A Question Of Agency?

[hawkeyefan]

Because I don't think that is what agency is in an RPG.

Okay, so you reject my idea of agency and railroading. But you're the one whose ideas are being attacked?

I hope you realize how this might be frustrating.

I just don't find being given narrative control, or the ability to set the play agenda as a form of agency. I've played games that allow it. I mentioned hill folk and had lots of fun generating off camera setting content through dialogue. It was highly immersive. I didn't feel it gave me agency though, because I guess it gelt like a 'cheat' in that respect. It felt like I was given narrative power, and for what the game was doing that narrative power was cool and fun. I am presently reading the Hillfolk rulebook and hoping to one day do either a straight up I Claudius Campaign with it, or run my roman game using it. I am not knocking this style at all. It just legitimately doesn't strike me as agency, and it isn't how I've used agency for all the years I've used and encountered the word in RPG gaming.

I'm not talking about narrative power so much as the player being able to introduce some goals or ideas to the fiction....especially ones connected to his character. "I'd like my character to found a school" or "I want to build a keep" or "I want to unify the shattered lands". These don't seem like narrative power so much as a player giving the GM a cue as to what they'd like to see come up in play.

The GM is free to not allow these things to manifest. But then I don't see how you can claim that this supports player agency. It's paradoxical just from a definitional standpoint.

To be clear on the scholar front, I responded in another post, but want to address it again here. In the setting I was running there was an imperial exam system based on the Song Dynasty and I was using my own game which has rules for advancing through the exams. Now I could have done rulings instead (asking for various checks), but I liked having concrete methods and I am pasting them below so you can see what I am talking about. But note, there would also be clear rules for the player conduction search. There are skills in the game that can be used to search and find clues, there are rules for traveling by ship etc. The brothers aliveness or deadness though would not be determined by any of those methods. That is a separate issue under the purview of the GM.

So you're saying yes? The character could have succeeded?

Understanding and recognizing that we tend to mean different things by the same word seems to be the starting point for any productive discussion.

Until all/most of the participants acknowledge the two different ways agency is used are both valid ways of using the word this discussion isn’t going to go beyond why we can’t use a word to mean what we are accustomed to having it mean.

Interesting. Please see the post I quoted above.

But the goal, as phrased, isn't a viable one. In a sandbox, you can't set that kind of goal and have the expectation the GM will let that outcome unfold

Not the outcome. Just the idea. Just the journey. That there are ways to see this come up......like there were for the player whose character wanted to be a scholar. He ultimately failed, but there was a way for him to pursue that agenda.

If all your scholar tests were impassable because you had some setting idea you wanted to preserve about how difficult it is to become a scholar, would you say that this impacted the player's agency? Would you have let the player know this? Or would you let him think it's possible, and then just watch as the character strove for it despite the fact that the conclusion was foregone?

 

[FrogReaver]

Here's something to consider : Do different sorts of fiction offer different amounts of agency. Like to me it's patently obvious that when I'm playing Exalted where a starting character can start as a world class swordsman, have substantial connections in the setting, and may even have an army, and substantial divine blessings they have considerably more ability to enact their will upon the setting than a game where I play a fairly weak conscript who has little autonomy in the fiction. For purposes of this discussion assume similar GMing techniques apply.

In my personal definition of agency that’s power.

absolutely no power does translate into a lack of agency.

but one of the most important agency determiners is the question: can you cause important things to change? And you can cause important things to change with no real power.

the way you have set up the conscripts situation he doesn’t sound like he has much agency. But add a few details and that assessment could change.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@hawkeyefan but certainly 'your brother is dead' is a valid outcome of a journey of finding said brother? (And not automatically a dramatically unsatisfying one.)

 

[FrogReaver]

I think we have to be able to draw of our experience though and report that in these discussions (and the opinions of players in our circles and people in our communities are going to matter: they can even be an important reality check for the poster in question, me).

Also I am not saying the niche perspectives are not worth engaging. My own style is niche, it isn't the norm. But within that niche, there is a norm of play. That norm doesn't create an ought, we are all free to move away from it for any reason, and there is no problem with doing so. But understanding that norm is important because it does inform how terms like agency get used in the broader community, and it does inform the assumptions some of us have going into this discussion.

It strikes me that if you had asked those in your circles and the answer had been total disagreement with you and agreement that the other definition is what they use that their inclusion in this discussion would have been welcomed with open arms. Can anyone say that’s wrong?

 

[prabe]

Here's something to consider : Do different sorts of fiction offer different amounts of agency. Like to me it's patently obvious that when I'm playing Exalted where a starting character can start as a world class swordsman, have substantial connections in the setting, and may even have an army, and substantial divine blessings they have considerably more ability to enact their will upon the setting than a game where I play a fairly weak conscript who has little autonomy in the fiction. For purposes of this discussion assume similar GMing techniques apply.

If the two characters are somehow in the same setting, I agree.

If one can somehow GM radically different settings (and probably stories) with the same techniques, that might not be the case. How much a given character can affect their setting is among other things going to depend on the capabilities of whatever opposition there is. How much a given character can affect their story is going to depend on the extent a given game/setting allows them to set their own goals. I don't know Exalted specifically, but my impression of White Wolf's games in general (based on not tons of play) was that there was frequently opposition more than capable of interfering with a given character (or party) and the published adventures and other supplements really, really didn't allow for the characters to set their own goals (which, to be fair, is a problem with published adventures in general). That impression could have been mostly shaped by the table (note the singular) and should not be taken as impugning the games or those who play them.

 

[prabe]

I’m not seeing how that’s different than the DM setting the dc of any other activity in the game?

mans if the PCs are doing something relevant to the outcome that is being taken into account.

In some ways it's not all that different, but if it's something happening offscreen it seems as though it's hard to say the players can reasonably expect to affect the outcome much--which isn't a dig at the approach/style at all: different tastes and table expectations and all-a-that.

 

[FrogReaver]

In some ways it's not all that different, but if it's something happening offscreen it seems as though it's hard to say the players can reasonably expect to affect the outcome much--which isn't a dig at the approach/style at all: different tastes and table expectations and all-a-that.

Players help faction X achieve goal x. Faction X then gets into conflict with faction Y over z that is offscreen. Often that faction X was able to achieve a goal they wouldn’t have achieved is factored in to the “DC” to resolve that factions conflict.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Here's something to consider : Do different sorts of fiction offer different amounts of agency. Like to me it's patently obvious that when I'm playing Exalted where a starting character can start as a world class swordsman, have substantial connections in the setting, and may even have an army, and substantial divine blessings they have considerably more ability to enact their will upon the setting than a game where I play a fairly weak conscript who has little autonomy in the fiction. For purposes of this discussion assume similar GMing techniques apply.

Good question. In a certain sense yes, but then again it also depends on the scope of the game. Like if the game just focuses on the fate of one village or the personal relationships of a bunch of people over a summer in a country mansion, then being able to affect those things is what matters.

But I think the Exalted games I've ran tended to have higher player agency than my D&D games, as the characters simply had more ways to affect the setting (though high level D&D character tend to gain similar power.) I think Exalted and typical D&D have kind of similar scope in a sense that in both there tends to be a big open world with a ton of powerful magical creatures and beings, but in Exalted you start at much higher in the pecking order. I think my Dragon-Blooded campaign had pretty high level of player agency, higher than my Celestial Exalt campaign or the D&D 4e/Fate (yes, it was converted to Fate at some point!) game I was playing in where the characters became gods.

And yes, the Dragon-Blooded had less magical mojo than the Celestial exalts, but they had political power and freedom to move around in the setting. That definitely helped the players to express their agency, but I think what actually contributed even more was the lack of overarching 'main plot.' There was not some colossal 'the fate of the world depends on you' type of main story in that campaign, that I find is pretty common in games with powerful characters (both my Celestial exalted game and the D&D/Fate game I was playing in had such.) That is something that I've actually grown quite tired of (it is overused in other media too) as it warps everything to be about that one thing and actually massively limits what the characters can plausibly do. (Sorry, I kinda wandered past your original question...)

 

[prabe]

Players help faction X achieve goal x. Faction X then gets into conflict with faction Y over z that is offscreen. Often that faction X was able to achieve a goal they wouldn’t have achieved is factored in to the “DC” to resolve that factions conflict.

I'm pretty sure @Bedrockgames was talking about determining the results procedurally, without as much player input as you seem to be implying. I'm willing to be corrected, though.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not talking about narrative power so much as the player being able to introduce some goals or ideas to the fiction....especially ones connected to his character. "I'd like my character to found a school" or "I want to build a keep" or "I want to unify the shattered lands". These don't seem like narrative power so much as a player giving the GM a cue as to what they'd like to see come up in play.

The GM is free to not allow these things to manifest. But then I don't see how you can claim that this supports player agency. It's paradoxical just from a definitional standpoint.

Because you are setting outcomes with those goals. In a sandbox, you don't get to set the outcome. You can have your goal being to establish a school. How it pans out will be a combination of what you legitimately achieve in the setting through your character, randomness, and the GM. The GM in a sandbox isn't going to unilaterally stifle that goal, but he is in charge of things like whether keeps actually exist in the setting, and whether kinds of opportunities you might find in the setting for starting a school. You are free to train in martial arts, develop and find your techniques, then try to find students to form a school around (and I think in most of my sandboxes, that would have a pretty good chance of resulting in you starting a school, provided you weren't puking all over yourself the whole time or something). But I get the sense you are coming at this more from a perspective of 'here is the drama I want to explore in the campaign', and that simply isn't how sandboxes tend to work in terms of agency.