A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

Also, in my campaigns, if I have a different group of players, what happens is totally different as well. I have to playtest content and run much of the same setting/campaign book material. It always ends up being about different things. They take place in the same location, but a location can be home to infinite stories.

side note

To me this is a sign of a well-designed adventure or module, if it plays out much differently when you run different groups of players through it.

/side note

 

[Lanefan]

Why is it condescending or dismissive?

Whereas I assume that your many references over the years to "Schroedinger's ogre" and the like are neither.

Though I understand the reasoning behind it, Schroedinger's ogre isn't mine: someone else came up with that one.

That said, I may have now and then referred to the idea of a fully no-myth [can't really call it a setting, but] setting as being Schroedinger's world.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Neither do flat-earthers. Sorry if that makes you feel slighted, but it's true. People rarely, if ever, believe that they hold incoherent positions. It's psychologically perturbing and discomforting to do so. Everyone has "incoherent" positions that frequently masquerade themselves publicly as coherent ones. Simply declaring that your position is coherent doesn't mean that the position passes the test of coherency. Plus, it hardly seems like it would be in a position to be so easily misunderstood by critics when you also position your preferences and views with loaded terms like "traditional" and "majority," as most are people here are incredibly well-versed with traditional styles of play that form the bulk of games out there. However, just because a playstyle is "traditional" does not mean that it is "coherent."

And you are not a psychiatrist vetting my mind for incoherence. Sorry but the arrogance in this post is really annoying. And this attitude is a real problem for me. The degree to which you are certain about your ideas in gaming, to the point that you compare a person to a flat-earther, which is just a scientifically wrong opinion, for taking a view on a subject as subjective as gaming style, which here is largely pivoting on peoples use of obscure terminology, just bothers me. I don't mind having a disagreement over playstyle. I do mind being told my view is incoherent when it isn't, and when I have been happy to explain it. What I keep getting is people restating my position in ways I don't find accurate.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here's the thing: what does @FrogReaver, @Crimson Longinus, or even @Bedrockgames stand to possibly "lose" when it comes to their own games from agreeing that either you, @pemerton, @hawkeyefan, @Fenris-77, @Hriston, or whoever else may be right when it comes to the player agency? How would their own, respective games be impacted (or threatened) in anyway if they agreed that their preferred games may have less player agency than other games on the market? There couldn't possibly be such opposition to this all if there were no stakes to this debate, right?

Because your conclusion about agency paints a very misleading picture of what our games are about, and about what agency means to people. My experience matches frogreavers, which is most people in the hobby have been using the definition of agency we are using (because it arose in response to railroading as a problem). Now you are taking a term which has that meaning, then introducing a new meaning, which I think is a misleading bit of rhetoric (it is also the think your side does in just about every since one of these threads to paint your style as having the most X when X is a priority or highly valued concept). It is also a form of equivocation (which is also incredibly common in these discussions).

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's not as if the rest of us have stopped playing D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, OSR, or other more mainstream games with enjoyment as a result of our respective viewpoints. I personally find it baffling but I love playing different games. Because much like card or board games, I hold the uncontroversial opinion that different TTRPGs do different things well. And when it comes to TTRPGs, you learn a lot about your own preferences, play styles, or even how to improve your "art" as a player or GM through playing other games or even exploring other modes of play with the same game.

No one here is expressing any issues with the games you like to play, and plenty of us have pointed to games that occupy similar space that we also really like. In fact many of us have expressed curiosity about your games (which gets diminished a bit because of the way you guys often dismiss our ideas). Further I have stated a number of times i don't play mainstream games or D&D. This is about a style of play to me, not about a system or what the majority of the hobby is doing.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Is it bad that I am amused by how many times someone posts "You can't do X in a RPG!" and then someone else responds with "Burning Wheel does that!"

The only thing is, this isn't what is usually being said actually. It a miscommunication. For example there was an instance where I said something like that about one of Pemerton's points, becuase when he first made it, it was in relation to D&D and about what D&D did (he was trying to suggest that the kind of mechanic found in burning wheel has long been present in D&D early in the discussion). So when he raised the same example, I assumed he was doing so in reference to D&D. I think the other side of the debate likes to paint us as narrowminded, or only having experience of the game through D&D. Now most of us don't play Burning Wheel, but we have and do play other games, and some of us don't even play D&D that much at all.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Or...perhaps he can, given a little out-of-box thinking followed by some spell power from either yourself-as-PC or someone else.

In D&D, a Commune spell could tell you which plane or land of the dead your brother's spirit wound up in, then a Planeshift spell could get you there (assuming it's a plane whose environment won't kill you on the spot), followed by some combination of scry-teleport or divination spells or sheer dumb luck to find and meet your brother's spirit.

I've seen this done in play. The spirit being sought was that of one of my PCs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Are you able to provide actual examples, rather than high-level description? As far as I can tell from your descriptions, you are contrasting your preferred approach with super-railroady AP-style play. Is that what you are meaning to convey?

I provided a number of examples, and linked to session and campaign entries on my blog multiple times. I have been pretty consistently contrasting my style with things like GM as storyteller (the approach you saw a lot of in the 90s), plot centered play, play centered around scenes (for instance games like Gumshoe, which I like), adventure paths, 3E style encounter structured adventures, but also any form of railroad (an adventure path is an adventure structure but only becomes a railroad if the players are prevented from not engaging it, or deviating from it).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also, I'd be interested to know what you mean by taking such an attempt seriously. I've posted multiple times in this thread about the GM taking suggestions. Do you mean that, or something else?

I simply mean, when the players say they want to try to do X, truly thinking about that request in a serious way (not simply rushing to a judgment on it, not blocking it because it is convenient for what you had planned, etc).

 

[Bedrockgames]

What happens if the GM on day 1, writing his/her secret notes, decides that the brother is dead, and then in a session a week later on day 8 the player decides to have his/her PC look for his/her brother. Does it count as taking that seriously if the GM goes on to adjudicate (let's say) 3 hours of play where the upshot of that is that the player learns what the GM had already decided and had already known, namely, that the brother is dead?

Yes it is. Taking it seriously isn't about seriously considering changing the setting details (at least not in the style of play I am describing). If the brother is dead, then he is dead. You have established that. What I am talking about is seriously considering whatever actions within that setting the players seek to take. This can extend to things undetermined in the setting, but the answer is ideally based on some criteria other than, this is what I want to happen (there should be a rationale for it).

Look, I've explained this style to you many times. I feel like you probably already understand what I am saying, and I am always a little skeptical when you ask questions. And I have explained how I do things to you. I am answering your question, but if this question is just a set up to attack my approach, I am not going to answer the next post.