A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

The idea that agency is achieved through gameplay is something I consider fundamental to OSR sandboxes as I play and run them. The idea that as you play a game the player achieves more skill and gains more mastery over their environment is a crucial part of play. So I think scenario design is an often overlooked part of agency here. For me navigating the environment in that sort of play should require cleverness and be fundamentally fair. What I mean by fair is that actions should not be blocked by things that players have no chance to learn. The text of Moldvay B/X is a damn near perfect distillation of these concepts in action.

I have played Moldvay more than I've combed through the GM section. Can you clarify which portion of the red set you are talking about so I can review it?

 

[Campbell]

A common example of autonomy without agency that we often see in video games are these big elaborate dialog trees made to make so you feel you are speaking for your character and your words make an impact. However these trees in some games almost always lead to the same narrative result. I have experienced the tabletop version of this many times. It's pretty common for some GMs to let you basically tilt at windmills for a little bit before they do what they were going to do anyway.

Another fairly common thing is freedom to go anywhere, but the narrative only moves forward when you do the right thing at the right place. Some folks will argue until they are blue in the face that the tabletop equivalent of this is not railraiding. I say it really does not matter what you call it sure as hell is not high agency play.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For me a core part of any game is the pursuit of mastery. There are objectives and reward systems that provide a positive feedback loop to let you know when you are playing the game well. XP for gold is one of the best designed reward mechanisms ever designed in my opinion because it drives you to take action, but leaves what actions entirely in the players' hands.

I agree on the XP. It is one of the reasons I give XP for finding manuals in wuxia campaigns (since finding them is something you see a lot of in the genre).

 

[FrogReaver]

A common example of autonomy without agency that we often see in video games are these big elaborate dialog trees made to make so you feel you are speaking for your character and your words make an impact. However these trees in some games almost always lead to the same narrative result. I have experienced the tabletop version of this many times. It's pretty common for some GMs to let you basically tilt at windmills for a little bit before they do what they were going to do anyway.

Another fairly common thing is freedom to go anywhere, but the narrative only moves forward when you do the right thing at the right place. Some folks will argue until they are blue in the face that the tabletop equivalent of this is not railraiding. I say it really does not matter what you call it sure as hell is not high agency play.

Many dialog options do have an impact in those games. Will they likely change the whole plot. Not in most games. But sometimes they effect the ending. Sometimes they affect what characters live and die. Sometimes they effect fairly significant things in the game.

other than that I’m pretty much on the same page.

 

[Fenris-77]

I like to engage in old school hex crawls from time to time (because I find fun and value in it), but I would say, mostly I use hexes to measure distance rather than to crawl. And I take a light hand with hexes (though it does depend on the setting and genre). Presently I run mostly wuxia campaigns. Also most of my campaigns take place in areas that are civilized, maybe with a frontier, but a known frontier. So mostly the players are doing things like saying they want to go north to the City of Dee (and they tell me what path they are planning based on their knowledge of the map). Then generally each Hex (depends on the scale) would be a Survival Check to see if anything happens. And I would use random encounters (but those tend to be keyed to local elements (for instance if there is a sect that operates in that area, they would be on the table-----and sometimes I have an entry on a table like 'pick something in that hex'). But these kinds of games are often more about the people and organizations living in the setting, than about clearing out hexes. But these wuxia campaigns are often blends of many things (there are dungeons in them, but also sect wars, grudges-----these are a huge part of my encounter table set up---romance, etc). I think some people see the maps to my settings and assume the setting is arranged like Isle of Dread (because of the hexes and the way terrain is rendered). But the drama and sandbox thing is pretty seriously baked into the setting material.

If you really want a sense of how I run this stuff, you can download Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate for free at Drive thru, and just read the GM section. It is a bit out of date (five years old at this point, and I've certainly refined some of my thoughts, but it gets a lot of what I talk about here----and in a less extreme way because I am not contrasting against an alternative style of play in the book----which is one of my frustrations when I engage in these threads (I find myself staking positions and losing sight of actual play).

Cool, you and I have similar tastes there. That's also a very useful benchmark for reading some of your other posts. I tend to write my encounter tables such that there is a just a roll every hex, rather than a Survival check or some such, but I build a wide range of stuff into the tables to account for that. I also tend to build my tables around what's happening rather than what's there, if that makes any sense, much like you often focusing on factions and people more than the very traditional approach to hex construction.

 

[Campbell]

I have played Moldvay more than I've combed through the GM section. Can you clarify which portion of the red set you are talking about so I can review it?

It's pretty sparse, but highly compelling. The instructions on dungeon in particular do an excellent job on describing how to put fair challenges together.

This text on B60 is very important.

"Everything is balanced."

The DM should try to maintain the "balance of play". The treasures should be balanced by the dangers. Some groups prefer adventures where advancement between levels is swift. In such a case, since the treasures are generally greater, the monsters should be "tougher". Other groups prefer adventures where character development is more important, and advancement is slower. If the monsters are too tough, and if the parties are reduced by many deaths, then few characters will ever reach higher levels. (The DM should keep in mind that further supplements will detail character levels up to the 36th. It should be very difficult for a character to attain this level, but it should not be impossible).

Not a huge fan of Gygax's instruction in First Edition DMG, but his commentary on player skill in the PHB is also highly instructive. Recent games that do a very good job of explaining and promoting skilled play include Into The Odd, Electric Bastionland, Mothership, and The Nightmares Underneath.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A common example of autonomy without agency that we often see in video games are these big elaborate dialog trees made to make so you feel you are speaking for your character and your words make an impact. However these trees in some games almost always lead to the same narrative result. I have experienced the tabletop version of this many times. It's pretty common for some GMs to let you basically tilt at windmills for a little bit before they do what they were going to do anyway.

And to me, especially in the kind of game I am talking about, that would be bad GMing. The whole point is to not focus on the outcome you want as the GM (in fact the more you can move away from 'wanting' outcomes, as a GM, the better in my opinion), but rather react to what the PC says. I have had a ton of situations where the players said something and a situation that looked like it would come to some big confrontation between the party and an NPC, turned into something very different. Usually when I run an NPC, I just have this gut sense of what they are reasonable about and what they are unreasonable about, and I think that is typically fairly easy for players to start to figure out through interacting with them or knowing the situation before hand.

 

[darkbard]

For what it's worth, I don't think it's useful here to rely upon definitions of agency as used narrowly in other disciplines. TTRPGing is its own endeavor, radically different, in my opinion, from the endeavor of enjoying (or analyzing) literature and so on. One of the great distinguishing factors in playing an RPG as opposed to reading a book is the agency given the player over the reader. That may be a rather trite observation, but once I figured that out I appreciated less and less RPGing as setting tourism and largely GM-facing systems and principles in favor of no myth, player-facing gaming.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's pretty sparse, but highly compelling. The instructions on dungeon in particular do an excellent job on describing how to put fair challenges together.

This text on B60 is very important.



Not a huge fan of Gygax's instruction in First Edition DMG, but his commentary on player skill in the PHB is also highly instructive. Recent games that do a very good job of explaining and promoting skilled play include Into The Odd, Electric Bastionland, Mothership, and The Nightmares Underneath.

I agree with a lot of the advice in that section (though that bit on B60 is one piece that doesn't really fit how I approach it: nothing wrong with the advice, I am just not very into that kind of balance).

Another place we might disagree is Gygax. I don't use or agree with every ounce of advice, but going back to that book really helped me crack a problem I had in gaming. It is also one of the most engaging books in the hobby I've read (I would also put some of the Van Richten books up there, Laws books (just like the way he writes), and Moldvay. The look, feel and the prose of Moldvay is something I discovered about two years ago----I grew up on the other red boxed set), and it really had an impact

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's pretty sparse, but highly compelling. The instructions on dungeon in particular do an excellent job on describing how to put fair challenges together.

I quite like how lean it is. The minimal approach was something I liked a lot about it.