A Question Of Agency?

[darkbard]

However on the other side it does feel like our preferences are constantly being undermined by linguistic arguments, to the point that their very existence seems in question.

How do you seriously hold to this position when you yourself repeatedly use normative language when discussing your own long-ingrained habits of roleplaying? You represent your "side" as being a longstanding tradition from which @pemerton and other advocates for player-facing gaming deviate, and yet you feel so aggrieved by our discussions on an online forum that you must defend your preferred gaming modality's honor from our "besmirchments"?!? I mean, really?

 

[prabe]

I've bolded a bit. That claim is not true if the Orc is undefeatable (like the unscalable ice wall). It is true if establishing the modal properties of the Orc is treated as up for grabs among the game participants.

I agree. If the GM can determine that a wall is unscalable, then the GM can determine that a given orc is unkillable. The latter case is seems likely to be a GM (or adventure designer) acting in bad faith; the former might be, depending on the situation (remember: I said "without magic or proper equipment"). I don't think a GM determining if and where any secret doors are is likely to be acting in that kind of bad faith.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Most of the time.

Sometimes they might declare an action with a failure state in mind, i.e. where any outcome - including the status quo - will do other than this bad one I've thought of!

Also, just because a player has a success state in mind (or even says it outright as part of the declaration) doesn't always mean that's the only possible success state*; and - and here's the bit that's key for me - doesn't always entitle the player/PC to that success state even if the roll would say otherwise**.

When would you allow for a roll, set a DC or Target Number, see that it is a success per the dice, and then deny that success?

When has this come about in a game? Do you have any specific examples?

I’m honestly struggling to understand this one. Many folks are saying that the GM can change the nature of a success, but the one example given so far has been pretty light.

Have you actually done this in play? If so, what did you do and why did you change things?

Setting is the purview of the GM. Therefore, any setting-based idea comes from or through the GM unless the GM has proactively delegated this purview to a player (e.g. the 1e DMG guidance re a Fighter building a stronghold; or e.g. the GM delegating a player to write up the home village of that player's PC).
Character, by contrast, is the purview of the player. Absent control mechanics, the GM (or anyone else) can't tell me how to play my character.

In what game? There are plenty of games where neither of these ideas is entirely true.

 

[Bedrockgames]

How do you seriously hold to this position when you yourself repeatedly use normative language when discussing your own long-ingrained habits of roleplaying? You represent your "side" as being a longstanding tradition from which @pemerton and other advocates for player-facing gaming deviate, and yet you feel so aggrieved by our discussions on an online forum that you must defend your preferred gaming modality's honor from our "besmirchments"?!? I mean, really?

Again, I am not using normal or traditional as attacks on your style. Describing non-narrative modes of play as traditional or old school is a convenient use of language (most people know what you mean when you say traditional rpg). With the word normal, like I said, I could just have easily have said 'typical'. I don't think it is a judgement at all to say "this is how people normally play the game". That norm can change over time, or I could be wrong about the norm, but there is likely a norm to speak of. That doesn't make other approaches wrong. My prefered style of play for example is not the norm (the norm quite honestly, in terms of adventure structures, appears to still be something more like adventure paths----though I could be wrong on that as I am not really playing D&D these days, so I am not that up to date on the mainstream of the hobby as I used to be). For instance, one norm right now is using social skills, and often rolling them as the primary way of determining what happens socially. Players and GMs expect social skills, GMs are expected to honor the results of social skill rolls. I much prefer to weight things on what the player characters say and do, and if social skills are used at all, it is to simply help the GM figure out what happens when the outcome of those things isn't immediately obvious. Here my style of play is outside the norm I believe. It doesn't bother me to describe social skills as a normal part of RPGs now (and I don't see such a statement as one declaring my preference around them as abnormal).

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton - I think the issue at hand is that both the orc and door were already present in the fiction, one alive and the other undiscovered, and the players have changed the state of those things in the fiction but not narrated their presence or absence. That is actually quite different from, say, being able to narrate the presence of a convenient balcony because you rolled really well to jump out of the Duke's window when he discovered you with his wife (as is the case in a game like Houses of the Blooded). To be specific I mean a balcony that was not in any of the GMs plans, maps, or notes, and that only exists because of successes on a die roll allowing the player narrate it into existence.

At least I'm pretty sure that's the sticking point here.

In the fiction the Orc is there, alive and kicking. The player wants a different fiction, where its dead. The game contains a process for transitioning from one to the other fiction: it involves establishing an in-fiction process (ie I attack the Orc with my sword) and using a real-world resolution method (rolling dice).

In the fiction the wall is there, blocking the PC's way with no evident ways through. The player wants a different fiction, where the wall contains a way through that is (obviously) not currently evident. A game like Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic contains a process for transitioning from one to the other fiction: it involves establishing an in-fiction process (ie I search the wall for secret doors) and using a real-world resolution method (rolling dice).

If a table wants to introduce a rule that no door can become part of the shared fiction unless the GM has already written unilaterally into his/her prior secret version of the fiction that's obviously their prerogative. The same thing could be done with the killing of an Orc, too (see eg the Dragonlance modules which use a method at least a bit like this).

Why would one introduce such a rule? Maybe because one enjoys puzzle-solving? Maybe other reasons, though they're not being clearly articulated in this thread.

My point is simply that killings of Orcs and discoveries of doors are not different in this respect. And various posters seem to be confusing metaphysical differences in the real world (eg obvious differences between how living things move from life to death and how architecture is created and explored) with differences of how fiction is written (in the case of fiction, the process of narrating Morgan Ironwolf kills the Orc is identical to the process of narrating Morgan Ironwolf found a secret door in the wall - as illustrated in my two short stories upthread).

 

[Bedrockgames]

and other advocates for player-facing gaming deviate, and yet you feel so aggrieved by our discussions on an online forum that you must defend your preferred gaming modality's honor from our "besmirchments"?!? I mean, really?

Not sure why you are putting 'besmirchments' in quotes as I never used that word. I wouldn't say I am aggrieved or that I am defending the honor of a playstyle. I am a tad annoyed by some of the arguments I've seen (for sure not all----I have had a very easy time communicating with Hawkeyefan, even though we disagree on a a lot).

 

[pemerton]

combat requires mechanics for the game to function, non-combat doesn't

This claim isn't true, though. Combat can be free-narrated like anything else!

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, I think railroading is more common when the GM likes to railroad.

I think railroading is generally a topic for outside combat.

Where there are fewer mechanics for players to rely upon and instead they have to guess at the GM’s judgment? And where the GM can simply declare things are “impossible” or similar in a way that he can’t get away with in combat? Not without being called on it if the players are aware?

You don’t think that these things may be connected even though you think railroading is more of a concern outside of combat?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Don’t you think that being railroaded or having choices constrained by the GM is more likely when the player doesn’t have the kind of info I’m talking about?

Do you think that players are more likely to be concerned about being railroaded in combat or outside of it?

Just to give an example of what I mean: builds. Optimized builds are great for allowing a player to realize a character concept in play (I want to be a great thrower of knives). I don't think that is agency though. I see agency as more focused on the character. This is more about the authorship. So I am drawing a distinction there.

 

[prabe]

Why would one introduce such a rule? Maybe because one enjoys puzzle-solving? Maybe other reasons, though they're not being clearly articulated in this thread.

Maybe because they feel more as though the characters are operating in something consistent with an objective reality, as a way to judge plausibility or determine courses of action? I think that's at the root of my own preferences. I think that's why some of the successes my characters have had in games where I the player could determine facts of the game-world seem so cheap as I remember them.