A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

As usual, you say in 20 words or so what it takes me 3 paragraphs to say.

but this argument has come up again and again, and the point my side makes is of course it isn't an actual pond. But the purpose is for the GM to emulate causality as best he or she can, within the confines of the genre of course (I expect different degrees of it in Silence of the Lambs than I do in Porky's). But no one here is claiming to be running a 1-1 simuailtion of reality (in fact, over the course of these discussions, we've made that point countries times). No analogy or metaphor is going to hold up to that level of scrutiny because it is just a comparison for aiding understanding of a point.

 

[Campbell]

This is why I think examples of degenerate playing and GMing don't help. At best, they may highlight a possible weak point in a system, but generally speaking they seem to be more about trying to "win" the discussion.

To kind of put that in perspective, I'm far less worried about a tyrant GM who stomps all over any decision I make and who openly shoves my PC back on the path of his plot and brags about his authority to do so......I'm far more concerned with the GM who is thoughtful and has a method, but who doesn't realize that certain decisions he makes are undermining my decisions as a player.

I'm not afraid of that because it's worse.....but just because it's more common, it's harder to spot with a lot of games, and very often the GM doesn't even know they're doing it themselves.

I pretty much agree. Most of my concerns when it comes to agency are about GMs who have the best of intentions, but do things that cut against making play consequential in order to make it more "fun". Often by failing to follow through on consequences that should fundamentally shake up the course of play, success when it makes no sense, moving things around in the setting to negate disruptive consequences, spotlight balancing, etc. Often my concerns are about GMs being shirking away from meaningful failure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I pretty much agree. Most of my concerns when it comes to agency are about GMs who have the best of intentions, but do things that cut against making play consequential in order to make it more "fun". Often by failing to follow through on consequences that should fundamentally shake up the course of play, success when it makes no sense, moving things around in the setting to negate disruptive consequences, spotlight balancing, etc. Often my concerns are about GMs being shirking away from meaningful failure.

I am checking out of this discussion if we are going to start talking about things like "degenerate play'

 

[hawkeyefan]

I might analogize this all a bit to a hexcrawl. There is a basic high level map of a 'wilderness area' and then the PCs move around in it, expending resources in different ways and choosing directions to go in (possibly informed by rumors, maps, clues, etc.) which satisfies their needs/goals. As they move across this landscape lower level details are filled in as-needed. Usually in a true sandbox there will be a few well-established 'lairs' or 'locations' where play shifts to a 'dungeon mode' of tactical exploration. I wouldn't try to draw too many parallels though. Classic hexcrawl/sandbox play virtually never involves any player input into what exists on the map. It is all either 'keyed' or randomly generated, or perhaps in a few cases extrapolated by the GM from previous events and findings.

Yeah, absolutely!

The similarities aren't accidental, right? The claim map is just a hexcrawl or a dungeon map. It works the same way in some ways, and then differently in others.

The key differences seem to be:

• the locations are not tied to a fictional geography
• each has a goal that is not hidden from the players
• the obstacle that needs to be overcome to take the claim is not set beforehand

It's based on more narrative needs, and can be crafted specifically in response to events in the fiction and the desires or interests of the players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

My impression is that @estar has a less fully developed, or less fully articulated, conception of GM agenda and principles. That is, I'm contrasting it with Dungeon World, where the game literally says (paraphrased a bit) "GM, you are a fan of the players, make them shine." Then it expounds techniques which do this. One of those is 'fiction first', which can be understood to include a lot of the constraints estar mentioned, that is the action draws from the fiction, and must follow consistently in concert with player's understanding of 'how the world works'. Another principle is always to 'up the ante' on the PCs. This is intended to help make them 'more awesome' but also to force them to move forward in the fiction at all times in some sense.

So, in his game, the GM is kind of playing a sort of 'zookeeper' role, where there is an element of curating the setting and interactions of the PCs with it, but without the hard constraints outlined above (you are literally playing DW wrong if you violate the GM's agenda/principles although they not stated specifically like 'rules' per se). This is understandable, his style is organically grown out of the early Gygaxian D&D game structure, and actually seems to me to largely comply with the admonitions of 2e, vis-a-vis generating story structure (IE that the leading role here is in the hands of the GM, but that they should incorporate some direction informally from the players). I think, if you interpret 2e a certain way, you COULD see it as moving in a trajectory that could lead to DW, it is just not nearly there yet. However, IME most 2e play becomes pretty authoritarian at times, it is hard to escape from the lack of mechanical support for character advocacy and directly connecting players to generating story elements. So GMs tend to fall back onto rulings that simply push things in a direction they feel comfortable with/anticipated/or like.

I think the gist of most of this thread is wrestling with that in the context of the thread starter. What dimensions of play process describe games with more or less player autonomy?

 

[Campbell]

but this argument has come up again and again, and the point my side makes is of course it isn't an actual pond. But the purpose is for the GM to emulate causality as best he or she can, within the confines of the genre of course (I expect different degrees of it in Silence of the Lambs than I do in Porky's). But no one here is claiming to be running a 1-1 simulation of reality (in fact, over the course of these discussions, we've made that point countries times). No analogy or metaphor is going to hold up to that level of scrutiny because it is just a comparison for aiding understanding of a point.

For me personally it makes it much easier to have a conversation in these terms (doing your best to reflect casualty) then speaking in terms as if this stuff had an independent animus. As someone who puts a lot of work in to make this stuff go in sandboxes games I actually think acknowledging that effort and talking about the techniques that enable it make it easier to achieve reliably. You do a lot to make the setting feel like a real place. I would certainly want to take credit for that blood, sweat, and tears.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't really like FATE, but it has more agency than 5e, so that more agency is not really indicative of my valuing of that game, either.

Some of my players prefer a variety of games other than Fate, and we also played D&D for a time. We even played a sandbox game of D&D 5e. When I ran Fate several times for them, my players recognized, identified, and responded to the fact that they had more player agency in Fate than in D&D. The same was true when I ran Dungeon World.

But consider also what it feels like to have a highly specialized vocabulary (that comes with many playstyle assumptions of its own) imposed on you in a conversation like this.

I don't know about you, but for me it sounds like an opportunity to listen and learn.

I might analogize this all a bit to a hexcrawl. There is a basic high level map of a 'wilderness area' and then the PCs move around in it, expending resources in different ways and choosing directions to go in (possibly informed by rumors, maps, clues, etc.) which satisfies their needs/goals. As they move across this landscape lower level details are filled in as-needed. Usually in a true sandbox there will be a few well-established 'lairs' or 'locations' where play shifts to a 'dungeon mode' of tactical exploration. I wouldn't try to draw too many parallels though. Classic hexcrawl/sandbox play virtually never involves any player input into what exists on the map. It is all either 'keyed' or randomly generated, or perhaps in a few cases extrapolated by the GM from previous events and findings.

This is one thing that I like about Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. At the very least, the village is designed via player committee as part of the character creation process. I can't recall if this is also applied to the wilderness around the village, but I would love to see something like this expanded for greater sandbox play.

 

[FrogReaver]

The ability to make that choice, assuming it was important to the character somehow, is the important part.

This here is the difference I've been trying to get at. You consider being able to make "that" particular choice to be agency. My conception of agency has nothing to do with "that" particular choice. Only that you can make some meaningful choice in "that" particular situation.

As for success, you were the one that pointed toward lacks the ability to kill as a measure of agency (or a lack of agency more precisely). I wouldn't say that phrase has anything to do with agency.

Seems you are taking that quite differently than I meant it. I had no concept of controlling success when I was talking about that. I would elaborate more but I don't want this to be the focus.

 

[Fenris-77]

This is one thing that I like about Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. At the very least, the village is designed via player committee as part of the character creation process. I can't recall if this is also applied to the wilderness around the village, but I would love to see something like this expanded for greater sandbox play.

Either in the core book or perhaps Further Afield, the process is one where the players do add detail to rhe surroundings, but at the level of rumour, folklore and myth, which the GM then actualizes. Thanks btw, I was trying to remember where I read that earlier.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know about you, but for me it sounds like an opportunity to listen and learn.

I will listen, but someone using a specialized vocabulary, particularly the way such vocabularies often get wielded here, does not mean they can teach me something. If see value in what they are saying, when I understand it, sure, I might learn something. But sometimes all the vocabulary does is make communication harder, or even create the impression that someone is talking more sense than they are. There are definitely places and disciplines where specialized vocabulary is required and/or useful. But there are also times when it is counter productive in my view. In a hobby like this one, I find that kind of jargon not terribly helpful. I also think walking around with that kind of model and that kind of jargon can distort your perception of the world rather than clarify it if the model is flawed.