Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[pemerton]

Yeah upthread I mentioned how colour can help one with immersion and for many a Trad game, immersion is one of the goals. I tend to think of colour as not just background material but rather the element of breathing life into a vision.

It is great when players, through their ingenuity, use what you intended for colour in a meaningful way.

Your last line reminded me of this, that you might find interesting:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/an-interesting-take-on-fictional-positioning-and-adversity-in-rpging.681692/

 

[pemerton]

Because @pemerton sees a railroad in any situation that isn't ultimately player-authored.

This is not true.

I think it is a railroad if the framing, stakes and consequences are all provided by the GM. If they are predominantly provided by the GM, then we may also have a railroad, or at least something rather railroad-y.

 

[pemerton]

Player agency =/= Player authorship.

Given that the essence of a RPG is establishing a shared fiction, what else would it be?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Given that the essence of a RPG is establishing a shared fiction, what else would it be?

We could have saved a lot of digital ink if you had just plainly stated that opinion a dozen threads ago.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Immersion is different for many people. If I’m a player in a game and decide to have my character leave a city, and everywhere I go, I keep hearing about what’s going on in that city, there’s a good chance it has the opposite effect… that I’ll feel like I’m being chased by the GM’s plot. Which doesn’t evoke a “living breathing world”.

Obviously this may not always be the case. It depends on many factors. But I don’t think that we can chalk all this stuff up to immersion.

Putting aside the hyperbolic example, the living breathing world, as I understand it and implement it, is meant to evoke the changes that might naturally seem to occur within a passage of game time, accounting for DM solitaire as well as the consequences (good and bad) of past player actions. One may also be using a published setting calendar or AP, as the campaign may have been set in a certain time period and thus certain known events occur.

Changes can also include colour.
The whole idea is to keep or help maintain the players within the headspace of the fictional game (immersion), offer reasonable outcomes, sometimes even predictable outcomes for what has already occurred within the campaign and possibly build future hooks. These hooks can be storylines for the party as a whole or to be individually explored by the characters. The latter could relate to character's backgrounds or desires.

This concept is used in Trad games but it can easily be incorporated in games where players have some level of creative input. The way I view it, the living breathing world is an exercise within the exploration pillar.

That's my take on it. I don't know if I did the concept any justice - but yeah, I do not think it is a difficult idea to grasp.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is not true.

I think it is a railroad if the framing, stakes and consequences are all provided by the GM. If they are predominantly provided by the GM, then we may also have a railroad, or at least something rather railroad-y.

I don't see a significant difference between our two statements. What percentage of GM involvement is allowed in your world for something to maybe, possibly, perhaps not be a railroad?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So here we have the GM establishing the framing, and to a significant extent also the stakes ("civil war"). And then setting up the series of events that must unfold for the players to get what they want: "figuring out" who the other powerful figures are = learning the stuff that the GM has authored, and "manipulating them onto being on our side" = prompting the GM to tell us more stuff about the stuff that the GM authored.

This may make for fun RPGing, or it may not - that's taste.

But the structure of the play is not a matter of taste - it's a more-or-less objective property of the manner in which the fiction is authored. And it is obviously all being GM-driven.

Disagree. This is the players establish that the game is now about regicidal revolutionaries. It will results a completely different game than the characters deciding to leave the empire and to become pirates. Seems pretty player driven to me.

 

[Lanefan]

This is not true.

I think it is a railroad if the framing, stakes and consequences are all provided by the GM. If they are predominantly provided by the GM, then we may also have a railroad, or at least something rather railroad-y.

That's a mile-wide definition of railroad.

For me, it's a railroad if a) the GM provides the outcome* without regard for what the players have their characters do and-or b) if the players have no choice in what their characters do next.

* - in the immediate, as opposed to longer-term consequences.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Given that the essence of a RPG is establishing a shared fiction, what else would it be?

So you now care about who authors the fiction, not just who says it aloud? Or are there different standards for GMs and players for some reason?

 

[Reynard]

But the structure of the play is not a matter of taste - it's a more-or-less objective property of the manner in which the fiction is authored. And it is obviously all being GM-driven.

Why are you assuming that this was some sort of Platonic description of events rather than an.example to.answer a specific post? Why are you intent on framing everything in such stark terms.

If the players want to drive play, it is incumbent on them to set goals and stakes IN CHARACTER. For players in traditional RPGs, their mechanism to affect the fiction is through their characters.

And before the inevitable "but viking hat GM!": save it. It's a distraction. Don't play with that guy. Play with a GM that wants you to drive the story.