Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[FrogReaver]

That's been talked about quite a bit, you may have missed it. Pretty much everyone talking about other games points to things they don't do well.

I can say that before I started playing other games and really embracing the differences, I was defensive about my game of choice and statements that it has flaws. I thought it was a slam against my choice of entertainment. It's not. It's an honest evaluation of the game. I am now very happy I'm aware of the flaws of 5e, much like I'm happier to know where potholes in the road are. It's because I can now steer around them. 5e is by no means perfect, but it's still a good game. Use it for what it does well and you'll have fewer issues. Use it for things it doesn't do well and you'll have more. This really shouldn't be a contentious statement.

I've not seen anyone mention, flaws of FATE or any of the other games mentioned.

 

[prabe]

If your experience is that Compels are about forcing the character into the the GM's story, then either you've played with bad GMs or you played with good GMs that just didn't grok FATE. This might, perhaps, be colored by your stated preference to only engage the fiction through the player declaring actions for the PC.

To me, having the GM Compel a trait I've chosen for my character is an opportunity to embrace that aspect of my character -- an aspect that is, in part, definitional to my character and totally my choice. It may not be the smart play in the fiction, but it's still definitely something my character would likely do. If this doesn't apply, then the Compel is being incorrectly used.

Here are examples of event Compels from FATE SRD:



Honestly, these look like things D&D GMs do without any mechanics at all.

They look like things I do without a second thought in D&D, with framing scenes and/or instigating events.

I have said--though possibly not in this thread--that GMing Fate has made me a better DM, though I'll never GM Fate again. My preference to leave the characters alone--to not Compel them--really makes me a bad fit, even if I know how the game works; and then the Fate Point Economy breaks down, and the game doesn't work super-well.

Also, as a player I'd rather be surprised by how the world connects to my character, and having an Aspect I expect the GM to Compel doesn't seem likely to be surprising. I dunno how that correlates to how I run 5E, but that's a different question.

 

[prabe]

I follow. I think my conception was more of using natural means to charm you, whereas you are picturing the possibility of someone so charming they are efficetively supernaturally charming

That would be different, and really, really hard to GM (at least in 5E). As a player, I'm guessing there'd be one or several Insight vs. Deception checks, if she was operating in bad faith. I can see it as easier to buy if she's lying that well than if she's that intoxicating a presence. Again, though, if an NPC manipulates my character into doing something, I'll resent the NPC, not the GM.

 

[chaochou]

So board game players have Agency, but traditional RPG players have no agency?

Is this a question? Board game players do. Traditional RPGs is such a loose term as to be meaningless.

Rules-bound Kriegsspiel gives Agency but Free Kriegsspiel does not?

Is this a question? Nothing I said precludes Free Kriegspiel players from having agency, definitionally.

For me this is a degenerate definition of Agency that gives rise to derogatory terms such as Mother May I and Magical Tea Party. It fundamentally misunderstands how trad RPGs work and the GM role as judge and referee.

For me this is a degenerate understanding of what I said. I‘ve made precise and clear statements on agency. I don’t see any value, or even comprehension, in your response.

 

[Lanefan]

By focusing only on a single instance where the suggested dice roll goes against a participant and extrapolating that the losing participant never gets agency. This is clearly false, like claiming the player whose move it isn’t in chess never has agency.

The chess analogy falls apart once it's noted that while the player whose move it isn't has no agency, the player whose move it is does; and that agency flips back and forth more or less evenly as the game progresses. (I say more or less, as sometimes a move made by one player e.g. checking the king reduce the number of moves available to the responding player; and this that player's agency)

By claiming that suggesting a participant only has to propose a change to the fiction, even when another has complete veto over it, is sufficient to have agency. This is so obviously false it’s laughable. It’s like claiming that toddlers have agency to get what they want by asking their parents.

The agency isn't around getting what you want; it's around being able to try to get what you want.

Only where a game has mechanics to ensure that their proposal can result in specific outcomes they want, and irrespective of whether the GM wants or likes that outcome, does a player have actual agency - not just the fake versions of it so beloved of railroading GMs in this thread.

Agreed in principle, though I'm not sure hard mechanics are required.

That said, though, it all too often comes across, whether intended so or not, that when people say things like "the proposal can result in specific desired outcomes" (hence my bolding of the word above) they really mean, or are trying to say, that the proposal must result in the specific desired outcomes. There's a huge difference.

'Can' result implies there's a greater or lesser chance that it cannot. 'Must' result would quickly become degenerate at a very high percentage of tables, and that's what I fight against.

 

[Ovinomancer]

IMO, Having agency over what actions some mechanic can force you to do has absolutely no impact on whether you have agency over your chracters actions. In both cases you don't.

If the Compelled action is limited only to things I've chosen to be important for my character, then I have exercised control over my characters actions. I can only be Compelled to do things I've already chosen.

If I'm Dominated, I have no choice or control over the actions of my character at all.

If I am to make sense of your argument, I can only assume that it's because you're arguing that agency over action declaration is a separate thing. I understand that you've said this, but aside from your assertion I haven't seen the arguments that support it. On the other hand, I've supported my characterization of agency as having choice and the ability to see that choice implemented in the fiction. If I use that framework, then a Compel is leveraging a choice I made in character creation and seeing it implemented in the fiction. That the action proposal comes from someone other than me is only important if we're accepting your argument that there's a special subset of agency that is declaring actions for your character. I don't agree that this is severable from the concept of agency.

In other words, we're approaching this from different sets of premises.

It seems like your concept of agency is some ever morphing hybrid of every kind of agency imaginable which allows you to muddy the waters by introducing a different type of agency into a discussion about some other type.

No, it's quite firm. It hasn't changed throughout the thread. I formed this concept awhile ago, and it's pretty strong. I have no problem pointing out when agency is denied. I don't think that's necessarily bad. Because I'm not arguing from a position that agency=merit, I don't have a stake in defending any given game based on how it treats agency. I think 5e, for instance, has muddy rules that can lead to all kinds of removal of agency even in good faith play. I still run it almost every weekend. I absolutely know that Blades in the Dark severely limits agency. It does this through play premises and setting and through sharing of authority over characters to some degree. And many other ways I'm not going to list. I still love to run Blades in the Dark. So, yeah, no, I'm not shifting my arguments to defend any particular style of play or game. That would make agency a useless tool to analyze how a game works. So, I have no need to shift my arguments. I certainly do not care that I win an argument with you on the internet.

So, any confusion about my position is on your end. It's not moving over here, at all. As I said in the above section, we appear to be operating on different premises. I also think we're operating on different goals. I'm trying to fairly analyze games. You seem to be looking to support a playstyle as having more agency against a different playstyle. I don't care. I care why they've limited agency and how that functions. And that goes directly to the discussion on Compels in FATE. These are a collaborative tool to use the character as designed by the player to create new issues in the fiction for the characters to overcome. They aren't Dominate Person, which just strips agency from one player and transfers it to another.

 

[FrogReaver]

If the Compelled action is limited only to things I've chosen to be important for my character, then I have exercised control over my characters actions. I can only be Compelled to do things I've already chosen.

If I'm Dominated, I have no choice or control over the actions of my character at all.

If I am to make sense of your argument, I can only assume that it's because you're arguing that agency over action declaration is a separate thing. I understand that you've said this, but aside from your assertion I haven't seen the arguments that support it. On the other hand, I've supported my characterization of agency as having choice and the ability to see that choice implemented in the fiction. If I use that framework, then a Compel is leveraging a choice I made in character creation and seeing it implemented in the fiction. That the action proposal comes from someone other than me is only important if we're accepting your argument that there's a special subset of agency that is declaring actions for your character. I don't agree that this is severable from the concept of agency.

In other words, we're approaching this from different sets of premises.


No, it's quite firm. It hasn't changed throughout the thread. I formed this concept awhile ago, and it's pretty strong. I have no problem pointing out when agency is denied. I don't think that's necessarily bad. Because I'm not arguing from a position that agency=merit, I don't have a stake in defending any given game based on how it treats agency. I think 5e, for instance, has muddy rules that can lead to all kinds of removal of agency even in good faith play. I still run it almost every weekend. I absolutely know that Blades in the Dark severely limits agency. It does this through play premises and setting and through sharing of authority over characters to some degree. And many other ways I'm not going to list. I still love to run Blades in the Dark. So, yeah, no, I'm not shifting my arguments to defend any particular style of play or game. That would make agency a useless tool to analyze how a game works. So, I have no need to shift my arguments. I certainly do not care that I win an argument with you on the internet.

So, any confusion about my position is on your end. It's not moving over here, at all. As I said in the above section, we appear to be operating on different premises. I also think we're operating on different goals. I'm trying to fairly analyze games. You seem to be looking to support a playstyle as having more agency against a different playstyle. I don't care. I care why they've limited agency and how that functions. And that goes directly to the discussion on Compels in FATE. These are a collaborative tool to use the character as designed by the player to create new issues in the fiction for the characters to overcome. They aren't Dominate Person, which just strips agency from one player and transfers it to another.

please don’t accuse me of bad faith.

 

[Lanefan]

I've seen a lot of people on the other side state that there are times when loss of agency is okay, and that things like Dominate are one of those ways. @hawkeyefan has said something similar in this thread. I've also seen in other threads where people say that any loss of agency ever is not okay.

OK, but what about gain of agency? Shouldn't that be just as bad? (I ask because nobody ever mentions it)

What;s good for the goose is good for the gander: you-as-player gain agency if your PC Dominates an NPC.

In this case agency is more or less zero-sum: what's lost by one player is gained by another. Easier to grok in a PvP situation - if Maxperson the Wizard Dominates Lanefan the Fighter, you gain exactly as much agency as I lose.

 

[Ovinomancer]

They look like things I do without a second thought in D&D, with framing scenes and/or instigating events.

I have said--though possibly not in this thread--that GMing Fate has made me a better DM, though I'll never GM Fate again. My preference to leave the characters alone--to not Compel them--really makes me a bad fit, even if I know how the game works; and then the Fate Point Economy breaks down, and the game doesn't work super-well.

Also, as a player I'd rather be surprised by how the world connects to my character, and having an Aspect I expect the GM to Compel doesn't seem likely to be surprising. I dunno how that correlates to how I run 5E, but that's a different question.

I'd like to really drill down on the first sentence. As you and I both said, these examples from the FATE SRD really look like things a D&D GM just decides. That's a big indication of the difference in how FATE frames things. In D&D, a player that had one of those statements attached to their character has either written it into their backstory or had it occur in play. On that front, they're pretty much the same as the FATE character. However, in D&D, the GM unilaterally decides when those things enter play as complications. In FATE, it's more of a negotiation. The GM proposes the complication, based on the trait, to the player. If the player agrees that this looks like something that would be true, they earn a FATE point. If they do not, they must pay a FATE point. This is pure incentive to lean into the traits you've chosen for your character. True, if you've spent all of your FATE points (presumably in doing awesome things), you cannot decline the Compel, but you're still going to be incentivized with a FATE point to lean into the traits you've chosen for you character.

If the GM is using Compels to push the story to result how they want it to, then the GM has missed the point. FATE is about making play about the characters, good and bad parts, and Compels are just ways to enable that.

That said, I see how the GM proposing actions for your character or negotiating a scene change with the player for their character can be jarring or not fun mechanics for everyone. That's fine. You do not have to like FATE, and I'm not asking you (or anyone else) to do so nor am I pitching FATE to you for reconsideration. I, personally, am not terribly fond of FATE -- I find it a bit too muddy for my tastes (which is funny because I like 5e, which is also muddy but in different ways). But, we should be discussing how games do things absent preferences. And FATE Compels are very distant from D&D Dominates except in very grossly simplified ways, like both remove agency to some extent. That's not a useful comparison statement.

 

[Ovinomancer]

please don’t accuse me of bad faith.

As I absolutely did nothing of the kind, I will file this away for the future as something to continue to not do.

If you mean pointing out that you haven't established a framework to support your assertion that agency over character action declarations is a separate thing from general agency, that's not an accusation of bad faith. It's an invitation.