A Question Of Agency?

[hawkeyefan]

That varies by group and game system. If you're playing in a published setting, the setting exists in the minds of players and GM - usually not congruent views across players, either.

Sure, published settings already exist as ideas. But the but about congruency is, I think, why the term “shared fiction” is so important in this discussion. And that is brought into existence through play.

This is NOT congruent with my experience.

Players often have to give in to the GM's view; unless and until the group disintegrates, the only person who's view matters is the GM.

I disagree here, although I’m not sure if you’re asserting the above or only pointing out that this is often asserted by some folks.

I think @Campbell included a bit about the GM introducing something, then the players asked some questions, and then the GM revised what he had introduced. An example of players “vetting” the GM’s ideas, which is something that does happen, although far less than a GM vetting the players’ contributions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

From what you’ve described, it sounds like they have the base amount I’d expect in most RPGs.

My assessment could be wrong, though. It’s hard to judge based on how you post. You shared some examples of your games, but they were largely just descriptions of what happened in the fiction. They didn't discuss process or mechanics or how these events came to be.

If we have a different definition of agency, which we do, then this point is going to be hard for us to reach agreement on.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I disagree with this. I mean, they may exist in the sense that they are ideas. But as far as being part of the game, no, they are not part of the game’s fiction until introduced on some way.

I understand why you prefer this method. The appeal is not lost on me, nor is it something I’m unfamiliar with. Where I disagree is that it makes a fictional world”more real” or that it gives more agency to the players.

The whole reason we are making this distinction of realness is to show that something is established in the setting, and the players have agency to explore it. I fail to see how something that is established in the 'shared fiction' is less real than something the GM has pinned down in the setting as existing, which if the players find it, they will discover, and if they don't, they will not. This is important because it means the choices the players make around this discovery matter. I am not saying this is the only way to do things. But I am saying, you guys keep defining things in a way that defines our style out of the agency conversation. And since agency is a priority of our style, I think fighting over the meaning of real and existing in the game, is important here. The game isn't just what everyone at the table agrees is going on in the setting. The game is stuff the players don't see or know about. Even something random, like an encounter table, exists as potential in the game. But stuff the GM has definitively hammered out and placed: that exists in the game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

.

I understand why you prefer this method. The appeal is not lost on me, nor is it something I’m unfamiliar with. Where I disagree is that it makes a fictional world”more real” or that it gives more agency to the players.

Because the definitions of agency and real you are using, reflect the style you are advocating. I mean you've placed the very idea of realness in a game around the idea of shared fiction, and you've essentially adopted the sociology definition of agency, rather than the literary one, because that also fits the notion of maximizing player power outside the setting. Now, if you experience more agency in that style of play, I think that is fine, and if the kind of agency you value is agency that effectively just equals overall mechanical and narrative power, or some other combination of things, that is fair too. I just don't think your view of this is as objective as you think.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You said that not changing details prior to introducing them is crucial to this approach and it’s why a GM using this style would not do so.

I am pretty sure I said something to the effect of "in that instance". I wasn't saying this is the only thing going on. And importantly I was talking about 'that style', which I hope you will appreciate may not be my own style. I was being cautious in my language for a reason. And again, my point was to show how a style like this one, using a method like that, produces something just as real as the 'shared fiction', even if it is off screen. I also tried to clarify what I meant as the subject went on, and tried to talk more precisely about it. Look at everythign I was saying about how I would run such a game. Pinning down details is important, and if I have a detail pinned down (like there is a master named Vengeful Swan who lives in the northern peak, I wouldn't suddenly change it to Head-Taking God, because I wanted a more ferocious foe for the party as they didn't have that many encounters, nor would I change it to Meek Archer because the party was already worn down by encounters). But it is called sandbox and living adventure/world in motion for a reason, it isn't just about the stuff you have on the page, those things are animate. And there are going to be times when the players go somewhere you haven't prepped. Now again, in interest of making player choices matter, the moment something new arises or the moment the players go somewhere unplanned for, I do try to get as many concrete details down and set them, just so I am not inventing things in response to their choices (i want choices like going left or right, or being kind or cruel in a given social encounter, to matter). I've also spoken about the use of things like random tables. There is a lot more. And sometimes you invent things on the spot, for a variety of reasons. You aren't always pinning things down. When I do that, I like make decisions based on existing things in the setting and on logic. This is one of the reasons why I am so interested in things like trade goods in my settings, it helps inform many of my on the fly choices.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You introduce him in the game. In the same session, for whatever reason, you need to introduce a shop owner, so you make one up on the fly and intro her on the spot.

Is one of these more “real” than the other?

See my fishmonger example.

I would say mostly not. They are roughly as real because I also put effort into the characters I make on the fly and I establish important details about them in my notebook quickly (so the players are interacting with a concrete character). But prior to introduction, the villain is more real. He is there, in the setting, doing things. He has more concrete information in the game (stats, background,etc). He has a place. And that does matter in terms of things like player choices.

One of the chief things I've tried to develop as a skill running these kinds of games, is giving on the fly creations as much of that as I can. But these two kinds of characters are still different.

 

[pemerton]

In the mind of the GM, in the notes of the GM, and in the logic that the GM uses to extrapolate details and determine accidental qualities of the things in the setting. If I decide Rupert the Elf lives at 23 Chestnut Street on Monday, and the players ask me who lives at 23 chestnut street on Thursday, his existence there wasn't fluid prior to them asking.

the aim of the GM is to fold all those things into the living world, and to treat them as live forces. For example a random encounter doesn't exist until you roll it, that is for certain. But when I roll a random encounter I do try to give it a sound reason for being there. And if that encounter result is an existing NPC, then I look to that NPCs motivations, etc. But this is different from a sect that I've established in my notes as existing in Flower Bridge Village, at Red Lotus Manor. That exists in my mind and in my notes before the players go there or ask about it.

<snip>

if the players go into town looking for a fish monger, I make a quick mental map of whether that is reasonable (is there a water source with plentiful fish), then I decide if the there is a fish monger, who he is, some key details like his wife is cheating on him with the proprietor of the Fragrant Word Teahouse, etc. I do that because I want that stuff set in order to create the impression of a real world and to force myself to have fidelity to that world. It is true these details are being made up, but whether they are being made up two weeks before or two seconds before, it is coming into being in the setting prior to the players experiencing it directly.

The question then arises, what are the various processes to establish something in the shared fiction?
The one process I want to focus on is the one where the DM maintains a separate fictional space that's separate from the shared fiction and reveals details from that fictional space as the PC's encounter them. The PC's actions form a feedback loop into that separate fictional space that affect change there which then gets revealed to they players as the encounter those elements and so on.

In this particular area, the fiction does exist as fiction apart from the players. It preexists their shared fiction. So while it's not yet established as shared fiction, it's still the fiction that their shared fiction is based upon.

<snip>

In a game where the players don't have full knowledge of all the fiction that exists they cannot add a minor or trivial detail to the fiction on their own as they can't ever be certain that such a detail is actually trivial or minor.

Note: I think they may very well add trivial and minor details in their individual own fictions but pushing these details into the realm of the shared fiction can cause problems in a game using this style of shared fiction generation.

I think that everyone posting in this thread is very familiar with the approach to RPGing described in these posts. It is pretty canonical for D&D since the early-to-mid-80s; for RQ and RM as I have always encountered them (other than some of my own RM play); and I suspect is very typical for play of GURPS, HERO, Star Wars, and a lot of Traveller. And that's just to name some games I thought of now.

As @hawkeyefan and @Ovinomancer have posted, it seems odd to describe this approach in which the GM has all this authorial power, and yet to deny that this authorial power has implications or establishes limits on player agency. I mean, two such limits have already come out at length in this thread: I as a player can't have a character recollect the location of Evard's tower unless the GM has already written that into his/her fiction; and I as a player can't have my PC's hope to meet his brother have any chance of coming true unless the GM decides to stage the encounter.

As @hawkeyefan has noted, it also seems odd to describe a process of play in which a significant part of the player-side experience is declaring exploration-type actions that trigger the GM to reveal his/her hitherto private/secret fiction, and yet to react so strongly to the description of that as RPGing-to-find-out-what-is-in-the-GM's-notes. I mean, yes, sometimes those notes are written up in loving detail and sometimes they're being elucidated or even made up as things go along, but the basic idea is the same.

 

[pemerton]

under the style I am discussing, the GM wouldn’t make that change.

When does the GM's work go from being draft to being finished?

 

[pemerton]

This kind description is dismissive of the style and fails to understand what it is really about

Why is it dismissive? Re-read your posts and @FrogReaver's post. It's a literal summary of what you both describe!

 

[Bedrockgames]

It just seems that, as you’ve described it, most decision points for the fiction belong to the GM. Sure the players can go to this city or that area, but what they run into will always be what the GM wants it to be. How those elements respond to the PCs will be up to the GM. How social interactions will go is up to the GM, with perhaps some influence based on the player’s choice of description. And so on.

The bolded isn't true. This is why lots of GMs use encounter tables for example. My cities usually have multiple level encounter tables, including specific NPCs who live in the city, as well as specific gangs and sects. The way I work it is the players make Survival rolls going from different areas of the city, and if they fail, I would roll on one of the tables. The result is usually not something that I want in that moment. It is just what I get, and I try to get it to make sense. But the players also have the power to go looking for people, to make a point of moving through the city cautiously, or to hire guards to make sure they are not accosted by people. I think my major issue with how you describe the style I am descrbing to you, is you describe it very reductively.

Also, how social interactions go, to my mind here, is very much in the hands of the players. Yes the GM is running the NPCs (the way PCs are run by players), but you are not just picking NPC reactions you want, you are supposed to be giving honest consideration to what the players say, do, etc. That matters. The way you describe it, it just sounds like the GM decrees the NPCs reactions. Anyone who has had an involved RP exchange in a game, knows it isn't a simple matter of fiat. It is a much more subtle, involved process. Again, here you just seem to be minimizing how much impact you have on this as a player. Obviously all that impact is through your character in this style, but that is still substantial (and to my mind feels more like having agency in the real world).

Even when setting elements are merely declared by the GM, it is not simply what the GM wants. It is usually what the GM believes ought to be there (and that could vary by style, as there is more than one approach). That is a very important distinction. When you say it is just what the GM wants to be there. It produces a very different kind of game, where everything is a product of the GM's will. But a GM who is making those kinds of choices in service to something like a living world, a living adventure or the drama sandbox I mentioned earlier, isn't simply advancing his will.