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A Question Of Agency?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8133409" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I have never played a RPG where the players don't have their PCs do things. And don't have goals for their PCs beyond <em>Hey, GM, here I am, throw something at me!</em></p><p></p><p>Those sorts of players seem to not be interested in exercising agency, and so I don't think examples of play involving them are going to be very illustrative of what player agency looks like.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The bits that I've bolded reinforce my conjecture upthread, that you are simply unfamiliar with systems that have robust action resolution mechanics. And at least for my part we do not seem to be talking past one another - your posts seem completely consistent with familiarity with "storyteller-GM" style RPGing that I would associate with games like 2nd ed AD&D, White Wolf, CoC, and that seemed to be evident in a story hour your linked to in a thread some months (I think it was) ago.</p><p></p><p>To go back to the bolded bits: in D&D combat, if a player - through the action resolution process - reduces a monster's hit points to zero by way of a sword attack, the GM <em>does not get to decide how the world reacts to the PC's swing of a sword</em>. The rules mandate that the GM narrate the monster being killed (or KO'ed, depending on the wrinkles of edition) by the PC's sword-blow.</p><p></p><p>Now just generalise that.</p><p></p><p>If the players succeed on action resolution, the GM is not <em>free to decide how the world reacts</em>. Rather, s/he is bound to honour the success. (This can't work if there is not an action resolution system that bears upon the matter at hand - see my post upthread about the weakness of onworld exploration in Classic Traveller as an example - but good RPG systems have good action resolution systems that cover at least the bulk of the action one might expect given setting, genre etc.)</p><p></p><p>This is why the sort of "unconscious railroading" you are positing is simply not possible in any system with robust action resolution.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8133409, member: 42582"] I have never played a RPG where the players don't have their PCs do things. And don't have goals for their PCs beyond [I]Hey, GM, here I am, throw something at me![/I] Those sorts of players seem to not be interested in exercising agency, and so I don't think examples of play involving them are going to be very illustrative of what player agency looks like. The bits that I've bolded reinforce my conjecture upthread, that you are simply unfamiliar with systems that have robust action resolution mechanics. And at least for my part we do not seem to be talking past one another - your posts seem completely consistent with familiarity with "storyteller-GM" style RPGing that I would associate with games like 2nd ed AD&D, White Wolf, CoC, and that seemed to be evident in a story hour your linked to in a thread some months (I think it was) ago. To go back to the bolded bits: in D&D combat, if a player - through the action resolution process - reduces a monster's hit points to zero by way of a sword attack, the GM [I]does not get to decide how the world reacts to the PC's swing of a sword[/I]. The rules mandate that the GM narrate the monster being killed (or KO'ed, depending on the wrinkles of edition) by the PC's sword-blow. Now just generalise that. If the players succeed on action resolution, the GM is not [I]free to decide how the world reacts[/I]. Rather, s/he is bound to honour the success. (This can't work if there is not an action resolution system that bears upon the matter at hand - see my post upthread about the weakness of onworld exploration in Classic Traveller as an example - but good RPG systems have good action resolution systems that cover at least the bulk of the action one might expect given setting, genre etc.) This is why the sort of "unconscious railroading" you are positing is simply not possible in any system with robust action resolution. [/QUOTE]
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