Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
It is pretty much the only agency that matters to me as a player, certainly after play begins.
An examination of player agency
- Thread starter chaochou
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Crimson Longinus
Legend
Yet you have previously advocated for rules that take away that control via social and personality mechanics. Though of course if you like to play such low agency games there is nothing wrong with that.
I think they could have rather significant amount of agency. For example I think "real mystery" game that we talked about in the other thread could work very well played this way. No rolls, characters just find the clues when they poke correct things and them make real deductions. Also a mostly social game would work well this way, where the players would just roleplay the conversations. Horror also works well when played this way.
Yes it is. I literally mentioned two ways the fiction was influenced by the player.
I do not think that. I however think it is a significant avenue of agency.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
I haven't read all 19 pages of the thread, so if this has already been discussed just ignore me.
Agency is defined as "inviolable rules which the players know and can rely on." And that's a decent definition, but it has a unique problem when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons. Depending on a certain interpretation of the first chapter of the Dungeon Master's Guide, there is no such thing as an inviolable rule: the DM is allowed to add, remove, and change rules, and is encouraged to do so.
So if that is a requirement for Agency, then Agency might not even be possible in Dungeons & Dragons. "Rulings not rules" is a valid and celebrated way to run an RPG, after all.
Agency is defined as "inviolable rules which the players know and can rely on." And that's a decent definition, but it has a unique problem when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons. Depending on a certain interpretation of the first chapter of the Dungeon Master's Guide, there is no such thing as an inviolable rule: the DM is allowed to add, remove, and change rules, and is encouraged to do so.
So if that is a requirement for Agency, then Agency might not even be possible in Dungeons & Dragons. "Rulings not rules" is a valid and celebrated way to run an RPG, after all.
hawkeyefan
Legend
I don’t mean minimal as in unimportant. I mean minimal as in and of itself, it doesn’t do much. There needs to be more involved.
Let’s look at a sandbox style game like you often talk about. Let’s say there are three places the PCs may go to get some needed bit of information… those three places should be detailed by the GM before hand, right? Each with its own place in the setting and with its own NPCs and so forth.
Would you say that the players being able to decide that they go to Aytown rather than Beeburg or Ceeville is very meaningful if the GM can just prep one town and then use that one regardless of which town they choose?
It’s the combination of character autonomy and some kind of principled GMing that actually creates the player agency.
Hence, being able to declare actions for my character is important, for sure, but it is only one piece of the puzzle.
You can’t “take stress”. You can only choose to spend stress or not. It is never inflicted on you… it is always a choice to spend it.
I would say perhaps you should not have spent the stress on the trivial items if you wanted to have enough stress to make it further into the score where the stakes may have been higher?
I don’t know… being allowed to avoid the consequences of your choices as a player doesn’t seem like a strong example of supporting agency.
I haven't read the whole thread, but Im going to jump in from the OP.
This is correct, and this is referred to as volition. Volitional engagement is a wonderful thing, and something a lot of games, including RPGs, could stand to focus on building.
These are also fair assessments, at least from examination of traditional RPGs. I've argued in the past that indie RPGs also have similiar issues, just through different vectors.
In general a lot of these problems stem from, as I argued, the non-acknowledgement that RPGs are fundamentally a hybridized improv game, and without recognizing and designing to account for it, you can break the improv loop, and this results in all the odd idiosyncratic problems we think are unique to RPGs, which are really all just different forms of blocking and other improv problems.
And, of course, poor design work on the non-improv elements, but often the two are interrelated.
This goes back to the issue of volitional engagement. Regardless of what the game states as its object of play, volition is fostered by players feeling empowered to identify and set their own goals within the game.
Much of the time, this kind of engagement can be intrinsic to the player, and thus the game just has to have captured the interest of the player for them to be volitionally engaged.
But, this is tricky to guarantee, and doesn't in turn give you any way to design the game to support whatever they come up with.
By designing for volition, you can identify what is and isn't going to be volitionally engaging about your game, and then you can design to support that volition. And, in the case of RPGs, if you design with improv in focus, and create a robust enough system, you can actually support a lot of that intrinsic volition.
But, at that point you start defying the idea of what RPGs are the more you open the game up to this. That was a conundrum I faced, and I eventually concluded I wasn't building one anymore.
This is ultimately why I've argued that RPGs are fundamentally improv games, because what you're pointing out is the exactly the breaking point of the improv game. The moment one participant blocks another, the entire dynamic collapses and the game has to be disrupted to bring it back on track.
The thing about RPGs however, is that participants aren't just people. The game is a participant as well, and if we assume a GM is present, this creates a three way improv dynamic that's incredibly fragile if not designed for, and most often RPGs have favored two of the three to the exclusion of the third.
This is why these improv problems manifest in idiosyncratic ways across all kinds of RPGs, because when you hybridize two different kinds of games, you need them to actually integrate with each other.
RPGs don't do this with improv, or do it poorly, and even the ones that try don't do so with transparency, which in turn is what I think keeps the whole hobby niche and relatively inaccessible, even as people go down the minimalism rabbithole.
This is correct, and this is referred to as volition. Volitional engagement is a wonderful thing, and something a lot of games, including RPGs, could stand to focus on building.
These are also fair assessments, at least from examination of traditional RPGs. I've argued in the past that indie RPGs also have similiar issues, just through different vectors.
In general a lot of these problems stem from, as I argued, the non-acknowledgement that RPGs are fundamentally a hybridized improv game, and without recognizing and designing to account for it, you can break the improv loop, and this results in all the odd idiosyncratic problems we think are unique to RPGs, which are really all just different forms of blocking and other improv problems.
And, of course, poor design work on the non-improv elements, but often the two are interrelated.
This goes back to the issue of volitional engagement. Regardless of what the game states as its object of play, volition is fostered by players feeling empowered to identify and set their own goals within the game.
Much of the time, this kind of engagement can be intrinsic to the player, and thus the game just has to have captured the interest of the player for them to be volitionally engaged.
But, this is tricky to guarantee, and doesn't in turn give you any way to design the game to support whatever they come up with.
By designing for volition, you can identify what is and isn't going to be volitionally engaging about your game, and then you can design to support that volition. And, in the case of RPGs, if you design with improv in focus, and create a robust enough system, you can actually support a lot of that intrinsic volition.
But, at that point you start defying the idea of what RPGs are the more you open the game up to this. That was a conundrum I faced, and I eventually concluded I wasn't building one anymore.
This is ultimately why I've argued that RPGs are fundamentally improv games, because what you're pointing out is the exactly the breaking point of the improv game. The moment one participant blocks another, the entire dynamic collapses and the game has to be disrupted to bring it back on track.
The thing about RPGs however, is that participants aren't just people. The game is a participant as well, and if we assume a GM is present, this creates a three way improv dynamic that's incredibly fragile if not designed for, and most often RPGs have favored two of the three to the exclusion of the third.
This is why these improv problems manifest in idiosyncratic ways across all kinds of RPGs, because when you hybridize two different kinds of games, you need them to actually integrate with each other.
RPGs don't do this with improv, or do it poorly, and even the ones that try don't do so with transparency, which in turn is what I think keeps the whole hobby niche and relatively inaccessible, even as people go down the minimalism rabbithole.
hawkeyefan
Legend
When a player makes a choice knowing the risk is loss of control, then yes… that risk has to manifest if it doesn’t go how they wanted.
Wouldn’t it take away the meaning of the player’s decision to not have the consequences be realized?
No rules? The GM can switch the killer halfway through because a more interesting idea occurred to him?
You said what the player could do. But if the GM pulls a quantum ogre, then does the player have agency?
Crimson Longinus
Legend
The stress from resistance is random, and by my understanding you need to commit to it before you roll, so you do not know whether it gives you trauma or not. You can get up to five stress from one resistance, so it is hard to gauge whether you can "afford" it.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
They will have details. But those cities are also going to have a lot of open space that will be generated by the GM as the players push on the boundaries by doing things, asking questions about the town, etc
But this is illusionism, a trick by the GM, to make the player think they have a choice when they don't. That isn't giving a player control of their character at all.
Again no one is saying principles aren't important. They are disagreeing with the OPs assertion that unless you have these other elements you don't have agency. And the example here isn't even about GMing principles. Any GM who says you have control of your character, but then makes all of your choices meaningless, isn't fulfilling the promise that you can control your character (because if I choose between doors A B and C and no matter what I choose it is always going to be a spear trap on my first choice, and an ogre on my second, you are undermining that control). It doesn't even require a principle beyond letting the players choose actions and make choices. The example you are providing is basically just taking what most people would consider to be a shady tactic or bad GMing regardless of what principles are in play
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I meant important as in for some people that is going to be the very definition of having maximal agency (and adding things in like mechanics that make the GM steer certain things towards PC background aren't necessarily adding more agency for those people). For you that might add agency, and that is totally fine, but can't you see how for some players, having something like that steer things towards another character could be seen as interfering with their own agency? It really boils down to what expectations of play people have when they sit down
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I do think people generally come to an unspoken agreement. And I think it can be useful to do what you are saying. One topic I often raise with players is establishing 'what franchise' we are in. I once had a player launch an arrow onto a boat and his expiations of what that meant and mine, and I was GMing, were misaligned. I was aiming for a more realistic outcome in that adventure and he was expecting something more out of a 60s adventure film (where the boat soon becomes engulfed in flames). Both sets of expectations are reasonable and both can sometimes be covered by rules but a lot of rules systems will be open enough in that area for it to come down to the GM making a call in some way. I think knowing what to expect from those kinds of actions is helpful when players want to make decision. I don't think that process needs to be formalized. And I think it can be spoken, unspoken, or even raised in the moment (i.e. "Say if I fire an arrow are we in a campaign where that is automatically going to light the boat on fire or should I lower my expectations?"). Also I always think it is a fair thing for a player to ask about their chances of success before they take an action (especially a time pressed, resource pressed, or risky one).
But I also think it is important to keep in mind not everyone is as systematic about this stuff. Some people can think systematically about these kinds of considerations at the table, but some people are going to go more by feel (and I think it is unfair to expect people who just don't think in that systematic way to be so systematic about the whole process).
All that said, I think this is a totally separate topic from agency itself
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