D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

And which game does that, exactly?

Because I do things my players don't want all the time.

When they fail rolls.

You have no power to declare anything outside of either the rules or the player's desires.

 

[pemerton]

And I'm saying it doesn't matter. All that matters is if it is possible, and it is since there are aspects of Burning Wheel that give the DM discretion.

Your position is stated from, as best I can tell, complete ignorance of how the game works. You can't tell me what discretions the GM exercises, or how they work, or what subject-matter they operate on. You can't tell me how these GM decisions affect the shared fiction, how that relates to the fictional position of the player's PC, who has what authorship roles in relation to that, etc.

You're just making up conjectures because you're familiar with the notion of "gaming the GM" in illusionistic, GM-driven D&D play.

 

[pemerton]

You have no power to declare anything outside of either the rules or the player's desires.

You state this as if it's a weird thing that the participant in a game should have to follow the game's rules!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You have no power to declare anything outside of either the rules or the player's desires.

Why should I need that power? Why is breaking the rules so important to playing a game with others?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You state this as if it's a weird thing that the participant in a game should have to follow the game's rules!

That game's rules are quite a bit more restrictive on the GM than I prefer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why should I need that power? Why is breaking the rules so important to playing a game with others?

Read the post above. If you like those rules, great!

 

[Maxperson]

Your position is stated from, as best I can tell, complete ignorance of how the game works.

And this response is stated from, as best as I can tell, complete ignorance of how humans work. If a human has discretion, he is vulnerable to manipulation of that discretion. That is a fact. You have acknowledged that the DM has discretion all over the place in Burning Wheel, so a burning wheel DM, being human, is subject to manipulation of that discretion.

You're just making up conjectures because you're familiar with the notion of "gaming the GM" in illusionistic, GM-driven D&D play.

Wrong. I'm stating fact because I'm familiar with how humans work when they have discretion over something. Discretion is manipulatable. My position has nothing to do with D&D other than D&D is included in the category of "All RPGs that have DMs."

 

[pemerton]

That's it though? A player says "I want to do this", the GM says "ok" and it's "just" a high player agency game after that point? Ok.

What example have I posted that looks like this?

If a character walks into a store and the player asks "what is for sale"....you as the GM will then give your imaginary conception of the setting and situation. I guess you can say you are making a "frame" and just "narrating"...but you are giveing your imaginary conception of the setting and situation.

Why is the player wandering into the store? Why is this even a thing in play? Who authored the need for whatever it is that the player is hoping their PC can buy in the store?

Then, how is it established what might be able to be purchased in the store? And whether or not it is for sale?

Without any of this sort of information, how can we possibly speculate about who is exercising authority in respect of the shared fiction of the store?

Well, based off this....you are saying High player agency is where EVERYTHING in the game is "in play" because the players requested it to be and the whole game revolves around only the players and their actions. So, going by your example, a GM must never create, do or add anything ever to the game...unless the players bring it into play.

Though I really don't get how you have a world that does not make sense. To me that just sounds like a random mish mash of random stuff....that by your defination will never, ever make sense.

I've posted actual play examples. What doesn't make sense? What is the "random mish mash". To be blunt, I'll put the depth and coherence of the fiction my group creates up against anyone else posting in this thread any day of the week.

The GM only acts when the players or the dice or the rules tell them to act.

When else would the GM act? I mean, playing a game means doing the things, in the game, that the rules tell you to do. Doesn't it?

your not talking about traditional game prep where a GM utterly and totally independent of the players, rolls or rules simply preps whatever THEY feel like having, making and using in the game world. And then have those people, places, things, events, and such happen independent of the actions of the players, any rolls or any rules.

Correct. What you describe here is a recipe for GM-driven play. I prefer high player agency play, as I think I've made clear in this thread for the past 180-odd pages.

Now that is interesting. Not really the rules....but the idea. Telling a player to make something they find uninteresting into something interesting. But I do see why there are rules...as most players idea of "interesting" would just be "I attackss!" And this where you get the "I'm bored...I attack the king yuck yuck yuck" kind of play...rules for action would prevent that.

So I begin all my RPG play, as well as my discussion of RPG play, from the assumption that I am sitting down at the table with a group of like-minded people, who like me love the tropes and genre material that are foundation for our games - in my case, that is REH and Roy Thomas Conan, LotR and the Silmarillion, King Arthur and John Boorman's Excalibur, Star Wars and Jedi Knights, the films Hero and The Bride With White Hair and Tai Chi Master, etc, etc. Any given individual might have drunk from a slightly different well from me, but I assume that they care about this stuff, enough to want to play a game that is built around this stuff and the themes it speaks to.

Last year, when I GMed a session of In A Wicked Age for teenagers, some of the tropes they drew on were more gonzo and more contemporary than I would personally bring into play. I was able to handle it, and to incorporate their ideas into my framing and my narration of consequences.

But if the only interesting course of action a player can see, in the game, is "I attach the king yuck yuck yuck" then something has gone badly wrong. Either that's someone who actually doesn't want to lay RPGs, in which case we can cheerfully part ways; or else I am presenting situations that are so lacking in interest that the best move the player can see is a completely degenerate one.

I understand that this can be a problem for beginning GMs - in my first few years of GMing, as a teenager myself, I had to learn how to establish interesting situations and it took me a few years to really hit my stride (though not everything I did before then was terrible, by any means). But I've been GMing for about 40 years now. I don't pretend that I'm a master of my craft, but I'd like to think that I've worked out the basics of how to frame interesting situations.

Right, if you keep the game or fiction very tightly focused and simple...then you have no problem making stuff up. Your not even trying to come close to a game reality world simulation....you just have a spotlight on the characters. It's all about focus.

It's also very Cinematic. It's exactly what hollywood does for 75% or more of it's movies: simple, straightforward, easy to follow and understand entertainment for everyone. Star Wars is the perfect example: anyone from 5 and up can understand "empire bad, other people good, death star bad, death star must go boom" and watch the movie.

This also fits in perfectly...as SO, SO many players try this: they watch endless simple Hollywood stuff...then think reality...and the RPG game they play is just like the stuff they saw in the movies.

And that is EXACTLY the problem I have. The players encounter some sort of problem. They don;t even try to think about it or do anything close to reality. They just come up with a wacky, goofy idea.....and automatically expect it to work. JUST like in that type of Hollywood movie. The movie character encounters a problem....just says a random thing(that they writer thought of), and then are able to just "do the thing". Though sure the movie will have like ten minutes of "action" where you might think that maybe the character will fail (but you KNOW they will auto make it).

Just compare Star Wars. The Movie is written as an adventure for your type of game. Things just happen, a LOT and almost ALL of them make no sense. There is not even a hint of "simulated reality" or a "larger world" outside the very limited focus of the main characters.

Star Wars as a plot would never make it in MY game....there are way, way, way, way to many plot holes and just plain "unreality" and "no focus on the larger world". To just mention a FEW:

*So does a Star Destroyer have no landing craft to deploy on a planet? As far as the movie shows us...some stormtroopers come down to the planet and get some dewbacks to ride around on and...um..."look for the driods". I my fiction...I'd say...um does the star destroyer not even have ONE speeder in it? Probe droids? Tie fighters? they could have found the droids in minutes with any type of aircraft.

*Gee sure is nice the two droids get captured and sold to the dad of the main character....

*And Lukes family gets killed RIGHT ON QUE so he can take the Call To Adventure

*Gee sure is nice the "only" people in the bar with a ship were Han and Cheewy

*Sure is a good thing they get captured as it's the ONLY way they could have saved the Princess. This really is a good one. They don't set out on a quest to save the Princess....they just randomly stumble upon her and are like "oks, lets save her!"

*In the classic Star Wars move....it SURE is a good thing the Death Star drops in "way over there" that is "far away from the rebel base" and then they must "orbit?" the planet to blow up the base. This is beyond simple and beyond dumb space physics. Like if the Death Star came out of hype space ANYWHERE else except "right behind the planet", they could have blown up the base in less then a minute.

But see that's the difference. Your game has the troops on dewbacks hunting the drioids as the players/rolls/rules trigger that action.

In MY game....I have the fully detailed description of The Avenger(that's Vader's Star Destroyer here) so I know the ship has tie fighters, shuttles, speeder bikes, walkers and such. So in my game the two droid Player Character would be caught VERY quickly....

If the fiction in my RPGing could be half as compelling as Star Wars, one of the great fantasy films of all time, I'd regard that as a triumph!

And I'm not the GM who has trouble creating situations more interesting than "I attack the king yuck yuck yuck".

 

[pemerton]

And this response is stated from, as best as I can tell, complete ignorance of how humans work. If a human has discretion, he is vulnerable to manipulation of that discretion. That is a fact. You have acknowledged that the DM has discretion all over the place in Burning Wheel, so a burning wheel DM, being human, is subject to manipulation of that discretion.

Wrong. I'm stating fact because I'm familiar with how humans work when they have discretion over something. Discretion is manipulatable. My position has nothing to do with D&D other than D&D is included in the category of "All RPGs that have DMs."

Gaming means manipulating for advantage. You haven't identified a single advantage in respect of which a BW player might manipulate the GM.

 

[gban007]

I think there is more room for gaming the DM in the more traditional style RPGs, e.g. where people reward role play over roll play, so people really good at former can end up having Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence as dump stats, but still end up managing to convince / negotiate etc well thanks to their role play ability, whereas those not so good at that side get a bit burnt, or where ones better able to get into the DM's head / understand what is behind the illusion can make good assumptions about what will happen, or where they can do the actions they know the DM likes and so will reward (e.g. DMs who may like honour based actions more than sneaky based actions).
But like Maxperson, I Can't see how Story Now games don't have some room for it, even if it is only done by those not really getting the game, so people who like the idea of putting their own stakes into play, being able to make a story more character centred, but can't / don't want to handle when things go bad for their characters because of failed rolls etc, a few times of bad reactions to those and I Can see the DM as such starting to go softer in case of fail rolls, allow more outs etc, which is effectively being gamed.