Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[Reynard]

All the influence is very much overstating it. The only influence the players have is chosing not to engage with the guild. What happens instead is completely DM-driven and is largely independent of the players' decisions. Does the guild thrive in the absence of the PCs? Does it struggle due to in-fightings and resistance from the community? Does another band of adventurers deal with it instead? Does the local government institute draconian anti-theft measures that unjustly target innocents and criminals alike? Does the guild raid a long-forgotten vault beneath the city and unleash horrific hauntings?

When and if the PCs return to the city, the plot-wagon selected by the DM will be waiting for them.

I don't have any problem with this process either as a DM or as a player, but I think it's important to acknowledge that player's influence on game world events is largely inconsequential.

I don't think that the world should "freeze" when the players look away, but I also want to acknowledge that the off-screen events do not flow as some natural, living world that runs on it's own. In most D&D games, off-screen events are DM-driven without player influence.

It's weird that folks are making a fuss over things that happen when PCs are "off screen" but are fine with the presentation of things as they are upon the PCs' initial arrival.

Imagine: the PCs come into town. They spend some time searching for rumors and they discover a couple plot hooks. There is a thieves guild on the cusp of making a major move. There's also a dungeon a few weeks away that promises great riches. After examining their options and investigating both, the PCs decide to head off to the dungeon with full knowledge that by the time they get back, the thieves guild will likely have made its move. They have made no move of their own to interrupt that plan or even involve themselves in it.

That is a choice. That is agency. While they can't know for sure what the consequences will be, they know there will be consequences. It is no less a choice than getting involved.

 

[Cadence]

Unless you keep track of time in your game, in which case the DM can certainly keep track of use various means of determination to figure out what's happening in places where the PCs are not present.

Of course you don't have to do these things, but I would really appreciate it the tone of those who disagree was a little less, "this is how it actually is, and you're either being disingenuous or deluding yourself to say otherwise". Not exactly conducive to discussion.

I kind of wonder how many people act that way in real life (like the world they don't see freezes if they don't engage it).

You have the thing where someone is waiting for a result (medical test, exam result, diagnosis, finding out if they left the oven on, waiting for a phone to be picked up) and mumbling "please let it be ok, please let it be ok" in hope or prayer -- when it is already decided, it is either ok or not and they're desires are too late to change anything.

Or you have the thing where someone doesn't make a doctors appointment because they won't have to know they have cancer if they never get it tested.

Or...

List of The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series) episodes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's weird that folks are making a fuss over things that happen when PCs are "off screen" but are fine with the presentation of things as they are upon the PCs' initial arrival.

Imagine: the PCs come into town. They spend some time searching for rumors and they discover a couple plot hooks. There is a thieves guild on the cusp of making a major move. There's also a dungeon a few weeks away that promises great riches. After examining their options and investigating both, the PCs decide to head off to the dungeon with full knowledge that by the time they get back, the thieves guild will likely have made its move. They have made no move of their own to interrupt that plan or even involve themselves in it.

That is a choice. That is agency. While they can't know for sure what the consequences will be, they know there will be consequences. It is no less a choice than getting involved.

Or the thieves' guild contact is still standing in the same dark alley, gently swaying in place, waiting for the PCs to interact with them so they can get that darn yellow question mark off of their head and replace it with a proper exclamation point.

Or so I understand from some folks here.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But here's the thing... the world does freeze. This is because it's not actually a world. It's just a collection of ideas. The game focuses on the PCs no matter what, so anything not happening to them or around their immediate area is not happening.

Instead, what happens is that when they leave the city, it leaves play... we no longer see what's happening there. Then when they return to the city, a determination is made of what's happened in their absence. This then gets applied retroactively. So, they return to the city to find the thieves' guild has started a gang war and the city is now in the grips of tumult and violence in the streets.

Until they return to the city, the state of it is undetermined in play.

Yes, the GM may make such a determination ahead of that point of play, but until it's introduced to the PCs, it's subject to change. That's because nothing has actually happened.

I mean none of it really happens. It is all imaginary.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I kind of wonder how many people act that way in real life (like the world they don't see freezes if they don't engage it).

You have the thing where someone is waiting for a result (medical test, exam result, diagnosis, finding out if they left the oven on, waiting for a phone to be picked up) and mumbling "please let it be ok, please let it be ok" in hope or prayer -- when it is already decided, it is either ok or not and they're desires are too late to change anything.

Or you have the thing where someone doesn't make a doctors appointment because they won't have to know they have cancer if they never get it tested.

Or...

List of The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series) episodes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Perhaps that's this idea is fought for here and in gaming. Because it would essentially be a mild form of delusion in real life to expect nothing to change without you knowing about it, and that delusion can be comforting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm talking mostly about typical D&D play, where the GM does lots of stuff that is invisible to the players.

Sure. This is why D&D often gets labeled as having less player agency and leans toward heavy GM-led play. You're stating it plainly as if it is a neutral thing... which it is! But if we discuss this kind of thing in terms of player agency or similar ideas, then people will thrash and squirm to not be open about it.

In this case, it sounds like a "living, breathing world" means "the GM decides what happens at all times".

Again, if this is happening between session, you aren't privy to the process in either case.

Again, this depends on the game and the processes used. In the recent games I've played in (Mouse Guard, A Thousand Arrows, Dogs in the Vineyard, Stonetop, Blades in the Dark, and 5e D&D) only D&D works that way. And even then, it's largely a choice on the part of the GM. I've played with two different GMs in D&D over the past year. One ran a prepped dungeon, and used random tables and rolls for things like this. The other GM just decided how such things would happen.

The game of D&D where the GM just decided everything is by far the most railroadish of all the games. I mean by orders of magnitude.

I, too, like to challenge my own assumptions with random rolls.

However, as noted upthread, this situation is specifically one of the kind I use if I am going to prep: here is the situation and the people and locations involved, and this is what is likely to happen if the PCs do not get involved. I do this to make improvising once the PCs do get involved easier and more consistent. But that means if the PCs do not get involved and haven't changed the larger context in a way that impacts this situaton, it plays out like it was designed to do.

"Likely to happen if the PCs do not get involved" is a bit unclear. If the PCs don't resist the thieves' guild, is only one outcome possible? Do they take over the city? Do they cause strife and unrest? Do they cause a response by the watch that leaves the city under perpetual martial law? Are they crushed by the watch, leaving a power vacuum that upstart factions are trying to fill?

That's just a handful of options off the top of my head. What is it that makes one of these things more likely than the other? How is "whatever sounds most reasonable to the GM" really a satisfactory answer to that?

This is the problem with this "living world" phrasing. Here, it's being used to tell the GM's story, disguising it as a natural outgrowth of the events in the game world. But considering that the GM decides all the events of the game world beyond what the players have their characters do, they can craft any and all reasons they need to have things be exactly as they want them to be when the PCs return.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I mean none of it really happens. It is all imaginary.

Precisely.

So, when the process is for the GM to decide what happens, instead of saying "living, breathing world" we should say "the stuff the GM wants to happen".

 

[Irlo]

It's weird that folks are making a fuss over things that happen when PCs are "off screen" but are fine with the presentation of things as they are upon the PCs' initial arrival.

If I appeared to be making a fuss, I badly miscommunicated. I have no problem with the DM determining what happens in the PCs absence or the state of things upon the PCs' arrival.

Imagine: the PCs come into town. They spend some time searching for rumors and they discover a couple plot hooks. There is a thieves guild on the cusp of making a major move. There's also a dungeon a few weeks away that promises great riches. After examining their options and investigating both, the PCs decide to head off to the dungeon with full knowledge that by the time they get back, the thieves guild will likely have made its move. They have made no move of their own to interrupt that plan or even involve themselves in it.

That is a choice. That is agency. While they can't know for sure what the consequences will be, they know there will be consequences. It is no less a choice than getting involved.

I agree completely. It's a choice and it's agency. In D&D games that I run and play, the consequences of that choice (with regard aspects that the PCs are not engaging) are in the DM's hands 100% with no player influence beyond not engaging.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. This is why D&D often gets labeled as having less player agency and leans toward heavy GM-led play. You're stating it plainly as if it is a neutral thing... which it is! But if we discuss this kind of thing in terms of player agency or similar ideas, then people will thrash and squirm to not be open about it.

In this case, it sounds like a "living, breathing world" means "the GM decides what happens at all times".



Again, this depends on the game and the processes used. In the recent games I've played in (Mouse Guard, A Thousand Arrows, Dogs in the Vineyard, Stonetop, Blades in the Dark, and 5e D&D) only D&D works that way. And even then, it's largely a choice on the part of the GM. I've played with two different GMs in D&D over the past year. One ran a prepped dungeon, and used random tables and rolls for things like this. The other GM just decided how such things would happen.

The game of D&D where the GM just decided everything is by far the most railroadish of all the games. I mean by orders of magnitude.



"Likely to happen if the PCs do not get involved" is a bit unclear. If the PCs don't resist the thieves' guild, is only one outcome possible? Do they take over the city? Do they cause strife and unrest? Do they cause a response by the watch that leaves the city under perpetual martial law? Are they crushed by the watch, leaving a power vacuum that upstart factions are trying to fill?

That's just a handful of options off the top of my head. What is it that makes one of these things more likely than the other? How is "whatever sounds most reasonable to the GM" really a satisfactory answer to that?

This is the problem with this "living world" phrasing. Here, it's being used to tell the GM's story, disguising it as a natural outgrowth of the events in the game world. But considering that the GM decides all the events of the game world beyond what the players have their characters do, they can craft any and all reasons they need to have things be exactly as they want them to be when the PCs return.

I'm reading here that you just don't like D&D (please correct me if I'm wrong). That's fine; there lots of games I don't like, but that doesn't mean doing things differently than D&D is better or worse than any other way except to the individual.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Precisely.

So, when the process is for the GM to decide what happens, instead of saying "living, breathing world" we should say "the stuff the GM wants to happen".

Informed by the player's choices as expressed through their PCs, with the caveat that, depending on the method of determination (random tables and subsystems), the actual stuff might not be what the GM wants to happen, but rather what the system determined.