A Question Of Agency?

[pemerton]

Regarding the Shire, I suspect it has a history because Tolkien wrote a story about a Hobbit from it, looking at it from outside that story. So, the causality in the real world might be kinda backward to whatever fictional causality might exist. As in, in the fiction, the hobbits are thus because the Shire is like so; in the real world, the Shire is written to be like so because it would make the hobbits thus. I'm worried I'm being unclear here.

Not very unclear, I don't think. I also think you're more-or-less restating @Aebir-Toril's point about the lack of causality/temporal integrity in fiction vis-a-vis the real world.

I was going to finish with that, but will add something.

Taken in itself, Aebir-Toril's point is pretty self-evident, even trite. The reason it is nevertheless worth stating is because, among RPGers, there is a tendency to treat the fiction as if it itself exercises causal power, or as if the narration of it is constrained by an inner causal or temporal logic (which would be a much much tighter constraint than internal consistency).

You can see that happening in this thread, eg when @FrogReaver confuses the player performing a check that establishes (inter alia) that a tower was built in the imagined past with the character performs an action of recollecting said tower and thereby causes (in the fiction) the tower to exist. And for the avoidance of doubt, here is the post I have in mind:

Characters fictional actions either cause something to happen in the fiction or they don't.

There are 3 cases.
1. Characters action is the cause of something that happens in the fiction such that the character could say "my action caused this" and have it be true within the fiction.
2. Characters action is the cause of something that happens in the fiction such that the character would say "my action did not cause this" and have it be true within the fiction.
3. Characters action did not cause something to happen in the fiction in any way.

<snip>

Character actions that cause something to happen in the fiction but that the character could say in the fiction "my action did not cause this" hamper role playing (because characters do things for a reason and this takes away the reason they would ever perform that action).

FrogReaver's second case does not exist, and it can only be presented as if it did because of treating an action in the real world whereby a player causing a fiction to be authored/established and an action performed by an imaginary character that produces an imagined causal change in the character's imagined world as if they are the same, or at least in causal interaction with one another.

 

[FrogReaver]

You can see that happening in this thread, eg when @FrogReaver confuses the player performing a check that establishes (inter alia) that a tower was built in the imagined past with the character performs an action of recollecting said tower and thereby causes (in the fiction) the tower to exist. And for the avoidance of doubt, here is the post I have in mind:

Here you go again making stuff up about my positions.

FrogReaver's second case does not exist, and it can only be presented as if it did because of treating an action in the real world whereby a player causing a fiction to be authored/established and an action performed by an imaginary character that produces an imagined causal change in the character's imagined world as if they are the same, or at least in causal interaction with one another.

The second case is literally what we have been talking about the last 5 pages...

The one where your characters "look for friends" action has no causal relationship inside the fiction with the chance encounter the out of fiction mechanic caused to happen.

 

[FrogReaver]

I am very confident that if I had led with an explanation that referenced Ron Edwards you would have rejected it. Especially given that you "liked" this post:

I imply you had a good paragraph that I mostly agreed with and your response is that you believe I would just reject it. WOW! With this I don't see a point in continuing. You've placed me in a box and assigned to me positions, beliefs, and even actions that don't apply to such a degree that even when I tell you something I actually think or believe that you no longer believe me. No productive discussion is going to come of that. And heck, the icing on the cake is that you think I'd reject something out of hand because Ron Edwards (or anyone) said it... just wow!

 

[pemerton]

Here you go again making stuff up about my positions.


The second case is literally what we have been talking about the last 5 pages...

The one where your characters "look for friends" action has no causal relationship inside the fiction with the chance encounter the out of fiction mechanic caused to happen.

Nothing that takes place in the fiction can have a causal relationship to anything in the real world.

And vice versa.

There is no character action that is the cause of something in the fiction which the character could truly say "I did not cause". (This is your category 2.)

In the fiction, the character hopes and looks out for his former comrade. And meets him.

At the table, the player - me - declares an action for his PC (namely, I hope and look out for a former comrade to help us). I make the Circles check. It succeeds. In the fiction, Thurgon and Aramina meet Friedrich.

It's pretty straightforward: an event in the real world (action declaration) leads via social processes to another event in the real world (a check) which leads via cognitive processes (reading the dice, looking up the rules etc) to everyone at the table agreeing that in the fiction, Thurgon and Aramina meet Friedich.

The causal processes involved are no different from when Thurgon fought some Orcs: an event in the real world (action declaration) leads via social processes to another event in the real world (a check) which leads via cognitive processes (reading the dice, looking up the rules etc) to everyone at the table agreeing that in the fiction, Thurgon fought off an Orc.

You prefer an additional constraint: that there be a fairly type mapping between the resolution processes in the real world and the imagined causal processes in the fiction. This is not a causal constraint (as per my previous two paragraphs, in each case the causation is the same). It is a topic/subject-matter constraint about what sort of fiction you are willing to have determined via a process where a player declares an action and then makes a check.

I'm pretty confident that no one in this thread is confused about your preference. I think most participants in this thread have read Edwards' essay that I linked to upthread, and he describes your preferences perfectly clearly. (I quoted the relevant passages a few pages upthread.)

The reason that you are getting the pushback you are is because you want to insist that your aesthetic preference tracks or correlates to a causal process; and to insist that RPGing that doesn't conform to your aesthetic preference is a hindrance on roleplay. Neither of those claims is true.

I imply you had a good paragraph that I mostly agreed with and your response is that you believe I would just reject it. WOW! With this I don't see a point in continuing. You've placed me in a box and assigned to me positions, beliefs, and even actions that don't apply to such a degree that even when I tell you something I actually think or believe that you no longer believe me. No productive discussion is going to come of that. And heck, the icing on the cake is that you think I'd reject something out of hand because Ron Edwards (or anyone) said it... just wow!

No one is forcing you to post in this thread. But have you noticed that no one in this thread has posted that your preferences are a burden on RPGing. Whereas, as I mentioned already in this post, a few pages upthread you posted this:

Character actions that cause something to happen in the fiction but that the character could say in the fiction "my action did not cause this" hamper role playing (because characters do things for a reason and this takes away the reason they would ever perform that action). Then the final A->B: if roleplay is being hampered then my agency to roleplay is being hampered (which should be fairly obvious IMO).

Now as I've posted there are no character actions thqt cause soemthing to happen in the fiction but that the character cold say in the fiction "my action did not cause this". But you intend this description to cover Wises checks and Circles checks as I have described them from my BW play. Which is to say, you intend to tell me that RPGing is hampering my roleplaying. In part, because my characters have no reasons for the actions they perform.

Not only is that a false description of my actual play - Thurgon had a reason to hope to meet and look out for an ally, namely, because he wanted help to cross the river and find Evard's tower; and Aramina had a reason to remember that Evard's tower was in the vicinity, namely, that she wanted to loot it of spellbooks - but it is a direct attack upon my RPGing.

I've posted multiple times how this play of Thurgon and Aramina follows exactly the same resolution process as fighting an Orc - declare action, frame check, resolve check and establish resultant fiction. But because the fictional subject matter is not one that you would prefer to establish in that way - you would prefer that all such things be established in advance by the GM rather than as outcomes of an action resolution process - you are insisting that it hampers RPGing and coming up with bad arguments as to why.

 

[Lanefan]

I suppose it rests on how much you actually cling to a notion of integrity in your gaming.

Without integrity, what's the point?

A check to find someone in a crowd, which, on a success, retroactively makes that person exist there, might not seem very realistic, but it's as plausible within the fiction as finding food from nowhere.

Let's say that the check retroactively makes you do something, in the past, like writing letters to said friend.

It's a very non-linear method of check resolution, but it's equally as valid in certain games as foraging.

Truth be told, I'm largely on board with the idea of a random roll of some sort that results in your PC happening to bump into an old friend, largely because stuff like that happens in real life on a sururpsingly common (if unpredictable) basis. In itself, this doesn't threaten integrity.

I fall off the bandwagon, though, at the point where the randomness extends into making you do something in the past, particularly if that something is otherwise out of character. By this I mean if you've already set your PC up as a consistent letter-writer then the thought of having exchanged letters now and then in the past with this particular old friend you've bumped into is quite plausible. But if you haven't, then plausibility (and thus integrity) comes under threat.

 

[Lanefan]

But looking for for food doesn't make there be rabbits around. Sometimes someone who is expert at looking for food nevertheless fails to find it simply because the rabbits are all somewhere else.

In this respect rabbits are no different from Evard's tower...

Why does this bring to mind a surreal image of a tower growing little legs and fleeing over the hill in order to avoid the hunter seeking it?

 

[Lanefan]

In the game state, the food is created when the check succeeds.
In the story state, the food can be presumed to have existed prior to being found.

This raises an interesting point: which comes first and-or takes precedence, the game state or the story state?

Put another way, does the game state always determine the resulting story state, or does the story state always determine the resulting game state, or is it a bit of both?

In this particular example, I'd say the story state (i.e. there's food to be found here) determines the game state (successful finding of food).

 

[Bedrockgames]

The game is what the players are playing, right? And that game consists of establishing a shared fiction, right? This is done through players declaring actions for their characters in the game, and through the GM establishing scenes and building on what the players put forth.

This isn't how many of us conceive of play. Shared fiction isn't a term I've ever been able to embrace. It just seems loaded and feels like it is part of the problem in a discussion like this one (moving things towards a specific way of thinking about setting and play). And scenes are not how everyone things of play either. I never think of what is going on as a 'scene'. I have done so for certain play groups or when playing certain games (like Essoterrorists for example). But generally speaking, scenes are not how I think of a play (and you can see the difference in how people who use that language in this thread approach play, versus those who don't).

 

[Lanefan]

Nothing that takes place in the fiction can have a causal relationship to anything in the real world.

Bob's character kills Joe's character in the fiction. This causes Joe to throw a d6 at Bob in the real world.

Next session: Mary's character pays for Joe's character's raise from death. This causes Joe to buy Mary a beer later that week in the Real World*.

Fiction ==> real world causality seems pretty cut and dried from here.

* - if that's not already a name for a gamers-themed pub somewhere it bloody well should be!

 

[Aldarc]

The introduction of the forest does not introduce the food. It introduces the possibility of food.

Much like how finding a painting in a haunted house may not mean that the painting is supernatural, but it introduces the possibility.