A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

Rolemaster probably had a chart for that.

No idea. Never read it. Never played it.

I played it as my primary game for nearly 20 years.

Luckily I'm posting in a thread where no one's game or style is framed as "invalid" or "wrong".

 

[pemerton]

Deadly diseases are a part of our world. Brothers die all the time to disease or random violence in such a way that we cannot intervene.

In the real world we don’t lack agency because we can’t control these things, we have agency despite our lack of control over them. Because, even though we have no control over such things, we do have meaningful choices about how we respond to them.

That’s what real world agency looks like.

I’m not saying this is okay because it happens in the real world. I’m saying that such bad things happen to your relatives and friends isn’t typically viewed as a lack of agency on your part.

In the real world, people are subject to forces/processes that they can't control.

Imagined worlds don't "unfold" according to their own causal processes. Because they're imagined. They have to be authored.

So the analogue of forces that people can't control becomes decisions made by another participant in establishing the imagined world. In the context of the sandboxes being discussed, that is the GM.

I don't really see how reiterating this point about your preferred allocation of authorial power is meant to persuade me (or anyone else) that players have more of it and GMs less.

What you seem to be doing is arguing why players in such games should be satisfied with having less authorial power than the GM: because the GM is the analogue in their game experience of forces/processes they can't control in the rest of their life experience.

I also still don't understand why this doesn't apply to combat resolution.

(I mean, I know the historical explanation: most RPGs' approach to combat is influenced by D&D which was in this respect derived from wargaming, and the whole point of wargaming is that the referee doesn't just decide what happens. But I don't understand how this approach is reconciled with the notion that the imagined world should be established by GM decision-making as an analogue for the impersonal processes that shape so much of the real world.)

 

[aramis erak]

This. A sandbox doesn't care about dramatic arcs. Drama can arise (i've mentioned drama and sandbox) but no one has plot immunity (not PCs, not NPCS) and in a sandbox,

You're fine to here

the gm has full setting control.

The properly run sandbox has some amount of PC influence that precludes full setting control, because of the agreed upon rules systems, and the simple factor that, in a sandbox, player actions matter.

At a minimum, a proper sandbox is responsive to player actions. Ful GM setting control is axiomatically constrained by having to react to players. If the players can't impact it, it's no better than EverCrack or WoW: openworld quests with no setting impact.

 

[FrogReaver]

In the real world, people are subject to forces/processes that they can't control.

Imagined worlds don't "unfold" according to their own causal processes. Because they're imagined. They have to be authored.

So the analogue of forces that people can't control becomes decisions made by another participant in establishing the imagined world. In the context of the sandboxes being discussed, that is the GM.

We don't disagree here.

I don't really see how reiterating this point about your preferred allocation of authorial power is meant to persuade me (or anyone else) that players have more of it and GMs less.

But that's not my point. I'm not saying you should prefer this method of authorial content generation because it's more realistic. In fact my point isn't about authorial content generation at all. My point is about agency and the real world factors in because I'm using agency in the real world to compare your conception of agency to. And guess what? There is a noticable difference. Agency in the real world doesn't require you to have power over a particular thing whereas agency in your conception does. Take a dragon. You say the person that has no chance of killing the dragon has less agency than the one that can. But agency isn't about you achieving your goals, agency is about you having meaningful decisions. And even when faced with an unkillable dragon you have meaningful choices. Do I run? Do I hide? Do I bargain? Do I lure it away? Do I help others get away from it? Etc. All are meaningful decisions in relation to the dragon situation and it's that capacity for making meaningful decisions that is agency.

And this is why I keep coming back to the idea, that 1 additional meaningful choice doesn't actually imply more agency, because agency isn't how many different meaningful choices you have the option of choosing between in a particular situation, it's whether you can make any meaningful choices in a situation.

What you seem to be doing is arguing why players in such games should be satisfied with having less authorial power than the GM: because the GM is the analogue in their game experience of forces/processes they can't control in the rest of their life experience.

That's not my argument at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I asked something similarly just now. I suspect the issue has more to do with the GM's fiat to make unilateral setting declarations removed from mechanical play procedures.

I can't really keep up with all the posts, but I just wanted to say that randomness isn't a 'fix', and it isn't about the 'GM fiat' so much as it is about the whole concept of what the agenda is. I play an RPG so that I can participate in an interesting story which is about characters that I RP (and their associates, etc.) not about narrating the outcomes of dice rolls. I have no problem with dice as a way injecting some suspense into the game and avoiding utterly predictable outcomes. So, in some sense I don't have this huge problem with randomness factoring into the 'find the brother scenario', but if the end result is simply determined by some single random toss of the dice which is utterly unrelated to anything taking place in the narrative, that is just IMHO bad storytelling. Why is that interesting? It is 100% about the dice! Give me a scenario where my character can take some huge risk and roll some dice and maybe it impacts the outcome, that's dramatic, but some DM just rolling "sorry your brother died 3 years ago, the dice say so." doesn't really cut it. That was 8th grade sort of level of play... I want something more sophisticated that delivers the goods better.

 

[aramis erak]

I think, in the oft-cited examples from BW, that roleplaying would be impossible without the resolutions (We found the tower; I found my brother). I think that in any system that boils down to "The GM Decides" where the GM is convinced/persuaded by roleplaying (along the lines of what I understand @pemerton to mean by "free narration") that the resolution is directly derived from the roleplaying. I think that in any system or instance where the odds of resolution are affected by what has been roleplayed, roleplaying and resolution are intertwined.

Technically, if it affects anything on a character sheet, in BW, it requires a roll. Likewise, if it requires a PC believe or disbelieve something, it also requires a roll. That's a quirk of BW/BE/MG because it's part of how Luke Crane has solved the problem of the charismatic player with the non-charismatic character using player abilities to dominate the story. Burning Wheel has a specific mechanical limit on RP power over the game. It's unusual in doing to the way it does. It's not unique, but it is rare. Vincent Baker has similar mechanics in some of his games...

 

[robconley]

I'm not being macabre here. I'm dead serious. A satisfying roleplaying game about being a caregiver/priest or merely someone who doesn't want to give up on a loved one will not include the sort of fiat/inexorable "Rocks fall, you die", lack of agency despite all efforts, reality of life that sometimes shapes these kinds of things. It would include the very real prospect of healing, it would abstract the unnecessary, and it would systemitize in a way that creates an integrated feedback loop where the emotions experienced and mental fortitude erected actually impact the physical fortitude of both the afflicted and the caregivers.

First off if I read your post correctly, sorry for your loss. As for the resolution to your example, I am uninterested as a player or referee in wish fulfillment. I am interested in the experience as a player, I am interested in creating an interesting experience for my players to adventure in. By experience I creating a place with people with personalities, locales with details, and sometime natural events.

For example my Scourge of the Demon Wolf is about a village and a region that suffered horrific attacks by packs of wolves lead by a demon possessed alpha wolf. Thrown in there is a conclave of mage, a village of medieval peasant with local clergy, a group of outlaws, and a band of wandering beggars.

It is a situation with no specific resolution. If the player don't deal with the situation, then the pack will grow and all the groups mentioned above will be slaughtered. In the absence of the PC's presence this is the course of events that will play out. It plays out that way because the demon wolf is not only gained control of the wolves in the immediate region but incorporated packs from surrounding regions. It cunning and intelligent enough to allow its combined pack to survive and grow.

The only group capable of dealing with this on their own are the mages and they are off in their own world doing their own thing and by the time they are aware of what going on it will be too late to save the other groups and possibly themselves or at least their conclave.

This sounds all predetermined but it not, it only what could happen if the PCs were not there. Starting with the initial incident, the PC enter the region and find themselves in the midst of the situation. I run the playtest of adventure for over 14 different group. Luckily there were patterns to be found among what the different groups did to deal with the situation. So that gave me more to write out than just the descriptions of the situation, characters, and locale.

But even with those patterns groups continued to surprise me at how they resolved the situation. The last group I playtested the adventure even managed to resolve it without dealing with medieval village. While all the groups managed to resolve the situation successfully, a handful had major difficulties in doing so. Suffered frustration, character deaths and other negative consequences. A small number of other groups sailed through the adventure. Most had ups and downs as they dealt with the NPCs and the situation.

Leaving all of that up for exposition + theatrical amplification + GM decides sounds like the most horrible experience I could imagine (and yes, it maps pretty damn well to my real life experience!)!

I coined (I believe at least...I don't ever recollect seeing it before that) the term "Setting Tourism" (as one of the key aspects of this type of play) a long time ago for precisely the reasons you're outlining above (even using the analogy).

What I do is little more than being a tour guide.

Couple questions:

1) Why do you not try to suss out "what is interesting" (that is, what is the premise and what are the themes and genre tropes of play) prior to play and have table time focus on that?

Because themes and tropes arise of human experience. Rather than artificially and arbitrarily (even as a group decision) incorporate them I recreate the situations that give birth to them.

And the core of it I figured out decades ago back in the 80s when I was known as the referee who let players trash his setting.

Being able to have a lasting impact on the setting coupled with the knowledge that I will use what the players did in this campaign as the part of the background of the next campaign. As well as not caring what the players consider to be a lasting impact. Back when I younger the players invariably choose to become kings and princes. Now that I referee a broader age range it tends to be more varied. One ended with one PC getting a promotion in the Overlord's secret police and the other a blacksmith franchise. Another ended with a inn being built.

The more the nuts and bolts of what I do, but that basic gist. In short I weave campaigns in which the players can exercise their vital powers as their characters along lines of excellence in a situation affording them scope. I don't promise success only that I will be fair.

Many games are systemitized precisely around this idea in order to deliver a consistently rewarding experience with respect to "what is interesting." My Life With Master is very different than Moldvay Basic D&D is very different from Dogs in the Vineyard is very different than Blades in the Dark is very different than Torchbearer is very different from D&D 4e is very different from Apocalypse World precisely because "what is interesting" is a foundational question that is asked and answered before starting.

My view that rules are a detail to used as an aide to adjudicate something specific the players do as their character. Rules can be abstract at a high level like realm management or they can be narrowly focused as to resolving knocking a chalice out of the hand of a lich while fighting a muddy hillside in a thunderstorm. Either way I pick the rules that fit me and my group's interest and tolerance.

I played and ran LARP events so I don't find rules governing role-playing particularly useful or desirable except as a form of shorthand description.

What do you think you gain and what do you think you lose by not preemptively asking this?

What I ask is "What are you interested in playing?" Usually it starts out with a broad genre.
Then I ask what you think of a,b,c,d, or e that fits with the above.
Then I narrow it down from there.

From that I create locales, and character that centered around that situation. For example if the players say "We all want to make City-Guards and try that for a campaign." I will then create the details of the City Guards, some aides for myself, some details I share with the players, and some details I keep for myself. Each players has their own background and know their place at the start of the campaign. Then play commence and we proceed from there. Since players are part of the organization a lot of the campaign is about fulfilling duties and following orders. But the character and those they interact with have lives and the complication is what leads to various adventures.

2) Do you have a play excerpt in mind that you could share where your own play led to "the brother died (or some derivation of that theme)?" Not like a "story hour" but actually sharing with us what went on under the hood ("Brother Alive Beginning State" > action declarations > action resolution > GM evolution of fiction/gamestate change > rinse repeat until "Brother Dead End State").

That would be helpful.

I ran a campaign using GURPS with two PCs. They played criminals, members of the Thieves Guild in the City State of the Invincible Overlord. Basically just brutes. One thing led to another a couple of session in and they wound up killing the local gang leader when they were not supposed to. When the Guild Lieutenant came around looking for them, they killed him too. At this point they decided what the hell and started working up the guild hierarchy one by one. Executed their plans quite well and more importantly they caught the guild in a way that left them flat-footed for a while.

Finally they done enough that the guildmaster decided to call a truce and invite them in as lords of the thieves guild. The players did a lot of things right but what they didn't do is build up a following. I roleplayed the negotiations and was able to convince the players that they had a deal and meet with the guild leadership to formalize their place. They walked into his chamber and were killed.

It was pretty much as brief and brutal as you imagined. Now I know players through the decades who would have not taken that well. But for these two players, when the final confrontation ensued they knew how they were played and that they walked into a trap. And death was the only outcome.

Why was death the only outcome, because the player killed somebody who was important to the guildmaster. Done it a way that there no coming back for the NPC.

Some would be critical of this. Say that as a referee I should have handled that confrontation differently. All I can say that the players had ample opportunities to choose different courses of action that would have led to a different outcomes. There was tipping point where they figured (wrongly in hindsight) to go for it all and they came up short. Mostly because to the end they were lone wolf operators for the most part.

Finally it not a miracle thing I do as a referee. I had several players over the decade just not come back in the midst of the campaign because it was going in a direction that didn't interest them. For these players (and this doesn't include the players with personal problems) the fundamental problem is not them or me or the other players. It is that by necessity the broad direction of what the players do is by consensus. Sometime that consensus otherwise free any particular agenda is boring or uninteresting to an individual. So why should they use their hobby time to do something boring?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In my personal definition of agency that’s power.

absolutely no power does translate into a lack of agency.

but one of the most important agency determiners is the question: can you cause important things to change? And you can cause important things to change with no real power.

the way you have set up the conscripts situation he doesn’t sound like he has much agency. But add a few details and that assessment could change.

Now, this is kind of interesting in terms of contrasting with my own position. I see it as a bit paradoxical that NOT having the choice to play a 'powerless' (in some sense) character grants you MORE agency. That doesn't seem right to me...

This is one of several reasons I don't really get behind @Bedrockgames definition of agency, nor subscribe to the theory that there are 'different kinds' of agency in any fundamental sense. Couple this with the already long-since made refutation of the idea of 'character effectiveness' as agency when the GM still reserves ALL power over the fiction at the table. Players in this theory are like subjects in some pre-Democracy European Kingdom, they are mere subjects. If they exercise some freedom it is either simply a grant of the power of the Sovereign (GM), or an act of rebellion!

So, given that oddity, I would have to say that no, playing a more powerful character is irrelevant. It is control over the concerns and agenda of the game as it relates to the player's part in it which can only constitute true agency, just like only equal participation in the Sovereignty (IE Democracy) is the only way to be truly free (or by being the king/DM). As another poster (Aldarc? Hawkeyefan?) mentioned, this doesn't require the power of direct authorship, it can be PbtA-like "requirement to focus on the player's concerns as an agenda" but it needs to put the player in a 'sovereign' position, even if their role is smaller (IE the President of the US obviously wields the sovereignty of a nation, but doesn't own it).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@hawkeyefan but certainly 'your brother is dead' is a valid outcome of a journey of finding said brother? (And not automatically a dramatically unsatisfying one.)

Agreed! In fact the player cannot (Czege Principal) be the one to dictate the resolution, as that spoils the process. They are simply entitled to the allocation of a certain quantity of 'dramatic energy' to their quest. The result should be dramatic, in doubt, and lead to character exposition, usually all driven by some sort of struggle/dilemma introduced into the situation, often by the GM (and possibly guided by dice, etc.). It is OK, if in the final analysis, after all the story has reached its culmination, that some failed check results in "the brother is dead." Hopefully that will lead on into even more interesting territory, but I guess it could come at the end of an arc and just end, if other things are 'on the burner' that can provide the needed 'dramatic energy' from there on.

 

[robconley]

Players in this theory are like subjects in some pre-Democracy European Kingdom, they are mere subjects. If they exercise some freedom it is either simply a grant of the power of the Sovereign (GM), or an act of rebellion!

Tabletop roleplaying doesn't work if the referee is not a fair arbiter.

Keep in mind that the first tabletop roleplaying campaign out there Blackmoor didn't have a setup where the referee was running the "opposition". There were players playing the good guys and players playing the bad the guy. While Dave Arneson was running some NPCs, he mostly adjudicating between two opposing group of players. Later he did run the Blackmoor Dungeon where he handled the monster. But even then there were players who were involved like Sir Fang the Vampire Lord.

I am describing this bit of history to illustrate that the referee being a fair arbiter lies at the heart of tabletop roleplaying. WIthout it none of it work.

It now about having power. It about the fact that a major reason why tabletop roleplaying works is the players only know what their character knows.

Nor is dispersing the decision making about the setting, it locales, creatures and characters is a magic bullet for making a campaign better. Instead of relying on one guy getting it right, now you have to rely on the group getting it right. It can work, but small group dynamic ensures that there will be as many negative outcomes as there with a single human referee although they will be different.