Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[Manbearcat]

This came up in another thread and I want to see what folks think about the idea.

When we talk about "Player agency" (which we do a lot around here) usually we are talking about the ability of the players to make informed decisions that impact the outcome of play.

I am curious is folks think there is such a thing as "GM agency" with a similar definition. More importantly, I am wondering if folks think if there are styles or elements of play that limit "GM agency" in a meaningful way.

For my own part, if we are talking about traditional RPGs (like D&D or GURPS or whatever), I don't think "GM agency" is a meaningful term. It is all "GM agency" because the rules start with the premise that the GM decides on the rules, and all decisions ultimately flow from the GM. While a GM may decide to allow game mechanics, die rolls or player decisions to inform or usurp that decision make, the GM still ultimately has the authority to change any decision. There is no mechanism in traditional RPGs that can limit "GM agency."

There are other kinds of games -- story now, for example -- that I think do define the GM much more as "just another participant" and therefore include rules and mechanisms that inherently limit what options are available to the GM. In these cases, "GM agency" is just a different kind of "player agency" because the GM is just another kind of player. Granted, I am not overly familiar with games of this type and it is totally possible I am misunderstanding the nature of, say, GM moves in Apocalypse World as a mechanism that defines and restricts "GM agency" in a way similar to player moves. I am sure @pemerton and @overgeeked will be along to correct me soon enough.

So, what do you think. Is "GM agency" a meaningful term and worth talking about in a similar context to "player agency"?

So, in light of the inevitable "living & breathing world" angle of conversation, I decided to go back to the lead post and take another look.

So my frustration with a lot of these conversations is about the mystification of the process. I'm always asking myself "why are our conversations around running games, the whys and hows of content generation and the what do we do with this stuff, mostly inscrutable? If we were teaching another person exactly how to run this game, would they come away from this conversation more confident, more capable?" IMO, the answer to that is very often "no." That is weird to me because its one of the only disciplines I've been involved in in my life where this is true; tenured practitioners can't have conversations were aspiring practitioners can glean solid insight and actionable instruction to go forth confidently and do the thing at a remedial level (and some of the disciplines I'm referring to look and feel very inaccessible to outsiders before first contact). And across the vast distribution of aspirants, this is not a case of "people are frightened of the social aspect of public speaking." Yes, there are some who are frozen by that singular aspect of things. But the bulk of folks just feel overwhelmed by the perceived magnitude of the task and how underequipped they are. Reduce the magnitude of the task and how ill-equipped they are and it becomes an enormously more welcoming environment with more volunteers and better "first contact."

This conversation, for instance, has pivoted around a controversial idea of "GM Agency" (I agree with your lead post that its controversial), then "social contract," and now its landing on "living, breathing, world" and then indexing "what makes sense (to me the GM)." Those don't help me a ton if I actually want to run most any game (except for something that is the most free-form, the most rules-lite, the most GM-directed game possible). They're either too lofty or slippery or begin and end with near total mystification of purpose and process...of participant duties, constraints, and means.

Ok, so what if we talked about duties, constraints, and means? We should be able to take virtually any game we run and nail down (a) what each of those are within the scope of that game and (b) cite very clear examples of how each of those specifically facilitate play across any given interval (its not enough to articulate a vague, meandering idea of how a game churns across an entire campaign). We should be able to talk about prep, talk about content generation during play, talk about why and how either are happening in totally unambiguous ways. We should be able to talk about very specific, very particular, game-directed aspirations for a GM. We should be able to talk about how the game's engine and ethos directs, compels, inhibits our input at each moment.

Pick five games, and I bet, if we tried hard and cared enough to, we could develop a fairly concise, clear depiction of duties, constraints, and means such that aspiring GMs would feel the magnitude of the task reduced and their level of preparedness increased. And, if for some reason we couldn't do that for a particular game, that would also be an interesting result.

 

[Hussar]

Context matters.

I was told quite clearly that it was impossible for the players to explore the world if the players have any hand in how the world is designed. It is impossible to have a living breathing world if the players can directly influence the world as opposed to indirectly through their characters.

My argument is that the “living, breathing world” is a fiction. It doesn’t exist. It’s a veneer people place over the fact that the world is simply whatever the DM dictates it to be. The thieves guild coming to power is no more of a consequence than fifteen other possible plot hooks the dm could have put in and if the players don’t go back to that town, won’t ever actually occur because of the players don’t go back to that town, the dm probably never thinks about that town again.

And it effectively hangs in stasis forever.

There is no such thing as a “living, breathing world”. This is just a convenient talking point. The notion that you cannot explore a collaboratively designed world is ludicrous. There are a dozen games out there that easily disprove this. Fate, Blades in the Dark, I’m sure there are many more.

And even the suggestion that we include advice in the DMG to allow this play style alongside more traditional play is met with the standard “you hate DnD” and “that’s not DnD”.

But I’m the one being overly critical?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have lost the thread on what you are asking. I explained how one determines what the thieves guild does: it was established at the outset and would happen that way unless the PCs did something to change it. In this hypothetical, they didn't, and so it occurred as designed.

The term “living breathing world” was used to describe a goal of play. I’m asking how one achieves that. To me, there seem to be multiple paths such that categorizing them all under that label doesn’t help discussion.

I mean, there are a lot of factors for this scenario that we don’t know. Are there no other factions/forces/groups that can deal with the thieves’ guild? How powerful is the guild? How much do the PCs and players care about this city? And so on.

Many of these factors will have been determined by the GM. So when we say things like “decide based on what makes the most sense” I don’t really see it as significantly different from what the GM wants.

For example, you’ve mentioned the PCs would return to find the guild has taken over the city. I’m supposing here that this would be because of a lack of rivals to keep them in check, and likely a lack of some strong central authority, or similar circumstances.

This is just me taking your examples and using them to make my own… but doesn’t this sound like a story that the GM has already arranged? The relevant factors are decided by him, the outcome of the PCs leaving is then decided by him, and how things are upon their return is decided by him. Also, interesting that the outcome would seem to be perpetual… that it’s unclear if the amount of time spent away from this city matters at all to the situation upon their eventual return. Yes, the players decided to leave, but otherwise this is already a predetermined outcome.

How did I get there? I made it up. Or maybe I rolled on a bunch of charts before play began (Shadowdark and Worlds Without Number both have a wealth of relevant charts that could result in exactly this scenario), but I don't think it matters which method I used any more than it matters whether I crafted the dungeon or rolled it up randomly.

So you cite two methods here… making it up and rolling on a bunch of charts.

Why are there two methods, would you say? Why wouldn’t there just be one? There must be some difference, right? Neither would seem to yield a more coherent world, or a less coherent one. So they both accomplish the “living breathing world” goal.

What makes them different? Is your answer really that it doesn’t matter?

 

[pemerton]

The GM exists to create, operate, and adjudicate the imaginary world the PCs live in, and adjudicate the results of their actions. The world is more than context for player challenges to me.

I am not good at this sort of thing, but I think i understand the desire. A really well developed world exists independently of the PCs -- which means that you can run lots of different campaigns in that world and they all matter. it isn't that the PCs are irrelevant, it is that their actions deepen the world in a historical way. The alternative, where the world is built for the specific PCs under specific conditions for the campaign, means that it is a lot harder to use that world outside of that particular group of PCs. A TPK destroys not just the party or the campaign, but the entire world.

I don't think anyone is calling for a "NPC session." The idea I'd that the world keeps turning even if the PCs decide not to engage. As it should be.

If the PCs go to a town and kill a bunch of undead, but the necromancer gets away, the DM should figure out where the necromancer is going and what he's going to do. The party may never get back to that area of the world again and may never hear anything about what happens, but if 2 years later in game time they happen to enter a town 150 miles from where they met that necromancer and find the town a literal ghost town with the necromancer in charge, that adds huge depth. And it happened independently of them.

If instead the necromancer grew much more powerful and threatened that entire country, they'd hear rumor of it 3 countries over where they are currently adventuring. It may not impact the characters in any way other than as an informational rumor, but it still adds a bunch of depth to the world.

I think it's self-evident that an (imaginary) place with (imaginary) inhabitants has events occurring to those people, and instigated by those people, all the time. As @Hussar said, right now it's raining somewhere in the world that you've never heard of, and someone is praising the freshness of the air or is thankful for the water, while someone else is frustrated that their laundry is getting wet or the hole they were digging is now a puddle or whatever else it might be.

The question about setting is not whether or not this self-evident truth is true but rather what principles should the GM use in presenting scenes, and consequences, to the players via their PCs?

Suppose that the players don't have their PCs pursue the necromancer. Why did they make this choice? What are their preferences about the sorts of situations they want to deal with in the game? The GM who decides to do what Maxperson suggests is not running a more "realistic" game than the one who decides that the necromancer, thankful to have escaped the PCs' vengeance, decides "never again" and settles down as a farmer instead. The GM who decides that the consequence of the players' choice not to have their PCs pursue the necromancer is that, in the fiction, their PCs are casually responsible for dozens or hundreds of deaths is not adding "depth" any more than the GM who has the PCs come to the town and hear tales of the repentant necromancer who now collects the tithes for the local church.

I know, from both experience as a player and reading others' accounts of their RPGing, that some GMs love to visit "consequences" on the players based on the GM's own imaginings about how the players' choices for their PCs might come back to bite the PCs in this or that way. But that has nothing to do with "depth" or "realism". It's just a choice to impose the GM's vision onto the game.

 

[Hussar]

Just to add to that.

While consequences always being negative leads to interesting game play - obviously they are creating adventure hooks which are contextualized for the players- this we choices or consequences have nothing to do with creating a living world.

If they did then just as often those consequences would be neutral or even beneficial.

 

[Cadence]

Just to add to that.

While consequences always being negative leads to interesting game play - obviously they are creating adventure hooks which are contextualized for the players- this we choices or consequences have nothing to do with creating a living world.

If they did then just as often those consequences would be neutral or even beneficial.

It feels like it depends on what they are consequences of?

The consequences of not going off to deal with a bad guy somewhere feel like they would result in bad things more than good to me.
The consequences of visiting country X and not country Y feel like they could go either way like you say.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The term “living breathing world” was used to describe a goal of play. I’m asking how one achieves that. To me, there seem to be multiple paths such that categorizing them all under that label doesn’t help discussion.

I mean, there are a lot of factors for this scenario that we don’t know. Are there no other factions/forces/groups that can deal with the thieves’ guild? How powerful is the guild? How much do the PCs and players care about this city? And so on.

Many of these factors will have been determined by the GM. So when we say things like “decide based on what makes the most sense” I don’t really see it as significantly different from what the GM wants.

For example, you’ve mentioned the PCs would return to find the guild has taken over the city. I’m supposing here that this would be because of a lack of rivals to keep them in check, and likely a lack of some strong central authority, or similar circumstances.

This is just me taking your examples and using them to make my own… but doesn’t this sound like a story that the GM has already arranged? The relevant factors are decided by him, the outcome of the PCs leaving is then decided by him, and how things are upon their return is decided by him. Also, interesting that the outcome would seem to be perpetual… that it’s unclear if the amount of time spent away from this city matters at all to the situation upon their eventual return. Yes, the players decided to leave, but otherwise this is already a predetermined outcome.




So you cite two methods here… making it up and rolling on a bunch of charts.

Why are there two methods, would you say? Why wouldn’t there just be one? There must be some difference, right? Neither would seem to yield a more coherent world, or a less coherent one. So they both accomplish the “living breathing world” goal.

What makes them different? Is your answer really that it doesn’t matter?

Charts exist primarily to help the DM come up with ideas, and secondarily to assist with fairness.

 

[pemerton]

the fact that the news from 3 countries over is about a villain the party failed to capture or kill makes it meaningful.

Is it?

Why did the PCs fail to capture or kill the villain? Who made the decisions about what happens next, using what process?

I mean, I don't think I've ever played a game where the players declare that, every morning, their PCs say a prayer to the gods to stop the world from ending. Would that make it meaningful for me to decide, for our next session, that the gods - unsatisfied by this lack of prayer - are ending the world?

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.

Where is the choice? What is the agency?

To me it sounds like the players have decided they prefer a dungeon-crawler to an urban intrigue game. Now the GM muses on their imaginary city and a session or three later tells the player something about it. Either this is mere colour - not "depth" at all - and the players continue to play their dungeon crawl; or else the GM is dragging the players out of their dungeon crawl game into an urban intrigue game even though the players - at least to date - seem not all that interested. Which is still not "depth" at al.

The absence of real choice and agency becomes even more clear if we suppose that, had the players opted for the thief plot instead, then the dungeon dwellers would have started raiding the nearby farmers, because the PCs didn't stop them.

The GM making stuff up about what happens, independently of the players' choices about what sort of game they want to play and what matters to them in the play of their PCs, is not "realism" or "depth". It's a type of solitaire play, which may or may not be used to railroad the players in a subsequent session.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just to add to that.

While consequences always being negative leads to interesting game play - obviously they are creating adventure hooks which are contextualized for the players- this we choices or consequences have nothing to do with creating a living world.

If they did then just as often those consequences would be neutral or even beneficial.

There's no reason consequences always have to be negative. I don't think anyone ever said that. You instead inferred it because...you don't traditioning GMing? I'm actually not sure, but there sure seems to be a lot if that going on around here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is it?

Why did the PCs fail to capture or kill the villain? Who made the decisions about what happens next, using what process?

I mean, I don't think I've ever played a game where the players declare that, every morning, their PCs say a prayer to the gods to stop the world from ending. Would that make it meaningful for me to decide, for our next session, that the gods - unsatisfied by this lack of prayer - are ending the world?

Where is the choice? What is the agency?

To me it sounds like the players have decided they prefer a dungeon-crawler to an urban intrigue game. Now the GM muses on their imaginary city and a session or three later tells the player something about it. Either this is mere colour - not "depth" at all - and the players continue to play their dungeon crawl; or else the GM is dragging the players out of their dungeon crawl game into an urban intrigue game even though the players - at least to date - seem not all that interested. Which is still not "depth" at al.

The absence of real choice and agency becomes even more clear if we suppose that, had the players opted for the thief plot instead, then the dungeon dwellers would have started raiding the nearby farmers, because the PCs didn't stop them.

The GM making stuff up about what happens, independently of the players' choices about what sort of game they want to play and what matters to them in the play of their PCs, is not "realism" or "depth". It's a type of solitaire play, which may or may not be used to railroad the players in a subsequent session.

Look, just say you don't like games where the players don't have more control over things than is common in traditional play (including most versions of D&D). That's clearly what you mean, and you've provided plenty of reasons for your preference. You don't have to constantly deny what other people are saying about their preferences. I don't see what benefit this provides to anybody.