A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

Me neither, but there is a lot of great stuff available on teh interwebs. That's only helpful if you find that sort of thing interesting though. I happen to enjoy reading scholarly articles about RPG design, but that's certainly not everyone's cup of chai.

Oh, in that case, I have read plenty of game material online, read many GM advice sections from RPG books, and watched a lot of youtube. But from that I take what works at my table and ignore what doesn't. I am not very into the scholarly stuff (I'll read scholarly articles on history and things like that, but scholarly gaming articles don't usually hold my interest long enough for me to get through it---oddly enough I've found the same with scholarly martial arts articles)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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).

Right, I am not really sure when I first heard the term 'sandbox'. It may have been quite far back, or maybe not so much. I have the impression we used it in the 90's, but its tricky to really say for sure. I think terms like 'OSR' are a bit more recent coinage, but I didn't really engage with online RPG community much before about 2008, so I could be wrong there. My impression is it was a 'thing' around the time 4e was released.

In any case, aside from the period 1974 to about 1978, during which time modules and canned settings were largely unavailable, I think 'module based play' (essentially APs or at least 'adventures') were vastly the most common form of play. Starting with Blackmoor's 'Temple of the Frog' it became more and more common to have some sort of dungeon. Holmes Basic came with a module (variously B1 or B2 IIRC) or else a set of 'geomorphs' and 'monster and treasure assortment', which included some tables that basically let you generate a random dungeon. I would say that, by the time G3 was published and the D series was being released, it was probably vastly more common to just run modules than anything else. These are pretty hardcoded, there's a bunch of rooms, you push through in a fairly linear fashion, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, Gygax certainly outlined all the elements of a sandbox in the 1e DMG in '79, but they were always effectively a pretty rare form of play, post 1977 or so. Before that most everything was 'map and key' which is really just a way of saying 'sandbox'. Even so, Arduin Grimoire kind of hints that it was never universal, even uncommon/non-existent in some place.

 

[aramis erak]

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

Sorry, but that doesn't even begin to pass the sniff-test.

Roleplay can work just fine when the GM is unfair. It's not so great if the GM's skewed against players having successes, but an unfair GM can be a lot of fun for a while, if they're tilted in the player's favor.

There are even games where the question is not "Do you succeed?" but "what does it cost you to succeed?" Or even, "How do you pull it For example, Cosmic Patrol - except for fights, there's no risk of failure, just risk of complications. It's playing to find out how, not playing to find out if. And the referee is not only not fair, but is always a player as well - GMing rotates every scene, and the adventures are a series of linked situations. You're just playing to tell the story of how they get through situation A to trigger the cutscene to situation B.

It parallels watching a typical action or detective show: you know the cast will accomplish the mission... but how? That's what we watch to see.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK. Player searches for his brother. To give herself some idea of exactly what the PC is up against in this search, GM rolls some dice to determine what's become of said brother since last seen by the PC.

GM determines: brother is living the high life as the most successful merchant in Praetos City, and that he and his high-ranking-politician wife have just had a daughter. Dick move?

GM determines: brother died as a commoner in a fire near the Praetos docks two years ago and, as no immediate family could be found, his meagre assets were revoked to the Crown. Dick move?

It really isn't the specific disposition of the brother which is the issue. It is more the idea that a) a player generated agenda like this is merely a side-show from the real business of delving the GM's dungeon (or whatever) b) that the disposition is simply handled without any regard to anything the player might indicate is interesting, or the character's actions/nature might point towards. Yes, the character could be 'living in Praetos City' but then why? There's certainly a family dynamic to explore, at least. The brother might be up to no good. Perhaps he hears of the search for him and sows red herrings far and wide. I mean, a lot more can happen, and would be INTERESTING to happen than "you show up at the city and find your brother." (dead or alive for that matter).

I just don't understand the deliberate disregard, and even contempt for, the idea that a player has something valuable to contribute behind describing how his character moves around and acts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I guess what I'm saying is, Gygax certainly outlined all the elements of a sandbox in the 1e DMG in '79, but they were always effectively a pretty rare form of play, post 1977 or so. Before that most everything was 'map and key' which is really just a way of saying 'sandbox'. Even so, Arduin Grimoire kind of hints that it was never universal, even uncommon/non-existent in some place.

This sort of matches why the 1E DMG was so useful to me around 2003 or so. I was just not enjoying the style of play the was prevent at the time. And the 1DMG, which I had read in the past, but not deeply, was something I picked up cheap on amazon. I remember reading that, and re-reading my knights of the dinner table and thinking this is more what I want. I wouldn't say my style is what you see in the 1E dmg, just something about those two things: Knights of the Dinner Table and the stuff Gary was talking about in the 1E DMG reminded me what I enjoyed when I first started playing, and reminded me it can still very much be a game, and that part of the fun is not knowing how things will unfold, and allowing the players to kind of trash the scenery and see what happens (the latter was more the knights of the dinner table thing. And obviously Knights of the Dinner Table is parody with a dysfunctional group, but I think because the focus was on players who are just there to play around in the setting, some wanting to amass power, some wanting to forge relationships, and some just wanting to kill orcs, there was something in that, that I wasn't getting. And so for me those two things were helpful starting points to get me thinking differently about play at the table.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

OK, I don't have an argument with that really. I would point out that this obviously means that many points in virtually all RPGs are non-RP moments (a majority of any combat probably, any sort of check in games that have them, etc.).

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah. I've skimmed the Hub and Spokes, once. I don't claim any real knowledge of Burning Wheel or its systems. It seems to be coming from a specific angle with a specific point of view and specific goals, and I suspect I'd either need to play it or read more. At a minimum, it seems to operate at a different scale than I'm used to (which isn't intended as a negative).

I think truer words about Burning Wheel are rarely written.

Luke Crane built BW on a series of several principles:

• Players can keep player knowledge separate from character knowledge
• Players need to play the character, not themselves in the character's world.
• Players need to communicate clearly what they want the story to revolve around
• GM's need to make hard-hitting consequences, and inform the player before the roll
• Players and GM's cooperate to have a hard-hitting kick-ass story
• The prime rule of play, GM or player, is "Don't be a dick!"
• Keep the player agendae in the forefront
• build opposition in view....
• Characters advance by doing, including failing at things.
• If failure isn't interesting, just say yes.
• If failure is interesting, set the stakes and...
• ... go to the dice!

So it does a bunch of things that play to those principles.

 

[pemerton]

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.

You are framing meaningful choices in the dimension that @Manbearcat calls tactical (running, hiding, bargaining, luring away). Perhaps with a little bit of bleed into the strategic (depending what exactly is involved in helping others get away from the dragon).

Now in my experience of D&D play many of those choices are not actually meaningful, because the resolution is purely GM-decides, and so the real action is not imagining and responding to the fictional circumstance but rather trying to intuit what the GM has in mind as the solution to the problem. This is because D&D has traditionally had a fairly narrow suite of action resolution tools. (4e being an obvious exception, though even 4e might struggle with your dragon scenario if the PCs are low-level and the dragon is not.) For instance, in AD&D there is no mechanic for resolving I hide from the dragon (the only hide mechanic in AD&D is thieves' hide-in-shadows ability, and dragons automatically defeat that ability at least within a certain radius), and there is no very robust mechanic for resolving I run from the dragon. Bargaining and luring away go straight to GM decides.

There are other systems that have more robust resolution tools. But that doesn't address the point, which I think @AbdulAlhazred has most recently made in this thread: why am I engaged with this dragon at all? This is the dimension that @Manbearcat calls protagonistic. If there is some dramatic or thematic explanation for that, then the question of "meaningfulness" is answered at that point without needing to elucidate tactical possibilities. Whereas if the answer is nothing more than because that's what the GM decided today's fiction would be about, then we're back in the situation where it is the GM who is deciding what matters.

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.

Most serious academic discussions of autonomy and choice tend to take the view that autonomy depends upon a sufficient range of (potentially) valuable choices. What counts as sufficient is context dependent, obviously, but here's an example that I think most scholars would say does not permit genuine autonomy or choice: Do as I say or I will kill you!, from a person who does have you in their power and so can kill you if you don't do as they say.

But in any event, I don't think anyone in this thread is claiming to have identified one additional choice that will move a RPG from a situation of no player agency to some player agency. In my case I've talked about degrees of agency ("high" or "low"). And I think I've made it pretty clear what my basis is for making those judgements of degree.

Going back to your dragon example, a game could be something that even you would recognise as a railroad and yet permit at least some of the sorts of tactical choices you point to in relation to the dragon (eg hiding vs luring or distracting vs running away). Would that make it a high-agency RPG experience? Not in my view.

 

[FrogReaver]

It really isn't the specific disposition of the brother which is the issue. It is more the idea that a) a player generated agenda like this is merely a side-show from the real business of delving the GM's dungeon (or whatever) b) that the disposition is simply handled without any regard to anything the player might indicate is interesting, or the character's actions/nature might point towards. Yes, the character could be 'living in Praetos City' but then why? There's certainly a family dynamic to explore, at least. The brother might be up to no good. Perhaps he hears of the search for him and sows red herrings far and wide. I mean, a lot more can happen, and would be INTERESTING to happen than "you show up at the city and find your brother." (dead or alive for that matter).

I just don't understand the deliberate disregard, and even contempt for, the idea that a player has something valuable to contribute behind describing how his character moves around and acts.

I mean consider someone coming into your game and trying to do things outside the agreed upon playstyle and calling you a dick when you said no.

IMO It's only a dick move if the player justifiably expects to be able to do that kind of thing. That's not a justified expectation in every style.

 

[FrogReaver]

OK, I don't have an argument with that really. I would point out that this obviously means that many points in virtually all RPGs are non-RP moments (a majority of any combat probably, any sort of check in games that have them, etc.).

Yep. That's the conclusion I had arrived at as well.