An examination of player agency

[zakael19]

What exactly do you mean by "principled"? It sounds loaded, but I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and not make assumptions.

Principled as in following the principles of good GMing in the handbook (such as in Dolmenwood the outline of a Referee’s Role, how to Describe the World so that players have sufficient info to make informed decisions, and where the players are given concrete guidelines on how to execute procedures). In the case of some NSR games like His Majesty the Worm, the book contains some best practices and further refers out to community blogs for further details.

Edit: the latter specifically commends the Principia Apocrypha to referees/GMs, which clearly states the principles there in as “rules GMs should follow supplementary to the game’s rules… to guide you when what you should do is uncertain.”

 

[pemerton]

I don't know what principled means here.

What exactly do you mean by "principled"?

I think the meaning can be reasonably conjectured by having regard to this, in the post you are replying to:

You can run D&D 5e by those rules. You just have to be transparent, and open to a degree of table discussion when unclear resolution moments arise.

<snip>

I’ve personally run principled OSE, 5e, and 4e such that I think I met all of the OP’s outlines and did so with explicit intent of maximizing player agency to set and pursue goals within a starting premise.

So principled means:

*The GM conforms to rules, that
*Are known to the players ("transparent"), so that
*The players can rely on them, in order to
*Pursue and (if successful) achieve the goals that they set for their PCs.​

The reliability of the rules puts certain constraints on what the rules can be - eg "The GM can suspend the normal mechanics at will" might be a rule that is known to the players, but is not a rule that the players can rely on in pursuing their goals.

To narrow down to 5e D&D as an illustration, I suspect the most important part of GMing in a "principled" fashion (in @zakael19's sense) would pertain to non-combat resolution, and in particular (i) how DCs are set and communicated, (ii) how the outcomes of a successful check are established, and (iii) how the outcomes of a failed check are established.

 

[zakael19]

I think the meaning can be reasonably conjectured by having regard to this, in the post you are replying to:
So principled means:

*The GM conforms to rules, that​

*Are known to the players ("transparent"), so that​

*The players can rely on them, in order to​

*Pursue and (if successful) achieve the goals that they set for their PCs.​

The reliability of the rules puts certain constraints on what the rules can be - eg "The GM can suspend the normal mechanics at will" might be a rule that is known to the players, but is not a rule that the players can rely on in pursuing their goals.

To narrow down to 5e D&D as an illustration, I suspect the most important part of GMing in a "principled" fashion (in @zakael19's sense) would pertain to non-combat resolution, and in particular (i) how DCs are set and communicated, (ii) how the outcomes of a successful check are established, and (iii) how the outcomes of a failed check are established.

Yeah, sorry - in my original post “principled” OSE meant in accordance with the principles of good GMing laid out within the handbook & community; in the latter 2 games by techniques done by me learning from the possibility space such that I met (most of the time) the OP’s guidelines to facilitate player-goal oriented gameplay as you just wrote.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Good question. You could always just flip a coin giving every action a 50/50 chance of succeeding no matter how nonsensical it might be, but is that a good solution?

Right… that’s the thing, some kind of rule can be established such that the player knows what to expect and can make decisions accordingly.

Flipping a coin may not be satisfactory for all instances, so we’d likely have to fall back on something else. Luckily, some games have done this. Even D&D… which may have multiple ways to handle something (an ability check or a saving throw may be used interchangeably in some cases)… can still fall back on those as basics. Other games have a general resolution system that can work in nearly any circumstance.

My brain is filled with random Snarf trivia.

My condolences!

It's their definition of agency and the examples they give. They want a game where the GM doesn't really arbitrate.

I don’t think that’s true. It’s more that they don’t want the GM to arbitrate over the player. Or the rules.

Like if I’m playing a game, I like to know how I can achieve my goals. What are the obstacles in my way? What are the rules that will play a factor in what I want to do?

If you play nearly any other game… this is information that is available to you. Look at basketball… I know that my goal is to score… to get the ball in the basket. I can move about, but have to dribble. I can pass. I have to stay inbounds, I can’t travel, I can’t pass backward across the half court line once the ball has passed it. And so on.

Now… does this mean I know everything? Not necessarily. My opponents’ skill level may not be known. How lenient the ref may be when calling fouls may not be known. And so on.

But you’d never expect anyone to play basketball where they either were not aware of these rules, or the rules were subject to change without notice.

And this applies to just about every other game. But when it comes to RPGs, a lot of times people struggle with this.

 

[Clint_L]

Except there was an entire section of the OP that already addressed this.

In a very condescending way, yes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Storytelling exercises and games are different things to me, for sure. Games have rules. Generally speaking, rules that are expected to matter... that they not be cast aside.

As I've said in the past, and as the OP cited... if you look at almost any other game, it's very easy to see where and how players have agency.

RPGs are not like "any other game". They are collaborative creative exercises with some rules as scaffolding. It is art, not science.

Character autonomy.

I am free to have my character go here, or go there, to do this or do that. Which is almost always all material created by the GM prior to the start of play.

And that is no way a player can exercise agency. To say it is not, is obviously a biased attempt to twist the definition of player agency.

No, I think for player agency, it has to be about what the player does. It's not so much about the content of the fiction as the creation of that content. What binds the participants? When can they create content? To what scope or effect?

That's what players do. So it's best to examine player agency at that level.

"Rules" that are required is that the GM gets to describe the fictional situation, the player gets to describe what their fictional character does about it and the GM describes how it alters the situation. That's rules for functional RPG for you.

And the player is doing deciding what their character does in the fiction, which in turn influences what the GM says next, thus affecting the fiction again. This is obviously the player exercising agency over the fiction.

Without the rules, you're not really playing a game. This is related to my comment above about in response to the difference (or stated lack thereof) between storytelling exercises and games.

Like Wittgenstein says, there is not one concrete definition of "game." It cover a range of very different activities. By focusing of the rules in RPGs, you are eliding what actually makes them unique. Like when we talk about the events in our games, we mostly talk about the fiction. And you can have a perfectly sensible (if somewhat incomplete) account of the events of the game that does not mention any rules, but you really cannot do it other way around.

I have! And not very long ago at all... last year, I believe. I did it out of obligation to a friend, who wanted to take a turn GMing. We were playing online, and I think he was so focused on trying to make sure that the combat encounters and the like ran well, that he basically just went from one to the next, while narrating bits of story in between.

It was a very frustrating play experience for me. I'm willing to play many types of games... as long as I know what a game will be when I sign up for it, I'm usually just fine. But this was much more of a railroad than I ever would have imagined. Because the GM in question is a good friend and because he suffers from some neurodivergent issues, neither I nor the other players wanted to complain for fear of upsetting him.

This indeed sound terrible, and very low player agency. Yet, you probably have played games with similar or even the same rule system, where the GM still had final say, decided outcomes, decided what to frame next etc. where the experience nevertheless was not like this and you had much more agency? Which to me goes to show that the agency does not derive primarily, let alone solely from the rules.

 

[soviet]

There must be a process by which the outcome of contested or uncertain actions is decided.

If that process is 'apply these clear and inviolable rules, known and agreed to in advance, to determine the outcome' I have more agency than if the process is 'the game's narrator decides the outcome using details and principles that may be unknown to you'.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There must be a process by which the outcome of contested or uncertain actions is decided.

If that process is 'apply these clear and inviolable rules, known and agreed to in advance, to determine the outcome' I have more agency than if the process is 'the game's narrator decides the outcome using details and principles that may be unknown to you'.

Perhaps. Maybe. I'm not sure actually...

Like yeah, it makes certain logical sense to view it like you say, but given that substance of the game is fiction, not rules, I feel inflexible rules can sometimes limit agency in uncomfortable ways.

Like recently in our Blades game we had a situation where my character took massive amount of stress due a bad resistance roll and suffered a trauma. By the rules my character would have been out of the scene instantly, yet by the fiction that would have made very little sense. So we didn't do that, we played the scene to the end, and my character took a dramatic action and then stormed out in very emotionally unstable state.

Now perhaps we could have concocted some fiction to explain it if we had decided to follow the rules to the letter, but it would have been unsatisfactory, I would have felt it would have violated my agency over the character, utterly destroyed my immersion, and the resulting fiction would have been way worse.

So I still think overtly focusing on the rules is a mistake. They're scaffolding they're a tool, but they're not what the game is about. And I think sometimes bending or ignoring the rules will better actualise the player's agency over the fiction.

 

[soviet]

Perhaps. Maybe. I'm not sure actually...

Like yeah, it makes certain logical sense to view it like you say, but given that substance of the game is fiction, not rules, I feel inflexible rules can sometimes limit agency in uncomfortable ways.

Like recently in our Blades game we had a situation where my character took massive amount of stress due a bad resistance roll and suffered a trauma. By the rules my character would have been out of the scene instantly, yet by the fiction that would have made very little sense. So we didn't do that, we played the scene to the end, and my character took a dramatic action and then stormed out in very emotionally unstable state.

Now perhaps we could have concocted some fiction to explain it if we had decided to follow the rules to the letter, but it would have been unsatisfactory, I would have felt it would have violated my agency over the character, utterly destroyed my immersion, and the resulting fiction would have been way worse.

So I still think overtly focusing on the rules is a mistake. They're scaffolding they're a tool, but they're not what the game is about. And I think sometimes bending or ignoring the rules will better actualise the player's agency over the fiction.

I think the question here is 'who decides?'. If your agency depends on petitioning an authority figure for a special exemption, that doesn't feel much like agency to me. If there are situations where the rules as written somehow don't suit the situation at hand (and I'm not at all sure your example would qualify) then what I would seek is for all participants to agree on the fix. But these circumstances should come up very very rarely.

 

[NN]

I don’t think that’s true. It’s more that they don’t want the GM to arbitrate over the player. Or the rules.

Like if I’m playing a game, I like to know how I can achieve my goals. What are the obstacles in my way? What are the rules that will play a factor in what I want to do?

If you play nearly any other game… this is information that is available to you. Look at basketball… I know that my goal is to score… to get the ball in the basket. I can move about, but have to dribble. I can pass. I have to stay inbounds, I can’t travel, I can’t pass backward across the half court line once the ball has passed it. And so on.

Now… does this mean I know everything? Not necessarily. My opponents’ skill level may not be known. How lenient the ref may be when calling fouls may not be known. And so on.

But you’d never expect anyone to play basketball where they either were not aware of these rules, or the rules were subject to change without notice.

And this applies to just about every other game. But when it comes to RPGs, a lot of times people struggle with this.

but in most rpgs the opponents skill level and the referee and the screams of the crowd are determined by the GM. Hell the whole thjng may be an illusion or a scam. Are these things part of the “rules” and if so isnt player certainty incompatible with exploration?

Is player agency “i want to play basketball”, or “i want to win this game”?