unilateral conception of the fictional situation. If the GM isn't going to say "yes" then I think the action has to get put to the test (which is what we see in @Ovinomancer's game: the PC attunes to the painting to try to work out if/how it is enchanted).




What all this suggests to me is that (i) you are not very interested in character-driven or character-focused RPGing, and (ii) you much prefer what I call "RPGing as puzzle-solving" or "RPGing as learning what is in the GM's notes".

What establishes the meaningfulness of the choice made by the player in Ovinomancer's game is that the PC, as played by the character, is prepared to take a risk to find a magical item that will improve his relationship with the university. We now learn something about this character, his drives, and what he thinks is worth taking a chance on. That is (broadly speaking) theme. The fact that it involves soul-sucking is probably closer to trope than theme, thought that's not a bright-line boundary and I'd of course be happy to hear what Ovinomancer thinks about that.

The idea that choosing to stake your soul on finding something to improve your standing with the university is not meaningful and is mere flavour is - to me - a very strange one. I wasn't in Ovinomancer's game but to me that sounds like part of a cool situation leading to interesting stuff down the track. In my BW game where I'm a player, my PC Thurgon is prepared to stake his life to defend his honour, and to restore (what he sees as) the honour of his family and their estate. This is why encountering his brother Rufus as he did, and why his failure to rouse Rufus to action, mattered. It's not mere flavour - that's the game!

The point of the random number generation in BitD (and AW, and BW, and - I would say - 4e D&D) is not to deliver theme. That's built-in and guaranteed by the rules for PC gen, for establishing the consequences of action declarations, and for framing scenes. The point of the dice is to manage pacing and related story dynamics. In a good story the protagonists get what they want some of the time, and they fail some of the time. Sometimes the chances they take pay off; sometimes those chances are overreach and redound upon them. In these RPGs, that is determined by the dice rolls. Part of the skill of designing these games is to make sure the maths works to produce reliable peaks and troughs of success and failure and complication. (We can also distinguish the games along those lines: 4e D&D produces more success than failure and so - especially when this combines with its tropes - tends towards the gonzo; whereas BW produces a pretty high rate of failure for a RPG and this is part of what makes it a demanding experience on the participants - players because their PCs are suffering and GMs because they're obliged to drive home those failures.)

The character's backstory and how it related to the motivations is good stuff. I definitely encourage that and as a GM that sort of thing will most definitely inform my decision making, albeit not in some formulaic manner. What renders this cool and well thought-out player authored motivation significantly less meaningful, is that the player has the ability to author solution to their quest any moment they want. And sure, they need to roll dice and may fail, but that's still ultimately what's happening here.

There is nothing in my BW game, or in Ovinomancer's BitD game, that is remotely comparable to the GM having prepared a haunted house mystery where the job of the players is to manoeuvre their PCs, via "I walk towards the . . ." or "I closely inspect the . . ." action declarations, into fictional circumstances where the GM then tells them pre-authored fiction which the players gradually piece together to solve the mystery.

I did post upthread about a recent scenario I ran that was exactly as I've just described:

That was fun enough, but involved very little player agency in respect of the shared fiction. It was more interactive than solving a crossword puzzle or solving The Eleventh Hour, but at its core was not a radically different intellectual exercise.

And to me it sounds that your murder mystery would have pretty decent amount of agency, though of course being a limited situation with singular focus it is not near the highest possible amount. But the player's actions matter here, they can actually deduce things. There is not even dice, so all that matters is their real skills. What would render all that pointless, if the players would be able to accuse one person, use their master detective attribute, and if they rolled well enough that person would be the guilty one. Sure, that would be a type of agency, but having that sort of agency would render actual detective work and decisions related to that pointless. So yea, this is exactly how having one type of agency lessens another type of agency, and ultimately it is about what type you prefer having. That is literally what this whole thread is about: people being unable to recognise this.

 

[prabe]

Framing a situation - you see a passer-by fall to the street, and what must be the assassin escaping across the rooftops or the mayor asks you to lend her money or OK, so you're going to the wizard's academy to try and speak to an expert in shapechanging? - isn't force. It doesn't unilaterally establish a particular outcome in the fiction outside of the action resolution procedure. It's creating the context for actions to be declared.

I'm not looking for an argument this morning (my time), but I'm noticing there's a difference between us--especially also thinking about your post just upthread about running a mystery scenario for your family.

I've said (and I maintain) that I'm not a big fan of ratiocination-type mysteries in TRPGs, for a few reasons, but I don't think that setting up a relatively traditional mystery (who killed the merchant?) is more than framing the fiction, while you seem to consider it on the lines of a railroad if the players can't decide, e.g., who killed the merchant, as opposed to figuring it out (or not figuring it out, or being wrong).

I guess you would think that the solution to the mystery (who killed the merchant?) would best not be decided by the GM, at least not beforehand (maybe as the result of an action resolution the gave them that responsibility)?

 

[Manbearcat]

The character's backstory and how it related to the motivations is good stuff. I definitely encourage that and as a GM that sort of thing will most definitely inform my decision making, albeit not in some 'if this, then always this' fashion. What renders this cool and well thought-out player authored motivation significantly less meaningful, is that the player has the ability to author solution to their quest any moment they want. And sure, they need to roll dice and may fail, but that's still ultimately what's happening here.

Going to use this post to discuss Framing and Consequences and try to put together a post that will help you understand why the bold word here is a category error and why there was no violation of The Czege Principle.

The word you should be using is propose. Author means fiat. You're stipulating a thing without resistance or recourse to dispute it. That is NOT what is happening in this case. The player is making a proposition and we're going to the dice to find out if (a) that proposition turns out to be a solution to his problem or (b) something else.

In one of my recent Blades games I had a similar situation to @Ovinomancer so I'm going to lay out the gist of it and show you how propose does not equal author.

Here though is the formula for agency:

Dictate what the game is about = player agency
Specific proposal + GMing ethos to follow their lead and play to find out = player agency
All the player-facing tech = player agency
Engagement Roll procedures = player agency
The deep suite of resources that the players can bring to bear to turn this proposition into reality = player agency

Now just to be clear (as you're about to see below) all of that player agency does not equal success.

---

Tier 2 Crew w/ a Whisper.

In order to amplify his power and to get them out of a huge predicament, the Whisper made a bargain with a powerful poltergeist (a member of the Reconciled, Magnitude 3, so 1 higher than the Crew). Unfortunately, the possession (its not constant control because of the Whisper's resistance to the supernatural, but it manifests and in not-great ways at not-great times) is wrecking the Crew's life and slowly taking the Whisper (every week of possession you take Trauma...4 Trauma and you're toast). The Whisper had a contingency sorted out when he made the deal; a Longterm Project to perform a self-exorcism. Unfortunately, the Downtime Project rolls just aren't going well and the Clock isn't filling fast enough.

So the Crew decides that they're going to go with a Linked Plan (a Split-Score):

STEALTH - Break into the Duskvol Academy's basement (where the Whisper went to school) where a Reconciled (a Tier 3 group of ancient spirits that don't lose their faculties to the ravages of time) Spirit Well is secretly located (the recon for this was performed during Information Gathering/Free Play), secure the powerful arcane energy (that sustains the Reconciled) from the well, then...

OCCULT - Exorcise the Whisper once they have the powerful arcane energy from the Spirit Well.

During the Stealth portion of the mission, the Crew is in the Basement. While everyone is is doing the heavy work of excavating the Spirit Well, the Whisper is perusing the forbidden occult books and artifacts in the Academy's basement. He's looking for a Ouija Board to help him uncover the Truename of the spirit for the coming exorcism. Of course he finds it. This should help him in the upcoming exorcism; giving them an extra die on the Engagement roll for the Occult Score and +1 Effect the first time he uses it in the Score (which is going to be a Tug-of-War Clock...if the PCs win, the exorcism is complete...if the Spirit wins, the possession persists and the PC takes another Trauma).

The Ouija Board is a powerful conduit to the Ghost Field, so interacting with it is extremely dangerous. However, the Whisper has his Spiritbane Charm in his mission Loadout so it helps ward him a bit. We're doing Racing Clocks here and starting with Controlled Position due to the Charm. If the Whisper fills his Clock first, he gets the benefits above. If the Ouija Board Clock fills first, then the Reconciled Spirit becomes aware of his attempt to find its Truename and will be enraged and bulwarked against the exorcism; -1 die to the Engagement Roll. This will happen along any Stress that is incurred along the way of the interaction.

---

So, I won't go over every Action Roll here, but the gist of it was this:

1) The Whisper attained a Pyrrhic Victory with the Ouija Board. Yes, it won its Racing Clock battle and attained the Truename of the Reconciled (thus giving it the benefits depicted above and avoiding the -1 Engagement Roll), but it incurred enough Stress in 2 Resistance Rolls to put him in a really bad spot for the upcoming exorcism.

2) Due to all the Stress that the Whisper was dealing with (if you incur enough Stress you (a) incur Trauma and (b) are knocked out of the scene) now because of that Pyrrhic Victory, he only had 2 Stress Boxes left. So he couldn't Push himself or use the elaborate Flashback he had planned for the exorcism. Ultimately, this very likely ended up being the difference as they lost the Tug-of-War Clock for the Occult-exorcism phase of the Linked Scores.

Because of that, the Whisper earned another Trauma and then later earned the final level of Trauma because the Downtime Project Clock couldn't clear the possession in time.

---

So the Whisper and the Crew has all kinds of agency to all 3 of (a) dictate what the fiction was about (on both the macro and the micro), (b) propose changes to the fiction, (c) draw upon their significant resources to make that proposal actionable.

They just ultimately failed because that is what happens (as everyone knows) in games. Failure is always on the table.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The character's backstory and how it related to the motivations is good stuff. I definitely encourage that and as a GM that sort of thing will most definitely inform my decision making, albeit not in some formulaic manner. What renders this cool and well thought-out player authored motivation significantly less meaningful, is that the player has the ability to author solution to their quest any moment they want. And sure, they need to roll dice and may fail, but that's still ultimately what's happening here.

Ah, I see. Let's look at your claim that the player can declare anything anytime as a solution and how this is missing some key parts of the puzzle.

Firstly, players are bound by the same genre expectations that the GM is. This means you can't declare that you're trying to find a ray gun in the Duke's toilet when in a typical fantasy setting. It's a genre violation. So, not anything can be a solution -- some violate genre. In this case, though, Duskvol is a haunted city, so there's not much genre problems with the example.

Secondly, the players are bound by the same "flow from the fiction" expectations that the GM is. They can't just introduce things that don't align with the fiction without conflict. Players actually have more leeway in this regard in Blades, especially with the Flashback move, but it's still a thing. This does pertain to the situation. If the score was in a normal, lived in manor house, declaring that a painting might be occult is much less in-tune with the fiction that one in the abandoned, haunted manor of a powerful occult family. So, where the fiction takes place is important.

How would this be reflected in the fiction? The GM's Effect determination. If a thing seems very unlikely or out of tune, then the GM should be setting effect to Lesser or even None. This is a fair move by the GM because the player has ways to alter the Effect by spending resources. So, if the player in the example did try to make a painting in a normal, unhaunted manor house an occult relic for his goals, then I, as GM, could easily say that this doesn't seem very likely, but you can try -- the effect will be Lesser. Or, if the home is owned by someone that abhors the occult, then I could say No Effect. The player is welcome to push or trade position to force the issue, but that's running some serious risks and will only bump up the effect by a step.

Finally, let's look at the "solution" space. Here, the task to change vices is a multi-clock effort, meaning you have multiple, complex tasks you have to accomplish that are very unlikely to be done in one go. Here, I worked with the player, and we established what getting back into the graces of the University would look like. The first clock -- 6 tick -- was to show that the PC could be valuable, and the second clock -- also 6 tick -- was to show that they were reliable and weren't going to slip back into their gambling habits again. What do clocks mean, though? They're a representation of a complex problem that can't easily be solved in one go. The PC usually engages these clocks as Downtime Activites -- which you've read about -- and can advance them some every time, depending on the result of a roll. The purpose of these clocks is to enact a cost (using Downtime) and a delay of gratification. The special bit about these clocks is that they set back by two ticks every time the player would use their old vice (which he didn't have a purveyor for, but that's a simpler task). So, at this point, the player was on the first clock, having spent 1 Downtime action to have a few ticks (I don't remember offhand, but it was not more than half-full). This leads to the example.

In the example of play, the player is trying to use an action in the Score to improve the clock. This is neat, as it puts the score into risk, which can have it's own entertaining fallouts. So, here we look again at the Effect space -- a normal effect success translates into 2 ticks (lesser 1, greater 3, critical 5). So, at best, the player understood that finding this painting, constrained by the genre and fiction considerations above, would only result in some movement towards a complex goal. This isn't a solution, it's a step in that direction, and it comes with risk. And, in this case, that risk caught up.

And to me it sounds that your murder mystery would have pretty decent amount of agency, though of course being a limited situation with singular focus it is not near the highest possible amount. But the player's actions matter here, they can actually deduce things. There is not even dice, so all that matters is their real skills. What would render all that pointless, if the players would be able to accuse one person, use their master detective attribute, and if they rolled well enough that person would be the guilty one. Sure, that would be a type of agency, but having that sort of agency would render actual detective work and decisions related to that pointless. So yea, this is exactly how having one type of agency lessens another type of agency, and ultimately it is about what type you prefer having. That is literally what this whole thread is about: people being unable to recognise this.

They kinda don't, though. The only things you can do in a murder mystery of this type are discover what the GM has planned. Sure, you have myraid ways to go about this, but this is like saying you can go to lots of different Chic-fil-a's to get a chicken sandwich -- the end result is the same.

 

[Fenris-77]

@pemerton - I was identifying a general trend, from the D&D of the early 80s to the present. I dont disagree with your reading of some late 70s properties, but I also dont think it really changes the teleos of the trend much either.