A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

In a way but not how you are thinking about it. What I do is establish the premise of setting which acts as check on what I can choose later.

<snip>

The rule I follow is that given the premise of the setting I will follow the consequences regardless of how I think ought it to be.

<snip>

So it not fiat. The rules are defined by description of the setting, characters, and creatures.

I don't know what contrast you are drawing between "following the rules" and "how you think it ought to be". Presumably the rules tell you how it ought to be?

In any event, at this level of generality I think my Classic Traveller game comes close to fitting your description. But it is not a pebbles-in-the-pond game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

• I describe the circumstances of the characters and it starts with the initial circumstances after character creation.
• The players describe to me what they do.
• I then describe the results often by using the mechanics of the system used for the campaign.
• I then describe the new circumstances
• Rinse and repeat until the session or campaign ends.

But a picture is worth a thousand words. Warning it not edited it is raw footage.

As for something written send me a PM and I will comp you a copy of a Scourge of the Demon Wolf.


Depends on what been described about the lost brother. I can think of possibilities but in this case, it is the player's call to describe the brother, and his life before he got lost. It part of the player's background and as long it consistent with the setting, I am good with it. Based on that I will come up with how the brother got lost and work it into the campaign. The player can choose to follow the leads or not. If the player is smart, diligent, and has a little luck (you just can't be rolling ones all the time) then it is likely it will be resolved successfully.


I handle most of it through first person roleplaying combined with the use of the dice and the system when needed to resolve things when the result are uncertain. For example combat.


My view is that because we are all human there is a limit to how detailed we can get. So in practice there is room for expansion about a character's background. As long as it not inconsistent with what been established I don't have an issue with a new family member or new detail being created and added to the background of the campaign. Once added I handle it like any other background element the players are interested in. I make sure to work it into as part of the life of the setting* as something the players to explore or learn out. However often it becomes an active goal of the players in which case they do what they think they ought to do as if they actually in the setting of the campaign. If they are novices, I will coach them until they are comfortable about choosing what to do.

*Think of it as color commentary coupled with random encounters.

I watched your play for a bit, and there's a strong aspect of the players asking the GM questions to determine what the GM thinks the situation is. That's very fine -- I tend to run a lot of my 5e this way -- but it's not exactly what you're describing. You have very firm constraints on the available ripples the players can create, and you have rocks in the pond that will react with ripples pretty strongly without being moved by them. This is, again, very typical mainstream play, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Functionally, though, your play loop is better characterized by the players declaring actions to find out what the GM's notes or thinking is. They can learn things this way that they can then leverage, largely in ways the GM intends but occasionally surprising, and the GM will decide how that turns out. This is, again, a perfectly good way to play (one I leverage, although to a lesser extent, when I run 5e) but it's not quite the expansive field your presenting. It's much more expansive than, say, an adventure path, where a plot is intended to be executed, but it's much less expansive in options that other games or approaches can muster. And, again, that's fine -- it's not a race.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In a way but not how you are thinking about it. What I do is establish the premise of setting which acts as check on what I can choose later. Every time something happens there is a range of results. If I think a possible result is the most interesting to the players I will pick that. If I think there are equally interesting possible results I will randomly roll between them and go with that. This acts as a check against bias. Sometimes only one result is plausible so I go with that. However I am kept in check by the fact there only a few possible result from any choice made by the players.

The rule I follow is that given the premise of the setting I will follow the consequences regardless of how I think ought it to be. I been called out from time to time for making a call that the players found implausible. And they are sometimes right. In which case I make a new ruling and that how it proceeds.

So it not fiat. The rules are defined by description of the setting, characters, and creatures.

Yeah, I disagree with a large chunk of this. Only a few possible outcomes from a player action really only occurs when the situation is so pre-decided by the GM that this constrains action outcomes.

Your opening scene in your video would be handled very differently in other games -- they'd set a scene and a point of conflict, and then follow player actions, either saying yes to them or testing them with the mechanics. On a success, the player gets their intent, or at least moves toward it for more complex interactions. On a failure, the GM changes the fiction in a way negative to the players (lots of discussion on how GM moves are constrained or promoted, but a general statement here works). The difference is that the GM isn't evaluating the plausibility or possibility of action resolutions except at the genre appropriate level. This is the part with GM bias seeps in, even to well intentioned play. And, this isn't a bad thing at all -- it's very natural, and often a goal of the kind of play you're promoting! GM curation of play is a strong selling point for many, especially with good GMs.

 

[FrogReaver]

There seems to be some confusion over how the Wises check worked, so I'll reiterate it, with some context.

Here's the context - from p 269 of Revised (the text is the same in Gold, p 552), setting out "the sacred and most holy role of the players" (emphasis original):

Use the mechanics! Players are expected to call for a Duel of Wits or a Circles test or to demand the Range and Cover rules in a shooting match with a Dark Elf assassin. Don't wait for the GM to invoke a rule - invoke the damn thing yourself and get the story moving! . . . If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself.​

Sounds fine so far.

It's in this spirit that I, playing Aramina, and having regard to her Belief which I had previously authored - I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse! - that I said, as Aramina, something like Isn't Evard's tower around here. I don't now recall exactly what the GM's response was, but I think I was the one to point to Aramina's Great Masters-wise 2.

So the GM set the difficulty for the check (probably Ob 2, I'm guessing, because I think I succeeded without needing to spend any artha; and Ob 2 is the difficulty for knowing "an interesting fact" beyond common knowledge but without any details, which I think is what this would be, at least on a generous reading).

I then rolled the dice, and got my two successes (1 in 4 chance) and thus confirmed that Aramina's recollection was correct.

I am very curious on one thing. Are there any restrictions on the kinds of things you can author into the fiction via remembering?

Can you remember you are the actually the king of the gods just assuming human appearance?
Can you remember the King of the World owes you a favor that you want to call in now?

To my mind, this is clearly action resolution. The action in question is remembering something. As I've posted many times upthread, it follows exactly the same procedure as any other action declaration, including I attack the Orc with my mace. There was nothing "out of character" about it that would be any different from declaring and resolving the attack. (Eg rolling the dice is not something the character does, in either case. If someone thinks that rolling the dice "emulates" the PC swinging the mace, well equally in this case it emulates Aramina making the effort to remember something she learned while studying as a mage.) There was no pointing at a map, because that would certainly be "details". As I've also posted, we found the tower by getting help from Thurgon's former comrade Friedrich.

The most damaging thing about memory mechanics of the kind you describe is that they really can be used to add any detail to the world unless the game places arbitrary restrictions on the kinds of things that are possible to remember with them. And if any detail can be added then pretty much anything already established can altered to such a degree that it isn't really the same thing anymore. So this mechanic typically does get restricted in the types of fiction it can affect, even though it's exactly the same procedure to resolve any memory detail. To turn your argument back on you a bit, why are you okay with some things being rememerable and others not? It is after all the same exact procedure that produces both? Maybe this will help you understand how we answer the question you so often pose to us.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So if I read you correctly, one way I could use something like that is allow my players to play things out as they do (say they go into a quarter of the city where an enemy gang operates and take over a couple of workshops they control, if I can identify what that means on the map you showed me, I could note that and it would provide them with some kind of ongoing advantage or resource.

Yeah, you got it. So a claim like Vice Den may be a number of things....a gambling hall, a brothel, a drug den....but it grants the advantage it grants mechanically. You can kind of “drape” the setting over that structure, so that your Vice Den becomes the “Crooked Post” a black lotus parlor owned by the Lampblack gang.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the setting details you’ve assigned to the Vice Den are just window dressing. They can be if that’s what everyone wants. But from what I’ve seen, taking a claim like that usually leads to all manner of new material to draw from. if your players really wanted to delve into operating the Crooked Post, you can incorporate that in for sure.

Again though, the problem is the specificity. My players are the types who will take over a workshop, and then start utilizing it pretty finely in the game

Claims that are taken by the crew can be targeted by rivals. Your crew will become subject to Entanglements (these are post Score consequences the crew faces and are based on how much Heat the crew has) and those Entanglements will often involve associates of the crew.

Maybe the manager of the Crooked Post gets picked up by the Bluecoats and they question him. Does he talk? Does the crew get rid of him? Maybe the barman owes money to Ulf Ironborn and gets roughed up by Ulf’s men. Does the crew let them get away with that or do they teach Ulf a lesson?

It’s all a springboard for more play, more story, more action.

But again, a little hard to say without trying it and absorbing the information through play. There is a lot in your post I read, but I couldn't translate into a visualization of actual play (just due to lack of playing it myself).

I get that. It was a game that I didn’t immediately get entirely, too, and I was looking at the actual rules, not an incomplete second hand description.

All I’ll add is that the Claim map is only one piece of the game. There are several, and they all interact with one another in meaningful ways. When something happens on a Score, it may trickle over into Downtime as an Entanglement, and then the Entanglement leads to another Score. So once you get going, the game’s play structure generates ideas and conflict.

It’s very tightly designed.

 

[robconley]

Functionally, though, your play loop is better characterized by the players declaring actions to find out what the GM's notes or thinking is.

@Bedrockgames Did you think that you had to guess what my notes were or how I thought about the situation? @Ovinomancer He played in my session.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

But I'm not talking about anyone violating genre conventions for example, or trying to contradict already played-for and thus established fiction. I would not consider those things 'within bounds', generally speaking. All games have those sorts of limits, even if they are often implicit. Although I would point out that in many 'player skill' type D&D games having your PC try to make gunpowder is perfectly kosher (and the DM making it always fail is also, of course). So, even genre or player vs character knowledge aren't always considered sacrosanct by all.

Nor do I understand why 'find my brother' would be somehow inappropriate. It is find for PCs to 'quest after treasure', or 'go looking for a dragon to rob', or something like that. I'm afraid I do not see 'quest after my lost relative' as being outside your play style. At least not in any obvious way. You may not like the implication that the DM should consider catering to players interests, but there it is.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This may or may not be an issue. I certainly don't need all the specifics spelled out in a setting (as long as I can extrapolate from an entry). Even with all my sects their entries give general information and there would be a lot of stuff that could be filled in more detail later by a GM (though many specifics like headquarters, maps of headquarters, areas of operation are laid out). Can you describe what 'become specific until they need to be' looks like just so I make sure I get this aspect.

Yeah...you kind of touch on it near the beginning of your post with extrapolation. The book provides enough detail to give you a good sense of the Faction, and then you can build the rest from there.

So let’s use a gang headquarters as an example. Most gangs’ HQ are loosely described in the book; the Red Sashes run a sword fighting school, the Crows have a kind of crooked tower in the middle of their district. Most are even less detailed.

So if your crew ran afoul of the Billhooks, a really vicious gang who favors hatchets and polearms, you’d know that their HQ is a butcher shop, and that they also own a stockyard and slaughterhouse. But where in the city are these locations? How big are they? How well defended? All that is for the GM and players to determine. You don’t need to know where the Billhooks’ Butcher Shop is until someone asks, or until the action of the game points you there.

It’s perfectly fine if you’ve introduced the Billhooks to the game as rivals of the PC crew and you’ve already got an idea to place their butcher shop HQ in the Docks. It’s also fine if a player suggests it for some reason. Maybe they want the Billhooks to have some personal meaning to their PC, and so they suggest that the Billhooks are notorious in the district the PC grew up in, Charhollow. However it makes sense to determine these details is fine.

Ultimately, many of the details are not yet set. This is by design so that the GM and players are free to kind of build their own city.

I think that bit of flexibility also opens up a lot of potential for the players to make suggestions about the details, which I think helps invest them in the place. That may not work for your group, though, and it’s not necessary although it’s heavily and frequently recommended in the book.

 

[robconley]

I watched your play for a bit, and there's a strong aspect of the players asking the GM questions to determine what the GM thinks the situation is. That's very fine -- I tend to run a lot of my 5e this way -- but it's not exactly what you're describing. You have very firm constraints on the available ripples the players can create, and you have rocks in the pond that will react with ripples pretty strongly without being moved by them.

I encourage players to ask question about the locale, creatures, and characters they are dealing with because my description are not always complete enough for them to have the information to make a decision. So they ask. With this particular session it was run as a one shot with several players who have not experience my Majestic Wilderlands setting before. So at the beginning there were a lot of questions and coaching get everybody up to speed on the situation and to the point where had a enough information to go on (and have fun).

Because it was a one-shot the inciting incident, the Bishop's Court, was contrived. A compromise given the circumstances of the session. The player were given a job to do that led them to the site of the adventure. Everything that occurred after they encountered the young couple in the road and fought the bandit was up to the players. When I first ran the adventure as part of a campaign, it was the encounter with the young couple and the bandit fight that was inciting incident.

Also this session was unique for me that it was run theater of the mind. Which I usually don't do. Instead I use maps, miniatures, and battlemaps a lot to minimize the questions. But that doesn't mean question are not asked. Usually they more precise and detailed about the immediate surrounding or character they are dealing.

And again it not because the player need to guess what is in my mind. It is because descriptions both verbal and using props are incomplete and thus the players may not have everything they ought to know as their character. I am only human and can't always guess correctly at what they think is important.

Last novices to my games often don't get right away that I am prepared to answer questions they might have. I rarely give answers that amount "just because". That if they want to details, I am willing to provide them. But on average I use my experience refereeing to make it easier by highlighting thing I found players found important in the past. It made easier with this adventure because that was my fifth run through.

This is, again, very typical mainstream play, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Functionally, though, your play loop is better characterized by the players declaring actions to find out what the GM's notes or thinking is.

If you played in one of my session I am afraid you will be disappointed if you try to figure what may notes or thinking is. I generally turn the question it around and ask what it is you want to do or are looking for. Then go from there.

They can learn things this way that they can then leverage, largely in ways the GM intends but occasionally surprising, and the GM will decide how that turns out. This is, again, a perfectly good way to play (one I leverage, although to a lesser extent, when I run 5e) but it's not quite the expansive field your presenting. It's much more expansive than, say, an adventure path, where a plot is intended to be executed, but it's much less expansive in options that other games or approaches can muster. And, again, that's fine -- it's not a race.

I am afraid we will have to disagree on how the expansive the two approaches are. My approach allows any player to do what their character are capable of within the setting of the campaign. Whether it is the Majestic Wilderlands, The Third Imperium, Star Trek, etc. I try to create a pen & paper virtual reality that can be explored as the player wishes constrained only by the fact is with a small group of other players with their own interest. True a player can't say "I flap my arms and fly" without a reason arising from how the setting works. But as a person existing a world there is a hell of lot of things they can do as long as they break free of thinking that there are things they ought to be doing. Like trying to guess how I think about a situation when what matters is what they think about it and that they have the information about what there.

 

[pemerton]

I am very curious on one thing. Are there any restrictions on the kinds of things you can author into the fiction via remembering?

Can you remember you are the actually the king of the gods just assuming human appearance?
Can you remember the King of the World owes you a favor that you want to call in now?

The most damaging thing about memory mechanics of the kind you describe is that they really can be used to add any detail to the world unless the game places arbitrary restrictions on the kinds of things that are possible to remember with them. And if any detail can be added then pretty much anything already established can altered to such a degree that it isn't really the same thing anymore. So this mechanic typically does get restricted in the types of fiction it can affect, even though it's exactly the same procedure to resolve any memory detail. To turn your argument back on you a bit, why are you okay with some things being rememerable and others not? It is after all the same exact procedure that produces both? Maybe this will help you understand how we answer the question you so often pose to us.

(1) Why would the sorts of limit you posit be arbitrary if there function is to avoid the most damaging thing?

(2) In the second of the two long-running RM campaigns I've mentioned upthread, one of the PCs was a fox who had taken on human form. Partway through the campaign, the PC remembered/discovered that he had really been a heavenly animal lord, exiled to earth. There are no mechanics for this sort of thing in RM, so it was resolved via player-GM negotiation. This didn't have any mechanical impact but did change the backstory quite a bit, in interesting ways.

The player presented this initially in the form of an in-game letter written by "Dying abbot dude, Temple for earnest desire for enlightenment, Yoa Maru branch" (this was the place where the fox-spirit had first gone when he took on human sentience, and the person who had cared for him):

Returning to full self awareness as an mature sophont a few scant months ago with only dim memories of his life or even existance before that (but retaining significant language skills, suggesting perhaps a scholar or poet in some previous existance) Hideyo seems to be the spirit of a wild fox reborn in a human (looking) body, allegedly by force of will. This theory under which this soul moved directly from animal state to the sometime thoughtful, sometime savage entity we know now has both strengths and weaknessed, and is probably not all true or all false. In support of this theory his physical aptitudes seem very similat to those one might expect from a creature whose animal spirit still remembers being both a killer and a thief. The skills for flight and hiding, but no distance stamina combined with a keenly developed sense for murder and ambush are very reminiscent of the wild fox. His self confessed cowrdice and fondness for stealth are likewise convincing aspects of an animal in human form.​

​

On the other hand there are aspects of his development and behaviour which suggest this cannot be the whole story. As mentioned previously his language skills are well developed, moreso in the spirit tounge as spoken in the courts of the fae princes, but not spoken by ordinary foxes. His rapidly emerging chi powers, while not entirely at ods with the animan side of his nature are surprisingly well developed, and the social/influencing abilities seem to have few parallels in the animal kindom (but would be very usful in the torrid atmosphere of the spirit court. He has a rudimentary grasp of chi based buddhist healing medicince, allegedly gained at a monastry (perhaps where is slight undertanding of his own place in the cosmos was learned?) but once again this implies a significant ammount of time spent in man shape amonst men. Even more intriguing is this individuals essentially undeveloped ability to channel power from (presumably fox ancestor?) spirits. Is this some inherited trait, that he has been granted by his ancestors by virtue of his unusual heritage, or something learned in a phase of his existance of which he currently has no memory.​

​

Added to this is the evidence of his endeniable (if somewhat unpricipled) social proficiency. Hideyo seems skilled at all forms of discourse and influence, displaying a familiarity with discussion, debate, argument and abuse which would seem entirely unnatual to have sprung forth fully​

developed from the chi of the spirit of a solitary animal with no particularly well developed language. Both this aptitude for influencing people and his lack of compuntion in using such methods on innocent novices once again suggest to me that this creature spent some considerable time amongst a sophisticated court.​

​

In conclusion, I belive the spirit known as Hideyo was at some time a functionary in one of the spirit courts (most likely an assasin in the​

court of the Vulpine Pince). It seems clear that immediately before his current incaration he was living as a wild animal in the woods hereabouts, and slowly recovered his more human memories. Equally clearly sometime before that he was trained as a healer by those of the buddhist persuasion. Whether this was, as he believed, a short number of years previously between his initial birth as a natural fox and his current life is unclear. It is possible he was not born as a natural fox at all, but was raised in the spirit court and banished to live as a beast for some some crime or convenience. It may also be that his recallection is correct, and he did in fact raise himself on the wheel by sheer force on will, and then took a post in some palace or other, only to fall away to animal state again, either as a punisment as speculated above, or simply internally after some great shock or trauma. Nothing can be certain about this except there is more to this one than a simple spirit who honestly learned to be man shaped and lived in a forest and a temple, that just doisn't make any sense. Note also that none of these speculations explain his minor but unignorable ability to channel.​

​

I fear I will be unable to investigate this phenomena further myself, my time grows near. Should Hideyo discover (in your mind) the truth about himself, and should he be (in your mind) a friend of our temple at that time, please show him this treatise, and forgive an old man's vanity in hoping he was at least close to the truth.​

I don't know if this text ever came to light in play, but the ideas in it certainly were developed through play - mostly back-and-forth between player and GM in scene-framing and some consequence-narration.

Rolemaster ultimately is probably not the best system to handle this sort of thing, but we did OK. It certainly didn't break things in any way.

(3) In BW being King of the Gods would be a trait. So if it's not on your PC sheet then it's already established that you're not King of the Gods, or at least not evidently such. There are rules for adding traits, but they require a table vote and a good-faith vote is expected to be grounded in the shared fiction. So a revelation that a PC is really King of the Gods is not impossible but can't be done in quite the way you suggest.

(4) In BW being owed favours is reflected primarily via Circles and to a lesser extent Resources checks. There is also a Relationships mechanic. It's possible to have King of the World as a relationship, but that would be quite expensive in character building and otherwise would have to be built up via play. (A certain number of successful Circles check in relation to the same individual permits adding that person as a Relationship.)

(5) Upthread I think it was @hawkeyefan who queried why, if we are expected to trust GMs with this stuff, we can't also be expected to trust players. Your examples seem to be intended as illustrations of game-breaking bad faith that is not grounded in the shared fiction. Which takes me back to my (1): I don't see why rules approaches that are intended to ensure that the game doesn't break, and to maximise the capacity of the game to reward good-faith, fiction-following play, should be described as arbitrary.


EDIT:
When you say the most damaging thing, what is your evidence for there being any such thing? Play experience? I don't think so. Others' play reports of difficulties they've had GMing Burning Wheel (or games with similar mechanics, eg MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic)? I haven't encountered these myself. Or is it just speculation on your part?