Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[aramis erak]

It is rare, but games that have players taking active hand in campaign design do exist - The Dresden Files RPG, (Fate-based, for those who care) has an entire minigame for campaign design with the players, for example.

Most of the Fate games released before Fate Core, in fact.

John Wick's games (excepting Blood & Honor and it's parent, Houses of the Blooded) put that definitional authority into the "Game of 20 Questions" by having the players define significant elements in character generation. This aspect was downplayed a bit but still present in the FFG rework.

All games from Burning Wheel HQ explicitly make it so.

All but one of the over a dozen AWE/PBTA games I've read put the majority of setting into the hands of the players, almost nothing at start in the GM's hands. Even the peripheral-to-that-ecosystem of games moderately strong GM game, Sentinel Comics, leaves a lot to players.

Hero System has strongly suggested players involvement in campaign building past the level of character definition, with a goal to producing a campaign document which defines the allowed ranges for powers, skills, disadvantages, and attributes. I first encountered this mode in Champions 4th ed.

John Wick's Houses of the Blooded and Blood & Honor both reserve to the GM two powers: to introduce fully defined characters, and to award Style/Honor points. Any player on any risk (the term for a dice resolution sequence - it's actually comparable to a whole round of most other games) can introduce and/or define and/or modify any character, item, or situation. Anyone can introduce a new character at any time via a Risk. Anyone can alter an existing character at any time when they're in the scope of the Risk's initial action. In other words, if they're in scene, they're targets.

 

[aramis erak]

Yep. Technically, Fate 3.0 was never itself published as a game, It is the engine underlying Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files .

And over a dozen other games. Many by third parties under license.

As I understand the history, they took what they did with The Dresden Files, neatened it up even more, and released that as Fate Core (which, if we go with numbering, is Fate 4.0).

They pretty much stripped it down to the barest bones.

Fate Accelerated came after Fate Core, but is different enough to not fit into numbering Fate editions.

Not long after, tho'. IIRC, Both are products of the same Kickstarter project in 2013. FAE was a stretch goal.

 

[Hussar]

Are they creating their own parts of the world secretly? Because otherwise they basically do know everything.

You continue to overstate your point, I suspect because you prefer more collaborative worldbuilding, and believing that player disengagement is caused by a lack of it helps support that preference.

I do it too, it happens.

I’m not overstating my point.

Collaborative world building in DnD especially does not exist at all. There’s virtually no support for it. Wow, you get to talk about your hometown that the dm is under no obligation to actually use. Ten thousand Man With No Name characters I’ve seen over the years is evidence to me how much weight other dms put on backgrounds.

I mean good grief, you like published settings. Does that mean there is no exploration in your games? Obviously not.

Why would having the players build stuff be any different?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’m not overstating my point.

Collaborative world building in DnD especially does not exist at all. There’s virtually no support for it. Wow, you get to talk about your hometown that the dm is under no obligation to actually use. Ten thousand Man With No Name characters I’ve seen over the years is evidence to me how much weight other dms put on backgrounds.

I mean good grief, you like published settings. Does that mean there is no exploration in your games? Obviously not.

Why would having the players build stuff be any different?

Because the players then play in the world they built. Every player probably isn't intimately familiar with every corner of a given setting, at least not as much as the GM, whereas presumably they were present when all of Planet Collab was created.

 

[Hussar]

Because the players then play in the world they built. Every player probably isn't intimately familiar with every corner of a given setting, at least not as much as the GM, whereas presumably they were present when all of Planet Collab was created.

Isn’t being familiar with a setting and it’s history a good thing? Far better that than the players bouncing off the setting lore and ignoring it completely.

 

[Cadence]

I’m not overstating my point.

Collaborative world building in DnD especially does not exist at all. There’s virtually no support for it. Wow, you get to talk about your hometown that the dm is under no obligation to actually use. Ten thousand Man With No Name characters I’ve seen over the years is evidence to me how much weight other dms put on backgrounds.

I mean good grief, you like published settings. Does that mean there is no exploration in your games? Obviously not.

Why would having the players build stuff be any different?

I'm sorry you've had nothing but naughty word DM's who turned you off on the game by not accepting the things you made up about your characters home towns or the like :-(

Just in DandD, For the last 30 years with over a half dozen DMs I've made up backgrounds and more and at worst had slight edits to them made by the DMs to fit with other characters or the like (including adding a Finn analog into a Norse game, an aspect of Badb to a Conan one, fleshing out the God of music in another, making a specialty priesthood of the elvish wind goddess, making up a family with deep connections to dwarfish brewing in another, and designing an extended business in an underdark one). One DM even gave bonuses for sending him background ideas about the characters.

And in my own current game I added in guns for two characters, a custom homebrew race for another, and worked out how a third could become a half vampire.

Sure, I always checked with the DM and my players always check with me when I run -- but it's not like a possible edit to fit in a cooperative game is a big deal

And it's not like it's recent. In the mid-early 80s we would always make stuff up to go with our characters (all the designing fortresses and hiring henchmen in the 1e DMG).

All of these separate groups over the decades apparently thought the support for doing it was there I guess. Maybe we imagined or extrapolated it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Isn’t being familiar with a setting and it’s history a good thing? Far better that than the players bouncing off the setting lore and ignoring it completely.

None of this explains how you explore a world you built.

 

[Irlo]

None of this explains how you explore a world you built.

You (the players) don't explore the world you built. Your characters do.

If it's important to the players to experience an unknown environment, then they won't want the level of agency that Hussar is advocating for.

The Forgotten Realms is well defined in source books and expansive fiction that a lot of players are familiar with. It's perfectly feasible that (some) players can still have exciting adventures in that setting, despite the familiarilty. Similarly, players (some of them) can have exciting and engaging adventures in a world that they help define either before or during play.

 

[Hussar]

I'm sorry you've had nothing but naughty word DM's who turned you off on the game by not accepting the things you made up about your characters home towns or the like :-(

Just in DandD, For the last 30 years with over a half dozen DMs I've made up backgrounds and more and at worst had slight edits to them made by the DMs to fit with other characters or the like (including adding a Finn analog into a Norse game, an aspect of Badb to a Conan one, fleshing out the God of music in another, making a specialty priesthood of the elvish wind goddess, making up a family with deep connections to dwarfish brewing in another, and designing an extended business in an underdark one). One DM even gave bonuses for sending him background ideas about the characters.

And in my own current game I added in guns for two characters, a custom homebrew race for another, and worked out how a third could become a half vampire.

Sure, I always checked with the DM and my players always check with me when I run -- but it's not like a possible edit to fit in a cooperative game is a big deal

And it's not like it's recent. In the mid-early 80s we would always make stuff up to go with our characters (all the designing fortresses and hiring henchmen in the 1e DMG).

All of these separate groups over the decades apparently thought the support for doing it was there I guess. Maybe we imagined or extrapolated it.

That is not what I said.

I said the DM is not obligated to accept any of the things you suggest. The DM could very easily have said no. And, as @Lanefan points out above you, he would say no if you suggested something that conflicted with something he already had detailed.

As I said, I think a lot of this gets really beaten out of players at a very early stage. I've seen FAR too many "Man with no Name" characters get brought to tables to believe that this isn't the result of DM's not being terribly receptive to players bringing new concepts to the table. The point I keep trying to make is that there is very little advice given to groups to make the game more collaborative. In fact, incorporating collaborative elements into the game typically results in huge amounts of push back - again, see Wish Lists from 4e or even the notion of buying magic items in 3e.

 

[Hussar]

None of this explains how you explore a world you built.

Good grief. Really? I actually need to spell this out?

Look, just how detailed do you think that collaborative world building is going to be? Are you picturing the players creating every single town, NPC and blade of grass before play starts? Don't be ridiculous. No. The setting will be laid out in typical setting fashion - here's the deities, here's the history, here are the races and where they came from, here's the broad swath history of the setting. Maybe, if you're lucky, here's a couple of cities.

I mean, ok, let's dive down to the idea of city. Here's the advice I would like to see given for a collaborative city build. Start with a sketch of a city - probably just a blobby circle, maybe with a river running through it and a rough idea of the different districts. You have five players, so, let's give it six districts (one for the DM too).

Ok, I want you (the player you, not you you) to write up a general overview of the district - say three paragraphs or so describing what this district is - wealth, commerce, that sort of thing - and then write up 5 locations in that district. Just, again, in general terms - who is doing what where. That sort of thing.

Now, when I get that all back, I put it all together, flesh out the city map and now I've got 30 locations for the city. Each player only knows 5 locations, so, no biggie there. I'll do up an overview of each district so the players kind of know that this is the merchant district, this is the slums, this is the noble district - and I nicely have 5 locations ready to go for each.

Note, this IS a city. Cities typically have more than 5 locations. It's entirely possible to have 6 or even 7. The Dm can add stuff.

Poof, I just saved myself about 5 hours of work and I have a fully functional city setting ready to go. Each player knows something about one district but, doesn't really know anything about the others. Could even go the Dirty Dungeon route and every time the DM changes something, add a d4 to the pot for use by the players.

I find it utterly baffling that I need to explain this. Do your players not do any exploration in Ravenloft or Forgotten Realms? How would this be any different?