D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[AbdulAlhazred]

How would it make any difference if you had gone to a town and asked one of the players to describe the town and they stated that it was a village of basket weavers? It would be different, I just don't see why it matters. The reason why the people went to a town in this region is because of what they've indicated interest in. Maybe they're seeking out the mystical basket of weaving or may it's just a stop on the path and it's just descriptive fluff but not their destination. If you're playing a game where villages don't really exist then it's such a different approach that the concept doesn't apply.

Well, I don't think it would happen exactly like that, but it might. The description would probably be more specific, like say in Dungeon World the GM might describe a scene, with the setting being a village, without defining anything further about it. This scene would engage something of concern to a PC. It might reveal a threat, pose a choice, probably as a dilemma, etc. The players might be asked questions about the village in the course of this play. One might establish that it's people are part of her clan. Another might note their economy, etc. These would become canonical and probably be made relevant in play, though something might prove extraneous, like the basket weaving perhaps.

Note that DW GMs are certainly free to prep whatever, but the game advises leaving significant 'holes'. Normally this will be in the form of fronts. So a village of basket weavers could be a danger, or more likely threatened themselves, maybe their destruction is an omen.

 

[Lanefan]

I did a google and it turns out there are six types of agency:

• 1. Digital Marketing Agency
• 2. Growth Marketing Agency
• 3. Advertising Agency
• 4. Social Media Agency
• 5. Branding Agency
• 6. Public Relations (PR) Agency

Google fail if it missed

7. Secret Agency

 

[AnotherGuy]

In that case I don't agree with Max. World moves are IMO absolutely necessary for the Living World model to work. You react to the PCs actions, but also have events occur outside their influence.

So all three of us play Sandbox.
I agree with your assessment of the Living World model* which runs differently to Max's Reactionary Living World model.

However you and Max are more in agreement in keeping meta knowledge out the game whereas I do tend to inject player facing mechanics here and there.

*Just as in PbtA provides a system for hard moves permitted by the GM, I would prefer to have such a mechanic for the Living World which acts independently to the PCs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We've gone back and forth on this in the 'GM fiat - an illustration' thread. A brief primer for those who didn't read it.

A) Are decisions constrained by established fictional constraints, including extrapolations based on 'plausibility',

different to:

B) The GM (or whoever) deciding something based on how they want the fiction to go and then creating the fiction to justify it post-hoc.


My view was that the first (A) basically constitutes the medium of role-playing. Without it you're just generating fiction.


The problem is as follows:

The constraint can't 'actually' be plausibility because it's possible to extrapolate the exact opposite.

But you're making the perfect the enemy of the good. Is also a totally irrelevant defence for the many reasons you, pemerton, hawkeyefan, manbear, have all pointed out.

My response (which living world advocates can't use) is that plausibility (or character immersion) is actually a lamp shade for artistic expression.

My repeated example was that you can want a character (you control) to do something but the demands of the fiction/authenticity means they must do the opposite thing.

The thing is. This makes sense to me when talking about a character (pc or npc) making a charged ethos driven decision, it makes far less sense when talking about warehouse awnings.

Very interesting! I had never really considered the artistic aspect, at least explicitly. I think most GMs with much experience can relate to it though, aesthetics does matter, at least in some play. Not sure if that is the best play or not, it's likely to be conflicted (like how Edwards talked about incoherent play, though I don't think he uses that kind of formulation anymore).

But, your A and B are certainly cogent.

 

[Lanefan]

I have no experience with BW, but this just sounds like a roundabout way of saying, "I don't want to play Burning Wheel, but if I did play anyway, I'd do it without buying into the premise and actively trying to subvert it."

If the game is about creating a character with beliefs that will cause problems, trying to design a character who doesn't experience problems is akin to making a bloodthirsty, angry, rude, blunt, psychopath who only solves problems with brute force, when the GM pitches a game about careful plotting and subtle political intrigue.

If you don't like the premise, don't play. Much as I've been saying to people who don't want to give authority over the world to the GM in a game where the GM will have authority over the world. It's OK to just say, "That's not for me, but you have fun with it."

How is simply doing what the character would do a subversion of any RPG system?

The belief can still cause problems, but that shouldn't stop me from having my character be able to think ahead and plan for eventualities...unless the base assumption is that characters come with very limited intelligence-wisdom equivalents, which doesn't seem to be the case as presented....or unless the system wants to deny me the agency to determine what my character would do and-or any preparations it might make in order to make its fairly-easily-foreseen tasks easier.

 

[Lanefan]

COMPONENTS	RAILROAD	LINEAR	SANDBOX	PbtA
Driving Force	GM	GM	GM (via Setting) / Players	Players
Mechanics	GM Facing	GM Facing	GM Facing	Player Facing
Character Concepts	Not Applicable	Colour	GM Dependent	Critical
Setting Importance	Primary	Primary	Primary	Secondary
Realism Input	GM	GM/Mechanics	GM/Mechanics	Mechanics
Primary Goals	Story Goals only	Story Goals	Exploration / Story Goals	Character Goals
Player Agency	None	Little-Some	Some-Greater	Greater

May I add (without the fancy formatting)

Story Generation ----- Story First ----- Story First-ish ----- Story After ----- Story Now

That to me is one of the key delineators in all this: when does the actual story get generated.

There are probably many more components that should be added, maybe some that should be excluded or corrected - I'm certainly (given my lack of RPG experience) poor at defining our hobby which is best suited for the likes of @Manbearcat.

There's some that could be corrected and quibbled, sure, but the general idea is close enough for rock'n'roll.

 

[robertsconley]

I'm not operating on the definition of agency within the context of tabletop roleplaying. I'm using the definition of a player and the definition of agency, and looking at how any game allows agency. I'm not treating TTRPGs any differently than I would other games.

That’s where the issue lies,your approach places everything into what I would call the second category: metagame agency Meta Agency. In doing so, it ends up being more limited than mine.

The reason is that RPGs aren’t games in the conventional sense. Game theory has only narrow application to RPGs. What makes tabletop roleplaying distinct is its character-centric play loop: the referee describes the situation, the players describe what their characters do, the referee adjudicates, and then describes the resulting situation. This cycle, pioneered by Dave Arneson in his Blackmoor campaign, is the core of the experience.

Because of this character-centric loop, there's an entire layer of agency in TTRPGs that isn’t present in most other games,specifically, what players can do solely as their characters.

You can see this difference at the very beginning of the hobby. Blackmoor was the first tabletop roleplaying campaign. Dave Arneson demoed it for Gary Gygax, which inspired the creation of OD&D. At the same time, Dave Megarry, inspired by the same Blackmoor dungeons, created Dungeon!, a board game. Both were born from the same source, but one clearly remained a board game while the other created an entirely new type of experience.

Further, it's possible to run a tabletop RPG campaign where players never interact with the rules at all. If the referee is skilled and has solid preparation, they can adjudicate everything using only their notes. It’s not easy,it demands strong communication and a high level of trust at the table, but it can be done. I’ve done it twice in 40 years of refereeing, both times as one-shots. Each felt like a typical TTRPG session using a rules-light system.

I understand you may have objections or questions about this. But ultimately, I think it’s a mistake to view RPGs solely as games. They are their own category, and “game” is only one part of what they are.

That's not a form of agency... that's cheating.

It is only cheating because an authority said it was cheating. Otherwise, it is something that either side is physically capable of outside of the rules used on the field. And a decision that is made outside of the rules of game being played on the field.

Another is player substitution, which is allowed in American football now but wasn't used to be. The decisions on when to substitute lie outside the rules used on the field, hence a form of metagaming. In Soccer, substitutions were not allowed until 1958.

I'm not speaking poorly of any kind of game.

You are doing good, it is alright to be passionate about what you think is important about RPGs.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I wanted to get back to this post because I thought it was an interesting way to look at things.

Can the GM cause the pirate crew to plan a mutiny due to the creation of a GM NPC pirate with a backstory and ambitions?

I don't see anything restricting this in a living world sandbox. NPCs, their backstories, and ambitions are the domain of the GM, so they can create what they'd like in that regard.

What I would do here if this was my game, is I'd signal the NPC in question as problematic in some way. That he clearly is outspoken and perhaps even hostile... but I'd temper that by making his role on the ship an essential one. Something that only he can do, or which he is the clear best at.

Then, before it gets to the point of mutiny, I'd let the players interact with that NPC to see if they can change that trajectory. If they can't, or if their actions make it worse, then the mutiny would take place.

Handling it in this way means I've made the situation known to the players, and left it up to them to decide how they want to handle it. I'm not hiding the situation from them. I'm not interested in if they discover the issue... I'm interested in how they handle the situation.

Can the GM cause the pirate crew to be hunted by a sea captain due to the creation of a GM NPC who has ambitions to become admiral, in order to be worthy to marry one of the duke's daughters? Is this not an example of a Living World independent of the PCs?

I would expect that this is absolutely possible in a living world sandbox. It interacts with player choice in the way folks are advocating... like, if the players decide to become pirates, this guy is something they're likely going to have to deal with.

How this is communicated to the players is the question I'd have. I would make it known to them in some way. Like if the game looks like it's going toward this idea of piracy, I'd start introducing relevant elements then, at least conceptually. I'd make sure that in the port city, they heard about this ambitious pirate hunter, and likely a bunch of other possible threats or opportunities as well.

Can the GM cause the mercenaries to be elevated into positions of power within the realm as certain key influentials are targeted and assassinated?

I'm not sure I follow this example entirely. By "the mercenaries" do you mean the PCs?

Can the GM narrate an earthquake which then releases lethal toxins into the air or some other danger from deep within its bowels that hurt this new nation that PCs formed in the hinterlands?

I don't see why not. This could be something the GM prepped as a possibility... perhaps a threat with a countdown of some sort and now it's reached that point.

Just doing so on a whim seems potentially contradictory to what some say here... but I'm not sure how problematic it is as long as it's communicated to the players in some way.

I had a natural disaster happen in a sandbox D&D campaign I ran a while back... a flood struck the twin towns that the PCs were based in (the towns were on opposite sides of a large lake). The flood nearly wiped out one of the two towns (the closer of the two), and severely damaged the other. This was caused by the machinations of one of the factions in play, and then it changed the geography of play, and wound up introducing a new faction entirely.

As GM, I introduced this event and then watched to see what the players did as a result.

Are these reactive or is this the Setting (the GM)?

Almost everything you mention above is the GM. The idea that the GM can't introduce NPCs with agendas that matter to play or threats that exist in the world or events that happen would, to me, go against the idea of a living world.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's also good design. Not a hot mess. And something to say yes to.

Different strokes for different folks. It's bad design for you, because it's not what you like.

IMHO it was replaced by WotC with a unified 3e design precisely because it had become unmanageable. 2e had reached a point of, essentially, collapse. Anything you attempted to add or change had to deal with 1000s of other elements. Or else just punt. For non-player-facing stuff punting is OK, but late era 2e is so bad you cannot really create a PC unless you sit down with the GM and hash out how everything works together on your sheet, what variant subsystems exist, etc.

Contrast with 4e which has at least as much material as 2e, yet 'just works' and could be expanded upon almost limitlessly and still work.

And I would argue that, through keywords and adherence to/establishment of thematic coherence, it can do everything 2e can do, but better. And note, I'm not addressing aesthetics like whether you like the classes or the balance of hit points to damage in combat, or even any arguments about the specific rules, like SCs. All that could be different and the same advantages realized.

So I have to reject your thesis.

 

[robertsconley]

I like this "meta agency" term coined in this thread by I believe @robertsconley . That being player influence beyond what the PC themselves is capable of.

I use metagaming but I acknowledge it is loaded term because of it association with cheating. Perhaps meta agency is the better way to describe what I getting at in the future without bringing extra baggage.

The idea crystalized me for when it was pointed out there is a difference between playing a campaign where as a player (not as your character) can do part of the world-building using the system. And playing a campaign where you are a character who the power to create worlds like with Amber Diceless. Both have worldbuilding mechanics, but one is part of the player's meta agency and the other is part of the player's character agency.