A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

Would it have made a difference to the play experience if, instead of test/skill checks, the GM just decided the exams were too hard and the PC failed?

Yes, that wouldn't be a situation where I would say the GM ought to just declare he failed. And by the same token, the individual steps of the search for the brother, I wouldn't advocate the GM simply declaring he fails to find further clues that lead to him.

 

[FrogReaver]

I proposed that. Frogreaver said it encompasses more than sandbox so I said fair enough. My preference is for plain english, without jargon, and for language to reflect general use. But here I am just trying to figure out a way to navigate the conversation

I think it does encompass more than just sandbox, but I'm not personally opposed to using that term as jargon in this conversation so that we are all on the same page. I think in future discussions we would want a more plain english term though that encompassed it all.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you look at @pemerton's Burning Wheel play example, with 'remembering the tower is nearby', can you call that anything EXCEPT RP? What else would it be? Obviously this might not be true of every example of player PC advocacy. It may not be true of every example of other sorts of play either, depending on your definition of RP...

Yes. "Remembering the tower is nearby" Has a number of discrete steps. I would say some of those specific steps are obviously not roleplay and therefore my original statement stands, that at the moment the player is determining the location of the tower, that moment is not roleplay.

 

[darkbard]

In both cases, I'd use the IWW camp loop. IWW focuses on water, food, and shelter as the core needs. The party roles 3d6, one for each need, with successes on a 4+ and appropriate skills granting advantage on the roll. 3 successes means everyone is fine, and less successes add one or more levels of exhaustion to one or more party members who can consume resources to mitigate the exhaustion. Six levels of exhaustion kills you, so there's some bite to the rules. The encounter rules I use have some resource consumption built into them and I also have resource consumption baked into my rules for resting during the day. The goal there is to thread food and light resource management as deep into the day-to-day as I can so it seems less like an occasional mini-game and more like a fact of life.

Sounds like a good starting place for a Dark Sun game--before really ramping up the pressure!

 

[Fenris-77]

Sounds like a good starting place for a Dark Sun game--before really ramping up the pressure!

Hmm. You know I hadn't thought of that, but hell yeah. I'd rather run Dark Sun in a OSR system than some sort of bastard child 5E treatment anyway.

 

[Lanefan]

@Lanefan - frankly, I don't think that's agency at all, at least the way the tiers look at it. I'd call that more a function of the social contract at the table. Let me rephrase, it is agency of a sort for sure, but not agency that's normally hindered or fostered by the system or the mechanics. That said, many games do have something to say about playing your character, so I don't think it throws a wrench in the works to add it to the list even given my initial definitional uncertainty.

An easy example of a system-level impingement on that agency: 1e D&D's alignment rules.

A table-level impingement would be ruling against playing evil PCs, or PCs not of your own gender.

 

[Fenris-77]

An easy example of a system-level impingement on that agency: 1e D&D's alignment rules.

A table-level impingement would be ruling against playing evil PCs, or PCs not of your own gender.

Both fair, but I still think this is somewhat different beast than the kind of agency I posted about upstream, which is more specifically agency realized through the avatar at the table, rather than agency over that avatar. To put that another way, agency over the decisions made by the avatar at various levels rather than agency over decisions about the avatar itself.

I'm not preferencing one or the other here, just trying to get granular about some of the different ways we talk about agency. FWIW I think that agency over the avatar itself is a very viable discussion topic.

 

[FrogReaver]

Both fair, but I still think this is somewhat different beast than the kind of agency I posted about upstream, which is more specifically agency realized through the avatar at the table, rather than agency over that avatar. To put that another way, agency over the decisions made by the avatar at various levels rather than agency over decisions about the avatar itself.

I'm not preferencing one or the other here, just trying to get granular about some of the different ways we talk about agency. FWIW I think that agency over the avatar itself is a very viable discussion topic.

I think agency over personality details blur the line between agency over the avatar and agency realized through the avatar during play as the avatars personality details do tend to impact your agency to have a character act certain ways in play.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think agency over personality details blur the line between agency over the avatar and agency realized through the avatar during play as the avatars personality details do tend to impact your agency to have a character act certain ways in play.

Hmm, I don't see it. Perhaps if the personality details weren't completely authored by the player I might agree. In a case where the player wrote the character, I wouldn't count it an impact on agency for them to play that character the way they decided it should be played. I'd agree that playing a character in good faith will influence the decision making in play, of course, but I don't that this bleeds over into the discussion of agency as I construed it above. Maybe you could call it a self-limiting of agency maybe?

I do agree that this liminal space you describe is one that will cause some hiccups in the discussion though, for sure. Different games treat avatar details differently and fold them into the overall systems and processes differently, so in a specific example you might have to untangle a bit of gordian knot to able to see what's what clearly.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hmm, I don't see it. Perhaps if the personality details weren't completely authored by the player I might agree. In a case where the player wrote the character, I wouldn't count it an impact on agency for them to play that character the way they decided it should be played. I'd agree that playing a character in good faith will influence the decision making in play, of course, but I don't that this bleeds over into the discussion of agency as I construed it above. Maybe you could call it a self-limiting of agency maybe?

I think that might be because they get grouped in with the social contract part. Players have agreed to play a game with X limitations on characters. Even if maybe they would have more preferred to play a game without that limitation they agreed to do so. I think self-limiting agency is a good name for this.

I suppose if a player felt he had no choice but to play under that limitation even if he didn't really want to then maybe it's a lack of agency, but I'm not really sure what if anything could actually cause this. Perhaps some kind of emotional or psychological phenomenon? I mean there's always the proverbial "gun to the head" but that's pretty far removed from what we are trying to talk about.

I do agree that this liminal space you describe is one that will cause some hiccups in the discussion though, for sure. Different games treat avatar details differently and fold them into the overall systems and processes differently, so in a specific example you might have to untangle a bit of gordian knot to able to see what's what clearly.

I think non-evil PC's were a good example. That certainly impacts the kinds of things you are able to do in the world even during play. But I think you are right that it is typically a self limiting decision at the start of the campaign on the players part to play that way.

Though it strikes me that almost any agency criticism could be headed off that very way. The player agreed to this and therefore it's okay that this restricts him during the game? IMO it also seems to apply to the sandbox and dead brother example quite well.