D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Old Fezziwig]

Now this is exactly what I posted about several times. Something several people said would never happen. But it's in the Rulebook?

So a player, can just say anytime "I look for a secret door"...and if they make the check, 'pop' the secret door was there all along. So the character can 'find' a secret door...anytime anywhere.

My example of a player saying "I look for a pile of gold under a tree" would never happen.....but a player saying "I look for a secret door" can happen all the time.

A few thoughts:

(1) I think this has come up before, but it's worth noting that Burning Wheel is exceedingly bad at map-and-key-style, old-school dungeon crawling. To the point where drawing detailed maps of locations is certainly a bad use of whatever prep the GM does. As GM, you might have ideas about what a site looks like broadly, but you probably don't have a detailed map showing every garderobe. (And it would probably be a waste of your time if you did create that map.)

(2a) The difference between "I look for a pile of gold under a tree" and "I want to use my [Architecture skill] to find a secret entrance" is kind of significant in a Burning Wheel idiom. The latter says something about the character (I'm an architect and know how this castle was built) and is a direct response to the situation at hand (which should be responsive to the character's beliefs). To return to my first thought, if you're not working in a map-and-key idiom (to be clear, I love old-school map-and-key play as much as I love Burning Wheel), this is how you introduce secret doors, secret passages, etc. into play.

(2b) Now, it's possible that someone could run a game where the former both reveals character and is responsive to a situation (and a player could create a character, Harold the Excessively Hopeful Pirate, that has the instinct "Always search under trees for piles of gold" in order to avoid a situation where he misses out on a pile of gold buried under a tree), but I think the derision that I'm sensing in your post is suggestive of how often that comes up. In most cases, it's not appropriate for the fiction and to make that statement is as responsive to the game as having players cause fights at taverns in a D&D game. At best, it's a momentarily amusing diversion, at worst it's disruptive. There are other ways for BW characters to make money that fit with the intended play style, and there are other ways for D&D characters to get into fights that fit with the intended play styles.

(3) Unless your characters have a fixation on secret doors or your game is, in part, about stealthy infiltration, "I look for a secret door" should not be a regular intent statement (intent because this only tells us what the character wants, but nothing about how the character achieves it).

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have no idea what type of GM you are.

A Casual GM, typically found in a Casual Game really just does not "care". They are there to "play the game"by hanging out and not playing the game, eating snacks, drinking drinks and goofing off. The Casual GM does not really keep track of details or anything else...not even the rules. The Casual GM has little or no prep, and often just "just makes up stuff on the fly". So they love it when a player does their job and makes something up for them.

See, there are actually games that work on zero or little prep. Nothing else about what you're describing here really applies to me or the other GMs I know. I mean, we're there to hang out as well, but the main focus is the game.

Even in a typically prep-heavy game like D&D, I don't personally tend to prep as much as other folks. This isn't because my game is casual or anything.... it's intentional because I like the players to influence the game as much as possible. The more I prepare, the less likely they are to do so, generally speaking.

I'm not sure what you mean by "better ideas"....."different ideas" sure.

I don't really get the 'incorporate' idea, in game play. I make an adventure, so like six weeks in the adventure a player randomly says "It would be cool if the bad guy was a troll", my response would just be "ok, that's nice."

Imagine if you didn't need to decide everything ahead of play. There are blank spots that need to be defined during play, and there are processes for determining that.

I mean, a Random Encounter table is a pretty classic example. It removes the need for the DM to decide the location of every denizen of a dungeon at all times, and places pressure on the players to take action instead of lingering in areas.

There are ways to apply this kind of process to other elements of play. Sometimes, these kinds of processes can involve the players or ideas that they've brought into play.

Well....for my game it's agree to my way or don't game with me.

Right. So there you go... you place little or no priority on collaboration or player agency.

True.

That's pretty much all that folks are talking about. Games that are set up for more collaboration. That tends to allow for more player agency. If you can understand that folks like collaboration more than you, that's all you really need to know.

Yes, I do add things to posts?

Yes, and then you criticize the post for the things you added. So, it's not really a criticism of the post... it's a criticism of your own take on the post, which is clearly flawed.

Putting aside the "player making wishes", it still does make sense. The rules only give the player a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny 'window' to attempt to do something...and all still under the vague limiting rules and the GMs whim. I guess you can say it's a tiny bit more player agency then a game like D&D, if you count things that way.

It depends on the game. I don't know what rule you have in mind or what game, or why you think it's a "tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny window to attempt to do something". Nor does everyone play the game in a way that it's always subject to the GM's whim.

I think that even just within D&D, there are degrees of agency much more significant than what you're describing. I expect that my game of D&D allows for much more player agency than yours, for instance. And then my campaign of Spire allowed for much more than my D&D.

So, no, I think you're quite wrong on this.

But maybe we can get somewhere with this. Can you offer an example from play where a player in one of your games exercised agency in a meaningful way?

This is my point though. Sometimes..and only at very specific times a player can say something very limited in every way, and still subject to a roll and the GM whim, but after all that....the player can make a tiny, limited "thing that happens".

It's like saying "If you got to a Wal mart parking lot and walk around and find a single penny you can say you 'made some money' ". And, yes, officially the money you have goes up by one cent. But it's not exactly much to celebrate.

No, not really. My take on player agency that "it's when a player gets to say what happens and not the GM, with support of the rules" applies to a good chunk of most games. Barring some BS about "the GM can veto anything" and similar rule zero type stuff, the rules tell us who gets to say what happens.

When the player gets to say, that's an instance of agency. This can be an attack roll or a skill check or the use of a feat or spell or ability or (gasp!) background feature. If the rules are honored, and the dice go the player's way, what they wanted to happen, happens.

There are more mechanics and processes that allow this than those offered by D&D.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton
As you can see I didn’t just pull that out of a hat either.

Maybe I should ask why it seems no one that plays burning wheel can agree about how it should be played?

I'm quoting the rulebook to you.

I could also quote you the bit about consequences being established in advance of rolling, and Luke's commentary on that in the Adventure Burner. I can also tell you what the blog post author is perhaps uncertain or confused about: between framing the obstacle, and making the roll, the player is entitled to bring resources to bear (eg lobbying for advantage, FoRKing in other skills, spending artha, deploying a trait, etc).

Upthread you posted that Circles does not have a variable difficulty of obstacle based on likelihood. But it does. So maybe I should ask you, Why would I take your conjectures about this game seriously when you seem not to have read it, nor to have played it, nor to have any real knowledge of how it plays, nor any real interest in learning how it plays as best I can tell.

@pemerton's cited the No Fishing guidance from the Adventure Burner/Codex, which covers fishing for better Obstacles (Obs). The sections immediately preceding it are "No Weasels" and "But Weasels," which I think are relevant here, too. The former is derived from Mouseguard, where it's a hard and fast rule. It says that once the Ob is set for a task, you must roll — you can't weasel out of it. Crane resists making it a hard and fast rule for BW in the "But Weasels" section, which says that you can sometimes avoid making the roll, but that means that your characters changed their mind at the last minute, and the fictional situation advances somehow, even if it's just time moving on. The example given is players deciding their characters will climb a curtain wall to gain access to a castle, but, upon finding out the Ob is too high, they walk away and approach the castle from the front gates. In this case, Crane says that what's happening fictionally is that the characters showed up with their gear, ready to climb, looked at the wall, said, "Oh, naughty word that," and tried something else, presumably after ditching their climbing gear, etc. So, there's a reframing of the scene as a result of the players changing their minds. They went to climb, but they didn't. But there is a mild fictional cost to that choice.

Suppose the GM describes the castle wall and its environs: it's 20 feet high, the wind is blowing, clouds are occluding the moon and stars, etc. And then a player declares, "I swing my rope and grapple to hook onto the wall, so I can then climb up." The GM then has to set the obstacle. The player, in this situation, can't back out - the wall is there, the wind is blowing, it's pretty dark, the grapple is flying through the air. The player has to roll the dice! They can put artha into it, they can FoRK in Walls-wise and Knots skill and whatever else they can scrounge up, etc.

But the fiction is established, and something is going to happen.

 

[pemerton]

double post.

 

[pemerton]

Now this is exactly what I posted about several times. Something several people said would never happen.

I believe that only two posters in this thread have given you technical replies about Burning Wheel: me, and @Citizen Mane. A third, @Campbell, has made some general remarks about the system.

Other posters - especially @AbdulAlhazred and @EzekielRaiden - have posted about techniques in Dungeon World. This is a different RPG from Burning Wheel. As per AbdulAlhazred's post not far upthread, resolution in Dungeon World is not "intent and task" coupled with "say 'yes' or roll the dice"; rather, it's "if you do it, you do it".

I have been quite clear about the role of Wises, Scavenging, Circles etc in Burning Wheel play. And have given examples from play, such as Aramina recalling the location of Evard's tower (successful Great Masters-wise), Thurgon looking for spellbooks in it, and instead finding his mother's childhood letters (failed Scavenging), Jobe looking for the Falcon's Claw and instead finding black arrows (failed Scavenging), Thurgon together with Aramina meeting Friedrich and Rufus (successful Circles).

Here's another episode of play:

Family obligations and sickness kept some members of our group away, and so two of us played Burning Wheel. We returned to this game, with each of us playing a PC and sharing GMing responsibilities depending on whose character is at the centre of the action.

Our last session ended with Alicia and Aedhros sitting out-of-the-way on the docks, Aedhros quietly singing Elven lays. I had set as homework for my friend to determine what trouble might result from this, to be the start of our next session of this game. It turned out that, despite having over 20 months to do his homework, he hadn't!

(I had done some homework of my own, writing up the Elven Ambassador to Hardby, and the Ship's Master from last session, as NPCs. But we didn't end up needing them.)

After a bit of prompting, he decided that a petty harbour official came up to Aedhros, telling him to move on and stop begging. (The singing being treated as busking, and hence a type of begging.)

Aedhros's response was to sing a short verse of the Rhyme of Unravelling, breaking the official's belt with the result that his pants fell down. I decided that Aedhros kept singing, sufficiently to give me a test to cause the official intense sorrow (this is the Dark Elf version of Wonderment from spell songs). The official - Will B3, we agreed - fell to his knees weeping bitterly, in remorse for all his pointless past actions (including his harassment of Aedhros). An attempt to further grind him down with Ugly Truth (untrained on Perception, and suffering a +2 Ob penalty from the Deceptive trait) failed.

My friend decided that this was about the time that Alicia awoke - she has an instinct If it shines in the dark, steal it, and he wondered if there was anything shiny revealed by the falling down of the official's trousers. I suggested a key. Alicia wanted to steal it as he wept. She called on the spirits of the coastal sea to help, and a mist rose up on the harbour. The successful Spirit Binding gave a helping die for a beginner's luck Inconspicuous test, lifting the key from the helpless, weeping man.

One of Aedhros's Beliefs was that Only because Alicia seems poor and broken can I endure her company. To keep her poor and broken, he pick-pocketed the key from her - an easy success for B4 Sleight of Hand with Stealthy and Inconspicuous FoRKs against untrained Observation.

Alicia, unaware of what Aedhros had done, wanted to know what the key opened. She Persuaded the official to tell her (an easy success against Will 3). I (exercising GMing powers, not playing Aedhros) decided that it opened the strongroom in the harbour office, where records and the like are kept. Alicia and Aedhros agreed to break into it, to find information that might help Alicia pursue her Belief that I will one day be rich enough to BUY a ship, and/or help get revenge on the master of the ship the two of us had sailed on.

I'll say more about this in a moment, relating it to the following:

(1) I think this has come up before, but it's worth noting that Burning Wheel is exceedingly bad at map-and-key-style, old-school dungeon crawling. To the point where drawing detailed maps of locations is certainly a bad use of whatever prep the GM does. As GM, you might have ideas about what a site looks like broadly, but you probably don't have a detailed map showing every garderobe. (And it would probably be a waste of your time if you did create that map.)

(2a) The difference between "I look for a pile of gold under a tree" and "I want to use my [Architecture skill] to find a secret entrance" is kind of significant in a Burning Wheel idiom. The latter says something about the character (I'm an architect and know how this castle was built) and is a direct response to the situation at hand (which should be responsive to the character's beliefs). To return to my first thought, if you're not working in a map-and-key idiom (to be clear, I love old-school map-and-key play as much as I love Burning Wheel), this is how you introduce secret doors, secret passages, etc. into play.

(2b) Now, it's possible that someone could run a game where the former both reveals character and is responsive to a situation (and a player could create a character, Harold the Excessively Hopeful Pirate, that has the instinct "Always search under trees for piles of gold" in order to avoid a situation where he misses out on a pile of gold buried under a tree), but I think the derision that I'm sensing in your post is suggestive of how often that comes up. In most cases, it's not appropriate for the fiction and to make that statement is as responsive to the game as having players cause fights at taverns in a D&D game. At best, it's a momentarily amusing diversion, at worst it's disruptive. There are other ways for BW characters to make money that fit with the intended play style, and there are other ways for D&D characters to get into fights that fit with the intended play styles.

In the example of play I just posted, we can see a few things happening that warrant technical exposition:

*Aedhros, following his Instinct, quietly sings the Elven lays. The GM frames a scene in which this gets him into trouble.

*Aedhros has the Belief Never admit that I am wrong and the Instinct Always repay hurt with hurt, and so sets out to humiliate the official. As this goes directly to these core, player-authored priorities for the character, a roll is called for. It succeeds.

*I can't recall, and the actual play doesn't record, how the GM adjudicated failure on Ugly Truth. Maybe that was the trigger for Alicia to wake up and join the scene?

Alicia's player asks if there is anything shining in the - *ahem- dark. As GM, I don't call for a test - I say "yes", and go straight to framing a scene that will speak to her Instinct - she sees the glint of a key that the official conceals inside his trousers.

*Alicia steals it, acting on Instinct and in pursuit of her Belief that I will one day be rich enough to BUY a ship. Again, a roll is called for by the GM. It succeeds.

*Aedhros, acting on his Belief, tries to lift the key from Alicia. Again, a roll is called for by the GM. It succeeds.

*Alicia, still in pursuit of her Belief about wealth, asks what the key opens. Again, a roll is called for by the GM, and her spell (Persuasion) succeeds. The player does not declare any sort of Wises or similar check (such as "Everyone knows that the only petty official with a big key is the keeper of the harbour levies"). So it is thrown back to me as GM, and I introduce an element that will speak to Alicia's Belief: there's a strong room, which the key opens.​

I've unpacked because it illustrates several of your (that is, @Citizen Mane's) points.

*There is no map. There is a place - Hardby, a rough and tumble pulp-ish port, whose docks host drunken sailors, Half-Orc thugs (anyone who is curious can read more of the linked actual play), and petty officials with their strong rooms, among other things. But there is no map, no key, no list of denizens. The play example shows people and places being authored as they are needed to frame scenes and keep things moving.

*Those things follow the player-authored priorities for their PCs. Why do we care about keys hidden in the trousers of officials? Because Alicia steals whatever glints in the dark! Why strong rooms? Because Alicia longs for wealth, so she can buy her own ship.

*There is no reason for a player to declare a "silly" action, like randomly looking for piles of gold and vorpal swords. The players have created these PCs - Aedhros and Alicia - presumably because they want to play [i[them[/i]. If they wanted to play Harold the Excessively Hopeful Pirate, they would have written up him instead. Or likewise my mooted character with Faeries-wise, who looks for pots of gold left under tree roots.​

That last points leads directly back to the discussion about gaming the GM and "fictional positioning trickery". In a game in which scenes are framed and consequences narrated around player-authored priorities for their PCs, why would anyone bother? You don't need to game the GM to have an opportunity that speaks directly to your character made a part of play: that's the core logic of the game.

Here's another example of play, from the first session of Aedhros and Alicia:

We agreed that Aedhros had travelled on the same ship as Alicia had been working on as a weathermage. Like Aedhros, she started with zero resources and no shoes, and with only rags as clothes. I asked her player why she hadn't been paid. Because bottom has fallen out of the market in soft cheese, so the cargo can't be sold. To work with this, I first got agreement that the port we had arrived in was Hardby (where the action of one of our other BW campaigns is centred). Then, as the ship master, I explained to the crew - including Alicia - that the wedding of the Gynarch (a plot point in our other game) had been delayed, and hence no one was paying for the cheese that had been brought from the green fields and fat cows of Urnst. Some were promised they would be paid tomorrow, but Alicia was told her passage was her pay! With her Base Humility, she accepted this (and earned a fate point). While this was going on, Aedhros took advantage of the distraction to Inconspicuously sidle up to the master and pick his pocket with Sleight of Hand. This earned 1D of cash (it was agreed).

There is no reason for me to declare aimless, pointless actions such as that Aedhros looks behind water barrels for sacks of gold. I declare something core to the character - he picks the ship master's pocket! The 1D of gold is agreed by me and the GM as an appropriate element in the framing. (If I had wanted more, then the GM could legitimately have called for a test on Wealth-wise or Ship Master's-wise or similar, to establish that I am indeed correct that this is a gold-filled pocket - a test which I probably would have failed!)

Here's another example of play, from the first session of Burning Wheel that I ever GMed:

The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge.

<snip>

I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)

Jobe's player does not need to game me, as GM, to have the opportunity to find something angelic that might help him deal with his Balrog-possessed brother: that's the first scene that I frame him into!

From the technical point of view, it's worth noting that the Aura Reading test plays the role that my conjectured Wealth-wise or Ship's master-wise test would have played, had I (playing Aedhros) aspired to get more than the barest 1D of coins from the picked pocket of the ship's master.

This is why I don't take seriously, until I'm provided with actual example or plausible conjecture, these repeated suggestions about the player gaming the GM. There are no advantages to be gained by manipulation that are not more easily obtained just by playing your character honestly and with verve.

So a player, can just say anytime "I look for a secret door"...and if they make the check, 'pop' the secret door was there all along. So the character can 'find' a secret door...anytime anywhere.

My example of a player saying "I look for a pile of gold under a tree" would never happen.....but a player saying "I look for a secret door" can happen all the time.

(3) Unless your characters have a fixation on secret doors or your game is, in part, about stealthy infiltration, "I look for a secret door" should not be a regular intent statement (intent because this only tells us what the character wants, but nothing about how the character achieves it).

The whole framing of "a player can any time hope to find a secret door" rests on the premise that this is a meaningful move in play. Sometimes it will be - I posted an example, upthread, from the Adventure Burner.

Here's another example where rather than a secret door it was a vessel to catch blood in (as best I recall, the situation was being resolved via Fight!, and Tru-Leigh's player declared an Assess action to look for vessels in the room):

The principal characters: Jobe, a wizard who wants to redeem his brother possessed by a balrog, and learn the balrog's plans so as to stop the pending apocalypse; Joachim, the balrog-possed brother, lying unconscious and healing in the tower of Jabal, a powerful and socially prominent wizard, who is hoping that when Joachim recovers he will be able to serve as teacher of wizards; Alenihel, a Glorfindel-style elven warrior down on his luck, and so serving (ronin-style) as a bodyguard to Jabal; Halika, a wizard-assassin who was apprenticed to Joachim and treated very badly by him, and has now sworn to find him and flay him, then send his soul to . . . [a bad place]; Tru-leigh, a snake-handling oracle from the hills who is under the control of a dark naga, and has been tasked to bring Joachim to his master so that the naga can spill Joachim's blood and thereby bind the spirits of nature to it.

<snip>

while Jobe and Tru-leigh (both PCs) were recuperating and restocking in a dodgy inn, Halika (a former PC, now mostly NPC) scouted out Jabal's tower so as to learn how to break in and take vengeance on Joachim. Jobe and Tru-leigh were worried that Halika was about to strike before they could go and recover Joachim themselves, so they fed her a sleeping potion. But then, as they tried to sneak into Jabal's tower through the catacombs, they got lost. So Halika was able to wake from her coma and head off on her own, trying to preempt them.

Halika broke into the tower (using her jumping spell) and went to the room where Joachim was recovering. Alenihel (another PC) tried to stop her, but was blasted to unconsciousness by her Emperor's Hand (force lightning-style) attack. Opposed checks were then made: could Halika decpaitate the unconscious Joachim before Jobe and Tru-leigh got there? Halika won the role, and so the answer was yes. The session ended with the head dropping to the floor and landing next to the body of the unconscious elf, just as Jabal entered from one doorway and Jobe from another with Tru-leigh behind him.

<snip>

Shocked by the decapitation, Jobe and Tru-leigh stand for a few seconds while Halika tries but fails to cut down Jabal so she can escape with the body. When they regain their senses, Tru-leigh rushes in to grab a chamber pot and place it under the neck of the body, to make sure no blood is lost.

In a FRPG session I ran yesterday, the action was in a bedroom in a mage's tower, where a wizard had been lying unconsciousness on a divan recovering from a terrible wound, but then was rather brutally decapitated by an assassin. One of the players, whose PC ran into the room just as the decapitation took place, asked whether there was a vessel in the room in which the PC could catch the decapitated mage's blood.

I resolved this by setting a DC for a Perception check - and because, as the player argued with some plausibility, it was likely that a room for convalescing in would have a chamber pot, jug/ewer, etc - I set the DC fairly low. The player succeeded, and the PC was able to grab the vessel and catch the blood as desired.

But most of the time players won't be declaring actions to observe vessels for catching blood, because it's not salient. Similarly for the finding of secret doors. Or the looking for piles of gold.

 

[pemerton]

Here are some posts I made in March 2017, that are pretty consistent with what I've posted in this thread. They sum up an approach to high player agency RPGing.

for the past 30 years I have used more-or-less the same GMing technique, of using the players expressed or implicit concerns/goals/aspirations for their PCs to inform my framing of scenes and narration of consequences.

by working with the players to establish the context and themes of the game; by framing; by narrating the consequences of failures.

the basic trajectory of play comes from the players, and the goals and aspirations they set for their PCs. The consequences in the game arise in response to those goals and aspirations

In the approach that my table uses, the GM always knows what it is that "the player is up to". Action declaration is both intent and task. Knowing both is key to framing the check, to understanding how it fits into the unfolding action, and - if the check fails - to narrating failure. (Eg it is only because the GM knows that the player wants the vessel to collect blood that it would be appropriate to narrate, on a failure, that the familiar is eating the blood.)

<snip>

The result of the roll is either success - in which case the PC gets what the player wanted for him (namely, he can see a vessel in which he can try and collect the blood) - or failure - in which case some sort of failure has to be narrated.

My campaigns also have a recurrent tendency to use a lot of history and/or cosmology as framing devices to generate motivations for antagonists, to inform the meaning of the actions of the protagonists, and to give "depth" to the gameworld and support immersion into it. (I would add: for backstory to serve this purpose it has to be known to the players as part of their experience of playing the game. Hence it has to figure in some fashion in both the framing of ingame situations and action resolution. And it has to be available to the players for them to buy into in the play of their PCs.)

The backstory is something that informs framing and emerges as part of the process of play. It is not a separate and prior element that I, as GM, use to adjudicate action resolution.

The consequences of failure are narrated by the GM in relation to the action declared by the player, the broader stakes and theme of the game as established by the players, etc. The GM has to make a judgement call, and exercise creativity, but the parameters within which this takes place are not set by the GM. (Eg in the account described upthread, of the PC looking for the mace but instead finding cursed black arrows made by his brother, the parameters for that failure - the existence of cursed arrows, the brother as a mage who got possessed by a balrog, the towers as a place in whose ruins enchanted items might be found - all that was established by the player. Which is why the revelation of the arrows was such a punch in the gut.)

if the players don't know what the backstory is - it's just something in the GM's notes - then (whatever else it might be) that backstory is not the plot of the game: it is nothing like "the main events, forming an interrelated sequence".

<snip>

if the players don't know something, than - by definition, almost - it is not part of the shared fiction.

I think, when read together, these posts show at least two things:

*That not all approaches to GMing and to RPGing are the same - I am describing a definite and distinct set of techniques;

*That there is no shortage of GM input and creativity in this sort of RPGing. Much of that creativity - like the players' creativity - occurs at the table, during play.​

 

[Umbran]

Someone by telling them specifically what you want and proposing (not simply declaring) an approach to make that happen?

I genuinely don't understand how it is possible to "game" someone when you're not only playing with your cards face-up, you're literally giving a specific explanation of your strategy.

You game a system when you use details of the system to your advantage. A basic level of this is expected - players choose paths to success the game supports.

You game the GM when you use your understanding of the GM's tendencies to your advantage. Before you tell the GM the approach, you choose your approach. If that choice is based on the GM's habits and foibles, you are gaming the GM.

F'rex, if you have a GM who really likes, or dislikes, some approach (like, say, stretching the written word on what low-level spells can do) then taking that like/dislike into account in choosing your strategy is "gaming the GM".

Or, an old school thing: GMs have design habits. A player can learn that certain kinds of arrangements on a map signal the presence of a trap, or an ambush. Using the GM's design habits to help make decisions is gaming the GM. "This corridor is the kind of place Ken would put a pit trap in, let me get my 10' pole out," is gaming the GM.

 

[Umbran]

... claiming that BW play does not actually permit this "secretly exploit the GM purely for player advantage" ...

GMs like to think they are inscrutable and have no biases ("Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast! I would catch it!") that players can use to their advantage.

GMs are probably wrong in this thought.

 

[SteveC]

I think the biggest takeaway I'd like to offer here is, to paraphrase The Dark Tower: "Go then, there are other games than these!" There have been several arguments going on based on other types of RPGs and I think that a lot of the argument comes from a lack of experience. I have been fortunate enough to play a lot of different game styles, and the biggest thing that I learned is that all of them work, but you have to come at them as they are intended. I think you can find a lot to bring back to D&D from other games (as a lot of people are posting here) but you have to understand the context of the original game and then translate it in a way that makes sense in D&D.

If I can just point to two areas that have made my D&D (and currently PF2) games better, it's framing the task up front (that's intent/method/consequences) and fewer checks but no null results, i.e., something always happens when you roll the dice.

I run a very recognizable D&D game, but adding those elements in has made it connect more with my players. This is totally a "your milage may vary" situation, but I have found that when I've played with great GMs, and watched streams where the GM is exceptional, they tend to focus on these areas. In terms of this thread, I think concentrating on them results in a game with more player agency and gets better buy-in.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

GMs like to think they are inscrutable and have no biases ("Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast! I would catch it!") that players can use to their advantage.

GMs are probably wrong in this thought.

Okay.

My problem is that this whole line of reasoning is essentially equivalent to the "altruism doesn't exist, because you get something out of doing good for others, even if that 'something' is just the feeling of having done something good." Which is a load of hooey--it uses a definition of "altruism" that is just dumb, but which is being passed off as though it were identical to the actual definition (which is perfectly compatible with people feeling good about the good things they do.)

On the one hand, if we allow this watered-down meaning of "game the GM," where it's literally just "pick things you know the GM likes," then it has no real meaning at all. That's literally just being a good player. The point can be conceded because it is an unequivocal good, not some kind of exploit--because "advantage" here can mean things as simple as "the group has a better time."

On the other, if we use the definition of "advantage" that people keep pushing--unfairly improved chances of success by manipulating the GM psychologically--then it clearly doesn't apply to the things @pemerton and others have spoken of. Because nobody is getting any kind of leg up on anyone else in this way in most games--indeed, such behavior is just as liable to cause more problems for the player, because there is no consistent "doing X thing will definitely always mean the GM gives better chances of success." I like it when my players take a risk to do what they believe is truly right (especially if others might disagree about what is right!), but that sort of thing will almost always lead to greater danger and risk, not less!

And we can turn this around further. What about the GM taking into account the stuff the players have told them? "I see Alice the Rogue is favoring social skills over infiltration skills and clearly prefers that over B&E...I should include a lock or two along the way, to 'Show a downside to their class, race, or equipment.' And Bob the Wizard is full of blasting spells, preferring to blow things up rather than figure them out...perhaps a magical effect that gets stronger when you throw spells at it could make things interesting, since that would challenge Bob's attitude toward magic."

Yes, GMs are human and have biases and preferences, but they're also aware of what's going on and how people play. If the rules say--as I noted above for DW--that the GM should do things that reveal weaknesses as well as support strengths, how does that support the player "gaming" the GM? They may get advantages in some places, but they'll be getting disadvantages in others--and dishonestly reporting their own tastes and preferences solely to secure occasional benefit while getting occasional detriment as well sounds like a pretty bad deal.