A Question Of Agency?

[robconley]

Um, I specifically talked to why I disagreed, which is not dismissal, it's engagement. I'm sorry if you feel attacked, that's not at all my intent. I'm being 100% honest when I say that you appear to run a fun game for your players that they seem to enjoy (seem only standing in for the fact that I don't know them or you, and can only judge from appearances). And, to me, that's the only goal of a game -- did you have fun?

I didn't feel attacked but I did think you had a misconception I find annoying as I encountered it many times. If I upset in my response I apologize.

And, that looks grand for the approach you're taking, but you're talking about letting players choose parts of the setting prior to play, or at specific points in play where such is allowed. After this, though, it's your evaluation of this. A game like Blades in the Dark is fundamentally a different beast.

Excellent

To give a quick example, the main part of the over-arching play loop

Ok so if I read your post right we are talking about.

• It about the Score a shorthand for a heist or something similar.
• A target is selected
• An approach is selected
• Once an approach is taken, a detail is selected.
• Question and discussion follows the object of which is to determine the number of dice in the Engagement which starts out the heist.
• The Engagement roll is made determine how well the Score starts out.

And this is where it ends in your example. I am a bit disappointed that you are describing how Blade in the Dark is played in general. Not a specific instance of actual play like I did. But I can work with this as while it is not a specific situation is a ingle narrow situation, the heist. Heists are something that occurs in my campaign as well.

This is a lot of agency for the players that's almost completely unmediated by the GM. The playloop in the Score also has a lot going on for the PCs, and I've described this recently since you've been in the thread in response to @FrogReaver. This is, I'm almost positive, nothing like your play approach. There's a lack of specificity until needed for instance.

I have players do the following

The player decides to pull off a heist in pursuit of their goal. I don't have a say in this.

The player select a target using their knowledge of the setting. I don't have a say in this.

An approach is selected. Unlike Blades in the Dark the players in my campaign are not constrained by a menu of choices. Instead they use their knowledge of the setting craft a approach tailored to the situation. I don't have a say in this.

Each approach has to have a detail is where there is a major difference. In general players know many of the details prior to the decision to do the heist by virtue of their knowledge of the setting. Here the detail are created after the decision that the group is going to play Blades in the Dark and create the experience of a heist movie. Another difference that the details are discovered not created on the fly. Through a combination of experience and out of game discussion I have an idea of what the player are considering doing and prepare accordingly if I don't have the details already.

Next the discussion of the dice (modifiers) to the Engagement. This also a major difference with my approach. In my campaign every step is played out in resolved in the same way as if the players were there in a virtual reality as their character. When playing OD&D over GURPS the steps may be handled in more detail or in a more abstract way but the steps are still played out. Also in Blades in the Dark there is no chance that the heist will be avoided.

The goal of the mechanics is just to see where in the heist the remaining steps start off yet. The assumption is that the heist will commence. In contrast in my approach, discovery of the details or more commonly the evaluation of the detail may result in the group not interested in commencing the heist. Which is OK because the point of the campaign is not to execute a heist. A heist in my campaign is just a means to an end of achieving some player's goal.

Which is another a major difference between my campaigns and Blades in the Dark. In my campaign the players can do anything that their character are capable of. They can find a dungeon and explore (Dungeon World), they can wander the ruins of a fallen empire of magic (Apocalypses World), they can plan out a heist (Blades in the Dark) within the same campaign and the same setting.

My view while the approach works for people, the actual implementations are so narrow in scope that the players wind up with less agency than my "traditional" campaign. Once the group embarks with Blades in the Dark the expectation is that the group will play out a heist to it conclusion. In all the session I been involved with or witnessed anything else (romance, exploration of the setting, etc) was incidental to getting on with the heist. The same with Dungeon World and other games with a similar approach.

Sure it great to get up an going with little prep and with everybody pitching, the price seems to be reduced scope, with agency reduced accordingly.

And to wrap this part of. I don't get to pick the details the player choose focus on either.

I think one disconnect we have, is you don't realize importance of how the setting described. I am not making up stuff all the time. It is actually uncommon. I am instead acting on information that been established beforehand. In the case of the Majestic Wilderlands often established decades ago by other players in pursuit of long ago goals. But even with my newer setting like Blackmarsh part of my preparation is talking with the players and making sure the details they focus on are established. If they are something the players ought to know as their character I provide them. It rare but I have been called out when something happened that the players found implausible. And I am able to produce notes written well before. And explain all the ways that the player could have learned about them but choose not to.

System absolutely can address this, and fairness, impartiality, and sportsmanship are utterly unnecessary.

Next the definition of sportmanship is fair and generous behavior or treatment while following the rules of a sport or game. So the only way that system can address this if the group exhibits good sportmanship by following the rules of the system. Can't have one without the other.

but we certainly don't want to watch him have a relaxing evening without terrorists.

Sounds like limiting agency to me. In my campaigns I had sessions that players enjoyed that amounted to a relaxing evening. I don't assume that the players want anything in particular other than to play the character they created. Since character are created with the setting of the campaign in mind they have built-in motivations to interact with the setting. Otherwise we would playing some other campaign in some other setting.

Instead, we're a fan because we love watching how he deals with the adversity of being trapped in a tower with terrorists, and how he succeeds! This is the kind of "being a fan" and "adversity" that I'm talking about, and it has nothing to do with "fairness" at all.

Except in my campaigns the players get the choice of leaving the tower. Or ensuring they are never trapped in a tower with terrorist in the first place.

System most definitely matters. Claiming otherwise shows a lack of experience outside of a narrow set of systems.

Since 1978, I have played D&D, AD&D, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Universe, Dragonquest, Champions, Fantasy Hero, Harnmaster, Runequest, AD&D 2e, Ars Magica, GURPS, GURPS with Whimsy Cards, Vampire the Masquerade, Mage the Ascension, D&D 3.0, D&D 3.5, Fantasy Age, Fudge (even wrote the beginning of my own Fudge RPG), Fate, The Fantasy Trip, D&D 4e, D&D 5e, my own D&D variant, Blades in the Dark, Dogs in the Vineyard, Dungeon World. Plus many many wargames and boardgames. Do you need a more formal curriculum vitae?

My view after all that is that system is a detail, an aide to make a specific campaign happen. Otherwise the group might as well be playing a wargame for all the agency they have. Because there isn't a system on the planet that can encompass all the things

Incidentally I find it humorous that I am being characterized as a "traditional" referee as because while people appreciate my comments and post on sandbox campaign, I also considered far out in left field by traditional referees because of my views on the role the rules, the system, setting, and campaign.

Oh, my, I haven't ever met anyone that thinks that tournament modules are a baseline for anything other than tournament modules.
Those are aimed at eliciting a very specific type of play -- asynchronous competitive play. I don't know any tables that look for this as a baseline for home play at all. I'm afraid that we've been exposed to violently different sets of players.

Yeah that not what a tournament style dungeon is. There is a subcategory of tournament dungeons (C2-Ghost Tower of Inverness). But a tournament style dungeon is broader category a way of formatting an adventure. The format being you have a keyed map and text organized by those keys. That is by far the overwhelming most common format of adventure available in the hobby and industry. And this is not guess, just survey the various adventure category on DriveThruRPG or RPGGeek

It is format that I found that doesn't work well for sandbox adventure that maximize players agency as their character. The travelogue style found in games like Ars Magica or the World of Darkness series works better but it is too wordy to use at the table. Plus despite being better many of these adventure are basically a railroad of some type and not really a sandbox. So I had to develop my own which I first formally published in Scourge in the Demon Wolf.

Yes, it is, but there are no laws of physics in the game, only the GM's ideas about laws of physics. Comparing real life to games is silly.

I disagree.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I do not think you can really talk about what we do when we sit down to play with Minecraft or Sim City as a game. Pretty much the entire body of thought around games and game design has no bearing on it. Something like Heavy Rain is similar for different reasons.

Last night we did some structured freeform based in the Abberant setting. Our play was very focused around the narrative we were building together and there was a lot of collaboration on setting elements. No rules were involved. There was no real objective to play other than exploring who our characters were. I do not think I would call it a game. We cannot approach designing the experience in the same way.

Then your definition of 'game' and the framework you use to understand games are obviously seriously flawed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So you wouldn’t say a player that lacks the ability to kill a dragon, lacks agency over/to kill a dragon?

IMHO this has nothing to do with agency. The dragon is an obstacle to the player's accomplishment of some goal (either fictional PC goal, or perhaps 'table goal' like 'have a super rich character'). Obstacles are there to simply create choices. Without them there is no meaning to the game at all. This is why the Czege Principal exists too, because there are no obstacles if you have power to simply declare them non-existent or overcome. Without obstacles/Czege there is just free-form 'table talk', which might be RP but has no real character as 'game' to it. At that point things like drama and tension cease to really happen at the table, though they might show up in a transcript of the session (IE read like a novel).

This is why I continue to argue that all the discussion of 'character level agency', BY ITSELF, is not very meaningful. It can become meaningful to a degree where obstacles exist and choices about how to overcome them and what costs to pay in doing so, are partly choices made by players. Now, some of that, as yourself, @estar, et al have stated, is perfectly feasible for a GM to put into player's hands within the fiction (IE do you go right or left? Where the players have some information that distinguishes the two 'wet and moldy smelling', vs 'dusty with fresh tracks'). The GM could also offer up 'hard choices', and such.

OTOH I think there's a difference between the above and what narrative systems offer, and I do call it another aspect of agency. Now, maybe @estar reaches this level by pure dint of being extremely sensitive to what his players ask for, but the more fixed nature of the fiction would IMHO put some pretty hard limits on that. Having run these sorts of games for roughly the first 20 years of my GMing career that was what I found was one of the issues. This is why a game like DW offers 'more agency', because the entire shape of the game, how the world itself works, can be built up in such a way as to 'work for the players'. And this working isn't in the form of 'gimmy' power gaming, it is at the more interesting level of simply engaging what is found to be most interesting during play.

 

[FrogReaver]

Then your definition of 'game' and the framework you use to understand games are obviously seriously flawed.

IMO. Flawed is too harsh. I think what he describes as a game is true of the “typical” game even though it’s far to narrow to describe all games.

 

[Campbell]

I am not trying to say you don't have agency in your style of play. I think it is a different variety of agency. I agree with Frog Reavers earlier point that it is more like apples and oranges. And I think you are hitting on a key reason here. I don't think me, Estar or anyone on my side is saying our approach is the best or a cure all. And definitely for the preferences posters like Pemerton have laid out, I don't think our approach would give them a satisfying play experience.

I am someone who likes and appreciates a lot of different play priorities and even likes to approach design from the perspective of finding new arrangements of priorities. Looking back at the Forge I think the biggest mistake that was made was not being more clear that the 3 creative agendas were just some possible arrangements of play priorities. Instead we get the impression that there was only one possible arrangement of play priorities. I think this types of agency analysis that is tightly constrained to a specific set of play priorities make a similar mistake.

I think it is possible to talk about this stuff in a nuanced way that applies to different arrangements of play priorities It is difficult, but think broadly worth the effort.

 

[Campbell]

Then your definition of 'game' and the framework you use to understand games are obviously seriously flawed.

I think the distinction between play and play done with shared purpose in mind. There is a large body of research and practice dedicated to this sort of game design. A significant chunk of people value that sort of play. Academically they have talked about purposeful play as games. If we need some other form of terminology to discuss I am fine with that.

I am not trying to put any moral weight on my words. I am just trying to be precise here. The current body of work in game design does not have anything to say about that sort of unstructured play. How can I talk about this in a way that you will not object to?

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the distinction between play and play done with shared purpose in mind. There is a large body of research and practice dedicated to this sort of game design. A significant chunk of people value that sort of play. Academically they have talked about purposeful play as games. If we need some other form of terminology to discuss I am fine with that.

I am not trying to put any moral weight on my words. I am just trying to be precise here. The current body of work in game design does not have anything to say about that sort of unstructured play. How can I talk about this in a way that you will not object to?

I find it hard to believe that the current body of work has nothing to say about play in Minecraft.

 

[Fenris-77]

I prefer to examine agency through the lens of game mechanics and feedback loops as the base level. This sidesteps the issue of getting to caught up in playstyle, which can apply to multiple rules sets. This kind of analysis also includes issues of 'control' outside of the mechanics of course, as agency in RPGs can be delineated both by what is rolled for and how that happens, but also what is not rolled for and where that control lies. Playstyle does indeed play in as well, as different style conventions apportion agency in a variety of ways either at the suggestion of the rules set or through spoken or unspoken arrangements at the table between players (of whom the GM is one). Those are the really the three key axis of interpretation in a model that treats all systems and playstyles as equally worthy of consideration.

 

[Campbell]

There is a wealth of research on unstructured play and some game design curriculum will offer a course or two on it, but the discipline defines itself through the prism of structured play. Most research around unstructured play is not in the game design, but in psychology (usually with a focus on early childhood).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think this is an interesting element. Again, I'll lean on Blades in the Dark as a way of talking about it.

In Blades, this progression of the characters as a group is formalized in several ways. First and most obviously, they pick a specific type of crew to be, and they have a crew sheet for their team that works very much like a character sheet. It has abilities they get to select as they gain crew XP and advance. The crew also has a Tier, and this is kind of a ranking within the setting. So a Tier 0 gang is one that most people won't have heard of, and other gangs and factions likely are indifferent toward. It also gives a sense of the quality of their gear and their lair and so on.

So, a crew can gain XP, and then gain new abilities or new lair features, or underlings that work for them. They can also move up in Tier. The process for this is to gain Rep (which they gain with each Score they pull off). When they gain enough Rep, they can spend it to move up a Tier. So their standing improves overall, they can start to afford better gear, their underlings are more capable.....all that kind of stuff. It also means that other Factions, likely higher ranking Factions with more power and influence, may start to take notice of the crew. There's a very formal player facing element to it all, it can be measured and tracked, and the players can work toward those goals clearly.

Do you think this would fit in your kind of game?

I would consider something like that to be in line with the sorts of 'subsystems' one might construct in 'classic' D&D. There's nothing quite this elaborate in the more mainstream material, but IIRC there were a few specialized products. I recall Birthright has a bunch of 'kingdom management' subsystems, and wasn't there something in 'Council of Wyrms' too? For that matter even the 1e DMG has some domain management rules and whatnot, though they are not very well developed.

So, the only real question would be, again, is the system in BitD too abstract? For some players it would probably work OK. For other groups they would be constantly running up against the problem of trying to do very concrete things and then the GM having to try to filter that through the abstract system and producing generalized benefits and such. They would probably complain about how this all hangs together. It would create a lot of work to elaborate each instance of "you got +1 to your X roll" in terms of "we bribed the judge with 78gp last week" or whatever.