Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[pemerton]

IThere is a sensitive Agency:Constraint: Play Priority relationship. More perceived agency and/or less constraint isn't always more (actual coherent agency). Sometimes more is less because the entire point of play can become muted or damaged beyond repair. If the point of agency in a game is to test delving skill in a threatening obstacle course, you encode play with particular constraints to ensure gamestate movement from one state to the next (and onward) is as close to a product of that skill as possible.

<snip>

THIS is what happens a lot with D&D. And what actually ends up happening is the GM starts relying upon Force to create a perceived experience of aligned Agency and Play Priorities when, under the hood (and definitely in the minds of the players who have sensed the tidal disruption), there is serious misalignment and incoherent incentive structures/feedback loops.

I agree with this. It relates back to the discussion upthread of a character who is able to teleport.

Having the ability to declare, as a player, that my PC is at place X rather than place Y does not give me any significant agency if the GM is largely unconstrained in narrating what it is that my PC encounters at X or at Y, and in then narrating how that encounter unfolds in response to what I have my PC do.

My agency is largely limited to promptig the GM to establish some fiction.

This is why I am disagreeing fairly strongly that simply declaring an action for a character is, in itself, a meaningful exercise of player agency.

 

[prabe]

{snip}

So what I'm trying to get at with this post is a few things:

1) There is a sensitive Agency:Constraint: Play Priority relationship. More perceived agency and/or less constraint isn't always more (actual coherent agency). Sometimes more is less because the entire point of play can become muted or damaged beyond repair. If the point of agency in a game is to test delving skill in a threatening obstacle course, you encode play with particular constraints to ensure gamestate movement from one state to the next (and onward) is as close to a product of that skill as possible.

2) Removal of those encoded constraints will perturb your distilled "Delving Agency" and therefore invariably perturb your Play Priority. Given how sensitive things can be here, small changes can have big effects. At some point (and likely very soon in the process), your changes will almost surely significantly negatively impact your initial Play Priority without the most rigorous intentful design. Now you've moved off of your primary Play Priority to something else...likely 2 different Play Priorities...with a very keen chance that they can be at odds with each other (possibly significantly so), rendering the resultant play a good chance of being a mess of misaligned Agency and Play Priorities.

THIS is what happens a lot with D&D. And what actually ends up happening is the GM starts relying upon Force to create a perceived experience of aligned Agency and Play Priorities when, under the hood (and definitely in the minds of the players who have sensed the tidal disruption), there is serious misalignment and incoherent incentive structures/feedback loops.

You said somewhere in the part I snipped that Moldvay-style delve play is one of the playstyles D&D does well. I'm not being argumentative, here; I'm genuinely curious what your opinion/s are: What are some other playstyles D&D does well? What would the Play Priority be for those? How would they degenerate? What would degenerate play look like? As someone who really doesn't care much for delve-style play, I'm genuinely curious.

 

[pemerton]

A GM saying yes is making a similarly unilateral decision. How much that changes the fiction is likely to result in how the success is honored and how it's narrated. This is how a GM operating in bad faith can allow PCs to "succeed" while still not allowing them to change the fiction. I have seen this with my own eyes, as a player.

I don't know what you have in mind here.

"Say 'yes'" as a component of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" means that the player gets what s/he wants.

If the GM's options are to either give the player what s/he wants, or to let the player dice for what s/he wants, this is quite different from the GM being uniaterally empowered to deny the player what s/he wants.

IAre you saying that some GM's lie and pretend to "say 'yes'" when in fact they do not give the player what s/he wants? If that's so that's sound pretty sucky. But that just seems to reinforce my point that unilateral GM decisions that stop the player getting what s/he wants are at odds with robust player agency.

 

[pemerton]

So, in both procedures, as I understand them:

1) The player proposes an action for their character.
2) The GM decides if there will be a roll, incorporating into that decision things such as genre-fidelity, etablished fiction, positioning. (Note that "Say yes or roll the dice" still contains a decision point.)
3) The player rolls the dice or otherwise resolves the action.
4) The result is narrated, faithful to the result of the resolution. Who narrates may be per the rules, or not.

I think I have probably a dozen posts upthread, include multiple ones that you have quoted and replied to, that deny (2).

The procedure I have stated - renumbered in accordance with your scheme and breaking out (2), has:

(2a) The credibility test is applied - is the action permissible relative to genre, fiction etc? This is something which is a matter of table consensus, and negotiation, with the GM acting as something like a chairperson.​

​

(2b) If the answer to (2a) is yes, then either (i) the GM says yes (ie the player gets what s/he wants out of the proposed action declaration) or (ii) the GM calls for a roll of the dice which will tell us whether or not the player gets what s/he wants.​

The fact that you, along with some other posters, seem resolute in disregarding this difference is quite surprising, given that the issue of unilateral GM determinations of failure is pretty much the topic of this thread.

 

[prabe]

I don't know what you have in mind here.

"Say 'yes'" as a component of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" means that the player gets what s/he wants.

If the GM's options are to either give the player what s/he wants, or to let the player dice for what s/he wants, this is quite different from the GM being uniaterally empowered to deny the player what s/he wants.

IAre you saying that some GM's lie and pretend to "say 'yes'" when in fact they do not give the player what s/he wants? If that's so that's sound pretty sucky. But that just seems to reinforce my point that unilateral GM decisions that stop the player getting what s/he wants are at odds with robust player agency.

I'll address this backward (sorry). Yes, I believe it's possible for a GM operating in bad faith (or from bad premises--I'm not insisting on bad intentions, here) to "say yes" in a way that negates, or undoes, or denies player agency. "Pretty sucky" sounds like an understatement. Bad GMing doesn't require malice.

As to the former: Yes, that's what I mean, but before the resolution gets to that point, there's the determination of appropriateness, possibleness (urk), and so forth; it's my understanding that if a proposed action doesn't meet those tests, there's a "no." That doesn't really seem different to me from a DM in D&D 5E (I really wish there was a game we both liked and played enough to be able to talk about the same game, don't you?) operating in good faith to determine when an Ability Check can't succeed (or, I guess in principle, can't fail).

As a side point--this is probably not super-relevant and I won't be upset if you ignore it--in the games I've played or read that were more ... explicitly about giving players agency in the fiction (mostly Fate; I've read the SRD for Blades in the Dark but haven't and likely won't play it) seems to me to have a clear trade-off, where the players get more ability to affect the fiction directly, outside of their character's capabilities, in exchange for the GM having more explicit ways to reduce their agency over their character. This seems to go with what's been said upthread about there only being so much agency to go around (as I understood it).

 

[prabe]

I think I have probably a dozen posts upthread, include multiple ones that you have quoted and replied to, that deny (2).

The procedure I have stated - renumbered in accordance with your scheme and breaking out (2), has:

(2a) The credibility test is applied - is the action permissible relative to genre, fiction etc? This is something which is a matter of table consensus, and negotiation, with the GM acting as something like a chairperson.​

​

(2b) If the answer to (2a) is yes, then either (i) the GM says yes (ie the player gets what s/he wants out of the proposed action declaration) or (ii) the GM calls for a roll of the dice which will tell us whether or not the player gets what s/he wants.​

The fact that you, along with some other posters, seem resolute in disregarding this difference is quite surprising, given that the issue of unilateral GM determinations of failure is pretty much the topic of this thread.

I will not speak for others, but I don't flatly say no often, and I don't do it capriciously. When I decide whether to say no, I am applying the credibility test; something needs to be ... pretty thoroughly not-credible before I'll deny the player a chance to roll. While I have a sense it's happened, I'm struggling to remember the last time I told someone what they wanted to do wasn't possible.

The 5E DMG specifically gives all this authority and the responsibility that comes with it to the DM. I'll quote:

When a player wants to do something, it's often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character's ability scores. For example, a character doesn't normally need to make a Dexterity check to walk across an empty room or a Charisma check to order a mug of all. Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure.

When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions:

Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?

Is a task so inappropriate or impossible--such as hitting the moon with an arrow--that it can't work?

If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate.

The filter for auto-success seems pretty broad to me, and the filter for auto-failure seems really narrow. If the DM and players are operating in good faith, it doesn't seem likely that there'd be conflict all that often.

 

[FrogReaver]

I agree with this. It relates back to the discussion upthread of a character who is able to teleport.

Having the ability to declare, as a player, that my PC is at place X rather than place Y does not give me any significant agency if the GM is largely unconstrained in narrating what it is that my PC encounters at X or at Y, and in then narrating how that encounter unfolds in response to what I have my PC do.

My agency is largely limited to promptig the GM to establish some fiction.

This is why I am disagreeing fairly strongly that simply declaring an action for a character is, in itself, a meaningful exercise of player agency.

I think you are preloading the term "player agency" with a lot of additional baggage that the concept doesn't necessitate.

I think that we can all agree that different games give differing amounts of agency to players over declaring their characters actions. Since games do this differently we should be able to talk about what impact restricting this kind of agency in games has on the play experience. You keep saying this kind of agency isn't meaningful, that differences in it aren't meaningful, but it's a very meaningful concept and type of agency to many of us. It may not be very meaningful to you but it's exceedingly meaningful to us. I mean one of the most common cited dislikes of certain games is that they don't have as much of this type of agency.

 

[Manbearcat]

You said somewhere in the part I snipped that Moldvay-style delve play is one of the playstyles D&D does well. I'm not being argumentative, here; I'm genuinely curious what your opinion/s are: What are some other playstyles D&D does well? What would the Play Priority be for those? How would they degenerate? What would degenerate play look like? As someone who really doesn't care much for delve-style play, I'm genuinely curious.

* 4e does scene-based, Story Now meets Magic the Gathering tactical depth, Mythic Action-Adventure to a level that no other game on the market can even touch. There are a few other games that have some elements of this and/or try their hand at it, but they don't get there with the completeness or with the depth or with the ease-of-use that 4e does.

Degenerate 4e play comes about when 4e GM's either (a) don't know how to run snowballing thematic, scene-framed conflict that centers exclusively on the tropes embedded in the PC (these could be technical/creative/improvisation skills like not knowing how to appropriate "Change the Situation" when a noncombat action scene should evolve from a failure or it could be just an inconsistent or poor sense of genre logic), (b) they don't know how to structure diverse and compelling combats (that incentivize movement/battlefield interactions/stunting and/or emphasize team monster synergy or attack team PC weaknesses and/or have compelling objectives that don't involve merely removing an enemy HPs to 0) or some combination thereof.

Degenerate 4e play is surely boring, with brutally long and uninteresting combats, and noncombat conflicts lacking in dynamism and thematic potency.

* BECMI/RC and 1e is best at high-resolution, high fantasy, sandbox hexcrawls.

Degenerate play is pretty straight-forward. Play can become unwieldy from a table handling time/book-keeping and look-up perspective. 2/3 of the way through the Expert Set spellcasters become dominant because of their ability to consistently obviate obstacles, destroy most aspects of the "crawl" component of play, while ensuring a rest schedule that compromises their supposed-to-be limited-use resource scheduling weakness. As a response, GM's can get desperate and annoyed and play devolves into a Rock-Paper-Scissors Calvinball game (basically with GMs shooting whenever they want and/or having access to all the nukes). GMs feel like in order for any level of satisfying play to persist they have to endlessly leverage their unique access to the offscreen/backstory to deploy an endless cavalcade of spellcaster power-play blocks; a passive-aggressive arms race and fictional position haggling cluster.

Stop at about level 9 (or even 7) and you're typically fine!

* AD&D 2e and 5e provide the best experience for an Adventure Path or Metaplot-heavy, GM-driven game where talented (in all the ways a bard would be) GMs can keep the plot and the action moving at a fast pace so players can enjoy a minimized overhead experience and a sense of participating in a far-reaching fantasy story (without the serious demands/workload of propelling play).

Degenerate play here is simple. If players are unwilling participants in the GM's or AP's preconceived story and dislike the covert Force techniques required to keep the story machine going.

It just so happens that the market for this is BY FAR the biggest for TTRPGs, likely because the % of casual players that can be caught in this net is massive.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think part of what is going on here is that some of us are associating "go to the dice" with games where the rules of the game tell us what happens. In 5th Edition except during combat and when a spell is involved the dice roll is nonbinding. In Fifth Edition the DM determines whether dice are rolled and what impact that has. This is different from even Pathfinder Second Edition which (taking some cues from Apocalypse World) lays out what success or failure mean and provides guidance on what DCs should look like for a given skill.

If I am trying to have my character intimidate a mad tyrant into doing something he does not want to do the game provides me with guidance on the sort of fictional position my character needs, what DCs likely look like, and what happens if my character critically succeeds, succeeds, fails, or critically fails. This allows me to make decisions for my character with a much better view of what might happen. The rules call out where judgement calls are expected to occur so I know where I should expect to negotiate with the GM.

It is possible to get that kind of information from a GM, but at that point they would just be writing their own game.

I am not saying the approach Pathfinder Second Edition takes is preferable in all cases. I do think the clear expectations it provides to both players and GMs can help (but not necessarily will) provide an experience where players have more agency over the fiction.

I think having a strong idea about the consequences rather than just success or failure is critical. I have zero interest in Spicy Dice rolls. If dice rolls do not really matter I would rather not roll them.

It could be argued that the real world doesn't give us a handbook on exact percentages for success and thus going to a model with resolution details hidden from us gives us something closer to real world decision making. So if the goal of a particular RPG is to have us play like our character, think like our character and make decisions like our character I'm not so sure the fully player facing resolution system is preferable. Ill even go a step further and say none of this has anything to do with agency.

 

[prabe]

AD&D 2e and 5e provide the best experience for an Adventure Path or Metaplot-heavy, GM-driven game where talented (in all the ways a bard would be) GMs can keep the plot and the action moving at a fast pace so players can enjoy a minimized overhead experience and a sense of participating in a far-reaching fantasy story (without the serious demands/workload of propelling play).

Degenerate play here is simple. If players are unwilling participants in the GM's or AP's preconceived story and dislike the covert Force techniques required to keep the story machine going.

It just so happens that the market for this is BY FAR the biggest for TTRPGs, likely because the % of casual players that can be caught in this net is massive.

Thanks for the answer!

So, I snipped your post, because I'm pretty much just playing 5E at the moment (open to other games as a player, not interested in investing as much as I'd have to, to introduce a new game as a GM) so obviously this is the part I'm most interested in.

I don't disagree with you that WotC clearly want 5E to be the Adventure Path Edition. I wonder if you think a DM running without a preconceived story is running something degenerate, or merely something that's not prioritized by the game's writers/publishers; possibly running something not entirely to the game's strengths. I mean, I never intentionally prep more than a session ahead; I don't really have preconceived stories; I say stories because I don't know exactly which goal a party will pursue after this one. I don't feel as though I'm using Force to, as you say, "keep the story machine going," but I'm willing to find myself wrong about that.