An examination of player agency

[soviet]

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.

But this is what I said before. You are petitioning an authority figure so you gain a special exemption. 'Please sir, do not apply any tariffs to my business at this time'. That isn't a high amount of agency, even if the authority figure says yes.

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.

I'm not sure what about your play example 'wouldn't make any bloody sense'. You said your character botched a resistance roll and took a lot of stress, meaning they suffered a trauma, meaning they would be out of the scene. That all seems perfectly logical to me. Are you saying there was something wrong with the framing, like the resistance roll shouldn't have been made? Or the consequences for failure should have been different? Was this not apparent or negotiable before the roll?

 

[payn]

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.

I think you need to look at who you are talking with in conjunction of about what. Is this the first time y'all engaged in the topic? Or is this attempt #123766142?

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

It depends on how schematic you're willing to accept your rules as being. There are games where every bit of resolution is done by rolling a particular dice set against a target number, based on one of a finite number of skills and attributes, where the only real variable is what the target number is (and normally there are a finite set of those, too, with at least broadly definitional flags applied). The latter is determined by the fiction, but its still normally pretty transparent.

What it does limit is, barring other mechanics, you can't hang much on it but success and failure (possibly with some steps of matter of degree).

You can pretty much do anything with such systems; you just can't expect the system to always do any of the lifting in terms of giving you everything you might want in output.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think you need to look at who you are talking with in conjunction of about what. Is this the first time y'all engaged in the topic? Or is this attempt #123766142?

Ideally, yeah. But people can still find it irritating and go back to the well one more time. (And of course some people get offended if you just walk away, which is sometimes the most useful option).

 

[soviet]

I am groggy and my min didn't clear, so I don't know how well I can state this, but for me the thing that has long struck me about RPGs since I first started playing was this ability of the player to say to the GM "I am going to do X" is what makes it a transformative medium. And the GMs ability to take that and turn it into just about anything, is what makes the medium limitless. It is what separates an RPG from a computer game, a movie or boardgame. It is what made me feel like I was suddenly in a world or in a movie, but could actually affect the stuff around me, and move the 'plot'.

None of this requires a GM's thumb on the scale. It can all be done with open and principled resolution.

You will probably be familiar with the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide from AD&D second edition (which is a great book). There's a whole section in there that (from memory) is all about a group painting a dead minotaur red and throwing it down the stairs accompanied by some minor illusion magic to scare off some higher level bandits. The advice in the book talks about how if the GM breaks it down to a sequence of rolls the likelihood is that one thing will fail and so the bluff won't work and the characters will be killed. Therefore the GM must step aside from the rules and fiat the outcome.

But that isn't the only solution. Any modern conflict resolution game can quite easily set up a conflict where the fighter's strength in throwing the minotaur is supported by the wizard's illusion magic and the thief's threatening words to create a roll with the stakes 'the bandits are scared away'. Skill challenges from 4e and similar group checks from other games can also achieve a similar thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think there is a code here though. 'What would make sense based on the fiction' and 'fictional coherence' are both different ways of saying 'what the GM thinks should happen'.

Putting the GM in a position of privileged authorship over the setting is a perfectly legitimate way to play. People who enjoy it will say that it makes the setting feel more real, immersive, coherent, etc. A sort of auteur theory of RPGing. But that GM control by definition comes at the expense of a certain amount of player agency. There's nothing wrong with that. Agency is not an unalloyed good. Having more is not always best. You can choose to have (or grant) less. But let's recognise that this is what's happening

If agency isn't an unalloyed good, why is so much digital ink being spilled over exactly how much of it any given shade of play possesses, and conversely how much authority the rules and/or the GM should have? Agency is not being treated as a value-neutral aspect of play here, certainly not by those claiming certain playstyles don't have much of it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I am groggy and my min didn't clear, so I don't know how well I can state this, but for me the thing that has long struck me about RPGs since I first started playing was this ability of the player to say to the GM "I am going to do X" is what makes it a transformative medium. And the GMs ability to take that and turn it into just about anything, is what makes the medium limitless. It is what separates an RPG from a computer game, a movie or boardgame. It is what made me feel like I was suddenly in a world or in a movie, but could actually affect the stuff around me, and move the 'plot'.

Yes, 100%

In the hands of a bad GM, I don't think anyone disagrees, that can impact the agency this set up provides.

It seems to me that an awful lot of the arguments in favor of more rules...not just in this particular topic, but across the game...are motivated by a desire to prevent "bad" players and DMs from doing certain things.

I like fewer rules, and playing with people I like.

 

[soviet]

If agency isn't an unalloyed good, why is so much digital ink being spilled over exactly how much of it any given shade of play possesses, and conversely how much authority the rules and/or the GM should have? Agency is not being treated as a value-neutral aspect of play here, certainly not by those claiming certain playstyles don't have much of it.

It's something that some people value more than others. Some people trade off a degree of agency for what they feel is a greater degree of setting coherency/verisimiliitude. Why can't we discuss that trade-off? Why can't we talk about how different techniques or approaches create more player agency than others? Why does one approach get to be the default way of playing that we're not allowed to question?

 

[FrogReaver]

In a sense that if GM gets to decide certain things, then the player cannot be deciding them. But the same happens when you outsource the decision to the mechanics as well. The mechanics say what happens, instead of any of the participants.

100% this.

In fact we could even describe such mechanics in more traditional terms as the creation of a random table where option 1 is the DMs proposed fiction, option 2 is the players proposed fiction, and option 3 is the players proposed fiction with the addition of a specified DM proposed complication. Weight the probabilities in some systemic way and that's all the resolution system in many of these types of games are - essentially a more creative method of generating a random table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, 100%



It seems to me that an awful lot of the arguments in favor of more rules...not just in this particular topic, but across the game...are motivated by a desire to prevent "bad" players and DMs from doing certain things.

I like fewer rules, and playing with people I like.

Agreed. It seems to me a lot of the push for rules constraints is motivated by a (sometimes prophylactic) concern about "bad" players and particularly bad GMs.