Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[FrogReaver]

I started by stating that player agency is the ability to generate fictional outcomes. If you had an alternate view you could just have said so, instead of trying, and failing, to play semantics around dice, mechanics and probabilities.

There's really no need to be so rude.

You now agree with me that “GM decides” offers no player agency with regards to fictional outcomes. In fact, it’s now ‘self-evident’.

Yes. I might need to refine that agreement a bit, but essentially yes. I believe there is a large subset of fictional outcomes that "GM Decides" offers a player no agency over. There is one smaller subset of fictional outcomes the player does have agency over - his PC's actions - because PC actions are also fictional outcomes.

I reject the idea that play of a game can be done without the ability to change the game state. And the game state in an rpg is changed by making new propositions about what is true in the game world.

I fully reject that first idea idea as well. But I would point out that there doesn't exist an RPG out there where the players have no ability to change the game state. Note that this doesn't imply that every single proposition they make needs to have a chance of success - only that some propositions they make need to have a chance for success. I would also like to point out that declaring a PC action is one way of making a new proposition in the game world.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not bashing anyone either. Players who come from games like D&D, where narrative authority rests heavily with the GM and the authority they do have is very much concentrated in their character, it's pretty natural that idea of giving some of that authority up doesn't sit well. All I can say is that in most cases that 'give' is located within a larger redistribution of authority that usually results in more player agency, not less.

Given that we are discussing 2 types of player agency, the obvious question to me is not whether summing up the agencies results in a greater net agency, but whether we should be weighting one type of agency as generally more important. I would tend to think that player agency of character actions is more important there but I'm sure others have different ideas.

 

[Fenris-77]

Given that we are discussing 2 types of player agency, the obvious question to me is not whether summing up the agencies results in a greater net agency, but whether we should be weighting one type of agency as generally more important. I would tend to think that player agency of character actions is more important there but I'm sure others have different ideas.

It's not really about one kind of agency, or two kinds, not really. Agency, broad descriptor that that is, comes it bits and pieces from all over the game. You get some bigger chunks in the places we're talking about, but there's a lot that comes from elsewhere, one nugget at a time. It depends on the rules set, the modifications to that rules set, the table expectations of that rules set, genre conventions, etc etc etc.

If you want to talk about sums and parts, I think it makes more sense to look at it holistically, from the player facing side, answering a question like how much control do feel you have over the story you are helping to tell? People might not be able to bang out an academic treatise about exactly how their rules and table works vis a vis agency, but I bet they can answer that one question. Using specific games as points on the continuum also helps locate your game, or tastes. D&D run older-school style tends to be fairly low agency, while a game like FATE is at the higher end (much higher depending on the exact FATE game) with PbtA falling in the middle, probably closer to FATE than D&D.

My personal preference lines up pretty neatly with @Campbell in that I prefer the more even distribution of agency of the PbtA games and other games that are fiction first, or play to find out what happens. If you collected all my posts about how I run D&D, it is very much informed by that preference. (my apolgies to @Campbell if I'm misremembering here).

 

[FrogReaver]

I do not understand what you mean by having agency negated. Agency is not something you either have or do not have. You have a certain amount of agency over a particular thing.

The more I think on that the more I'm not sure that's true. I have no idea what one-half agency or one-quarter agency would look like. To me that's pretty strong evidence that agency cannot be quantified, that it's binary. That said I think we can talk about the distribution of player agency over discrete fictional outcomes that occur within a given play experience. I suspect this is what you actually mean and that is something non-binary that we can quantify.

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 myself, @prabe, @Lanefan and many others, player agency tends to be intended to mean that we have control over our characters actions.

 

[FrogReaver]

One thing I've noticed is that there is a tendency for some to equate player agency with having no restrictions on PC action declaration. I believe that restrictions on PC action declaration don't necessarily impact player agency of PC actions in any way. That was one point I was bringing to light in my chess example. Your player agency over your pieces isn't limited because you cannot move your knight as a queen. Being constrained by the agreed upon rules of the game (for an RPG this includes social contracts, houserules, etc) never constrains player agency.

 

[Campbell]

One thing I've noticed is that there is a tendency for some to equate player agency with having no restrictions on PC action declaration. I believe that restrictions on PC action declaration don't necessarily impact player agency of PC actions in any way. That was one point I was bringing to light in my chess example. Your player agency over your pieces isn't limited because you cannot move your knight as a queen. Being constrained by the agreed upon rules of the game (for an RPG this includes social contracts, houserules, etc) never constrains player agency.

When you talk about it in that way you pretty much render the concept of agency useless as a comparative analysis tool. Limitations that we accept are still limitations. The whole point is to be able to meaningfully talk about what is actually going on in any moment of play.

 

[Lanefan]

One thing I've noticed is that there is a tendency for some to equate player agency with having no restrictions on PC action declaration. I believe that restrictions on PC action declaration don't necessarily impact player agency of PC actions in any way. That was one point I was bringing to light in my chess example. Your player agency over your pieces isn't limited because you cannot move your knight as a queen. Being constrained by the agreed upon rules of the game (for an RPG this includes social contracts, houserules, etc) never constrains player agency.

I differentiate between the actual rules of the game, which in theory constrain everyone equally, and things like social contracts and houserules which can very much constrain one table in comparison with another.

 

[Fenris-77]

The equal restraint the comes from rules of the game is indeed only theoretical. At least with D&D, actual practice isn't really that even. The adjudication rules for D&D leave a whole lotta wiggle room, as evidenced by our endless round of threads in EW about just that topic. Other games don't have quite the same range of implementations of their rules sets. That's neither good nor bad, just a thing.

 

[pemerton]

I will respond more fully later. I have a question. Isn’t it true that in many games where players dictate fictional outcomes that they can dictate what other PC’s do via those outcomes? If so isn’t that taking away at least in part some players agency to declare their PCs actions?

I've bolded the key sentence. It might cover a lot of ground.

If I declare an action I kill the orc and then I succeed on my action (in some systems that might be winning an opposed check; in D&D that normally means making a successful to-hit roll and then making a good damage roll) then other players can't declare as their action I talk to the orc because the fictional positioning won't let them (unless they change the fictional positioning in some way (eg in D&D that could be using a Speak with Dead spell).

In that sense any change to the ficiton ramifies down the line to future action declarations.

In some systems, social conflict resolutions which, in fictional terms, brining it about that someone is persuaded or cowed or ensorcelled or the like create, in mechanical terms, hard constraints on action declaration similar to the orc being dead. This is how Duel of Wits works in Burning Wheel: if you lose, there are actions that are off the table for your character. It's also how I adjudicate Prince Valiant (the rules there are a bit more vague or incomlete than BW) as in the examples of play I posted about upthread. As farr as the actua process of play is concerned, the comparison to the dead orc is literal, not analogy or metaphor. I thik we all can see that, if player B declares I talk to the orc after player A's PC has killed it, the correct response is You can't - the orc's dead so in these systems. So, absolutely identically, in the systems I'm describing in this paragraph f the player delcares I get ready to lead the charge after another character has won the social contest to extract agreement that he will lead the charge, the correct respoinse is You can't -you agreed to let so-and-so lead the charge, remember?

That's not the only way of handling that sort of change in the fictional positioning. In some systems (I'm thinking some PbtA and also Cortex+ Heroic) the player might take penalties to checks that push against what the dominating character wants the PC to do. In Cortext + Heroic that sort of penalty functions (mechanically) just like injury or exhaustion - they all operate as buffs to the opposed check - and if it gets big enough then it takes the character out of play just like too much exhaustion would. In the exhaustion case the GM gets to narrate the PC collapsing for physical reasons; in the emotional or influence case the GM gets to narrate the PC collapsing from stress, or doing something else appropriate to the influence that has been exerted.

I've never played Fate, but I think the structure of compels is roughly comparable to this: if the player ignores the influence/constraint, s/he takes a mechanical penalty (in Fate, that takes the form of a resource expenditure).

Burning Wheel has another interesting mechanical framework in this general terrain: in BW each charcter has a Steel attribute, and if you fail a Steel chck you have to choose from one of four options to choose from: run screaming, swoon, fall prone and beg for mercy, or stand and drool. So the ficitonal positioning (I failed my Steel check, so my character's courage has failedi) not only precludes action declarations that would contradict that fiction but correlats to a tight mechanical constraint on what happens next. Classic Traveller has morale rules that look like a bit like this, too: if you fail the check you have to declare your character either breaking or surrendering (at some tables maybe the GM decides this rather than the player, in which case see below).

Yet another mechanical possibility occurred in my BW game (BW is a very mechanically interesting, complex and flesible system): when a dark naga ensorcelled a PC, I had theplayer rewrite one of his PCs' Beliefs to recognise the new situation, which then - within the structure of that game - changes his incentives in playing the PC. The analogue in D&D 5e would be changing an Ideal or a Bond.

In D&D (all editions, I think) there can be mechanical effects on a character (PC or NPC) that allow control over that character's action declarations to be changed. Rolemaster also has those effects. I imagine so do other RPGs that are to a greater or lesser extent in the mould of D&D. I suspect there are some Classic Traveller tables that run morale like this too - ie that failing a morale check lets the GM dictate actions for the PCs whose morale has broken.

From the point of view of burdens on play agency, what is significant about this last category of mechanical effect is not that it lets someone else make things true in the fiction of your PC, but rather than for the moment you can't declare actins for yur PC. It's like the PC being dead, or drugged, or utterly immobilised because bound and gagged.

EDIT: I just saw that this post is an appendix to posts that @Campbell and @Fenris-77 already made.

 

[Campbell]

So a fundamental conceit important to my understanding of role playing games (related to agency) is that the fiction is shared. Once anyone introduces something to the fiction it no longer belongs to just them. You are tacitly agreeing to allow the characters you introduce or setting elements be affected and changed by what goes on in the fiction. You do not really get to decide and limit how they will be affected, although emotional safety and creative boundary stuff will apply.

This manifests itself slightly differently in more challenge focused games. The emotional state of a B/X character is not under threat, but it is also like not a focus of play. Still you can be poisoned, diseased, subjected to all manner of spells, paralyzed, turned to stone, and/or level drained. All manner of nasty things can happen to you.

For their part the referee must play the dungeon denizens with integrity and make fair impartial rulings. They must respect your fictional positioning and let things play out. They are bound by things like wandering monster tables, morale rolls, and reaction rolls.

In a more character focused environment the expectation is that everyone is playing their characters with integrity - letting what happens in the fiction affect their characters physically, mentally, and emotionally. This includes the GM. They must play the world with integrity. No gets to hold on to their conceptions of things. No character concepts - only characters.

If we are all protecting the things we think we own and setting up carefully constructed boundaries of how we will allow other players to affect them there can be no real meaningful agency over the fiction. Agency over the shared fiction is dependent on playing with people who are vulnerable enough to allow their conceptions of the setting, characters, and relationships to meaningfully change.

I think in many ways agency over the shared fiction and agency over the content we create are opposing forces. Assuming equitable relationships and not naughty word ones (where I can affect your stuff and you cannot affect mine) the more agency we have over our stuff the less everyone else has over it. Agency then becomes this elaborate maze of walled of gardens where we must carefully negotiate the ones in which we can effect each others stuff.