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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 8234269" data-attributes="member: 6993955">Sure, the kind of game I was specifically thinking of there is what I would term (with fondness, not sarcasm) as a purist OSR kind of game. The setting is all GM and the players play entirely within their own character (no meta mechanics, no shared worldbuilding, etc). That game is also quite often the standard people put forth when they want to define a sandbox game. In that game, while the setting is GM notes and GM decisions, it's still entirely a response to player decisions made in-character. The world emerges (from notes perhaps), accretes and changes based on player decision making, and so very much to my mind in keeping with what we are defining as protagonist play. Where that same kind of game deprotagonizes players is when it emerges (especially) but also accretes and changes despite or regardless of player actions, at which point the word railroad probably fits. For dramatic needs, if the players are playing to those needs, and the GM is responding to player actions and decision making, those needs will inevitably take some significant portion of the spotlight.That's not to say that events in the wider world can't happen at their own pace without deprotagonizing players, that's silly, but so long as player actions drive the game and the the teleos of play for the characters I think protagonist play is the label we're looking for. I don't think you need player agency over the fiction to make that work, although it certain does help in many of the games I enjoy. As for player agency, I don't think you need to remove agency either, at least in terms of decisions made in character. Where we might have some defining to do in the stakes of using or not using some of the meta mechanics and shared worldbuilding that many games use.</blockquote>

Verification