A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

These elements are not absent from the games I play where all of this is also handled with clear processes and game mechanics.

Perhaps for you they aren't. For me, it takes great effort to have such mechanics not interfere with those things.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The GM absolutely is steering things. It may not be their goal, or their primary reason for making the decision they make, but it is in fact them steering the game.

No the players are. This is the whole point. When the GM is acting as an honest arbiter and referee of the world, the fact that you have a human mind reacting to what the players say they want to do, is giving power to the players. Again, maybe this bugs you, maybe you don't trust most GMs to do this well, I don't know. But from my experience of play, this is the thing that makes RPGs so liberating: I can literally try everything and the GM has to react. Sometimes the GM will draw on a mechanic to help aid the decision (sometimes you do need randomness or a procedure), but the point is a GM can contemplate and respond in a way no computer, system or board game can. And this was instantly clear to me the moment I sat down to play the first time, and all those boring dice, pens, paper, magically disappeared as I felt like I was really present in a fictional world. To me that is the height of agency: the sense that you are making real decisions and having real impact with those choices.

 

[Bedrockgames]

How many times has it been pointed out in this thread that analyzing degrees of relative agency is not an attack on a playstyle, no matter how much the purportedly aggrieved wish it so?

It never seems to matter what valued thing we are talking about. But it always seems when the, for lack of a good label, the immersionists say something like "sandbox play maximizes freedom", the narrative crowd here comes in and tries to assert that their style maximizes freedom. I think it is obvious this has long been a playstyle debate. What is frustrating is I feel like you guys don't see how your analysis always just happens to result in these things always placing your playstyle at the top of the discussion.

And this is even more infuriating at times, because a lot of us have expressed interest and curiosity about narrative style (I even asked the forum several pages back for a good narrative mechanic I could insert into my own game, and I got crickets on that). Your analysis is just driving people away from the thing you are advocating.

Also, a lot of the appeals to 'analysis' just come off a lot of times as 'agree with me because I think I am right'. I keep seeing the word analysis used here, and in some cases it appears there is a genuine effort to analyze. In others it feels like people feel they have arrived at an enlightened truth and have trouble seeing anything outside their own perspective.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Maybe he is just opposed to bad analysis that frames his playstyle in a very negative light? Afterall, one can complain about bad analysis without being opposed to analysis.

This is definitely part of it. And I think it is hard to read these threads and not see this attitude present in the analysis.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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?



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

I have a story. We were playing a Star Trek game (this was around 1993, so forgive me if I don't recall the exact game). I was playing the ship engineer, and the crew was tasked with dealing with a raider in a distant system (so no support) that had a technologically advanced ship of unknown origin. Our ship was limited to Warp 4 (or 3, exact number irrelevant), while the raider could achieve Warp 5. While looking through the rulebook, I came across a chart showing how warp levels worked. The warp numbers existed as stable plateaus of power that required a power climb above the plateau level as you approached it, but then fell to the lower power to maintain the warp speed. In looking at the chart, I saw that the power needed to climb over the hump for Warp 4 was higher than the stable power for 5 -- that, in fact, we could get close to warp 5 if we redlined the engines -- at least to give chase enough to find the raider's base.

So, I ran this past the GM, showing the chart, and got the nod that we could try this. I RP'd presenting the possibility to the Captain (another player), and prepared the effort -- we wouldn't be able to chase for long, but we could possibly keep the raider on sensors. The confrontation went as we expected (our ship was slightly more powerful in combat, if slower), and the raider broke off at Warp 5. The captain ordered the chase, I rolled the check the GM and I had discussed, and succeeded! And... the engines immediately broke down and we had to limp to dock.

I didn't play another session.

 

[FrogReaver]

EDIT: My point being that the fiction - whether that is a composite of things and/or events and/or states of affairs and/or processes - has to be authored.

I agree. Fiction must be authored. I don't think that's a very controversial point.

Elements that make up the composite get introduced. In the context of a shared fiction that power will be distributed. It is - I assert - not possible to distinguish between the power to introduce a death of an Orc and the power to introduce discovery of a way through a wall in terms of authorial process.

In D&D the "authorial process" for an Orc dying follows combat rules and for a secret door to be discovered follows the general playloop of the game. I have no issue with the D&D "authorial process" for either of those events. And while that process may differ in some respects, it's also very similar in many.

That said, the framing you do here isn't the same as you did earlier. You aren't saying anything in this subquote that I particularly have an issue with but you did earlier when you were comparing the D&D authorship process to your style of games authorship process.

(And the authorship obviously happens in the real world, not in the imagined world.)

I think that's a true statement in one sense but I don't think it really goes far enough. If I'm a player and my in fiction characters action results in a dead orc that's quite a bit different than myself outside the fiction dictating that X is part of the fiction. You do agree there is some kind of a difference there right?

The difference can only be explained in terms of subject matter/topic.

FURTHER EDIT: I agree that some people are happy to let the player be able to make decisions that oblige the whole table to accept that the Orc is dead, but want decisions that oblige the whole table to accept that the wall has a secret way through it to be under the purview of the GM.

The player never declares the Orc is dead. That's the GM. That's why I would say the GM and not the player authors the dead orc. He may be doing it by mechanics that depending on certain player actions and mechanical success outcomes - but at the end of the day the GM in D&D establishes in the fiction that the orc is dead.

This also seems to me to be a very similar process to how secret doors are found in many D&D campaigns.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I have a story. We were playing a Star Trek game (this was around 1993, so forgive me if I don't recall the exact game). I was playing the ship engineer, and the crew was tasked with dealing with a raider in a distant system (so no support) that had a technologically advanced ship of unknown origin. Our ship was limited to Warp 4 (or 3, exact number irrelevant), while the raider could achieve Warp 5. While looking through the rulebook, I came across a chart showing how warp levels worked. The warp numbers existed as stable plateaus of power that required a power climb above the plateau level as you approached it, but then fell to the lower power to maintain the warp speed. In looking at the chart, I saw that the power needed to climb over the hump for Warp 4 was higher than the stable power for 5 -- that, in fact, we could get close to warp 5 if we redlined the engines -- at least to give chase enough to find the raider's base.

So, I ran this past the GM, showing the chart, and got the nod that we could try this. I RP'd presenting the possibility to the Captain (another player), and prepared the effort -- we wouldn't be able to chase for long, but we could possibly keep the raider on sensors. The confrontation went as we expected (our ship was slightly more powerful in combat, if slower), and the raider broke off at Warp 5. The captain ordered the chase, I rolled the check the GM and I had discussed, and succeeded! And... the engines immediately broke down and we had to limp to dock.

I didn't play another session.

Replying to myself, because I recalled some more. At the time, I lived with the GM of this game (for about 4 months -- it was not at all going to work for more reasons than this). I recall having asked him what the hell that was about the next day, and being told that the GM had thought up a new, cool thing to have happen before we could locate the raiders base, so he had to stop the chase attempt so that could happen. That was the point I realized I wasn't going to be able to play with this guy as a GM. I moved out shortly after that (for unrelated reasons), so it wasn't much of a problem.

 

[FrogReaver]

How many times has it been pointed out in this thread that analyzing degrees of relative agency is not an attack on a playstyle,

If you don't want to come across as attacking a playstyle then you need to make a much better case that your preferred games have more agency than my preferred games than you actually are. We all highly value agency. Being told your preferred game has less of something you highly value than some other game is offensive. It's even more offensive when the offensive thing is believed to be untrue and an unfair characterization of your playstyle and believed to be based on shallow and self-serving analysis. Now, offensive things can sometimes be true. If they are true then the way to lessen the offense is to make what will be perceived as a strong and fair case for why it is true.

no matter how much the purportedly aggrieved wish it so?

No one wishes that they were being attacked. I mean seriosuly?

 

[Campbell]

@Bedrockgames

This is my bookshelf

Not included here, but among my favorite games I would include:

1. Stars Without Number
2. Worlds Without Number
3. Old School Essentials
4. Godbound
5. Wolves of God
6. Mothership
7. Mork Borg

I understand and have an unironic love for sandbox gaming. I also love Story Now games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Sorcerer, and Apocalypse World.

I also have the feels for a number of mainstream games. I'm running Scion Second Edition today. I'm also playing in a Vampire game right now. I love Exalted Third Edition and Pathfinder Second Edition more than I have a right to. I am playing in a 5e game that has lasted for 3 years now.

This really is not about what game or style is better. I genuinely believe players have more ability to reach the outcome they wish to see in games like Apocalype World, Blades in the Dark, and Sorcerer than games like V5, D&D 5e, and Dark Heresy. That's not a good thing or a bad thing. Its just a thing.

I do think there is more autonomy in a sandbox game like Worlds Without Number than a game like Blades or Monsterhearts.

From my perspective this was not really a playstyle debate until you made it one.

 

[Manbearcat]

Replying to myself, because I recalled some more. At the time, I lived with the GM of this game (for about 4 months -- it was not at all going to work for more reasons than this). I recall having asked him what the hell that was about the next day, and being told that the GM had thought up a new, cool thing to have happen before we could locate the raiders base, so he had to stop the chase attempt so that could happen. That was the point I realized I wasn't going to be able to play with this guy as a GM. I moved out shortly after that (for unrelated reasons), so it wasn't much of a problem.

But you were obviously afforded the ability to declare actions from your PC's perspective within the shared imagined space. It doesn't matter if the GM erected a block in order to impose content they unilaterally thought was going to be cool/fun. Hence, this is character-driven play.

The only way it would be GM-driven play is if you said "I'm going to attempt to rig the warp-drive to redline it to temporarily achieve the necessary 1.21 Jiggawatts for Warp 5" and the GM said "The droid you've been working with for a decade rolls into the Engineering Bay to assist you. It looks at you with cute, blinkey Wall-E eyes. Roll a Wisdom Save to avoid being momentarily smitten."