Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[prabe]

@hawkeyefan

Decision (which is probably almost always an action declaration, but I'm open to the possibility it might not be; the decision of which trail to follow doesn't seem as though it requires action-resolution, for example, though acquiring the information on which to base that decision probably does) is when and where players exert--and demonstrate--agency. (Again, leaving aside games with mechanics that allow direct reframing of the fiction.) That agency can be falsified (which word seems better than "undone" or "negated"; I don't feel as though I'm moving the goalposts, here) by the GM in several ways, which mostly revolve around not allowing the players to change the fiction--which one might describe as framing the future (though there may be problems with that description). Once falsified, the agency effectively doesn't exist, and didn't in the first place. If you have two paths that might lead to the McGuffin, and no matter which way you go you find [THING] and then the McGuffin, there's no agency in that decision, even though the players might believe there is; heck, if there's no agency if the GM flips a coin after you decide, either.

I tend to agree with the statement that failure should (at least sometimes) also change the fiction, just in a way contrary to the player's desires. To me, the ability to fail is inherent in agency. I recognize not everyone agrees with that.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Thought I’d just bring this up again, as it’s been proven true over the last 10 or so pages.

If it wasn’t convincing then, why do you think repeating it without providing additional reasoning makes it more convincing now?

 

[pemerton]

Going out on a limb, but I'd say character agency does not exist at all. Characters cannot choose, being not real. Any choice made is by the player. Lacking one of the foundations of agency (ability to choose), characters can't have it.

That's certainly one way to make sense of it.

I was treating it as an imaginary state of affairs - so a conscious, undrugged etc character is (in the fiction) exercising agency by making choices etc; whereas a dominated or sleepwalking or similar character is not.

My main point is that the character having agency in the fiction is almost completely sepatare from the player having agency at the table., Players could have agency narrating the activities undertaken by their sleepwalking PCs (qv the PC in my BW game who is dominated by a dark naga); and players could lack agency in a game where their PCs are awake and active decision-makers (as per the example of an AD&D game I briefly played in before the players all walked).

 

[pemerton]

I'll give this a shot. I don't know what you know about the games I'll talk about, so I'll try not to skip anything important. If something seems overly basic, it's because I'm presuming this is new to you, not because I believe you to be stupid--I emphatically do not.

While Fate has (arguably) a similar mechanic, I'm specifically thinking about Mutants and Masterminds, second edition (they're on third edition, but I don't know it as well; and it's been a while since I played or ran even second edition). As you might guess from the title, it's a superhero roleplaying game. Characters have Hero Points that can be spent in several ways: You can use them to re-roll an action resolution, you can use them to temporarily add an ability to your character, you can use it to increase a power's effectiveness (I'm whiffing on the mechanics here, but I can probably find them if you want), or you can use them to edit a scene.

In all cases, when you use them they are actually spent--something like the Certificate I remember you mentioning in I think Prince Valiant--so they are a limited resource. If a player wants to use a Hero Point to edit a scene, he does something at the table to indicate this (we used beads to represent Hero Points, I gather some people use poker chips--IIRC it's strongly recommended in the rules that there be physical tokens), and he proposes his edit to the GM. The GM approves it, or doesn't, or makes a counteroffer (which can lead to further negotiation). There are at least recommended limits to the editing--it shouldn't be an instant-out. The scene is then re-written (I think "re-framed" might fit with the terminology you've been using) to reflect this change. Adding the spittoon from your example would fly; I had a player at my table do it once to edit ambulances into the approaching first responders. IIRC, an example in the game book involves a PC being locked in a storeroom by a villain with plant powers editing the storeroom to contain herbicide/s.

Does that help?

I understand the mechnanic, more or less. As a mechanic it seems to me no different from the following:

In classic AD&D there is a system called spells. Spelss are a limited-use resource, similar to Hero Points in M&M or Storyteller Certificates in Prince Valiant.

When the GM frames a scene, one response a player may make is to spend one of these resoures - often called casting a spell. There are a range of effects possible, but some are a type of refrraming: eg the Passwall spelll permits the player to substitute for the narration "You see a wall" with the narration "I see a wall with a 5' x 8' by 10' deep hole in it".​

But I've never heard a Passwall spell described as editing a scene. It's the terminology that I'm puzzled by, because it seems like it's meant to call out something distinctive but I'm not seeing the boundaries of what is being distinguished.

 

[pemerton]

Here's the thing about legal moves. Sometimes not every legal move will be a good move to make for satisfying play, particularly when it comes to the GM.

<snip>

In any game where a GM is given a good deal of latitude like they are in Fifth Edition or Apocalypse World making the right calls based on play priorities, rather than just ones you have the authority to make is huge. I expect players to provide feedback and try to hold me accountable if they feel I made the wrong call even if I had the authority to make it at the time. This is how we get better.

Yes. I posted more-or-less this back on page 19 of this thread:

given that the rules for ability and CHA checks tell us that CHA "measures your ability to interact effectively with others" and that "an ability check tests a character’s or monster’s innate talent and training", it follows that a GM who decides the tyrant's reaction without calling for a check has decided that no amount of innate talent or training in respect of interacting with others can influence this outcome. When should a GM make such a decision? According to what principles? With what goals and hopes in mind?

The rules may not tell us what is the best approach here, but that doesn't mean it's pointless to talk about better and worse approaches.

 

[pemerton]

On the other hand, it's been demonstrated that if you can't announce an action you don't have agency, and that if you have agency you can announce an action; so, I don't think the disconnect you think has been proven, has been proven.

@chaochou is correct: announcing an action is not agency in any interesting sense for RPGing. I played an AD&D game years ago, breifly before I and the other players walked, in which every action we announced achieved nothing unless the GM could narrate an outcome that was the one he wanted to make his pre-written adventure work as he'd written it.

Any other action he rendered ineffective by exercising control over the fiction eg NPCs would refuse or be unable to answer questions, provide assistance, etc.

If that GM started posting in this thread saying that players in his game had agency because they could announce actions it would be a joke. I was there. Action declarations in that game were pointless, because the GM was just working through a sequence of events that as already written.

This thread, and the OP, have brought back memories of that experience.

 

[prabe]

I understand the mechnanic, more or less. As a mechanic it seems to me no different from the following:

indent]In classic AD&D there is a system called spells. Spelss are a limited-use resource, similar to Hero Points in M&M or Storyteller Certificates in Prince Valiant.

When the GM frames a scene, one response a player may make is to spend one of these resoures - often called casting a spell. There are a range of effects possible, but some are a type of refrraming: eg the Passwall spelll permits the player to substitute for the narration "You see a wall" with the narration "I see a wall with a 5' x 8' by 10' deep hole in it".[/indent]

But I've never heard a Passwall spell described as editing a scene. It's the terminology that I'm puzzled by, because it seems like it's meant to call out something distinctive but I'm not seeing the boundaries of what is being distinguished.

I don't appear to have explained it adequately.

Spells are actions, something the player declares the character is doing. One acquires spells by finding them--either in captured spellbooks or on scrolls--or by random chance--the spells one acquires at a new level. One has a set number of spells one can prepare and cast, as a feature of one's class level (in the case of passwall it looks as though that class would have to be Magic-User). Once one has cast a prepared spell it's no longer available (barring preparing it more than once). Casting a spell takes some amount of segments or rounds (or longer in some instances), and the effects are clearly defined--passwall has specific effects, which are different from phantasmal force, which are different from alter reality.

Using a Hero Point in Mutants and Masterminds (or using the similar rules in Fate, whereby one can use a Fate Point to "Declare a Detail") is a thing the player is explicitly doing as the player; it's not an action they're declaring their character as doing. They are much more limited a resource than spells are in AD&D--the default in Mutants and Masterminds is one Hero Point; the default number in Fate Core is three Fate points. Using a Hero Point in this way (as a subset of "Inspiration) in Mutants and Masterminds is described in the rules as "intended to give the players more input into the story and allow their heroes chances to succeed"; using a Fate Point this way (as "Declaring a Detail") is described in the rules thus: "Sometimes you want to add a detail that works to your character's advantage." Note that both rules are explicit that it's the player doing it, not the character. Hero Points in Mutants and Masterminds are acquired when a character undergoes a "Setback" (defined as a failed check with the worst possible result) or a "Complication"(which are described as "essentually setbacks the players choose for their heroes in advance" with examples given as Accident, Addiction, Enemy, Fame, Hatred, Honor, Obsession, Phobia, Prejudice, Reputation, Responsibility, Rivalry, Secret, and Temper. One can also earn Hero Points for suitably heroic acts or particularly good roleplaying (at the GM's description). In Fate, the primary way of acquiring Fate Points is by accepting Compels from the GM.

Does that help clear things up?

 

[prabe]

@chaochou is correct: announcing an action is not agency in any interesting sense for RPGing. I played an AD&D game years ago, breifly before I and the other players walked, in which every action we announced achieved nothing unless the GM could narrate an outcome that was the one he wanted to make his pre-written adventure work as he'd written it.

Any other action he rendered ineffective by exercising control over the fiction eg NPCs would refuse or be unable to answer questions, provide assistance, etc.

If that GM started posting in this thread saying that players in his game had agency because they could announce actions it would be a joke. I was there. Action declarations in that game were pointless, because the GM was just working through a sequence of events that as already written.

This thread, and the OP, have brought back memories of that experience.

I assure you I didn't mean to drag those memories out of your depths. I have been involved as a player in games that had similar problems, and they can be immensely frustrating.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's certainly one way to make sense of it.

I was treating it as an imaginary state of affairs - so a conscious, undrugged etc character is (in the fiction) exercising agency by making choices etc; whereas a dominated or sleepwalking or similar character is not.

My main point is that the character having agency in the fiction is almost completely sepatare from the player having agency at the table., Players could have agency narrating the activities undertaken by their sleepwalking PCs (qv the PC in my BW game who is dominated by a dark naga); and players could lack agency in a game where their PCs are awake and active decision-makers (as per the example of an AD&D game I briefly played in before the players all walked).

I agree with your point, but not with phrasing it as involving character agency. That still just doesn't exist. The character isn't making choices and the fiction isn't real. Unreal things cannot have agency because they lack the foundational ability to actually choose. This is nothing more than a reflection of the player's choice onto the fictional character.

Still, I follow that you're saying a player can exert agency over character action declarations even in a fictional state where the character is in a non-normal fictional state. That's fine and good. And I follow that a player can not have agency over a character in an otherwise normal fictional state. It's still player agency we're talking about -- the character is the vehicle for that agency. I don't see anything clarifying by imagining the character as having agency.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't think your position and mine lead to radically different expectations or GMing styles, do you? I don't entirely disagree that agency is woven throughout the game, I just believe it's exerted (that's the verb I keep coming back to) at discrete points. There are threads of agency all around and they get pulled when and where PCs act. If you exert your agency here, the thread moves there and there and there and probably there and maybe there; I think this is what I mean when I talk about actions having consequences, PCs being able to make mistakes. I think my "consequences" is congruent with your "finality." I think if the GM undoes an action (I don't want to use "negate" here because I can see someone saying "that's impossible" as negation, and I don't think it is) then there was never agency in the first place. Looking back at games from long ago that deeply frustrated me as a player, I can see that this was one of the things that went wrong, at least sometimes.

No, they don't require radically different expectations of GM styles, but then that's kinda not directly related to discussing where agency exists. More on this in a moment.

I suppose that I don't really see agency existing at discrete points but rather emerging from the combination of multiple points. Being able to declare an action isn't agency unless that action has a chance to exert change and isn't later reversed using fiat. All of these things have to be true for agency to exist -- loss of any of them removes agency. This is a classic example of the sum being greater than the parts -- each part is important to agency, but the sum of the parts is the full expression of agency.

Back to where agency exists. One can run a game without ever consciously considering agency, and run it well. If, however, we are going to consider agency, it helps to define it and locate it in play without reference to supporting or not supporting our preferred play. I run very different games between systems, and therefore agency changes. I'd say that my players have more tools available to express agency in my Blades game, but they also give up agency because I can narrate their characters doing unintended things on a failure. This is all mediated by the mechanics and strong principles of play to achieve the play goals. Do my players have more agency in Blades than in my 5e game? Eh. It's different, but probably, a little bit. Mostly because Blades is so laser focused on play that takes full advantage of the agency it provides and just doesn't do the other stuff where it's agency wouldn't. 5e is more, broad, and that lack of focus means that agency can suffer as play wanders in and out of different areas of agency (Combat, I'm looking at you and your glorious, meticulously structured agency). And, that's absolutely fine. Amount of agency is not a benchmark for fun. More agency doesn't equal more fun, and less doesn't equal less. I love playing Gloomhaven, for instance, but I have a lot less agency in that game than in any RPG. Yet, I've played in RPGs that aren't nearly as much fun. Agency != fun.

In fact, I'd say that a large part of good design is where and how you limit agency. Not provide, but limit. I find I can play a fun game in 5e, so I don't really care how more or less agency exists between 5e and another game as a matter of how I'm going to spend my entertainment time. I do care when I'm looking at games and analyzing how they work, and when I do that I'm going to strive to be merciless in my analysis. This helps me understand the game better, to better understand where the potholes are so I can help steer play around them. I don't care if I find less agency when I do this, because I want to know where agency exists, where it's threatened, what it's threatened by, so I can use this information appropriately when I run that game.