A Question Of Agency?

[prabe]

My second issue is that I am failing to see how more agency in this example is being exerted than in a D&D session. The player is looking for something... the DM decided if it was or wasn't there, a roll to figure out if it was magical was made and failure = trap sprung. PC and party attacked. I'm trying to see where the extra agency came in here... where the player shaped the story.

I think you're missing that--if I understand correctly--the portrait wasn't magical until the check was made. It wasn't a trap until the player failed the check.

 

[prabe]

I just want to be clear... I'm not arguing that the steps of play didn't make logical sense. I'm asking whether the player in that moment had sufficient information to weigh what he would get from delivering the portrait to his friend vs. the consequences he would suffer for failing...to determine if it was magical I guess. That's my hang up. Yes a soul sucking painting, is perfectly reasonable in an immortals haunted mansion... but was there enough information given for the player to understand that was a possibility? Otherwise how is it any different form the D&D traps that were being disparaged earlier in this thread?

I believe that in Blades, by checking for it to be magical, you are setting up the possibility for it to be cursed/trapped/in any event bad news, and the expectation is that the players are aware of this.

 

[Imaro]

Except in D&D the PCs are, as I was pointing out in my B2 example, engaged with some GM-derived (or module) content. So any trap they ran into was not elicited because of what they wanted to engage in. It might e that it was encountered because they chose the most interesting available content to play with, and it turned out to be trapped.

Yes but even here they are choosing to engage with it. In both situations there is a choice to engage. That is agency, especially if we are agreeing that types of agency are either irrelevant or don't exist.

I mean, this situation might not have been engaging some big central concern of the character. It sounds like he was kind of just scrounging for stuff, but his goal could as easily have been to find his long lost brother and it would have worked the same....

But this is just setting goals and even in an adventure path, once the players have agreed to play it they can choose goals for their characters in line with said adventuring path. Again I'm stumped by what the actual difference is unless we are now positing that in a traditional AP the olayers are being forced to play and engage with things they don't want to... I don't think that's what is being argued.

 

[Manbearcat]

The other thing I find kind of dissonant about BitD is that it claims that players


Maybe there's just something I'm not getting... again this doesn't seem different from D&D to me. Yes the consequences were based on the character failing a roll but honestly, from the moment you started reading it, you knew it would be a magical soul-sucking portrait that would attack him and his friends if he failed a roll to determine if it was magical or not... really???

EDIT: And to be clear I am not arguing whether it is or isn't in line with BitD priciples what I'm arguing is that the player in this example had no more agency in the events than a D&D player who failed his perception and saving throw for a similar trap.

Yeah.

Are you familiar with the setting tropes and the genre of the game?

The Ghost Field is kind of like the Ethereal Plane; it’s the medium where Ghosts, Specters, etc reside. Ghosts are tortured, angry poltergeist man that freedom the life essence of the living. The PC tried to Attune to the Ghost Field. The possessed painting went Samara on him (this could be Harm or Trauma). No surprise at all. It could have gone one of a few ways but the Complication was overwhelmingly was going to be about a poltergeist manifestation, possession, or feeding on the essence of the Attune-ey.

 

[Imaro]

I think you're missing that--if I understand correctly--the portrait wasn't magical until the check was made. It wasn't a trap until the player failed the check.

But it was still the GM who decided a roll was possible...

 

[prabe]

But it was still the GM who decided a roll was possible...

If I remember right, it was the player who asked for it, and "yes" would have been too easy (or otherwise inappropriate, and in any event the only other option).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred I have no issues with your analyzation of the game above, In fact it pretty much aligns with how I am reading what happened as well. My issue is with 2 things specifically, the claim that the outcome for failure was foreshadowed to the point that the player knew his risk vs his reward. If the player had known the risk was a soul-sucking painting... or even an attack by the painting would he have made the same choice? I don't know, but if you have no clue what the outcome of failure will be outside of...some bad stuff...does that diminish the meaningfulness of that decision? Again I don't know but if the GM is making it up on the fly after the roll it kind of feels that way to me.

My second issue is that I am failing to see how more agency in this example is being exerted than in a D&D session. The player is looking for something... the DM decided if it was or wasn't there, a roll to figure out if it was magical was made and failure = trap sprung. PC and party attacked. I'm trying to see where the extra agency came in here... where the player shaped the story.

Well, I think the consequences of messing with a haunted painting were pretty predictable. I agree, I don't know what the EXACT fictional details are likely to be, never having read BitD. Still, it seemed pretty genre appropriate. I am also guessing the mechanical implications of the fallout from that were in line with what might have been gained (again, kind of guessing, but it seems likely).

So, I think the answer to the second question is that the player could have chosen other sorts of actions. He could have looted some stuff from the place, or I dunno, something. He picked his battle. The fiction could very well have emerged from some D&D-esque type of process, but this type of thing emerges EVERY TIME from something like BitD. It is just as likely the D&D result would have been, "nothing of interest here at all, the painting is worth 10gp." That sort of result might happen in BitD also if the player didn't engage any mechanics, but in that case the game is simply not designed to focus on something that uninteresting. Once you start rolling dice in a game like BitD, stuff gonna happen!

 

[Imaro]

Yeah.

Are you familiar with the setting tropes and the genre of the game?

The Ghost Field is kind of like the Ethereal Plane; it’s the medium where Ghosts, Specters, etc reside. Ghosts are tortured, angry poltergeist man that freedom the life essence of the living. The PC tried to Attune to the Ghost Field. The possessed painting went Samara on him (this could be Harm or Trauma). No surprise at all. It could have gone one of a few ways but the Complication was overwhelmingly was going to be about a poltergeist manifestation, possession, or feeding on the essence of the Attune-ey.

I'm familiar with the setting I've played BitD a couple of years ago as a one shot. You right here have given 3 different possibilities... now let's add to that it could have been guards in the estate that walked in on the character as he was trying to attune to the portrait, perhaps attuning to the portrait momentarily sent a signal for other ghosts out from the estate and they would be arriving in the next scene, perhaps the spirit in the portrait makes the master aware of intruders... or maybe.... well my point is I see a ton of possibilities in that set up and not all of them revolve around poltergeist manifestation, possession or feeding on the essence of the attune-ey.

 

[Manbearcat]

So, I haven't ever played Blades, but every single step in that particular downward spiral made sense to me, having read the rules (and talked about with people here). That said, I don't disagree with you that the character exhibited a similar helplessness to a D&D character in a similar situation.

Can you describe what you mean by “helpless” here? Are you talking about mechanically (because there are a host of procedures and player-side resources that can be brought to bear in this situation - both pre and post Complication - to mitigate the fallout)? Are you mate saying that you feel like the PC was working from an information deficit in their decision-point? Something else?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think you're missing that--if I understand correctly--the portrait wasn't magical until the check was made. It wasn't a trap until the player failed the check.

Yes, sure. But so what? All it means that it really didn't matter which object they poked, once they chose to poke something in a manner that required a roll it meant it could explode on their face. I really don't see this as increase of agency, possibly even the opposite.