A Question Of Agency?

[Neonchameleon]

If you view agency as your ability to control the setting, then sure. But like others here, we are viewing agency as the freedom to explore the world and make meaningful choices in that world. Different points of view.

And if you view it as this then there is still in my experience a far greater ability to explore and make meaningful choices in an off the cuff Apocalypse World setting than literally any D&D sandbox I have ever played in, no matter how much work the DM put in.

When it comes to making meaningful choices Apocalypse World leaves D&D so far in the dust it's not even funny. Every roll contains multiple meaningful choices; what you do, how you do it, and frequently with how much risk. Meanwhile a (non-4e) D&D martial character in combat is frequently short of them; their attacks are roughly the same and disengaging to run away is a bad choice so you swing at the target in reach (a just about meaningful choice) and automatically make a damage roll.

As for exploring the setting, the professions of D&D characters are all different types of adventurer. Apocalypse World gives you social connections to the town you find yourself in and collections of NPCs while the PCs have different power relations with them (rather than being outsiders) so you again explore frequently in much more detail.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And this, to me, feels like One True Way-ism.

It isn't

 

[pemerton]

I'd add to this that it is not a zero sum game. In Apocalypse World every failed skill check is a hard move - which pulls the GM into tweaking things and controlling things much more than in D&D.

I agree that it's not strictly zero sum. I posted a bit more about that upthread.

I don't agree that AW hard moves, or similar approaches to failure narration in a system like Burning Wheel, pull the GM into "tweaking" or "controlling" more than in D&D. Perhaps this is true in respect of immediate consequences in the fiction - for instance, a failed attempt to get information from a NPC is probably more likely to lead to them throwing a punch in AW, compared to just stonewalling in D&D. (Even that might depend on what if any reaction roll table - if any - is being used in the D&D game.) But I think the fact that the GM is responding to a situation that has been driven by the player, and that the GM does not have notes establishing a default of "status quo" ("there are no status quos in Apocalypse World"), helps maintain a higher degree of player agency over the shared fiction and its trajectory.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And if you view it as this then there is still in my experience a far greater ability to explore and make meaningful choices in an off the cuff Apocalypse World setting than literally any D&D sandbox I have ever played in, no matter how much work the DM put in.

But my point is this is just your subjective experience. I don't have enough experience with Dungeon World to weigh in on its level of agency. I can say, much of what people who play it here have described about it, doesn't seem like it would provide more agency than a well run sandbox to me, but like I've been saying all thread, what matters is what works at the table, not arguments on a thread. So I would be totally open to the idea that the kind of agency I am talking about is present in AW (I am just not seeing it based on your descriptions of the game). And I should say, the amount of agency I feel in a sandbox is enormously high, so my bar would be pretty high on that front. I used to say immersion wasn't possible with narrative mechanics that allow the players to establish setting details, then I played Hillfolk and had to admit I was incredibly immersed. And like I said before, there are plenty of people who are open minded and curious about these games and willing to try them. But that doesn't mean we will have the same experience of them that you do (just like not everyone is going have the same experience with a sandbox). People think differently and react to systems differently.

 

[pemerton]

If you view agency as your ability to control the setting, then sure. But like others here, we are viewing agency as the freedom to explore the world and make meaningful choices in that world. Different points of view.

I think I've been crystal clear for the whole thread that I am referring to agency over the shared fiction. If the shared fiction consists to a significant extent of the content of the GM's notes then I don't think the players have a high degree of agency over it. Their primary function becomes taking exploration-type actions that prompt the GM to reveal some of that content in his/her notes. A really clear example of this sort of thing is a traditional CoC module.

The more the activity of play moves away from those exploration-type, prompting actions towards actions that realise player-generated agendas, the greater (in all likelihood) the player agency over the shared fiction. Suppose that player-generated agenda requires a secret way through a particular wall: if this now turns back into a learn what the GM has decided about secret ways through this wall then play is returning to a lower player agency mode. A system like Burning Wheel, and in a different way Dungeon World, is intended (in part) to avoid such a return.

 

[Bedrockgames]

When it comes to making meaningful choices Apocalypse World leaves D&D so far in the dust it's not even funny. Every roll contains multiple meaningful choices; what you do, how you do it, and frequently with how much risk. Meanwhile a (non-4e) D&D martial character in combat is frequently short of them; their attacks are roughly the same and disengaging to run away is a bad choice so you swing at the target in reach (a just about meaningful choice) and automatically make a damage roll.

But how you view this boils down a fundamental difference in our core assumption of play ( I think). Don't get me wrong, some games I like having lots of martial options. Heck I made a wuxia game with literally hundreds of kung fu techniques in it. But, I don't see all those kung fu techniques adding more agency. And to be clear, I understand what apocalypse world is doing, isn't buidling more crunch into combat, just using this as an example of having more choices in combat. If I want 100 percent maximum agency, in my opinion, the best way would be to have as few mechanics as possible, and to just let the player say what they try to do based on their character, and have the GM figure out on the fly what that does and how to resolve it mechanically (a ruling). Again, I haven't played apocalypse world, so I can't weigh in on its approach specifically. But I do think there is a big divide here over the role that GM rulings play (which is a crucial concept in sandbox, and a lot broader and more involved than in other styles of play IMO----there are pages and pages of blog entries and discussion on rulings alone).

 

[Neonchameleon]

But how you view this boils down a fundamental difference in our core assumption of play ( I think). Don't get me wrong, some games I like having lots of martial options. Heck I made a wuxia game with literally hundreds of kung fu techniques in it. But, I don't see all those kung fu techniques adding more agency.

There are, to me, a handful of things that enable and encourage agency in combat - and you're right that crescent kick vs spin kick isn't on the list however fun it is to decide. Off the top of my head they include:

• Risk vs reward - do you take seemingly unnecessary risks in combat to get things done faster?
• Risk self vs risk allies - do you let allies get hurt to keep yourself safe and on the back line or do you even jump in the way of attacks for them?
• Environment, terrain, and situational factors - what makes this fight different from any other and how can you use it?
• How does the fight end? Is there any other way than death? And what do you do after?

Apocalypse World has every attack hitting the risk vs reward point because there are two basic attacks, one much higher risk than the other but also more likely to kill than the other. And even when the attack is made you probably have another risk vs reward choice as part of the resolution. It also has quite a bit to say about the other three points. oD&D has a lot on point 2 thanks to the hireling rules - but many Apocalypse World playbooks also have gangs.

If I want 100 percent maximum agency, in my opinion, the best way would be to have as few mechanics as possible, and to just let the player say what they try to do based on their character, and have the GM figure out on the fly what that does and how to resolve it mechanically (a ruling).

To me this isn't actually great agency because the player can't really move with confidence without knowing the GM intimately. I want enough structure that I don't have to ask the odds of success - and knowing them means that I understand the world much better. There is however a difference between the common sandbox pattern of a character basically being Isikai'd into a strange world to explore the sandbox and someone who grew up there.

Interestingly Apocalypse World is built on the rhythm of freeform RP. In freeform there are times you'd naturally hand over narration to either the GM or the other players because there's something that needs resolving - and the rules are designed to slot in at those moments so as to cause minimal disruption. (Vincent Baker's wife, Meguey Baker, is a freeform RPer by background and one of his goals in any design is to make her want to reach for the dice rather than have them imposed on her). It also has a lot of rulings (one for every failed roll) but very solid guidelines for them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To me this isn't actually great agency because the player can't really move with confidence without knowing the GM intimately. I want enough structure that I don't have to ask the odds of success - and knowing them means that I understand the world much better. There is however a difference between the common sandbox pattern of a character basically being Isikai'd into a strange world to explore the sandbox and someone who grew up there.

But can you understand that not everyone has this issue, that some of us see the human mind as the greatest enabler of the kind of agency you are talking about (at least for us----I get these are subjective, human interactions, and for some people a human referee might be a hindrance to that, without clear mechanisms for giving players more clarity for something). But for some of us, it is the ability of the GM to react to a player's declared actions with rulings, and even with fiat, that makes the possibilities feel infinite, that makes it feel like we have agency in the world, etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Interestingly Apocalypse World is built on the rhythm of freeform RP. In freeform there are times you'd naturally hand over narration to either the GM or the other players because there's something that needs resolving - and the rules are designed to slot in at those moments so as to cause minimal disruption. (Vincent Baker's wife, Meguey Baker, is a freeform RPer by background and one of his goals in any design is to make her want to reach for the dice rather than have them imposed on her). It also has a lot of rulings (one for every failed roll) but very solid guidelines for them.

This about freeform narration. This is about the player says they want to do A then B, so that the opponent gets crushed by Y as they strike (some kind of involved and specific combat action, that is still within the fair parameters of action in a given moment), and the GM, because there is a vacuum around the rules on the declared action, customizes a way of managing it in that moment. The negative casting of this, is the GM may be wrong, the GM may come up with a bad solution. My experience is it is usually better when the GM is able to tailor these rulings to specific requests. Personally I am more concerned that the GM come up with a procedure for that moment. I am not worried about the probabilty consistency against simliar situations later on or something (as long as the ruling seemd fair and good at the time, which it usually does with most GMs I game with).

 

[Neonchameleon]

But can you understand that not everyone has this issue, that some of us see the human mind as the greatest enabler of the kind of agency you are talking about

The issue here isn't the human mind. It's the human voice. Which is pretty low bandwidth. If I just wanted human minds to be involved I'd give up on rules entirely and play freeform. Having the structure of rules enables us to use our minds to transcend more of the practical limitations.

But for some of us, it is the ability of the GM to react to a player's declared actions with rulings, and even with fiat, that makes the possibilities feel infinite, that makes it feel like we have agency in the world, etc.

Indeed. Also for some of us it's the safety ropes that enable us to decide that climbing cliffsides is something other than suicidal, that makes us want to do it. But that doesn't mean that the safety rope actually being used means that things are going well.

Which means simultaneously I want the GM to be able to make rulings - but to do it as little as practical and to do it unobtrusively. The Apocalypse World rhythm helps it be unobtrusive.