An examination of player agency

[Crimson Longinus]

Hey that's interesting! I'm a little confused at how you'd take stress without opting in and how the trauma could be resultant from a trivial matter since the triggering is in the player's hands,

I mean I of course chose to roll to resist a thing, but I rolled really badly and IIRC took five stress. And it was not "trivial" in a sense that the effect would have not been bad, it was physical harm, but it was not emotionally meaninful. The events after that however vey much were (and I wanted to resist the harm so I could get there) and it made perfect sense for my character to gain a trauma from that scene, not just at the exact moment the rules indicated.

The issue is that as resistance is the game's mechanic for avoiding basically any bad stuff and as the amount of stress you can potentially get from it is more than half of your stress track, it sorta creates situations where not every time you risk trauma by rolling is something super dramatic.

but interestingly Harper has provided some optional rules around Trauma in Deep Cuts that basically leave it more up to the player how that moment of overwhelming stress -> Trauma plays out.

Oh, true! I hadn't noticed that. Yes, so the Deep Cuts approach is closer to how we handled it and I think that really fixes my issue with it as it does not require awkwardly writing the character out of the scene if it doesn't make sense

I feel vindicated, apparently Harper felt it was an issue as well, as it has been changed. (He also made stress from resisting to cap to three, which makes it way less swingy.) So yeah, I like the Deep Cuts version a lot more.

I think that prioritizing "player agency over dramatic moments" is a totally valid thing to want, we see this show up in the rules of games like Fabula Ultima/Daggerheart around character death for instance.

Right! And my expectations here are not particularly high. With death I'm fine with just some last words (and I would allow a PC in D&D 5e to say such even though by RAW they're unconscious) and with trauma I just wanted my character to do something dramatically stupid before storming off.

As an aside, since the Flashback mechanic is intended to replace pre-planning ("oh we totally made a plan for just this occurrence, let me tell you how..." in teh same way Load is "oh I totally packed my lock picks before we left the lair..."), it generally errs on the side of 0-1 stress unless you're doing something that in another system might be a whole set of rolls and multiple scenes (an example given of a 2 Stress flashback is basically fundamentally changing the context of a Desperate engagement roll by talking about how you arranged for there to actually be a bomb in a delivery).

Well a flashback might require and action roll, which might have consequence and one might resit a consequence, roll badly , and somehow get trauma in the present where nothing happened...

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

I've yet to see much that wasn't covered in the OP:

What I see are a lot of claims of exceptionalism for a certain subset of RPG play. The claim is that these games must feature agency simply because they assert it is the case, irrespective of their hidden processes, unstated rules, ability to write and undermine rules and processes unseen, and willingness to conceal player goals.

Even though transposing any of these features into tens or hundreds of thousands of other games (chess, ludo, Monopoly, tennis, I Spy, snap, poker, basketball, doesn't matter) clearly and obviously destroys the agency of other players, they claim this simply doesn't happen when they play their version of this rpg. Their player agency is different. Their game is the exception.

These assertions, these claims of exceptionalism, are unsupported and - in my view - untenable.

I argued back here that there is an intuitive difference between full control and final say that your definition of agency is too strict to accommodate.

I wouldn't expect others to care when you call their use of a word unsupported and untenable based on a definition you made up that doesn't match the dictionary or intuition.

 

[pemerton]

I think here you are equating narrative control with agency and to me that isn't what agency is.

Why is what you think agency is more significant, or more reasonable, that what the OP of the thread thinks agency is?

 

[pemerton]

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.

You seem to have read a bit of my Torchbearer 2e actual play.

Do you really think the reason that I enjoy TB2e (or Burning Wheel, or 4e D&D, or Classic Traveller, or Prince Valiant, or any of the other RPGs that I enjoy) is because I'm a bad GM who needs to be controlled?

Anyway, I'm going to test this hypothesis by starting a thread about the Prince Valiant healing rules. I predict that I will get many ENworlders complaining that they involve too much GM fiat!

EDIT:

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.

Is this why you're obsessed by rules for "simulating" things like getting hungry while trekking through the wilderness - because you're a bad GM who plays with bad players?

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

My hunch is your definition of agency is Narritivist and doesnt work for other agendas.

Sounds like you just have a preference for games on the Narrativist end of the spectrum.

I'm not sure. OP's view is quite extreme. It implies Narrativist play isn't even possible with trad RPGs (surely it requires player agency, which OP says is logically impossible in trad RPGs). None of the OG theorists I'm familiar with would agree with that.

Ron Edwards is clear that any game can be played in that style. Narrativist games just facilitate it, mostly by making prep easier for the GM.

I remember Vincent Baker saying something to the effect that the GM rules in Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World aren't there to constrain them, but to help them do what good GMs do intuitively.

I'm not sure about Luke Crane. I haven't read any of his work. Is he where all this anxiety over GM dictatorship comes from?

If there are "big GM" and "small GM" Narrativist camps, OP would fit at the extreme end of the latter.

 

[pemerton]

When you tell people what they consider agency or freedom isn't that, because you have a stricter definition of the term that removes what they value from being what they think it is and enjoy, you aren't just "having a discussion".

Really? Aren't you one of a billion posters who's told me that what I think is a railroad really isn't?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Why is what you think agency is more significant, or more reasonable, that what the OP of the thread thinks agency is?

I didn't say it was more significant or more reasonable. I said it was what I think agency is. Why should his definition of agency trump other peoples usage? I am not claiming agency for one style. Nor am I claiming to have the one true definition of agency. I stated that narrative control isn't agency to me. But if he thinks that is an important part of agency fair enough, if he thinks it enhances agency, fair enough. He just ought to understand that isn't how a lot of others think about agency (and it matters because the whole OP is set up to define agency in a particular way in order to advance an argument for a particular approach to play and design). And even that would be fine, except he accuses people who play outside that approach and style of being delusional about believing they have agency. The issue I think is treating this all as a zero sum game

 

[FrogReaver]

Let’s be less than generous and suppose there was a game where the rules are the player says something their character attempts and the DM decides what occurs in the fiction. By the OPs definition there are invoidable rules, they are known to all parties, and players can use them to achieve known goals (providing their goal is to get the GM to decide what happens next in the scene).

Does this theoretical game have player agency? If not, what’s missing from the OPs definition?

 

[pemerton]

If player and GM are bound by the same rules to the letter, it seems to me that any actions that fall outside the scope of the rules is simply forbidden.

If the game permits moves that there are no rules for, it seems like a bad game to me.

What's even the point of having a GM who is as bound to the rules as a player?

To frame scenes. To play the NPCs. To establish consequences.

I mean, you've read at least one of my Classic Traveller actual play threads (I was looking at it yesterday, and you had posted in it): Classic Traveller session

When I GMed that session, I was following the rules. Is it unclear what the point was, of me and the players playing the game?

EDIT:

Practically speaking, how often is a GM overriding any rule based on their whims really a problem? This is not a rules problem this is a social problem.

<snip>

Then you just end up in a game with some really silly and stupid results that don't make sense within the context of the campaign.

Player: I open up a rift in space and time, exposing Capone's men to the face melting presence of the Nuclear Chaos, Azathoth!
GM: Uh, we're not playing Call of Cthulhu.
Player: So what? I get an Ability roll for things not specifically covered in the rules. Are you denying my agency?

You seem to be the one with the social problems, if your players aren't interested in the integrity of the fiction!

EDIT to the edit: @soviet got there first! (Like a sputnik!)

 

[pemerton]

I didn't say it was more significant or more reasonable. I said it was what I think agency is. Why should his definition of agency trump other peoples usage?

Upthread you posted this:

the definition the OP begins with seems deeply flawed. My issue with the OP is it feels like an argument trying to capture agency for particular style of games

I feel that you are trying to capture agency for a particular type of game too, namely, a game that I would probably think is a railroad.