A Question Of Agency?

[TwoSix]

I didn't say it wasn't but that was a direct response to a poster expressing what seemed like a distrust of GMs consistency ruling on these things. Trust in the GM seems like a big factor in many of these discussions

No game works well if you don't trust the DM (or the players). Games with less DM authority assumed to be granted to the DM will ameliorate some issues with a problem DM, just like games with high DM authority run a little better with problem players. But no game runs great if any of the participants are a problem.

 

[chaochou]

This was touched on earlier but agency isn’t a neutral term. When you describe my playstyle as having less agency that’s a derogatory assessment of my playstyle.

So? We all have to kowtow to your feelings? Your next move will be to get offended by the alternative term and the one after that and replay the definitional bs to try to shut down the conversation that way. Or you could just, like, deal with it.

 

[pemerton]

Have you ever been in a LARP?

I've never LARPed with foam weapons etc. I've played freedform RPGing with intense social interaction. What made it different from the case I described, and what @Lanefan, @Bedrockgames and (as I understand it) you are describing, are two things:

(1) The social interaction was between the players, each of whom had a character to play;
(2) The role of the referee was to move from player (or group of players) to player (or other group) and to whisper, cajole, interject etc so as to help bring it about that everyone was playing his/her PC to the hilt;
(3) The situation at hand demanded that a consensus or final resolution be reached, so that in some ways (of course not all) it was analogous to a game like Diplomacy. Once that position had fallen out of the interpersonal interaction, the referee did not try again to destabilise it. Rather, he narrated its consequences.

This is very different from the GM logically extrapolating how a NPC will respond to a player's advance on behalf of his/her PC.

EDIT having just seen this post:

And this is a real point, either you violate the Czege Principle, or what, you have to look to the GM to decide everything by fiat? I'm not seeing that as a really satisfactory process... I guess you could assign another player to play the NPC (or maybe this is 'PvP' to start with, it could be). But then in the later case the principle is still violated, and in the former the assigned player doesn't really have any clear motive not to just give the other player whatever they want, outside of sheer perversity! Either way, it doesn't seem like there is a very good set of incentives there. Drama is certainly happenstance at best.

The scenario I described above was in the neighbourhood of your PvP variant. It worked for the reasons I've described, which take it well outside the territory of "GM decides".

 

[Campbell]

This was touched on earlier but agency isn’t a neutral term. When you describe my playstyle as having less agency that’s a derogatory assessment of my playstyle.

Is it just the term or like what I'm trying to speak to conceptually?

Do you disagree that you are not as interested as I am in a player's ability to create meaningful change in the situation? I know that I expect to have constraints on my play based on how things turn out when the rules get involved. I like that when my character is Angry in a game like Masks that I have less ability to Pierce the Mask and see what people are really up to. Character agency as you define is just less important to me than it is to you.

I do not mean to be derogatory, but I'm not going to stop thinking about and talking about RPGs in a way that is useful to me. If you have more precise language you think would be more accurate please let me know. Agency over the fiction is a useful evaluative concept to me. You know what I mean by it. I'm not sure why you think speaking on it is derogatory.

 

[Aldarc]

I have not encountered a game which specifically does this. I mean, I don't recall a real admonishment or 'principle' that says "don't do this" in such games which I've played/run, but it GENERALLY seems to be a lot like other 'table etiquette' at the very least (IE don't murder other people's PCs). I mean, there are some specific games where it may come up, and even play a genuine role in the game, but I would think you'd know that going into such a game.

Anyway, lets think about Dungeon World for a second. The GM frames scenes in that game, and they are intended to be such that they will engage the players and challenge the characters. Now, could a player create a bond for his character that could be satisfied by, say, murdering that other PC? I guess so... Said player might then declare an action with the intent to cause that (although PvP is not really covered by DW's rules). If this is against the wishes of the other player, then something about the game isn't really going right. Not only that, but something very similar is just as possible in D&D, but you wouldn't condemn freedom to run your PC as you wish on that basis, would you? Instead you'd rely on table etiquette, or else everyone would know it was allowed (IE we once played an 'evil campaign' where this was a completely legit action).

Even if we take Fate, where the GM can invoke Troubles on a PC. Those Troubles are intentionally selected by the player to be lightning rods of story complications for their character. It's like saying, "I want my character to face situations where my 'Manners of a Goat' can pose a problem in the story."

This was touched on earlier but agency isn’t a neutral term. When you describe my playstyle as having less agency that’s a derogatory assessment of my playstyle.

It's not derogatory. There is no value or moral judgment attached. I don't know how many times people have reiterated ad nauseum that it's not good or bad. Because it's not about "whoever has the most is best". It's simply about understanding differences of player agency between systems. Sometimes less is good if those are your play preferences or if it's suitable for the genre.

 

[TwoSix]

It's not derogatory. There is no value or moral judgment attached. I don't know how many times people have reiterated ad nauseum that it's not good or bad. Because it's not about "whoever has the most is best". It's simply about understanding differences of player agency between systems. Sometimes less is good if those are your play preferences or if it's suitable for the genre.

I'm not sure how to interpret "I don't want any metagame currency, I don't want any say over the setting, I just want to play my character and do nothing else" as not making a specific request for less agency. Which is fine! There are plenty of games in which less agency is exactly the goal. I mean, choosing to play rather than DM in pretty much every game is deliberately eschewing a large amount of agency over the game, and I don't think anyone thinks playing is somehow less virtuous than DMing.

 

[pemerton]

I am not saying you are using it as an insult. I am saying it isn't a neutral term at all and there is a reason people are arguing over it. Further it is highly, highly subjective.

You may recall that upthread I remarked on your apparently unanalysed and unselfconscious use of words like "normal" and "traditional". You were largely dismissive of my observations about your usage.

That's of course your prerogative, but having done that I now find it curious that you expect other posters to defer to you in their use of terminology that you regard as not "neutral".

Perhaps for you, neutral is equivalent to "words Bedrockgames uses", but I hope you appreciate that that won't work for many of your interlocutors.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Both of those goals are perfectly possible for players to declare in a traditional game too. So I don't think that example illuminates the issue (I can decide my character must destroy the book fo Eibon).

Right, but we haven't really got down to the level of what it is that you, or @FrogReaver thinks is somehow going to interfere with your ability to play. I mean, in a game of the type I espouse there would be these two PCs one wants P and one wants !P. Either one can declare actions which have the intent to take a step in the direction of their goal (We will assume these are SMALL steps, lest this be a trivial goal and not worth discussing). Either player can either outright generate, or call for, some fictional element that will advance their fictional position in a direction favorable to either P or !P. Depending on the mechanics of the game, they may actually HURT their position (IE a failure in Dungeon World would probably make achieving your ultimate goal harder, but also more fun).

Some changes in the fiction might lead in the direction of BOTH P and !P (both PCs want to find the Book of Eibon for example). Others might tend to preclude one of these. Somewhere, at the end of the campaign, one or both of the PCs will necessarily fail in a way which is unrecoverable. The other PC's player will likely be responsible for calling down the fiction which produces this state. I just see all this as classic game play. While, in the end, someone's 'agency' will be 'reduced', it doesn't, again, seem like this is problematic.

I'm really hoping someone can come up with an example. Sorry to sound pushy, but lots of things are asserted without proof in this world today.

 

[pemerton]

Getting back to the main question for me personally what is most important in a game where I am meant to embody a character is freedom to choose my character's desires and goals with the assurance that if they are reasonable in the fiction I have freedom to pursue them. Freedom of action without freedom to choose my aims is not agency at all to me. It's hallow. I feel respecting a player's ability to engage in protagonism for their character - to set their sights on something and go after it is tantamount.

This is a big part of the reason why I believe the GM should only prepare situation and not plots. It's a players job to decide what their goals are. It's the GMs job to make that pursuit interesting.

Yes, well said. And this sort of agency can perfectly well exist in a 'traditional' RPG format. All it requires is an open world, players with initiative and a GM that is willing to let the 'story' go where the characters take it. Now you of course can do this with players having narrative controlling meta mechanics too, but they're by no means a requirement.

I do not think of agency primarily in terms of the tools I have available, but if I am able to use the tools available to achieve outcomes not chosen by the GM or other players. I generally prefer the resources I have available to correspond to in character things, but that is immaterial to agency from my perspective.

Campbell's second post here sets out the reasons why, for me, "open world" or "sandbox" play does not necessarily support "this sort of agency".

If my PC's goal is to find spellbooks - certainly genre-appropriate in a standard fantasy RPG like D&D or Burning Wheel - and the GM decides that there are no spellbooks in the neighbourhood of my PC, then I can't achieve outcomes not chosen by the GM.

If the GM treats my formulation of my PC's goal as a suggestion to include a spellbook in the neighbourhood of my PC, then - as I posted upthread - we are now in a situation where the player is shaping the fiction in ways beyond just describing his/her PC's desires and physical actions. As I posted then, because this is informal and implicit it does not give the player as much agency as more formalised principles, techniques and/or mechanics might. But that doesn't seem to mark any fundamental cleavage about who gets to shape the shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

Characters don't have any agency of their own, but as a shortcut for "agency expressed only through the vehicle of the character" that seems a perfectly fine term too.

Upthread I explained how I recall there is a wizard's tower in this neighbourhood or As I ride through the outskirts of my personal estate I look out for my brother are examples of agency expressed only through the vehicle of my character.

But many posters in the thread who seem to have views of RPGing similar to @FrogReaver's didn't accept that point, because the upshot of the success of the action declaration establishes a truth about the shared fiction which was not, in the fiction, caused by the physical actions of the PC.