A Question Of Agency?

[Aldarc]

Because combat is where a player in D&D has the most agency.

I don't think it's a coincidence that combat in D&D has drifted towards "combat as sport."

 

[FrogReaver]

Okay, cool.



That didn’t seem to be the case at all, but if so, then okay I’ll proceed with that in mind.

That's fair.

So then given that you agree above that a D&D player will have an outcome in mind for their declared action, how is that different from the Blades player?

At the step of having an outcome in mind, not particularly much.

But going beyond that just a little will reveal many differences. In blades the desired outcome is stated up front and if success occurs it's mandated that the player get his desired outcome. Neither of those are necessarily true in the case of D&D - though by far the most likely result in D&D is that the player gets his desired outcome.

Well no, it’s not a “yelling fire in a theater” situation. That is most definitely illegal.

Doing something against the rules of the game can also be described with "illegal". "That's an illegal move".

I’m asking if the DM is free, either within the rules or within the social contract of the gaming group, to take a successful action declaration, and make it so that the success is something other than what the player expected.

I answered both of those in my original post.
The rules - technically yes (by my understanding)
The social contract - that depends

The player declared that their Rogue was going to attempt to disarm the trap.

The player declared that their Fighter was going to attempt to attack the orc.

The player declared that their Bard was going to attempt to Persuade the baron to provide the party with horses.

In each of these cases, the player has an outcome in mind. Wouldn’t success result in that desired outcome? Or may the DM alter the outcome?

By the rules yes (others may disagree with my reading of the rules). By the social contract, it depends. In practice, most of those things will have the obviously desired outcome (or something approaching it)

I think it's worth mentioning that in D&D the DM determines if the roll is even called for in the first place. He is well within his rights to determine success or failure with no roll at all. So there's very little reason he would ever want to turn a success into a failure and the like. The system sets him up so he doesn't need to do that.

Now could a successful trap disarm look a little different than the player had in mind. Yes! The player has in mind the trap will be fully disabled. The DM may decide it makes more sense that disarming this particular trap means you can at most temporarily disable it so that you can bypass it.

Or could a successful persuade check for horses for the whole party mean that the party gains 2 horses instead of 5? Yes!

If the DM may alter the outcome, then would you agree that this reduces a player’s agency?

No. It's not what he may or can do. It's what he does do.

If the DM cannot alter the outcome, then are we back to the player declaring both action and intended outcome? Doesn’t this render the (3) in my previous post as not applicable on a success?

As noted again and again. That's not really the way D&D works by rules. The rules do not guarantee a player his desired outcome on a success. He does often get it. But other good results sometimes will be substituted. I gave 2 examples of that above. I don't think it's in the Spirit of the game to have a success turn into a failure and so whether there's rules against it or not, you don't really see DM's going, you passed your disarm trap check, roll a dex save because you disarmed the trap by setting it off with you on top of it. That kind of thing just doesn't happen.

Imagine if the DM was not discouraged from simply negating an action in combat. He could just alter any result as desired, usually to match some preconceived idea he has about the fiction. What would this do to player agency?

Can he? Most certainly. If not by rule then by the knowledge that the players don't have enough information to spot him doing it. If he did negate that one action most likely nothing would change in respect to the agency over the combat challenge. Taking away one combat action is unlikely to take away the party's ability to overcome the combat challenge. Much like a single bad call most often doesn't decide the outcome of a sports match.

Imagine if the social and exploration pillars of D&D had similar structure to combat. The DM would follow established processes, the players would declare actions, the dice would determine success or failure, and the DM would honor those results. The DM would not be steering things toward their idea of how the fiction should go. What would this do to player agency?

In terms of amount when compared to the typical D&D game, nothing.

 

[Campbell]

Most of time when I see a disconnect between what a player intends to achieve it involves a player trying to gain some information or applying leverage to an NPC. These are particularly troublesome areas because "plots" often revolve on keeping players in the dark or scripted NPC behavior. It's these arenas that often have the most impact on a player's ability to enact meaningful changes in the fiction that send play on a trajectory that was not planned by the GM.

 

[FrogReaver]

Most of time when I see a disconnect between what a player intends to achieve it involves a player trying to gain some information or applying leverage to an NPC.

What I see in relation to that most often is that there's no chance to get exactly what the player wants but there is a chance to get something related to what the player wants. In this case the DM determines the stated action is close enough for these other things and if determining they are uncertain he calls for a roll and on a success provides something that is good but not exactly what the player wanted.

These are particularly troublesome areas because "plots" often revolve on keeping players in the dark or scripted NPC behavior. It's these arenas that often have the most impact on a player's ability to enact meaningful changes in the fiction that send play on a trajectory that was not planned by the GM.

This seems to be going back to the notion that if the players have no knowledge or imperfect knowledge of something that they cannot meaningfully change it. I think they can! Enacting meaningful change doesn't require player knowledge, it requires PC action.

But you don't actually mean that the players cannot meaningfully change the fiction. What you mean is more like the players cannot purposefully control some specific part of the fiction. And I agree, I mean how could they have any say there when they lack the knowledge required to do so?

All this does is bring us full circle back around to, does lacking agency over one thing or one type of thing mean you have less agency overall. My answer to that is no. Agency is not a 0 sum.

 

[prabe]

All this does is bring us full circle back around to, does lacking agency over one thing or one type of thing mean you have less agency overall. My answer to that is no. Agency is not a 0 sum.

I don't think I disagree with you that lacking agency over one thing in Game Alfa, relative to Game Bravo, means you lave less total agency in Game Alfa than in Game Bravo. I think it's probable, though, that a given game or moment has a fixed amount of agency available, so if one person loses agency, it seems likely that someone (something?) will gain it. So, if you would normally have agency over something in that moment/game, and you lose it, you do have less agency in that instance--I guess I'm saying that agency is probably a zero-sum thing at any given moment (or in any given game). Some games might have more or less variability in the amount of agency available; we know the agency available is distributed differently in different games.

 

[Campbell]

@FrogReaver

Please do not tell me what I mean.

I am specifically addressing that in the face of limited transparency when it comes to social situations and information gathering it can become damn near impossible to tell if the GM is playing with integrity. It's these areas of the fiction where illusionism finds its nesting ground. If the GM is not meaningfully constrained by fictional positioning either socially or mechanically how can we say that players have the power to enact meaningful change in the shared fiction? They can plead before the GM/DM, but a medieval peasant does not have agency over their own life because they can petition their lord to enact change for them.

Also operating in information environments means it is much easier to enact change. To shape your environment.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But going beyond that just a little will reveal many differences. In blades the desired outcome is stated up front and if success occurs it's mandated that the player get his desired outcome. Neither of those are necessarily true in the case of D&D - though by far the most likely result in D&D is that the player gets his desired outcome.

I don’t know if there are “many” differences. It seems to just boil down to the fact that the Blades player is stating an expected outcome, and that he can achieve that outcome without the chance of being denied by the GM.

Seriously, the only difference here is that you’re saying the outcome may be altered in D&D.

By the rules yes (others may disagree with my reading of the rules). By the social contract, it depends. In practice, most of those things will have the obviously desired outcome (or something approaching it)

So, in your opinion, what would be a reasonable example of a DM altering the success state? How would this come about? Preferably, describe something that actually happened rather than offer a hypothetical.

I think it's worth mentioning that in D&D the DM determines if the roll is even called for in the first place. He is well within his rights to determine success or failure with no roll at all. So there's very little reason he would ever want to turn a success into a failure and the like. The system sets him up so he doesn't need to do that.

Really? I would say the system sets him up so that he may absolutely do it.

No. It's not what he may or can do. It's what he does do.

So how do you figure this? Why should the system give him the ability to do things that he shouldn’t do?

Can you elaborate?

Can he? Most certainly. If not by rule then by the knowledge that the players don't have enough information to spot him doing it. If he did negate that one action most likely nothing would change in respect to the agency over the combat challenge. Taking away one combat action is unlikely to take away the party's ability to overcome the combat challenge.

Then what is the purpose of taking one away?

Also, I would say I’ve seen often enough where a combat shifts significantly on the result of one roll.

In terms of amount when compared to the typical D&D game, nothing.

You really don’t think that a player having more ability in the social sphere of the game would be an increase in agency? Why not?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So, in your opinion, what would be a reasonable example of a DM altering the success state? How would this come about? Preferably, describe something that actually happened rather than offer a hypothetical.

I think most common situation would be when there is something that the player doesn't know about the situation that prevents the thing from succeeding in the manner envisioned by the player. I think trying to find food in the necrotic death zone was used as an example of such earlier in this thread, though that was rather extreme case of it. When attacking the orc, perhaps the orc is actually an illusion, and instead of harming an orc (because it doesn't exist) a hit reveals the illusion as character's sword passes harmlessly through it (this or something very similar certainly has happened in many a game, probably in yours too.)

So how do you figure this? Why should the system give him the ability to do things that he shouldn’t do?

Can you elaborate?

Good question.

In this thread a lot of different GMing principles have been bandied about. I think many of them are laudable and applying them most of the time might indeed be a good idea. Most of the time. Roleplaying is such a complex affair, that that I am personally very sceptical of axiomatic principles that should always be followed (beyond always making sure that the players are not actually traumatised and other such real life safety concerns and good manners.) A thing can be a good idea 99% of the time, but that 1% will happen and then you need to 'break the rules.' I don't feel that unliving block of text such as game rules document can sufficiently capture the nuance needed for such decision making and take into account every possible situation. I feel that it is best if an actual human being makes that call. As a GM I want to have the power to make such calls, and as a player I trust my GM to use their power wisely.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think broadly speaking if you are using the rules of the game as a means to settle disputes between players you have already lost. If we cannot come to consensus about stuff in the fiction we probably should not be playing together. I think game rules should be layered on top. They should add something to the experience.

Then if playing a consensus based combat system works for you, by all means, I suggest going with a system like that. But I don't see the purpose of RPGs as building consensus about stuff in the fiction. At the end of the day this is a game, and it is one with uncertain outcomes of actions (that is part of the excitement. Combat is an area where having rules is handy because that is a spot you are likely to see much more divergent interpretations of what should be the outcome (should my sword have hit? why this time but not last time? etc). My overall point though is combat is a part of the game, it definitely feels like I need to rules. On the other hand, I don't need rules for non-combat stuff as much (some spots I like it, but many spots I think the game works better without rules).

And to be clear I wasn't saying we are using the rules to settle disputes between the players. Something about that framing actually bothers me quite a bit. I think it is pretty clear that wasn't the sort of scenario I was painting with what I said.

 

[FrogReaver]

@FrogReaver

Please do not tell me what I mean.

I was trying to be nice by assuming you weren't saying something so trivially incorrect. But I have no problems doing this your way.

What the heck makes you think that PC actions aren't enough to enact meaningful change in the fiction?

It's these areas of the fiction where illusionism finds its nesting ground. If the GM is not meaningfully constrained by fictional positioning either socially or mechanically how can we say that players have the power to enact meaningful change in the shared fiction?

Because we can watch their PC's actions causing meaningful change in the shared fiction.

They can plead before the GM/DM, but a medieval peasant does not have agency over their own life because they can petition their lord to enact change for them.

That's a strange definition of agency. If the peasant acted and his actions resulted in his life being spared then he most certainly had agency. Heck, if there was even a chance his actions would have spared him, it's still agency.