Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[Micah Sweet]

I often set short term goals for NPCs, but only advance them when PCs are in view of them. Or, rarely, I've declared a Cutscene and done something that had been foreshadowed. Especially if they ignored the foreshadowing.
Sometimes, I'll instead set a timeline and then adjust it for player interaction with it.
It's not a goal pursued in the same way a player's is, but it's something for players to interfere with.

In certain games - most especially Blood and Honor (John Wick), My characters have all the motivations and goals they'd have if PCs... but less screen time. And operate exactly like PCs in every other way. (Including mutability if not full sheet at introduction.) This does change the nature of the GM relationship... since I'm only allowed one character to roll in a risk ... combat excepted. It's a totally different kind of RPG, and it has very different needs and niches. And allows a much more PVGM approach. As well as more PVP approaches.

Likewise, in Burning Empires, it's side vs side, and the GM is part of one side. Often the whole of one side - it's designed for 3 vs 3 characters as key movers in the story, with the the setups being by number of players

Players:	GM+1	GM+2	GM+3	GM+4	GM+5	GM+6
Side A	Player with 3 PCs	1 player with 2 PCs 1 player with 1 PC	3 players with 1 PC each	3 players with 1 PC each	3 players with 1 PC each	3 players with 1 PC each
Side B	GM with 3 key NPCs	GM with three key NPCs	GM with three key NPCs	1 player with 1 PC GM with 2 key NPCs	2 players with 1 PC each GM with 1 key NPC	3 players with 1 PC each GM only plays minor NPCs

I ran with 3 players... I was playing 3 PCs, and doing the task resolution supervision. Resistance to my tasks was done by showing the players the standards and them agreeing on the Ob (target number, for the BW impaired)... Just remember: the default Ob is 2 successes...

See, unless an NPC's goals directly demand the PCs' involvement, i see no reason why their plans wouldn't advance independent of the PCs presence. That makes zero sense to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Collaborate world building has its advantages and drawbacks, but I think it definitely is something D&D should have as a suggested option in DMG and offer some advice. But 5e DMG is pretty terrible, so it is not a surprise that it is not helpful about this either.

In my personal experience collaborative world building works best, when there already is some established (either published or homebrew) framework within which the participants collaborate. I have a good experiences from a Glorantha game a while back, where we created our tribe/village and their immediate surrounding, including some NPCs, beliefs, relationships etc together. It anchored characters to the world, and made them feel part of the same community. But we didn't create the whole world, we just defined our small corner of it.

Similarly we recently created our characters and gang for Blades in the Dark. We haven't played it yet, but the process established the place of characters in the world and gave them some existing relationship. But again we worked within confines of established framework, criminals in the city of Duskvol.

These are the sort of methods I actually would like to try to use in my own games more, but I still want to retain control of the actual broader world. World building is very important to me, and the reason the game is happening in the first place is probably because I had some idea for a setting or interpretation of the setting.

My experiences of collaborative building of whole worlds is not that good. I feel that unless there is a participant who is really willing to push with their vision it often ends up as some sort of designed by committee generic fantasy world. Then a gain, a lot of published worlds feel like that to me too, and if that all you need for your games then go for it!

The idea of collaboratively building the whole setting is where I have reservations, and the smaller scale examples (which I have fewer problems with, at least in principle) didn't come into the conversation until later.

 

[Umbran]

Are they creating their own parts of the world secretly? Because otherwise they basically do know everything.

I'm sorry, no, they don't know everything, because this form of collaborative world-building doesn't create everything.

In a typical D&D world, if there's a BBEG who is an anti-paladin warlord out to conquer the adjacent nation... the players know that, or learn it very early. For a great many games, the GM creates a setting document, and gives it to the players, and then complains that they don't read it!

Collaborative worldbuilding typically generates less detail than would be in that document. Unless you think typical GMs leave their players "knowing everything" this is a bugaboo.

None of this explains how you explore a world you built.

When you do collaborative worldbuilding, it is largely done at a high level. It generates basically a bullet-list of elements, tropes, and relationships. The details are still left to the GM.

F'rex, the players may posit that one of the Big Bads for the campaign will be the Hershey Corporation, and that the new CEO is a vampire trying to ghoul people through inexpensive chocolate.

And that may be all that is known to the players. Who is this vampire? What are they like? Why are they doing this? What do they need to succeed in their plan? What's Hersey Park like under this CEO... all open questions to explore. Everything other than their existence is still open to explore.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That is not what I said.

IAs I said, I think a lot of this gets really beaten out of players at a very early stage. I've seen FAR too many "Man with no Name" characters get brought to tables to believe that this isn't the result of DM's not being terribly receptive to players bringing new concepts to the table. The point I keep trying to make is that there is very little advice given to groups to make the game more collaborative. In fact, incorporating collaborative elements into the game typically results in huge amounts of push back - again, see Wish Lists from 4e or even the notion of buying magic items in 3e.

While this could absolutely be part of it, the "Man With No Name" thing also has another cause; when a player does create background, and the GM uses it as a lever against them. Doesn't take much of that before someone never does it again.

 

[Cadence]

That is not what I said.

I said the DM is not obligated to accept any of the things you suggest. The DM could very easily have said no.

And I never see a version of DnD that doesn't give the DM veto power (at least for some list of reasons).

On the other hand, I can see them setting it up with better instructions on how the players need to have buy-in to a campaign idea they are being sold and encouraging DMs to ask players for things they'd like to see and encouraging them to say yes unless they have a reason not to.

I think it would be great to have this....

The point I keep trying to make is that there is very little advice given to groups to make the game more collaborative.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm sorry, no, they don't know everything, because this form of collaborative world-building doesn't create everything.

In a typical D&D world, if there's a BBEG who is an anti-paladin warlord out to conquer the adjacent nation... the players know that, or learn it very early. For a great many games, the GM creates a setting document, and gives it to the players, and then complains that they don't read it!

Collaborative worldbuilding typically generates less detail than would be in that document. Unless you think typical GMs leave their players "knowing everything" this is a bugaboo.



When you do collaborative worldbuilding, it is largely done at a high level. It generates basically a bullet-list of elements, tropes, and relationships. The details are still left to the GM.

F'rex, the players may posit that one of the Big Bads for the campaign will be the Hershey Corporation, and that the new CEO is a vampire trying to ghoul people through inexpensive chocolate.

And that may be all that is known to the players. Who is this vampire? What are they like? Why are they doing this? What do they need to succeed in their plan? What's Hersey Park like under this CEO... all open questions to explore. Everything other than their existence is still open to explore.

None of this was explained in @Hussar 's original complaint posts. I assumed they were talking about worldbuilding in the traditional sense, just by multiple people instead of one. Asking your players what they want to see in the campaign prior to putting the setting together is just normal, decent DM work as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can totally see that. I wonder though if it's partially just a lack of experience. Most players don't have much, if any, experience with that level of collaboration and it does take a lot of guidance to get the players (and the DM for that matter) to the point where it becomes more comfortable.

Its probably more to do with players who just have a different image of the setting in their heads and aren't good at finding a common ground or extending someone else's idea. I've seen that happen with people who were actively trying to work with someone else's idea.

 

[Umbran]

I assumed they were talking about worldbuilding in the traditional sense

Sure. I get that.

When one's assumptions take one to a weird conclusion, there are a several ways one can proceed. One is to make assertions of those weird conclusions as truth, wait for others to forcibly knock them over, and take failure to knock them over that as indication that the weird result is reality. Another is to ask questions to check the assumptions.

The former often feels better, but it may not be the best way to learn things.

 

[Lanefan]

You (the players) don't explore the world you built. Your characters do.

As do you, through the eyes of said characters.

If it's important to the players to experience an unknown environment, then they won't want the level of agency that Hussar is advocating for.

The Forgotten Realms is well defined in source books and expansive fiction that a lot of players are familiar with. It's perfectly feasible that (some) players can still have exciting adventures in that setting, despite the familiarilty.

Sure, but those adventures won't involve much setting or lore exploration unless the players have somehow had no prior exposure to the FR setting.

Similarly, players (some of them) can have exciting and engaging adventures in a world that they help define either before or during play.

Of course, just like you can have exciting engaging adventures in a homebrew setting with which you've become familiar through years of play.

But that "becoming familiar" process is IMO hugely important, and skipping it does a disservice to the players and the game.

 

[Lanefan]

Good grief. Really? I actually need to spell this out?

Yes, because I think your idea of collaborative world-building and mine are very different.

I mean, ok, let's dive down to the idea of city. Here's the advice I would like to see given for a collaborative city build. Start with a sketch of a city - probably just a blobby circle, maybe with a river running through it and a rough idea of the different districts. You have five players, so, let's give it six districts (one for the DM too).

Ok, I want you (the player you, not you you) to write up a general overview of the district - say three paragraphs or so describing what this district is - wealth, commerce, that sort of thing - and then write up 5 locations in that district. Just, again, in general terms - who is doing what where. That sort of thing.

When I think of collaborative world-building I see everyone having a hand in everything, sitting around a table and actually, well, collaborating. We're going to do this district now, and each participant chucks in their ideas for that district which then get hammered out (hopefully without too much argument) into something viable. Repeat for the next district, and so on.

I find it utterly baffling that I need to explain this. Do your players not do any exploration in Ravenloft or Forgotten Realms? How would this be any different?

Mine don't, I have a homebrew setting that does me fine; and if-when I ever start a new campaign I'll design another.