A Question Of Agency?

[Manbearcat]

The issue of others disliking the inclusion of the kinds of martial abilities you mentioned.

No, its not that simple.

(a) "Believability" undergirding play in case (i) in one game while (b) genre logic (that strains the credulity of case (i) persisting in the same milieu) undergirds play in the same game in case (ii) isn't a place I take refuge when it comes to games. If I'm examining one thing for "believability" I'm examining all things for internal consistency. Or I'm examining none (which is where I pretty much always sit).

Games are games. I play/run them as games and I take my cues from the designers in terms of "what is the point of play" and "how does the embedded genre logic/tropes facilitate" the playing of that game.

My Torchbearer games are brutal, dark fantasy featuring very mundane martial PCs that can't do those things and Face PCs that fail at massively higher rate than D&D Face PCs.

My Scum and Villainy (Star Wars Space Opera meets Peaky Blinders or GTA) game features suave Face PCs with high hit rate in parleys but non-Force, martial PCs look like Star Wars characters (or us).

My 4e and Dungeon World games feature thematically robust PCs and mythical tropes (that scale with the Tiers of play) from martial heroes to spellcasters and from chasm jumpers to primordial convincers.

My Dogs in the Vineyard games feature very mundane, gun-toting Paladin characters and if there is a supernatural element (Sin manifesting as actual demonic influence) will vary from game to game (so anointing someone's head with Sacred Earth during an exorcism or blessing a marriage in a ritual may or may not manifest as a supernatural event). And "just talking" escalates to "fists/knives" or "guns" pretty routinely depending on if its a "relatively" frivolous domestic dispute (a family's child set fire to the stables and he needs to indenture them to the owner/proprietor for a season to work it off) or something more ominous "cattle rustlers have taken up residence in a house of ill-repute."

My Blades games feature mundane, martial PCs with heist genre logic/tropes where the supernatural is an accepted part of being held hostage in a world that has undergone a ghostly apocalypse.

My Mouse Guard games feature action-adventure heroic mice that do what swashbuckling + medieval heroes can do but no more as they deliver the mail, settle disputes, guide travelers, trailblaze new routes between settlements, and secure their villages and lives against the predators of the forest. Outside of actualized anthropomorphism, its a mundane game that lives off of the prior tropes.

All of these games feature conflict mechanics, PC build tools, action resolution + binding GMing principles/procedures and very explicit (and distinct) play priorities that dictate results and all of them opt-in heavily toward "playability." In none of these cases is "Free Roleplay + adjudicate by believability" what undergirds outcomes with respect to parleying, journeying, trailblazing, mail-delivering, undead turning, argument de-escalation-ing, cliff-climbing, chasm-leaping, lightning pillar repairing, ship piloting, Wookie-calming, dispute settlement-ing, (non)lethal combat-ing, chases-ing, exorcisms-ing, ing-ing, etc.

Genre logic is good not just because its fun and creates form...but because its useful/functional and coherent as a game stabilizer/perpetuator (and it doesn't play nice when it manifests as a double standard as one character archetype becomes preternaturally competent in their shtick, which happens to be a huge site of conflict for play, yet grounds another character archetype in their shtick, which happens to be a huge site of conflict for play).

 

[pemerton]

I already agreed the door and orc were similar, so why the repetition of your examples? I'm talking about something else entirely. I'm talking about the genesis of the orc or the door, the agency to add either orc or door to the fiction in the first place. Most detractors of narrative games would probably use the term narrative control.

But my point is this: writing a story about an orc that gets killed is no different from writing a story about a wall that turns out to have a secret way through it.

You keep mentioning the door. My point is that the wall is established fiction (part of the framing), and embellishing that established fiction by adding a secret way through it (which has been discovered in virtue of a search) is no different from embellishing the established fiction of the Orc by adding that now its dead (because killed in virtue of an attack).

There authorship, and hence authorial agency, involved in either case is the same. Each embellishes an established fictional situation by adding something to it that changes the state/nature/details of an established element (wall in one case, Orc in the other).

Neither involves any greater or lesser narrative control. The difference is purely one of subject matter.

 

[pemerton]

I want the things my character says and does to matter.

Is there a RPG you're familiar with which (i) has social resolution mechanics and (ii) where this isn't the case?

The only I can think of is 3E D&D, but I don't know that system all that well and so I may be wrong.

In Apocalypse World and Dungeon World and Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant and Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP and Classic Traveller - just to mention systems I'm familiar with that have social conflict resolution mechanics - what the character says and does matters a great deal.

 

[pemerton]

players shouldn’t know what White Bearded Sage’s motives are, because those are in his head, not their heads

This is strange. I interact with many people every day. And quite often I know what their motivations are, even though their motivations are not in my head. This is one aspect of being a social animal.

My priority is being honest in the NPCs reaction.

<snip>

I will let that happen in a heart beat if I think their proposal would meet with a positive response

Who does not want to be honest to the NPCs?

I guess the question is, how does someone decide if a proposal would meet with a positive response? And how do the players learn this? Especially if you take the view that they shouldn't know NPCs' motivations.

 

[Manbearcat]

Yes, I absolutely agree. I love that kind of stuff. I prefer for there to be rules on how to go about it. And I don’t just mean “say my argument, then have the GM determine a DC, and make the roll”. I prefer that the mechanics of all this be as robust and engaging as the scenario you describe. The bribery and the invitations and the politicking....I want all of that to matter in some way I can understand so that I know the game and can then make meaningful and informed decisions.

Imagine baseball where the umpire didn’t call balls or strikes. He tracks them, but none of it is known to the players. How are they supposed to approach the game?

This is where “GM Decides” puts us.

Now, I know you’ll say “oh it’s about trust” but that’s not it. I may trust that the umpire has called each pitch exactly as he sees them. I just may not agree with his opinion.



It can matter if you like. “Wow that’s a really compelling argument....roll with advantage.” And so on.

When a 12th level fighter rolls a 4 on his attack and misses the fire giant, do you assume he’s tripped over his shoelaces and fallen on his face? Probably not. So again, why can’t a compelling argument, eloquently worded, still fail to sway anyone?

I think that if the player takes the time to really lay it on and does a good job, there’s nothing wrong with giving them a bonus of some kind, as per my example above.

I think this need to vet the attempts speaks to an underlying need to steer things. Whether it’s to preserve some idea about a NPC or other story element, or to keep some secret from the players that will matter later, or any other number of things.

Exactly.

A Social Score in Blades as a Tug-of-War Clock with 4-6 faces depending upon how complex the opposing views/situation is with (i) an Engagement Roll (based on play/what is said) and (ii) subsequent Position and Effect negotiated at the table based on what the evolving situation and what the player says/does as inputs. They're (a) still rolling dice but (b) what they say/do matters (to both the emerging fiction and as an input to action resolution + subsequent outgrowth and gamestate evolver).

 

[pemerton]

Why not just let them succeed at persuading in this case. What does the roll even add?

The possibility of failure. Much like the rolls in combat, even if the player describes an amazing offensive manouevre.

 

[Fenris-77]

But my point is this: writing a story about an orc that gets killed is no different from writing a story about a wall that turns out to have a secret way through it.

You keep mentioning the door. My point is that the wall is established fiction (part of the framing), and embellishing that established fiction by adding a secret way through it (which has been discovered in virtue of a search) is no different from embellishing the established fiction of the Orc by adding that now its dead (because killed in virtue of an attack).

There authorship, and hence authorial agency, involved in either case is the same. Each embellishes an established fictional situation by adding something to it that changes the state/nature/details of an established element (wall in one case, Orc in the other).

Neither involves any greater or lesser narrative control. The difference is purely one of subject matter.

Weeeelll, in a thread entitled A Question of Agency, I would submit that who does the narrating of the diegetic frame might be a topic of some importance. Flame wars have been had over this particular bit of real estate and differences here are pretty key in how many people in the hobby classify different RPG systems. So there's that.

 

[pemerton]

I personally am also not a huge fan of going to the dice to resolve friendly negotiations where everyone is negotiating from a position of good faith. I think talking it out at the table does a good job of modeling building real life consensus. There's no real tension in such exchanges. I like to go to the dice for those moments where an NPC might catch you in a lie or you are showing a willingness to commit violence. Those moments should feel tense.

The most recent sessions I have played have been Classic Traveller. Classic Traveller has a system for determining the (generally hostile) response of NPCs to the witnessed use of psionics.

The point of making a check in this case is to determine the "cost" or consequence to the players of their psionics-using choices. It's a social variant on a "spell failure" roll which is a part of many fantasy RPGs.

 

[pemerton]

Weeeelll, in a thread entitled A Question of Agency, I would submit that who does the narrating of the diegetic frame might be a topic of some importance. Flame wars have been had over this particular bit of real estate and differences here are pretty key in how many people in the hobby classify different RPG systems. So there's that.

The secret door is no more part of the "diegetic frame" than is the death of the Orc. It's discovery is a point of resolution following the rising action of the search; just as the death of the Orc is a point of resolution that follows the rising action of the fight.

Sometimes a fiction will prefigure that moment of resolution by showing us the door (Chekov's door?). Likewise we might foreshadow the death of the Orc by seeing another Orc defeated a certain way, or by seeing this particular Orc in a fight. But RPGs - for obvious reasons that follow from the way the fiction is generated - tend not to require foreshadowing or prefiguring as a necessary precursor to a particular resolution.

 

[Fenris-77]

You keep replying to my posts and I continue to have trouble connecting your replies to anything I've said. I'm not saying the problem there is you, btw.

Edit: I think we may be working with some different definitions of what the diegetic frame is too. I'm using in it to refer to the "internal world created by the story that the characters themselves experience and encounter" which is to say mostly the same way the term is used in cinema, and also in most RPG theory I've read. Where are we getting our wires crossed here? Because both the orc and the door fit my definition.