Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[hawkeyefan]

The world of the game isn't real. It's a collective fiction invented by the group playing the game. Of course it is the GM or the system or the players being responsive.

I'm honestly not sure what you are trying to get at. Are you trying to articulate a discussion about why use random tables versus GM fiat versus something else? If so, maybe just say that instead of circling it in such a way that you are constantly intimating that people are being either foolish or disingenuous.

I’ve explained my point a few times. Here it is again:

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’m don’t think it’s about foolishness or disingenuousness, really. I think that folks tend to describe their process in ways that are more vague than is helpful. “Living breathing world” doesn’t help the discussion because it covers such a variety of methods.

 

[Aldarc]

Show me on the character sheet where the bad GM hurt you.

You do realize that his point here was in response to a strawman, right?

 

[hawkeyefan]

What's the alternative? That there be no consequences stemming from what the players didn't choose to take on? No in-setting cause and effect where, if left uninterrupted, one thing reasonably leads to the next? No evolving backstory above and beyond that which the PCs specifically interact with? And how about campaigns or settings with more than one PC party?

Yes! Sometimes, when people leave a city, they never go back and then nothing that happens in that city ever affects them again.

So if the game isn’t focused on the city, who cares what’s happening there? If for some reason it becomes relevant again, it can be determined then. There’s no need at all to maintain that kind of information when it’s not immediately relevant to play.

Ideally, a game world doesn't just sit there static waiting for some PCs to show up. It evolves. Monarchs die and are replaced. Storms destroy a small town. A new temple is built to the glory of Jupiter. A war begins in the east, while another ends in the south. And so on.

But until these things somehow become relevant to play, who cares about it? It seems to be only the GM. That’s why this kind of stuff is called solitaire play.

And that’s fine if that’s something the GM enjoys… I get it; I spent years doing that kind of stuff myself. But as a player, if this stuff keeps coming up in play no matter what we do, it absolutely comes across as the GM trying to force their story. And it comes across that way because that’s what it is.

And, ideally, a game world reacts to what the PCs do in or to it. The PCs kill the evil Emperor, so a five-way civil war erupts between factions looking to fill that void. The PCs destroy an imprisoned deity and in so doing quite literally take away the primary reason the game world is articifially held in its orbit, so the world starts drifting into its natural (and rather unsuitable for life) orbit. Both of these happened (with consequences still ongoing) in my current campaign, and while they've largely left the civil war to its own devices I strongly suspect there's going to be a lot of effort put towards trying to fix the planet's orbit; and not entirely intentionally they've already laid some of the groundwork for so doing.

Sure, no one is saying that the PCs’ actions and player decisions shouldn’t be acknowledged and included in the shared game world.

 

[AnotherGuy]

“Living breathing world” doesn’t help the discussion because it covers such a variety of methods.

From your posts on EW, you've stated that you've had experience with trad games before so I think it is safe to assume that you recognise the concept and the myriad ways one can go about achieving said living breathing world.
That one cannot put into words which satisfies some posters is not hugely unfamiliar terrain here - when plenty posters here continue to struggle to define what a roleplaying game is.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So if the game isn’t focused on the city, who cares what’s happening there? If for some reason it becomes relevant again, it can be determined then. There’s no need at all to maintain that kind of information when it’s not immediately relevant to play.

Immersion is a goal for many a table.
The living breathing world assists in attaining that goal for those tables - EVEN IF it's just through colour (refer @pemerton's post #438)

 

[aramis erak]

Meh. I’ve yet to see or hear of anyone actually playing out how the monsters got into that dungeon. I highly, highly doubt anyone does.

And I’d point out @aramis erak that you’re boardroom example changes things. The npcs are on camera and being played by players. That’s not what I was talking about.

Put it another way. Who played out Acererak becoming a Demi-lich?

I've used "How to Host a Dungeon" to generate dungeons for T&T play...
I've also used Jacquay's Central Casting: Dungeons to generate dungeons.

Well, you're certainly assuming a lot of contempt for alternative styles of play coming from DMs who prefer to keep their campaign environments dynamic in the background while displaying quite a heaping load of such contempt yourself in this badwrongfun screed. I suspect a bit of projection is going on.

He's more exhibiting it than assuming it.

What system? What do you use in D&D to determine how a thieves' guild performs when the PCs don't seek to stop them and instead skip town for a while?

The rules from the AD&D 2E Birthright Campaign Setting can do that.

Also, why can't the GM of such a game decide that another city faction or visiting adventuring party deals with the guild? Now they're heralded as the heroes of the city and when the PCs return, that's how the world has lived and breathed while they were gone?

In most systems, they can. In a few, however, the guilds operate on a rules level, and the rules will call for or prohibit interactions at times.
Note that Arneson and others of the oldest RPG guard also ran campaigns where different groups were adventuring in the same campaign setting and interacting - some things that more modern GMing style would be NPC lead actions are, in that style sometimes the GM presenting the reaction of the setting to actions by Group A into the narrative of Groups B and C...

There's no way to remove all GM judgment from the process, and I wouldn't want to. But having it be nothing but GM judgment seems to me a very different thing than using a randomizer of some sort. Hence why the "living, breathing world" phrase isn't very useful.

Agreed

And don't get me wrong... there's absolutely nothing wrong with "the GM decides what happens". I just think we should be honest about it, and differentiate it from other methods.

 

[Hussar]

Including determining the downstream consequences of their characters' actions?

'Cause that's what we're talking about here, and as those consequences (in theory anyway!) somewhat naturally flow from the setting as created the players - having had a hand in creating said setting - will be far better informed as to what those downstream consequences might be than would their characters. And suddenly you've got a metagaming problem to deal with; a problem that was completely avoidable.

Not really. Those consequences that you keep talking about are not actual consequences. They’re just what the dm thinks will be fun for the next adventure.

That’s not a consequence. A civil war after killing the emperor is not the only possibility. There are many. And allowing the players to be involved in determining those things means that they are actually thinking beyond their character and engaging with the broader world.

 

[Cadence]

That’s not a consequence. A civil war after killing the emperor is not the only possibility. There are many. And allowing the players to be involved in determining those things means that they are actually thinking beyond their character and engaging with the broader world.

A game we were in a few years ago had our party kill the king and his cabal, and then stick around to try to not have everything fall apart (we didn't need to stick around, we had a mission elsewhere, but we decided to).

 

[Hussar]

And they are. I haven't seen anyone claim that things are always negative.

Really? Every single example in this thread has been a negative. Not one single positive was even suggested. Even the idea of a positive consequence was called unbelievable.

 

[Maxperson]

Just two initial clarifications:

(1) I posited an alternative, that the "living breathing" stuff is mere colour;

It can't be color, because color has no impact on anything, like your Red Herring examples of filling a tub on the other side of the world or whatever.

A living, breathing world might or might not have impact. If it doesn't, it can't be color since color is something the PCs are aware of but has no impact. If it does have impact, then by definition it isn't color.

(2) It won't be illusionism if it's all done transparently. Eg this is how I've played in CoC one-shots.

It's also not illusionism, since illusionism is the illusion of choice. The quantum ogre and doors scenario. There is no illusion of choice going on with a living, breathing world, so it cannot be illusionism.