hawkeyefan
Legend
Now you’ll be asked to define “mechanics”....
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A Question Of Agency?
- Thread starter zarionofarabel
- Start date
Aldarc
Legend
For my 1840s Vienna Urban Fantasy game, the supernatural was also a way to explore the ethno-nationalistic,* liberal, imperialistic, and class tensions within the Austrian Empire before the 1848 Revolutions.
* Before the 1848 the Austrian Empire included territories part of the following modern day countries: Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Italy (Venice and Milan), Poland, and the Ukraine.
This raises a further element of player agency: who gets to answer thematic/evaluative questions raised by the play of a RPG?
One well-known answer is the GM, by policing alignment, forbidding evil PCs etc. An alternative is to allow other participants to express their own views through play. This is also an aspect of play where social mechanics can become significant.
Maybe it's because I managed to drop out of both high school and college, but can you unpack "evaluative question" a little, here, at least as it would apply to an RPG? I mean, what comes to mind is "what is it to be a hero?" but that seems thematic.
Presuming I understand you well enough, I think the GM--by putting whatever limitations on their setting they do, such as no-evil--might not be so much limiting who gets to answer the types of questions you're talking about, as defining what those questions are. If I, as the GM, tell the players, "Make characters who are at least willing to be heroes," it seems at least plausible that I'm setting up the thematic questions of "What does it mean to be a hero?" and/or "What is the price of being a hero?" but it seems to me as though those questions are available for the players to answer. (In reality, I just find it easier to run heroic motivations, and I at least am not intentionally setting those questions up in the campaigns I'm running.)
hawkeyefan
Legend
I think that, for me, if the players don’t have at least as much say as the GM, then there’s a problem. Assuming of course that they want to have some say on this kind of thing.
I think a lot of it will be constrained by the setting, as @prabe has said. So if the chosen game/setting has assumptions about who the PCs are, that’ll of course play a big part.
But beyond that kind of thing, I think it’s best when the players are free to contribute anything further. Especially when it comes to things specifically tied to their characters.
Perhaps ideally, this kind of stuff emerges in play, and either the player or GM or both run with it.
Aldarc
Legend
The players are welcome to express their own themes and questions, but 1840s Vienna was chosen due to the particular socio-political backdrop (and lack of digital technology) and the diversity of nationalities that players could potentially pull from while still being "Viennese" citizens of the Austrian Empire.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
On this, I agree...I think.
Can, but don't have to; these things can be explored just as well absent mechanics.
Here is Ron Edwards on theme/evaluative questions, contrasting "right to dream" (which he labels simlationism) and "story now" (which he labels narrativism)::
@prabe's game is about heroes. @Aldarc's Vienna game is about (I think) the meeting of different ethnicities in a pre-20th century multi-national empire.
Who decides what counts as heroism? Who decides what counts as (say) problematic ethno-nationalism? If the answer is the system, as adjudicated by the GM, then the game falls into the category labelled by Edwards as simulationism. And for the game to work, the participants, and particularly the players, have to buy into that. This need not give more agency to the GM than players if the system is very clear and everyone buys in (some supers systems might be instances of this). Conversely, the more that the system manifests via GM interpretation/adjudication of GM-authored fictional starting points and background elements, then the more I would say this is giving agency to the GM rather than the players. (The previous two sentences contrast two broadly-described ways in which a RPG system might put "the imagined world", "the cosmos", into action.)
If the answer is we work this out via play, so that maybe one or more participants might get a shock, or have to change their minds, or just find themselves in disagreement with some other participant, then the game falls into the category labelled by Edwards as narrativism.
The relevance of social mechanics in this respect is that a major, perhaps primary, way that a system as adjudicated by a GM can reveal answers to these sorts of questions is via the social/"human-oriented" fiction that it generates. Even in D&D, where this can manifest itself through supernatural phenomena like losing access to spells, I frequently see that articulated in social terms - the Gods of Good are NPCs under the GM's control, and they don't like what the PC has done and so withhold their favour.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in Vincent Baker's systems DitV and Apocalypse World, which are self-consciously intended to be narrativist in Edwards's sense, allows the players to impose their vision on the human/social and hence moral world as much as on the physical/"nuts-and-bolts" world. This means that the system, as the working out of "the imagined world"/"the cosmos", won't in and of itself yield answers to the thematic/evaluative questions both games are intended to raise. There is no putting "what you want" in advance of play, then having "what you want" come out simply via GM adjudication of the system.
I also recommend examining Theme carefully. In this game [ie simulationist RPGing], it's present and accounted for already, before play. The process of prep-play-enjoy works by putting "what you want" in, then having "what you want" come out, with the hope that the System's application doesn't change anything along the way. . . .
In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all.
The point is that one can care about and enjoy complex issues, changing protagonists, and themes in both sorts of play, Narrativism and Simulationism. The difference lies in the point and contributions of literal instances of play; its operation and social feedback.
In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all.
The point is that one can care about and enjoy complex issues, changing protagonists, and themes in both sorts of play, Narrativism and Simulationism. The difference lies in the point and contributions of literal instances of play; its operation and social feedback.
@prabe's game is about heroes. @Aldarc's Vienna game is about (I think) the meeting of different ethnicities in a pre-20th century multi-national empire.
Who decides what counts as heroism? Who decides what counts as (say) problematic ethno-nationalism? If the answer is the system, as adjudicated by the GM, then the game falls into the category labelled by Edwards as simulationism. And for the game to work, the participants, and particularly the players, have to buy into that. This need not give more agency to the GM than players if the system is very clear and everyone buys in (some supers systems might be instances of this). Conversely, the more that the system manifests via GM interpretation/adjudication of GM-authored fictional starting points and background elements, then the more I would say this is giving agency to the GM rather than the players. (The previous two sentences contrast two broadly-described ways in which a RPG system might put "the imagined world", "the cosmos", into action.)
If the answer is we work this out via play, so that maybe one or more participants might get a shock, or have to change their minds, or just find themselves in disagreement with some other participant, then the game falls into the category labelled by Edwards as narrativism.
The relevance of social mechanics in this respect is that a major, perhaps primary, way that a system as adjudicated by a GM can reveal answers to these sorts of questions is via the social/"human-oriented" fiction that it generates. Even in D&D, where this can manifest itself through supernatural phenomena like losing access to spells, I frequently see that articulated in social terms - the Gods of Good are NPCs under the GM's control, and they don't like what the PC has done and so withhold their favour.
I don't think it's a coincidence that in Vincent Baker's systems DitV and Apocalypse World, which are self-consciously intended to be narrativist in Edwards's sense, allows the players to impose their vision on the human/social and hence moral world as much as on the physical/"nuts-and-bolts" world. This means that the system, as the working out of "the imagined world"/"the cosmos", won't in and of itself yield answers to the thematic/evaluative questions both games are intended to raise. There is no putting "what you want" in advance of play, then having "what you want" come out simply via GM adjudication of the system.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
I do not think mechanics are required to routinely get to place where we are meaningfully exploring character. Freeform techniques are part of the answer, but not always the whole answer. What I absolutely do think is absolutely required is intention, technique, and discipline on the part of everyone involved. You have to be able to get past the performative instincts to get to the real stuff. The right mechanics can sometimes be a boon here, but can also serve as a safety valve to avoid engaging with your character and their environment.
This is seriously hard stuff to get right. I personally struggle with performative play almost every session where I play/run character focused games and I have substantial training in acting. You have to do the work if you want to get it right. Part of that work can involved incorporating feedback from more formal techniques (games rules) or it may involve more informal feedback mechanisms.
My personal experience is that if you want to reliably get to that place where you really embody a character it does not just happen naturally. It requires intention and discipline. The right set of rules and/or less formal techniques applied artfully can help to maintain that intention and discipline. There's nothing special about whether you write your process down on paper or not.
