A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

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.

There's a missing temporal component here. My winning of the race presupposes and builds in an earlier action my running of the race. Ditto for the exam example: it's mighty hard to pass an exam without first sitting it.

The brother example is a bit different: I find my brother does not necessarily come with a built-in I look for my brother in that you may have found him by sheer chance without looking for him at all.

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.

Heh - yes she can!

The only new spell I've ever had one of my-as-player PCs research and invent in a game was to do just this: Pagey's Pages (a.k.a. Manywrite) copies the mundane writing on one page or sheet on to numerous other blank pages. Not much use for printing books but great for copying maps, handbills, wanted posters, leaflets, etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This has actually been a recurring point against your arguments, you've just missed it. So long as the GM controls the narration of both success and failure, the player is losing agency. They may retain some, but it's difficult to detect against manipulation like Illusionism. Compared to a player that can enforce half of the resolution space, meaning they can assert what can happen on a success, this is most likely a lower agency position. There's a weird space where the GM is allowing the players to define all success states in mainstream play, but this is difficult to do given how games like 5e structure play and require a level of necessary prep. What typically happens is that even a good GM trying hard to allow players to define the success state still temper this against the needs of the game and their own consideration of what should/could happen. This reduces agency.

We are not missing it. We understand that, if we use your definition of agency, this is the case. But we are using a different definition of agency (which I think Frogreaver made a good point about being designed in response to railroading). The issue isn't a failure of one side to understand the other's argument

 

[Bedrockgames]

. Because, there are trade-offs and player agency isn't a moral or value statement until you are using your own preferences to select your game.

Yes it is. Agency is very much a morally loaded term. When people on my said they were interested in trying to increase agency due to adventure structures they were encountering, it was because they were bothered by them. We felt anger towards the constraints, and while it is just a game and no one is suggesting this translates into real life issues, it is fundamentally about giving players freedom (and freedom isn't a morally neutral concept). Further your side has clearly painted this conversation in moral terms when it has discussed the way our side approaches GMing. And even if it isn't given moral value, agency is a valued term, and it is taken as a value statement to say this game gives agency and this one doesn't. And not to beat a dead horse, but the reason people who like this style are taking issue is because our style grew up around the idea of enhancing agency. It is an important aim of the style. But your response is to insist on a defintion of agency we don't even use, in order to force us to agree with you that your approach offers the most agency (and then you keep turning around and saying 'but we're just coldly analyzing, there is nothing wrong with your style of play'). I don't see cold analysis, I see analysis that is geared towards the conclusions you've already reached about styles and games.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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

Me too. This is largely what I was talking about when I said I was fed up with the adventure structures that were prevalent in the early d20 boom, and felt like I could just hand my players my notes, because it wasn't really meant to turn out that different from group to group. When I sit down to play, I want to have no idea what will happen and where things will go. So I want any module or setting material to be built to provide that kind of play

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Neither do flat-earthers. Sorry if that makes you feel slighted, but it's true.

I want everyone to take a moment to appreciate the irony of this comment by an internet expert who is telling @Bedrockgames, an actual RPG publisher, how RPGs work.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I want everyone to take a moment to appreciate the irony of this comment by an internet expert who is telling @Bedrockgames, an actual RPG publisher, how RPGs work.

Just to be clear, I am an indie publisher with a very niche audience (you can't throw a cat without hitting an indie designer these days ). It isn't like I've put out something that everyone here has heard of. I don't think publishing stuff should protect me from criticism at all (I have never claimed to be the smartest guy in the room on this topic). I just think comparing anyone in the thread to a flat-earther for taking a playstyle position, or for not using a term like agency in the same way, is an unfair characterization.

 

[Aldarc]

I want everyone to take a moment to appreciate the irony of this comment by an internet expert who is telling @Bedrockgames, an actual RPG publisher, how RPGs work.

Can you either explain how this qualifies as irony or how am I doing what you are accusing me of doing in the post you are quoting? Or are you showing your true colors by choosing to make baseless personal attacks? Based on our mostly positive interactions in other threads, I would hope that you would be better than that.

 

[Campbell]

We are not missing it. We understand that, if we use your definition of agency, this is the case. But we are using a different definition of agency (which I think Frogreaver made a good point about being designed in response to railroading). The issue isn't a failure of one side to understand the other's argument

What's the solution then? How can I talk about the things I want to talk about on these boards?

I mean I have been upfront about exactly what I meant from the beginning. I have tried to reframe the conversation innumerable times. I keep getting told that instead of speaking to a player's ability to enact meaningful change in the (shared) fiction that I must instead talk about their freedom to explore. I keep being told that talking about games as games is denigrating your playstyle when I have no intention to.

I'm expressing my genuine perspective in the best way I know how here. There is no equivocation here. Feel free to tell me how you think I am misguided or offer a different perspective. I will listen. Please do not question my integrity.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Can you either explain how this qualifies as irony or how am I doing what you are accusing me of doing in the post you are quoting? Or are you showing your true colors by choosing to make baseless personal attacks? Based on our mostly positive interactions in other threads, I would hope that you would be better than that.

I was not the one who brought the flat-earther comparison. Perhaps we could just agree that throwing such around is not terribly constructive?

 

[Aldarc]

Just to be clear, I am an indie publisher with a very niche audience (you can't throw a cat without hitting an indie designer these days ). It isn't like I've put out something that everyone here has heard of. I don't think publishing stuff should protect me from criticism at all (I have never claimed to be the smartest guy in the room on this topic). I just think comparing anyone in the thread to a flat-earther for taking a playstyle position, or for not using a term like agency in the same way, is an unfair characterization.

It is not that your position is comparable to a flat-earther. The point is to illustrate that even flat-earthers, a position we can (hopefully) mutually agree is absurd, think they have coherent positions.