A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

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.

There are overlaps between character and setting agency: this has been my point about recollection being an action declaration like any other. Likewise read a charges situation and similar PbtA moves are character agency but meet your criteria for setting agency.

Character agency can also overlap with situation agency: eg a taunting ability, or its reverse a calming/diplomacy ability, can change what is at stake in a social encounter.

I'm not sure if you agree with this or not.

 

[aramis erak]

I see those aspects of Cortex+ as closer to flashbacks than to retcons - it establishes that the PC did something in the past to get ready for the current situation.

Either way, they're still revising the established story with details out of the flow of the character's PoV.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In the fiction there is a different causal relationship between tower => my memory of it and my muscular motion with my sword => death of Orc. But I'm not talking about imagined causal processes;

But I am. And in games made out of imaginary stuff it matters.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Who thinks that, in the fiction, the character thinks that looking for his friend made the friend turn up?

Putting to one side the actions of providence, that would be as silly as thinking that recollecting a tower caused the tower to exist.

Right. So that's the difference. In fiction the character hitting the orc actually caused the orc to die.

 

[Manbearcat]

Not that explaining the difference between character and setting agency is difficult, assuming that the listener is not actively hostile to the idea of drawing that distinction in the first place. I saw recently this article about the difference between roleplaying and storytelling games linked on RPG.net, I think it is pretty relevant to the a lot of the discussion that has been going on here:
Roleplaying Games vs. Storytelling Games

I’d just point out that some games give you agency over just the character and others the character and the setting. That to me is enough to make the concept be worth differentiating. Especially when coupled with the fact that my side swears that this vector is perhaps the most important for differentiating the games they prefer from the others.

In the worst case that makes character agency a subset of setting agency. So let's assume that's the case. Being a strict subset of setting agency vector doesn't preclude items in the character agency subset and non-character agency subset from being behaving and even being valued differently in analysis. At this point though - I'd suggest you would drop setting agency and talk about setting based character vector and setting based non-character vectors.

There are overlaps between character and setting agency: this has been my point about recollection being an action declaration like any other. Likewise read a charges situation and similar PbtA moves are character agency but meet your criteria for setting agency.

Character agency can also overlap with situation agency: eg a taunting ability, or its reverse a calming/diplomacy ability, can change what is at stake in a social encounter.

I'm not sure if you agree with this or not.

QUICK ASIDE to address Crimson Longinus.

You've linked a post to the Alexandrian which accepts as foundational building block for subsequent analysis that his Dissociated Mechanics essay is (a) useful and (b) correct. You're not going to get much purchase here with that. The overwhelming number of participants here engaged in an ENORMOUS discussion on it long ago and almost all of them came to the conclusion that it is neither correct nor useful (in fact, its very much the opposite). I can't relitigate the entirety of the argument/thread at this point (it was 1000s and 1000s of posts), but the crux (from my recollection) was that it had enormous holes in evaluating the very nature of Roleplaying games (it would nonsensically cast 4e and Moldvay Basic "board games" - which was really the point of the initial iteration of the essay - and wouldn't recognize Pawn Stance play as TTRPGing) and it misunderstood certain aspects/deployments of authority distribution as being inexorably caught in the event horizon of "story advocacy"...therefore incapable of being "protagonism" (aggressively advocating for the dramatic need of a constituent part, a Character, of "the <possible> story") rather than recognizing the possible state of independence of the two (while, yes, acknowledging the likely interdependence) despite a given configuration of distributed authority.

Its initial iteration was an extremely controversial partisan hit-piece by someone who didn't understand games they clearly weren't familiar with/didn't like/took offense at, which I think was cleaned up later. Regardless, it certainly wasn't convincing then as a piece of independent analysis and therefore any work that depends upon it as a foundational piece will be compromised.

Cue Forest Gump (That is all I have to say about that).

---

I'm going to try to do some further explanation here which I hope will clarify how I'm intending to use each of these concepts in developing this matrix.

As a reminder (and Frogreaver addresses this in his 2nd paragraph above), I'm still unsure if there is sufficient utility and independence in separating Character (as a unique object within the gamestate separate from all of the other objects - which would be Setting) from Setting when it comes to (a) formulating a matrix to discuss agency when analyzing play and (b) formulating a matrix to derive agency when conceiving > executing the intentful design of a TTRPG. More on this below.

First...

THINK OF CHARACTER, SITUATION, AND SETTING AS GAME PIECES

Lets start here. This is ultimately what I was trying to get at with "vector" (or medium). Protagonism, Tactical, and Strategic are not game pieces. They are what manifests through the game pieces.

Yes, Situation will have dimensional parameters (the independence and interdependence of Goal/Intent < > Stakes) that can't be plotted as x, y, z coordinates. But for the sake of this effort, leverage those big brains of yours (everyone) to either (a) ignore that or (b) conceive of the possibility of plotting it if you must.

So...

* A Character is a Game Piece (through which a table participant will express/channel Protagonism-based, Tactical-based, Strategic-based agency).

* Any given Situation is a Game Piece (" above).

* The Setting is a Game Piece (" above).

This is where its going to get a little meta.

If we had sufficient vantage and could instantiate any game into infinity, we would see Character and Setting being in a state of Superposition, encapsulating every_single_concievable configuration of their collision (which would be a manifestation of initiating/inciting Situations and all possible downstream Situations similarly in a state of Superposition).

Take any one of those instantiations. Those are your 3 Game Pieces.

There will be ample interdependence between the 3 Game Pieces but is there sufficient independence between each 3 such that it is useful (or even required) to make them discrete when developing a matrix for analyzing play and designing games. I'm inclined to say "yes" but I could be talked out of it with sufficiently persuasive argument.

So...to Character as Game Piece. Again, immersion or habitation need to be set aside here for this analysis. "The sensory and (de)moralizing experience of remembering" and "the sensory and (de)moralizing experience of recognizing relations and having relationships" is relevant to the holistic experience of play. But we have to excise that to honestly engage in this analysis.

So I have this Character. They're here, now, in this space along with other objects (Setting). Now there is a problem where I want something (through my Character) but the relationship of objects (including my Character) in this space conspires to deny me it (my ability to make this what play is about is Protagonist Agency...my ability to advocate for that desire will manifest in Tactical or Strategic Agency). This is Situation.

I do agree that on the Venn Diagram of those 3 Game Pieces ("vectors" or the medium through which a participant at the table will give rise to their Protagonism, Tactical, or Strategic agency), there will be some "conceptual bleed" and overlap (I mentioned a few upthread, but the Mark aspect of a 4e Fighter's Combat Challenge has some meaningful differences from the Immediate Interrupt aspect of their OA which has meaningful differences from the initial, and best imo, iteration of Come and Get It). There is interdependence (but there are discrete things as well).

Lets contrast "Read a Sitch (or Discern Realities in DW)" in AW from a Passive Perception check in 5e.

READ A SITCH
When you read a charged situation, roll+sharp. On a hit, you can
ask the MC questions. Whenever you act on one of the MC’s answers,
take +1. On a 10+, ask 3. On a 7–9, ask 1:
• Where’s my best escape route / way in / way past?
• Which enemy is most vulnerable to me?
• Which enemy is the biggest threat?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What’s my enemy’s true position?
• Who’s in control here?
On a miss, ask 1 anyway, but be prepared for the worst.
Reading a situation can mean carefully checking things out,

My initial orientation here is through the Character Game Piece. I'm here and now in relation to all of these objects in this space and I'm in a situation.

I roll dice.

Any result of 7+ and my Game Piece is now either/or/both Situation or Setting (because of the structure of the move, the agenda of play, and the ethos that binds/informs GMing). Through this I'm expressing one or more of Protagonism, Tactical, Strategic agency by generating/directing/focusing content (and/or ensuring other content doesn't manifest).

On a 6-, I'm actually still expressing some agency through Situation or Setting...but it can_only_be_Protagonism Agency; I can, at least in part, dictate that play further interacts with the resolution my PC's dramatic need (because the prospects for erecting a move-based gambit have been wrested from me due to the fortune results and action resolution procedures).

My habitation or sensory experience can (and for those, like myself, who love AW) be entirely unchanged. But what is happening at the game vantage level is what it is.

Contrast with a 5e GM saying "what is your Passive Perception/Insight (?)" when you've unknowingly entered a provocative place or encountered a potentially volatile NPC and giving you an information dump.

Contrast with a 5e player saying "I go to the balcony and look to the northern night sky where the arresting BOOM came from" and the GM saying "Roll Perception."

EDIT - This may look superficially like The Forge's Pawn, Actor, and Director Stance makeup. But, unlike that essay, I'm not attributing a cognitive relationship. Its literally a question of "when looking down at the Game Board, which Game Piece do you pick up to do this thing?" There is fundamentally no need for a cognitive shift (eg from Actor to Director) when "Reading a Sitch" in AW above vs what happens in 5e. You can inhabit both Actor and Director simultaneously, one or the other, or neither (Pawn). Some players may claim that they are incapable of habitation/immersion with one or the other (and others may claim amplification of habitation/immersion)...but that is entirely beside the point to "which Game Piece do you pick up to do this thing?"

 

[pemerton]

But I am. And in games made out of imaginary stuff it matters.

Right. So that's the difference. In fiction the character hitting the orc actually caused the orc to die.

What's your point?

In the fiction remembering where a tower is doesn't bring the tower into being. This is the case whether it's my PC remembering where the tower is, or a NPC telling my PC where the tower is based on his/her memory.

That all seems obvious.

But there is no difference in the real world between the authorship process whereby I, as a participant in the game, establish the fictional element the Orc is dead, killed by me (ie my PC) and the authorship process whereby I, as a participant in the game, establish the fictional element the tower is known by me (ie my PC) to be at such-and-such a location. Both are acts of authorship. Both are mediated via action declarations for my character - one about engaging in a feat of combat, the other about engaging in a feat of memory.

You and @FrogReaver are arguing for a subject matter constraint - something like the player of a RPG should not be able to establish any fictional element which is not causally downstream of his/her PC's actions - but seem to want to assert that it's a process constraint.

You also don't seem to apply your subject matter constraint consistently - as per @hawkeyefan's repeated example of the foraging check, you seem happy to allow it to be violated where the fictional element is relatively trivial generica (eg that there are rabbits to catch in the woods) but get worked up about it when the fictional element has a proper name (like Evard's tower or my brother Rufus) or is specific or unique in some similar fashion (like a bridge across a river).

It seems a very particular aesthetic preference. Ron Edwards gives a good account of some (I think not all) of its features here (written early in 2003):

In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. . . .

Resolution mechanics, in Simulationist design, boil down to asking about the cause of what . . . Two games may be equally Simulationist even if one concerns coping with childhood trauma and the other concerns blasting villains with lightning bolts. What makes them Simulationist is the strict adherence to in-game (i.e. pre-established) cause for the outcomes that occur during play. . . .

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order, on this guy's "go," and the next guy's "go" is simply waiting its turn, in time. . . .​

I say "not all" because this still leaves open who among the participants gets to set up the situation (including such matters as the location of Evard's tower or of Rufus) which is then resolved linearly in time.

In the same essay Edwards describes the role of the GM in a significant amount of RPGing:

I also recommend examining Theme carefully. In this game, it's present and accounted for already, before play. The process of prep-play-enjoy works by putting "what you want" in, then having "what you want" come out, with the hope that the System's application doesn't change anything along the way. . . .

[T]he more common character creation methods . . . almost always the relatively clumsy "GM approval" proviso. . .

Dice-based resolutions sometimes represent much noise and effort about not much effect, i.e., random factors tend not to deviate from expected results very much. Some games display a small range of possible Effect (i.e. damage rarely harms an opponent very much at a time), slight metagame adjustments to minimize extreme results, or a lot of offered strategies for the GM to soften or redirect the effects that occur. . . .

[W]hen it's done badly, resolutions are rife with breakpoints and GM-fiat punts . . .

The key for these games is GM authority over the story's content and integrity at all points, including managing the input by players. Even system results are judged appropriate or not by the GM; "fudging" Fortune outcomes is overtly granted as a GM right.

The Golden Rule of White Wolf games is a covert way to say the same thing: ignore any rule that interferes with fun. No one, I presume, thinks that any player may invoke the Golden Rule at any time; what it's really saying is that the GM may ignore any rule (or any player who invokes it) that ruins his or her idea of what should happen.​

Approaching RPGing in this way will answer the question of who gets to set up the situation which is then resolved linearly in time. It will also produce a game that resembles pretty closely @hawkeyefan's and @Ovinomancer's characterisations of 5e D&D (though Edwards is perhaps a little blunter in his account than they have been). I think it's obvious that in a game approached in this fashion player agency is less than one in which players have ongoing influence (directly via mechanics, or by giving suggestions to which the GM is obliged to have regard) over theme, situation, effect and outcome, and more generally "what should happen".

 

[pemerton]

For anyone interested, here is one epic "dissociated mechanics" thread.

The notion is silly, and adds nothing useful and some confusion to Ron Edwards' discussion of framing and resolution that predates it by half a decade:

Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:​

• Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.
• Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.
• More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.

The notion is doubly silly because (as Gyagx noted in his DMG, and as 4e D&D embraced) hit points and saving throws in D&D are obviously FitM resolution systems.

So is the following subsystem from Classic Traveller, a game that superficially adheres strictly to "simulationist" imperatives for the correlation of at-the-table and in-the-fiction linearity (Book 1, 1977, p 16):

A basic throw of 10+ to avoid dangerous situation applies whenever any non- ordinary maneuver is attempted by an individual while wearing a vacc suit (such as running, jumping, hiding, jumping untethered from one ship to another, etc).​

DM: +4 per level of expertise.​

When such an incident occurs, it may be remedied by any character with vacc suit expertise (including the character in danger himself) on a throw of 7+.​

DM: +2 per level of expertise. No expertise DM: −4.​

This is FitM because only when the initial check is failed do we then "go back" and establish the precise fictional details of what has given rise to the dangerous situation. (I posted an example upthread from my Traveller session earlier this week - the check was failed by the players of both PCs, and I narrated that they were having trouble managing their oxygen and temperature regulation functions and would either have to run back to their base or open the airlock of their rivals' vessel that they were trying to sneak into.)

If even Traveller can't avoid FitM, then there's little hope of avoiding it in any workable resolution system. Which means either everything becomes GM fiat, or players are allowed to engage in mechanical resolution which constrains and obliges particular GM narrations. Whether that's what is happening with our vacc suit system?s or is there terrain around here that my vacc suit pipes will get snagged on? or @hawkeyefan's foraging or my PC meeting up with his brother becomes an issue of topic/subject matter, not of fundamental gameplay process.

 

[FrogReaver]

You also don't seem to apply your subject matter constraint consistently - as per @hawkeyefan's repeated example of the foraging check, you seem happy to allow it to be violated where the fictional element is relatively trivial generica (eg that there are rabbits to catch in the woods) but get worked up about it when the fictional element has a proper name (like Evard's tower or my brother Rufus) or is specific or unique in some similar fashion (like a bridge across a river).

Let's talk about foraging. Foraging preserves that in-fiction causal relationship. I go out and actively start looking for food which causes me to find food. I could even say in the fiction my foraging caused me to find food.

But you already are in agreement that a character "looking for friends" couldn't say in the fiction that my looking for friends caused me to find friends. That's the difference, and why I am not being inconsistent.

Now the reason I've described this "I look for friends action" as smoke and mirrors is because there is a way of looking for friends where you actually go out to the places you think they might be and eventually find them. In that case the character could say "looking for friends" caused me to find friends. That's not how you described your game handling that action though. You specifically called it at for establishing chance encounters. It's easy to convolute the 2 notions about "looking for friends" in such discussions and likely was intended by the game designers to obfuscate what is really going on with that action.

 

[FrogReaver]

It seems a very particular aesthetic preference. Ron Edwards gives a good account of some (I think not all) of its features here (written early in 2003):

In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. . . .​

​

Resolution mechanics, in Simulationist design, boil down to asking about the cause of what . . . Two games may be equally Simulationist even if one concerns coping with childhood trauma and the other concerns blasting villains with lightning bolts. What makes them Simulationist is the strict adherence to in-game (i.e. pre-established) cause for the outcomes that occur during play. . . .​

​

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order, on this guy's "go," and the next guy's "go" is simply waiting its turn, in time. . . .​

I say "not all" because this still leaves open who among the participants gets to set up the situation (including such matters as the location of Evard's tower or of Rufus) which is then resolved linearly in time.

You use quite a different definition of simulationist than I do. I would never describe my games as trying to simulate anything. I guess if you want to get really technical you could describe almost all RPG's as trying to simulate a fictional world with linear causality. I don't think that strengthens the case for calling my style simulationist anymore than it would strengthen my case for calling your style simulationist (as despite this one example most of your games heavily feature linear causality just as well as mine).

 

[Campbell]

You use quite a different definition of simulationist than I do. I would never describe my games as trying to simulate anything. I guess if you want to get really technical you could describe almost all RPG's as trying to simulate a fictional world with linear causality. I don't think that strengthens the case for calling my style simulationist anymore than it would strengthen my case for calling your style simulationist.

As defined in those essays Simulationism or Right To Dream is simply an aesthetic preference rooted most strongly in exploration rather than protagonism/theme (Narrativism or Story Now) or skilled play (Gamism or Step On Up). I personally prefer the epitaphs to the labels here. It's also not perfect. These creative agendas are not the only possible ones. Still it's better than what existed before where everyone basically assumed you could only design and play RPGs in pretty much one way.