A Question Of Agency?

[hawkeyefan]

I'm curious as to how you think he can? In the games I've been discussing, I've been told that if the player gets true success then he gets exactly what he wanted. I'm not seeing where that leaves room for DM input on what a success actually means?

I was talking about D&D. I don’t know if the player gets to decide what exactly happens when they achieve a success. They very well may, but I think the system leaves a lot of room for interpretation to step in such that different DMs will handle it different ways.

For example, in an actual game I played in, we were routinely prompted to make perception checks. We weren’t always told why, just that the roll was needed. Then, after the roll, the DM told us qhat we noticed.

Where does player authorship or player agency come into this?

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.

This quote that your argument relies upon shows a misunderstanding of the situation. You’ve picked up this error and run with it.

Manbearcat here realized the consequences of having a player be able to author the solution to their problems and it's why he refused to call it authorship. My posts since then have been about showing that it is actually authorship - because if it is then this criticism still stands.

If you think that what @Manbearcat is doing here is some kind of semantics game, you’re sorely mistaken. He has clearly made a distinction for authorship being one that is decided by fiat. Meaning no roll is needed, no approval from the other participants, etc. Authorship is where the player says “X is true” and so it is.

You’ve discarded the distinction he’s made (authorship is by fiat), and replaced it with your own (success however obtained is authorship) and now you’re arguing against your own mistake.

If you sincerely thibk there’s no difference between a player declaring something is true and a player attempting an action to determine if something is true, then you need to make a compelling argument on why. You can’t just say there’s no distinction and then pat yourself on the back.

 

[Manbearcat]

For example, in an actual game I played in, we were routinely prompted to make perception checks. We weren’t always told why, just that the roll was needed. Then, after the roll, the DM told us qhat we noticed.

Where does player authorship or player agency come into this?

Here is what I think some people would say to this (this is not my answer - speaking of # 2 below - and I think it would be an interesting conversation to have).

In the D&D community (probably somewhere around The Wilderness Handbook and the huge advent of metaplot and/or setting tourism as a growing D&D cultural touchstone), two things happened (and then a third after it became clear that it made for problematic play):

1) GM gating "information dumps" (of the Perception/Insight variety) around passive checks that have no attendant in-game decision-points.

2) The point of agency in these "downstream information dumps" is alleged to be at the PC build stage (select x Primary Skill or y Secondary Skill or put z # Skill Points into this Skill).

3) HOWEVER, some/most of these "information dumps" were important to convey to the PCs. Its borderline imperative that they get these pieces of information (Robin Laws speaks about this and attempts to address this at the system level) to solve the mystery or be immersed in the political intrigue of the court et al. So the GM tells the player to "roll dice" without giving them any target number so they can basically deploy Illusionism (ALL THAT AGENCY YOU HAD AT THE BUILD STAGE MATTERS GUY!) and give them the "information dump" regardless of the roll and regardless of the player's expression of agency at the build stage (which means, of course, that the alleged "build stage agency" doesn't exist in practice).


3.x became the pinnacle of "agency as an expression of build" in D&D. What do you (and anyone else) think about that formulation?

 

[hawkeyefan]

3.x became the pinnacle of "agency as an expression of build" in D&D. What do you (and anyone else) think about that formulation?

I think that summary is spot on.

The 3.x era was probably the most important for my group, and I think that had a lot of impact on us. We started playing together in the 2e days, but when 3e came out, it became our go to game. I think that it also had a lot of new and interesting elements, and streamlined a lot of the areas we would have considered problematic prior to that (THACO, saving throws, etc).

But with the GM as storyteller mode still pretty firmly entrenched, and the introduction of very codified skills such as Perception, Sense Motive, and Knowledge what often happened is that huge portions of very important information was gated behind skill checks. And if a skill check was not successful, then things either ground to a halt, or else the GM resorted to illusionism and simply gave the info needed.

It’s very like putting all the end content of a dungeon behind one secret door and not leaving any other means to get there. It took me a lot longer than I’d like to admit to realize this. And then to recognize how pervasive it was.

These elements have impacted my approach when I run 5e in a lot of ways. And I think that because these were issues I’d already discovered and worked toward resolving with prior editions, I kind of ignored the fact that they’re still present in 5e.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Considering that my original sentence specifically mentioned the authorship in the situation being conditional on the die roll, getting hung up on whether it is 'proposing' or 'authoring' is indeed semantics.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok, that is exactly what I thought. I wish you would just come out and call me a "dishonest, ideologically-entrenched douche" rather than implying it and then bouncing the ball back in my court as you've done in the lead sentence above.

Alright.

1) I brought up "RNG as epithet" because in the gaming community (not software development or wherever you're trying to draw jargon from), its pretty much exclusively used as an exasperated exclamation when someone feels that an aspect of a game (deep deck + draw mechanics, or a large and swingy dice game) highlights the noise of the RNG aspect sufficiently to damage the game's ability to distill the signal of skilled play.

Whether you meant it in the clinical RNG bent of software development (or whatever) and therefore just meant it as a descriptor (rather than the neutral "fortune resolution" as I've always used it and most everyone else has), is besides the point for why I included it.

I included it because its extremely important in a conversation about agency (maybe not to you or your point...but it absolutely is important as a fundamental aspect of the conversation).

Now, moving on from that.

2) It was unclear to me what your hypothesis was until that last thing you posted where (a) you appear to think you have read my mind and (b) your brutally incorrect inference that I was being intellectually dishonest has led you profoundly astray.

Because you haven't explicitly said it yet but you've hinted at it significantly above, I'm assuming what you're attempting to demonstrate is the following formulation:

* The Czege Principle states that authorship of your own success at defeating an obstacle isn't fun.

* "Isn't fun" here can be subbed out for "yields a meaningless decision" which can then be extrapolated to "authorship means no agency has been expressed."

I now think that is what you're trying to do.

Unfortunately, this is a complete non-sequitur. It is a fundamental misunderstanding and subsequent misappropriation of the axiom (which I'm sure someone has already told you along the way but I haven't read a lot of the thread lately).

The reason why I included all those extra steps in the Play Loop? ITS BECAUSE THEY'RE FUNDAMENTAL TO THE FORMULATION OF ALL OF THIS:

1) The Czege Principle is about NO INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN <OBSTACLE> - <MOVE> - <OBSTACLE DEFEATED>. It is about AUTHORSHIP VIA FIAT.

For instance:

GM THINKING: "This damn Spellcaster <OBSTACLE> is going to wreck my perfectly planned mystery/encounter/metaplot. I know! I'll leverage my exclusive access to the offscreen and unestablished backstory to erect this block! <MOVE>"

GM IN PLAY: "You cast your Scry/Teleport/Fly/Charm spell and nothing happens. It must be an Anti-Magic Field! <OBSTACLE DEFEATED>"

This is the Czege Principle at work.

LITTLE KID PLAYING: "I'm Indiana Jones! DUN DUH DUNT DUUUUH! Oh no, a Pit Trap! <OBSTACLE> "Oh look! A chandelier <makes whip crack noise> <MOVE> DUN DUH DUNT DUUUUH <pantomimes swinging across and landing on the other side>!<OBSTACLE DEFEATED>

This is the Czege Principle at work.

THIS is why proposal (and then consult the intervening procedures to determine if this proposal is actionable) is the correct word. NOT AUTHORSHIP.

The Czege Principle is about skilled play (and agency being an attendant feature of that). This dovetails precisely with my point about RNG above. "RNG" (the epithet) is a thing because it reduces the distillation of Skill Play. Coming up with an obstacle and making a move by fiat to defeat it "is not fun" because it is THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF SKILLED PLAY.

EDIT - Ninja'd by @Ovinomancer : "unilaterally author outcome" is another way to put it. This is why "proposal > consult intervening procedure to determine if it is actionable" is the correct formulation.

Quibble. The bolded is not a Czege Principle violation, it's a demonstration of GM Force. The GM didn't create the obstacle, the player did with their character build and choices of actions. The GM just Forces the action to fail for <reasons>.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Considering that my original sentence specifically mentioned the authorship in the situation being conditional on the die roll, getting hung up on whether it is 'proposing' or 'authoring' is indeed semantics.

Is it? Or is it a meaningful difference that you’re not grasping even if you mentioned it?

Do you think that Authorship being by player fiat as mentioned by @Manbearcat really is no different than Authorship as any success as mentioned by @FrogReaver ?

If so, how do you propose that the difference is semantic?

 

[prabe]

3.x became the pinnacle of "agency as an expression of build" in D&D. What do you (and anyone else) think about that formulation?

Like @hawkeyefan I'm inclined to agree, with the caveat that I never played 4E (and I'm not intentionally critiquing 4E by pointing that out).

The "gating" you mention is why in the 5E games I run, information relevant to long-term goals/situations will eventually be available--any rolls I ask for just determine costs/time (such as library research).

 

[FrogReaver]

Ok, that is exactly what I thought. I wish you would just come out and call me a "dishonest, ideologically-entrenched douche" rather than implying it and then bouncing the ball back in my court as you've done in the lead sentence above.

I do not believe you to be dishonest or a douche. Ideologically-entrenched is a good descriptor - though it's one that also seems to flow both ways. That's been implied of me more time in this thread than I can count.

Alright.

1) I brought up "RNG as epithet" because in the gaming community (not software development or wherever you're trying to draw jargon from), its pretty much exclusively used as an exasperated exclamation when someone feels that an aspect of a game (deep deck + draw mechanics, or a large and swingy dice game) highlights the noise of the RNG aspect sufficiently to damage the game's ability to distill the signal of skilled play.

I am part of the gaming community as well. My experience there isn't the same as yours.

That said I'll give one example of something similar to what you are saying. There was a battletech game in development some years ago. They were good about discussing development decisions with the community and one particular one got a loud vocal minority of players quite upset. They were going to implement a cone of fire instead of pinpoint accuracy. They made much the same argument - that such a mechanic would impede skilled play and tried to use that to push the game in a direction they preferred. But they were wrong. One can become skilled at cone of fire play. The larger more silent majority made this counter argument and ended up winning out.

In action RPG's that function on a loot system (Diablo 2 for example) with very low drop rates of the best items sometimes you will see RNGesus invoked. This isn't an assertion about distilling skilled play, its about the game offering extremely low chances to find particular items.

It's more my experience that the typical gamer understands that when there's chance involved in a game it's a result of an RNG.

Whether you meant it in the clinical RNG bent of software development (or whatever) and therefore just meant it as a descriptor (rather than the neutral "fortune resolution" as I've always used it and most everyone else has), is besides the point for why I included it.

I'm not sure the difference in a neutral "fortune resolution" and RNG as used in game development. Those appear to me to be mostly interchangeable terms.

I included it because its extremely important in a conversation about agency (maybe not to you or your point...but it absolutely is important as a fundamental aspect of the conversation).

I'm not saying it isn't, but how so?

2) It was unclear to me what your hypothesis was until that last thing you posted where (a) you appear to think you have read my mind and (b) your brutally incorrect inference that I was being intellectually dishonest has led you profoundly astray.

I do not believe you were being intellectually dishonest though. I believe that your understanding of the consequences is preventing you from really considering the possibility that you are wrong about this one thing - as the consequences of being wrong here are quite large.

Because you haven't explicitly said it yet but you've hinted at it significantly above, I'm assuming what you're attempting to demonstrate is the following formulation:

* The Czege Principle states that authorship of your own success at defeating an obstacle isn't fun.

Close enough. I actually don't agree that it explicitly violates Czege, just something fairly close to it.

* "Isn't fun" here can be subbed out for "yields a meaningless decision" which can then be extrapolated to "authorship means no agency has been expressed."

I now think that is what you're trying to do.

Unfortunately, this is a complete non-sequitur. It is a fundamental misunderstanding and subsequent misappropriation of the axiom (which I'm sure someone has already told you along the way but I haven't read a lot of the thread lately).

The reason why I included all those extra steps in the Play Loop? ITS BECAUSE THEY'RE FUNDAMENTAL TO THE FORMULATION OF ALL OF THIS:

1) The Czege Principle is about NO INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN <OBSTACLE> - <MOVE> - <OBSTACLE DEFEATED>. It is about AUTHORSHIP VIA FIAT.

I don't see anything but fiat in the player's attempt to author the fiction via proposal. Perhaps you mean something more particular by FIAT than that?

THIS is why proposal (and then consult the intervening procedures to determine if this proposal is actionable) is the correct word. NOT AUTHORSHIP.

I would counter that if one cannot call a player authoring the fiction as authorship that we likely have bigger problems.

I mean the fiction does have to have an author correct? If not then how did it come into being? Surely you wouldn't call the RNG the author of the fiction? So who is the author of the fiction in the scenario where the players proposal becomes the shared fiction via a successful roll?

The Czege Principle is about skilled play (and agency being an attendant feature of that). This dovetails precisely with my point about RNG above. "RNG" (the epithet) is a thing because it reduces the distillation of Skill Play. Coming up with an obstacle and making a move by fiat to defeat it "is not fun" because it is THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF SKILLED PLAY.

What of coming up with an obstacle and saying i'll bypass it if I roll X or better on this die?

 

[Lanefan]

One question regarding RNGs: are you lot saying that high randomization increases agency, decreases agency, or has no (or neutral) effect?

Regarding authorship: every bit of the emergent story is ultimately authored by someone, and that 'someone' isn't often the game system itself.

 

[FrogReaver]

One question regarding RNGs: are you lot saying that high randomization increases agency, decreases agency, or has no (or neutral) effect?

Regarding authorship: every bit of the emergent story is ultimately authored by someone, and that 'someone' isn't often the game system itself.

Thank you for the concise summary!