Is "GM Agency" A Thing?

[aramis erak]

The notion that npcs “work” towards goals of foreign to me. When not on camera, npcs succeed or fail entirely at my whim. If I decide that the castle burned down in the night, that’s what happened. Npcs have no existence outside of whatever I happen to imagine.

On screen, then the rules change. But off screen? Who cares? The cultists continue on their road to whatever they are trying to do. No one ever actually rolls out a battle where no players are present, the odd exception being an exception of course and please, if you want to say, “well I one time rolled out an npc fight with no players”, I congratulate you on your technical correctness but point out that that’s not really the point.

MANY of my players. Perhaps maybe one or two of yours, but I don't know, and I have my doubts you would even if they do. Thing is, many players won't tell the GM one way or the other, so it's highly possible that the negatives from GM's are false negatives from ignorance. Even close friends often don't. (I get better feedback at public games than with close friends.) In order to get the feedback, I've had to inculcate a culture of openness, and of allowing abstractions, and even of metagaming play. (Tho', I've yet to get the current group doing Metagaming play ...¹)

I may not roll out a whole battle, but I'm likely to, during downtime, pop a couple dice into the mass combat portion of the rules to better be able to tell what did or didn't happen. If the battle is important to the players in some way, I'll treat it like any other important to the PCs battle, save for PC interaction. But when I say battle, I usually mean more than 100 on a side, and fairly abstracted.
One of my more memorable Traveller minicampaigns was board-room based - and the various actions resolved by cutscenes and players taking over NPCs on both sides... (And to think, that was 30 years ago.)

1: note the capitalization.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know what you mean by "reality" here. What you seem to be saying is that you prefer to have the GM decide the important fictional outcomes, at least sometimes, rather than make it something at stake for the players to engage with via the game's action resolution mechanics.

What I mean is that I want the imaginary world of the game to exist as independently of the PCs as possible. PCs (controlled by the players) do what they want to do, and NPCs (controlled by the GM) do what they want to do. Their actions don't stop just because no PC is looking at them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Whereas my RPG play is strongly informed by 45 years worth of consumption of visual fiction... and audio fiction... where the villains activities may be of need for some otherwise apparently narrative pops, but are actually behind the scenes character actions.

The GM exists to provide challenges, and context for them, and to adjudicate the interactions with those challenges.

The GM exists to create, operate, and adjudicate the imaginary world the PCs live in, and adjudicate the results of their actions. The world is more than context for player challenges to me.

 

[Reynard]

What I mean is that I want the imaginary world of the game to exist as independently of the PCs as possible. PCs (controlled by the players) do what they want to do, and NPCs (controlled by the GM) do what they want to do. Their actions don't stop just because no PC is looking at them.

I am not good at this sort of thing, but I think i understand the desire. A really well developed world exists independently of the PCs -- which means that you can run lots of different campaigns in that world and they all matter. it isn't that the PCs are irrelevant, it is that their actions deepen the world in a historical way. The alternative, where the world is built for the specific PCs under specific conditions for the campaign, means that it is a lot harder to use that world outside of that particular group of PCs. A TPK destroys not just the party or the campaign, but the entire world.

 

[Maxperson]

Chaos vs Law! CHOAS VS LAW! Alignment strikes again!

Only a chaotic evil person would mipssell chaos!

 

[Maxperson]

The Necronomicon is a cookbook?

Pretty sure that's the Necronumnumicon.

 

[Maxperson]

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

1. Exploration does not have to be of the nooks and crannies of the world. It can also be of character, story and goals.
2. Even the most fully fleshed out world has tens of thousands of holes large enough to drive a semi through. Plenty of room to explore stuff that hasn't been seen if that's what the group wants.

 

[Hussar]

Meh. I’ve yet to see or hear of anyone actually playing out how the monsters got into that dungeon. I highly, highly doubt anyone does.

And I’d point out @aramis erak that you’re boardroom example changes things. The npcs are on camera and being played by players. That’s not what I was talking about.

Put it another way. Who played out Acererak becoming a Demi-lich?

 

[hawkeyefan]

What I mean is that I want the imaginary world of the game to exist as independently of the PCs as possible. PCs (controlled by the players) do what they want to do, and NPCs (controlled by the GM) do what they want to do. Their actions don't stop just because no PC is looking at them.

They do, though. What the PCs look at is what’s in play. If the PCs aren’t involved, then nothing is happening with those NPCs. When they disappear from view, you can use any method you like to determine what’s happened in the interim, but it’s all abstracted.

Not unless you do the equivalent of cut scenes that don’t include the PCs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Meh. I’ve yet to see or hear of anyone actually playing out how the monsters got into that dungeon. I highly, highly doubt anyone does.

What do you mean by "playing out"? Back when I did things with dungeons, I often went to the trouble of figuring out why and how things were where they were. Even in my earliest days, my first (over the top) dungeon was literally a monster condominium.