A Question Of Agency?

[Campbell]

I'm curious which are these games where player action cannot be negated by the GM. The GM in almost any game always has more mooks and can give the bosses unlimited hp and special moves.

But the expectation is that the GM will not negate the player action without an exceptionally good reason. The player says what they are doing and frequently picks up the dice, moving straight into the shared fiction rather than having to go through GM negotiation first. The rules for e.g. throwing a tapestry over someone's head in Fate are clear ("Create an advantage" possibly invoking a scene aspect and probably using athletics) and in D&D they are not.

So in Fate the player moves as freely from their character to the fiction when pulling a rug from under the feet of the bad guys unless the GM intervenes ("the rug's been glued down/simply tears") as they do in D&D when swinging a sword and making an attack roll unless the DM intervenes ("your sword passes straight through the illusion/bounces off the forcefield"). And in both cases this is expected to denote exceptional circumstances.

This is more empowering for the players because they have a clearer understanding of the capabilities of their character and because they can just do these stunts rather than haggling and slowing things down for everyone. Whether it's more empowering for the GM depends on that GM - some find it less makework, others get less of a power trip or more of a headache.

The unconstrained GM with infinite dragons is not really a feature of all RPG play. Often times they are constrained by prep. In Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel they are instructed to frame scenes or make GM moves in very particular ways. When running Apocalypse World for insistence you are instructed to always say what your prep demands, always say what honesty demands, and always say what the rules demand. If playing according to the text you really do not get to say when and when not to invoke the rules of the game. It does give the GM quite a bit of latitude within those confines, but infinite dragons is not part of the deal.

 

[Aldarc]

I can distinguish between them quite well: A does not use meta-game resources (the referred-to tokens or fate points) where B and C do.

And that's all I need to know to determine which I will consider playing and which I will walk away from.

Though I understand your preferences - you have reiterated them often enough in our past discussions - I will add that player meta-currencies are not anywhere as diametrically opposed to in-character roleplay as you often set them out to be. The more experience my friends and I have accumulated with running/playing such roleplaying games has only reified this point.

 

[Campbell]

Though I understand your preferences - you have reiterated them often enough in our past discussions - I will add that player meta-currencies are not anywhere as diametrically opposed to in-character roleplay as you often set them out to be. The more experience my friends and I have accumulated with running/playing such roleplaying games has only reified this point.

For me personally a lot depends on the structure of the currency. Currencies that correspond to something that has meaning in the fiction like Stress in Blades, Team in Masks, or Strings in Monsterhearts feel much better to me than Plot Points, Artha, or Fate Points.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I do not mean to pick on you here. I just want to illustrate a point.

A significant number of people basically talk about games as if every game was structured and organized along an OSR to Pathfinder First Edition sort of range of unstructured play to long list of exception based rules that obviate the need for GM judgement. That in order for game mechanics to have teeth they must obviate the need for any GM judgement and come in large unwieldy books. A lot of the games I enjoy playing/running do not exist on that spectrum.

I understand this. But because of the kind of rule that was mentioned, it seemed reasonable to give my shifting views on this topic (OD&D and Moldvay was actually what I had in mind in terms of D&D). But I get this isn't strictly about volume, or rules light to rules heavy, that you can have a light system that just is focused on particular areas (I mentioned essoterorists which is a bit like that: creates a wonderful amount of space around creating monsters and threats: by not actually filling in a lot of the spaces a more traditional rpg would).

 

[FrogReaver]

I had a feeling that may be the case, but I wasn’t sure.

No problem.

What do you mean here? That examples of rules were offered?

That you either references or provided game examples that fit the description of what you were asking me to provide - albeit in a post to another person.

What fallacy? I’m not going to try and shut you down from having whatever opinion you’d like. However, I do think that lack of experience can absolutely play a factor in one’s understanding of a topic.

I was saying you were not doing that, but that others have tried a few times throughout this thread.

Of course experience can absolutely play a factor in one's understanding of a topic. Do you really think anyone doesn't believe this? It's just more experience about a topic doesn't mean ones analysis is correct.

I’m not going to assume that you or I understand Burning Wheel as much as @pemerton does, for example. I’ve read some of it, but not thoroughly. Why would I assume I know as much about that game as him?

The pure mechanics and the playloops of those games I completely defer to them on - that's what knowing more about the game really means. But the analysis of what those mechanics and playloops mean in relation to agency isn't something that experience with a game is going to aid one with (provided that those with knowledge of the game are forthcoming in the relevant details that would enable one to analyze the game).

It’s not something I have had a ton of familiarity with. I’ve certainly played games where players will put forth things that they want for their characters to struggle with and for the GM to bring forth in the game. But that’s a bit different.

I agree that's quite a bit different than authoring your own obstacle. It's still authoring and still related to what obstacles you will face, but it's more like authoring a constraint for obstacles than obstacles themselves.

Sure, I think this is the common way RPGs work.

There's a difference between overcoming an obstacle in character and authoring the removal of the obstacle.

You seem to be using those two terms synonymously and they mean something quite different. For example D&D has plenty of the first and nearly none of the later.

I’m open to this idea, for sure. It comes up in Blades in the Dark when players are free to add details as part of Action declaration, but that’s pretty minor. It can certainly come up in a Flashback, which gives the players a lot of leeway to bring things into the fiction, but there are costs and they do need to fit with what’s already been established.

For example, in my first Blades in the Dark campaign, the PCs were infiltrating a property that belonged to a rival faction. Things went pretty poorly for them with some low rolls, and ultimately they were confronted by a group of four armed guards. The player of the Slide (a Face-type character) called for a Flashback. The night before the score, he spent some time in a tavern where guards for this faction were known to hang out. He spent a Coin to persuade some guards to help them out, with the promise of no blowback. I advised him this Flashback would cost 2 Stress, which he happily paid.

Even with the Coin, this required a roll. The player said it was going to be a Sway roll, which makes sense. I set the Position/Effect at Desperate/Standard; I figured even with the Coin, the Slide was putting the crew in a potentially vulnerable position. These guys could simply take the coin and promise to help and then turn on them in the moment. Or worse, they could alert the whole place and have everyone ready to pounce on the PCs.

So a lot was riding on this roll. The Slide player decided to push to add an extra die to his Sway pool, for a total of 3 dice. This brought the total cost of this Flashback up to 4 Stress and 1 Coin, which is significant.

He rolls....double 6s for a critical.

So the guards don’t just ignore them and let them go about their business, they say to let them know if they can be of any help in the future. They have no love for their boss (a labor boss who squeezes all he can from his workers and destroys any attempt to unionize).

So the player of the Slide no only narrated the crew out of a threat with their Flashback, but due to the crit also made a contact for potential use in the future.

I'd say that's a good example of what I was referring to. The player invoked a meta mechanic in order to change or attempt to change the difficulty of the current fictional obstacle.

I'm not sure I would say what the player did there was authorship though - at least not directly. Invoking the meta mechanic led to a mini roleplay session where some actual character actions invoked more mechanics that resulted in the DM authoring? that the guards would help them.

Which does lead me to believe that I'm focused on authorship when it's not so much about who ultimately authors what is happening, but it's more about whether a metagame mechanic was invoked that ultimately led to that authoring of the fiction to make things better for the player.

 

[Aldarc]

For me personally a lot depends on the structure of the currency. Currencies that correspond to something that has meaning in the fiction like Stress in Blades, Team in Masks, or Strings in Monsterhearts feel much better to me than Plot Points, Artha, or Fate Points.

Obviously those things you listed have the benefit of being tied to the setting/genre of the games, whereas Fate can't exactly proclaim that Fate Points correspond to something as concrete or meaningful in the fiction as the games you listed since the fiction/genre/setting in question will vary fairly substantially between Fate games. Fate is less a game and more a toolkit after all. If we were using Fate to play Wheel of Time, for example, then Fate points would likely represent Ta'veren luck/karma that draws complications and fortune to them.

But IME that still is not necessarily as diametrically opposed to immersive in-character roleplay as often gets imagined.

 

[Neonchameleon]

For me personally a lot depends on the structure of the currency. Currencies that correspond to something that has meaning in the fiction like Stress in Blades, Team in Masks, or Strings in Monsterhearts feel much better to me than Plot Points, Artha, or Fate Points.

In the case of Fate if you're playing a character in Fate you absolutely can use Fate Points as e.g. willpower if you set your character up that way. It takes only a little finessing of your aspects and deciding how to invoke.

There's a difference between overcoming an obstacle in character and authoring the removal of the obstacle.

You seem to be using those two terms synonymously and they mean something quite different. For example D&D has plenty of the first and nearly none of the later.

I'd be interested in an actual play example of authoring the removal of an obstacle - if I've understand what you mean I can't think of any time I've seen it happen if you grant flashback scenes (which only normally come up in heist games) as being examples of overcoming an obstacle; they are IME textbook examples of mini roleplay sessions.

I forget who it was that commented that it's generally a bad idea to have the person responsible for creating an obstacle to be also responsible for overcoming it.

 

[Fenris-77]

I can't think of an example for the "authoring out of existence" thing. The games in question tend to have a hard rule that additional facts can't overwrite the existing fiction. Authoting things into existence, sure, but not the other way round.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I can't think of an example for the "authoring out of existence" thing. The games in question tend to have a hard rule that additional facts can't overwrite the existing fiction. Authoting things into existence, sure, but not the other way round.

If you think of the "mainstream" mindset where the GM has prep notes, then the above action is possibly removing things from the GM's picture of the fiction, if not the fiction established at the table.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm curious which are these games where player action cannot be negated by the GM. The GM in almost any game always has more mooks and can give the bosses unlimited hp and special moves.

None, and no games prevents a player from playing against the rules, either. If you consider games where the participants are following the rules in good faith, then D&D still allows for this, while a game like Blades in the Dark absolutely does not. Blades tightly constrains the GM's framing authority to be within the scope of the score the players have decided, and the GM must frame within the initial engagement roll scope and then from there on out only within the scope of the action resolution and it's position markers. I can't just pour more mooks into a room, or even add unlimited mooks in one go, because these things are constrained.

But the expectation is that the GM will not negate the player action without an exceptionally good reason. The player says what they are doing and frequently picks up the dice, moving straight into the shared fiction rather than having to go through GM negotiation first. The rules for e.g. throwing a tapestry over someone's head in Fate are clear ("Create an advantage" possibly invoking a scene aspect and probably using athletics) and in D&D they are not.

The trick to this is that the only person evaluating the "exceptionally good reason" is the GM, at least in "mainstream" games like 5e (and other D&D games) or Pathfinder 1e. What the GM considers a good reason may not meet anyone else's thinking at the table. There was a fairly recent thread about the Burgomaster of Vallaki where this happened. In games that allow for GM negation of action, it actually happens quite often, for as poor a reason as a misalignment of understanding of the current fiction. And, in those cases, it's the GM's vision that wins every time.

So in Fate the player moves as freely from their character to the fiction when pulling a rug from under the feet of the bad guys unless the GM intervenes ("the rug's been glued down/simply tears") as they do in D&D when swinging a sword and making an attack roll unless the DM intervenes ("your sword passes straight through the illusion/bounces off the forcefield"). And in both cases this is expected to denote exceptional circumstances.

This is more empowering for the players because they have a clearer understanding of the capabilities of their character and because they can just do these stunts rather than haggling and slowing things down for everyone. Whether it's more empowering for the GM depends on that GM - some find it less makework, others get less of a power trip or more of a headache.

Mostly agree.