Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Not at all. You do not have to play any of these games. The criticism isn't being challenged because you haven't played the right games, but because your criticism is entirely off-base. It doesn't show any understanding of the structure, intent, or results of play. That's what's being challenged. And a suggestion is often made that a good way to understand these things is to play one (or more) of these games. The statement isn't that you have to play to criticize, but that you at least have to understand to criticize. It's pretty clear you do not understand, even after providing a claimed pedigree. So, I'm challenging the pedigree you're claiming not because a pedigree is required, but because you've introduced it as a claim to knowledge. Knowledge that still seems to not understand the thing you're trying to criticize.
Nope. I don't really care about your credentials, and I don't really need you to agree with my tastes. Show understanding of the thing you're criticizing seems a pretty acceptable requirement to have a discussion about it, though, and you're not doing that.
Not if the GM doesn't allow that. They can be attacked for walking away. The situation can change to disallow retreat. Surrender doesn't have to be accepted. No, the players have no authority to end conflicts in 5e, only the GM has this authority because they control the response to whatever the players do.
This is the analysis of the authorities in the game. It's been claimed strongly in this very thread, and endorsed by you, that the GM has full control over everything but the PCs. You cannot align that claim with one that says the players actually have authority and control to end conflicts. The GM defines the conflict, enables it, resolves it, and narrates it. The players can only declare actions that might influence how the GM choses to conduct these tasks. But, as has been clearly noted, the GM is under no obligation to do so.
I'm going to approach this in a few ways:
1) Everything the PC does in a 5e game is from a curated list of moves. If the PC does something not covered by a move, then nothing mechanical happens or the referee makes it up. So, mechanics only engage when the Pcs do something on the curated list of moves.
Do you see this issue here? You're saying that the only time the game matters is if the mechanics engage, and then are claiming that because of this, you can only do the mechanical things. You've established a circular argument. One that applies to just about any game because it's, well, circular and proves itself! So, on this ground, this argument fails to have any use as a criticism.
2) As a functional matter it's incorrect. You're analyzing this as if it has the same structure as a 5e game. Where, quite often, the GM presents a description with no obvious threat, situation, or conflict to resolve, and players state actions to explore the setting until they find one. A good example is a description of the opening room of a dungeon, where there's no guards or obvious threats, but some interesting bit of decor and a few hallways leading out. The GM describes this and asks, "what do you do." Because here the point is to explore the setting by declaring actions that get the GM to tell you more information about the setting. PbtA doesn't do this. The above never happens, if you're engaged with the play as it tells you to play it. Instead, there's always something immediate and pressing that requires attention and action. So, in this case, the move list is broad, generic, and tuned to resolving conflicts. There's not a thing you could suggest that cannot fit a move. If it's trivial, you don't call for a move. If lots of trivial things are happening, you need to step back and reexamine your play.
This is a bold claim. Let's look at it from the 5e perspective and see if it holds up. The players declare they're resting for 8 hours in an inn. If you skip to the next morning (a sequence of events) you're removing the players' agency to respond. Yep, seems silly. Let's do another. The rogue is disarming a trap! It's a dangerous trap, but they've failed their check to learn how dangerous so they do not know that if the trap fails, it will kill them. The rogue fails their roll to disarm the trap, and the GM narrates the outcome. Perhaps a saving throw is made, but the result doesn't matter because the fail result still kills the rogue (say, low on hp, trap is poison gas triggering a CON save for half, half exceeds hitpoints). We can ignore death saves because there's no choices in death saves, so it doesn't go to agency at all. Well, here we have the same problem -- the GM isn't telling the rogue about the eruption of the cloud of gas, or a hissing sound, or whatever and giving the player the option to declare another action to react. No, instead we have a sequence of events (mechanism triggering, gas mixing and expelling, rogue breathing the gas in sufficient quantity to injure, death) that's been elided while removing the player's agency to respond.
So, then, the issue isn't eliding time, per se, but instead what's elided. Okay, this is a better argument. However, we then need to look at what's being staked. In 5e, with a task resolution, what's being staked on a roll is often very unclear. This is intentional, and many 5e moves are made to learn more about the setting, to discover hidden information. So you make a move here (declare an action) and the GM tells you more, depending on the outcome. The conflict isn't being staked on this, knowingly. But it might resolve a conflict (like the trap, above), if the GM decides. Usually not, in which case it makes sense that action declarations will continue until the conflict resolves to the GM's satisfaction. The players have no ability to close out the conflict at any point, only to suggest more actions that might convince the GM to close the conflict. Agency here is muddy -- a given decision may or may not be impactful and that knowledge only belongs to the GM. The players certainly have no agency to close out the conflict in any way.
What about in PbtA? Well, everyone is fully aware that the conflict is being staked, how it is, and that failure will trigger a serious consequence. In this consideration, the player does have agency to close the conflict -- they can declare an action to do so and succeed. The GM is constrained here to honor this. But if they fail, they know that the GM can and will do things, including things that may be sequences of bad. This is staked. Willingly. So the player is staking this against the reward. How is this not agency?
But, let's go with maybe definition agency not as the ability to make impactful and meaningful actions, but rather the ability to declare an action (meaningful or not) with some small enough time slices to satisfy your argument. Let's accept the premise of your argument, here. In that case, PbtA does absolutely remove agency if the GM chooses to make a hard move that has multiple component parts or is a sequence of events. As an example, from our last Stonetop game, the Blessed was attempting to ward an Treant's sacred grove from a woodcutting party. They tried to ward the area against the woodcutters so they would not be able to approach while not being seen. He failed. The GM chose to attack the attempt (safely ward away the woodcutters and not be seen doing so) by having the copse animate and begin attacking the woodcutters (totally in line with the fictional setting material about forests being dangerous for things like this and this being a treant's sacred grove), the Blessed being seen by the cutters still outside the copse, and those fleeing while screaming "woodwitch!" The Blessed did not get the opportunity to react when the copse animated, nor when it began killing woodcutters, nor when the remaining woodcutters saw the Blessed, nor when they began to flee. All of that was the consequence of their failure. Now that the situation is irrevocably changed (and irrevocably change is a guiding principle to making hard moves, at least irrevocable within the scene), the Blessed's player has another choice to make. In this example, given your requirements for agency, yes, agency was removed because the Blessed wasn't allowed to react to a sequence of events. In compensation for this, though, had the Blessed succeeded, then the woodcutters would have 100% been warded from the area and the Blessed would have accomplished their goal. So, here, PbtA is staking a large amount of agency against the potential (but not required) loss of agency if the GM decides a consequence is compound. If we look to 5e, we see that we have many more small choices to make, so that provides agency through your definition. What's missing, though, is any agency to bring the conflict or situation to a close -- this belongs solely to the GM.
It's horse trading. PbtA, even under your definition of agency, does give the GM the ability to remove agency in pursuit of a consequence for a failure, but in return they cede their agency to the player on a success - the GM has no agency here and has to give the player the conflict. In 5e, the player is retaining the agency to keep declaring reactionary actions, but the GM always retains their agency to declare when the conflict is over. It's not that there's more or less agency in either, but rather that it's differently proportioned. If you're going to restrict your analysis of agency only to a narrow definition, then you're losing sight of the entire picture and making specious arguments on agency.
No it's not. What gives you this idea? I've provided a few examples of play above to illustrate my points. What example can you provide that shows how framing (I have no idea what hard means here, framing is framing) removes agency? Framing in PbtA starts the action off with an immanent danger or conflict or situation. It's here, now, and needs addressing. There's no agency elided here because there's no impactful decisions to be made that were skipped. Framing isn't about saying things like "hurr, your character is a moron and has stuck their hand in the hole and now it's being gnawed off, what are you going to do?" That kind of thing absolutely violates the principles of play. Instead, how framing happens is that there's a conversation between players and GM about what they want to do, and then we skip along that until a point the GM feels is one that has interest and conflict, and the GM frames that in and play happens. This isn't the GM declaring actions for the PCs -- the players are already in agreement on the general shape of what's happening ("we're going to travel to Gordon's Delve, along the high roads") and then the GM is taking that and framing a particular situation ("Okay, after a day's travel (it takes 4), mark rations, you come across a small camp, maybe two families -- yeah, two men, their wives, and a gaggle of children. The camp is nestled in a hollow below you as you crest the hill. Across the hollow, and not seen by the camp, you see maybe 6 hillmen creeping towards the camp, blades out. They're on the far side of the camp. You also see that they have a few lookouts at the crest of the opposite hill. Maybe horses behind the hill? What do you do?"). Nothing here assumes actions outside of what the players have already indicated their doing.
I have no idea what it is you're describing here, but it doesn't align with my experience nor with the principles and agenda of play.
I supposed. I don't think that the cause of what you're claiming is actually the cause.
