An examination of player agency

[chaochou]

@pemerton

Thanks for the response.

Personally, I don't see merit in inserting agency as a factor into what constitutes 'skilled play'. And I see only confusion arising from analysis that attempts to break play down into singular moments to be labelled as 'agency' or 'not agency' within the context of a game.

That is to say, if I sit down to play chess against Magnus Carlson - and we both agree to the same rules, time constraints, win conditions, shake hands and set our clocks - then we are playing with the same agency. What transpires in the game will then result from our skill at chess, and I'll lose. But I'll have played the full game with complete agency - that is, a full sight of the board state, and complete knowledge of the legal moves, and the win, draw and loss conditions.

Skill - that is, understanding or intuiting how to use your agency (assuming you have it) to achieve your goal - is, in my view, a seperate dimension of play. And the fact that, for example, in backgammon you might not have a move right now - either due to the bar or your dice roll and board position... that's not an agency issue either. Your agency isn't ebbing and flowing with the board state. It's there and present in the fact that you have rules and processes which you can use to try and achieve the win condition.

 

[FrogReaver]

The goal of play in D&D is not to win. For the participant who is in the GM role, the goal is to present scenes that force the players into intense, engaging, thematically laden action with their PCs. For the players, the goal is to play one's character in accordance with their beliefs, instincts, traits etc. For all participants, there is a further goal that emerges from the intersection of their role-specific goals: finding out what happens to these characters when they are put through the wringer.

Eero Tuovinen describes this sort of play, in general terms (he's not talking specifically about Burning Wheel, but about games that fall under what he regards as the "standard narratavistic model" (remembering that this is pre-Apocalypse World):

I find that the riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship. . . .​

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all but the most experimental narrativistic games run on a very simple and rewarding role distribution that relies heavily on both absolute backstory authority and character advocacy. . . .​

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One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . .​

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The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. Then they let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants. . . .​

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The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end. . . .​

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These games are tremendously fun, and they form a very discrete family of games wherein many techniques are interchangeable between the games. . . . The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook. And it works . . .​

I think there's an underlying axiom that isn't anywhere near universally agreed upon that underlies your opinion.

For a game like bridge I think your differentiation of authority and agency works well. For some RPG's that follow closer to the bridge model I think it also works. By follows closer to the bridge model I mean they have complete predefined rules and processes for play, essentially no judgement is required. RPG's like that can have the bridge type of authority and agency distinction that you mention here.

But what about RPG's that don't have complete predefined rules and processes for play? I agree these games don't have the bridge like control over outcome you claim is needed for bridge like agency. The players in these games cannot force things like in bridge based simply on the game rules and procedures alone, because some of the rules and procedures call for a large amount individual judgement layered on top of them. And yet, while the individual judgements are never written and the procedures used to make those judgement are never set in concrete, players do intuitively learn to leverage such judgmental systems to help achieve their goals. Now the results are not guaranteed like in bridge, but they are there and tangible and there's a world of difference in how well a 'good player' will achieve their goals and how well a 'bad player' will in such games.

The underlying axiom for your position seems to be that if something doesn't have that bridge like authority and control/agency split then it either doesn't have agency or has less of it, but that doesn't necessarily follow. There can be non-bridge types of agency and indeed are.

I also think it's worth noting that control over outcome isn't really agency, but more an effect of having agency. Yet one can only have as much control over outcome as a game actually allows. Also worth noting is that having less control over outcome isn't synonymous with having less agency.

 

[Pedantic]

Skill - that is, understanding or intuiting how to use your agency (assuming you have it) to achieve your goal - is, in my view, a seperate dimension of play. And the fact that, for example, in backgammon you might not have a move right now - either due to the bar or your dice roll and board position... that's not an agency issue either. Your agency isn't ebbing and flowing with the board state. It's there and present in the fact that you have rules and processes which you can use to try and achieve the win condition.

That's not quite what I'm getting at. I'm not sure I agree we couldn't do a choice by choice analysis, but it's not what I was driving toward.

I'm purporting that an element of agency is not just influence, but discrimination. It's easier to talk about in competitive games, but I'm curious how the same element manifests in the TTRPG context here.

My contention is that if a player's choice always produce the desired outcome, then they functionally haven't expressed any agency in making a choice. I presented an example earlier in this thread of a race game that has one button that accelerates a fixed distance toward the finish; that seems to meet your definition of agency, but doesn't allow the player to discriminate between different lines to that end. Ultimately, I don't think the player is expressing agency in using that option to achieve the desired outcome.

Extending that analogy, I don't agency increases meaningfully if you add a second button, that also advances the player the same distance. You could make a case if the second button only advances the player half as far, they can now express agency by picking between the two buttons, but I'm inclined to put trivial optimization cases outside the bounds of real agency.

Removing the competitive case, and setting anything you'd like as the goal of play, on what basis do players discriminate between different lines of play? I was proposing a test earlier, that there should exist at least one case that advances the player toward the goal more readily than another line of play, and ideally there should be more than one such unique line that both could be argued to be equally effective at getting there.

I'm solidly open to an example here, I think this an aspect of agency that could be encoded in TTRPG play, but I don't understand the systems nor fundamentally the goal of play being proposed here well enough to see how.

 

[Pedantic]

I also think it's worth noting that control over outcome isn't really agency, but more an effect of having agency. Yet one can only have as much control over outcome as a game actually allows. Also worth noting is that having less control over outcome isn't synonymous with having less agency.

I don't think I agree at all with this. Making choices that determine the outcome of play is, I would argue, the entirety of expressing agency in games.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't think I agree at all with this. Making choices that determine the outcome of play is, I would argue, the entirety of expressing agency in games.

You're teetering on defining agency simply as playing a game. Playing a game = making choices that determine the outcome of play.

 

[pemerton]

How is it that a player does not know their character's goals?

Eg XP earned by hitting some trigger that the GM knows and the players don't.

 

[Argyle King]

Eg XP earned by hitting some trigger that the GM knows and the players don't.

It could be that I'm simply not fully understanding the concept.

I understand the concept that you would be receiving XP for an achievement (goal) that was unknown beforehand.

I'm not following how that occurrence means that a player has less player agency. I don't perceive receiving an award that you didn't know existed as being much different from opening a treasure chest and finding a magic item that was not known to be there. How does not knowing about an award remove control over the actions taken that lead to the award?

 

[pemerton]

It could be that I'm simply not fully understanding the concept.

I understand the concept that you would be receiving XP for an achievement (goal) that was unknown beforehand.

I'm not following how that occurrence means that a player has less player agency. I don't perceive receiving an award that you didn't know existed as being much different from opening a treasure chest and finding a magic item that was not known to be there. How does not knowing about an award remove control over the actions taken that lead to the award?

Well, suppose that one important overarching goal of play is to advance your PC by accruing XP. But you don't know how the GM is going to make the decision to award XP. So now you don't know what your local goal of play should be, in order to achieve that overarching goal.

One analogue would be a game very much like soccer, except that what counts as scoring a goal is varying from time to time based on an unrevealed decision by the referee - so you don't know whether it counts as good play to pass the ball forward, or backward, or to shoot towards the opponent's goal as is conventional, or perhaps to shot towards your own goal because the ref has decided that that is now what will count as a score for you - or maybe the ref has decided that you'll score if you kick the ball into the spectator stand on the full!

Another example in the RPGing space, less stark than the uncertain criteria for XP example but one that I've experienced in play, is where the goal of play is (in broad terms) for the PCs to prosper in the milieu that the GM is presenting to them - but whether or not they prosper will depend on social dynamics within the milieu that the GM keeps secret, and so the players can't tell, at any given moment of play, what sort of thing their PCs should be doing to get ahead as they are expected to.

The most crass version of what I've just described is the quest-giver who betrays the PCs - a bizarrely popular trope which I regard as the utter pits for player agency. But it can occur in more nuanced versions too.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton

Thanks for the response.

Personally, I don't see merit in inserting agency as a factor into what constitutes 'skilled play'. And I see only confusion arising from analysis that attempts to break play down into singular moments to be labelled as 'agency' or 'not agency' within the context of a game.

That is to say, if I sit down to play chess against Magnus Carlson - and we both agree to the same rules, time constraints, win conditions, shake hands and set our clocks - then we are playing with the same agency. What transpires in the game will then result from our skill at chess, and I'll lose. But I'll have played the full game with complete agency - that is, a full sight of the board state, and complete knowledge of the legal moves, and the win, draw and loss conditions.

Skill - that is, understanding or intuiting how to use your agency (assuming you have it) to achieve your goal - is, in my view, a seperate dimension of play. And the fact that, for example, in backgammon you might not have a move right now - either due to the bar or your dice roll and board position... that's not an agency issue either. Your agency isn't ebbing and flowing with the board state. It's there and present in the fact that you have rules and processes which you can use to try and achieve the win condition.

I don't think I disagree with much of that - except perhaps in some cases of extreme skill differential: I don't think I really have very much agency when I sit down to play chess with even a competent club player, given that they will just completely clean my clock as I have no serious grasp of what counts as good play for chess. (I say this based on experience - the last time I played against a competent club player, it really would have made no difference had I rolled dice to move my pieces rather than made the choices that I did - I was so utterly out of my depth that it is almost a stretch to say that I was playing.)

So I think you may have misunderstood me.

What I'm trying to get at is that a marker or manifestation of agency in a game is that it permits a player/participant to us their authority to direct, control or at least guide how other players/participants must then exercise their authority. So in chess, by positioning my pieces in certain ways I can control how you exercise your authority to move your pieces. That's how I push towards mate. In bridge I can control how you exercise your authority to play cards from your hands, by choosing what to lead, whether to play under or over (and thus determining how the lead shifts), etc.

And RPGs can permit this also.

But some RPGing is undertaken in a way that doesn't permit this: I can exercise my authority as a player - say, to describe what actions my PC is taking - but that exercise of authority doesn't then have any impact on how the GM is able to use their authority. Or in other words, the GM can do more or less whatever they like with their move, regardless of what move I make as a player.

I regard the sort of RPGing described in the previous paragraph as very low agency. I also think that it's rather common.

My reason for mentioning Gygax in particular is not to connect agency to skill, but rather to point out that he does not advocate for the sort of low-agency play I've described. Rather, he is envisaging a rather intricate way of setting up the game, which means that the players do have the capacity, via their moves, to control or at least guide the GM's moves. And this is what makes "successful adventures" (Gygax's term) possible.

And I think this is worth noting, in my view, because for reasons to do with the culture and history of RPGing, a lot of the low-agency RPGing still - at the surface level, at least - uses some Gygaxian techniques (map and key, for instance, seems to remain a very popular technique). But the low-agency RPGing does not deploy the rules and procedures that Gygax presupposed in his essay, and thus despite some resemblance in respect of techniques does not permit the same sort of exercise of player agency as the Gygaxian model does.

 

[Argyle King]

Well, suppose that one important overarching goal of play is to advance your PC by accruing XP. But you don't know how the GM is going to make the decision to award XP. So now you don't know what your local goal of play should be, in order to achieve that overarching goal.

One analogue would be a game very much like soccer, except that what counts as scoring a goal is varying from time to time based on an unrevealed decision by the referee - so you don't know whether it counts as good play to pass the ball forward, or backward, or to shoot towards the opponent's goal as is conventional, or perhaps to shot towards your own goal because the ref has decided that that is now what will count as a score for you - or maybe the ref has decided that you'll score if you kick the ball into the spectator stand on the full!

Another example in the RPGing space, less stark than the uncertain criteria for XP example but one that I've experienced in play, is where the goal of play is (in broad terms) for the PCs to prosper in the milieu that the GM is presenting to them - but whether or not they prosper will depend on social dynamics within the milieu that the GM keeps secret, and so the players can't tell, at any given moment of play, what sort of thing their PCs should be doing to get ahead as they are expected to.

The most crass version of what I've just described is the quest-giver who betrays the PCs - a bizarrely popular trope which I regard as the utter pits for player agency. But it can occur in more nuanced versions too.

I think the disconnect for me is that I find a lot of my interactions with rpgs to be emergent gameplay. That is to say that some goals are known neither to the players nor the GM, instead being things which grow out of playing the game and how the in-game world evolves.

Certainly, things like XP are a way to keep score.
I appreciate further explanation of how unknown goals could be said to remove player agency. The soccer example makes sense.

However, I don't find that I agree that unknown goals lessen player agency. In contrast, I would posit that the ability to create and achieve previously unknown goals through play are a way that player agency can be increased.