D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

Can the GM cause the pirate crew to plan a mutiny due to the creation of a GM NPC pirate with a backstory and ambitions?
Can the GM cause the pirate crew to be hunted by a sea captain due to the creation of a GM NPC who has ambitions to become admiral, in order to be worthy to marry one of the duke's daughters? Is this not an example of a Living World independent of the PCs?
Can the GM cause the mercenaries to be elevated into positions of power within the realm as certain key influentials are targeted and assassinated?
Can the GM narrate an earthquake which then releases lethal toxins into the air or some other danger from deep within its bowels that hurt this new nation that PCs formed in the hinterlands?

Are these reactive or is this the Setting (the GM)?

Yes to all of these, potentially. Otherwise we're not talking about a living world that exists independently of the PCs, we're talking about a video game where everything remains in stasis until the PCs get within range.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I advocated for giving the players what information their characters would have in that situation. Now I didn't say doing it differently was wrong, or provided less agency. I just made the point that not giving the player meta knowledge about what is behind a rock obstructing their view isn't inhibiting agency. Again, you are making really strange arguments here, that you have to give maximal information for characters to have agency, and it seems to be an agenda driven argument (because you are consistently labeling high agency styles of play as having much more limited agency).

Information is how players engage with a game. Any game.

It doesn't mean that there cannot be hidden information. The board game Clue came up in one of the recent threads on the topic... the whole point of play is the find out what's hidden in the envelope. Players exercise their agency by making the moves that the game allows to declare their theories, which help them eliminate suspects, weapons, and rooms until they believe that they know what's in the envelope.

They can fail. They can act on less information than is ideal. What doesn't happen is that information that could be available to them is instead not provided to them. There isn't a GM who says "Sorry, you can't go into the Conservatory right now... Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum are inside and have locked the doors" or "Sorry, Mrs. White doesn't answer your summons to the Study, so you can't cross her off your list this round."

There's no GM judgment that potentially blocks information. That you consider this "meta" in some way is telling. You're too focused on the make believe of play rather than the play of the game.

As for my "agenda", I've said this is simply my observation based on my experiences with GMing and playing this type of game, and the descriptions offered here by others.

And our point is it is the prime focus. Agency is the main focus. It is the overriding concern when you run a sandbox. The problem is, you have redefined agency to make sandboxes seem more limited than they really are. I remember when these agency-sandbox threads first started cropping up here, and it was a direct response to the claim that sandboxes were providing choice (and it came on the heels of the whole kitty box argument that sandboxes are really just a choice between multiple railroads).

Living world also does not have to mean realistic by the way. That frequently happens because a lot of living world sandboxes come from a gaming culture that likes naturalism in RPGs. But you don't need that for it to be a living world. It could be a cartoon world and still be a living one.

I don't think I'm "redefining" agency to match any preference of mine so much as you've already limited it to match your preference. I'm looking at player agency as the agency that a player of a game has. I don't see the need to limit it in some artificial way as you have done.

I don't think sandbox play is just a choice between railroads. I think it does allow for choice. I do think it's very focused on GM-authored material... so I think that although it allows for player freedom to engage with the material how they like (within the constraints of the fictional world of play), it doesn't go as far as many claim when it comes to player-focus.

And yes, I'm viewing any mention of "realism" as "consistent and plausible", meaning that there is some sort of logic applied to the events of play determined by the GM.

There's only one type of agency that you personally care about because it includes having influence on the world outside of what your character says and does. I, and others, don't include that as something that matters.

No, there's only one type of agency. You and others don't care about player agency beyond what the character says and does. Hence, you prioritize that over player agency, with that being something like "immersion" or something similar.

And that’s your opinion, not @AlViking’s, and not mine. If you view that as the gold standard, great for you. But it’s not the case for others. Your views make sense within that framework, so I understand what you're saying. Just don’t expect agreement from those who don’t share your premise.

Likewise, I don’t expect you to agree with my views, but I hope by now you’ve read enough to understand why I hold them. And from the length of your exchange with @AlViking, I think it’s fair to say you understand his views as well.

I don't view it as the gold standard. I am not making any value judgment. I've pointed out many times that I play and run these sorts of games and have a perfectly good time doing so. There is nothing wrong with them in any way. My statements are made as neutrally as I can manage. I enjoy these games, I also enjoy Narrativist or Story Now games.

I absolutely understand why people limit agency to only that of what the characters know and can do. It's a very standard approach to play.

 

[Reynard]

But don't forget its also a thread talking about resistance to change within D&D fans, so what its done in the past is not really responding to the question of whether that's all it should do.

I mean, I don't want to put words in @Reynard 's mouth, but I think its legitimate to say that in the context of the thread start "That's what D&D has always done" can be legitimately responded to with "That's the problem."

You guys are on your own. I can't believe this thing is still going.

 

[TwoSix]

You guys are on your own. I can't believe this thing is still going.

Me neither, and it's like 8% my fault!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Information is how players engage with a game. Any game.

It doesn't mean that there cannot be hidden information. The board game Clue came up in one of the recent threads on the topic... the whole point of play is the find out what's hidden in the envelope. Players exercise their agency by making the moves that the game allows to declare their theories, which help them eliminate suspects, weapons, and rooms until they believe that they know what's in the envelope.

They can fail. They can act on less information than is ideal. What doesn't happen is that information that could be available to them is instead not provided to them. There isn't a GM who says "Sorry, you can't go into the Conservatory right now... Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum are inside and have locked the doors" or "Sorry, Mrs. White doesn't answer your summons to the Study, so you can't cross her off your list this round."

There's no GM judgment that potentially blocks information. That you consider this "meta" in some way is telling. You're too focused on the make believe of play rather than the play of the game.

As for my "agenda", I've said this is simply my observation based on my experiences with GMing and playing this type of game, and the descriptions offered here by others.

I don't have a lot of time right now, but this feels a bit like wordplay to me. I mean what is happening when the GM does not provide information that is obstructed by a wall or rock, is pretty much the same idea as the information being hidden in the envelope in clue. But clue is a broad game, with rigid rules you have to follow. So you have almost no agency in that game. You can't attack and kill professor plum to assume his identity at the unversity because there is no GM who can go beyond the rules or interpret the spirit of the rules to make that allowable when a player says it is what they want to do. In a living world sandbox you can do that. And while the GM might not tell you what is behind Professor Plum, because it is obvious to him that Professor Plum's body would obstruct whatever he stands in front of, this is not an imposition on agency. You can still decide to kick Professor Plum out of the way for a clear view, or move to the right for a clear view. This is just a byproduct of respecting POV (not a requirement in a sandbox, but something many sandboxes do).

 

[hawkeyefan]

If a player does not have control over the action their character takes [they must succeed on a steel roll in order to murder someone], I view that as abdicating agency to the rules of the game. The player therefore has no agency.

But what if a player knows and accepts that as a risk? That this is a possible consequence of play. And then, knowing that, they enter the situation anyway... and then the dice don't go their way. Does that change your view?

Some things to consider:

If not, then what about when a character in D&D is charmed or dominated? The character knows that Strahd is a vampire and can influence people with his undead abilities... and he and his companions choose to find and face Strahd... and the character is subsequently charmed. Does this mean the character has no agency?

What if the game asks the player to indicate what aspect of their character they'd like to see challenged during play? Like, if I select my character's courage at the start of play, is it then problematic for the GM to put me in situations that will reveal something about my courage? And if I wind up not being brave in some way... I fail a roll to act when afraid... is that a loss of agency?

What about in D&D when my character is reduced to 0 HP. Does that mean the character has no agency at all? Or does it mean that the agency is temporarily removed until the character can recover?

That doesn’t change the fact that I use specific techniques to run a World in Motion campaign. Those techniques fundamentally differ from a referee saying, “I’m deciding this because I feel like it,” without any justification.

I was going off your previous comment which said you used "judgment" and didn't talk about techniques. I think what the techniques are and how consistently they're applied matters quite a bit.

Nor does it mean that someone like yourself must appreciate my approach because it’s procedural rather than arbitrary. You have your own creative goals that need to be met for a campaign to be enjoyable, and my World in Motion techniques clearly don’t serve those goals. In some ways, they may even work against what you find important and fun.

And, as I’ve been saying lately, that’s OK. There’s room in this hobby for incompatible creative visions.

Absolutely! I've said many times, I'm just explaining my thoughts on the topic.

 

[Pedantic]

To me another big issue is whether or not the player could have prepared for the scenario, something that's never been answered. They know they need to collect blood at some point, why would they not bring a vessel to do just that wherever they went? If it's just not part of the game, that's fine. To me the approach is so different from the loose simulation approach of D&D that there really is no comparison.

I generally view this as a cure worse than disease scenario. The critique that a player might not know or understand the board state (the presence of absence of cups) and worse that the GM might be deciding something consequential (or more specifically, "more consequential than the player's action declarations") about the board state is reasonable; less reasonable are the objections to every proposed procedure a GM might use to resolve the board state as arbitrary.

The proposed solution is to move the board state outside the grounds of play, into a function of resolution; we will roll dice to determine the board state as part of your attempted action, moving it from a thing to be acted on, to a description of whether you succeeded or failed. The problem is that this flattens the tactical space hugely (depending on the engine, it may render the game tactically not interactive or in something like a 4e skill skill challenge, cut the decision space down to a tiny set) and alters the gameplay loop.

My worst case scenario is that the loop becomes negotiation, but it could just be a narrowing to a resource management puzzle. The problem is that if the player was expecting gameplay built around manipulating a fixed board by expending time via repeated action declarations, the game is now unrecognizably different.

Frankly, I wish the taxonomy tended toward that difference in gameplay loop as the prime differentiator. Moving it up a level to "goal of play" or worse, lumping all those mechanical approaches together into a monolith of "RPGs" and trying to discuss their universal traits is (holding the length of this thread up as proof) mostly a waste of time.

I can happily say "I do not like hidden movement games" when talking about board games, and then say something about what makes for stronger or weaker worker placement, and no one is going to conflate those into a unified claim about board game play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You guys are on your own. I can't believe this thing is still going.

Well, I'm only dipping in every few pages myself; I have some related interest, but most of the back and forth for the last several pages either I don't care about or I'm not really in either of the two camps that have shaken down. It just seems that people should at least remember the context the thread started with.

 

[Azzy]

You guys are on your own. I can't believe this thing is still going.

I don't even know what's being argued any more. My eyes glazed over some 30 pages ago.

 

[robertsconley]

I don't view it as the gold standard. I am not making any value judgment. I've pointed out many times that I play and run these sorts of games and have a perfectly good time doing so. There is nothing wrong with them in any way. My statements are made as neutrally as I can manage. I enjoy these games, I also enjoy Narrativist or Story Now games.

I absolutely understand why people limit agency to only that of what the characters know and can do. It's a very standard approach to play.

"No, there's only one type of agency we're talking about. It's that of the player playing the game. Player agency."

This is not a neutral statement. It is stated dispassionately but not neutrally.