A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

What we’re talking about is not an example of the GM not giving a player the outcome he wants. It’s about him denying the entire journey that the player has said he’d like to take.

I’m gonna run with my “Kung Fu” example. Looking for his brother is very far from the only thing that Caine did in the series. He had tons of adventures. But it was his main drive.

Sanbox play isn't usually built around a premise like that. If we were running a monster of the week or adventure of the week campaign (which I do run between sandboxes) and we hashed out an idea that the framework of those adventures was you were looking for your long lost brother, that would be reasonable. But again, in a sandbox game, the decision to go look for your brother, doesn't guarantee what you will find, and it doesn't guarantee you will get a series of adventures along the way. That just isn't the nature of a sandbox game. Maybe you don't like sandbox. That is fine. But I've run enough of them, to know they work, to know this isn't a problem for plenty of groups.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Or no.....because the players are free to have their characters choose between going north to the temple of the wind, or west to the school of the flying fists?

I don't understand your sudden hostility. This isn't what my campaigns are like at all. It isn't a choice between choosing cardinal directions, and having a series of adventures built around finding your brother. In a sandbox campaign, you can have long, ongoing drama of all kinds, but it usually arises organically, with very unpredictable results, as players interact with the setting and NPCs.

 

[pemerton]

Again on railroading I don’t think it is reasonable to define railroading as the GM not giving players the outcomes they want.

This is not what I said. I don't think it's what @hawkeyefan said either.

I referred to an "exercise in futility" because the GM already knows what is going to happen.

It is possible for the PC's desire to find his/her brother to fail, perhaps to fail because the brother is dead, without the GM deciding that in advance. For instance, there could be a soft move in response to a failed check - You hear that your brother was in the parts, getting ready to cross swords with notoriously ruthless swordfighter so-and-so, etc - and then a further failed check that triggers a hard move - When you get to the fighting ground it's all over. They tell you the fight happened yesterday. There's a child hanging around - she offers to take you to your brother's gravestone for a grote and a bowl of warm meal.

I've used PbtA terminology - soft move, hard move - but the same sort of thing could be done in other systems too (eg Burning Wheel).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I agree, PCs not getting their desired outcomes is not 'railroading' per se. However I would like to say that there needs to be logic attached to the actions of the PC, and perhaps to the outcome of checks, which leads to any given resolution of one of their goals. If the resolution is simply "sorry, it just happened this way" that doesn't feel satisfactory to me (whatever term you want to use for it).

If, OTOH, the PC simply fell short, then maybe Von Bad Guy pig stuck his hostage brother and then escaped. Maybe this was all the result of some characteristic or action/goal of the PC in the first place (he picked a fight with Von Bad Guy because he believes in the rights of the peasants of Pleasant Valley to live unmolested). Maybe this leads to a new goal, etc. This is all great stuff! Simply dead-ending something with "well, your brother died 3 years ago, it was all futile from the beginning" doesn't seem like good stuff. Maybe it could be turned into simply a step moving towards a greater goal/character transformation if its done right, but just on the face of it, it is dull.

Of course that's where we seem to always differ. I see no point to dull pointless stuff in an RPG. Leave it for real life! lol.

The issue is the action of the player is looking for the lost brother. Whether he succeeds at that or not, is a separate question from whether the brother is alive, living it up somewhere, or asleep in a gutter. Those are questions I would expect the GM to answer, independent of the PCs success in finding him. I would also expect the search to be the product of more than say a single roll of a skill. Again this is dependent on the campaign. I am talking about sandbox, living world adventures. In that style, it is entirely expected that the GM has purview over the brother's status. Going in search of him, and finding a grave somewhere, wouldn't be a problem for most people in this kind of game. On the hand, if I was playing in a savage worlds campaign, where we usually expect to have more input into where are characters are going, it might be a problem for the GM to decide the brother is dead if the party was expecting to go on a series of Kung Fu like adventures.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If the player offers that up as his PC’s concept, and the GM just thwarts that....I mean this is pretty antithetical to player agency.

Again, you can set up a concept, but in sandbox, you don't set up outcomes (and going on a series of adventures to find your lost brother, or simply finding your lost brother, are both outcomes). As an example of what I am talking about, we had a character in one of my campaigns who wanted to be a great scholar official. It turned out, in the course of play, it was quite the challenge to pass imperial exams and achieve such heights, and he ended up being more of a unemployed, unranked, scholar. Again, in these kinds of campaigns, the players can't really load the outcome into the character concept (and the player understood that, when he set that as his concept, he understood the goal itself might be unobtainable). I feel that in this case, his agency was about him being allowed to pursue that course in the campaign. He attended the exams when they were offered (which is not all the time in the setting). But failing the exams is a real possibility (and fail them he did). And even if he did get through the exam system, he would still have to contend with wrangling for a post, and obtaining promotions to desired posts. None of that is a guarantee in a sandbox setting. It doesn't mean I am going to block him from that path deliberately. But the expectation is I try to fairly handle the challenges as he climbs his way up that ranking system.

Still his character had amassed a number of scholarly skills. So he could still function as an independent scholar in the setting

 

[Bedrockgames]

Finally, I don’t care one bit how most people play or what most people want in their game. Nor do I think you’re qualified to make that determination. Nor do I think it’s relevant at all.

I said 'a lot of people', not 'most people'. I was just making the point that a lot of people are perfectly happy playing this way. That, I do think, is relevant.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is not what I said. I don't think it's what @hawkeyefan said either.

I referred to an "exercise in futility" because the GM already knows what is going to happen.

It is possible for the PC's desire to find his/her brother to fail, perhaps to fail because the brother is dead, without the GM deciding that in advance. For instance, there could be a soft move in response to a failed check - You hear that your brother was in the parts, getting ready to cross swords with notoriously ruthless swordfighter so-and-so, etc - and then a further failed check that triggers a hard move - When you get to the fighting ground it's all over. They tell you the fight happened yesterday. There's a child hanging around - she offers to take you to your brother's gravestone for a grote and a bowl of warm meal.

I've used PbtA terminology - soft move, hard move - but the same sort of thing could be done in other systems too (eg Burning Wheel).

Well, in a style like this, there are lots of things the GM knows in advance. He doesn't know what is going to happen though. He just knows that the brother is dead. Maybe when the player gets their he tries to resurrect him. Or maybe the player character goes on a murderous rampage after. There are all kinds of places that could lead, that the GM does not know. But you are right he knows that a successful search for the brother would yield knowledge of his death.

By your description of the PbtA approach, it sounds like the setting detail (the brother being alive or dead) is being baked into the player setting that as a goal for the relevant check. If that is how things are done in PbtA, that is fine. People are happy who play those games. My point is, in a sandbox, framing this way, is setting up the outcome, and something you wouldn't do. In most sandbox games a player saying he or she wants to look for their brother isn't going to be distilled into one roll or action. It would like be a number of efforts at tracking down rumors, clues, etc. And there would simply be no assurance that he is alive at the end of that (nor would most people in a sandbox consider an outcome where he is dead as futile (if anything they might be suspicious that it sounds overly dramatic, especially if it involves any of the details you mention above, but I like drama in my sandbox). Also this is just one possible outcome. What makes it exciting is it is an unknown on the player side. One possibility is he is dead. Another possibility is he is alive and waiting there to meet his brother again. Another is he is alive but filled with resentment towards his brother. Or we could even take a page from Death Duel and have him find a coffin upon ending his search, only to later discover his brother faked his own death and has been living wretched existence as nameless wanderer later on. There are all kinds of potential outcomes to "I go look for my long lost brother" in a sandbox. But as a player in that kind of campaign, I don't expect to shape the outcome. I get in other styles of play, and in some RPGs, the expectation is different, and that is fair (and maybe there is an OSR adjacent sandbox style that does that as a lot of the PbtA fans seem to be interested in Old School stuff recently). All those styles are fine by me. But what I am describing is the more OSR rooted, sandbox and living world approach. In this, I really do think the brothers status as alive or dead, would be something that players would expect the GM to decide, and they wouldn't see that decision as infringing on their agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sanbox play isn't usually built around a premise like that. If we were running a monster of the week or adventure of the week campaign (which I do run between sandboxes) and we hashed out an idea that the framework of those adventures was you were looking for your long lost brother, that would be reasonable. But again, in a sandbox game, the decision to go look for your brother, doesn't guarantee what you will find, and it doesn't guarantee you will get a series of adventures along the way. That just isn't the nature of a sandbox game. Maybe you don't like sandbox. That is fine. But I've run enough of them, to know they work, to know this isn't a problem for plenty of groups.

I would argue that a sandbox....or just about any RPG, really....is going to consist of a series of adventures. I mean this in the normal context and not one specific to RPGs. Like, Caine had many adventures as he wandered the old west looking for his brother.

I expect that the PCs in your games, sandboxy as they may be, are still engaging in events and happenings that can be called “adventures”. Certainly your descriptions of sone of your campaigns sounded like things out of adventure fiction.

And to be clear, what I’m saying is a dick move is for the GM to agree about the brother and then immediately do away with it.

Now, if you want to answer the question I asked....how would you handle this if a player came to you and presented this idea....with “I’d tell him that’s not something that’ll fit this game; maybe some other game in the future” then I’d say that’s perfectly fine. Not all games should be the same, and not all will include everything that other games do.

Like player agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't understand your sudden hostility. This isn't what my campaigns are like at all. It isn't a choice between choosing cardinal directions, and having a series of adventures built around finding your brother. In a sandbox campaign, you can have long, ongoing drama of all kinds, but it usually arises organically, with very unpredictable results, as players interact with the setting and NPCs.

Well, ongoing drama of all kinds except looking for lost brothers.

I am absolutely comfortable with sandbox play. I do it all the time. I just also like my players to be involved in what the game is about and where it goes. these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The issue is the action of the player is looking for the lost brother. Whether he succeeds at that or not, is a separate question from whether the brother is alive, living it up somewhere, or asleep in a gutter. Those are questions I would expect the GM to answer, independent of the PCs success in finding him.

Okay, so how does the GM decide? If it was your game, how would you decide?

You’d look at relevant details like what the brother was up to and who he was involved with and what else might be going on in the area, and then make a judgment call about what makes the most sense, right?

I would also expect the search to be the product of more than say a single roll of a skill.

Who wouldn’t?