Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Fenris-77]

@prabe - A TTRPG character is primarily a set of knobs and dials that allow the player to interact with the diegetic frame, in other words to exert narrative control via an avatar. So to a certain extent there isn't a significant difference between authority over the character and authority over the fiction because the character is a tool specifically design to allow that narrative control over the fiction. For the most part that's how TTRPGs funnel player agency, or narrative control, - through the agency of the avatar as constrained by the rules, mechanics and table contract. That control is generally limited to immediate outcomes and descriptions, one way or another, with more far reaching control generally devolved to the GM, should the game in question actually expect that sort of control.

 

[prabe]

@prabe - A TTRPG character is primarily a set of knobs and dials that allow the player to interact with the diegetic frame, in other words to exert narrative control via an avatar. So to a certain extent there isn't a significant difference between authority over the character and authority over the fiction because the character is a tool specifically design to allow that narrative control over the fiction. For the most part that's how TTRPGs funnel player agency, or narrative control, - through the agency of the avatar as constrained by the rules, mechanics and table contract. That control is generally limited to immediate outcomes and descriptions, one way or another, with more far reaching control generally devolved to the GM, should the game in question actually expect that sort of control.

I'm not sure how that's wildly different from what I said--which doesn't mean it's wrong or unhelpful; I sincerely appreciate the explanation. I mean, I'm pretty explicit about limiting player narrative authority (in D&D--other games draw the lines differently) to what their characters can accomplish--I think you'd include that under "rules, mechanics and table contract" but I'm willing to be corrected. I think I'd say that the players, through their characters, are experiencing the story that emerges, sometimes more than they're co-authoring it; I think I'd say the GM is more authoring it (though back when I was writing fiction it often felt as though I was experiencing the stories as I wrote them, so that distinction is perhaps less distinct that it seems at first).

 

[Lanefan]

I don't believe a chess player's agency is taken away because he can't move his knight as a queen. I believe the agency of a player is defined by the moves they can make inside the game and that those moves cause unique feedback inside the game. Losing player agency occurs either when that feedback loop gets temporarily turned off or when a legal move is not permitted. The first can happen in the "GM Decides" style but isn't required to. I don't believe it can happen games where a mechanic other than "person Decides" is being used. The second only happens when a referee makes an incorrect ruling and can occur in any game with a referee.

Disagree on the second one: player agency infringement can also happen (and often does) when a referee makes what would otherwise be a correct-by-the-rules ruling.

For example, there's no rule saying a referee (DM) must allow Evil PCs, thus even though her banning them impacts my agency as a player in what I'm allowed to play and-or how I'm allowed to play it she's still not incorrectly applying any rules.

There's a big difference between "Play what you want as long as it fits in with the setting" (genre-appropriate, it exists there, etc.) and "Play what you want as long as it fits in with the story" (see examples e.g. discouraging romance in @Campbell 's proposed Marvel-Universe-style campaign on page 52 this thread). The second is to me far too restrictive, and tells me one or both of two unpleasant things is in play: either a) the story is seen as more important than the characters (railroad warning), or b) players are discouraged from thinking as individuals (groupthink warning).

Either way: hoist the red flags regarding player agency.

All styles allow players to change the shared fiction by having their PCs do things. This even occurs in an instance of auto-failure. Player had PC attempt to do something -> auto-failure -> shared fiction changes. Thus, from the definition provided in this quote it doesn't follow that a GM ruling auto failure takes away player agency. It's not that their attempt at agency has been blocked/negated - it's that they did have their character make a move and that move resulted in a change in the shared fiction.

A ruling of auto-failure doesn't take away player agency.

Banning the action from being declared in the first place (as some here have suggested) hammers player agency, however. It's a key - though small - difference.

 

[Lanefan]

But anyway, if what you mean by the setting has an objective existence outside the PCs is that you author bits of it independent of what the players have their PCs do, how does that relate to players' action declarations for their PCs?

Easy. It gives the author (the GM) parameters to work with if and when the PCs' action declarations take them into the previously-independently-authored bits.

If they never go there, it never relates. Can't see any problems there.

 

[Lanefan]

Can we please stop playing definition games? If you know what a poster means when they use a particular word or phrase can you address the content of what they are saying rather than how they express it? This is not debate club.

I hear ya!

Problem is, there's a few in here - not just on one "side" but scattered through the various viewpoints - who have kind of built a reputation for defining terms in their own ways and then using those terms as if their definition was correct.

Needless to say, this ineviatbly leads to those personal definitions being challenged, and away we go...

 

[Lanefan]

I think you're confused about what is going on in the discussion of actions that violate the credibility test.

Go back to Robin Laws's example from HeroQuest Revised:

As Narrator, you are never obligated to allow a contest just because two characters have abilities that can be brought into conflict. If the character's proposed result would seem abusrd, you disallow the contest, period. . . .​

Read it carefeully: if the character's proposed result woudl seem absurd [ie if it violates genre or fictional positioning constraints] then you disallow the contest [ie no check is made; the action resolution mechanics are not invoked].

OK, here might be the problem.

"Disallow the contest", by use of the word "disallow", strongly implies (at least to me when I read it) the rules ban the action from even being declared. This violates player agency.

The player is free to describe his/her PC shooting an arrow into the sky aiming at the moon. But (outside the context of some sort of epic fantasy) that does not generate a check to see if the moon is hit.

Yet you go on to say this, which shows that in your view the action can be declared but the resolution mechanics can be skipped as the action has zero chance of success. This doesn't violate player agency at all.

The premise of Laws's remark is that a system is being used similar to what @chaochou mentioned upthread: namelhy, that if a valid action is declared then the dice are rolled and on a success the player gets what s/he wants for his/her PC, and otherwise the GM narrates a failure.

Reading this at face value implies that any action declaration that doesn't result in a die roll is invalid, which I somehow don't think is what you mean.

There's inevitably going to be some action declarations that auto-succeed (I open the [known-to-be-unlocked] door) and some that auto-fail (I try to knock down the castle with a bodycheck); nothing to do with player agency but everything to do with fictional constraints and premises and consistency.

 

[Campbell]

I'm not sure how that's wildly different from what I said--which doesn't mean it's wrong or unhelpful; I sincerely appreciate the explanation. I mean, I'm pretty explicit about limiting player narrative authority (in D&D--other games draw the lines differently) to what their characters can accomplish--I think you'd include that under "rules, mechanics and table contract" but I'm willing to be corrected. I think I'd say that the players, through their characters, are experiencing the story that emerges, sometimes more than they're co-authoring it; I think I'd say the GM is more authoring it (though back when I was writing fiction it often felt as though I was experiencing the stories as I wrote them, so that distinction is perhaps less distinct that it seems at first).

Personally I am also not really a fan of player narrative authority either. My preferred approach to achieving player agency over the fiction is to have games constrain the GM's agency over the fiction through game mechanics that tell us what happens and/or by instructing the GM on how to perform their role. This creates an environment where players can depend on their fictional positioning thus increasing agency over the fiction.

I juxtapose this against Storyteller play where a GM may change setting details, play NPCs without integrity, rule based on what they want to have happen, and expect players to find the story. Fifth Edition does not necessitate that sort of play, but it fails to meaningfully constrain the GM either.

My preference is that we should all be experiencing together, including the GM. Nobody gets to decide how things should go.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the reason that @chaochou is not having regard to this other mode of player agency that you are calling out (and which @Lanefan has also called out) is because he is assuming that there is no RPGing in which players don't get to declare actions for their PCs.

There's really no RPG system in which players don't get to declare actions for their PCs but there's many instances - often on a table-by-table basis even within the same system - in which the actions they can declare are somehow limited beyond just what genre and fictional premises would allow.

Therefore he is focusing on what is variable among different RPGs - both across systems, and across actual instances of play in those systems. And what is variable is the amount of player control over what happens next in the fiction.

Anlso variable is how - as in by what mechanical or narrative means - that-thing-that-happens next point is arrived at.

5e D&D (and all D&D, I think) as written, for example, gives the DM complete control over the mechanics in terms of when they are invoked: you don't roll a check or an attack roll or anything else unless the DM tells you to. Players can't by RAW just arbitrarily roll, unless some form of Inspiration allows it.

But the tradeoff is that the players are - or should be - very free to declare whatever actions they want. Those actions are then fed into the DM's mechanics processor that has, at its root, four possible outcomes: auto-success, success-by-roll, fail-by-roll, or auto-fail. On success the player gets what she wants (and has often already narrated the proposed fiction-on-success as part of the initial decoararion); on fail the DM narrates what - if anything - happens next.

 

[prabe]

@Campbell

That is very much how I endeavor to GM. To the extent that as a GM it feels less like experiencing the story, it's because I have more on my mind. It's harder, I think, to let go and let story, when I'm thinking about what is changing and what the in-world response/s will be. That's an argument for being well-prepared, but GMing IME requires more bandwidth than playing (again, talking about 5E and similar games).

 

[Lanefan]

I agree that player agency over the actions they are allowed to select for their character can be an important thing to discuss, but that is not generally what player agency tends to be intended to mean.

For my part this is exactly what player agency is all about: the agency over what actions I can select for my PC, and what I can have my PC try to do, and how, and when; and what personality or outlooks or alignment or whatever it possesses.