Fair enough, I just took a look at the article. My sense, and again I don't play video games, and haven't touched on since about 2010 (and was pretty out of the loop at that point already). So I am not getting the examples he uses (which could impact my analysis). My sense is the writer in this article is talking about something very different from what I am talking about. His definition of agency is: The player's ability to impact the story through the game design or gameplay.
Yes, I thought it was interesting to see someone examining a similar medium have a similar conclusion.
I know that you may not agree with that assessment, though. Which is fine.
It does make me wonder if....even though you may not play them anymore...if you think of video game worlds as real in the same sense as RPG worlds.
I think the use of the term story isn't how I would frame it, but I also understand some people simply use story to mean "stuff that happens in the game". However reading the article he seems to be talking about stories that are imbedded in play (with plot points and everything), and his use of agency appears to be the players ability to make meaningful choices within that story. I may be misunderstanding, but to me it doesn't sound like he is talking about open world play. Correct me if I am wrong there. I could be.
I don’t think you’re wrong. I think he’s using story as like a record of the end result of play. Which given the nature of video games, is probably more required. Even when games or open world, there tends to be expected routes.
I fond that this tends to be true of RPGs, too, though hopefully not as necessary, and ideally fairly infrequently.
But my whole approach to character agency is to not plan stories at all.
I do want to point out here that you’re describing character agency. Which isn’t really a thing. I think this is a big part of the ongoing frustration in the discussion.
I think someone earlier in the thread used character autonomy which seems to suit.
I point this out because agency has to happen at the player level. As such, it has to be related to the things a player can or cannot do.
And I think here we bump into a fundamental issue over our uses of language. This isnt' at all what I would recognize as a railroad. The GM deciding something about a detail in the setting, even something related to your character, or what you might be interested in, isn't railroading. Railroading is when the choices you make in the setting are being thwarted, so you are railroaded towards some adventure or outcome the GM wants.
So if a player says “My character is searching for his brother” and the GM decides that the brother is dead....how is that not thwarting what the player wants?
Maybe there’s a valid reason for the GM to do this, but I’m struggling to think of it.
One other thing I want to add...if this is an application of the term railroading that you’ve never encountered before, that may be fine....but I find the request to allow multiple definitions of agency but to only allow one for railroading to be a bit odd.
So let’s not get caught up on the label. You’re using a word the way it makes sense for you; allow others the same courtesy, yes?
Do you think that if a player said they wanted their PC to be searching for his brother, that a GM may be justified in declaring that the brother is dead?
How would you handle this as a GM? A character searching for their brother/father/teacher/whoever is a pretty common trope in all kinds of genre fiction. Has this come up for you? How have you handled it?
