A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know what you see as the difference between agency and power. In this context they seem to be more-or-less synonymous.

I wouldn't say they are at all. If they were there wouldn't be any disagreement. But we have two different definitions of agency, both in use by a large number of gamers.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You also seem to count finding one's brother which is introduced into the fiction as the result of resolving a check as authorship, whereas you don't similarly classify defeating an Orc in combat which is introduced into the fiction as the result of resolving a check. I don't see what property the first possesses but the second lacks such that the first but not the second is authorship. Both contribute to the content of a fiction.

We have been over this dead orc a dozen or so times, and I've tried to make clear, I don't consider it a compelling argument.

The orc has been introduced, and therefore you can try to kill it with your attack. You are not setting the stakes of that action though. Your action is an attack. The dice, the GM and the combat procedure determine if that results in a miss, loss of HP, death, etc. The brother could be anywhere in the world, perhaps even dead, or for all we know, on a demiplane somewhere. But the problem is really more in how you are presenting these examples than in a major difference between them. Your ability to find your brother through a check is going to be limited by the reality of where he is or is not. Again, like the orc, you are loading the outcome into your check. You don't get to say "I roll to kill the orc" and if you succeed on your attack that automatically means the orc dies just because that is how you phrased it. By the same token, if you say "I make a gather information roll to find my brother", that doesn't mean on a success you find your brother. It means the GM gives you what information might be available about your brother in the area where you made the check. You can't just take what is in effect a sensory skill for the setting, and use it to author stuff through clever phrasing of the roll.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Suppose you're correct. Then the apposite word for my description would be incomplete. Not condescending. Nor dismissive.

Again, I think your description is both incomplete and unflattering

 

[pemerton]

But your character, and the memory don't really exist.

Nothing in RPGing really exists. My BW game is not special in this respect.

If you ask the GM, Does my character remember anything about Evard's tower, and the GM then tells you information about Evard (from his/her notes, or reading from the module, or making it up on the spot, or whatever other method of GM-content-transmission you prefer), it's still not a real memory. And the character still doesn't exist. And neither does the tower.

The contrast is between processes of establishing, as components of the fiction, (i) that Evard's tower exists, and (ii) that my PC remembers where it is.

Neither process will give rise to a real tower or a real memory about it in the head of a real person. (Unless you count the GM remembering what s/he wrote in his/her notes. But that is certainly not something the player experiences.) One process involves the player being told something by the GM. The other does not.

 

[pemerton]

Recollecting something isn't agency in an RPG, at least not the way I am using the term. That is entirely internal.

Why are internal features of the player characters not relevant to agency? Even if one uses the literary notion, they're hugely important - central to analysing the agency of the protagonist in a drama is making sense of his/her internal life.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Why are internal features of the player characters not relevant to agency? Even if one uses the literary notion, they're hugely important - central to analysing the agency of the protagonist in a drama is making sense of his/her internal life.

let me be clear, fake, made up memories generating setting content are not important to agency: but the GM telling you how your character feels, very likely would be an infringement on agency.

 

[pemerton]

You don't get to say "I roll to kill the orc" and if you succeed on your attack that automatically means the orc dies just because that is how you phrased it.

Which RPG are you talking about?

In Burning Wheel a player can do what you say can't be done. It's also a possibility in Prince Valiant (though more often it would be used for unhorsing rather than killing). It's also a possibility in 4e if the Orc is statted as a minion. And whether the Orc is statted as a minion is not necessarily just the GM's decision. In my 4e GMing I've adjudicated skill checks which have as their outcome the "minionisation" of a NPC. And I'd be surprised if I'm unique in that respect.

The orc has been introduced, and therefore you can try to kill it with your attack.

This doesn't seem relevant to the question I asked. There is no real Orc. There is no real attack. There are words spoken and dice rolled and numbers tracked and more words spoken. How is it not authorship?

Your ability to find your brother through a check is going to be limited by the reality of where he is or is not. Again, like the orc, you are loading the outcome into your check.

This goes back to the question of what "reality" of where he is or not? Given that you reject the notion that such "reality" might be established as the outcome of action resolution, I assume you mean what the GM has written down or what the GM has decided or maybe what the GM determines by a roll on the random NPC location table.

Those all seem to be processes of establishing a fiction (which, in this context, = authorship). In the case of the brother, you want it to be authored by the GM unilaterally rather than via an action resolution process. Whereas in the case of the Orc you are happy to go the other way (but there's no reason in principle why the GM couldn't just decide that the Orc parries the attack, or that the GM couldn't roll on a random NPC defensive manoeuvre table and get the result that the Orc parries the blow and disarms the PC).

Nothing you are pointing to about your preferences for different processes of authorship explains why the player's ability to bring it about, via game play, that the fiction contains a dead Orc is not a process of authorship. What else would it be?

 

[pemerton]

fake, made up memories generating setting content are not important to agency

Where did you learn this? In the same place that you learned that fake, made-up descriptions of reading a fishmongers secret notes to his mistress are important to agency?

The whole game consists of fake, made-up things. I don't know why you think yours matter more than mine.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Where did you learn this? In the same place that you learned that fake, made-up descriptions of reading a fishmongers secret notes to his mistress are important to agency?

The whole game consists of fake, made-up things. I don't know why you think yours matter more than mine.

I'm confused as to why he's denying that the character is real whilst simultaneously insisting on using literary agency. That's utterly incoherent.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm confused as to why he's denying that the character is real whilst simultaneously insisting on using literary agency. That's utterly incoherent.

Literary characters are not real either, yet their agency is still something you can talk about. But my point was the literary term informs the RPG term. I was just pointing out that the term being used by one side basically is pulled from sociology, while the other seems to be taking it more from literature. It is just a matter of is agency about what your character can do in the setting or is it about what the player can do. I don't think my position is incoherent at all. You might disagree with it, or you might misunderstand it, but it is a coherent point of view.