NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8016979" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'm going to use this response to one of my prior posts on agency [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] in response to your question regarding "what does D&D do well? (and the implied question of "how is that expressed in agency?")"First I'm going to focus on (a) Moldvay Basic delving (which is one of the playstyles D&D does well), (b) that second sentence (because its apposite), and (c) "why more so often becomes less" when the dungeon walls (and related constraints) are removed.So we have a Unit of Play that the game orbits around:The Exploration Turn10 minutes of navigating 120 ft, listening, searching.  The dungeon is stocked with traps, puzzles, denizens, secret doors, treasure, et al.We also have some Clocks:The Light Clock (our lanterns and torches work on the Turn schedule...this isn't nearly punishing enough...which is one of the great changes Torchbearer made) and the Wandering Monster Clock; we have a 16.7 % chance to encounter Wandering Monsters on each Exploration Turn.  Encumbrance (lets call it a Clock because it increases our struggle as it matures) limits our ability to explore  (throttling back that 120) as we become weighed down with treasure.  We have the Rest Clock (every 5 turns we're disincentivized to continue without a Rest because of accruing negatives).  Finally, we have our Resource Attrition Clock (Hit Points, Spells, Loadout).These things and the mechanics to handle the minutiae of delving (Traps, Searching/Listening, Combat, Monster Reaction, Morale, et al) and, along with the conversation of description<>clarification, inform player decision-points.What does this all of this work to do?Distill the precise type of agency we're trying to test in challenge-based gaming.Agency distillation is central here.What happens if we add more stuff or take away constraints/hardships?  Lets examine just a couple of changes and their implications on play.* Lets go from the claustrophobic dungeon/ruin to the outdoors.  Yeah, by removing the enclosed corridors, we suddenly have access (and therefore a perceived sense of increased agency) to significantly increased omnidirectional travel choice.  However...there goes our Light Clock (even if at night there is still the moon).  Further, lack of constraint on direction of travel will very likely make each travel-based decision-point under the Exploration Turn paradigm lower in resolution and less pressing/high-stakes in terms of attrition/danger (intersection with the holistic "Delve Clock" which is all of the Clock factors integrated).It should be clear that this will almost surely result in Challenge-Ablation-Creep just on its own.* Remove Encumbrance?  Suddenly, our decision-point on item loadout and treasure procurement becomes muted entirely.Another instance of Challenge-Ablation-Creep.We can continue, but it should be clear where this is going.  Each of these things are important on their own and, when combined with other changes, will serve to amplify each other (possibly to the point of rendering one facet of Challenge-based-play inert...which will have further downstream effects).[HR][/HR]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.</blockquote>

Verification