A Question Of Agency?

[Aldarc]

@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.

It's about a Viennese supernatural investigation society.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I'm probably missing something here, but why does one need to be able to get past performative instincts (as opposed to just turn them loose and embrace them) in order to do anything?

Put another way, isn't exploration of your character most likely to come via inhabiting said character and then performing as it?

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.

Now and then, yes. As long as the mechanics can get out of the way (or be forced out of the way) when they're not needed, all is good.

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.

When using someone else's script, e.g. for a stage performance, I agree; in that you have to try to interpret what someone else has written. By contrast, in RPGs - unless using pre-gens - 99+% of the time you are the sole author of your character and thus you're only having to interpret your own ideas, which (in theory) is much easier.

 

[pemerton]

This is also an aspect of play where social mechanics can become significant.

Can, but don't have to; these things can be explored just as well absent mechanics.

I do not think mechanics are required to routinely get to place where we are meaningfully exploring character.

<snip>

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.

In my reference to social mechanics I wasn't thinking so much about inhabiting or expressing a character, but about making a point, via play, about some thematic/evaluative/moral issue. I think this can b hard if - for instance - the GM is free, or even moreso is obliged, to have all the right-minded NPCs/gods/cosmic forces respond in a pre-given way to what a player's character does.

 

[pemerton]

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.

It's about a Viennese supernatural investigation society.

I was responding to the first of the above quotes - using "about" to refer to the theme that is explored rather than the literal subject matter.

 

[Aldarc]

I was responding to the first of the above quotes - using "about" to refer to the theme that is explored rather than the literal subject matter.

So it's Simulationism when the GM picks the themes and Narrativism when the players pick the themes? So what does Ron Edwards say it's called when pemerton, who was neither a player nor a GM in this one-shot, picks my campaign's themes?

IMO, the setting shapes a lot of a game's themes. If the group decides to sit down and play Blades in the Dark, a lot of the themes are essentially pre-selected and outside the hands of either the GM or players. Same would certainly be true if people sat down to play Prince Valiant. This was a setting that I selected for this one-shot because it was (1) genre appropriate, and (2) an era in 1800s Austrian history of rising political tension in the backdrop.

 

[pemerton]

So it's Simulationism when the GM picks the themes and Narrativism when the players pick the themes? So what does Ron Edwards say it's called when pemerton, who was neither a player nor a GM in this one-shot, picks my campaign's themes?

I'm not picking. I'm trying to describe based on what you posted. If I've misunderstood what you meant by "the supernatural was also a way to explore the ethno-nationalistic,* liberal, imperialistic, and class tensions within the Austrian Empire before the 1848 Revolutions" then you might explain how. Or not, obviously. But I think your actual approach is a bit weird. Are you inviting me to keep guessing? Or hinting that you don't want to talk about it? Or something else?

the setting shapes a lot of a game's themes. If the group decides to sit down and play Blades in the Dark, a lot of the themes are essentially pre-selected and outside the hands of either the GM or players. Same would certainly be true if people sat down to play Prince Valiant.

That's not in dispute. The issue of player agency arises when we consider who it is who gets to decide the answers to the thematic questions that are posed?

In Prince Valiant the players get to decide (or at least try to; if their action declarations fail they might have to change their minds, much as can happen in (say) Burning Wheel). This contrasts with Pendragon, which builds in the answers via its Passion and Traits system.

I don't know, in your 1840s Austrian one-shot, whether the game system itself oriented towards nationalism (this tends to be D&D's default, but you weren't playing D&D I don't think) or cosmopolitanism (I believe that is your personal inclination, but I don't know if you built that into your system) or left it open (in the sort of fashion that, say, DitV does).

 

[Aldarc]

I don't know, in your 1840s Austrian one-shot, whether the game system itself oriented towards nationalism (this tends to be D&D's default, but you weren't playing D&D I don't think) or cosmopolitanism (I believe that is your personal inclination, but I don't know if you built that into your system) or left it open (in the sort of fashion that, say, DitV does).

It was oriented towards supernatural investigation. The ethno-nationalistic themes that could have been explored were not because it was a one-shot focused on investigating a haunted house and not a long-term campaign. As we were using Fate, my players were of course more than welcome to answer whatever questions were naturally posed by the setting or to incorporate said themes into their aspects. Due to the political makeup of my players, I doubt though that my players would have been fond of answers supportive of either nationalism (definitely not big in Austria post-WW2) or Austrian imperialism.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So some thoughts based on recent posts......

I think when it comes to theme, the genre and setting will play a big part, for sure, but even still, there's usually leeway to explore other themes than just those imposed by setting. And some themes can be pretty universal, so you can take them and drop them into any genre or setting.

I think what can be tricky, whatever game we might be talking about, is that there's going to be a call to action of some sort, and a general need to work as a group. These things can be challenges to examining theme through an individual character.

Take 5E D&D for instance. The published material makes it pretty obvious that the expectation is that PCs be at the very least inclined to heroics; there's little motivation in each of the published adventures to engage the characters beyond the call to heroism, and perhaps the call to adventure. It's simply expected that the characters band together and then proceed to try and save the day. These can be added or altered by a specific group so that it's less altruistic or so that the goals of the scenario as published can somehow coincide with personal goals of the PCs. But it's pretty constraining to kind of have that expectation and motivation be inherent.

The fact is that the group element is already a strong constraint on what you can do with a character thematically. And this is one that most games struggle with, to some extent; RPGs are (mostly) a group activity, after all. Adding more restrictions like "only good alignments" and so on just makes it even tougher.

My 5E campaign has elements of this, for sure. I try to put it at odds with other goals, though, so that there's some tension. Some decisions that need to be made that aren't always easy. And each PC has goals of their own, as well, so I try to bring those to bear. The game doesn't do much in this regard, so it all boils down to the players giving me ideas and me using them in play. We know each other well, and I have an idea of what they'd like to see, how they want their characters to be challenged, and so it works well enough.

But it's far from the optimal game for this kind of play, and even with as much as my players and I try to put this stuff in there, the thrust of play is primarily heroics. In an earlier edition, the thrust of play might be in raiding a dungeon. In this edition, it's about stopping the bad guys.

If you're examining a theme of some kind with a character, then I think there needs to be risk involved. I think this came up a hundred or so pages ago, but I think it's really relevant. The risk of failure needs to be real.....if your theme is one of redemption, then that's something that the character must be able to either succeed or fail at. It shouldn't be as simple as a player deciding at character generation "My character is trying to atone for his horrible past" and then simply plays the character as they would just about any other, engaging in the group's goals, and occasionally monologuing about their sordid past. If there is no struggle for the....if it's all simply up to the player, then it's not much of an examination of redemption.

Now, this doesn't require mechanics; it can be done simply through play, with the player deciding things for the character. But in the absence of mechanics that can help here, then things need to be framed by the GM so that there are consequences that matter at stake. There needs to be some kind of drawback, whichever way the player decides to go. There needs to be a challenge.

I think it's only through that kind of challenge where we get to actually examine a theme instead of simply using it as some kind of character trait to help us roleplay.

Anyone can play a character with a haunted past and use it in their portrayal of the character. But if you want to actually examine trauma and its effects on someone through play, if you want to see if a character can overcome their past and gain some sense of peace or redemption, then you need to go beyond just playing the role. That theme needs to be a focus of play (shared as play may need to be among the group).

To me, that speaks of, if not more agency, then maybe a deeper agency as a player.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also, not all campaigns or games are intended to explore themes in the sense of a pervading idea. And a lot of this is blurring several meanings of theme. Theme can just mean something like "a horror themed RPG" which is just the subject matter really, but it can also be used to talk about redemption, morality in a godless universe, right and wrong in a world with competing cosmological oughts, or the conflict between freedom and security----those are much more about ideas pervading a game or campaign.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you're examining a theme of some kind with a character, then I think there needs to be risk involved. I think this came up a hundred or so pages ago, but I think it's really relevant. The risk of failure needs to be real.....if your theme is one of redemption, then that's something that the character must be able to either succeed or fail at. It shouldn't be as simple as a player deciding at character generation "My character is trying to atone for his horrible past" and then simply plays the character as they would just about any other, engaging in the group's goals, and occasionally monologuing about their sordid past. If there is no struggle for the....if it's all simply up to the player, then it's not much of an examination of redemption.

Well, it can be a more complex equation than that. There doesn't necessarily need to be a 'risking failure' element. Success (or failure) could be a forgone conclusion, even built into the premise. The questions can be in the nature of "what is the price of success?" for example. Is it worth the price you paid? If you pay this terrible price to achieve what you originally intended, did you actually achieve something worthwhile or not? I mean, this is just one example, there could be many others. It could be straightforward like "you can die, or you can submit to slavery." What role does your conception of honor play in this? Or, as in my 'doomed space station' one-shot, how do you face certain death? What sort of perspective does that give you?