Roll for Effect or Intent?

[bloodtide]

Again, these strike me as differences in scale, not kind. Both have the PC interacting with the world and being told to roll to find out if they succeed. Having to do it in one step or six does not change how it is being adjudicated, just the granularity of that adjudication (and as @Ruin Explorer said, giving the GM plenty of opportunity to GOTCHA).

Difference in scale is a thing between the two.

Both are rolls in an RPG, so they are very similar.

When I ran 5E the players were almost universally confused by the idea of rolling more than once for anything outside of combat.

I find this common too.

 

[GMMichael]

Again, these strike me as differences in scale, not kind. Both have the PC interacting with the world and being told to roll to find out if they succeed. Having to do it in one step or six does not change how it is being adjudicated, just the granularity of that adjudication . . .

The suggestions were a little more nuanced than that. The first was creating a world condition to solve a problem, the second was reacting to world conditions to solve a problem. The problem can vary in scale in both situations.

To me, OP's question is closely related (even if not stated that way). Do PCs react to conditions established by the GM (Effect), or do they create their own fiction after/before making a roll (for Intent). I might call this Simulation versus Co-Authorship, instead of Effect versus Intent. Or D&D vs. Dungeon World.

 

[Pedantic]

I'm firmly in the "for effect" camp, but I want to point out that "rolling" is doing a lot of conceptual work here. My preferred state of affairs is much more that players declare a set of actions as a strategy to achieve their intent; the endpoint shouldn't be to get to one or more rolls, but to have a knowable procedure for how those actions will be evaluated.

It's very easy to overwhelm agency in either system with too much randomness. In what you're calling "intent" that's generally a feature; the point is to set the parameters of what will happen through randomness, and then give players the ability to explain the how within those. In a gameplay sense, this is a low agency mechanic; the dice have more impact than the player's declaration on whether they achieve their intent or not.

You can also have low agency play in the effect model, but there's a few different ways to do it; the GM may call for an arbitrary number of rolls (or set capricious DCs), using iterated probability to drown out player decision making or the players chance of success might remain too low for their choices to much matter, as examples.

Providing meaningful agency requires a lot of upfront rules discipline and limited deployment of rolling in the first place.

 

[overgeeked]

Providing meaningful agency requires a lot of upfront rules discipline and limited deployment of rolling in the first place.

How does rolling limit player agency?

 

[FrogReaver]

How does rolling limit player agency?

You mean rolling without upfront rules discipline and limited deployment of rolling in the first place?

Because that seems fairly obvious? If the game is set up such that rolls get called for too often then they tend to make no goal involving rolling successful. And if they do so without upfront rules discipline then the players have no basis to make their decisions on the likelihood any approach will meet their goal. Either of those scenarios is very low agency by itself. The player either cannot achieve his goals or he cannot formulate a meaningful plan to achieve them.

 

[Pedantic]

How does rolling limit player agency?

It doesn't necessarily, but it's really easy to overwhelm participant's input with randomness, either by outright setting odds too low, or calling for iterated rolls. If the rolling has as much or more influence on the outcome than the player's decision, their agency is clearly compromised.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

We role for intent when that is meaningful and adds to the fun. Otherwise we just narrate stuff and/or use solutions like Savage Worlds tools for quick task resolution.

 

[overgeeked]

It doesn't necessarily, but it's really easy to overwhelm participant's input with randomness, either by outright setting odds too low, or calling for iterated rolls. If the rolling has as much or more influence on the outcome than the player's decision, their agency is clearly compromised.

Huh. So the player getting the outcome they want is a requirement for the player having agency?

 

[FrogReaver]

Huh. So the player getting the outcome they want is a requirement for the player having agency?

How exactly are you reading that into what he said?

 

[Pedantic]

Huh. So the player getting the outcome they want is a requirement for the player having agency?

No, I'm saying the player's decision making being the most significant factor in whether or not they achieve their goals is definitional to agency.