Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Manbearcat]

That said, you say "fictional outcomes" very different than narrative control. So please give me an example of a fictional outcome, or maybe even a few. I'd like to see for myself how they actually differ.

If I had to wager a guess as to what @Fenris-77 is meaning here, he is saying:

Fictional Outcomes - Any change to the gamestate and attendant shared fiction of a declared action by a table participant.

Narrative Control - The ability to assert a thing happens within the setting external to a player's PC's immediate (temporally and spatial in that particular fictional situation) ability to influence/put into a effect.

For instance, in 5e Fictional Outcome:

Player: I attempt to jump across the gorge on horseback.

GM: <Yes, no, roll dice> Gamestate/fiction changes as a result.

5e Narrative Control (PCs are in a jam with the Burgomaster's men chasing them)

Player with Folk Hero and Background Trait "Rustic Hospitality": As we're rounding the bend with the Burgomaster's men in hot pursuit, a trio of muddy, rain-soaked commoners usher us into their hut with a hushed "this way(!)" and we dissappear beneath a trap door that they push a table atop.

4e has lots of equivalence in Skill Challenges Skill uses (particularly Knowledge and/or Relationship abilities/skills), Streetwise broadly, and tons of various Powers.

Blades has Flashbacks.

Dungeon World has all kinds of moves like this from the Fighter class, Rogue, Bard, Barbarian, Dashing Hero (etc etc).

Lots of systems and PC build types afford some level of (exogenous - with the PC being the locus) Narrative Control (with breadth, potency, if outright fiat or resolution is involved all varying).

 

[Campbell]

What I mean by character over character concept is to not hold on to your conception of who your character is. We find that out by testing them in play. Approach your character and the fiction with a sense of genuine curiosity. Resist the impulse to control either.

So practically this means encounters are not designed to show off one characters skill set (no spotlight balancing). It means you should change your conception of who your character is over time. You let the fiction affect that character. You do not get upset when things do not go your way. You engage in the here and now.

You play a person.

 

[FrogReaver]

How to put this and not go on all night with it?

If I'm reading things right, we're discussing what happens in play with regards to player agency; and how either can/will/does impact the other - right?

Not sure I would phrase it that way, but seems close enough.

So, overriding influences e.g. social contracts, houserules, etc. can and often are felt in the immediate here-and-now of play. An example: if my idea for a character going in was to be Evil-aligned but I find Evil PCs are not allowed at that table, that affects my play at every moment. Or, if my idea for my character is to be a hopelessly romantic flirt and I find there's a social contract banning PC romances (or that they'll always be kept offscreen), that too will affect my play at every moment.

But you made a distinction between rules and houserules/social contracts. If a game existed that banned Evil PCs via rules or romance via rules would you also view that as impacting player agency?

In both cases that constant and ongoing effect on my here-and-now play will simply be that I'm not able to play the character I wanted. I'm either playing a watered-down or amended version of the concept I first had in mind, or I'm playing something completely different because my first concept has been negated by a houserule. Either way, my agency's taken a kick in the head - I can't play the character I originally wanted and therefore I can't affect the fiction in ways I might have otherwise.

I think that being a player implies that you are playing a game. A game implies there are legal moves and potentially illegal moves. A player cannot play a game without accepting the legal and illegal moves. As such a player of a game only has agency inside the domain of the games legal moves because that is what he has accepted. Having any agency outside those legal moves would be 'cheating'.

I mean you could attempt to make the case that the mere existence of illegal moves in a game always constrains player agency but in that case it would apply to any such rule - even ones about genre appropriateness, about action resolution mechanics, about fairness, about the player getting to place the treasure in the Dungeon. If we really want to say that we can but I think that essentially makes player agency a worthless concept. What matters at that point isn't how much player agency or how little as it's neither good nor bad, it just 'is'. What matters at that point is what specific types of moves the game makes legal and illegal.

You're not always engaging with every rule. Travel rules, for example, are rather irrelevant when standing in a throne room talking to a courtier. But some rules - mostly those dealing with things like allowable character personalities, racial traits, and other 'always-on' stuff - you're engaging with at every turn. Most of the time that engagement is invisible; it's when it's not invisible that problems arise, usually to the detriment of player agency.

Having to engage with a rule at every turn is one reason to dislike such a rule. I'm not seeing you make a clear connection from that to player agency.

 

[FrogReaver]

For instance, in 5e Fictional Outcome:

Player: I attempt to jump across the gorge on horseback.

GM: <Yes, no, roll dice> Gamestate/fiction changes as a result.

5e Narrative Control (PCs are in a jam with the Burgomaster's men chasing them)

Player with Folk Hero and Background Trait "Rustic Hospitality": As we're rounding the bend with the Burgomaster's men in hot pursuit, a trio of muddy, rain-soaked commoners usher us into their hut with a hushed "this way(!)" and we dissappear beneath a trap door that they push a table atop.

So then player agency of fictional outcomes would seem to imply that the player has control of the fictional outcomes, which seems to me that would require narrative control, right?

If not perhaps an example illustrating player agency of fictional outcomes would help shed light on the difference - as all you provided above was an example of a fictional outcome determined by the GM or dice.

 

[Maxperson]

If you ask me to pass you the salt, and I do, I haven't negated your agency. I've facilitated it.

No you haven't. If I have to ask you to pass me the salt, you have full agency to say yes or no. I am 100% reliant on your agency to get what I want. If your choice aligns with my desires, great, but my agency means diddly unless I get up to get the salt myself or rudely lean across you and grab it.

If a player says (speaking for his/her PC) I go to the shop and buy some rations and the GM answers OK, write them down on your equipment list the GM has not negated the player's agency. The GM has allowed the player to decide what happens in the fiction.

Sure. Meaning that it's the DM's agency that decided it, not the player's.

If the GM says, instead, There are no ration venders around here - it's a wild and desolate place we now have two paths we might go down. Is this the GM taking the lead in establishing constraints of fictional positioning and genre? That's something where the players can participate in the negotiation, thus exercising their agency in reaching a consensus.

Sure. If the players can override the DM, they have agency. They are the ones deciding yes or no, unlike in the above examples.

Is this the GM unilaterally exercising control over the content of the shared fiction, based on his/her prior conception of what that fiction does and doesn't look like? Then we have no player agency, as @chaochou has said. In this case it's obvious that the GM is the one who is controlloing the content of the fiction.

And this is like the salt and rations. The DM is unilaterally exercising control over the content of the shared fiction and deciding to grant your request.

This happens all the time in my experience: different participants make different suggestions about what might be the case in the shared fiction and we work it out. Eg in my game on Sunday the application of action resolution mechanics dictated that one PC had fallen off the boat into the water. The player of that PC then wanted to use his sword to fight the dragon that was responsible for tipping over the boat. But that can only happen if the PC still has his sword on his person!

And he has the ability to touch the bottom with a good portion of his body out of the water.

I don't know if you've ever tried to hit someone with a noodle or something will in water that is deeper than you are tall. You aren't very effective and that's with something light. Deep water would also inhibit the ability to swing, even if you can stand.

In the same session the PC who is Master of the PCs' military order lost an argument with a NPC count about who would lead the charge in the next day's battle. None of the PCs - and none of their players' - was happy with this outcome. They wanted to circumvent it. I had to remind them more than once that the argument had been lost and conceded. They therefore ended up circumventing it by leading their forces out for a night-time raid on the enemy, with the goal of making it be the case that there would not be a charge the next day. This is an example of negotiation and consensus on what exactly is or isn't consistent with the established fiction.

This is curious. It was established in the fiction via the argument with the Count that there would be a charge during the battle the next day, it just wouldn't be the PCs that lead it. How were the players able to negate that by engaging a night time raid? Shouldn't there have been both the night time raid AND the day battle with the charge?

 

[Campbell]

First off, kudos for a well-thought-out post.
I'd like to throw this in here: these two things IME are not necessarily an either-or proposition.

While you're quite right that all manner of nasty things can happen to you in a challenge-focused game, one could argue the same could (and-or should?) be true - or be able to be true - in a character-focused game. That many systems seem not to have these options available is IMO a shortcoming.

And players can - and IME some very often do - allow what happens in the fiction to affect their characters physically and-or mentally and-or emotionally even in an otherwise challenge-based environment. It might not be a focus of play for the whole table, or even for the system, but it is for that player playing that character; and the system doesn't forbid it.

And one hopes that in ANY system the GM is making fair impartial rulings and running the setting and its NPC inhabitants with integrity and sincerity.

The rewards systems, play expectations, GMing techniques, rules that work best and rewards systems are phenomenally different. It is possible to mix techniques, but there a like a million land mines you need to get through. Our Mork Borg (Doom Metal OSR) game does some of that, but we refer on providing cues to each other of when to focus on what. Your basically designing a new game at that point.

When it comes to players trying to play different sorts of games at the same table that is not my bag at all. I just will not do it. We sit down to play a game we are playing that game. If we want to make changes we will make changes, but this is something we do together.

An Apocalypse World GM or a Burning Wheel GM is not a neutral arbiter in the way a B/X referee is. They have agendas laid out by those games they are supposed to follow. It's an active role. Not a passive one. It's like night and day.

 

[Lanefan]

But you made a distinction between rules and houserules/social contracts. If a game existed that banned Evil PCs via rules or romance via rules would you also view that as impacting player agency?

Yes if those things can exist as NPCs.

The type of setting-based constraint that says I can't play an Elf because Elves don't exist in this setting is fine: it applies equally across the board to players and GM alike.

The type of non-setting-based constraint that says I can't play an Evil Human even though Evil Humans exist in the setting is not fine. Ditto the clearly non-setting-based constraint that says I can't roleplay a romance with another PC even though people in the setting fall in love all the time (one assumes, unless mating and reproduction are done completely without emotion).

Taking this to an extreme would suggest I should be able to play a Dragon if I wanted; I don't go that far and am quite willing to accept (and enforce!) limits on playable races or creature types. But within those creature types, if it exists in the setting then I should be able to play one and it violates my player agency if I'm arbitrarily told I cannot. It further violates my agency if there's certain reasonable and otherwise-generally-acceptable things e.g. romance that I'm not allowed to roleplay.

It's an extension of my increasingly-hardline stance that PCs and NPCs are and must be consistent with each other within the setting. In other words, PCs are in all ways mechanically the same as NPCs only they've got players attached.

I think that being a player implies that you are playing a game. A game implies there are legal moves and potentially illegal moves. A player cannot play a game without accepting the legal and illegal moves. As such a player of a game only has agency inside the domain of the games legal moves because that is what he has accepted. Having any agency outside those legal moves would be 'cheating'.

On a strictly mechanical basis, I agree. Telling the DM you rolled 16 when the die clearly says 4 is cheating.

But on a beyond-mechanical basis I think the act of imposing extra illegalities (e.g. no Evil, no romance, must play your own gender, etc.) can very quickly start nibbling if not outright chomping at agency. Some people are cool with this. In a few instances I'm cool with this. But that doesn't blind me to the fact of its occurrence.

Having to engage with a rule at every turn is one reason to dislike such a rule. I'm not seeing you make a clear connection from that to player agency.

I was trying to - and it seems failing to in any clarity - respond to something you said about whether player agency is affected if the rule affecting it isn't relevant to the here-and-now situation; by pointing out that some agency-affecting rules are always present. But I've now forgotten exactly what it was you said that I was responding to, or where I was trying to go with it...so...bang goes that conversation.

 

[Lanefan]

The rewards systems, play expectations, GMing techniques, rules that work best and rewards systems are phenomenally different. It is possible to mix techniques, but there a like a million land mines you need to get through.

I'm not quite so sure.

I say this after years and years of watching a few of our players in our generally-challenge-based games play their characters in a way that by your description seems closer to what those character-based games end up with: the full gamut of emotional and mental* responses to what the fiction presents them with. It all comes from the player, mind; but the game system neither fights it nor forbids it...in fact, the system kind of ignores it, which makes things nice and simple.

* - the system itself kind of takes care of physical responses.

Our Mork Borg (Doom Metal OSR) game

>raised eyebrow< Doom Metal OSR game? How the feldecarb does that work?

Tell me more!

When it comes to players trying to play different sorts of games at the same table that is not my bag at all. I just will not do it.

Taken at face value this says you'd be annoyed were someone to play an all-emotion character in a challenge-based game...which seems odd.

We sit down to play a game we are playing that game.

The way I see it, we sit down to play a game and we're playing that game; but the game isn't (and shouldn't have to be) necessarily the same to each of us, and assuming that game is flexible enough it falls to each of us to make what we can of it and-or what we want of it.

And yes that means you might have the hard-core tactician and the full-immersion roleplayer at the same table playing the same game. My view there is if the system in use can't at least try to handle both at once the blame lies with the system, not the players.

 

[pemerton]

Wow.

You say this:

And then you say this:

Which. Is. Exactly. What. I. Mean.

So, which is it? Do you understand? Do you not understand? Do you understand but you don't know you understand? If you're playing stupid, please stop; I know you're not stupid.

I don't understand what you mean by the dice decide. And what you mean by comparing it to the GM decides.

You seem to be asserting, or at lesat implying, that there is no differnce between tossing a coin to see which of us has to do the dishes and you getting to decide every time who has to do the dishes. But the difference between those two things is so obvious to children and parents the world over that I don't see how you could assert that they are the same.

Here's another way to come at it: when @chaochou uses the phrase GM decides he means the GM decides what happens next in the fiction. When you use the phrase the dice decide you seem to mean the dice are used to work out who gets to decide what happens next in the fiction. How are those equivalent, given that the subject matter of the decision is different in each case?

If what you said was true, then there woudl be no difference between resolving combat using the D&D combat resolution framework and having the GM decide what the outcome is and telling the players. But I think that every RPGer has a very visceral grasp of the difference between those things.

In each case the difference is between (i) one person getting to decide what happens and (ii) using a randomiser to decided who gets to decide what happens.

Agency over your character is intrinsically good--it is, at least in more-traditional TRPGs like D&D, what the players can control directly, the only (or at least primary) way they have to shape the fiction.

<snip>

The players have agency over their characters, and thereby over the fiction. The players' agency over the characters is approximately absolute--barring magical effects like charm spells or draconic presence, the players get to decide what the characters do; their agency over the fiction is limited to what the characters can accomplish.

This is not very helpful analysis. The bolded phrase is an output of action resolution and the exercise of participant agency: eg Can this character jump this chasm? Can this character kill this orc? won't know until the action is resolved. So the phrase can't serve as an answer to questions about who has what sort of control over the fiction.

Players in D&D exercise agency over the fiction by declaring actions for their PCs. The resulting influence on the fiction is not confined to their PCs. Eg (to borrow one of @Lanefan's examples) if the player declares I open the door and it is aready uncontentious that the door is unlocked, has working hinges, and is in the immediate proximity of the PC who is not in any way trapped or paralysed, then it becomes true in the fiction that the door is open.

I'm sure there are some tables which treat such action declarations merely as suggestions to the GM to change the fiction, but I've never played at one as best I can recall.

Something being impossible doesn't negate player agency. The fact you have a player at your table who knows how tugboats operate kept that consistent with reality, but the fact that the operator couldn't (in the absurd) have the tugboat take off like a helicopter doesn't do change the options he has.

Again the analysis here is unhelpful. Impossible is not a self-actualising category. Someone has to make the call. Who gets to decide, at the table, that a tugboat can do this but not that? I explaind how, in the game I described, it was a player who was not the GM who did that.

In my games set in non-real worlds - eg my 4e game - the players also help decide what can or can't be done. Eg in that game it was the player of the invoker/wizard who generally took the lead in deciding what was possible to be done with magical effects.

That sounds more like authorship than agency to me.

I'm not describing authorship. I'm providing an example of a non-GM participant deciding what sorts of action declaration pass the credibility test and hence can be resolved by engaging the resolution mechanics. The player isn't authoring anything in the sense of contributing new content to the fiction. S/he is helping to curat the fiction to make sure it remains coherent/consistent. I posted the example to rebut the assertion that the GM is uniquely responsible for this.

But in any event, in a game whose main activity is collectively generating a shared fiction, what is the contrast you are drawing between authorship and agency?

 

[pemerton]

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.

As you describe this, it seems that all a player can do is make suggestions to the GM. Is that what you intend?

I don't think what you describe is the only way to play D&D. It's not even canonical for 4e D&D. If a player says, for instance, I climb the wall I think the GM narrating You are blown off by a sudden gust of wind by fiat, without any resolution check, would be regarded as sound GMIng at many tables. No matter how realistic that might seem to the GM.

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.

Action declarations that automatically succeed have everything to do with player agency over the fiction: they are instances of the player exercising such agency.

Action declaration that auto-fail in the sense you seem to have in mind (ie GM deciding) are cases where no agenc over the fiction is exercised by a player. But a decision - as at my table - that something isn't possible given fiction and genre will involve an exercise of player agency via collaborative negotiatoin and consensus decision-making abut what is possible. That is an exercise by all participants of agency over the content of the fiction.

"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.

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.

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.

I believe you've never read the HeroQuest Revised rulebook. So it would probably make more sense to ask for clarification than to tell me that I'm wrong in my interpretatin of it.

A contest is a check, normally opposed but sometimes againt a fixed target number. What Laws is saying is that if the thing the player says his/her PC does or attempts doesn't make sense, then no such check is made.

The reason for differentiating this from the action resolution process is the one I've already stated above: that establsihing what genre and fiction permit can be negotiated and the object of consensus; whereas action resolution is not a conesnsus-driven procedure. In each of the systems I referred to, it involves dice rolls.