A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

I think if I showed him @Bedrockgames version of what is "normal" or "typical" in RPGing he would be surprised.

He might be. For the most part I was saying what I find typical in the sandbox crowd (though I do think the agency definition I am using has much more currency than the one you guys are using, but that is just my sense).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I didn't mean a lack of sandbox techniques. Rolemaster books are replete with those. I meant techniques for increasing player agency.

Sorry I misunderstood what you meant

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't think it's "old school" at all. I think one version of it solidified in the 1980s, but I think the version that you two are advocating also has a certain "retro" dimension to it. It's not actual "old school", it's a type of re-recreated "old school" that didn't predominate back in the day.

I actually do agree with this. When I say old school and OSR, I am talking about the post 2000 look back at old school. I started in 86 and I remember there being all kinds of variety at tables (though also a lot of what you see in the OSR movement was certainly present). But a table could vary a lot based on the game they played, the edition of the game, the style developed locally (every place seemed to play quite different). I am in no way saying what I am talking about reflects how people played D&D across the US in its early days. What I can do is talk about what I encountered when I first sat down to play in 86, and a lot of what I am trying to recapture here is the freedom I experienced with that kind of sandboxy open world (though again I don't think it was quite so rigid as it comes off in some of these discussions-----but certainly for me the spark of that experience did all come to focus on playing my character in a world operated by the GM). I do hope I've made this clear across my posts. On many occasions I have said clearly, I think people over simplify the history a lot. And your view of gaming often depended on what you were into at a given moment.

 

[innerdude]

[In a sandbox], it is almost always, whatever is going on with [insert any element of the fiction introduced by the player], that is for the GM to decide. You only have control of what your character does. It is a valid style of play. And agency is considered to be your freedom to explore the setting through your character. That has been the standard understanding of agency in this context. It isn't even controversial I think. I am genuinely surprised to encounter the view I am encountering in this thread.

Well of course it's valid. Who's questioning the validity of that playstyle?

I'd be willing to wager that nearly everyone who frequents ENWorld has participated, in one fashion or another, in a campaign of the kind you have described. I've GM'd three different Savage Worlds campaigns using roughly the same basic social contract / GM principles you've outlined.

But to insist that this playstyle contains the farthest possible boundaries of available player agency is objectively incorrect. There are many systems/styles/techniques that offer more player agency than what is being offered in this style.

Look, if the tradeoffs for increasing player agency don't sit right within your style/techniques, or just aren't worth it to you, that's totally cool.

Maybe increasing player agency makes it too risky that your group's belief in the illusion of objective reality will be broken. Hasn't been my experience, but you're the one assessing the risk. Maybe increasing player agency makes it so that significant amounts of time, plot, and setting will focus on elements personal to the player's characters, and it's too risky in your mind that it'll turn off players in your group, because they won't be getting enough spotlight time. Maybe increasing player agency makes it so that you have to change your GM prep in ways that are too time-consuming, uncomfortable, or un-fun to you, up to and including changing systems---and you simply don't want to make those changes.

All perfectly valid reasons to continue doing what you're doing.

But how is it even controversial to say that Burning Wheel and Powered by the Apocalypse offer greater player agency than the style of play you're describing?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Apologies to all, my intent was not to compare anything to rape, but to make a reference the victim blaming. I could have been less blunt.

That said, @FrogReaver, why did you think it a useful argument to suggest blaming the player, especially in a "they should know better" way?

 

[Bedrockgames]

But to insist that this playstyle contains the farthest possible boundaries of available player agency is objectively incorrect. There are many systems/styles/techniques that offer more player agency than what is being offered in this style.

The problem is we are using totally different definitions of agency. Until this thread, I don't think I ever encountered your useage of agency at all. In all my years of seeing it in discussions online and at the table it has always meant, your ability to move freely through your character in the setting. And it just isn't something where I am going to adopt a whole new useage of the term simlply because I encounter a circle of posters on a forum who use it that way. I will happily engage you and discuss differences, but you just keep insisting that I have to accept your view of how much agency is present in the kinds of games you run versus mine (and you assert it is objective when clearly there is a lot of subjective stuff going on in interpretation and analysis).

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Which, tangentially, in itself strikes me as a bit odd; in that IME one of the very basics of sorting out a character's background and history would be determining what immediate family it has, where and-or when they were last seen, and their last-known status (e.g. alive, dead, elected to office, etc.).

 

[darkbard]

Which, tangentially, in itself strikes me as a bit odd; in that IME one of the very basics of sorting out a character's background and history would be determining what immediate family it has, where and-or when they were last seen, and their last-known status (e.g. alive, dead, elected to office, etc.).

This makes a great deal of sense for some playstyles, but overly determined elements such as these work against Playing to Find Out.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@AbdulAlhazred was playing club D&D in the mid-70s and - as I understand his posts - does not think that the conception of player agency that you and FrogReaver advocate would have been universally accepted back then.

I have never suggested that. I don't think I even encountered the term till after 2000. I am talking about how it is used among gamers generally, among sandbox players and the OSR. Not about how it may have been used in the 70s. I do talk to and listen to people from that era who gamed. But I think me and @AbdulAlhazred probably have very different views of gaming based on his posts (whereas with some of the other OGs I've talked to I find I am much more on the same page with).

 

[Bedrockgames]

No. Classic Traveller is a RPG from 1977 that expressly contemplates, right there in the text of its little black books, the sort of player agency that I enjoy in RPGing and that you and @FrogReaver are saying is not part of a "true sandbox".

What terms should we use then? What would be acceptable to you as a term, that also doesn't distort what we are trying to say? I feel like we are really trying to accomodate here and be flexible. This isn't about saying one thing isn't a true style of play. But I think any objective person who looks at the trends in sandbox play would definitely say our definition is much more in line with how sandbox gamers talk about agency. That doesn't mean there can't be other ways, there hasn't been other ways. But I mean just for the purposes of clarity in virtually every conversation I am in in gaming period, except this one, people immediately get what I am talking about with these terms. It just seems to me what you want is for us to concede that your definition of agency is the right one, and the style of play you are talking about it maximizes agency the most.