A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

Not at all. I am happy to expand the meaning of sandbox. I did it myself with Drama+Sandbox. I think sandboxes often get a reputation for being hard to run, and not everyone's cup of tea. So any effort to expand interest, is cool. If people have a variant approach that still feels sandboxy but works for gamers for whom pure sandboxes haven't been great fun, I say go for it and call it a sandbox. I would definitely say make distinctions though because without them these labels become meaningful and fall into disuse. So call it what you want (A Sandbox World, or a World Sandbox, new school sandbox, philosophical sandbox, protagonist sandbox, or whatever language detones the area of the hobby you feel you belong to).

Yea, that's what I thought was your position and should clarify things.

But when I've been saying sandbox on its own, I've generally meant a traditional sandbox.

I think this is where the contention was primarily coming from.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think your definition of agency goes beyond sandboxes to some degree.

Probably. I am a little reluctant to weigh in on this one. I don't like adding jargon as a rule, but I get the need for a distinction within the context of this discussion. I do agree with you that autonomy would not be the term. I think you need to retain agency in the label. Probably just qualify each sides version of agency with a modifier that fits.

 

[pemerton]

Just to address what Pemerton said: he is equivocating on the word outcome. It is an outcome of something. Just like me posting this message is an outcome of something. But it isn't an outcome of the player searching for the brother. The brother didn't die as a result of the search. The brother, presumably, had other causes of death. That the dead brother was found was the outcome of the search.

No one is suggesting that the brother would die as a result of being searched for (unless, say, we're playing an espionage game where that sort of thing can happen).

But consider the following imagined sequence of events:

Player to GM in the context of a "true sandbox" game: I search for my brother.

<play takes place, actions are declared, it all gets to a point where the player has declared an action that prompts the following from the GM>

GM to player (relating information from notes): Your brother is dead.

<player comes home, talks to housemate - who is not a participant in the game - about today's session>

Housemate: What was the outcome of your search for your brother?

Player: He's dead.​

That's the sense in which I am using the word outcome. That outcome was authored in advance by the GM.

I will let @pemerton speak for himself, but in my view that's not equivocating. Obviously it was the player who brought in the fiction of them searching for their brother. The brother did not exist prior to that. He's saying that in the context of this brother he wants the outcome of what happens to be determined by gameplay decisions he has made I think. This is based on a more expansive view of character than you probably hold - where a character is more than the physical body, but also the things they value, people they care for, and relationships they have.

All this is true.

But also I am referring to the outcome of what the player has his/her PC undertake, namely, the search for the brother. There are two options: either the PC doesn't find/learn about his brother; or the PC learns that his brother is dead. There is no prospect of the PC learning that his brother is alive. That is the sense in which the outcome has been established in advance. It's not an "equivocation" on the use of outcome. It's a perfectly normal use of the English word.

I do think there is value in playing different styles on their own terms. I don't much like adventure paths, but I play one happily if that is what a group wants to do (and I won't actively resist it or complain). It can be helpful to experience what people are after.

<snip>

If someone told me they were going to run a sandbox using burning wheel, and in the style you have been describing, I would play it according to their style and I wouldn't complain, nor would I sit in judgement of it.

I'm not sure what you think I'm complaining about or judging. I am expressing my preferences.

I'm also not sure why you think I'm ignorant of what you're describing. I've participated in the sort of game you described. As a GM, though, play fairly quickly drifted towards something I (and I imagine the players) preferred more. Though it was tricky because of the system being used (Rolemaster) and my lack of knowledge of the full range of suitable techniques.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think this is where the contention was primarily coming from.

That could be. I don't know what else to say. I can try to use terms like pure sandbox, my sandboxes, or traditional sandbox (though the latter seems to get a lot of push back for being 'normative'---which I really don't get). I can try to be more precise. But you and others may have noticed, I am not the most precise speaker in the world. And especially with a gaming term I use all the time, I tend to be casual and expect people to know what I mean by context.

 

[Ovinomancer]

To me, the question ultimately comes back to, why did the player agree to play in a campaign using a playstyle that allows for the possibility of their brother being dead with them having no say in the matter? If the player agreed to that then the DM isn't doing anything bad for playing by the rules the player agreed to.

If the player didn't want a dead brother, they shouldn't have dressed like that?

 

[Bedrockgames]

But Autonomy has nothing to do with being able to change important things in the fiction...

So I think your autonomy only covers part of what we mean by agency.

Would Old School Agency and New School Agency work?

 

[FrogReaver]

Probably. I am a little reluctant to weigh in on this one. I don't like adding jargon as a rule, but I get the need for a distinction within the context of this discussion. I do agree with you that autonomy would not be the term. I think you need to retain agency in the label. Probably just qualify each sides version of agency with a modifier that fits.

Well my notion is that their definition is more of an expansion instead of a totally separate thing. I think our definition is definitely still agency in their language (despite some claims otherwise), but I'm curious to hear how they would talk about it as such using their language and terms instead of mine.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If the player didn't want a dead brother, they shouldn't have dressed like that?

Are we really making this comparison?

 

[FrogReaver]

If the player didn't want a dead brother, they shouldn't have dressed like that?

Rape jokes aren't cool.

 

[pemerton]

when a player is determining a piece of the setting is he roleplaying in that moment? He surely is advocating for his character - but is that roleplaying?

It depends what the process looks like. Upthread I've discussed a variety of ways that a setting element can be determined. They are not all the same.

If a player spends a chit or token so as to be permitted to point to a bit of map and say That's where Evard's tower is, I don't think that is playing the character.

When I say Don't I remember Evard's tower is around here? - thereby triggering a check on Great Masters-wise - that is playing my character.

When a player in the BW game I GM said I look around - it's a mage's bedroom so there should be a vessel to catch the blood in that was playing his character (both stating his physical action and associated mental state).

Here's an example of 4e D&D play that I posted way back in @innerdude's epic "dissociated mechanics" thread, and in some other 4e threads around that time, that caused a bit of a flurry:

The PCs were fighting some NPC hexers. One of the hexers used his Baleful Polymorph power on the PC paladin of the Raven Queen. This had duration "until end of the caster's next turn". For the next cycle of initiative, there were the inevitable jibes from the other players about not slipping on the slimy frog, etc. Then, at the appropriate point in the initiative cycle, I described the frog turning back into a paladin, just as the rules required me to.

The paladin's turn then came up, and the player, in character, made some rude remark to the NPC hexer. The hexer replied to the effect of "I'm not scared of you or your mistress - after all, I just turned you into a frog." The player, in character, replied "And my mistress turned me back" - the obvious implication being that his mistress, and him as her vessel, are more powerful than the hexer's petty magic.​

That player's play - actually the same player as the one whose PC looked for the blood-catching vessel - was all done thinking in character. The player at all times was speaking as his character, thinking as his character, giving voice to his character's convictions of the Raven Queen's divine power. (It's also worth noting that the 4e mechanics did not contradict him: the mechanics leave it completely open why, within the fiction, the Baleful Polymorph ends when it does. In the example I've given, we see the player filling in that fictional space via in-character roleplay, thereby reinforcing rather than forfeiting immersion.)