A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

Roleplay can work just fine when the GM is unfair. It's not so great if the GM's skewed against players having successes, but an unfair GM can be a lot of fun for a while, if they're tilted in the player's favor.

I bolded the key bit; as after that while has passed, what then?

The early-days form of what you advocate for here was ye olde Monty Haul DM, and to the same result: great fun for a while, until the game collapsed under its own weight long before it otherwise might have.

It parallels watching a typical action or detective show: you know the cast will accomplish the mission... but how? That's what we watch to see.

What you watch to see, maybe. To me that's the most boring bit - that the heroes or good guys will always win in the end.

 

[Lanefan]

It really isn't the specific disposition of the brother which is the issue. It is more the idea that a) a player generated agenda like this is merely a side-show from the real business of delving the GM's dungeon (or whatever) b) that the disposition is simply handled without any regard to anything the player might indicate is interesting, or the character's actions/nature might point towards. Yes, the character could be 'living in Praetos City' but then why? There's certainly a family dynamic to explore, at least. The brother might be up to no good. Perhaps he hears of the search for him and sows red herrings far and wide. I mean, a lot more can happen, and would be INTERESTING to happen than "you show up at the city and find your brother." (dead or alive for that matter).

I think you missed my point completely in several ways.

First, in the post you quoted I was trying to winnow out the difference, if any, in the perceived 'dick move' level if the fate of the brother was positive rather than negative. If I got any bites on that I haven't seen them yet, I'm responding to posts as I read them.

Second, I need to know the brother's current state/status/location first so I can determine what the PC might be up against (or not) in his search, and what steps might be required and-or what steps will be of some use, might be of some use, or won't help at all in the search. Finding a high-and-mighty merchant, for example, is likely to be far easier than finding a two-years-dead commoner. Asking around in Praetos is more likely to produce results if the brother is actually in Praetos than if he's been the last three years in Spieadeia, 300 miles to the south. Etc.

I neither said nor implied that the player's search would be resolved player-side by one roll or a tossed-off remark. Hell, if the player wants I can drag it out for ages.

What is done quickly is the initial DM-side determination of where the brother is and what he might be doing there.

 

[Lanefan]

You know this also completely explains lots of games, including many that don't look like yours at all, right? It's so vague that it doesn't have much explanatory power at all -- it could sound like anyone's game.

Pebbles dropped into a harbour and having the ripples go where they may still leaves the water in control. The pebbles, in the end, are just pebbles.

Some other games in a similar analogy appear to have the pebble never sink; or the ripples go only in controlled directions; but in truth the analogy rather fails here.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Bedrockgames Did you think that you had to guess what my notes were or how I thought about the situation? @Ovinomancer He played in my session.

No. I had the sense that we could pretty much do anything, but like you said, this was a streamed session and a one shot, so we were adhering to the scenario and trying to make the best use of time. But I felt I could have tried to go anywhere, do anything, etc. And I think describing that as guessing what it is in the GM's notes (a description of this style that has arisen earlier in this thread, and a description I reject), doesn't at all capture the sense of freedom we were feeling at the table

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ultimately, many of the details are not yet set. This is by design so that the GM and players are free to kind of build their own city.

This is probably the aspect that would go over least well. The players would definitely expect me to have a city developed, and even if there were details of it they were probing that I had invented yet, they would expect those details to come from me (since i know all the basic details of the city enough that I can extrapolate what ought to be in a given area, and whom). That said, where they choose to explore, is definitely going to help detemine what get's shaped in the session. It is just they wouldn't want to be calling the shots on the details in any way unless it was something their characters were making (for example we had a group take over a section of buildings in town and convert them into a headquarters, so through the efforts of their characters, the effectively added someting to the map. Also I would have as many details pinned down about groups in the city as possible (so a city map is likely to have the headquarters of gangs and sects marked------though there have been time I have left that kind of detail fuzzy for a given group----but normally that is hammered out)

 

[Fenris-77]

One method of cooperative setting building that might work for you, I can't remember where I read it, it to couch the player input in terms of rumours, stories and legends, in other words stuff they've heard about. You give them some locations, factions and whatnot, with some basic info, and your players come up with some stuff, but that stuff isn't fact, so the mystery of the setting is maintained while still getting the players dialed into the setting. If that stuff indexes ideas and themes they are interested in you still get all that juicy hook bait too. Anyway, it might work for you.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I disagree with a large chunk of this. Only a few possible outcomes from a player action really only occurs when the situation is so pre-decided by the GM that this constrains action outcomes.

This isn't my experience at all with this. Not only can the players literally do whatever they want within what situation is presented, their actions and their choices created new situations that the GM then has the setting responds to. Unless the GM and players can only think of three possibilities at a time (and sorry simply insn't my experience on either side of the screen here), this simply isn't the case. I could really care less if others agree or not to be honest, I know what my own experience of play is. But I am a bit forceful on this point because this was the thing that struck me like thunder the first time I sat down to play an RPG: it was a level of freedom and immersion I had never experienced before in any other medium (movie, book, video game, etc). And it was due to the power of the GM saying "What do you want to do" and the fact that my answer could be anything I thought of within the limits of my character.

 

[robconley]

I don't know what contrast you are drawing between "following the rules" and "how you think it ought to be". Presumably the rules tell you how it ought to be?

The rules don't tell you what happens when the PCs kills the knight's son in barroom brawl. The description of the knight character will lay out the range of possibilities for his reaction and the resources at his disposal. In addition the details of his culture and society will define other means he has at his disposal.

In any event, at this level of generality I think my Classic Traveller game comes close to fitting your description. But it is not a pebbles-in-the-pond game.

I run Traveller the exact same way I run my Majestic Wilderlands. The players are free to do anything that is possible for their character to do. Because some editions like Classic Traveller have little in the way of character advancement it become doubly important because "advancement" is about getting ahead in the campaign's setting (Third Imperium or something else).

 

[pemerton]

I want to contrast two approaches to how a GM frames a situation. One is the worked play example from the Apocalypse World rulebook; the other is my actual play of Prince Valiant, that I've already mentioned upthread.

Vincent Baker's example (AW pp 154-55)​

Spoiler

[The example begins with Marie the Brainer causing some trouble among Plover and his friends by kinda-inadvertently hurting Isle]​

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“Sweet. Plover thinks she’s just leaning her head on his shoulder, but she’s bleeding out her ears and eventually he’ll notice his shirt sticking to his shoulder from her blood. Do you stick around?” I’m telling possible consequences and asking.​

“[Heck] no.”​

“Where do you go?”​

“I go home, I guess.”​

“So you’re home an hour later?” See me setting up my future move! I’m thinking offscreen: how long is it going to take Plover to get a crew together?​

“Hold on, it was only 1-harm—”​

“I know. She’ll be okay. It’s Plover who’s the biggest threat.”​

This is what honesty demands [because of a prior read a situation result which established Plover as the biggest threat]. “Are you home an hour later or where?”​

“[Damn]. Yes, home.”​

“Having tea?” Ask questions like crazy!​

“No tea. Pacing. I have my gun and my pain grenade and the door’s triple-locked. I wish Roark were here."​

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Here’s my big plan, by the way. Isle’s listed in the cast for a threat called Isle’s family, which is a brute: family (naturally enough). Its impulse, accordingly, is to close ranks and protect their own. What’s most fun is that I’m acting on that impulse but I’m using Plover, Church Head and Whackoff — members of Keeler’s gang! — as Isle’s family’s weapon. It’s just like when Keeler uses them to go aggro or seize by force, only I’m the one doing it.​

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If Keeler lets me, that is. Keeler thinks about imposing her will upon her gang to stop them, her player thinks about it too. She twists her mouth around, thinking about it.​

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Finally, instead, “knock yourself out,” she says.​

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Marie’s player: “damn it, Keeler.”​

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“So, Marie: at home, pacing, armed, locked in, yeah? They arrive suddenly at your door with a solid kick, your whole door rattles. You hear Whackoff’s voice: ‘she’s expecting us I guess.’” I’m announcing future badness.​

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[From here, the situation escalates into a fight between Marie and Plover et al. Marie ends up winning by using her weird powers.]​

What I've quoted is about one page of a nearly seven page play example. It's the transition from the first scene in that example - the initial situation where Isle gets hurt - to the second scene, the attack by Plover and crew on Marie in her house. I would say it's the high point of GM agency in that example of play.

What exactly does the GM do with that agency?

The GM prompts Marie's player - where do you go? - and confirms that she's home. The GM exercises his (Vincent's) own initiative in using another PC's gang members as the antagonists in the next scene. This is an example of interweaving the stories and interests of multiple PCs; the other player - Keeler's player - could have intervened in relation to this, but chooses not to. And the GM operates under certain constraints beyond this one that arises from sticking his fingers on Keeler's player's stuff: he has to stick to the established fiction (that Plover is the biggest threat); he has to think offscreen (does Plover have enough time to get a crew together?); and he has to follow his prep in relation to Isle's family, the brute family with the impulse to close ranks and protect its own.

Notes are referenced - the GM's notes about Isle's family; and also "public" notes about Keeler's gang membership. But there is no map-and-key involved, nor any random tables. The understanding of time and place is real, but loose. Did Plover et al walk to Marie's house, or drive there in a dune buggy with a mounted machine gun? We don't know, and nor does Vincent though maybe he's thought about it. Or maybe he hasn't, yet.

My actual play example (link here)​

Spoiler

Our last two sessions of Prince Valiant have seen the PCs trying to make their way from France to the Holy Land. . . .​

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The second of these two sessions - which we played on Sunday - began with the decision to liquidate all assets (incuding the captured pirate ship) on the grounds that the PCs didn't have the resources to maintain a chapter house of their order in Sicily.​

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They then set sail again.​

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Exercising GM fiat, I declared that as they were crossing between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula the storms were incredibly fierce, and the captain of their ships decided to cut his losses, and dock and sell his cargo in Dalmatia. The PCs therefore set of on the overland trek to Constantinople.​

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This was a fairly obvious contrivance to seed some scenarios. The players didn't object.​

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The core rulebook has three scenarios that involve fighting Huns, and I used the first of them: the PCs and their band (by this point 13 mounted men-at-arms plus the three knight PCs, and 42 footmen) were crossing through fairly rough and mountainous country when they were set upon by a band of 50-odd Huns. . . . The way the scenario is written it assume resolution via single combat, but this was clearly going to be a mass combat, and I improvised stats for the Hun leader (making sure he was weaker than the notorious Hun leader who figures in the third of these Hun-fighting scenarios). I had also decided (via extrapolation from the scenario set-up) that there were 20-odd huns in an ambushing flanking manouevre . . . .​

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[The PCs forces are victorious, with some effective leadership by the PC knights.]​

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Sir Justin failed in a Healing check to save the lives of injured soldiers on his side, and so the forces were slightly depleted, but Sir Gerran gave a speech to the captured Huns explaining the greatness of St Sigobert and the order's cause and made a very successful Oratory roll, with the result that 32 Huns joined the PCs' forces, giving them a highly useful mounted archery capability.​

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I asked the players who would be with the four of them if they were scouting ahead to verify whether the band could pass safely through the forest, and they nominated their two NPC hunters - Algol the Bloodthirsty who is in service to Sir Morgath, and Rhan, the woman who had joined them at the end of the last session I posted about.​

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I was using the Rattling Forest scenario from the Episode Book, and described the "deep and clawing shadows [that[ stretch across the path, and the wind [that] rattles through the trees." The PCs soon found themselves confronted by a knight all in black and wearing a greatsword, with a tattered cape hanging from his shoulders, and six men wielding swords and shields, their clothes equally tattered. The scenario description also mentions that they have "broken trinkets and personal effects" and I described rings and collars that were worn, notched and (in some cases) broken. The description of the collars was taken by the players as a sign that these were Celts (wearing torcs), and I ran with that. . . .​

The players, and at least some of the PCs, had decided that there must be something in the forest that would be the anchor or locus of the curse, and Twillany's player spend the earlier-awarded Storyteller Certificate to Find Something Hidden ("An item which is lost, hidden, or otherwise concealed is discovered almost by accident by a character. The thing must be relatively close at hand, and the character must be searching for it at the moment.").​

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The published scenario doesn't say anything about this, so I had to make something up: as Twillany and Rhan were riding along the path deeper into the forest, Twillany's horse almost stumbled on something unexpected underfoot. Inspection revealed it to be a great tree stump that had been cut close to the ground, levelled and smoothed, and engraved with a sigil very like one that Twillany had noticed on the Bone Laird's cloak as the two women had ridden past him. It seemed to be a mysteriously preserved wooden dais of an ancient house or stronghold - and looking about it there were still visible signs of posts and postholes of a steading wall. . . .​

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The resolution here was unfolding fairly quickly . . . the upshot was that Twillany's player decided that the curse couldn't be lifted simply by working on the dais - the Bone Laird would have to be brought back there to confront it . . . Twillany and Rhan therefore returned to where they had left the Bone Laird, his warriors and the other PCs. . . .

Sir Justin had the idea of converting these ancient Celtic ghosts to Christianity and the reverence of St Sigobert - "a Celtic saint" as he emphasised several times - and he also thought that their bones could be put in the reliquary that had been made for martyrs of the order . . .​

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[The encounter ended with Algol going back to the PCs' main force and returning with the reliquary, and the PCs persuading the Bone Laird that he and his men would find rest and release from their geas if they acknowledged God and St Sigobert and had their bones placed in the reliquary. The Bone Laird beheaded his men, and then Sir Morgath - a PC - beheaded the Bone Laird with the Bone Laird's own enchanted blade.]​

I've edited my actual play report to try to bring out the moments of high GM agency. Like Vincent Baker's example, there is the asking of questions - in this case to establish who (the PCs and their hunters) rather than where (Marie's house). There was no map-and-key used - the only map was an ordinary map of Europe which we all looked at together.

There were notes used, in the form of the two episodes (the Huns and the Rattling Forest); these informed framing, and yielded NPC stats, but did not inform resolution beyond that. In the Rattling Forest episode certain key elements - that the NPC spirits were ancient Celts, and that there was an anchor of the curse - were established by the players.

When I compare this actual play example to the AW one, the main difference I see is less thinking offscreen. The idea of the ghosts as ancient Celts comes from the players thinking offscreen rather than the GM, and it doesn't generate significant constraints - what it does do is produce material that is relevant to downstream action declaration and resolution.

I don't think either of these examples fits the definition of "true sandbox". They both show "interactions of ripples" - but the method for determining what those interactions look like is quite different from the method of GM extrapolation from pre-prepared fiction.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, PbtA games generally aren't "true sandboxes" the way, for example, the OSR would define it. The amount of prep necessary for a true sandbox is antithetical to the "play to find out" ethos.

My personal GMing style for OSR lies somewhere between the true sandbox and the PbtA approach. I do fronts and sketches of locations and faces, and then start firming things up in response to the decisions the players make in play.