A Question Of Agency?

[Fenris-77]

I think it's important not to explain everything away by saying the players agreed to X, yeah. Mostly because while players do agree to the pitch, and build characters, they aren't necessarily privy to how the GM does business, nor are they necessarily conversant enough in the mechanics in question to know exactly what the stakes are. That's completely ok in most cases of course, that level of understanding isn't even remotely necessary to play and enjoy an RPG. It is, however, the root of comments at the table like what do you mean I can't do that? which is exactly the sort of thing we're talking about.

I think there's a difference between the active agency that you get in authoring a character, and the ability to make decisions in range X about that character, versus the output in terms of agency when you power that avatar up and start having it do things. Upstream I was talking about the second kind, and then @Lanefan mentioned the former. I think it's possible to keep those two ideas separate and discrete in terms of explanatory power.

 

[Aldarc]

Here is a relevant sub-section in the "What is Player Agency?" essay I linked earlier:

What exactly is player agency?

Some may think that player agency is just about interactivity. But that would be cutting the definition too short. Many things can be interactive. Games however provide players with a level of interactivity and choice that has much larger ramifications. This degree of choice is agency and is built on both a philosophical and sociological framework.

Player agency is about giving players the interactivity to affect and change the game world. Though agency, players have power to influence and change what is happening in the game. It provides them control (or at least of sense of it) of what will happen next.

This means that players should be given the ability to make decisions in the game. But these decisions shouldn’t be trivial – at least from the player’s perceptive. It isn’t just about choosing a particular skin or a hat for a player’s avatar. Instead, it’s about making sure that your players can make meaningful decisions in the game.

Games of course provide this amount of agency in different forms and degrees. Games also share a lot in common with stories and narratives. As such, some applications of narratives that have game-like elements like branching stories or “choose your own adventure” provide the player with agency in order to determine the outcome of the story.

That means in both narratives and games, players provide influence, power, and control over what they want to do; what they want to accomplish; and perhaps most of all what is FUN to do in the game. Because of this, player agency is much more than just simple interactivity. Player agency is instead about providing players with the ability to shape their own experience.

That power to shape their own experience provides players with the satisfaction of implementing their will inside the magic circle of the game. Through this will, they wield, influence, and implement what can be accomplished inside of the game.

Sometimes that amount of agency affects tactical and strategic choices in games. This is especially true for orthogames where separate and unequal outcomes of a game condition (i.e. the winning condition) are necessary to bring play to a close. However, for other idiomatic games (such as role-playing games) those choices could be much less focused on those game changing outcomes. Instead, they could be more aesthetic. Specifically in how players choose how their avatar looks and is represented in the world.

No matter how agency is implemented or defined in games, it does provide one specific purpose. Agency is part of the core elements of what makes a game a game. Providing a player with the options and structure to make those meaningful decisions is the first step that a designer takes in curating the player experience.

Notice that this piece makes a distinction between agency and rote setting/game interactivity. Agency is also presented as being at the level of the player rather than simply the player character in the setting. It also discusses how agency involves the power and influence over what they want to do and accomplish, not even necessarily for the purposes of their character's fiction, but for their own sense of fun and game involvement.

 

[innerdude]

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).

Upon further reflection, I find that I am not fully willing to cede that your definition is somehow the assumed "writ large" for the hobby.

My first exposure to RPGs was BECMI in 1985. I skipped most of the '90s, then continued my "adult" grounding in RPG play with D&D 3.5 in the early 2000s.

In all my years of play and study of RPGs, I've never once come across your definition of "agency" as some set-in-stone, founding principle. In truth, I don't know that I'd ever fully formulated a complete picture/definition of what I'd consider player agency until I sat down and began working through this thread. Though I had some ideas beforehand of what could constitute agency, it has become abundantly and comprehensibly clear that the concept of player agency extends well beyond the definition provided in your quote.

If your definition of "agency" ever was held in primacy by the RPG vox populi, I imagine it was during some period in the '90s---which would be no surprise, given the general zeitgeist of RPG play was dominated by D&D 2e and Vampire/White Wolf. I've never played an actual White Wolf system (though I've watched other people do it), but it's my general impression that in some White Wolf circles, a GM not allowing a player to actually, you know, play their character might have been a "thing" back then. Between GM force and the massively heavy handed White Wolf metaplot (from what I've gathered), there might have been real concerns that a player might be forced by the GM to even avoid playing their character a certain way much of the time. So I suppose for its time, your definition at least identified some part of the problem.

Newtonian physics still has a place in our understanding of the world. But it's been enhanced, supplanted, and overlaid with significantly more material since Sir Isaac Newton got bonked on the head with an apple.

To say that the inner workings of RPG theory, play, and mindspace have radically evolved since 1995 would be an understatement. If your definition of agency worked back in the '90s, it doesn't work anymore.

 

[Aldarc]

I also think that our own hobby's understanding of player agency has naturally expanded as a result of video games, a significantly larger media industry, which attracts greater designer, scholarly, and player-side analysis about their games. So it is little surprise that the video games industry has developed a more articulate sense of player agency or even design principles. There are obviously differences of medium between video games and TTRPGs, but there is also more overlap between them (or even board games) than with say film or literature.

 

[pemerton]

The Moldvay adventure design process (which I just read about half an hour ago, coincidentally), calls for the map to start with the base village (or town etc) and the dungeon to be placed first, somewhat centrally, and the rest of the map built around that. B2 fits that pattern like a glove.

Which page?

I've just been reading my copy. Here are some extracts:

Page B3:​

This rule booklet deals mostly with adventures in a dungeon . . .​

​

It is the DM's job to prepare the setting for each adventure before the game begins. This setting is called a dungeon . . . The dungeon is carefully mapped on paper . . . Each game session is called an adventure. . . . An adventure begins when the party enters a dungeon, and ends when the party has left the dungeon and divided up treasure. . . . At the start of the game, the palyers enter the dungeon . . .​

​

Page B15​

When the players have rolled up their characters and bought their equipment, the DM will describe the background of the adventure. This might include information about the place the charactrs start from, the names of any NPC companions or retainers they will have, and some rumours abot the dungeon the party is going to explore.​

​

[The rest of this chapter (Part 4: The Adventure) discusses resolving movement and exploration in dungeons; and then talks about awarding XP.]​

​

Page B51:​

Before playes can take their characters on adventures into dungeons, the DM must either craeat a dungeon or draw its map, or beome familiar with one of TSR's dungeon modules. . . . This section [ie Part 8: Dungeon Master Information] gives a step-by-step guide to creating a dungeon.​

​

[The rest of the chapter then goes on to discuss how to build a dungeon (eg heading B. Decide on a Setting discusses how "it is useful to have a general idea of what it will look like" eg castle, tower, temple, etc.]​

This is what I had in mind. Where is the reference to villages?

 

[Fenris-77]

Which page?

I've just been reading my copy. Here are some extracts:

Page B3:​

This rule booklet deals mostly with adventures in a dungeon . . .​

​

It is the DM's job to prepare the setting for each adventure before the game begins. This setting is called a dungeon . . . The dungeon is carefully mapped on paper . . . Each game session is called an adventure. . . . An adventure begins when the party enters a dungeon, and ends when the party has left the dungeon and divided up treasure. . . . At the start of the game, the palyers enter the dungeon . . .​

​

Page B15​

When the players have rolled up their characters and bought their equipment, the DM will describe the background of the adventure. This might include information about the place the charactrs start from, the names of any NPC companions or retainers they will have, and some rumours abot the dungeon the party is going to explore.​

​

[The rest of this chapter (Part 4: The Adventure) discusses resolving movement and exploration in dungeons; and then talks about awarding XP.]​

​

Page B51:​

Before playes can take their characters on adventures into dungeons, the DM must either craeat a dungeon or draw its map, or beome familiar with one of TSR's dungeon modules. . . . This section [ie Part 8: Dungeon Master Information] gives a step-by-step guide to creating a dungeon.​

​

[The rest of the chapter then goes on to discuss how to build a dungeon (eg heading B. Decide on a Setting discusses how "it is useful to have a general idea of what it will look like" eg castle, tower, temple, etc.]​

This is what I had in mind. Where is the reference to villages?

I had to go back and look, it's actually in the Expert Booklet on X54, which makes it Cook and Marsh, not Moldvay mea culpa.

C. PLACE THE DUNGEON AND THE BASE TOWN.
Up to now, most characters have been adventuring in a dungeon
that was assumed to be near a town. Both of these should now be
placed on the map. The town is likely to be near a waterway or
trade route, while the dungeon is usually in a deserted or desolate
area. The dungeon should not be too close to the town (or the
town would probably be overrun by the dungeon's monsters) but
should not be more than a day's journey away. If the town and
dungeon are placed near the center of a small scale map, the
players will be able to explore in all directions.

 

[Neonchameleon]

All I mean is there is nothing wrong with my style. I am not suggesting others are doing anything wrong in their gaming (and I think I've made that clear)

But that's not what you are saying. What you are saying is "My style is the best at X" which is at best a statement that needs to be proved - and can be disproved by counter example.

If you think that the implication that not having the best agency (or anything else) is in any way an insult or of itself makes other gaming styles wrong then you shouldn't be trying to claim your way of playing has the best X because when you do you are saying that literally everyone else is wrong. And you do not have a leg to stand on when your own feelings get hurt because it's pointed out that you are not at some theoretical maximum here and others can give more. It's you saying "Any other than the best is wrong" rather than "This is a valuable factor in a complex situation."

If only the style of play that is best at X is right then I can guarantee that your style isn't it no matter what that style is. Humans are complex and "best at X" normally ends up being a paperclip maximiser.

What terms should we use then?

If you want to talk about something as used by the OSR community try using "OSR" rather than "Old School"? Otherwise you will get people like @pemerton legitimately pointing out old school sources. Meanwhile OSR refers to a specific approach.

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 to me classic Old School sandboxes have therefore and by that definition always seemed to me to have less agency than games run more like Fate where my characters are much more able to influence the setting. Classic sandboxes keep me detached from the setting and restrict my agency because my character does not move anywhere near so freely.

A good example would be the Fate roll to Create An Advantage using Contacts. In character this is the character finding who they need to in the town or city - but this means that the player gets to endow traits about that contact rather than pick from the half dozen or so pre-prepared contacts. My character can move freely in their area of expertise precisely because the setting is malleable and they are part of that setting. Play I expect from a predefined rigid sandbox (and yes I am calling sandboxes rigid here even if a whole lot less rigid than metaplot heavy games and adventure paths) would restrict my character in ways that meant they were less a part of the setting.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Upon further reflection, I find that I am not fully willing to cede that your definition is somehow the assumed "writ large" for the hobby.

My first exposure to RPGs was BECMI in 1985. I skipped most of the '90s, then continued my "adult" grounding in RPG play with D&D 3.5 in the early 2000s.

In all my years of play and study of RPGs, I've never once come across your definition of "agency" as some set-in-stone, founding principle. In truth, I don't know that I'd ever fully formulated a complete picture/definition of what I'd consider player agency until I sat down and began working through this thread. Though I had some ideas beforehand of what could constitute agency, it has become abundantly and comprehensibly clear that the concept of player agency extends well beyond the definition provided in your quote.

If your definition of "agency" ever was held in primacy by the RPG vox populi, I imagine it was during some period in the '90s---which would be no surprise, given the general zeitgeist of RPG play was dominated by D&D 2e and Vampire/White Wolf. I've never played an actual White Wolf system (though I've watched other people do it), but it's my general impression that in some White Wolf circles, a GM not allowing a player to actually, you know, play their character might have been a "thing" back then. Between GM force and the massively heavy handed White Wolf metaplot (from what I've gathered), there might have been real concerns that a player might be forced by the GM to even avoid playing their character a certain way much of the time. So I suppose for its time, your definition at least identified some part of the problem.

Newtonian physics still has a place in our understanding of the world. But it's been enhanced, supplanted, and overlaid with significantly more material since Sir Isaac Newton got bonked on the head with an apple.

To say that the inner workings of RPG theory, play, and mindspace have radically evolved since 1995 would be an understatement. If your definition of agency worked back in the '90s, it doesn't work anymore.

You don't have to cede anything but neither do I. This is the defintiion I have encountered consistently since 2000. But at this point, the discussion is not going anywhere. I am perfectly content for us to agree to disagree on agency. If there is some other topic we can explore that is fine. But it isn't the end of the world for two sides to reach an impasse in a discussion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But that's not what you are saying. What you are saying is "My style is the best at X" which is at best a statement that needs to be proved - and can be disproved by counter example.

I wouldn't even go that far. What I am saying is my style places high value on agency, and is structured around avoiding railroads. And that I understand agency to mean, for me and for most people i've met in the hobby, to be having freedom to act and make meaningful choices in the setting as your character. Personally, I think it is a great style for achieving this, possibly the best. That is about the extent of my claim. But I do think this conversation is at an impasse. And I am sorry, but a circle of posters asserting a definition of a term that I simply don't encounter in the hobby, is not going to get me to change my mind about it

 

[Aldarc]

You don't have to cede anything but neither do I. This is the defintiion I have encountered consistently since 2000. But at this point, the discussion is not going anywhere. I am perfectly content for us to agree to disagree on agency. If there is some other topic we can explore that is fine. But it isn't the end of the world for two sides to reach an impasse in a discussion.

Except now that you have encountered other definitions or understandings of player agency, so hopefully you will stop claiming in the future that your understanding is the only one you have encountered consistently.* Others in your circles may even find the other understanding more intuitive or informative if exposed to it, particularly if given the opportunity to think through a fair treatment of the idea. Having awareness of such wider discussions of player agency outside of your circles will certainly help prevent insular group think that regards your understanding as the One True Way.**

* I'm not sure how you have not encountered this consistently at least when it comes to this community, since I recall such discussions from @pemerton, @Manbearcat, @Campbell, and others for at least 5 years now on this forum.

** Before any smart guy says anything: it's not clever to suggest that this could be directed at us as the critical difference is that we are repeatedly exposed to and reminded of "traditional" and "hegemonic" understandings already and we do know what forms the bulk of gaming expectations regarding GM authority, player agency, etc. as many of us come from such backgrounds and still play such games.