A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

Down a rabbit hole we go...

So, if my players go off in some random direction without asking me about it then that choice was not informed and thus they lack agency because I could just make up whatever and they wouldn't know any better. Sounds fair.

Disagree. They had agency, and exercised it in choosing to go off in a random direction and also (oddly enough) in failing to seek out any information on which to base their choice.

With this combination they hand the agency over to you-as-DM, in expectation you'll put (or already have) something interesting for them to find and interact with in said random direction. And so you do; and then in effect hand the agency back to them so they can decide what to do with or about whatever you've thrown at them.

Had you instead found some way to invalidate their decision and made it impossible to go where they wanted then chances are high you've impinged on their agency.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think there is a difference, and it's intent. Illusionism is an a deliberate act to conceal the removal of agency. That's not necessarily bad -- I do not think the removal or limitation of agency is inherently bad in games -- in fact, most games require strong limitations on agency to function. D&D, played in the traditional way where the GM preps ahead of time and owns the setting the players explore, quite often encourages techniques like Illusionism so that the work done by the GM is not overwhelming. There are reasonable applications of Illusionism in D&D, although I personally avoid them. Regardless, Illusionism is always a deliberate act.

'Making things up,' on the other hand, may be a deliberate choice to remove agency, but it's very, very hard to conceal. If you're making things up so that you're maintaining a hard level of control over the fiction such that you're engaged in a railroad, or a playground version of nuh-uh, then, yes, this is both an abusive and deliberate act to remove agency, but it's also not concealed. However, you can 'make things up' using a strong set of principles and constraints and not do either of these things. You can 'make things up' in a way that doesn't remove any agency and instead promotes it (just like you can run traditional D&D in ways that promote agency, this isn't a competition). Illusionism can never do this -- it's a deliberate removal of agency.

So, yeah, I don't think the difference is either murky or not worth discussing. There's a clear line in how the technique function, regardless of whether or not you're invoking degenerate and bad faith play for either. If you stick to good faith play, there's still a difference, and, yes, I think Illusionism can be used in good faith -- it's a tool to reduce GM prep. I think overuse moves to bad faith, regardless of motivation in any specific instance -- it's a tool that creates railroads and hides the tracks if overused. Occasional use, especially as a buffer to use when you need bridge content because the party has either thrown you a loop or you didn't have enough direction to prep the next leg is, to me, just fine. I don't need to tell players that this encounter chain was going to happen no matter what because I need more time to prep where they just decided to go. In that case, orcs in the Dark Wood are what you get.

Sorry, I know I'm behind the thread a bit, but...
I see this sort of 'orcs in the Dark Wood' a bit differently, perhaps. Suppose the players have evinced a desire to fight orcs. They have put up stakes, so to speak, on their PCs ability to kick the Dark Woods Orc's butts. Encountering orcs in this case is entirely appropriate NO MATTER WHAT, and maybe the limit of what to do about it is some variance in the details of the encounter. They sneak, OK, they bypass the orc scouts and get to surprise an orc sub-leader (but this is a tougher encounter, where they get a tactical advantage). Again, this resolution is assuming I'm understanding what the PLAYERS are telling me about the further evolution of the story. Also, as another poster stated up thread from here a bit, the curtain can be pulled back a bit here, so the players (not the PCs) can see this. It can be done in-narrative too, like "You see an orc patrol, do you go in fighting or sneak past and try to find their base?"

So, there's a level of 'illusionism' possible here, depending on how you play it, but it is only problematic if the dynamic is "I the GM want to make the story about fighting orcs, no matter what the players asked for!" If they said "we use up our favor with the Giant Eagle King to bypass the Dark Wood, because we want to go to the Lost Mine and make money to..." AND THEY STILL get the orcs, then there's a problem! I mean, now you're just playing out the story in your head and all the players are is a dice rolling service! That's (IMHO) bad.

 

[aco175]

Over the last few pages there has been some talk about an NPC interaction and later deciding that he was lying. This ties to the improv DM and the prep DM. I was thinking that there is some chance of missing something if you improv the lying later at some point. There would be no chance to tell if the NPC was lying with a check or investigation around town or such.

I'm more of a prep DM, so I'm likely biased, but I was thinking if you had some sort of outline or cheat notes you could note that this NPC would lie to the PCs about X if asked. I do not think it is a big problem that you completely improv. There have been games I have played in that are like that and they are fine. I have had to go improv at times myself when the PCs are in places and change directions from what I thought they were planning. Like what others said, if people are having fun, then it is fine.

 

[Lanefan]

This rests on the conceit that a prep GM will be faithful to the established fiction while an improvisational GM will not be.

This would be my issue, yes, for one very simple reason borne out by experience:

A fully-improvisational GM will inevitably run into problems where fiction-now doesn't match what was established before. I've done this myself on the simplest of things: telling a party an ordinary non-magical tower (which I was completely making up on the fly) was 60x60' as they approached it from the outside and then once they got inside telling them there was about 90x70' worth of rooms in there on one floor and about 70x40' on the next.

And that's something as simple as a tower whose outside dimensions I'd told them roughly an hour before I messed up the inside ones. Now, spin that out over potentially several years and there's no way in hell anyone could keep it all straight. And players pick up on these sort of things in a flash.

 

[Lanefan]

Anyway, on to the thought project!

A) The NPC was telling the truth, but then the GM changed that fact later.

B) The NPC was lying but the players bought the lie and didn't bother to check to see if the NPC was lying.

C) The NPC was lying, the players thought the NPC was lying, but failed their "detect lies" roll so the PCs bought the lie.

Which example(s) are illusionism? Which example(s) deny the players agency? Which example(s) DO NOT deny the players agency?

D) The NPC was lying but thought she was telling the truth; her own information was faulty, or she herself had been deceived

E) Things changed such that the NPC's information, while truthful at the time, had become outdated by the time the PCs could put it to use

There's a gajillion ways something like this could come about. The trick is just not to try it too often.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This.

If action resolution, and framing, and establishing consequences, are all happening in a robust way in accordance with known principles, then departures from them will be obvious.

This was a feature of the first session or two of BW that I played in. These were the first RPG sessions the GM had ever GMed - and a couple of times he introduced a NPC who clearly was of interest to him, but with nothing having been done to link that NPC to my PC's Beliefs or relationships.

I didn't complain about it. I just minimised my PC's interaction with those PCs, and used the resources at my disposal - in particular, action declaration - to restore the focus to what I was interested in.

Right. With Blades, the fiction is largely built by consequences that the GM throws at the PCs based on their action rolls. These consequences should fit the fiction and the action being attempted. So if the crew’s Lurk PC is walking a tightrope high above a courtyard that’s patrolled by guards, some likely consequences would be being noticed, losing his balance, and the like. The player chose to have the PC go out on the tightrope, and the GM’s actions are therefore based on that player choice.

If a GM in Blades starts inflicting consequences that don’t flow from the fiction, it’s pretty obvious. And while I think there’s a lot of leeway....indeed, coming up with interesting consequences is one of the key elements of GMing Blades....the more often this happens and the less related it is to the established fiction, the more obvious it would be.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I’m trying to imagine running Blades and trying to force a specific outcome, but to also be unaware that I’m doing so.

I can’t seem to quite picture how it could be. When I run Blades, I do have ideas in mind of things I want to bring into play, but I don’t think that these elements are a case of force because they’re either a result of prior play....let’s say the PCs have killed a few opponents on a couple of scores, so now they’re being investigated by the Spirit Wardens....or they’re elements that the players have indicated they’d like to see....such as a player whose PC used to be a member of the Red Sashes, so I have the crew run afoul of that gang to see what happens.

I suppose maybe an example could be if I wanted to incorporate Lord Scurlock as a foil to the PCs and so invariably the story runs headlong into him one way or the other, despite him not really being connected to anything that’s already been established in the game. Maybe that’s a GM forcing a specific element....but I’d think it’d be obvious. If not to the GM then to the players.

Quick aside, my Blades game just finished a daring recovery from Lord Scurlock's abandoned manor in Six Towers about two sessions ago. What I had thought was going to be a fairly straight theft with some loot turned into a real Fall of the House of Usher thing! There was an uncorked spirit well, paintings that tried to steal souls, and a cult now reeling from the disaster their effort to control the well turned into and now reeeeeallly hates the Crew. Oh, and a necklace turned over from some nice loot and a few other trinkets. Most of this because the Hound decided the manor had to have some neat things worth taking to give to his friends at the University so he could by back his good graces and a Whisper that decided his missing ghost friend might be involved with the cult and using the manor for a base of operations. Many failed checks later and the whole thing was blowing up!

I love how Blades goes off the rails in the best ways possible, but, man, sometimes it's work to keep up!

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sorry, I know I'm behind the thread a bit, but...
I see this sort of 'orcs in the Dark Wood' a bit differently, perhaps. Suppose the players have evinced a desire to fight orcs. They have put up stakes, so to speak, on their PCs ability to kick the Dark Woods Orc's butts. Encountering orcs in this case is entirely appropriate NO MATTER WHAT, and maybe the limit of what to do about it is some variance in the details of the encounter. They sneak, OK, they bypass the orc scouts and get to surprise an orc sub-leader (but this is a tougher encounter, where they get a tactical advantage). Again, this resolution is assuming I'm understanding what the PLAYERS are telling me about the further evolution of the story. Also, as another poster stated up thread from here a bit, the curtain can be pulled back a bit here, so the players (not the PCs) can see this. It can be done in-narrative too, like "You see an orc patrol, do you go in fighting or sneak past and try to find their base?"

So, there's a level of 'illusionism' possible here, depending on how you play it, but it is only problematic if the dynamic is "I the GM want to make the story about fighting orcs, no matter what the players asked for!" If they said "we use up our favor with the Giant Eagle King to bypass the Dark Wood, because we want to go to the Lost Mine and make money to..." AND THEY STILL get the orcs, then there's a problem! I mean, now you're just playing out the story in your head and all the players are is a dice rolling service! That's (IMHO) bad.

Different choice made, though, isn't it? Of course, if you're looking at a different choice, then the nature of the outcomes should be evaluated with that choice in mind, not a different one.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This would be my issue, yes, for one very simple reason borne out by experience:

A fully-improvisational GM will inevitably run into problems where fiction-now doesn't match what was established before. I've done this myself on the simplest of things: telling a party an ordinary non-magical tower (which I was completely making up on the fly) was 60x60' as they approached it from the outside and then once they got inside telling them there was about 90x70' worth of rooms in there on one floor and about 70x40' on the next.

And that's something as simple as a tower whose outside dimensions I'd told them roughly an hour before I messed up the inside ones. Now, spin that out over potentially several years and there's no way in hell anyone could keep it all straight. And players pick up on these sort of things in a flash.

I fail to see why the Improv GM is unable to take notes on what happens. Prep doesn't mean you're incapable of misremembering what's happened before -- that's what notes are for, and Improv doesn't mean you can't have notes on things that have happened. Even on stage, one of the big rules of improv is not to invalidate what's come before. I take notes when I run Blades because it means that when the players re-engage a threat or faction or location, the fiction they established before is still there. This isn't a strong argument, as it supposes that Improv requires never taking notes.

Prep is the things the GM writes down (or keeping in mind) that haven't happened yet. Improv doesn't prep. There's nothing about notes there.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And if you had not decided sneaking DCs, the number of checks required etc beforehand, can you guarantee that you spending a significant amount of time preparing that orc encounter wouldn't affect how hard you decide to make the sneaking? This is what I mean, the difference between illusionism and the GM gently tipping the scales towards the outcome they want is really flimsy.

Now THIS is why I considered 4e's SC mechanism so much of a tool for player control of the game, because it puts all this in the realm of a rule, which even the GM is supposed to follow (there's still some leeway for GMs to fudge things of course, but that is just another form of force, though maybe not illusionism).