An examination of player agency

[payn]

Boundless exploration within a GM designed sandbox isn't what is special about the medium. It is what some people like about some roleplaying games. Trying to make the entire medium fit into a boundless exploration box erases the rest of us who are not here for that. It's like saying area control is what makes the board game medium transformative. It's like saying taking tricks is what makes the card game medium transformative.

It's putting all roleplaying games in a single box and elevating a single play agenda (with a little a) as the real one.

Thats basically what all the line drawing in the sand is about.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I hope it is clear that these two components of your post that I've outlined are specific GM principles that are specific to a particular play agenda. Which is good. Specific GMing principles to a specified and particular agenda is excellent.

But principle and agenda-wise, this is situating all three of play broadly, player decision-space, and GM responsibilities/authority to be centered around things that would be extraordinarily adverse in other forms of play. If play situates the GM as "reader of the room" when they're mediating action resolution, that can trivially Trojan Horse in a game theoretical model where social coersion (overt or covert, individual or collective) propels moments, sequences, or all of play. That might be deeply anathema to any number of play agendas. If play situates the GM as "responsible for the pulse of unfolding events," that might be deeply anathema to any number of play agendas; (i) those that want the pulse of unfolding events to emerge sans-GM orchestration or (ii) those that don't want a pulse of unfolding events to even enter into play at all (which necessitates that none of the participants are preoccupied by such a pulse!).

Its this kind of Trojan Horse (I'm not making an accusation here...these Trojan Horses get routinely deployed, smuggling in all manner of anchoring expectations that may or may not be examined), that becomes a problem when this kind of GM authority/responsibility in a void-fraught rules becomes married to player decision-spaces that are supposed to be simultaneously goal-directed as well as contingent upon reliability in all three of orientation to situation, attendant decision-space to be mulled, and action + resolution (which includes handles, leverage, currencies, consequence-space evaluation, and possibly even advancement scheme).

And to reiterate, this isn't about outcomes (though outcomes are important). This is about the moment-to-moment orientation to and processing of individual chunks of play. It is more about the input dynamics of this stuff and the cognitive scheme in which it situates players (which is where the "gameable space" thesis picks up).

Look, I was not one true waying, that was what the OP was doing. If you don't want the GM to do that, then don't play that way. But my point was that doing so is not intrinsically antithetical to the player agency.

And you are again talking about the "gameable space" and I have already said twice why I don't think it needs to rely on the rules, though it of course could.

 

[zakael19]

Look, I was not one true waying, that was what the OP was doing. If you don't want the GM to do that, then don't play that way. But my point was that doing so is not intrinsically antithetical to the player agency.

And you are again talking about the "gameable space" and I have already said twice why I don't think it needs to rely on the rules, though it of course could.

How does the GM make their decisions given this to not constrain what you’re defining as agency? Are they open with how they’re understanding the situation so players can validate the fictional space? Are they anchoring player fronted goals around open procedures?

Or does player agency mean something different then the ability to openly and consistently pursue goals while relying on the GM to be as close to an impartial arbiter within the game’s rules and procedures to you?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Boundless exploration within a GM designed sandbox isn't what is special about the medium.

This isn’t what I said. I wasn’t talking about exploration sandbox. The game I first played in wasn’t a sandbox. It was a cinematic mechwarrior campaign. What made it feel distinct to me is it was totally unlike a board game or video game because it had this sense of being boundless where we could go beyond what was programmed or written in advance. And a big part of what made that happen was the GM being able to facilitate play and not being constrained. To be clear, I am not saying you can’t achieve this in other ways or that placing constraints on the GM will automatically ruin agency. I am saying this is what you guys are butting up against in this thread when you tell people they have no agency in RPGs where the GM isn’t operating with constraints (for many many players this was the feature they noticed that set apart RPGs from other mediums). I am not saying this experience is universal. This is a very subjective thing. I am saying that is why the idea is getting so much push back.

It is what some people like about some roleplaying games. Trying to make the entire medium fit into a boundless exploration box erases the rest of us who are not here for that. It's like saying area control is what makes the board game medium transformative. It's like saying taking tricks is what makes the card game medium transformative.

I am not doing that. I am trying to be non prescriptive. And I am not even talking about sandbox play. I am explaining to you how the medium felt to me when I first encountered it. Other people will have different experiences I am sure. And I have heard from many others who feel exactly as I do. So I am just saying when you tell people they don’t have agency, when this is at the heart of what gave them agency in the medium, they aren’t going to be persuaded by your reasoning. That experience is simply too powerful in shaping how they viewed the medium

It's putting all roleplaying games in a single box and elevating a single play agenda (with a little 'a') as the real one.

No. That isn’t what I am doing. I said in my other post constrained GMing and unconstrained are both valid and both seem to have agency as a goal.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How does the GM make their decisions given this to not constrain what you’re defining as agency? Are they open with how they’re understanding the situation so players can validate the fictional space? Are they anchoring player fronted goals around open procedures?

Or does player agency mean something different then the ability to openly and consistently pursue goals while relying on the GM to be as close to an impartial arbiter within the game’s rules and procedures to you?

All I can say that in the actual situation I alluded to earlier, I felt that my agency was honoured by the GM acceptance of setting aside the rules a bit so that the fictional situation could unfold in satisfactory and logical manner and had we not done so I would have felt that my agency was limited and violated.

I generally feel that it is part of GM's job to make sure that the fiction unfolds in a manner that does not produce "this doesn't make any bloody sense" from the players, and if that requires overriding rules, then so be it. That is the coherence that allows players to make meaningful decisions, not the coherence of the rules. Granted, in a good game this should be in harmony most of the time, so that the expectations are one and the same, but this doesn't always happen.

 

[Manbearcat]

Look, I was not one true waying, that was what the OP was doing. If you don't want the GM to do that, then don't play that way. But my point was that doing so is not intrinsically antithetical to the player agency.

And you are again talking about the "gameable space" and I have already said twice why I don't think it needs to rely on the rules, though it of course could.

I am not accusing you of One True Wayism. In fact, I not only don’t care about that stuff, every time I see the conversation hew that direction I cringe.

What I was trying to do was talk about how there sometimes isn’t the kind of solve you are putting forth above to the kinds of problems I’ve been attempting to point at. It seems to me you’re putting forth these principles and techniques as generalizable solves, when the reality is those solves are a poison pill for certain forms of play. Simply, rules-voids and/or structure-voids create certain dynamics for both the inputs of play and its outputs. You can principally solve those dynamics via the two ways you are referring to. However, all I was getting at was that those principles and associated techniques are not only not generalizable solves, but they can also generate dysfunctional play if they are at odds with the goals of play.

TL;DR I’m not accusing you of anything other than perhaps calling a particularized solve generalizable when, in fact, it might be the opposite of a solve. I’m a simple confounder to the idea of these 2 x principles and related techniques as a generalizable solve; I don’t want to GM any game that situates me as “reader of the room” or “having my pulse on unfolding events” (assuming that entails meatspace social dynamics being inputs to action resolution as well as GM responsibility for orchestration of play trajectory/dramatuc arc).

 

[Bedrockgames]

All I can say that in the actual situation I alluded to earlier, I felt that my agency was honoured by the GM acceptance of setting aside the rules a bit so that the fictional situation could unfold in satisfactory and logical manner and had we not done so I would have felt that my agency was limited and violated.

I generally feel that it is part of GM's job to make sure that the fiction unfolds in a manner that does not produce "this doesn't make any bloody sense" from the players, and if that requires overriding rules, then so be it. That is the coherence that allows players to make meaningful decisions, not the coherence of the rules. Granted, in a good game this should be in harmony most of the time, so that the expectations are one and the same, but this doesn't always happen.

And I think it is important to point out this isn't what people sometimes call magic tea party. No one is saying there aren't rules. I think what people like me and Crimson tend to feel, is that the rules aren't the things for us that make the medium pop, it is the GM and Player dynamics, and if the rules, procedures and even expectations are overly rigid, it can feel like our agency can get lost to a process. It is like the difference between being lost in a vector system help line and getting a live agent where you can make that human connection that goes beyond the letter of help line procedures. It is the difference between playing Kings Quest or Police Quest back in the day, when you had to type in the exact phrasing of what you wanted to do and the system was programmed to handle certain things, not others, and having a human before you who can interpret your phrasing better than a machine, and can provide more output than the machine. And again to be clear here, I am not saying these other approaches will produce machine like game play for everyone. I am saying many of us are wary of the OPs rationale for this reason

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am not accusing you of One True Wayism. In fact, I not only don’t care about that stuff, every time I see the conversation hew that direction I cringe.

What I was trying to do was talk about how there sometimes isn’t the kind of solve you are putting forth above to the kinds of problems I’ve been attempting to point at. It seems to me you’re putting forth these principles and techniques as generalizable solves, when the reality is those solves are a poison pill for certain forms of play. Simply, rules-voids and/or structure-voids create certain dynamics for both the inputs of play and its outputs. You can principally solve those dynamics via the two ways you are referring to. However, all I was getting at was that those principles and associated technics are not only not generalizable solves but they can generate dysfunctional play if they are at odds with the goals of play.

TL;DR I’m not accusing you of anything other than perhaps calling a particularized solve generalizable when, in fact, it might be the opposite of a solve. I’m a simple confounder to the idea of these 2 x principles and related techniques as a generalizable solve; I don’t want to GM any game that situates me as “reader of the room” or “having my pulse on unfolding events” (assuming that entails meatspace social dynamics being inputs to action resolution as well as GM responsibility for orchestration of play trajectory/dramatuc arc).

I don't offer them as universal solve, only as potential one. But that human element certainly is what is unique to RPGs. (For now, we all will soon be replaced by unfeeling bots that fake humanity convincingly enough.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is an art to suspending your position in the sake of interest in the conversation. If the person only considers x and z to be necessary agency items, it does no good to drag on about z. When the shoe is on the other foot, sometimes you gotta just disengage.

Sure, but at least some of the people some of the time are just going to get into it if they think someone is misrepresenting something they place value on, and the fact the other side insists on the semantic advantage isn't exactly going to make them more willing to go halfway.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not saying we need inviolable rules, but plenty of roleplaying games have inviolable rules without codifying every possible action. Marvel Heroic RP, Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World are all examples. Like you can build in constrained judgement into your game design so that it can respond to just about any sort of fiction.

Though I'd argue you can't really do so and have the mechanics engage with some of those situations at all deeply. But I'm well aware that's not a priority for many people.