A Question Of Agency?

[aramis erak]

No they aren’t. Nothing I’ve advocated for has been about me or the character having narrative control over the setting.

I’ll go one further - while having narrative control over the settting is a type of agency - it has nothing to do with role playing a character.

Only to a point - past that point, there's no room left to roleplay. Some GM's (generally inexperienced ones) limit to the listed actions and the only real free-to-pick element they allow is for players is their character's name.

Now, I've seen some very tightly railroaded stories where players followed along happily, getting their in-character dialogue and creating mutual entertainment, but not actually being able to define anything that's not in the rules as theirs to define. And I've seen players utterly choke when able to define things for themselves.

 

[pemerton]

Here are three actual play reports (the first I'm quoting from upthread, about BitD; the second is me posting as thurgon on RPG.net, about Burning Wheel; the third is me posting on these boards I think, though I can't find the thread and have taken it from a file on my hard drive - the system is Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy):

The crew was sneaking into an old, rumored to be haunted, abandoned manor house. They had entered the premises through an old servants tunnel, and emerged in a room full of furniture covered in sheets and cobwebs, jumbled about.

<snip>

the scene started when they entered the hallway from the room and saw a dim lamp at the end with a shadowed figure -- clearly a guard -- there. I described the hall, merely as color, as being wide, with dilapidated chairs and a few broken tables along the walls, which were covered by peeling wallpaper and a few old, dusty portraits. To enhance the air of 'haunted" I described one portrait of a young woman who eyes seemed to follow the PCs. As two PCs snuck down the hallway to engage the guard, one PC -- mentioned earlier as the one trying to change their vice -- said they were going to examine the young woman's portrait to see if it would be interesting to those at the University he was trying to woo. This seemed interesting -- I could have just said yes -- so I asked the player how they were going to do this? What counts as "interesting" and how do you know? The player thought a moment, and said that his old friend at the University liked the occult, so he was going to see if the portrait held occult value. I said, maybe, let's check, what are you doing to find out? The player looked at their sheet, shrugged, and said, "I guess I Attune and see if I get any feels from it, but I have zero dice in Attune. Maybe I can ask the Whisper to do it?" I responded sure, but he's off taking care of the guard right now, do you want to wait? The player said, no, I'll do it, I'm going to push for 1 die. I said, okay, the position is controlled (they got a controlled result on the engagment roll, so all initial situations are set to controlled position) and said normal effect (the default, you need a reason to change it). He rolled, and failed. I now got to put a consequence in play. I chose to worsen the position and said that as the player looked at the portrait, the figure suddenly turned their head and looked at the player, and he found it was difficult to look away and there was a feeling of pulling or suction, but not physical. The player was like, "okay, I guess that answers that question, it's occult, um... I try to pull away." I said, sure, but hang on, let me check in with the other PCs for a moment while you're staring into the creepy painting. I did, they succeeded, and we got back to the PC.

The PC tried to pull away from the painting, and declared a wreck action to do to -- using violence to destroy a thing. He had dice, and since I had worsened the position previously, I set position to Risky (which is normal, you need a reason to change it) and normal effect again. The PC failed again (honestly, this is a trend in my Blades game, largely because the players seem to enjoy trying actions they have no or one rank in). Now the picture started glowing, and the young lady turned into a hideous creature. I told the PC you feel your soul being sucked into the portrait and cannot escape! I leveled some Harm, which was Resisted. The other PC noticed this (glowing portrait) and the Whisper (think occultist) trying to intervene and used Attune with their Command ability to try to force the animating spirit in the portrait to flee. Since their friend was in danger, this was again Risky and Normal. The Whisper succeeded with complication, and so the portrait entity released the first PC, but in doing so a backlash of psychic energy whipped back at the Whisper and they suffered a Harm. They elected to not Resist, as it was a level 1 harm, and they like to keep a ready supply of Stress for rolling. This choice, though, had some unfortunately repercussions later in the Score, and the harm was to their occult abilities and that became very, very relevant again.

In our session today we were short a couple of players so played BW instead. As well as the two 5 LP humans, I quickly worked up a 4 LP elf for the 3rd player (a Citadel-born soldier-protector and sword-singer). Writing up beliefs took a little while. The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge.

<snip>

I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless .

<snip>

I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)

My memory of the precise sequence of events is hazy, but in the context the peddler was able to insist on proceeding with the sale, demanding 3 drachmas (Ob 1 resource check). As Jobe started haggling a strange woman (Halika) approached him and offered to help him if he would buy her lunch. Between the two of them, the haggling roll was still a failure, and also the subsequent Resources check: so Jobe got his feather but spent his last 3 drachmas, and was taxed down to Resources 0. They did get some more information about the feather from the peddler, however - he bought it from a wild-eyed man with dishevelled beard and hair, who said that it had come from one of the tombs in the Bright Desert.

The PCs started the session separated in a dungeon.

<snip>

the PCs followed strange piping music down a hitherto-hidden tunnel leading out of the ghouls' secret room to the lair of a Crypt Thing. The berserker attacked but missed. I think the wolf skin-changer tried something - I can't remember what - but with little success. But then the Doom Pool build up to 2d12 and so I was able to spend it to end the scene - in the fiction, the Crypt Thing teleported them all into an empty room on a lower dungeon level. Mechanically, this landed them all with a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication.

After taking a rest (ie a Transition scene), they headed out and I described the next scene - a pillared hall with murals, flickering braziers, and a living statue guarding great doors. While the two warriors dispatched the statute, the skinchanger read the mural to try and work out where in the dungeon he was - mechanically, he successfully eliminated his Lost in the Dungeon complication. The swordthane did the same after dispatching the statue, and then helped the berserker also to read the mural/map before the latter then broke down the door. The skinchanger had continue to study the mural/map and had worked out the Path to the Treasure (a d10 or d12 - I can't remember precisely - asset).

On the other side of the door was the land of the svartalfar: a land of faerie fire, of deadly traps, and with the glint of gold. . . . The skinchanger used his Cunning expertise and his established knowledge of the path to the treasure to bluff Moonstone, the C/F/MU, into taking him to the dark elven treasure vaults - also picking up Milestone-based XP in the process for leaving his allies in a risky situation - and ended up finishing the scene with a huge (d12+) treasure asset. The other PCs finished off the three remaining dark elves, but not before the F/MU brought the stone crashing down, blocking off the tunnels the skinchanger and Moonstone had travelled through.

<snip>

Although much of the detail of the setting is introduced by me as GM in the course of framing, key elements are introduced by the players, mostly in the form of assets - the tunnels into the ghoul room; the fact that the murals in the pillared hall have a map of the dungeon; and the drow treasure (and my Scene Distinction Glint of Gold was itself a riff on the fact that the skinchanger PC had established a Path to Treasure asset). The framing itself was all spontaneous as needed, although the stat blocks were mostly prepared in advance (I'd written up Ghouls and a Crypt Thing, used the MHRP book for dark elves, and only the Living Statute was written up by me ex tempore).

But this account should also make it fairly clear why the notion of "illusionism" just has no purchase in this game. Everything's on the surface: the Scene Distinctions, the Doom Pool growing or shrinking (it started the session at 2d6, 1d8, 2d10 and ended at 1d6, 1d8), the assets and complications, the NPCs in a scene, etc. There's nothing even remotely analogous to a fork in the road with the same encounter destined to occur down either path.

These are three different systems, with different principles and techniques governing them. Some examples of these differences:

* Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic are both very scene-based, but I don't know about BitD. (AW is not, but I don't know if BitD differs from it in this respect.)

* Burning Wheel and (I think) BitD both emphasise fictional positioning very heavily, whereas in Cortex+ fictional positioning doesn't normally count in resolution until it is filtered through a mechanical process (like the GM establishing a Scene Distinction or a player establishing an Asset).

* Burning Wheel has a formal framework for players flagging Beliefs, whereas I think BitD doesn't and Cortex+ has Distinctions that are perhaps more like Aspects in Fate, as well as Milestones which are closer to Beliefs but aren't as central to the GM's framing as Beliefs are in BW.​

Despite this, there is a strong overall similarity in how they handle this situation:

* the GM frames a situation which has an object/artefact of interest (the portrait; the feather; the mural);

* a player has his/her PC engage with it because she sees it as something of interest to his/her PC;

* there is a check declared to read it/attune to it/otherwise interpret or make sense of it;

* the resolution of that check establishes, in the fiction, further details of that object/artefact - in the case of the successful check (to read the mural) that all goes the player's way, and in the other two failed cases the GM combine the players' ideas with their own to produce a "fail forward" failure narration.​

I would consider all of these episodes of play as exemplifying a reasonably high degree of player agency in respect of the shared fiction.

 

[aramis erak]

Traveller does not have any general framework for transforming stat values into adjustments in action resolution (in this way it differs from a number of systems, including D&D from 3E onwards, Rolemaster and its cousins like MERP and HARP, RuneQuest and other BRP systems, etc). In given situations the referee may impose a modification that is extrapolated from a stat value.

Note that every other edition does have a standard method; only Classic doesn't. But it has several basic modes in the core and others in early adventures (1-4)
Mode 0: Physicals as hit points; damage is marked against them. Different subeditions of CT have differences on the details...
Mode 1: if att <X, DM-z, if att ≥y , DM+1 or DM+z , DM+ Skill, 8+ succeeds, conditional mods apply.
Mode 2: 2d for N+, DM+(skill × X) (See Vacc Suit in Bk1 p22; Note the lack of attribute.)
Mode 3: Xd for Attribute or less (not used in the core, but implied in Book zero, and used in a couple adventures.) (Exemplar: Bk3 p37, entry Seismic Quake)
Mode 4: if sum of applied attribute exceeds some threshold, the action succeeds (Twilight's Peak, p25)
Mode 4a: One in Twilight's peak is if the sum of strengths of PC's on the ladder crosses a value, the ladder breaks... (ibid, p26

Many have touted this as a benefit of CT; many others have cited it as CT's biggest problem.

For those curious...
2300 and Mega use attribute/5 as equivalent to a skill for task purposes (called an asset). Compared to CT, the sigma on skill levels is a little wider in MT, but typical levels are comparable, as the raise in skills per term is proportional to the larger number of non-weapon skills. T:2300 and 2300AD (same game, 2 editions) actually has a bit lower sigma on skill levels, and comparable numbers and levels to CT.
TNE used 1d20 ≤ (att + skill)×(DiffMod). More skills (about 20% more) but about 50% more skill levels
T4 and T5 both are (Difficulty)d6 ≤ (Attribute+Skill) (in T5, skill is broken into Skills and knowledges, but you get to add one skill and one of its knowledges.
Mongoose uses a d20 inspired modifier table and is 2d6+Stat+Skill+DiffMod for 8+...
T20 uses the standard d20 mode, Traveller for Hero uses standard hero, GT and GTIW use standard GURPS modes.
Cepheus Engine uses the Mongoose model (from the Mongoose SRD).

 

[pemerton]

Note that every other edition does have a standard method; only Classic doesn't. But it has several basic modes in the core and others in early adventures (1-4)
Mode 0: Physicals as hit points; damage is marked against them. Different subeditions of CT have differences on the details...
Mode 1: if att <X, DM-z, if att ≥y , DM+1 or DM+z , DM+ Skill, 8+ succeeds, conditional mods apply.
Mode 2: 2d for N+, DM+(skill × X) (See Vacc Suit in Bk1 p22; Note the lack of attribute.)
Mode 3: Xd for Attribute or less (not used in the core, but implied in Book zero, and used in a couple adventures.) (Exemplar: Bk3 p37, entry Seismic Quake)
Mode 4: if sum of applied attribute exceeds some threshold, the action succeeds (Twilight's Peak, p25)
Mode 4a: One in Twilight's peak is if the sum of strengths of PC's on the ladder crosses a value, the ladder breaks... (ibid, p26

Many have touted this as a benefit of CT; many others have cited it as CT's biggest problem.

Another example of Mode 4 is found in the module Shadows. (STR to force electro-mechanical doors.)

A variant of Mode 3 - maybe it's its own mode - is when the whole of the attribute serves as a DM together with skill expertise levels (see donning a vacc suit during explosive decompression in Book 2; and first draw in Book 1).

I use two further variants of Mode 3 that are extrapolated from (i) the handling of infection in Annic Nova and (ii) Andy Slack's rules for toxins and disease in early White Dwarf: one is 19+ on 3D + attribute; the other is 10+ 2D + half-attribute.

For Vacc Suit under Mode 2, I step up the throw required by 1 and allow a +1 DM if DEX 6+ and +2 if DEX B+; this is a generalisation of an idea found in Double Adventures 1 and/or 2 (I'd have to dig back through to see which one).

As to the benefit/problem aspect I think we fall on different sides of the position: for me, these different subsystems in Classic Traveller is one of its big strengths.

 

[pemerton]

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.

This seems bonkers to me! The whole reason - at the table - that the portrait turned out to be a soul-sucking magical thing was because the player was interested in the question is it magical and then got the occultist "whisper" involved. At every point the GM seems to have been riffing off the players' ideas and contributions.

I don't think that D&D is run very often in this style.

 

[pemerton]

If it happens everything regardless of what the the player chooses is that really agency?

In a good RPG, whatever the player chooses something interesting will happen!

What is distinctive about (say) BitD as described by @Ovinomancer, compared to GM-driven play, is that those interesting things are based around the players' ideas as much or more than around the GM's ideas. Unlike in (say) BW, this is done via a semi-formalisation of "taking suggestions" rather than a mechanical process that allows the player to directly establish the relevant constraints on the fiction.

 

[aramis erak]

As to the benefit/problem aspect I think we fall on different sides of the position: for me, these different subsystems in Classic Traveller is one of its big strengths.

For me, once I met the DGP task system, most of CT 's skill mechanics went the way of the dodo... because the task system made it much easier to be consistent, at the cost of being not nearly as tailored. My preferred edition was, for decades, MegaTraveller.

It's been amusing over the years to see people claim any one of the modes of attribute use in CT as the "one True Way" - but GDW adopted, for a period of about 7 years, the DGP task system as the mechanic for both 2300 and MT. (note that 2300 uses 1d10, while MT and DGP's CT add-on, use 2d6)

 

[pemerton]

For me, once I met the DGP task system, most of CT 's skill mechanics went the way of the dodo... because the task system made it much easier to be consistent, at the cost of being not nearly as tailored. My preferred edition was, for decades, MegaTraveller.

It's been amusing over the years to see people claim any one of the modes of attribute use in CT as the "one True Way" - but GDW adopted, for a period of about 7 years, the DGP task system as the mechanic for both 2300 and MT. (note that 2300 uses 1d10, while MT and DGP's CT add-on, use 2d6)

I'm not familiar with the DGP task system - but I have a copy of MegaTraveller and its task system. The only thing I like in MegaTraveller, which I have borrowed for my Classic Traveller game, is the Special Duty line on the PC gen tables. With the extra skills from the supplements - which are already there on the Supplement 4 charts and which I've retrofitted into my Book 1 charts (except for Legal, Trade and Gravitics - I just use Admin, Broker and Engineering) this helps give a good number of skills for the PCs.

I wouldn't say that the Classic subsystems are a "One True Way". But for me they're an important part of the Traveller "feel" and I think they help shape the implied setting very effectively. Whereas the MegaTraveller resolution framework and skill lists make me want to run back into the arms of Space Master!

 

[pemerton]

while having narrative control over the settting is a type of agency - it has nothing to do with role playing a character.

As I posted upthread, I have suffered from amnesia, for real, in hospital, not recognising the youngest member of my family because I'd forgotten she existed.

Generally I don't want to role play amnesiacs. But that is what your approach requires me to do.

 

[pemerton]

Presumably the character was randomly generated some time before the game, and I've had plenty of time to form my mental image of that character to make it work in my head (and if I couldn't, I hopefully would have an option to say, 'no, this is not the sort of character I want to play.')

In my Classic Traveller game the players generated their PCs and then we got right into it.

But as least as the 'impose love' scenario was originally described, it was happening during the game, and if that is not working for me at that moment, then that's a problem, I don't have several days there to get my mind in the right place. Though what you said earlier about the GM 'selling' the idea applies. It is perfectly possible that the GM could manage to present the situation so that it would not be jarring (though unless they're psychic, far from guaranteed.) But if they could do that, then the mechanic was unnecessary in the first place.

This doesn't really seem to bear on the issue of agency. Rather, it seems relevant to uptake vs dissonance.

Furthermore, character creation and actual play are generally treated as separate things. Even if I would accept the lack of agency in character generation and be OK with creating a random character, it doesn't mean I would accept lack of agency over my character in the actual play.

A lot of RPGing involves character development, which is something like ongoing PC build. And there are some approaches to character development in which it feeds off actual play - RuneQuest is a famous example.

So I guess I don't really feel the force of this distinction. It seems a little arbitrary.