A Question Of Agency?

[Thomas Shey]

I'll admit that's the cause for part of my distaste for those games, combined with the fact I interpret "success with complications" as "partial failure." The fact that putatively competent characters seem to fail so routinely ... bothers me.

And here's an example of that. You aren't alone. This is almost exactly my wife's perception of it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm going to meander my way through this, because there are a lot of moving parts to this, so hopefully this comes out somewhat coherently. If you (or someone else) needs clarification, let me know. I'm going to call this:

D&D THEORY OF MIND

[Much snippage]

I don't think this is really it, MCB. I think it involves more how you're going to engage with a fictional world in general. If your natural inclination is toward the concrete, then a sense of size, of distance, of appearance, and other things is going to be that no matter whether the game system involved engages with those elements directly or not. If your inclination is toward the impression you get, then more figurative language is going to be fine (and may also engage with the system mechanics better depending on what they are). But I don't think for many people these are dependent on the systemic hooks; its just how they view a fictional space in general; they'd have the same issues with a story. I can read a story that avoids the concrete, but parts of it will always feel fuzzy to me. It doesn't have to use physical units of measure exactly, but it has to use something in context where those would relevant (an exchange of archery fire in the story, or trying to travel a distance) and those have to be consistent.

This is one reason "Speed of Plot" in some fiction works for some people and is jarring for others (the notable case being on Game of Thrones where travel times and distances were often really dissonant to some people because they matched so poorly--and they did, indeed, notice since those travel times were often plot-relevant).

 

[Thomas Shey]

1) Your calibration of "failure" vs "success but complication/cost" vs "success" is off (I remember we had the discussion prior about the AW example and I don't think we ever had a meeting of the minds...so my guess is this is part of it).

This may well be very much true--but if someone still sees it that way, that's still how it feels to them, and telling them its incorrect or irrational is, functionally, useless.

 

[hawkeyefan]

1. All consequences of both success and failure should be known before the player makes a roll.

I don’t know if I’d say all consequences need to be disclosed ahead of time. I think that in most cases, a sense of the risk inherent in an action that’s to be attempted and some sense of the odds, too.

For example, in my 5E game, I almost always share the DCs for any kind of action roll. Keeping those unknown just leaves the door open for fudging and illusionism or even just the possibility of those things. And for what? To obscure the chance of success?

2. Successes must be absolute.

I think you have to honor the dice results. If a player achieves a success, a GM adjusting things so that the success does not stand is undermining player agency.

There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for it than a GM deciding “no, that’s not how I wanted things to go...I’ll just go ahead and change that.”

And honestly, if the GM can’t think of other ways to challenge the PCs than by undoing a success, then the GM has a lot to learn.

Seriously, let the PCs have their success and come up with some other thing to challenge them.

And there's a bizarre corollary people sometimes apply to 2 above: successes must be absolute but failures need not be. Why not go the other way around - failure is absolute but success isn't always - and thus make things a little harder on the players/PCs?

I don’t personally follow that mentality. I have no problem allowing PCs to fail. However, the mindset for the fail forward approach you’re critiquing here is that there are times when failure will bring the game to a halt, and so therefore, fail forward is about finding alternative ways to apply consequences than simply declaring a failure and then watch as everyone stares at each other for a half hour.

The intention is to keep the game moving in instances where it may otherwise slow or stop. And I know that you personally don’t mind when a game slows to a crawl, but there are plenty of us who do.

I'll admit that's the cause for part of my distaste for those games, combined with the fact I interpret "success with complications" as "partial failure." The fact that putatively competent characters seem to fail so routinely ... bothers me.

Well, hall of fame baseball players hit less than 4 times out of 10. Also, the frequency of rolls in D&D means that my D&D players miss more often than my BitD players. And we also tend to be harsher in failure narration in D&D as opposed to Blades.

Roll a 1 on a roll in D&D and my group will mock and laugh and explain how the character falls on his face or similar, and we don’t even use fumbles. By comparison, Blades specifically tells the GM to not make the PCs look foolish on a failure. It’s not so much that they blundered as it is that they’re trying something that’s very difficult.

And this is not even addressing that a success with complication isn’t really a failure. You succeed at what you attempt, it just doesn't go perfectly.

I read the rules for Blades, somewhere between wanting and expecting to like the game, and ... didn't. I can't and won't speak for your friend, but to me it seemed to approach the Heist thing kinda backward--and I know that's the intent, it just seems too determined for things to start in medias res.

I don’t know if this will help, but maybe don’t think of the game as trying to simulate criminals committing crimes and instead think of the game as trying to simulate a crime story. Because if you read some crime fiction or watch crime movies, things begin in media res all the time. Relevant details and plans are revealed in flashback....all the time. The criminals have the items they wind up needing....all the time.

All that stuff is baked into crime fiction.

 

[prabe]

This may well be very much true--but if someone still sees it that way, that's still how it feels to them, and telling them its incorrect or irrational is, functionally, useless.

To be fair to @Manbearcat I didn't take it in those terms. I took it more as ... not as the designers intended/expected, I guess. I'm not inclined to dispute such a description.

 

[prabe]

Well, hall of fame baseball players hit less than 4 times out of 10. Also, the frequency of rolls in D&D means that my D&D players miss more often than my BitD players. And we also tend to be harsher in failure narration in D&D as opposed to Blades.

Well, uncomplicated success seems to come up about one time in three (ish) in Blades. So maybe that's about right. I guess "statistically correct" doesn't necessarily equal "fun."

And this is not even addressing that a success with complication isn’t really a failure. You succeed at what you attempt, it just doesn't go perfectly.

Yeah. As @Thomas Shey has said, there are people who see the other way from that. I'm one. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's going to stick in my craw.

I don’t know if this will help, but maybe don’t think of the game as trying to simulate criminals committing crimes and instead think of the game as trying to simulate a crime story. Because if you read some crime fiction or watch crime movies, things begin in media res all the time. Relevant details and plans are revealed in flashback....all the time. The criminals have the items they wind up needing....all the time.

All that stuff is baked into crime fiction.

It's trying to emulate a narrow type of crime fiction, I agree. It's trying to emulate a combination of the "reveal the plan as things go flawlessly" and the "heist turns into a fiasco" type. Strangely, neither type of crime fiction is a type I care much for.

 

[pemerton]

But I absolutely would not want the game to revolve around such approach. At that point it becomes more like collective storytelling around some rules like Once Upon a Time (card game) and less like a tabletop RPG.

Burning Wheel is a tabletop RPG. It's no more "collective storytelling" than is D&D combat. It's just that it extends the principle of "finality" that applies in D&D combat to other areas of character activity.

To me the whole point of having the GM there is for them to use their judgement. I want them to come up with interesting things I want them to come up with surprising things and I trust them to do it better than a codified rule system could.

This is why Burning Wheel has a GM. The GM uses his/her judgement (see eg the GM deciding what happens when Thurgon and Aramina fail to command Rufus). The GM comes up with interesting things (eg deciding that Rusus is on his way to pick up wine for "the master"). The GM comes up with surprising things (eg that Thurgon's younger brother has gone south in search of glory).

But Burning Wheel also has players who are able to exercise agency: they can declare actions for their PCs, and if those actions succeed then the GM is bound.

And when I play a character, I don't want to be deciding setting details because that forces me constantly from in-character perspective to the narrator-perspective.

Notice how in the example of play I posted there is not point at which I (as the player of Thurgon and Aramina) ever had to switch from an "in-character" to a "narrator" perspective. All I did was say what Thurgon and Aramina were doing.

This is a recurring feature of discussion on these boards: one poster sets out an example of, or an account of, RPGing that involves player agency; and another poster responds by expressing his/her dislike of quite a different thing (ie shared storytelling and narrator perspective). I don't quite get why.

The rest of the world reacting to the PCs' success doesn't (or really shouldn't) change or negate the success. If they defeat a baddie in a permanent-seeming way, that baddie should stay defeated. If they (to use your example below) convince someone to their side, they should stay convinced.


And if the PCs convince Pup to do something that weakens his followers' allegiance, I think the GM is behaving reasonably to have the followers become less loyal or shift their allegiance. The PCs have changed the situation, and the shared fiction; it's just changed (again) afterward--as situations tend to do.

Suppose, in resolving a D&D combat, the player declares "I attack the Orc with my sword", and rolls to hit. The GM is not at liberty to just decide that the Orc blocks the sword-blow with its shield. The GM can only narrate such a thing if the roll to hit fails.

In Classic Traveller, if a player has his/her PC attempt a tricky manoeuvre while wearing a vacc suit, the GM is not at liberty just to narrate that the PC gets stuck or catches an air pipe or similar. There is an action resolution subsystem for this, and only if the player fails the check is the GM at liberty to narrate the dangerous situation coming to pass. (The resolution system then goes on to specify the check required to get out of the dangerous situation without damage to vacc suit ingegrity.)

What might weaken Pup's followers' allegiance? Who knows! If the GM has declared that Pup is in control here, and if the players have then successfully brought Pup to heel, they have taken control of the controller. The GM is not just at liberty to decide Pup is no longer the controller. That would have to be the outcome of something else going wrong for the PCs - at which point the GM is free to indulge his/her conception of what sorts of things might weaken the followers' allegiance.

The idea that the GM is free to make up whatever fiction s/he wants regardless of the outcomes of action resolution is anathema to player agency. Because it makes action declarations pointless: whatever they are, and whatever follows from them, the GM can do what s/he likes!

And to head off the recurrent question, so what is the GM for then? Not all action declarations succeed. When they fail, the players have forfeited their agency to the GM. That's (roughly) how winning and losing rolls goes in a dice-based game!

And sometimes it's not clear what happens next. In a RPG with a GM, that's where the GM has a special role to set the scene ("framing"). But framing need not negate or disregard player agency. It can easily honour it.

To follow on from what @Ovinomancer said not far upthread, if the players look to the GM to see what happens next, and it's clear that the PCs have been pushing Pup around, the GM can tell them that Pup's followers are starting to mutter among themselves and give you surly glances when they think you're nor looking at them. Now the status of Pup's followers has clearly been put at stake, and the players can decide what (if anything) their PCs do about it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, uncomplicated success seems to come up about one time in three (ish) in Blades. So maybe that's about right. I guess "statistically correct" doesn't necessarily equal "fun."

Again, my D&D game includes many more failed attempts by an order of magnitude. Honestly, it seems like you prefer straight up failure to success with complication, which seems odd.

My group played a BitD variant last night. One of the players declared his PC was going to take out a guard. He rolled a 4. He took the guard out with one action, but in doing so, his weapon jammed. I would think that someone who looked at that as a failure is either aggressively pessimistic, or maybe your reading of what Success with Complication means is giving you a very narrow idea of what it may actually be.

Yeah. As @Thomas Shey has said, there are people who see the other way from that. I'm one. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's going to stick in my craw.

Right, but again, D&D doesn’t stick in your craw even though (generally speaking) success/failure is the binary state.

I think perhaps we also need to look past how the player feels about his PC succeeding with a complication, and look at what that does for the game.

The result of 4-5 is what drives the game forward. It propels the fiction and creates a sense of rising action and pacing to the events. It’s what keeps the game from devolving into everyone taking turns punching each other until everyone on one side is down.

It's trying to emulate a narrow type of crime fiction, I agree. It's trying to emulate a combination of the "reveal the plan as things go flawlessly" and the "heist turns into a fiasco" type. Strangely, neither type of crime fiction is a type I care much for.

I mean....a blend of those two extremes seems to cover a whole wide swath of crime fiction. Not sure what examples you may have in mind.

 

[prabe]

Suppose, in resolving a D&D combat, the player declares "I attack the Orc with my sword", and rolls to hit. The GM is not at liberty to just decide that the Orc blocks the sword-blow with its shield. The GM can only narrate such a thing if the roll to hit fails.

In Classic Traveller, if a player has his/her PC attempt a tricky manoeuvre while wearing a vacc suit, the GM is not at liberty just to narrate that the PC gets stuck or catches an air pipe or similar. There is an action resolution subsystem for this, and only if the player fails the check is the GM at liberty to narrate the dangerous situation coming to pass. (The resolution system then goes on to specify the check required to get out of the dangerous situation without damage to vacc suit ingegrity.)

Yes. This is pretty basic GMing (in games that have something like a GM).

What might weaken Pup's followers' allegiance? Who knows! If the GM has declared that Pup is in control here, and if the players have then successfully brought Pup to heel, they have taken control of the controller. The GM is not just at liberty to decide Pup is no longer the controller. That would have to be the outcome of something else going wrong for the PCs - at which point the GM is free to indulge his/her conception of what sorts of things might weaken the followers' allegiance.

The question "Who is in control here?" contains an implicit component of "now." Once the PCs change that, it's changed. I never said (at least I don't think I ever said--I'm not going to scroll back and check) that the GM should just do it; I said the GM should/could do it if it fit: While I was thinking as a consequence for however the PCs suborn Pup, having it happen when the PCs get something other than an unqualified success on a relevant check would be mechanically sound, as I understand PbtA.

The idea that the GM is free to make up whatever fiction s/he wants regardless of the outcomes of action resolution is anathema to player agency. Because it makes action declarations pointless: whatever they are, and whatever follows from them, the GM can do what s/he likes!

I'm not talking about "regardless of the outcomes of action resolution." I'm really not. I might be open to the idea of "because of the PCs' decisions" but once the PCs succeed at something, that's part of the established fiction, and what happens next has to be consistent with that.

I had a thought--and it's escaped somewhat, and I'm trying to recapture it--that we are probably thinking about action-resolution, and/or success, at a different zoom-level (for lack of a better convenient metaphor). That you want/expect an action-resolution to resolve something more or different (probably not less) than I do. If I'm right (or if I was, in the thought I had before, which this might not be the same thought) then I'm not sure we can really communicate about this.

And sometimes it's not clear what happens next. In a RPG with a GM, that's where the GM has a special role to set the scene ("framing"). But framing need not negate or disregard player agency. It can easily honour it.

To follow on from what @Ovinomancer said not far upthread, if the players look to the GM to see what happens next, and it's clear that the PCs have been pushing Pup around, the GM can tell them that Pup's followers are starting to mutter among themselves and give you surly glances when they think you're nor looking at them. Now the status of Pup's followers has clearly been put at stake, and the players can decide what (if anything) their PCs do about it.

That last seems like a reasonable way to GM the situation. As I've said, I make a sincere effort frame things that are consistent with previous fiction, which includes the PCs' actions.

 

[prabe]

Again, my D&D game includes many more failed attempts by an order of magnitude. Honestly, it seems like you prefer straight up failure to success with complication, which seems odd.

Maybe it will seem less odd if I point out that I see "success with complication" as "partial failure." And yes, I think I do prefer failures that don't pretend to be successes.