A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

So when in a D&D session a few weeks back I bought some magical rations that were ever-refilling and the DM told us the next session we might be running low on food so I pointed out I'd bought supplies (in part because I expected something like that) I was authoring the removal of an obstacle? If that's what you mean by it then fine. It's also what approximately a quarter of the D&D spell list is designed for.

If so, fair enough. I just don't see why this is an issue.

That's not at all an example of what I mean by authoring the removal of an obstacle. In your example above there's more than one reason it doesn't fit.

1. It was simply a reminder to the DM that something had occurred in the fiction which should have prevented the obstacle he was trying to place.
2. This is not an example of removing an avoiding one in the first place.
3. This was accomplished via in-fiction, in-character play.

Any one of those things would have made it not be an example of what I'm talking about.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In my opinion that's because there isn't more agency in either one. They are completely different playstyles. It's apples and oranges. Rather than more agency in one style or the other, it's that they have different agency.

Good luck with that argument! I mean it is obviously true, but I've been saying it for over hundred pages now with no success.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, yeah. Which is why literally no game I can think of does it this way. Almost every game I can think of where you are expected to pick flaws in advance

Well then, it's a good thing I was talking about picking flaws at char gen and made that clear in my post. Why are you acting like I didn't?

It's like the authoring out a problem issue. "This would be a bad way to do things" isn't much of an argument when just about no game that intends to do the things you are talking about does things the way you are proposing to be a bad way.

You've demonstrated you don't even know what I mean by authoring out a problem, so how can you say anything about whether any games actually employ that technique or not?

 

[FrogReaver]

This assertion is contentious.

I dislike replying with just questions but you didn't leave me much to go on.

Howso? Which part?

 

[FrogReaver]

I've run Blades. And the GM's scope isn't that tight until the players are rocking stats of 3s and 4s. If the GM wants to make something almost impossible they can pull the tier rules. If the GM wants more mooks they just need one roll of a 1-3 on the dice to announce reinforcements.

Of course a GM who's acting in good faith shouldn't and I hope wouldn't do this. But the tools actually exist to do it.

@hawkeyefan

This is an example of two posters that are more familiar with Blades than me having a bit of a disagreement in how it's described to be played. Now imagine if I had taken one of those descriptions to heart, then anyone discussing with me that had played and disagreed with that posters description would also disagree with most analysis I'm doing on that basis.

Which is to say, there's no wonder I look like I'm misconstruing how games play. I mean how could I not when the very players of those games tell me they play differently.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Time is important for flow and thus immersion.

This is an issue where I have seriously relaxed my thinking the more I have focused on what works at the table for me (versus positions I staked out in online conversations). Sometimes while defending a concept like sandbox or immersion, I've staked out principles, and even if these principles seemed to be about right in a lot of cases, often times they weren't, because they were a crude explanation for what was actually making me tick (I know I have made numerous points like this throughout the thread, but repeating them here since, given the size of the thread, you likely didn't see them unless you were combing finely over every post). Sometimes these were sound principles but they missed some subtle nuance (like I don't like X, actually turned out to be I don't like a lot of X, or I don't like X when I notice X--------and sometimes there was an actual mistaken causal link because of the presence of X). I value immersion, but I realized immersion isn't this thing that has to be constant and unbroken for me. I would take somewhat unreasonable positions to defend the principles of immersion I laid out. And this impacted my table play because I stopped doing things that were in principle supposed to ruin immersion, but in practice fun and part of the game. Not saying this at all what is going on with you, just emphasizing this to explain why I keep going back to play at the table, being wary of game analysis (even my own at times).

Another place I saw this, and again something I've mentioned countless times on this thread, Is with Hillfolk. Where in principle I didn't think I would like it on immersive grounds (because players could narrate things into existence, and because it had a lot of meta mechanics for the drama). But in practice it felt like that same moment when I first played D&D and a spark went off in my brain because I was so immersed in the world (except in this case I was immersed in a world that felt like one of those old made for TV miniseries in the 70s and 80s).

 

[Manbearcat]

Going through life without being able to tightly predict the odds of success of almost any action I take is completely alien to me.

I'm 43. I spent all of my life in athletics, martial arts, and in the sciences and having dealt with numerical and spatial relationships constantly. I don't know what the background is of folks who feel like its "not immersive or counterintuitive to have a deep understanding of their prospects for any action", but it has to be profoundly different than my own.

I can think of more than 5 dozen physical things, from running to climbing to swimming to grappling to ball sports to workout metrics (ranging from the specific to the general), that I can predict with an extremely low margin of error (even things where there are variables that I can't know); within 5 %. When it comes to approximating distances/spatial relationships or time passed within a relatively short interval (say 2 hours) I'm very precise.

And (as I wrote upthread), when it comes to conversation/argument, I'm very confident, no matter how persuasive and informed I am on a subject, I can move a position-entrenched person off of their position less than 5 % of the time!

So I go into almost every physical endeavor (whether its me against static obstacle or me against another party) knowing what my prospects are within a very small margin of error. Likewise, if I go into a parley/conversation with another committed party (who has something they are unwilling to give up), I know I have very little chance to get them to give it up!

What sort of margin of error do some of you guys think you're working with when you try to predict your prospects in any given arena?

 

[FrogReaver]

The problem is that most discursive logic is not necessarily about "better logic" or what actually is the "most logical" as a lot of our sense of logic is also informed and guided by our own biases, preconceptions, and past experiences. This is to say, you likely find the people who tend to be most convincing and logical likely also are supporting your own preconceived notions and viewpoints. This is how appeals to "logic" can be quite (unintentionally) self-deceptive. This is also why people also appeal to possessing the additional perspective of firsthand experience with playing/running game systems, because logic on its own doesn't cut it.

They make that appeal to firsthand experience so that so they can gain authority over the topic. Do you really think this would go over any better if I went out and played those games and came back with my same exact opinions?

This assertion is also at odds with a number of your own points in this debate about how you claimed that certain arguments people made were not consistent with your own experiences playing your game (system/style/mode) of choice.

I disagree. It's a long thread so I'm not going to ask you to dig up any of those examples, but if you see one going forward then point it out so that I at least have a chance to defend myself from your attack that I'm being inconsistent.

likely for the self-serving purposes of reinforcing preconceptions and biases or to "win" debates rather than to come to an actual good faith understanding.

You don't get to insinuate that I am acting in bad faith. That's not cool.

 

[Manbearcat]

@hawkeyefan

This is an example of two posters that are more familiar with Blades than me having a bit of a disagreement in how it's described to be played. Now imagine if I had taken one of those descriptions to heart, then anyone discussing with me that had played and disagreed with that posters description would also disagree with most analysis I'm doing on that basis.

Which is to say, there's no wonder I look like I'm misconstruing how games play. I mean how could I not when the very players of those games tell me they play differently.

I'm skimming the thread and I briefly saw that statement by @Neonchameleon and I just knew that it was going to create fallout of this exact variety (you posting these words 100 %) because the statement (at face value) is completely anathema to running a Blades game with integrity and by the rules and muddies the water that I (and others) have tried to clarify in this prolonged conversation.

I'm assuming what he's saying here (and you'll have to clarify @Neonchameleon ) that "the game tech exists in Blades to completely and obviously play without integrity and pull obvious nonsense like "HEY GUYS, I KNOW YOU'RE DOING A DECEPTION SCORE AT ULF IRONBORN'S (TIER 1) GAMBLING DEN (eg an elaborate dealing from the bottom of the deck/signalling heist with 3 members of the Crew secretly playing cards collectively against 3 individual member's of Ulf's Crew) AND THE POSITION OF YOUR ACTION ROLL IS ONLY RISKY BUT OMG A 1-3 (!)...RIGHT BEFORE YOU WIN AND GET THE COIN FROM YOUR SCORE, THE SPIRIT WARDENS (TIER 4) EXPLODE THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR AND EVERYTHING GOES TO HELL AS THEY TRY TO CONTAIN A ROGUE SPIRIT LIKE THE GHOSTBUSTERS DESTROYING THE HOTEL AS THEY TRY TO CAPTURE SLIMER!"

That doesn't follow the rules for Position Complication handling and it defies the GMing Goals, Actions, and Principles Six Ways to Sunday...basically the integrity of the game is ruined. That doesn't even amount to farce. Its basically a suicide mission by the GM to destroy their game.

Even throttling that back on several different axes, its going to be bloody obvious if the GM either (a) doesn't know what they're doing or (b) isn't playing with integrity. There is no version of even the most modest form of "rocks fall, you die" in Blades. Its too tightly structured, too player-facing, the rules are too intuitive, and the difference between poor GMing/good GMing and best practices/worst practices are far too blatant.

So, I'm pretty confident that @Neonchameleon just meant that the action resolution mechanics (utterly by themselves...removed from the holistic synthesis with the rest of the game) allow for incompetent play/GMing and GMing without integrity (regardless how obvious it will be that its incompetent and without integrity). Yes, any game with a death wish can degenerate to Calvinball. "Because humans." That is not a very bold thesis!

 

[FrogReaver]

So if you value speed in cars being told that another car is faster than yours or that F1 cars or Indy 500 cars are faster than stock cars is offensive?

Is your point that everything I value must be valued equally, such that if I value agency then it must be to the same degree and similar way that I value car speed? If not, then what does cars and their speed matter?

Or is it just that value isn't a sufficient word to describe what's going on?

Me, if I value something and someone else tells me that something else does it better my reaction isn't "that's offensive" it's "that's interesting. How does it do that?"

I would say the offensive part is the implied:
"you say you like agency, well this game has more, so you should try it as you should like it more, and if you don't I guess that means you didn't really value agency that much to begin with"

This comes twice over when the people saying that are familiar with both sides of the argument - and almost everyone posting on ENWorld (a D&D forum) also plays D&D so they are familiar with both approaches. This isn't "Fans of game A vs fans of game B" - it's "fans of both coming down very consistently on the side of B doing this specific thing better".

I don't think so. Have you heard @pemerton talk about D&D?

And "a is better than b at x" is not in and of itself offensive.

I think it depends on what a and b are.

Even if it isn't true then you start by assuming good faith on the other side.

I do. If I wasn't assuming good faith I wouldn't be discussing this.