D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

If this meshes with what @pemerton @AbdulAlhazred @Campbell and others have been saying this feels like it should be very helpful to me in thinking through things. So, I'm just checking if it is.

You can read the rule for Advantage Dice in the Hubs and Spokes of BW, which you can download for free rom DriveThru, as per the link I posted just upthread. That will also show you the advancement rules.

Here is the essence of the advantage rules (p 30 of Revised; the text in Gold is identical, I think):

Whenever a player can claim his character has a clear advantage . . . he gains +1D to the ability being tested. A player may only lobby for one +1D advantage per test.​

The reason that players don't always want an advantage die is because of the advancement rules.

Player walks up to a house door and says "I look for the key under the doormat"...a Very Reasonable thing. Player gets a 100 on the roll rule whatever. The GM says "nope no key"...also a Very Reasonable thing. Both player and GM grab the rule book an point to the "reasonable rule"....and what, the game ends?

I already posted this, pretty similar, example upthread:

Here's an example from the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner (p 232):

a group . . . needed to sneak into a well-guarded citadel tower. One player chimed in, "I have Architecture. I want to use my knowledge to find us a secret entrance."​

There's intent and task - if it succeeds, the PC finds the secret entrance they are looking for; if it fails, the the GM establishes a consequence.

Resolving the key under the doormat - using Perception, or Folkways-wise, or Keys-wise, or even Doormats-wise - would follow the same process.

Player walks over to a random tree and says "I keep and eye out for a pile of gold". Player succeeds a scavenger check. GM says "you find a pile of gold under the tree". Same thing.

Looking for piles of gold under random trees looks to me like it might fail a credibility test - it seems to be in the same neighbourhood as finding beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet.

On the other hand, if the player is able to FoRK in Faeries-wise then it seems like a legitimate check! The Obstacle seems like it might be fairly high, though.

 

[pemerton]

I wouldn't say that boring muddled play is an advantage.

Apologies, my rhetorical question was not addressed to you; it was simply prompted by your post.

 

[pointofyou]

Apologies, my rhetorical question was not addressed to you; it was simply prompted by your post.

No worries. Feel free to consider that sentence a rhetorical answer.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Like, how is boring, muddled play an advantage?

Because it came about by gaming the DM!

 

[pemerton]

Because it came about by gaming the DM!

Ah, now it's clear to me (in a muddled, slightly boring fashion).

 

[Cadence]

You can read the rule for Advantage Dice in the Hubs and Spokes of BW, which you can download for free rom DriveThru, as per the link I posted just upthread. That will also show you the advancement rules.

Here is the essence of the advantage rules (p 30 of Revised; the text in Gold is identical, I think):

Whenever a player can claim his character has a clear advantage . . . he gains +1D to the ability being tested. A player may only lobby for one +1D advantage per test.​

The reason that players don't always want an advantage die is because of the advancement rules.

Was that answer supposed to be to me? I was asking if Umbran's comments on Tactical Task Resolution and Conflict Resolution seemed to fit with your experience.

 

[Campbell]

I wouldn't say that boring muddled play is an advantage. My point was that you can put the things you think will be interesting to play toward or things you are willing to see as stakes on your sheet. The things you are willing to see as stakes. There may well be things about your character you don't think will make for interesting play or that you are not willing to see as stakes and you might not want to put those on your sheet. You might even be willing to accept some optimization penalties though these might be small if what you don't have on your sheet is unimportant enough or if what you don't want at stake is parallel to things you're willing to risk.

I personally would consider the above as a sign that a player was not playing the game in good faith. IE not attempting to fight for what their character believes in. In particular if the character as expressed through play obviously has other things they care about more than the beliefs enumerated on their character sheet than the beliefs on their character sheet need to change. Whether I was the GM or another player I would definitely raise the issue with the group.

 

[pemerton]

Was that answer supposed to be to me? I was asking if Umbran's comments on Tactical Task Resolution and Conflict Resolution seemed to fit with your experience.

I thought you were asking about tactical advantages. I answered by setting out, in brief, the rules for tactical advantages in Burning Wheel.

On task vs conflict resolution, this from Vincent Baker remains pretty insightful nearly 20 years on:

In task resolution, what's at stake is the task itself. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you crack the safe?

In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?

Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That's how you tell whether it's task resolution or conflict resolution.

Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.

In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a win anyway.

Let's assume that we haven't yet established what's in the safe.

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Success!
"You crack the safe, but there's no dirt in there, just a bunch of in-order papers."

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Failure!
"The safe's too tough, but as you're turning away from it, you see a piece of paper in the wastebasket..."

(Those examples show how, using task resolution, the GM can break success=winning, failure=losing.)

That's, if you ask me, the big problem with task resolution: whether you succeed or fail, the GM's the one who actually resolves the conflict. The dice don't, the rules don't; you're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out.

Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged authorship. Task resolution will undermine your collaboration.

Whether you roll for each flash of the blade or only for the whole fight is a whole nother issue: scale, not task vs. conflict. This is sometimes confusing for people; you say "conflict resolution" and they think you mean "resolve the whole scene with one roll." No, actually you can conflict-resolve a single blow, or task-resolve the whole fight in one roll:

"I slash at his face, like ha!" "Why?" "To force him off-balance!"
Conflict Resolution: do you force him off-balance?
Roll: Loss!
"He ducks side to side, like fwip fwip! He keeps his feet and grins."

"I fight him!" "Why?" "To get past him to the ship before it sails!"
Task Resolution: do you win the fight (that is, do you fight him successfully)?
Roll: Success!
"You beat him! You disarm him and kick his butt!"
(Unresolved, left up to the GM: do you get to the ship before it sails?)

(Those examples show small-scale conflict resolution vs. large-scale task resolution.)

Something I haven't examined: in a conventional rpg, does task resolution + consequence mechanics = conflict resolution? "Roll to hit" is task resolution, but is "Roll to hit, roll damage" conflict resolution?​

 

[pemerton]

if the character as expressed through play obviously has other things they care about more than the beliefs enumerated on their character sheet than the beliefs on their character sheet need to change.

This.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the subtext of this is that the player could be pursuing a hidden agenda. Frankly I don't think that's a real concern for 2 reasons. It's likely not to work, and it's degenerate bad faith play. It's no harder to do the same thing in trad play, so how is it a criticism of BW?

In context, it wasn't meant as a criticism of any kind of play; it was a claim that all play works this way, with (AIUI) @pemerton claiming that BW play does not actually permit this "secretly exploit the GM purely for player advantage" stuff that had been asserted to be universal. Sounds like you're of the camp that such secret-player-exploitation-of-GM is, in fact, universal?

It's my understanding that the closest you can come to a "hidden agenda" in Burning Wheel or anything PbtA or FitD is by having character traits or beliefs you don't put on the character sheet so they never come up as stakes. Whether this is "degenerate bad faith play" is a thing I'll leave for people who prefer that style of play to answer but it doesn't seem horrible to me.

While it doesn't sound horrible, it also doesn't sound like play in this context. That is, if I'm understanding your description correctly:

1. These are character-things (beliefs, traits, whatever) the player cares about and intends.
2. The player never mentions these character-things.
3. The GM makes no effort to include these things in play, though they might show up coincidentally.
4. Hence, they are irrelevant to gameplay in these games, except as coincidence.

Alternatively, from some of the things mentioned above (where it is the player avoiding something they don't like), it would look like this...

1. There are character-things (beliefs, traits, etc.) the player dislikes and intends to NOT do/have/be.
2. The player does not mention these character-things.
3. The GM makes no effort to include these things in play, though they might show up coincidentally.
4. Hence, they are irrelevant to gameplay in these games, except as coincidence.

This sounds like the player playing in good faith--they want to have fun, it is more fun to see things they find interesting and to avoid things they find not-interesting, so they focus on the stuff that interests them and avoid the stuff they dislike. That's...that's not jockeying for any kind of advantage. That's playing these games in good faith. That's literally just trying to be a positive, contributing Burning Wheel player!