Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8014606" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Three things:1)  Agency, as a concept in social science, requires both the ability to make an autonomous decision and then to enact it with the same autonomy.  Merely the ability to navigate a decision-point independently is not sufficient. 2)  The reason why I frequently invoke the OODA Loop is because it encapsulates all of the necessary components of Agency; Observe > Orient > Decide > Act.  You can't get actual agency without the A.  To observe, then orient, then decide isn't sufficient.3)  I think contemplating the nature of agency in Heist/Delve play is very interesting and informative, but probably for a different reason than some think.  Its not because of less agency in this type of play, but its because of the way system and GMing ethos integrate so well to optimize the very specific kind of agency required to achieve the apex play priority (to test player's skill in a confined obstacle course of danger).  The gameplay is encoded with all of the coherent machinery to allow play to express exactly the kind of agency required to pursue its agenda with all vigor.  Nothing more, nothing less.  So talking about this sort of play as having less, or even more, agency than games that allege to identify with "create dramatic narrative" (no matter how that narrative is created) doesn't seem particularly apt I don't think. I think what is apt is "what is this game trying to do" and "what sort of agency (including limits) is required to pursue that agenda with all vigor."This is also why I think agency is often very tenuous, moment in and moment out, with a propensity to go wobbly in games that allege to try to do both things at once (test player's skill in a confined obstacle course of danger and create dramatic narrative).  The type of agency required to do the former is often at tension to do the latter...and simultaneously, the system tech (but not GMing ethos, interestingly, the GMing ethos of the former and the latter can coincide perfectly) required to crystalize and propel the former agency is almost always not the same as what is required for the latter.Again, which is why games like Blades in the Dark and Torchbearer are so bloody brilliant.  This is also, why 4e to me was brilliantly designed.  No, it wasn't a delve game, but it was very much like a heist game with a formula of thematic action scenes heaped on top of each other as they snowball into a dramatic narrative (with the system tech and GMing ethos to propel the whole thing when GMed correctly).</blockquote>

Verification