A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

Among people who have not played Blades or Apocalypse World these player strategies for avoiding playing the game basically seem like a pretty big deal. A lot of that comes from being used to the way incentives and play loops reinforce a certain set of player behaviors in mainstream games.

Turtling or "safe" play is something I'm not really interested in. It makes play drag, particularly in systems that have a reasonable rate of failures.

In our Traveller session today the key PC and offsider PC were trying to steal the NPC rivals' air/raft to enter the alien pyramid complex. The world they're on is very cold, and so vacc suits are required. Neither character has vacc suit skill, and both players failed the roll required to manoeuvre safely in vacc suits. I narrated this that they had arrived at the rivals' pinnace (where their air/raft was parked), were having trouble regulating the oxygen and temperature aspects of their vacc suits, and basically had to run back to their own base or open the pinnace airlock.

The player of the offsider opted for the second option. Which precipitated further mayhem as the NPCs came to find out who was infiltrating their vessel.

There is no XP or advancement system in Traveller to encourage action over safety, so this outcome was more the result of the personality of the player feeding into the established dispositions of the PC in question. But there are aspects of the system that help here. For instance, there are subsystems (eg social resolution), elements of character build (especially Social Standing including some characters being nobles), and aspects of the setting that flow from this, which make "fail forward" narration feasible. So taking a risk, and failing, doesn't mean "game over".

I think this "freedom to fail" which is different from "freedom to lose" is an important component of player agency in non-gamist RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

As I see it, there's a few ways for a player to activate agency:

• Direct authorship ("I declare this to be true about the fiction, without any consultation to systematic rules framework").
• Rules-mediated authorship ("I'm spending metacurrency X, which by rule means I can now declare the following thing(s) to be true in the fiction").
• Character generation/advancement ("Because my character has these skills, this background, and these traits and flaws, it must naturally follow that the following things are true in the fiction").
• Action declaration ("My character chooses to perform action X. If he/she succeeds at his/her intent, then the following thing(s) in the fiction must be true"). (Naturally, action declarations will largely be mediated through rules conventions to determine the "truthiness" or "falsiness" of the declaration.)

Are there additional ways to activate player agency?

I've posted about some of these upthread. (But got little traction.)

I think a key issue is whether the player "authorship"/"narrative power" is an action declaration of some sort, or is direct stipulation like a GM writing something in his/her notes. Your "rules-mediated authorship" straddles both possibilities: eg in Prince Valiant a storyteller certificate allows player fiat, but is still about an action that the player's character takes.

An important form of player agency is the ability to make meaningful suggestions to which the GM has to have regard. This can take all sorts of forms - eg Beliefs in Burning Wheel; or responding to the GM's questions in a PbtA game.

Another form of player agency, which is very important in AW and DW, is being able to oblige the GM to introduce a fictional element that will speak to the player's concern/interests (eg "Who here is in charge?" or "What here is not what it seems?"). This is very different from exploration-oriented actions in D&D or similar systems that oblige the GM to read from his/her notes but don't require that what the GM tells the player have any particular connection to the interests/concerns of a player or of his/her PC.

And really, if you think about it, the creation and use of rules for a roleplaying game are ultimately a shorthand way of communicating a contractual agreement between players as to how certain declarations about the fiction should be mediated.

Upthread I've quoted Vincent Baker a couple of times:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

 

[pemerton]

Maybe it will be clearer by example than by definition. Let's say you come to a raging river and want to cross it safely. A player that's able to add (or do something that adds) the existence of a nearby bridge across the river to the fiction would be authoring the removal of the obstacle.

Do you think that’s all that different from things like using Survival to find food, or Nature to find a poison remedy, por Gather Info to learn about a thieves’ guild in the area?

To me, this still resembles declaring an action.

I look for a bridge absolutely is declaring an action.

In my Burning Wheel game, when we needed to travel along and across the river Thurgon found a former member of his order, who took us across on his raft.

Here's the bigger issue as I see it: from the point of view of gameplay, what is the difference between (i) player A building a character with strong Swimming skill, or Boatwrighting skill, and then resolving the process of getting across the river by swimming or by building a raft Talisman-style; and (ii) player B building a character with strong Circles, multiple Affiliations and Reputations to boost Circles, and then resolving the process of meeting a friend or former comrade who will carry the characters over the river on his raft?

These are different characters, who will have different stories, but the basic structure of play is the same: character build supports action declaration which - if successful - allows the river to be crossed.

What is the ostensible problem here?

 

[pemerton]

My personal experience with Cortex + Heroic is fairly limited. I have played and run short runs of Marvel Heroic Roleplay using the event books (about 6 sessions each). I did once run a longer term game using the Smallville Roleplaying Game (Cortex+ Drama) set in the X-Men Universe, but that is a phenomenally different game.

Cortex Prime has basically put both of these games in the same umbrella system.

I don't have Cortex Prime - the closest I've got is the Hacker's Guide, but with that I haven't read the Smallville or Leverage bits very closely.

@Campbell, I think you're right that the MHRP Events books push things closer to story advocacy because of the need to keep on track - frankly I think there's a huge tension (which I assume is the result of commercially-driven compromise) between the event framework of MHRP and its resolution system. So when we've played MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic I've used the events books for particular scenes or scene elements that seemed apposite (eg appearing before Congress, and Titanium Man attacks) and I've used characters, but I've never used an event structure.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton is always talking about having agency over the shared fiction; where you're helping build the stage as well as acting on it.

I think when some of us including me talk about agency we're referring to agency within the shared fiction; where you're acting on a stage someone else has built.

Two things:

(1) If we're comparing RPG players to actors, who is providing the script and the direction?

(2) The shared fiction consists of more than setting. That an orc dies is as much a part of a shared fiction as that an orc exists or that a secret door exists.

 

[Manbearcat]

Realize I already wrote one essay-length post today, but I had a few additional thoughts.

One, I want to recognize that despite my disagreement with @FrogReaver and @Crimson Longinus on what they see as untenable components of player-facing systems, I don't want to discount that their objections are coming from a real place.

In a socially constructed activity like roleplaying, there is a significant element of risk any time a GM considers upsetting the status quo. Despite my desire to branch out from more "traditional", GM-facing, task-resolution systems, that's not to say that there isn't value in what such systems provide.

There's absolutely a core substance, or space, or experience derived from D&D and its progeny, offshoots, and alternatives that has provided sustained value to participants for close to 50 years.

That's not trivial. It is, in fact, remarkable in the extreme.

I think the purpose of having conversations like this one is to give all of us ideas, considerations, components, techniques, and systems of thought that will increase our ability to achieve consistent excellence of play and high satisfaction within our hobby.

This is also not trivial (even though our games contain seemingly trivial elements like elves, gnomes, and dragons).


Two, I've been thinking tremendously about how much result follows intent when it comes to how much player agency to allow/disallow.

The why behind systems like PbtA, Burning Wheel, BitD, Fate, etc., is extremely important. A tremendous amount of effort, thought, and design rationale has been explicitly "baked in" to those systems, because they are designed from a specific intent.

I think much of the tenor of conversation around these systems stems from how much that intent is personally valued.

If the intent is to provide a different experience from "classic" D&D, then conversations will naturally revolve around processes that are perceived weaknesses or flaws in "classic" D&D.


Three, the idea has come up over and over that there's different "kinds" of player agency at stake when a game is in action. And I don't know that it's ever fully been addressed whether this is a "thing" or not.

Earlier, @Manbearcat broke down player agency into subsets: Setting, Situation, and Character.

As that was 50+ pages of posts ago, I don't know that I fully explored this.

The problem as I see it, is that the notion of whether there's different "kinds" of agency is related to the interplay between subsets. Meaning, does an increase in player agency in one subset have the ability to decrease agency in another? And if so, does the increase in one subset increase the overall level of agency relative to the whole, even if agency is diminished in another subset---or is it zero-sum?

Furthermore, have we fully identified the ways that players can actually express, or activate agency in play?

As I see it, there's a few ways for a player to activate agency:

• Direct authorship ("I declare this to be true about the fiction, without any consultation to systematic rules framework").
• Rules-mediated authorship ("I'm spending metacurrency X, which by rule means I can now declare the following thing(s) to be true in the fiction").
• Character generation/advancement ("Because my character has these skills, this background, and these traits and flaws, it must naturally follow that the following things are true in the fiction").
• Action declaration ("My character chooses to perform action X. If he/she succeeds at his/her intent, then the following thing(s) in the fiction must be true"). (Naturally, action declarations will largely be mediated through rules conventions to determine the "truthiness" or "falsiness" of the declaration.)

Are there additional ways to activate player agency?

*Edit --- added Rules-mediated Authorship.

I want to clarify and expound on my post and hopefully it starts some functional conversation.

As of right now, I think many of the people I typically agree with on these issues has at least SOME level of disagreement with me on this so it would be especially interesting if those folks who typically agree with me, but disagree with me here, would critique what I write below:

AGENCY VECTOR AND TYPE

So I wrote above about Character Agency, Situation Agency, Setting Agency. These are vectors for player agency, not types (more on that below). On any given Venn Diagram featuring these 3, there will be some overlap, but the majority of the space of each is discrete with no overlap. To unpack that further:

Character Agency - The PC is here. The time is now. The relationship of relevant objects (including the PC themselves) within the gamestate are thus. Without changing any of here, now, and thus for any given action declaration, make a move where either/or/both here and thus are changed (now will fundamentally change because time will have moved forward after the action declaration).

Situation Agency - The immediate conflict is x, the corresponding stakes are y, the relationships of relevant objects within the gamestate are z. Make a move that affects either/or/both y or z, which will in turn impact certain qualities of x (the level of danger, the participants, the prospects of success).

Setting Agency - The ability to make a move that interfaces with/leverages the offscreen whereby some new aspect of the shared imagined space (setting) becomes established/fleshed-out (in a way that doesn't violate what has been already established through play). This could be something relevant and interesting...or it could just be interesting with the prospect of becoming relevant later.

Now, onto AGENCY TYPE:

Tactical Agency - The ability to make a move that affects, both in degree and in kind, the relationship of objects/goals/stakes within the immediate gamestate.

Strategic Agency - The ability to make a move that affects, both in degree and in kind, the relationship of objects within the setting such that downstream decision-points and gamestates are likely significantly altered.

Protagonist Agency - The ability to have resolving a PC's dramatic needs be either the outright premise of play or primarily propel the trajectory/arc of play.

---

I don't see any other vectors or types. If anyone sees a different one, critique away. FYI - I don't see how "emotions, feelings, or immersion" are "agency" here. All of those things will be the experience created by the unique characteristics of a person's cognitive landscape/framework connecting + the systematized aspects of games (what is the premise of play, what kind of conflicts, what kind of fallout and how is that actualized).

I'm running long here so I need to wrap this up.

One thing I find interesting in examining the matrix above is the Martial vs Spellcaster in D&D divide. Look at how much of all of the above the classic D&D Spellcaster interfaces with vs the Martial character:

* They have tons of agency through their Character because its impossible not too. HOWEVER, they can subvert the ability of NPCs to express agency via their spells.

* They have tons of ability to dramatically alter or reframe Situation via their spells.

* They have a unique ability to express agency through Setting within their spells, which grows as levels accrue (becoming somewhat rote at 10+ in high level Spells/Rituals).

* Their Tactical Agency is profound. They can fundamentally alter or reframe any given combat or noncombat encounter with a singular spell (god help us if they deploy more than one).

* Their Strategic Agency is without equal. They can dictate when/where and even if/what...becoming a triviality as levels pile on.

* Because of all of the above, they get to dictate (a) what the game is about and (b) the trajectory through which that "what is this about" manifests more than any other character. The only way this doesn't turn out is f (c) they give up this capability of their own volition or (d) the GM assumes an adversarial arms race against the Spellcaster...leveraging the offscreen/secret backstory in order to block their ability to put into affect (a) and (b).

(D) particularly becomes a thing when the GM is trying to impose their own metaplot or keep a game on the AP's rails.

---

Thoughts?

EDIT - One thing I've tried to examine often (and this dovetails precisely with "The Spellcaster Issue" cited above) is when one or more vectors/types of agency clash with a play priority and what gives way. I find, far too often, that what gives way is Protagonist Agency (if it was even present to begin with). THIS sort of agency loss is a non-starter for a lot of people expressing distaste with certain "GM moves" in this thread.

 

[innerdude]

After looking over it for a minute, I think the defined Agency Types are solid.

In terms of the Vectors, I'm actually having a hard time seeing how Character Agency isn't actually subsumed into either Situation or Setting.

Thinking about D&D 3.5 / PF1, for example, a character's build would fall under the other two vectors.

If we're talking about core stats (bonuses, BAB), that's only relevant to Situation ("Because my fighter has an 18 STR, a +6 BAB, and is wielding a longsword, he is able to make an attack move that can cause harm to the ogre") and Setting ("He's obviously a large, powerful individual who will be viewed by inhabitants of the fiction thusly").

If we're talking about background / personality / traits / bonds / flaws / appearance, that's all Setting.

What is it in particular you're thinking about in therms of Character as a vector?

 

[innerdude]

Er...I have to plead not guilty on this one, y'r honour. I think that was someone else's death cult.

Man, you people and your death cults. So hard to keep track of them all.

I mean, why do I have to be the one to know the difference between the evil death cult of Tightened Sphincters and the devilish death cult of Stolen Toilet Paper?

 

[prabe]

After looking over it for a minute, I think the defined Agency Types are solid.

In terms of the Vectors, I'm actually having a hard time seeing how Character Agency isn't actually subsumed into either Situation or Setting.

Thinking about D&D 3.5 / PF1, for example, a character's build would fall under the other two vectors.

If we're talking about core stats (bonuses, BAB), that's only relevant to Situation ("Because my fighter has an 18 STR, a +6 BAB, and is wielding a longsword, he is able to make an attack move that can cause harm to the ogre") and Setting ("He's obviously a large, powerful individual who will be viewed by inhabitants of the fiction thusly").

If we're talking about background / personality / traits / bonds / flaws / appearance, that's all Setting.

What is it in particular you're thinking about in therms of Character as a vector?

Not speaking for @Manbearcat here, but I think it needs separation out because of the Protagonist thing. I mean, I can see how a character's dramatic needs might be divorced from Situation or Setting (or, at least, the connections might be at best tenuous) but it seems as though it must be connected to Character Agency.

I was going to say something about Protagonist Agency being more difficult to navigate, the more players you have. I have five PCs in one group I'm DMing, and six in the other, and it's hard to make a narrative fit more than one or two goals at a time. In practice, this means that some characters aren't pursuing their own goals, now; in principle, though, any character's goal could be next.

 

[FrogReaver]

I want to clarify and expound on my post and hopefully it starts some functional conversation.

As of right now, I think many of the people I typically agree with on these issues has at least SOME level of disagreement with me on this so it would be especially interesting if those folks who typically agree with me, but disagree with me here, would critique what I write below:

AGENCY VECTOR AND TYPE

So I wrote above about Character Agency, Situation Agency, Setting Agency. These are vectors for player agency, not types (more on that below). On any given Venn Diagram featuring these 3, there will be some overlap, but the majority of the space of each is discrete with no overlap. To unpack that further:

Character Agency - The PC is here. The time is now. The relationship of relevant objects (including the PC themselves) within the gamestate are thus. Without changing any of here, now, and thus for any given action declaration, make a move where either/or/both here and thus are changed (now will fundamentally change because time will have moved forward after the action declaration).

Situation Agency - The immediate conflict is x, the corresponding stakes are y, the relationships of relevant objects within the gamestate are z. Make a move that affects either/or/both y or z, which will in turn impact certain qualities of x (the level of danger, the participants, the prospects of success).

Setting Agency - The ability to make a move that interfaces with/leverages the offscreen whereby some new aspect of the shared imagined space (setting) becomes established/fleshed-out (in a way that doesn't violate what has been already established through play). This could be something relevant and interesting...or it could just be interesting with the prospect of becoming relevant later.

Now, onto AGENCY TYPE:

Tactical Agency - The ability to make a move that affects, both in degree and in kind, the relationship of objects/goals/stakes within the immediate gamestate.

Strategic Agency - The ability to make a move that affects, both in degree and in kind, the relationship of objects within the setting such that downstream decision-points and gamestates are likely significantly altered.

Protagonist Agency - The ability to have resolving a PC's dramatic needs be either the outright premise of play or primarily propel the trajectory/arc of play.

---

I don't see any other vectors or types. If anyone sees a different one, critique away. FYI - I don't see how "emotions, feelings, or immersion" are "agency" here. All of those things will be the experience created by the unique characteristics of a person's cognitive landscape/framework connecting + the systematized aspects of games (what is the premise of play, what kind of conflicts, what kind of fallout and how is that actualized).

I'm running long here so I need to wrap this up.

One thing I find interesting in examining the matrix above is the Martial vs Spellcaster in D&D divide. Look at how much of all of the above the classic D&D Spellcaster interfaces with vs the Martial character:

* They have tons of agency through their Character because its impossible not too. HOWEVER, they can subvert the ability of NPCs to express agency via their spells.

* They have tons of ability to dramatically alter or reframe Situation via their spells.

* They have a unique ability to express agency through Setting within their spells, which grows as levels accrue (becoming somewhat rote at 10+ in high level Spells/Rituals).

* Their Tactical Agency is profound. They can fundamentally alter or reframe any given combat or noncombat encounter with a singular spell (god help us if they deploy more than one).

* Their Strategic Agency is without equal. They can dictate when/where and even if/what...becoming a triviality as levels pile on.

* Because of all of the above, they get to dictate (a) what the game is about and (b) the trajectory through which that "what is this about" manifests more than any other character. The only way this doesn't turn out is f (c) they give up this capability of their own volition or (d) the GM assumes an adversarial arms race against the Spellcaster...leveraging the offscreen/secret backstory in order to block their ability to put into affect (a) and (b).

(D) particularly becomes a thing when the GM is trying to impose their own metaplot or keep a game on the AP's rails.

---

Thoughts?

EDIT - One thing I've tried to examine often (and this dovetails precisely with "The Spellcaster Issue" cited above) is when one or more vectors/types of agency clash with a play priority and what gives way. I find, far too often, that what gives way is Protagonist Agency (if it was even present to begin with). THIS sort of agency loss is a non-starter for a lot of people expressing distaste with certain "GM moves" in this thread.

I would say there is a another agency vector to mention. It doesn't come up in any game that I'm aware, but the agency to alter established fiction at least needs mentioned IMO. Think, retcon.