A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

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.

If the GM has decided, "off screen", that the PC's brother has died, then one thing the character cannot do in the setting is to meet up with this brother.

Less dramatically, if the GM has decided that the PC's brother has travelled far away, then one thing the character cannot do in the setting is to meet his brother on the borders of their ancestral estate.

Those are precisely the sort of GM decisions you are advocating for. As the previous two paragraphs show, they clearly shape what it is that the character can do in the setting. (Which I think was also @hawkeyefan's point not too far upthread.)

So even in your preferred sense of agency they appear to limit it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If the GM has decided, "off screen", that the PC's brother has died, then one thing the character cannot do in the setting is to meet up with this brother.

Less dramatically, if the GM has decided that the PC's brother has travelled far away, then one thing the character cannot do in the setting is to meet his brother on the borders of their ancestral estate.

Those are precisely the sort of GM decisions you are advocating for. As the previous two paragraphs show, they clearly shape what it is that the character can do in the setting. (Which I think was also @hawkeyefan's point not too far upthread.)

So even in your preferred sense of agency they appear to limit it.

But they don't limit your agency in the setting. They limit what outcomes your agency can achieve. Lots of things do. The GM is going to make lots of calls about details in the setting. For example the Gm might decide the printing pres hasn't been invented yet. That is a detail of the setting. That doesn't reduce agency just because you, the player, can't start a printing press company in the setting. Any setting with any kind of definition is going to place limits on what can be achieved, not on agency itself. But agency is about your freedom to move and act within that setting. It is about how much the GM is obstructing or enabling free will. A GM who decides the brother died, isn't impacting your free will. I get that for you agency is about being able to say "I want this to happen in the game" and for there to be a reliable way to make that happen, but that isn't what we mean when are talking about agency (and again agency is a really important concept in the style of play I am talking about, and when people use it, they definitely are not talking about the type of agency you appear to be discussing).

 

[pemerton]

I thought I would see what Wikipedia has to say. Its entry on Agency (sociology) opens with this:

In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure are those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit an agent and their decisions.​

That is consistent with how I teach theoretical sociology. It has no real connection to this thread - no one here is talking about agency vs structure, or related matters like Weber vs Marx. The discussion is about the much more common-sense notion of how much the player is able to influence the play of the game. And given that the crux of the games being discussed - ie RPGing - is shared imagining, the discussion is particularly focused on how much the player is able to contribute to and shape that shared imagining.

That entry has a number of "see also" links, but neither it nor any of them seem to deal with literature.

There is an entry on Character (arts), which opens "In fiction, a character (sometimes known as a fictional character) is a person or other being in a narrative". That seems common sensical enough. But there is no occurrence in that entry of the word "agency". At the end of the opening paragraphs we are told "The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order." Later on there is a discussion of Aristotle's distinction between qualities and actions.

I don't think there are that many RPGs that try to say anything meaningful about the relationship between human individuality and the social order. HeroWars/Quest played in Glorantha might be one. In Classic Traveller characters have a Social Standing stat, and in our game that can be a factor in influence checks, including when they have been used to solve disputes among the players, I guess that says something, though it's not super-profound. The original Oriental Adventures tried to make something similar a part of the game, although the execution falls a bit short of the ambition.

When I think of RPGs that try to tackle the issue of qualities vs actions, the first that comes to mind is Burning Wheel, in part because qualities (Beliefs, Instinct, Traits) can all be changed, and changes in Traits are governed by the Trait Vote which is meant to have regard to actions performed. Likewise actions performed which resolve certain Beliefs are one major trigger for writing new ones.

I don't think D&D has ever tried to tackle either of these issues: with the exception (noted above) of OA, it conveys no sense of social order beyond a bit of set dressing; and there are almost no cases where the qualities of PCs are connected to actions (falling from paladinhood is the only - notorious - exception that comes to mind).

So I'm still at a bit of a loss as to how literary notions of agency bear upon RPGing in general.

 

[pemerton]

If the GM has decided, "off screen", that the PC's brother has died, then one thing the character cannot do in the setting is to meet up with this brother.

Less dramatically, if the GM has decided that the PC's brother has travelled far away, then one thing the character cannot do in the setting is to meet his brother on the borders of their ancestral estate.

Those are precisely the sort of GM decisions you are advocating for. As the previous two paragraphs show, they clearly shape what it is that the character can do in the setting. (Which I think was also @hawkeyefan's point not too far upthread.)

So even in your preferred sense of agency they appear to limit it.

But they don't limit your agency in the setting. They limit what outcomes your agency can achieve. Lots of things do.

There is a vast literature on the nature of action - I drew on some of it in a thread I started about 18 months ago.

If both I look for my brother and I find my brother are true, then they are both descriptions of the same action. There are not two separate things that take place, first the looking and then the finding, any more than is the case when I win and run a race, or when I sit and pass an exam - my winning of the race and my running of the race are the same thing, just differently described; likewise my sitting of the exam and my passing of it.

The GM is going to make lots of calls about details in the setting. For example the Gm might decide the printing pres hasn't been invented yet. That is a detail of the setting. That doesn't reduce agency just because you, the player, can't start a printing press company in the setting. Any setting with any kind of definition is going to place limits on what can be achieved, not on agency itself

How does this relate to your "literary" notion of agency? Eg if there is no printing press invented, then it's not just that my PC can't start a printing endeavour; s/he can't even try to.

But agency is about your freedom to move and act within that setting. It is about how much the GM is obstructing or enabling free will. A GM who decides the brother died, isn't impacting your free will. I get that for you agency is about being able to say "I want this to happen in the game" and for there to be a reliable way to make that happen, but that isn't what we mean when are talking about agency (and again agency is a really important concept in the style of play I am talking about, and when people use it, they definitely are not talking about the type of agency you appear to be discussing).

We are now back in the notion of agency equals being able to declare actions for one's character. In what RPGing do you think this doesn't exist? Can you please give examples of RPGs where the player does not have the freedom to say (eg) "I look for my brother"?

 

[Bedrockgames]

How does this relate to your "literary" notion of agency? Eg if there is no printing press invented, then it's not just that my PC can't start a printing endeavour; s/he can't even try to.

I just said it was informed by that definition. The defintion people on my side are using is your ability to do things within a given setting.

But if you are seriously making this argument, I find it a little extreme. I mean, basically by this logic only settings that have and allow everything maximize agency. That is wish fulfillment, not agency in my view.

In the case of the printing press, yes, you can't try to start a printing press company if printing presses don't exist. But that doesn't impact your ability to do things in the setting. One of the setting conceits is: no printing press. But within a setting with no printing presses, you could still try to start a scriptorium or engage in a similar venture. But not being able to do something because a device hasn't been invented, doesn't strike me as interfering with agency.

 

[pemerton]

Here are two examples, one from actual play and the other from actual film.

A player establishing truths about the fictional setting which are not just truths about bodily motions performed by his PC: In my 4e D&D campaign that ran to 30th level (and that has been on hiatus for 3 or 4 years now due to one player's unavailability in that time), there was one PC with a significant access to rituals and a strong Arcana skill: the invoker/wizard. There was another character who had limited access to rituals and a modest Arcana skill: the sorcerer.

Quite often the player of the invoker/wizard would tell the table, speaking as/for his character, how magic worked in the (imagined) world of our game, and what sorts of actions would or wouldn't make sense and would or wouldn't be possible. Sometimes he would to do this as part o framing his own action declarations, or in preparation for framing them. Sometimes he would do this to inform or even correct the player of the sorcerer.

The invoker/wizard PC had a feat that gave a bonus to checks involving rituals. As written by the designers, I think the word "rituals" was meant to encompass the formal game elements falling under that label. But the player of the invoker/wizard - ie the same guy who would set out his theories of how magic worked - would decide if any given check he was making that was related to his PC's manipulation of magic counted as a ritual, or not, and would apply the bonus accordingly.

This caused no problems in 7 years of gameplay. I don't recall any particular time when there was disagreement - eg by the player of the sorcerer - but if there was we must have resolved it pretty straightforwardly, given I can't remember it.

I consider what I have just described to be a manifestation of player agency. I am also very confident that it supported rather than hampered the player's inhabitation of his PC (given that he was playing a PC who, by the end of the campaign, had an Arcana bonus that would rival most gods' let alone any mortal's). My own view is that the gameworld would not have felt more "real" to that player if, instead of him playing as I have described, I as GM provided all that information about what was possible using magic via second person narration.

A film with a "chance meeting": In the film A Knight's Tale, Heath Ledger's character William Thatcher is jousting in disguise as a noble knight. He is found out, barred from jousting, and put in the stocks.

Prior to this, at a joust fairly early in the film, he has met and befriended Prince Edward. When he is in the stocks, Prince Edward turns up and announces to all assembled that his personal genealogists have looked into William's ancestry and while he seems to be of humble origins in fact he has noble ancestry. This lie from an important friend means that William is released from the stocks and able to joust again.

What RPGs have the capacity to produce a scene like this other than by sheer GM fiat? I can think of two that can do so easily: Burning Wheel, using the Circles mechanic; and HeroWars/Quest, using a check made on a relationship.

In Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP that sort of social connection could (in various ways) contribute to a dice pool used to reduce or eliminate an In the Stocks complication, but I don't think it would be straightforward to have it play out in the particular way it does in the film (ie the Prince telling a lie that changes the character's status and thereby achieves his freedom). Prince Valiant has the concept of a Rescue episode, but these are GM initiated, not player initiated. It also has an Escape Bonds special effect which a player could trigger by spending a Storyteller Certificate, but the closest that gets is that a tool might be smuggled to the player. It doesn't allow the player to stipulate that a particular NPC turns up. (Once the GM has decided that the NPC turns up, Prince Valiant does have a system - a Presence check - that could determine that the NPC tells the lie to help the character.)

If there are RPGs that could handle this other than via GM decision-making that I'm missing, I'm very happy to be corrected.

Now, is a RPGing experience going to be better if such a scene happens in virtue of GM decision-making rather than player action declaration? To me it doesn't seem so. Is a RPG system better if it doesn't permit such episodes to occur? Again, to me it doesn't seem so.

 

[pemerton]

But if you are seriously making this argument, I find it a little extreme. I mean, basically by this logic only settings that have and allow everything maximize agency. That is wish fulfillment, not agency in my view.

In the case of the printing press, yes, you can't try to start a printing press company if printing presses don't exist. But that doesn't impact your ability to do things in the setting. One of the setting conceits is: no printing press.

Here is the alternative to your bolded assertion: the setting conceits - genre, tropes, etc - are settled consensually. Which is to say, are themselves a result of the exercise of agency by all participants.

 

[Bedrockgames]

We are now back in the notion of agency equals being able to declare actions for one's character. In what RPGing do you think this doesn't exist? Can you please give examples of RPGs where the player does not have the freedom to say (eg) "I look for my brother"?

You keep framing things a certain way, and I really don't agree with your framing or paraphrasing of me at all. It isn't just about being able to declare actions, it is about being able to have freedom in the setting. Most RPGs don't rule against agency, but countless adventure structures and playstyles do go against agency. My whole point earlier was the reason I went back to a lot of the older content and searched for new adventure structures is because the ones that were prevalent at the time, to me, felt like they were hampering agency. So this is largely about playstyles, not systems (though certainly many games have guidelines that run counter to agency). For me maximizing agency isn't about finding the right system. I don't need rules that encourage agency. I just need systems that don't interfere with it. While few RPGs would stop you from looking for your brother, plenty of GMs, who are focused on say having a particular adventure set up or who want to keep on you the path your on, might not take such an attempt seriously should you try it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here is the alternative to your bolded assertion: the setting conceits - genre, tropes, etc - are settled consensually. Which is to say, are themselves a result of the exercise of agency by all participants.

Again, that isn't what I am talking about when I say agency. Now if you like that, fair enough. But it has zero connection to what people on my side of this discussion mean when they say agency. For me, I get no greater sense of agency by participating in the setting design and setting genre physics. Doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy it. I just don't think it is agency to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think going back to the roots, agency came up for RPG's first in the context of railroading. People at this early time were talking about agency and railroading and didn't care at all about whether the player could control any other part of the fiction (or control it in any other way). They were simply concerned with the player being able to control the character and for that to have the possibility of causing important changes in the fictional world. When they used the word agency that's what they were referring to. When I talk about agency that's what I tend to mean as well.

With this definition, something that takes away player control of their character is a removal of agency. The only time this is deemed acceptable is when the character itself is also experiencing a lack of agency. The reason for this is because it preserves character advocacy (a separate play goal).

With this definition, the player having control of non-character details isn't agency as it's not the player's control of the character that is causing the important changes in the fictional world.

I think it's okay in the present to talk about other types of agency. However, there's always the question of whether the techniques being used to add a different type of agency to a game are also impacting the historical type of agency described above. I think the techniques that we see being pushed back on the most are the techniques that do actually impact this kind of agency.