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

[robertsconley]

It seems this is true of all roleplaying games. Can you give an example of a sequence of play (however brief), or technique, where it's not true?

Sure I will let one my players explain.

Initial Context: The party is crossing the Golden Pass into the Southlands to scout out rumors of Dark Elf activities in the Forsaken Desert. They stayed the night in the village of Hawksleigh.

Also note, most of this is handled through first-person roleplaying.

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From Josh with notes from me.
With a few minutes of time to think, I want to share a fairly cool "Rob moment in gaming." Rob's been fleshing out his setting, and we've been playing in a new spot to lend a hand with that.

I'm making Rob's side up since I didn't talk with him about it, having been on vacation. So Rob sets this up—gives us a rumor that some hill giants are running a toll racket in a location we are heading. We're like 8th level and fairly "ambush" focused, so we're thinking we can fix this problem for the locals and build some street cred.

Rob's Note: The Rumor was one of the things people in an inn were discussing when the party stayed there. Plus in a port further east called Visby they were warn to carry something to use a tribute in case they were ambushed by Hill Giants in the Golden Pass. Came up in a conversation with a merchant when the NPCs became aware that the party was travelling over the Golden Pass.

Point of note though: this is NOT what we're here for. It's a "side quest."

We scout out their hideout, and it's a large complex, with support, and the wife is a druid that talks to wargs. Hm… there are four of them. This might hurt.

We toss some ideas about. I have to miss next week, so the group goes back to report, musters some troops, then heads over to say hi to the elves. Apparently everyone has considered this and just been paying them for years. There is a larger contingent of hill giants in the mountains that don't like what this one is doing, but isn't stopping him.

Rob Note's: Yonk Place is one of a half dozen Hill Giant steadings scattered across the Westwall.

We get back, tell the local what we learned, then head back up. Catch the female out. Instead of ambushing, we send a warning, because we don't want the hill giants descending to get revenge.

Rob's Note: The local in question is Lord Jerome Blackhawk, Constable of Gold Keep. The female is Frella and was a result of a random encounter roll made when the party travelled from Gold Keep back to Yonk's Place. Did not expect that. The short length of the trip meant there was only one roll made travelling back and forth. It was highly improbable that it would happen but yet there was, not only I roll that an encounter occurred, it was a random encounter with an inhabitant of the Westhall, and it came up Hill Giants. So I rolled to see which of them was out and about and it was Frella.

Turns out she's the chieftain's daughter, and an Appalachian redneck.

We let her go. Leaving that discussion, we realize that killing them will likely result in a blood feud.

Rob's Note: While roleplaying Frella threaten the party by telling them. "Y'all better stay clear or you will be dealing with more my husband Yonk, you will be dealing with my daddy and he can git mighty angry".

So… this simple encounter, had we gone through with it as originally intended, likely would have resulted in the local towns being wiped out by a marauding band of hill giants. Actions. Consequences. Great gaming moment.

Rob's Note: True, this took two sessions to play out, and when I realized what the party's plan was likely to be, I worked up a timeline it would take for things to escalate among the Hill Giant (about a month). I figure it would be about 2d6 days for the bodies to be discovered. 3d6 days for the news to get around and for the Hill Giants to assemble. Then 1d3 days for them to march on Gold Keep as their first target. I roll 7, 13, and 3 for 23 days from the killing to the attack on Gold Keep.

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See below for most of the notes I started with. There are some rough notes beyond these as a result of the party sailing by ship to the nearest port to the Golden Pass, Visby. So I fleshed out something, mostly the details of what was going on with Greenelm Woods. I guessed wrong as the party just wanted to barrel through the Golden Pass.

However, last week, it is going to be used, as the party has decided to return from the Southlands and discussed investigating what is happening in Greenelm.

Wrapping it up.

In a typical narrative-driven game, the encounter might have been introduced as a dramatic story beat or resolved through a scripted scene. In contrast, this situation arose organically from prior player choices, random rolls, and the established logic of the setting.

In Burning Wheel, as a different example, the random encounter with Frella wouldn’t have occurred. My impression is that a Burning Wheel campaign would instead focus on the players’ declared intent, killing the hill giants, and then explore the consequences of that decision, such as igniting a conflict between Gold Keep and the hill giants.

That’s OK, and it works for the Burning Wheel campaign for what everybody expects. But it’s different from how things unfold in my Living World sandbox, where events evolve from persistent world elements and procedural outcomes rather than narrative framing.

Spoiler: The Context

The Golden Pass (Hex 2615)​

This is the main pass to cross the Westwalls. The Grand Kingdom now uses it as the gateway to the Southland region. Dozens of caravans use the pass every month. Gold Keep (Locales, 2616) protects the pass from raiding Hill Giants from the mountains.

2517 Yonk’s Place​

Nestled in the foothills of the Westwall is a steading of Hill Giants, Yonk and his family. Five hill giants (HD 8) live here; Yonk (HD 10) , his brother Donk (HD 9), two of Yonk’s sons Mat and Tak, , his wife Frella who is also has druid abilities (Level 5). Yonk and his family have grown fat off the caravans passing through the Golden Pass. They used to raid. On one raid Yonk’s eldest son, Bonk, was killed. Enraged Yonk tore apart the caravan. Later a group of merchants approached Yonk and made restitution and agreed on a tribute that Yonk can ask of the caravans. Since then, caravans traveling the Golden Pass pack an extra wagon with “Yonk’s fee”. The steading is built on top of dam overlooking a mountain lake guarded a pack of wargs (HD 4) tended by a small group of Blackrock Goblins serving as kennel masters.

2616 Gold Keep​

Pop: 80 Human (Hundmeran); Ruler: Lord Jerome Blackhawk, FTR 8, Human (Hundmeran, M); Market Size: VI; Resource: None; Military: Light Foot 8; Med. Foot 4; Hvy. Foot 2; Shortbow 6; Lgt. Cavalry 30; Hvy. Cavalry 10;

Gold Keep sits above the Golden Pass. Commanded by the Lord Jerome Blackhawk, bachelor knights and cavalry patrol the pass. Every fortnight, Hawksleigh (Locales, 2815) to the east sends supplies to the keep. The king just recently appointed Lord Blackhawk, the warden of Gold Keep. The Lord Blackhawk recently found out about Yonk’s fee (Locales, 2517) and has resolved to end the extortion. Several prominent merchants have tried to persuade him to leave well enough alone but to no avail.

2815 Hawksleigh​

Pop: 300 Humans (Hundmeran, Vasan); Ruler: Baron John Banbridge, FTR 10, Human (Hundmeran, M); Resource: Farm; Market Size: VI; Military: Light Foot 8; Med. Foot 4; Hvy. Foot 2; Shortbow 2; Light Cavalry 2; Med. Cavalry 1; Hvy. Cavalry 1;

Hawksleigh is a village of the Grand Kingdom established after the conquest of Vasa. Currently, Baron John Banbridge rules 300 farmers and lumberjacks. His son Harold (FTR 6) is the guard’s leader and patrols the village and countryside with four cavalry and 16 footmen. Hawksleigh supplies nearly all of the food for Gold Keep, which is ten miles to the east. The lumberjacks traditionally harvest the Greenelm Woods (Terrain, 2913) to the north.

The Grand Druid of Greenelm has accused the baron and his lumberjacks of over harvesting and has turned the forest again them. The baron appealed to the king who sent his rangers to resolve the situation. The King’s Rangers are led by Captain Martin Ardmore (RGR 9, M). Captain Martin commands 20 rangers (2x RGR 5, 4x RGR 4, 7x RGR 2, 7x RGR 1). The situation has almost escalated to all-out war. Captain Martin has requested that the High Sheriff of Vasa summon a council to be assembled at Gold Keep consisting of the local nobles to discuss options.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you have a view on my question: If you are GMing 3E D&D, and a player builds a ranger with Orcs as a favoured enemy, and so that means you as GM decide to use some Orcs as NPCs, does that count as the player exercising "meta agency"?

If the player did this, and I wasn't going to have orcs in the setting (or didn't expect them to be enemies), I would make sure the player knew it was unlikely that their choice would be fruitful.

 

[robertsconley]

In the hypothetical where the player was free to select a favoured enemy in the knowledge that doing so would affect my world building, that would seem to match my understanding of meta-agency as @robertsconley was defining it.

Also, the pre-game to establish the Initial Context in my living world sandbox campaigns is an example of meta-agency. The player are not acting as their character during that. They are proactively doing worldbuilding* with me to carve out a starting place for their character in the setting. Thus acting for their character.

Although with Joe, a player in my last Majestic Wilderlands campaign, it took all of 2 minutes with him going, I am just a dude who hangs around taverns. And I'm looking at the City State of the Invincible Overlord, saying, "How the Tanglebone Tavern as your hangout. And he went, "Sounds good to me."

*handled through collaboration, not mechanics. My own take on this from the old 1983 Harnview

 

[Micah Sweet]

It seems this is true of all roleplaying games. Can you give an example of a sequence of play (however brief), or technique, where it's not true?

Well, apparently several folks here seem to think it's impossible. Perhaps you can ask them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is a consequence of a choice the player made in character.



I see where you are going but this isn't the same issue. The point I was making is Hawkeye was advocating for a definition of agency where it isn't considered infringement when the characters thoughts or actions are taken away from the player: for most people being able to control your characters thoughts or actions are the very essence of agency. Now that can still come up in a high agency game and overall the players still have agency. But by shifting the focus so much on mechanical play, rather than what is happening in the setting, and how the player is able to control their character in the setting, he is glossing over a very important aspect of aagency

Now I am not sayin agency can't shift depending on the context. In some games, there trade offs are different. I just find this starting point skews everything away from what most people would think of as being agency in an RPG



I mean i don't have any issues with you doing this at all. It is probably very fun, but yes I think many people would raise agency concerns here. Now I get a game like this is doing something different from D&D or something. So it is probably also taking a slightly different view of agency. I think there is room for agreement and discussion around that. But I would say for most people a mechanic that forces players to confront some kind of inner fear before they take an action is definitely interfering with their expectations around agency (as I would say the standard view of agency is probably more about being able to control your characters thoughts and actions). But like I said, I am a fan of fear effects. I think people take the agency argument too far sometimes here. But I get the concerns around their characters thoughts being controlled or their actions being hindered

So, a question then:

Do you have total control over your own thoughts and actions? Do you always succeed at the things you want to succeed at and fail at the things you want to fail at? Do you only feel fear when you wish to, and never when you do not wish to?

Because by the standard you're articulating here, most human beings rarely if ever have agency. Anyone with a phobia, for example, simply does not and cannot have agency, because they don't get a choice, they feel the fear and it can be crippling. I, personally, have phobias of spiders and of falling; I don't mind being in high places, even ones where I can see how high up I am, but I am deathly afraid of falling, and will outright panic if I suddenly realize that the protections against falling are inadequate to actually prevent a fall. Does this mean I as a human being can't actually express agency because I don't have control over this? What about (say) someone with clinical depression, or ADHD, or (etc., etc.)?

And this isn't even getting into, as previously noted, things in D&D which defy this description and have for ages. Dragons of sufficient age have a nonmagical, entirely natural (in 3.x, "Extraordinary", which is explicitly not supernatural) "Frightful Presence" which (a) induces a roll (a Will saving throws), and (b) forces the character to be frightened if that roll fails. In other words, for more than 25 years, D&D has had exactly the thing you claim destroys agency, a forced roll which induces a mental state. And as I have said before, 5e continues this tradition, as the completely mundane Spinosaurus Dinosaur has Frightful Presence, and the the equally mundane Battle Master being able to use Goading Attack or Menacing Attack, and nothing prevents an NPC from being constructed so (in fact, many fans have poo-poohed the separation of NPC abilities from PC ones!) Or if using the Battle Master as an example doesn't work for you, the "Warlord" creature (which can be "any humanoid") from VGM and MPMM has a Legendary Action that forces a DC 16 Wis save or else the target is frightened until the end of the Warlord's next turn.

So, what exactly is different here? D&D still allows entirely mundane creatures or effects to strike fear into the hearts of PCs, if they fail a roll to resist it. What makes this different from the things @pemerton has described? Why is what D&D does, and has done for two and a half decades, acceptable, while BW is unacceptable? Per your own descriptions, D&D takes away your agency just as much as BW does!

 

[pemerton]

I hate to re-litigate the definition, but generally agency is meant to mean "ability to move towards a goal/specific result." This sort of deep-held control seems to less be about agency and more about, well, control or OC-style character-conception. It doesnt really tell us anything about said character's ability to achieve materially important goals?

Like, say we've house ruled that no mind-altering effects happen because somebody finds them uncomfortable. They have increased control over their character's fictional state, but that tells us nothing about how much agency they have during play - a player with total control of their character's words and espoused internal state in strict AP play with the GM narrating a story has precious little agency over the totality of the game.

100% this.

I could play the DL modules, exercising complete control for the whole time over what my PC thinks and feels, and that wouldn't stop it being a railroad.

 

[AnotherGuy]

There is no world that exercise causal potency. Where you say the world, you are actually talking about the GM making a decision, using whatever heuristics and processes they think will ensure "consistency".

In Burning Wheel, the GM uses different processes - not ones that foreground their ideas about "world consistency", but ones that respond to player-determined priorities for their PCs.

The idea that one is more "meta" than the other has no foundation that I can see - they are simply different GMing principles.

Pemerton can you please illustrate what you mean here by providing a simple example to highlight how these different GMing principles may play out at the table...

• traditional GM will make a decision on an outcome to ensure consistency; and
• BW GM will play out the same example but respond to player-determined priorities.

I'm struggling to understand your comment in a later post where you say fiction doesn't have causal impact.
For instance as I imagine it, battle in dungeon causes commotion, that commotion results in noise.
The fictional causal impact would be that GM/module decides or a dice mechanic would determine if this noise alerted the other creatures in the dungeon. The players would be very much aware the risks associated with that noise in the dungeon.

If by whatever means the GM uses, the creatures are alerted, the GM/module or dice mechanic would determine how the creatures respond. A trad GM may use the intelligence of the leader, the fictional positioning of these creatures (morale, distance to noise, chain of command to BBEG, number of creatures, the type of noise heard...etc) to decide how these creatures may respond.

Now beyond the scope of a dungeon or at least that example within a dungeon, I can see what you mean if there is an existence of hidden backstory i.e. PCs impresses king and his daughter, hidden backstory being a suitor exists and now feels the PC is a threat with the causal impact being suitor makes moves to hurt the image of the PC in the eyes of the king and his daughter.
In that instance, the player is not directly aware of the risks associated with their actions and thus fictional causal impact is just a stand-in for GM decides.

Have I answered my own question?
Unless the risks are known at the table (if hidden backstory exists), you believe that fictional causal impact is just another term for GM decides. Thus the Living World is an exercise in GM decides - or its at least that's how you view it?
And that is not to say that the fiction is not consistent, logical and naturally flows, but it is incorrect to put the fiction ahead of its author as to what actually drives the causal impact?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Here: you can add this to my previous post: "I believe that."

I'm not saying my personal preference is an objective fact. I failed to include a few words in my post.

In that case, my request would not be that you add that addendum to your post.

It would be that you presume such an addendum is present in others' posts unless they explicitly say otherwise.

 

[pemerton]

What you’re describing is how I handle adjudication. The idea that the circumstances of the setting, what has already been established, do not just provide background detail, they actually shape and sometimes dictate what happens next. When I say the world has causal continuity, I do not mean it is real in any metaphysical sense. I mean that once something exists in the world, it behaves as if it is real. Players can rely on that. The referee cannot just handwave it away. A locked gate is locked. A patrol has a set route. A drought causes real shortages. These may be imaginary elements, but they carry consequences because the world treats them as facts.

once something is true in the world, it stays true until something in the world changes it. It is treated as real because we choose to treat it as real. The consequences follow because we choose to follow the consequences.

This is the core of the Living World sandbox.

All this has been core to most of the RPGing I've done since the mid-1980s.

On the assumption that not all of that RPGing counted as "living world" sandbox, it follows that this core is not unique to that particular approach to RPGing. (EDIT: I've just seen that @thefutilist makes the same point not too far upthread.)

One thing worth adding, for anyone thinking about how this plays out in practice, is that the referee is not deciding outcomes on the fly. The current state of the world shapes their rulings, the consequences of past events, and the procedures they have committed to. That is what keeps the game from feeling arbitrary. It is not that the referee has no control, but that their control is grounded in a consistent framework.

Yes. Upthread I posted this:

Speaking for myself, I don't dismiss plausibility as a heuristic: I use it all the time when GMing.

What I deny is that imaginary things participate in actual causal processes. The causal process is GM decision-making, not some imagined event exerting real power.

So, I think it is legitimate to discuss the process and the content of what those imaginings are, and what constitutes fiction that meets the needs of the participants. But, like you, I am not in favor of confusing the issue by talking about 'causality' or 'reasons' WITHIN the fiction. It is fine for Micah or whomever to say "we want to be able to describe how we imagine something happening in the fiction" but it is vital not to lose sight of the fact that there are many potentially valid ways to do that, unlike reality where only one set of facts exists.

I think I may be less sceptical than you about the capacity of plausibility, as a heuristic, to exclude certain possibilities (blatantly absurd ones). I agree with you that it tends not to be very useful, on its own, for winnowing down a set of possibilities to a unique answer.

I certainly think that we can talk about fiction; and reason about it too. Here's an instance of reasoning about it: Sherlock Holmes lives in Victorian London; Sherlock Holmes, when he met Watson, was not familiar with (then) contemporary astronomical theories, as they were not relevant to his study and practice of detection; therefore, Sherlock Holmes does not read ancient Sumerian writing (given that such an ability is far more esoteric than knowledge of scientific astronomy). Similar sort of reasoning allows us to conclude that Holmes does not know the chemical structure of DNA; does not leave the house naked (by choice, at least); etc.

We can reason expressly about causation too. For instance, if Holmes drops a hammer on a cobblestone, than everything else being equal that will make a noise. In one of the stories, we see Holmes drawing inferences from the failure of a noise to occur (the dog that didn't bark).

But none of this shows that imaginary things are exercising causal power. It shows that humans can create fiction in accordance with various heuristics.

 

[pemerton]

Where player goals come into play is in determining what parts of the world get developed next. I often use the example of walking through Manhattan. There may be hundreds of things happening around me, but I only pay attention to a few, like finding a game store. Similarly, if a party made up mostly of Thothian mages arrives in the City of Northport, then in addition to covering general city details, I’ll focus on fleshing out how magical society functions there, assuming it exists. Their goals steer the spotlight, but the world remains grounded in its own continuity.

So this would be the players exercising "meta-agency" in your sense, wouldn't it?