A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

Another fine and interesting analysis from MBC.

Just one question: what do you mean by "Rowboat World"?

If I were to evaluate exactly what is happening here based on the matrix (no matter how fallible) I've devised, it would look like this:

THE IYLLIC D&D SANDBOX

* Protagonist Agency for players is either (a) non-existent or (b) its relatively diffuse. In case (b) (where some or all of the PCs do have some kind of explicit dramatic need that play attempts to resolve), it is diffuse because (i) there are a huge number of dramatic needs within the sandbox and (ii) those must all be given expression through the GM such that (iii) there will be many, many moments of play that entirely unrelated to/not framed around resolving PC dramatic need. (i-iii) are necessary in concert so the dreaded "Rowboat World" doesn't materialize through play.

The "Side Quest" is the classical manifestation of this. Through the confluence of an accretion of "Sandbox Dramatic Needs" + "Side Quests (where resolution of those Setting Dramatic Needs are the focal point around which play orbits)" = "Rowboat World" is kept at bay.

For these games (like the one BRG seems to be representing), diffuse Protagonist Agency (which means both in total and for any given unit of play, PC Protagonist Agency is diminished or non-existent because resolution of Setting Dramatic Need is the apex play priority) is "a feature, not a bug."

 

[Bedrockgames]

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?

I will get to the rest of this later (short on time), but to quickly answer this, look at my phrasing, I didn't say railroads were thwarting what the player wanted (you may want to be a 20th level wizard at the start of the game, I don't think anyone would make a serious argument that denying a player that would be railroading. I said railroading was thwarting their choices in the setting. The choice in the setting was to look for the brother. That choice wasn't thwarted at all. In fact it was honored, and the brother just happened to be dead (when you have a world in motion, where the GM generates the setting content, this sort of thing can happen).

Also, the first part of your answer glosses over a massive divide between us: we have a different definition of agency in RPGs.

 

[Manbearcat]

Uh, No, that first one isn't properly a sandbox. At least not in the way it's been used in wargaming and RPG theory. Why? Because "quest" is not appropriate for sandbox. In a proper sandbox, there is no quest to be main nor side quest. There are things happening in the foreground, which players experience, and possibly things happening "off-screen" (for lack of a better term), which may or may not be immediately visible to players. There may be jobs to do, if one looks for them, but any quest cannot be side, because it's what is driving the interaction, and is set entirely by the player(s)

In a proper sandbox, the only thing special about PCs in setting is that, when none of them are in play, time stops for the sandbox. Unless, of course, the GM has established otherwise. (I had a campaign that, in between the 2-3 session annual adventures, time passed at the same rate as the real world, as an example.)

A well done sandbox is like a montessori method classroom: interesting things to do, and which ones you do is your choice, within the limits of available seating. Always more things than you can get to, so that even if one works ahead, there is always something left to do.

The moment the GM gets into setting quests for players, they've exited the sandbox mode into open world quest mode. It's different. It's a different flavor of agency as well, because once you start into side vs main quests, you get into story trumping the sandbox.

"Side Quests (both the adjective and the noun)" is just (pretty widely used in my opinion) parlance in TTRPG and CRPGs used to depict the phenomena.

Operationally speaking, you and I are talking about exactly the same thing.

See everything I bolded in your text above. Any place you see "Side Quest" just sub:

• "jobs to do"
• "interesting things to do"
• "things you can get into"
• "something left to do"

Its all the same stuff. It just needs to not orbit around PC dramatic needs (because it has its own, PC-neutral, dramatic needs through which the GM gives it volitional force within the Sandbox).

 

[Manbearcat]

Another fine and interesting analysis from MBC.

Just one question: what do you mean by "Rowboat World"?

Thank you Lanefan.

Its vast but shallow with a lot of uninteresting and not particularly compelling stuff to do!

@FrogReaver and @Ovinomancer , I'll respond to your posts tonight or tomorrow.

 

[aramis erak]

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. This is by no means a perfect definition (it has been a long weekend), but it is much closer to my conception of the term railroad, than you saying you are being railroaded because the GM has decided your characters brother is dead.

It's certainly not a good definition, it's not consonant with what I've seen from Dave Arneson.

Understand: The classic dungeon itself is a form of railroad, as it limits one to several paths. You have rails with switches - so a multi-path railroad. For example, the dungeon in chapter 3 of Hoard of the Dragon queen essentially has two directions after the entry fight: the left path (easy), and the right path (hard, inobvious, and takes you directly to the dungeon boss). If you go left path, you hit the traps, instead. Engaging with the dungeon is "Pick a or b" ...

If one has a horn of blasting, one can make a third option, but it's a low-level dungeon so the PCs shouldn't have the needed spells nor magic items to go off-rails.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I will get to the rest of this later (short on time), but to quickly answer this, look at my phrasing, I didn't say railroads were thwarting what the player wanted (you may want to be a 20th level wizard at the start of the game, I don't think anyone would make a serious argument that denying a player that would be railroading. I said railroading was thwarting their choices in the setting. The choice in the setting was to look for the brother. That choice wasn't thwarted at all. In fact it was honored, and the brother just happened to be dead (when you have a world in motion, where the GM generates the setting content, this sort of thing can happen).

Also, the first part of your answer glosses over a massive divide between us: we have a different definition of agency in RPGs.

That’s some semantic footwork, I’d say.

It’s the GM saying “Oh your character wants to find his brother? Okay cool.” Then playing a three hour session to reveal at the end the brother is dead.

It’s lousy, whatever other label you’d like to use.

 

[aramis erak]

"Side Quests (both the adjective and the noun)" is just (pretty widely used in my opinion) parlance in TTRPG and CRPGs used to depict the phenomena.

Operationally speaking, you and I are talking about exactly the same thing.

See everything I bolded in your text above. Any place you see "Side Quest" just sub:

• "jobs to do"
• "interesting things to do"
• "things you can get into"
• "something left to do"

Its all the same stuff. It just needs to not orbit around PC dramatic needs (because it has its own, PC-neutral, dramatic needs through which the GM gives it volitional force within the Sandbox).

You're not getting it, clearly.

The term «quest» itself is a VERY loaded term, and such substitution is pretty much coming across as intentional obfuscation. It's not a commonly used term in the theory works I've read.

And, in practice, few people actually run real sandbox games on the TT. Many who claim to actually aren't doing so, because they have an agenda as a GM. If, at any point, the GM has to hint that, "The story is over here, guys" that's not a proper sandbox.

A large part of that is conflation with videogames, where quests are there in a supposedly open world that isn't actually an open world, but is instead quest-gated by need of certain items to get into specific regions.

The definitions of open world and sandbox differ significantly between the two media. Zelda games are said to be "open world" - but they are not. Large portions are locked behind needed items. That's a feature that few TT RPGs have, but many GM's try to impose.

When you get to the TTRPG, if an area requires having done X, Y or Z to have anything interesting happen, it's no longer a sandbox, it's just a wall-less dungeon.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That’s some semantic footwork, I’d say.

It’s the GM saying “Oh your character wants to find his brother? Okay cool.” Then playing a three hour session to reveal at the end the brother is dead.

It’s lousy, whatever other label you’d like to use.

Certainly you might find it lousy, that is very much a matter of preference. But why is it lousy m, and how is it a railroad? In a sandbox that is worked in motion, when you go to look for someone, their current condition and status often changes. I am not saying the Guzman ought to always have the character in question dead,but being dead is certainly a viable possibility. To be as a player, the thing that makes that search interesting is I don’t know what condition my brother is in, and what has become of him. If I went on a search abc discovered he had died, that would be an interesting revelation to me.

 

[Lanefan]

"Side Quests (both the adjective and the noun)" is just (pretty widely used in my opinion) parlance in TTRPG and CRPGs used to depict the phenomena.

Operationally speaking, you and I are talking about exactly the same thing.

See everything I bolded in your text above. Any place you see "Side Quest" just sub:

• "jobs to do"
• "interesting things to do"
• "things you can get into"
• "something left to do"

Its all the same stuff. It just needs to not orbit around PC dramatic needs (because it has its own, PC-neutral, dramatic needs through which the GM gives it volitional force within the Sandbox).

I'm not quite sure if you're suggesting the things on this list are good things, or bad things, or just...things.

For my own part, as a DM all of those are good things in that their existence means there's still some life in the campaign; as it'll die when there's nothing left to do.

Also, IME occasionally something that starts out as a simple side quest takes on a life of its own (often because the players assign far greater importance to it than it really has, and-or end up becoming engaged in it for other reasons) and ends up becoming a major focus of the campaign for a while.

=================

Another (!) variable that I might as well chuck in here, just to add to the fun: desired types and amounts of player agency are going to vary, even within the same system, based on the type and length of campaign you're trying to design and-or run.

Consider the difference between:

• designing a campaign and-or setting around a particular set of PCs and their goals/motives (and, by extension, a particular and unchanging set of players) with the intent of ending said campaign once those specific things have been dealt with
• designing a campaign and-or setting without foreknowledge of what PCs will be played in it at any given time, or how long those PCs might individually survive, or how much player turnover the campaign will see as it goes along; all with the intent of the campaign - if things work out well - potentially never ending.*

One would think that in coming up with the former one would want to allow a far greater degree of @pemerton-style player agency than in the latter.

Of the former: Benefit: way less or even near-zero up-front prep to do. Drawback: an intentionally-closed-ended campaign.
Of the latter: Drawback: way more up-front prep to do. Benefit: it's work that in theory only has to be done once and it'll last for ages.

I approach all of this from the latter perspective: characters come and go; sometimes players come and go; yet the campaign rolls on regardless. What this means is that the underlying setting IMO needs to be robust enough to backdrop all this and to withstand what a (potentially wide) variety of people are going to try to do to it.

* - there's also a third type - designing a campaign intended to be a single hard-rail adventure path and that's it - which can be ignored for these purposes.

 

[Manbearcat]

You're not getting it, clearly.

The term «quest» itself is a VERY loaded term, and such substitution is pretty much coming across as intentional obfuscation. It's not a commonly used term in the theory works I've read.

And, in practice, few people actually run real sandbox games on the TT. Many who claim to actually aren't doing so, because they have an agenda as a GM. If, at any point, the GM has to hint that, "The story is over here, guys" that's not a proper sandbox.

A large part of that is conflation with videogames, where quests are there in a supposedly open world that isn't actually an open world, but is instead quest-gated by need of certain items to get into specific regions.

The definitions of open world and sandbox differ significantly between the two media. Zelda games are said to be "open world" - but they are not. Large portions are locked behind needed items. That's a feature that few TT RPGs have, but many GM's try to impose.

When you get to the TTRPG, if an area requires having done X, Y or Z to have anything interesting happen, it's no longer a sandbox, it's just a wall-less dungeon.

No. I'm getting it.

For some reason you're wanting to stick with "Quest" here (as if I care about the term), then escalate things to "coming across as intentional obfuscation", and then die on this hill.

I_do_not_care about the term. That should be clear from my response.

Get rid of Quest. Nuke the whole damn site from orbit if you'd like so you're sure.

I'm not invested in "Side Quest" as the parlance that so many use (I used it because so many others use it so I figured it was sufficiently informative and wasn't this hugely contentious language that apparently it is for you). I'm not invested in it as technical jargon (which it clearly is not). I'm CERTAINLY NOT invested in it for "intentional obfuscation."

So, let this stand as me formally disavowing "Side Quest", sufficiently genuflecting, and bending the m-fing knee to whatever term you (or anyone else wants to use).

Do_not_care.

What I care about is that the sandbox contains "stuff to do" that is "energized by dramatic needs detached from the PCs."