A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

Again, name the games and provide reference to the rules, and your play experiences. No-one else is going to answer for you. Let’s hear your experiences.

This isn’t about my experiences. Why try to make this about personally dismissing me?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have asked this question of @FrogReaver, @Crimson Longinus and @Lanefan for about 10+ pages now. As of this post of yours, on p 91, I'm yet to receive an answer.

It has been answered several times. Various personality mechanics exist in games and some of them force certain responses from character. Monster Hearts was cites as an example of game that focuses on this. I'm pretty sure some White Wolf games have something like this, as that IIRC was when I first came across to this issue. Though unlike you, I am terrible at recalling mechanics of some games I've not played in years, so I really cannot give any specifics. But we all know that such mechanics exist.

But even that is besides the point. Yes, almost all RPGs give the plyers great freedom to set the personality of their character and control how the character expresses themselves. But it's ubiquitousness has nothing to do with whether this form of control is a type of agency; of course it is! In almost all RPGs players can choose to have their characters to engage in combat. Do you think that because it is so universal, choosing to fight and choosing how to do it is not a type of agency?

 

[FrogReaver]

They're limitations on your favoured baseline, because they limit how I can characterise and "roleplay" my character.

No they aren’t. Nothing I’ve advocated for has been about me or the character having narrative control over the setting.

I’ll go one further - while having narrative control over the settting is a type of agency - it has nothing to do with role playing a character.

 

[chaochou]

This isn’t about my experiences. Why try to make this about personally dismissing me?

Why do you think you’re entitled to any credibility for opinions on games you’ve not read, played or understand?

 

[FrogReaver]

Why do you think you’re entitled to any credibility for opinions on games you’ve not read, played or understand?

I’m sorry. Isnt this a discussion about rpg analysis? If so what does having played a particular rpg have to do with analyzing it?

 

[chaochou]

Monster Hearts was cites as an example of game that focuses on this. I'm pretty sure some White Wolf games have something like this, as that IIRC was when I first came across to this issue.

So then, explain from your own play of Monsterhearts how and why you felt different about the agency you had. Your own actual play.

 

[pemerton]

Honestly, no more than when some piece of narrative art moves me to some feeling or another. Sometimes it feels more manipulative than others, in either case.

I think part of it is that the character is me in the game, and telling me, e.g., you (character) have an uncontrollable passion for Guenevere when I (player) don't generates ... I'll stick with dissonance; and I'll stick with that dissonance feeling like a lack of agency, even if I'm willing to concede that technically (the best kind of correct) it isn't. Hope I'm being clear.

So there's a conflict between what you want the character to feel and what the character may actually feel? I don't quite follow how this would break immersion.

Certainly the character, in the fictional world, would not want to feel fear (let's say), right? They feel it despite not wanting to feel it. Which would by kind of in line with how the player feels, right?

I mean, ultimately, you as a player like what you like and don't what you don't, so I get it, but I'm just trying to follow your description.

In general I think that part of the skill of GMing is this: when the system requires that you establish and evince the fiction, you should so so in a way that encourages uptake by the players.

Here's an (imagined) example of GM failure, from John Harper's blog:

I've seen people struggle with hard moves in the moment. Like, when the dice miss, the MC stares at it like, "Crap! Now I have to invent something! Better make it dangerous and cool! Uh... some ninja... drop out of the ceiling... with poison knives! Grah!"​

He goes on to offer the following advice:

Don't do that. Instead, when it's time for a hard move, look back at the setup move(s) you made. What was threatened? What was about to happen, before the PC took action? Follow through on that. Bring the effects on screen. Bring the consequences to fruition.​

This is what we might call "following the fiction".

Vincent Baker gives another example and brief discussion here:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. . . .​

​

So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"​

​

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush? . . .​

​

1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.​

​

2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."​

​

. . .​

This is just as relevant to the GM narrating PC mental states as it is to Orc jumping from the underbrush or ninjas dropping from the ceiling. If the GM's narration doesn't follow from the fiction it will fall flat or generate feelings of dissonance.

(It's deliberate that I'm running together examples of "external" and "internal" GM-narrated fiction. As Baker's example of "this far into Elfland" shows, either can evoke doubts or dissonance.)

Genre is important here.

Classic Traveller has morale rules that apply to PCs just the same as NPCs. So players can find that their PCs break and run in combat without the players having made that choice. This both follows from, and helps reinforce a sense of, sci-fi genre closer to Alien than to Star Wars or even Star Trek.

A rule whereby the GM can dictate that a PC falls in love with Guinevere fits better in a game of knightly romance than in (say) a mid-level D&D game centred on Tomb of Horrors or the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

GM framing will also help here - both in itself, and because it is more likely to produce player responses that build up towards buy-in. Here's an actual play report on the use by me as GM of an Incite Lust effect in Prince Valiant play:

warning came that a military force was approaching in the distance. The drawbridge was raised and the gates closed. But Sir Morgath, looking out from the battlements, could see that in front of the soldiers were two women riding hurriedly on ponies. (In the tram on the way to the session I had decided to use the second of the Woman in Distress episodes found in the main rulebook.) There was debate - should the drawbridge be lowered? - but Sir Morgath was against it, as too risky. The women arrived at the edge of the moat across from the drawbridge and called out for help to Sir Gerran, who as Marshall of the order was in command of the gates. Lady Lorette of Lothian explained that she was fleeing from her fiance, Sir Blackpool the Count of Toulouse, to whom she had been betrothed by her father and who had treated her cruelly. Would they not lower the drawbridge?

Although Prince Valiant is not technically a pulp it is from the same period - the 30s and 40s - and there is a degree of pulp-era stereotyping in Greg Stafford's presentation of women in his scenarios. In this case, Lady Lorette has Presence 4 and Glamourie 5. So as she pleaded to Gerran I rolled her 9 dice vs Gerran's Presence of 3. I allowed Gerran's player two bonus dice (the maximum morale bonus allowed for in the system) as a resolute Marshall defending his castle, so he had 5 dice in total. And rolled better than me! And so he didn't relent.

Meanwhile Sir Morgath had lowered a rope down the wall of the castle. He called out to the Lady and she leapt into the moat and swam to him, where he took hold of her and carried her up the wall. But the handmaiden accompanying her did not have the strength or courage to jump into the moat. So Morgath slid back down the rope and swang across the moat to rescue her. (At the start of the session I had handed out some fame (the "XP" of the system) that had been earned in the previous session. This had qualified Morgath for a new skill rank, which he had spent on Agility: his player felt he was repeatedly suffering for a lack of physical ability at key moments. It now served him well, as he got 3 successes on his 4 dice.)

In the scenario as written by Stafford, the Lady has the Incite Lust special effect which she will use against the strongest and most famous male adventurer, provided he is not married. Anticipating possible complications, Morgath - when asked by the Lady who her rescuer was - announced himself as Sir Morgath, husband of Lady Elizabeth of York. But being an unfair GM while also trying to run with the fiction, it seemed only to make sense that Morgath should fall for the Lady as he carried her in his arms into the castle. The player cursed me appropriately, but also had seen it coming. He took the Lady into the keep to ensure her safety.

Sir Morgath's infatuation for Lorette flowed from the fiction. He had tried to steel himself, and encourage her to back off, by declaring his married status, but holding her in his arms was too much for him!

As this played out and was experienced at the table, it did not resemble a ninja dropping without explanation from the ceiling, or a random Orc jumping out of the underbrush in Elfland.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Wait so you feel in this example that you telegraphed enough that the player could come to the conclusion that the consequences for a failure to examine and appraise that portrait was a magical gotcha trap? Seriously how was this any different than a magical D&D trap from a failed perception check and then a save to resist/avoid?? You decided a a roll was necessary and the consequences and it doesn't seem like the player had enough meaningful information to determine what would be the consequences if he failed.

EDIT: And let's be real anytime a GM or DM can decide no roll is necessary it is effectively fiat to grant success or failure

It was a haunted house. It was a creepy portrait. The player CHOSE to make the portrait magical -- I did not. There was no magical gotach trap here, because there was no gotcha at all -- the player chose to make it magical in the context of a creepy haunter manor home (that belongs to Lord Scurlock, a being that has been alive for perhaps as long as the Emperor, ie at least a thousand years, and is known to be up to serious occult stuff). The player then CHOSE to interact with the portrait they wanted to be magic in a way that directly puts occult consequences on the table -- ie, Attune. So, yeah, to get to the part where I narrated that the portrait was doing a bad thing, we have two player choices, a lot of foreshadowing about occult things, and then a failed check which all led up to, not the portrait sucking out his soul, but that this was now on the table.

As for the GM fiat statement -- if the GM can only decide to let player actions stand or negotiate a roll, this is very different from a GM that can say yes, roll, or no. The authority to deny a thing is the control over the thing. All are, yes, exercises of GM authority, but that's not a particularly interesting observation. There's a huge difference in player authorities and agencies between the two models. Let's not pretend they're the same.

 

[chaochou]

I’m sorry. Isnt this a discussion about rpg analysis? If so what does having played a particular rpg have to do with analyzing it?

Complete ignorance doesn’t lend itself to analysis.

 

[prabe]

@pemerton I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I wish you hadn't arranged those quotations so it looks as though @hawkeyefan was replying to me, there. I didn't think I was talking about immersion, particularly, but that's actually less of a problem. Sorry.