What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

the assumptions of play between your spherical cow and the following declaration do not align. The problem here isn't the spherical cow and what that entails in limited choice (mazes automatically limit choices) but that the assumptions of play are not aligned.

I believe that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is making a point about degrees of player agency over the content of the shared fiction, and perhaps more generally over the "direction and shape" of play (to use a metaphor).

I don't see how it refutes AbdulAlhazred to say that "the assumptions of play are not aligned." That's the point! A player of snakes and ladders who tries to choose which squares to move his/her piece into has "misalgined" his/her assumptions of play. But that doesn't mean that players of snakes and ladders have some sort of different, snakes-and-ladders-type agency. It just helps us see that snakes and ladders is a game free of player agency - whereas there are other games in the neighbourhood (eg backgammon) that do involve player agency.

And if someone comes along and says, "Well, when we play snakes and ladders we exercise all this agency over how we roll the dice (with a cup, with lots of shaking, over the shoulder, whatever)" or "We exercise all this agency in how we count out the squares" how is the person who said that backgammon has more agency than snakes and ladders meant to respond? I mean, backgammon players can do that stuff too if they want - but they may not bother if the play of the game itself has sufficient agency to hold their interest!

As we relax the constraints on snakes and ladders to make it more like backgammon, then attempted moves that once were "misaligned" become apposite. That's precisely because we're introducing agency into the play of the game.

Of course any illustration by analogy has its limits; AbdulAlhazred already acknowledged that by calling his a "spherical cow". But the point is still there: in the scenario he described player agency over the content of the shared fiction is minimal at best. The fact that players may manifest their agency in other ways, or over other elements of the RPGing experience, doesn't change the basic point.

A player cannot say here "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them."

that declaration is treading close to the Czege Principle of the player writing their own solution to their own problems (I want to find X, so I'll declare Y action that will directly lead to me finding X. Even if there's a mechanical check on this declaration, a success leads to immediate satisfaction of the player defined objectives.)

The Czege Principle is the empirical conjecture that "it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict."

What AbdulAlhazred has described does not violate the Czege Principle: he is positing that the GM has framed the PC into an endless indiscernible maze; and the player decares "I search for a secret passage to take me to the land of the Yuan Ti." That is just the play of a RPG!

To be honest I find it interesting, and potentially quite telling, that both you ( [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]) and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] look at perfectly ordinary action declarations in response to GM establishment of the situation - like "I'm in place X - the maze - and want to be in place Y - the land of the Yuan-ti - and so search for a secret passage from X to Y"; or "Enemies have broken down the door to my redoubt, and I want to escape, so I search for a secret escape tunnel" - and see violations of the Czege Principle!

You are treating the principle as supporting a prohibition on players' freely declaring actions that would resolve their current predicaments - ie as a licence for railroading!

 

[Maxperson]

I agree in a theoretical sense. The post you've replied to was particularly in the context of D&D, which tends (especially in its 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e incarnations) to be weak on finality for non-combat action resolution.

If you have a skill challenge, or 1st ed AD&D-style "no retries" (or retries with cost, like passage of time = wandering monster checks), then other PC actions become similar to combat. But a lot of "living, breathing world" play also rejects those sorts of "no retries" mechanics on grounds that they are "unrealistic".

That's still no different than killing the orc, though. When killing an orc, you also get "retries". If you miss(fail to kill the orc), you can retry until you kill it or something else happens to prevent success. You are comparing success against the orc on the first try, with failure of the skill attempt on the first try, rather than comparing success on the first attempts to both.

AC and HP are not set with an orc, either. The DM has the option to alter both via rolling for hit points rather than using the flat number listed, or by adding removing armor pieces/magic to the orc. So those two variables are similar to the DM setting the DC for the skill attempt.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I mean to 'play with the agency of the character'. Advocacy isn't really relevant here, although presumably a character is a vehicle for the player to express some sort of desire about what she wants to play. I would call 'actor stance' (I haven't really used these terms) to be 'playing in first person', but in my discussion first person isn't really material either. What is material is that the player is taking, within the game world and its fiction, the characteristics, the AGENCY (ability to do things in the game) of the character. This is what you mean by 'no meta-game' presumably.

As with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I find it odd that anyone would assert that players bound to character stance have the same agency WRT the fiction as one's who don't live within that limit. Beyond that though, Pemerton's point includes that a player CAN be entirely in what I call character stance and STILL exercise agency over the fiction, and that this is a common method of play. I think it is what most of us are really debating about here. You, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], et al often maintain that you take into consideration player motivations, desires, suggestions, possibly even to the level of players establishing fictional elements via making checks (IE I search for a secret door and one shows up if the search is successful) in some cases.

I think there's an unbroken continuum in a practical sense from my 'spherical cow' endless random maze where all decisions are pointless, on up through Arnesonian (poor guy gets shafted on credit too much) dungeon play, to various degrees of GM establishment of and utilization of fixed backstory and hidden positioning, on up through all the degrees of GMs cooperating with players to put the elements they want into the story, finally on up to formal scene framing (standard narrativist model) play, and into formal systems of player authorship, and finally unconstrained group authorship.

In this context I think it is reasonable to get back to the original discussion of world building (which I would generalize to most GM pre-authored backstory and setting). As you approach the Standard Narrativist Model level of player agency is there a different role for world building than there would be in say a dungeon crawl?

I don't think anyone's claiming they have the same agency, with agency defined in the [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]ian sense. Clearly, there are different levels of this agency, and I've been very explicit about this. What I have argued is that total agency is similar, because the trade-offs made in granted expanded [MENTION=6923062]Per[/MENTION]mertonian agency come at the reductions of other kinds of agency, and vice versa. I've also said that this is fine, because different players will value different kinds of agency in different ways.

As for the continuum, I started thinking that there was one, but I've come around to strongly saying there isn't an unbroken continuum. This is shown by the fact that there are no games truly in the middle by design. There are DM-facing games with some player-facing tools, and vice versa, but nothing at all that's truly in the middle. I think, despite the tone and strange arguments, that [MENTION=6923062]Per[/MENTION]merton's simplified point that hidden backstory interferes with player action declaration in player-facing games and breaks the understood point of play is correct and why we cannot have 'in the middle' games at all -- we can only borrow some tools while the majority remain in the different camps. It really is chess vs checkers with no true hybrid in the middle.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It seemed clear to me

Sure, you had all of the assumptions!

Sure, its not coherent with the spherical cow, the only point here was the difference between the two in respect of what the fiction addresses. Its a very bare bones comparison, and that was the point.

I think, again, it's a bad comparison because the intent and declaration are outside of the scope of the model -- the model is that there is only the maze, but the declaration both presents something outside of the maze and a way to achieve it, neither of which are part of the model. It's like searching the study for a ray gun - it breaks the assumptions of the game. In doing so, it doesn't represent what you intended it to represent, and actually takes on characteristics that go against the model of player-facing games and right into some of the easy but incorrect criticisms made against player facing play, ie, that the players can just make up whatever they want.

As such, your example does more against your point that for it.

Sure sure, its a simplistic example. Remember, the 'Czege Principle' is not some sort of absolute thing. It is less a factor to the degree that the result of the player's declaration produces an indirect or incremental move in the direction of meeting their objective. In other words, it would be poor Story Now to produce the secret door to the Yuan Ti temple and entirely address the character's desire. It would be less poor to have it lead to a chamber which contained a map that guided the party to another location. That location in turn would most likely be a step in the direction of the goal, etc. I don't think this is really very relevant to the point I was making, which was about who was in charge of the direction and content of the fiction. In the endless maze it is clearly the GM, entirely. When the player can declare an action to reveal an element of the scene that addresses his agenda, then he's achieved some control over the narrative.

No, I understand all of that, I pointed it out because, given the simple model, the player declaring that there is a yuan-ti jungle in a world defined as only a twisty maze is introducing their own challenge and the fiction necessary to support it, ie that the spherical cow now has a tumor that's yuan-ti jungle shaped. And then the player proposes their own solution to this inserted problems with the declaration of a secret door. There's a mechanical check, which prevents a complete violation, but a success looks very much like one and a failure leaves the problem of whether or not the cow tumor yuan-ti jungle is negated as well.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sure, but only in response to what the players WANTED to do. Had these issues not been of interest to the players then this detail would never have been created. In the context of a discussion of world building and backstory creation this is the central topic, how, when, and why do such elements come into existence and what purpose do they serve?

This is a bit vague. My understanding is that the GM is supposed to frame scenes that bring the player agendas into crisis, which isn't the same thing as framing things the players are interested in. The form of the crisis is the invention of the GM, not the player, and only loosely follows player interests in that the crisis formed attacks some part of the player's agenda. The fact that all scenes are supposed to place the player agenda into unavoidable crisis is the bit that I'm actually talking about. The defense that 'well, it's still the player's agenda' doesn't really defuse the point that the players lack agency to mitigate or choose the crisis they're forced into.

Again, this is analytical. I think that there's a lot of fun in games that do this, that constantly bang the drum on crisis and make the players make hard choices. But, it that fun does come as some costs -- it's not all free lunch. And, when discussing agency, I think it's okay to acknowledge that it is a zero-sum game because we all can't have total agency in a shared space -- we also have to share the agency or it's not a shared space. How we share that agency is useful, but not when we're denying that agency sharing occurs and try to claim that one style has more agency than another in total. This is why I've tried to be so clear about how [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has defined agency for his discussion. Under that definition, the agency over what's added to the fiction and how is more broadly given to players and taken from the DM in player-facing games (by definition of player facing, I'd argue). However, this doesn't mean that some other agencies aren't given back to the DM to compensate. The agency over pacing, for instance, seems to be a big concession -- players in DM facing games tend to have much more agency over pacing than in player facing games because crisis is an emergent function of DM facing games while it's a focus in player-facing games. Players in player-facing games cannot avoid or mitigate crisis by slowing down the pacing. Players in DM-facing games have less agency to introduce new fiction to overcome crisis. This is because they have more agency in pacing to mitigate and overcome crisis. Much of the discussion about resting in 5e is really about how much agency the players have over pacing and how it can trivialize many elements of the game that the DM uses to advance to crisis. So, this isn't something that's new, even if it's not normally discussed in terms like 'agency over pacing.'

 

[Ovinomancer]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted a response to this not far upthread.

What I would add is that you are now positing that having a GM is a burden on player agency. I guess there is a sense in which that is true, but it seems a necessary element in anything resembling a RPG in the typical sense rather than a shared story-telling game like A Penny For My Thoughts.

I started this thread in the General RPG forum, and throughout have assumed that we are talking about RPGs. In a typical RPG someone else - the GM (or another player occupying the GM role for that episode of play) - establishes the situation in which the player finds his/her PC. That framing can either take as its core the GM's stuff or the player's stuff. Consistently with what AbdulAlhazred posted, I am asserting in this thread that when the GM uses the player's stuff (or players' stuff) to inform the framing that affirms the players' agency over the content of the shared fiction.

No, I didn't posit that because having a DM as a burden on player agency is blatantly obvious. I assumed we all took that as a given.

What I was doing was pointing out that increasing agency in one area typically comes at a cost in another area. Having increased agency over the shared fiction for the purposes of overcoming obstacles in play comes at the loss of agency in determining the pacing of the game -- the rate at which obstacles must be addressed. In player-facing games, the players can't choose to hold off on a framed crisis in play -- they are expected to engage that crisis and accept the consequences of the engagement. In DM-facing games, players often can opt out or delay a challenge and recover or improve resources to reduce the challenge presented. This isn't an option in player-facing games.

I believe that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is making a point about degrees of player agency over the content of the shared fiction, and perhaps more generally over the "direction and shape" of play (to use a metaphor).

I don't see how it refutes AbdulAlhazred to say that "the assumptions of play are not aligned." That's the point! A player of snakes and ladders who tries to choose which squares to move his/her piece into has "misalgined" his/her assumptions of play. But that doesn't mean that players of snakes and ladders have some sort of different, snakes-and-ladders-type agency. It just helps us see that snakes and ladders is a game free of player agency - whereas there are other games in the neighbourhood (eg backgammon) that do involve player agency.

And if someone comes along and says, "Well, when we play snakes and ladders we exercise all this agency over how we roll the dice (with a cup, with lots of shaking, over the shoulder, whatever)" or "We exercise all this agency in how we count out the squares" how is the person who said that backgammon has more agency than snakes and ladders meant to respond? I mean, backgammon players can do that stuff too if they want - but they may not bother if the play of the game itself has sufficient agency to hold their interest!

As we relax the constraints on snakes and ladders to make it more like backgammon, then attempted moves that once were "misaligned" become apposite. That's precisely because we're introducing agency into the play of the game.

Of course any illustration by analogy has its limits; AbdulAlhazred already acknowledged that by calling his a "spherical cow". But the point is still there: in the scenario he described player agency over the content of the shared fiction is minimal at best. The fact that players may manifest their agency in other ways, or over other elements of the RPGing experience, doesn't change the basic point.

The Czege Principle is the empirical conjecture that "it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict."

What AbdulAlhazred has described does not violate the Czege Principle: he is positing that the GM has framed the PC into an endless indiscernible maze; and the player decares "I search for a secret passage to take me to the land of the Yuan Ti." That is just the play of a RPG!

To be honest I find it interesting, and potentially quite telling, that both you ( [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]) and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] look at perfectly ordinary action declarations in response to GM establishment of the situation - like "I'm in place X - the maze - and want to be in place Y - the land of the Yuan-ti - and so search for a secret passage from X to Y"; or "Enemies have broken down the door to my redoubt, and I want to escape, so I search for a secret escape tunnel" - and see violations of the Czege Principle!

You are treating the principle as supporting a prohibition on players' freely declaring actions that would resolve their current predicaments - ie as a licence for railroading!

Again, no, not even close. As I posted above, the spherical cow is the game concept and that means the entire game is the twisty maze -- there is no yuan-ti jungle to engage. This is the point of the simplified model -- there's nothing to play with except the maze. So, the player introducing both the yuan-ti jungle as a place in the game that isn't a twisty maze AND that this is the goal/objective of the player (how can this be if it's not part of the game except by fiat) AND a solution to achieve this goal (the secret door leading directly there) is very close to a full, explicit Czege Principle violation. This is why I said, explicitly, that the declaration wasn't coherent with the model - it has the player authoring both backstory (yuan-ti jungle), a challenge (get to the backstory), and a solution (secret door), none of which are within the the simplified spherical cow model. It's a bad example on many levels.

And, that said, at no point was I using the Czege Principle to try to falsely prohibit action declarations. Again, recall that I have played and am familiar with the conceits of player-facing play and that I enjoy playing in those kinds of games, given the right group dynamic. I'm not at all interested in finding ways to discredit the playstyle, as I enjoy that playstyle. I don't run that playstyle, for a number of reasons, but I'm going to try a few games of Blades in the Dark because that goal of play and setting strongly appeals to me whereas many of the other examples of that style (Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, etc) don't really appeal to me. I cannot run a heist game well in a DM-facing style without a huge amount of work, something I'm not interested in, and hours of in-game planning and contingency planning, something I'm also not interested in. Blades provides a nice framework for a style I am interested in, and I'm not adverse to the concepts of player-facing games at all, so it's something I actually want to run (as opposed to the others, which don't appeal to me because I prefer my D&D as D&D for reasons).

I think you'll get a lot more out of these discussions when you stop trying to shove everyone into boxes they don't fit in. Your comment to [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] above about who repped his posts is very telling of a mindset that's keeping track of the 'sides' in a discussion and assumes that rep is an indication of which side a post is on. I don't think that's very useful as a metric at all. Also, you should maybe listen a bit better to many people saying your formulation is dismissive and find a better one that still sticks to your points. This insistence on 'the DM telling you things in his notes' bit is a great example. When shown something that isn't in notes, you've changed your statement to 'what I mean by notes is things pre-authored or made up on the spot but kinda seem like their pre-authored' and stuck with your formulation. This undermines your argument about pre-authoring being bad because you've now added DM provided narrative that isn't pre-authored but is instead responsive to player input as in the same category so that you don't have to back away from other things you've said. You've now conflated two different arguments -- pre-authoring outcomes reduces player agency to add to the shared fiction by creating unknowable roadblocks to action declarations AND that action declarations that prompt the DM to narrate more backstory also reduce that agency. The latter isn't obvious, and you haven't actually made that case, but yet you keep appending it to the former case and assuming it's also true. I can see cases where it is true, but also cases where it isn't. You should separate your arguments so this can be unpacked and discussed. Not doing so continues the confusion as people argue against the latter part and you respond as if their contesting the former. Like this post, for example, where you respond to an argument I didn't make to then accuse me of doing something I'm not doing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Upthread, you said "Why can't the GM have an idea in his mind ahead of time, with some ideas about what can or may happen, but not committing to anything until the players have interacted with the idea?" I responded to this, saying that this is not an account of the GM establishing any setting element. The GM does not commit to anything until the players have interacted with the idea.

If the GM has established a setting element, then s/he is already committed to something. Conversely, if s/he's not committed it follows that nothing is yet established. S/he just has an idea.

Sure, and I think that is fine. I tend to keep a lot of things in mind, but remain flexible based on how they come about in play.

But there are other elements that I certainly do decide ahead of time. I do commit prior to play. My point is that this need not violate any level of player agency.

I'm not sure what you mean by "abuse" here. But anyway, as I have said many times upthread already, the games the I GM are not ones in which players are per se empowered to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration. They are no different from D&D in this respect. The players are not considering "what would make the most compelling story" - they are just playing their PCs. (Eero Tuovinen talks about this at some length in the blog I've linked to several times in this thread.)

This is where I think it depends on the nature of what is happening. The PC searching a room for a bowl where one conceivably may be? Sure....make a Perception or Search check and let's see. Or, more likely, sure, there's a bowl on a table near the bed.

The PC searching the kitchen for a map that they've come to the keep to find? To me, that's an issue. It's the solution to the problem that's been established, and has likely been given much more consideration than the presence of a bowl in a bedroom.

So the players abusing their ability to foster the fictional elements of the scene by simply declaring that something may be present in the room. I don't think that the Czege Principle is exactly what this is, but it's close enough.

If you like. What do you think is at stake in labelling it "framing"?

For myself, I'm generally interested in the players' choice of means for their PC expressing something about their conception of the situation, and what is important in respect of it, rather than reflecting some choice I made as GM to pose some sort of puzzle. So when I frame a situation, I am trying to "go where the action is" so as to provoke some response driven by dramatic need.

Provoking a response to what? You've clearly given a decision point to them. So they have certain options available to them. This limits their options.

Now, this is likely not an issue given that the GM is supposed to be basing these decision points based on player want/character interest. But my point is that doesn't mean there is not a limit on player agency. A specific problem of some kind is presented. It must be addressed. So the GM is indeed limiting their agency. They have to deal with this thing in front of them, and not go off on some kind of side quest that piqued their interest.

No.

The framing is the establishment of some shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.

My secret backstory is the establishment of the shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.

The players learning that it will be hard for the PCs both to befriend the baron and deal with the leader of the hobgoblins doesn't dictate their options. It does establish a context for making choices that will tell us something about these protagonists.

I don't know of any RPG that would be run the way you describe. I don't know of any RPG that suggests that the GM's job is to (i) frame the situation, and then (ii) tell the players what their PCs are or are not allowed to do in trying to engage and/or resolve the situation. Do you have one in mind?

I'm going off of your descriptions. I am not familiar with Burning Wheel and a few of the other games you are advocating. I am familiar with other games that would be considered story now.

In every RPG I'm familiar with that has social resolution mechanics, the way we find out whether or not a guard can be bribed is by seeing how the social resolution unfolds.

I don't know what limits you have in mind. Or what actions you are worried will or won't be considered. Do you have a concrete example in mind?

As for the bit about the ability of the players to author things into the fiction - I will repeat again that the games I GM generally do not involve player fiat authorship, and in my view that this is largely a red herring as far as player agency in respect of the shared fiction is concerned.

"Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't "authoring things into the fiction." It's just an action declaration.

But the result of the action does establish the player's desired thing into the fiction. So yes, you are advocating for that.

I suppose the word "fiat" being added here is key....yes, I know you are not advocating for players to add elements to the story without restriction. But you've been talking about it throughout the thread in the course of action declaration, so that's what I am talking about.

People disagreed. And denied.

The only "dismissive" thing was to actually say it.

I disagree. I don't think that people were lying when they said they found the way you described their playstyle as insulting. What they were arguing was not your description in general, because it applies to just about any RPG in one way or another....but it was your insistence that this was the sole characteristic of their style. "The GM reading a story to the players" is a dismissive description of an RPG.

Again, it may be useful if you can answer if you've been swayed in any way. If there are any decent answers to the question you posed in the OP. What is worldbuilding for? If you reply to me, I'd hope you would not cut this question out a third time. I think it'd genuinely be interesting to see your take on it after hundreds of pages of this thread.

Certainly there must have been some take away for you?

 

[Lanefan]

I agree in a theoretical sense. The post you've replied to was particularly in the context of D&D, which tends (especially in its 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e incarnations) to be weak on finality for non-combat action resolution.

If you have a skill challenge, or 1st ed AD&D-style "no retries" (or retries with cost, like passage of time = wandering monster checks), then other PC actions become similar to combat. But a lot of "living, breathing world" play also rejects those sorts of "no retries" mechanics on grounds that they are "unrealistic".

While I prefer the "living, breathing world" model I'm also quite happy with "no retries", based on the assumption that the roll you made represents your best attempt of several or many, depending on the specific situation; which to me is quite realistic.

What if the GM abuses his/her power?

Personally I think I prefer to think about different techniques based on the play experience they are intended to deliver, rather than what happens if game participants turn bad.

Agreed. I just wanted to point out it's not always DMs who go bad; players can too.

That's a key part of what distinguishes RPGing from shared storytelling: the player doesn't have to do anything but delcare actions as his/her character. The resolution mechanics mediate the process of establishing the content of the shared fiction.

It's a fine distinction but worth noting, in how we're looking at this: you're saying the resolution mechanics are what introduces the content, where I'm going one step further back and saying it's the player introducing it if the gatekeeping mechanics allow via success on a roll.

The mechanics themselves can't introduce anything; they have to be triggered by something.

All action declaration is an attempt to author something into the fiction - a dead orc, a discovered secret door, whatever it might be. That's the point of action declaration - to change the fiction!

Where to me the point of action declarations is to interact with (and maybe change) the fiction that's already there, be it fiction the player/PC knows about (there's an orc whose presence is known by all, my action declaration of attack tries to change its state from healthy to unhealthy, or dead) or doesn't know about (there's a secret door in the south wall which won't be found if nobody looks for it and might be found if someone does).

Lanefan

 

[hawkeyefan]

Framing backstory establishes factors which draw a scene that addresses player concerns and 'gets to the action'.

Yes.

Well, there are a couple of things to point out here. First it REALLY depends on the agenda of the players. Secondly the bribeability of the guards appears to be SECRET. Think of a wall in a dungeon, you can see it, you can touch it, you know all about what it is. The wall cuts off motion in a certain direction in the dungeon, and the unbribeable guard cuts off certain actions too, but without telegraphing that to the players. This may or may not be an issue depending on the first point, agenda.

A wall in a dungeon can be illusory or can contain a secret door or may have a message carved into the stone. It may do much more than simply block the PCs' progress. The only way to know is for the PCs to interact with the wall.

Same with the guards. Why would the bribeability of the guards be broadcast to the players, but a secret door would not? I don't see the distinction here within the context of your analogy.

Now, having said that, I would almost never have totally unbribeable guards in a game, unless there was some really compelling reason for it (I mentioned earlier that Modron guards on Mechanus would definitely fit this description). Especially if the players want an intrigue-laden, caper type campaign along the lines of the Gentlemen Bastards series.

But let's say there is some compelling reason for bribery not to work. Modrons, per my example above, or magically compelled guards, or whatever the case may be. Why offer this information? Why not make the players work for it in some way? The players can find themselves in a situation where their normal solution won't work. Can't that be an interesting scene that goes where the action is?

I don't think I see the fear of keeping secrets from the players that seems to be a major concern. Yes, I get that such secrets can be used poorly by the GM. But I also think they can be interesting complications to the players' plans, and what courses of actions are available to the characters.

Pemerton would likely dismiss this as not being interested in this kind of "puzzle solving" but I don't really see it that way. So I'd like your take on it, if you care to share.

I think you need to understand Story Now more deeply. The scene is framed IN RESPECT TO THE PLAYER'S AGENDA, so if the players decide that they wish to engage in bribery and other kinds of skullduggery then unbribeable guards may well be an infringement on their agenda and it simply wouldn't be established as such in a Story Now player-centered game, doing so would be a mistake. Guards would be established, probably, in order to present a CHALLENGE to the characters such that the players must address the questions at hand, which is "we're shady guys who bribe people" (or maybe not, maybe your character is a Paladin and the question is about sticking to your principles regardless of the cost and NOT bribing the guards, then the GM might frame a SOLICITATION of a bribe). Notice how pre-established backstory would work against this kind of agenda. It might be fine to call the guards 'unbribeable' if this suites the framing and leads to the right conflict, but you won't know until you get there. This is why its Story Now. Walls and guards and such ONLY APPEAR when they serve the agenda of the game, and then they have the characteristics that are requisite of them (otherwise they might simply appear as simple props).

So if I pre-establish in my GM notes that the guards may be open to bribery, but it will depend on the results of the PC's check, then how is this different from Story Now? I mean in the result at the table and the impact on the players' agency in this instance?

Player agency probably always IS limited by framing. This is the PURPOSE of framing. Without any limits there's no challenge to overcome, no conflict, no tension, no stakes, nothing. Nobody is arguing that there are no limits on player agency (at least with respect to what the characters can do, in a group-authored game the player might not ACTUALLY be limited formally except by the need to cooperate with the other players to make a good game). What is argued is that the game should always address the player's AGENDA.

If a player wishes to have a character who's concept is "My father always said I wasn't good enough, so I'm going to rule the world in order to prove him wrong!" then the focus of things which that player does with that character, his character's narrative, is going to be about that need, that drive, the consequences of it, the nature of it, how it impacts and shapes his character, the world, etc. Maybe he spends his time working towards world domination and the challenges are the obvious obstacles to that. Maybe some of it, or most of it even, is about the moral cost of such an undertaking. How much does he have to compromise himself as a human being in order to achieve his goal? It might be about the ultimate hollowness of such an achievement and his growth and realization that it is empty and won't make him happy. There's plenty of possibilities even within a fairly narrow character definition. How this character interacts with the other characters, the nature of the milieu, etc. may all influence exactly what ends up being addressed. Standard Narrativist concepts just imply that it WILL be the central focus of that character's narrative.

This was my point. I see Framing as limiting agency to an extent. It puts a choice to the players and is compelling enough that it must be addressed. So their choices of what to do are now limited to what is possible to address the situation before them. The fact is that the player is accepting of the limits placed on his agency. And I don't have a problem with this....this is fine. But it's interesting that you agree with me, but Pemerton does not.

My point being that Framing acts as a limit on player agency. It says "here is the situation...what do you do?" and in any situation, there are a limited number of actions.

For some, probably [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], forcing such a situation on the players is likely seen as a limit on agency. A game like that would likely begin with "what do you do?" and then determine the action in response to the players actions and the results thereof.

I'm not advocating for either approach....I think I utilize both, but I tend to always have the players' interests in mind. But I think as you hint at above, a GM can take a LOT of leeway with what the player has offered as their interests in the game. The character who wants to prove his father wrong? You provided several different takes on it, and we ca come up with more, many of which would likely be very different from one another.

Again, limitations aren't really the issue. The issue is what is the agenda of the game? When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks about "moves which reveal the GM's secret backstory" what that really says is "the GM introduces elements of the story that address the GM's agenda." This is, in Story Now terms, simply definitional, as the player's agenda is established dynamically by engaging with the framing of the scenes, character backstory, etc. When the GM dictates backstory for purposes that are other than player agenda, that reduces player agency over the narrative, because it addresses GM agency over the narrative and thus GM agenda. Maybe the two are in harmony sometimes and the player and the GM both get what they want out of the scene. I think this usually happens to some degree in all but dysfunctional cases. The point is, frames always create limitations, but in a player-centered game the players are the center and the limitations are there to further their agenda.

I think I agree with most of this. I don't necessarily think that the GM should have no agenda at all, nor that a story now game is entirely free of such, but other than that, I think the rest makes perfect sense. The players are accepting of the limits placed on their agency, because they know it will drive the game in a way that they've expressed interest.

I don't know if I see it as all that different in that basic way from a sandbox style game where the GM has pre-determined all the nearby areas and the threats and challenges they contain, as long as the players have expressed interest in this style. In that sense, they're accepting of the limits that are being placed on their agency because they know the game that will result is one in which they're likely to be interested.

Again, I think so much of this goes back to the player and GM's expectations, and what the style or methods being used will bring to the game

 

[Lanefan]

Separated this bit out for its own discussion...

I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted some thoughts in response to this.

My first thought is that I don't see how what you describe violates the Czege principle at all - the player is not framing his/her own conflict, the GM did that (by establishing that the enemies have beaten through the door - I am assuming that this is being established by the GM). The player is simply declaring an action that addresses the conflict - "I look for a secret door so I can run away!"

In a DM-run system where the presence or absence of a secret door is already locked in, there's no problem. But in a player-driven system the player has to have in the back of his mind the thought "Hey, maybe if I try searching for a secret door and roll well I can - in effect - out of nowhere author us an escape hatch."; and so she tries it, and it works.

The player didn't author the conflict but did author the resolution, which is why I put it as skirting close to Czege rather than outright violating it.

Second, you are making assumptions that you have not spelled out about the significance of finding a secret door. In some systems (eg some forms of D&D), perhaps this is a "get out of jail free" card. But then in those systems so would a Passwall spell be, so whether or not finding a secret door is unbalanced depends upon how the system allocates a range of other similar action possibilities.

In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door establishes an asset which will give a bonus die to subsequent appropriate action declarations, but doesn't constitute a "get out of jail free" card at all. In 4e, it might be part of a skill challenge, and until the challenge overall is resolved the players are not entitled to any assumption of success in escaping their enemies.

4e doesn't fold combat situations into skill challenges, does it? And this is a combat situation. And in other systems if my next action declaration following discovery of the door goes something like "I open it, yell to my companions that here's the way out, and book it outside!" then - depending on other factors such as initiative order and actions of the foes - I'm probably out.

More generally, I think there is a need to distignuish between abuse and unbalanced moves. The latter are a big deal in D&D (less so in nearly every other RPG I'm familiar with), but that just tells us something about a peculiarity of D&D. If D&D can't support player-driven RPGing because it's got no appropriate way of balancing moves, managing action economy, etc, again that's mostly just a fact about D&D. (I know from experience that 4e doesn't have problems along these lines, besides the niggling infelicities that can be found in many complex RPG systems with many moving parts. I wouldn't be surprised if 3E is very different in this respect, nor 5e either for that matter. And 2nd ed AD&D has its own issues that AbdulAlhazred has already mentioned at length in this thread.)

The answer here might be to fine-grain it all a bit. 1e with its 1-minute round length has all kinds of issues and headaches here; more recent editions with rounds measured in seconds solve many of these while introducing a bunch of others; I think there's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle (20 or 30-second rounds?) that mitigates many of the headaches without ever fully removing any of them, and that might be the best we can hope for.

I wonder, is the difference due to D&D actually paying attention to action economy and unbalanced actions where other systems maybe don't so much?

Re the reliquary example:

Yes the immediate drama might be waiting at the reliquary but - and this only just now occurred to me - what's being denied is the ability for the PCs to become distracted by something else, or to distract themselves. Isn't this just another form of railroad?

Do you mean PCs or players? There is no player agency in the PCs being distracted - I mean, I as GM could narrate "You [the PCs] become distracted by some piping minstrels, but soon regain your focus on the task at hand."

You could narrate that. Or you could describe what the PCs are going past during their journey to the reliquary: "As you travel with the angels you pass by several intersections and open doors. Down one hallway you see (and hear!) a slave being beaten with a club by a hooded person. Through one of the open doors you see a luxurious-looking bedchamber - and you're sure that was some pretty expensive jewelry just sitting out in the open on that dresser! Down another hall you notice a strange shimmering light coming from a door or opening on the left."

Or it could just be "As you travel with the angels you pass through a number of dusty passages; in a few places intersecting passages lead off into darkness."

Things like this give the players (via their PCs) options. They could decide to rescue the slave. They could decide to steal the jewelry. They could check out one of the passages leading into darkness*. Or they could ignore it all and go straight to the reliquary.

* - even if they ignore everything else they might still want to check out the other passages to see if one provides a different approach to where they're going.

As far as the players being distracted, I find it hard to characterise "being distracted" as a form of agency - it is a way of being led by someone else's exercise of agency! (That's practically inherent in the meaning of what it is to be distracted.)

If the players want to do something other than go to the reliquary, than that is on them - they can call for us to back up, or they can retropsectively resolve some situation where they collected some information, or whatever. You seem to be presupposing a type of rigidigy about play, and the handling of the passage of time and of movement from A to B in the fiction, that is different from my experience.

Backups and retcons are undesirable in the extreme. Note the way I presented the descriptions above: I don't say or imply they've got to the reliquary yet, I just say what they see on the way and thus give them the chance to interact with it before ever getting to the reliquary or knowing what awaits them there (though in this particular case the angels might have already forewarned them what awaits; this is an unusual example in that the party have a guide, which isn't often the case). Thus things happen in a sequential order both within the fiction and outside of it:

1 they* talk with the angels
2 they travel with the angels
3 during this travel they learn more about the environment simply by what they see as they pass
4 they get an opportunity to respond to what they've learned in 3
5a if they do nothing they reach the reliquary
5b if they do something in response to what they've learned in 3 they don't reach the reliquary yet and things (temporarily or permanently) go in a different direction.

* - they meaning both PCs within the fiction and players outside of it.

But none of this even gets a chance to happen if you-as-DM jump straight from talking with the angels to framing the scene at the reliquary. There's the add-to-the-fiction type of agency, but there's also the make-a-choice-within-the-fiction type of agency; and it's the second that's being denied.

Lan-"I nip into the bedroom and steal the jewels"-efan