A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

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.

This is no different from remembering where a tower is, which leads me to finding the tower; or looking out for my brother, which leads me to notice him.

But looking for for food doesn't make there be rabbits around. Sometimes someone who is expert at looking for food nevertheless fails to find it simply because the rabbits are all somewhere else.

In this respect rabbits are no different from Evard's tower or Rufus.

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.

I actually used the phrase "chance meeting" - that phrase is borrowed from JRRT and of course is gently ironic, because in the world of JRRT's writing nothing happens literally by chance. More than any other fantasy writing I'm aware of (including Dune and Star Wars), JRRT presents a world in which providence is at work.

As I have posted repeatedly upthread, Thurgon and Aramina met Friedrich on the river in the area of the old border forts. And met Rufus upon crossing the border into Auxol, Thurgon's ancestral estate.

Overall your approach to setting - at least as evinced by your posts - seems to rest on two assumptions that are fairly common to a lot of D&D play but are typically not true of BW or AW games: (1) that the protagonists are strangers to the place in which the action is taking place; and (2) that generica like rabbits are no big deal and can be narrated or presupposed freely by all participants (perhaps subject to some overarching GM veto power), whereas towers and bridges and brothers which are a big deal are the exclusive province of the GM.

To put the same point another way: you are happy for the player, without any prompting from the GM, to imagine the GM-narrated forest as containing rabbits and herbs and roots and berries and so on - which the player than takes for granted in declaring his/her PC's foraging check; but you object to the player, without any prompting from the GM, imagining the GM-narrated fantasy world as containing Evard's tower or imagining the GM-narrated river as containing a bridge that crosses it.

@Lanefan seems to use some sort of appeal to likelihoods to explain the contrast in preferences. I don't know if you think of it the same way: to me, as I've indicated in my posts, the contrast seems to be between no-big-deal generica and individuated/unique/specific things. As I've already posted, it's an aesthetic preference based on topic/subject matter.

You use quite a different definition of simulationist than I do.

I quoted Ron Edwards, and used the word as he does.

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.

What Edwards is focusing on is a mapping of the causal process of resolution onto the authorship of the imagined causal processes of the fiction.

That is not a feature of all RPGing or all RPGs. For instance, a check made to establish what it is that a PC recollects has the same real-world causal structure as a check made to establish whether a PC defeats an Orc in combat. But the causal processes in the fiction are different in each case. Hence there is no mapping of the sort I described in the previous paragraph. Hence games which feature both sorts of checks are not simulationist in Edwards' sense.

(A footnote: D&D combat is not simulationist in Edwards' sense either, because the individual processes used to determine whether a PC defeats an Orc - to hit rolls, changing hp tallies, etc - don't map onto any imagined causal process. Often there in fact is no fiction that correlates to those checks - the game participants just make the rolls and do the maths - or if there is fiction it is established post-hoc (eg the GM looks at the change in the Orc's hp total and then narrates something about barely blocking a forceful blow with its shield). This sort of thing was discussed at great length in the "dissociated mechanics" thread I linked to upthread.)

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand this objection. I'm not familiar with The Burning Wheel, but presumably a Circles check in that system corresponds in some way to an attempt by the PC to make him/herself open to such an encounter, putting out the proper signals and feelers or sending messages to the appropriate people, for example. Also presumably, if you already knew where your friend was, there would be no need to "go looking" for them. Assuming you're familiar with 5E, a long way up-thread I posted that such an attempt could be resolved in that system with a Charisma check.

Circles, in BW, is described thus (here is the link to download Hub and Spokes of Gold for free; I'm quoting p 21):

Circles
Who does the character know from his days as an apprentice? Can he call on his former gang mates for help? Such questions are answered using the Circles ability. It’s a measure of the character’s social influence, and its scope is shaped by the character’s lifepaths.​

So it definitely covers what you say - making oneself open to an encounter - and also putting out feelers etc. It can also determine eg whether someone comes to rescue you as you're about to be executed - but that would be a more difficult check (roughly speaking, the more improbable the location and the more immediate the encounter, the higher the obstacle).

As I and @aramis erak have posted, Circles is based on Will (the nearest analogue in BW character building to D&D's CHA) and is augmented by Affiliations, Reputations (these are both elements of PC build) and also successful Wises check (made to ascertain the current lie of the land, hear rumours of where others are, etc).

 

[pemerton]

@Manbearcat all of the subject matter of the player agency is imaginary.

This isn't correct. The fact that everyone agrees that their shared fiction contains a dead Orc, or Evard's tower, or this meeting with Rufus, is a real thing in the real world.

Imagined causal processes are just that - imagined. Fiction does not itself exert any causal power, given that it isn't real.

But people are real, their mental states are real, and their consensus (or lack thereof) in the context of a joint endeavour is a real thing.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is no different from remembering where a tower is, which leads me to finding the tower; or looking out for my brother, which leads me to notice him.

Yes it is. The reasons have even been covered about 10x now.

But looking for for food doesn't make there be rabbits around.

Correct

Sometimes someone who is expert at looking for food nevertheless fails to find it simply because the rabbits are all somewhere else.

Depends on how zoomed in you want to get. When a character forages in say 5e, it's typically being done in a large expanse of wilderness. Because 5e as written doesn't have rolls occur unless there is uncertainty, then the only way a player rolls is if the DM determines there's a chance he could forage something to eat which would imply that some source of food is in his vicinity. If there's no source of food in his vicinity (or no source he would be capable of discovering) then he doesn't even get a roll. So by the time there is a roll in 5e it's already defacto established that food is in the vicinity. (*As always with D&D some playstyles vary and some DM's will call for some rolls even if there is no uncertainty).

Overall your approach to setting - at least as evinced by your posts - seems to rest on two assumptions that are fairly common to a lot of D&D play but are typically not true of BW or AW games: (1) that the protagonists are strangers to the place in which the action is taking place; and (2) that generica like rabbits are no big deal and can be narrated or presupposed freely by all participants (perhaps subject to some overarching GM veto power), whereas towers and bridges and brothers which are a big deal are the exclusive province of the GM.

Neither of those is true for my approach. It's almost like you so much want to stuff me into a particular box that you don't actually listen to what I'm saying.

To put the same point another way: you are happy for the player, without any prompting from the GM, to imagine the GM-narrated forest as containing rabbits and herbs and roots and berries and so on - which the player than takes for granted in declaring his/her PC's foraging check;

With the caveat that the DM could say, well actually this forest is desolate and barren. Are you sure you would try to forage in such a place? (Ideally this detail would come up before player action declarations - but DM's can forget to mention important details at times or the player could have been distracted when they DM gave that detail).

But yes, part of medieval fantasy is that a typical forest will have food you can forage. So yes, it's perfectly acceptable for players to imagine that in the absence of any further description about the forest.

but you object to the player, without any prompting from the GM, imagining the GM-narrated fantasy world as containing Evard's tower or imagining the GM-narrated river as containing a bridge that crosses it.

Yes. Evard's tower is a very specific fantasy element. A river having a bridge is pretty hit and miss. So quite different things.

That is not a feature of all RPGing or all RPGs. For instance, a check made to establish what it is that a PC recollects has the same real-world causal structure as a check made to establish whether a PC defeats an Orc in combat. But the causal processes in the fiction are different in each case. Hence there is no mapping of the sort I described in the previous paragraph. Hence games which feature both sorts of checks are not simulationist in Edwards' sense.

Would have saved us alot of time if you would have led with this

(A footnote: D&D combat is not simulationist in Edwards' sense either, because the individual processes used to determine whether a PC defeats an Orc - to hit rolls, changing hp tallies, etc - don't map onto any imagined causal process. Often there in fact is no fiction that correlates to those checks - the game participants just make the rolls and do the maths - or if there is fiction it is established post-hoc (eg the GM looks at the change in the Orc's hp total and then narrates something about barely blocking a forceful blow with its shield). This sort of thing was discussed at great length in the "dissociated mechanics" thread I linked to upthread.)

I don't have problems with dissociated mechanics like hp, etc. So I don't think it's the dissociative part that's my problem.

 

[darkbard]

Because 5e as written doesn't have rolls occur unless there is uncertainty, then the only way a player rolls is if the DM determines there's a chance he could forage something to eat which would imply that some source of food is in his vicinity. If there's no source of food in his vicinity (or no source he would be capable of discovering) then he doesn't even get a roll. So by the time there is a roll in 5e it's already defacto established that food is in the vicinity. (*As always with D&D some playstyles vary and some DM's will call for some rolls even if there is no uncertainty).

Remind me again of your argument for player agency.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not familiar with The Burning Wheel, but presumably a Circles check in that system corresponds in some way to an attempt by the PC to make him/herself open to such an encounter, putting out the proper signals and feelers or sending messages to the appropriate people, for example.

Technically, throughout the Burning series of games, the Circles Check more than that.
One of the options in the list of modifiers is wanting him here "right here, right now"... I once had a player do that for a random adventurer named Yeet Myee... just to provide a different target for the monster. But it got enmity clause... his family had sent him to hire the PCs, and now thinks the PCs are responsible for his demise....

 

[aramis erak]

Your fictional worlds function quite strangely. In mine, my character foraging for food doesn't create any food.

In the game state, the food is created when the check succeeds.
In the story state, the food can be presumed to have existed prior to being found.
The two are different, but in the game state, the PC goes from the uncertain "i have no food but might get some" to either "I got some food" or "I didn't get some food." And presumably the game state advances to a point where the lack of food matters either way.

 

[Campbell]

What I have been calling the (shared) fiction and what has at times been called the shared imagined space consists only of what has been established on screen. It has no independent existence until we establish what is true and not true within it. This is important it helps to talk about how this gets established through play in a variety of different sorts of roleplaying games.

While making the setting feel real to the players is important it is in fact always under construction. We are building it as we play in it even if only the GM is actively building it.

One of the things that makes talking about RPGs challenging is that they thrive in the space where we think of characters and places that are offscreen having an independent existence, but they are animated entirely through human effort. We have to acknowledge that if we are to speak to what is really happening when we play. This is monumentally important when we talk about GM techniques because the GM cannot afford to act under such illusions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What I have been calling the (shared) fiction and what has at times been called the shared imagined space consists only of what has been established on screen. It has no independent existence until we establish what is true and not true within it. This is important it helps to talk about how this gets established through play in a variety of different sorts of roleplaying games.

While making the setting feel real to the players is important it is in fact always under construction. We are building it as we play in it even if only the GM is actively building it.

One of the things that makes talking about RPGs challenging is that they thrive in the space where we think of characters and places that are offscreen having an independent existence, but they are animated entirely through human effort. We have to acknowledge that if we are to speak to what is really happening when we play. This is monumentally important when we talk about GM techniques because the GM cannot afford to act under such illusions.

I think this is missing how others approach the game. Obviously none of this stuff is real, but to say it only exists the moment it is introduced in play or 'on screen', is simply not the case in a number of playstyles. For one, you often create material between games, with the expecation that that material is pretty much set (certainly you can make changes to it on the fly for a variety of reasons, but I think when most GMs create a setting map, even if the players haven't been to the north, they treat the desert they put there as set, and as existing, even if the players never encounter it). Further the whole concept of living adventure and the world in motion, is the idea that the GM is considering what the NPCs are doing when they are not on screen. Some of us even track this stuff (I have blog entries on how to track NPC movements to create a real sense of objective NPCs moving around independently and just as restrained by speed considerations as the party). Again, none of this is real, but the point is the GM in a living adventure or in a world in motion, is expected to treat those things as being the same level of real as the stuff that happens 'on screen'.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In the game state, the food is created when the check succeeds.
In the story state, the food can be presumed to have existed prior to being found.

Can you please define game state and story state