What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Ilbranteloth]

I feel like the real core of this is that you don't want to even discuss [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s concept of player agency. That concept is a very basic agency concept that says "you have agency when you have power to control something" in essence. So, when a poster says "the players moved their characters to point X and I told them they found Y, and they said 'we search' and nothing was found because that's what the map key said was there, nothing." (I know, I'm stripping the narrative down to a very dry level, but I'm not doing so to attack the technique, but just to easily illustrate the elements of it) then where is the player agency by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s measure? I don't see how, in a game where all the content is as established as the real world is, and just as immutable, that the players have any agency over that. I my example they simply don't. You can say that they could have gone to room Z instead of X, and then found something when they searched. OK, but that's missing the point, the players still didn't decide what the narrative was going to include or be about, at all!

So, when you instead assert your theory, that the PCs having a choice in-game is agency (although I am personally not understanding what is being controlled by fictional people) then Pemerton saying "its just like a choose-your-own-adventure novel" is bound to piss you off, because you think that someone is wrong AND critical, but its not wrong, you just have to be able to discuss things in terms that other people accept sometimes. We can have a discussion about YOUR definition of 'agency' (actually we did, and I'm sorry to say I wasn't really convinced it is very useful, but I'd be the last person to tell anyone to shut up, you can champion that view as much as you want). In other words, put yourself in the position of the person you're arguing with and see if maybe their viewpoint actually makes some sense, and isn't as antagonistic as you think.

But player agency doesn’t mean they have full control of everything. Whether the discovery was pre-authored or not doesn’t really have anything to do with player agency. The players are not being restricted in their choices or actions. Just like I can go get in my car and go left or right. My free will has not been altered. If I come to a red light it still hasn’t altered my free will or agency, it’s just a circumstance that provides a decision point.

It’s not a choose your own adventure because the outcome has not been predetermined. That there is something in the room may have been, but what the characters choose to do, and the results of that decision is not predetermined. Choose your own adventure books produce the same result every time you select option 1. A published adventure is like a DM prepped adventure. I’ve run Keep on the Borderlands and Tomb of Horrors dozens of times, and never had the same results, ever. Each group had their own experiences and results.

Now [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] may prefer a game where the players have a greater ability to author beyond the actions and decisions of their characters, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the players have more agency, just a broader part of the authoring of the story.

Removing player agency would be pretermining the outcome of an encounter, not the content of the world. Such as deciding that the result of this encounter will be that the PCs will be captured. That decision can be predetermined or made on the fly.

Note that this does not mean the characters can never be captured.

Taking away agency: the DM decides that the characters must be captured. Initially he throws 8 well armed guards, but that doesn’t deter them. So he brings in 12 reinforcements. That still doesn’t stop them, so he brings in a wizard with a wand of hold person.

Not taking away player agency (and tying into world-building): the kingdom is in the midst of a war, and bandits have been an increasing problem in the area. The Lord has ordered an increased patrol of 12 men-at-arms, 6 of them mounted, with a wizard with a wand of hold person. The PCs run afoul of the law, and find themselves surrounded by one such patrol. Due to the heightened security, escape may be risky, since it will make them outlaws, putting a bounty on their heads, dead or alive.

Their agency hasn’t been altered, because they are still able to make any decision they want, although some are more risky than others. Even if they aren’t aware of the current political situation, that will become apparent in time.

The important thing to understand is that in this situation the player’s agency has not been compromised, although the character’s may have been.

The framework of the game, including the house or table rules, determines what the players are allowed to do or not. This is not altering agency, it is just the rules of the game. Some games have more restrictions than others.

For example, the rules for high school football are different that the NFL. That’s not taking anything away from the players. They still have the same goals, and they are free to accomplish those in any manner within the framework of the rules. How they meet those goals might be altered, but within the framework of the game they still have their agency.
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]’s preferred approach is not “choose your own adventure” nor is it impacting player agency within the context of the game they are playing. It’s a different game than [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]’s, with different rules and approaches, that’s all.

 

[Maxperson]

No, you DISAGREED with him, that's nothing like correcting someone. And when you 'correct' people by telling them that your opinion is facts

I'm not stating an opinion. My playstyle is not anything like "choose your own adventure". That's a fact. It can be abused into "choose your own adventure", but at that point it's no longer the playstyle being discussed here. He can hold the opinion that my playstyle is like "choose your own adventure", but he would be wrong.

Now, sometimes people make statements without saying one way or the other how they consider it, but its better to assume they're willing to grant everyone else their own tastes and opinions unless otherwise stated. That just facilitates discussion and means disputes will only happen when someone actually IS a jerk, and not when they simply don't like your way of doing things so much and voice some criticism of it (and I mean criticism in its most neutral way, to point out the flaws in a thing, not 'to condemn it').

At this point I don't even know if he dislikes my way of doing things. He hasn't demonstrated here that he even understands it.

 

[Maxperson]

I feel like the real core of this is that you don't want to even discuss [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s concept of player agency. That concept is a very basic agency concept that says "you have agency when you have power to control something" in essence. So, when a poster says "the players moved their characters to point X and I told them they found Y, and they said 'we search' and nothing was found because that's what the map key said was there, nothing." (I know, I'm stripping the narrative down to a very dry level, but I'm not doing so to attack the technique, but just to easily illustrate the elements of it) then where is the player agency by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s measure? I don't see how, in a game where all the content is as established as the real world is, and just as immutable, that the players have any agency over that. I my example they simply don't. You can say that they could have gone to room Z instead of X, and then found something when they searched. OK, but that's missing the point, the players still didn't decide what the narrative was going to include or be about, at all!

There's no such game. Never has a game been made where all the content has been established as the real world is, or is just as immutable. And I have already stated multiple times and have given examples of how the players have an amount of control over what the narrative is going to include or be about. And they have that ability BECAUSE the game you just described is impossible. Not only is it impossible, but no game can even remotely come close to it. Even in the Forgotten Realms, the most detailed campaign you can buy, only about 5%, if even that much, is detailed.

I'm perfectly willing to discuss handing the players some DM Agency by the way. I'm just not willing to change the definition of Player Agency in the discussion.

So, when you instead assert your theory, that the PCs having a choice in-game is agency (although I am personally not understanding what is being controlled by fictional people) then Pemerton saying "its just like a choose-your-own-adventure novel" is bound to piss you off, because you think that someone is wrong AND critical, but its not wrong, you just have to be able to discuss things in terms that other people accept sometimes. We can have a discussion about YOUR definition of 'agency' (actually we did, and I'm sorry to say I wasn't really convinced it is very useful, but I'd be the last person to tell anyone to shut up, you can champion that view as much as you want). In other words, put yourself in the position of the person you're arguing with and see if maybe their viewpoint actually makes some sense, and isn't as antagonistic as you think.

So first, PC and player is interchangeable. The players are the ones making the choices for the PC, so the players are the ones. Second, it's not MY definition of Player Agency. It's the one that has long been established and used. Third, when someone is factually incorrect about the nature of my playstyle by repeatedly calling it "choose your own adventure", then yes I get irritated and will call that person out on it.

 

[Campbell]

When I think about player agency the first thing that comes to mind is What is a player expected to do? What (usually unspoken) principles should guide my decision making? Am I there to enjoy serial world exploration for its own sake? Am I there to find the GM's story and complete the predesignated scenario in the manner dictated? Am I supposed to carefully manage my resources? Am I supposed to play my PC with integrity as my main focus? Am I supposed to drive my PC like a stolen car?

Where does the ultimate protagonism lie?

The other thing that I think about is everyone's commitment to really following the fiction. Does the GM provide meaningful opportunities for players to find leverage over the current state of the fiction? Are there reliable ways to reason about the fiction? Is fictional positioning respected? Are the rules and fiction something that can be relied on? Does the GM or any player have designs on how things should work out that they are purposefully moving things toward? Are players overly precious about the ways their PC may be affected by events? What goals are players social free to pursue?

 

[Lanefan]

I think the key point is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is interested in the EXPERIENCE of the players, what they're after from the game, which isn't necessarily related to which particular one of the choices that they make for their characters. I mean, it MIGHT be, but nobody can say if and to what degree.

Perhaps, though much of the experience of the game IME that players remember afterwards is what happened to their characters in the game, and what they did, and how.

That isn't because of 'railroading', that's not really necessary for the 'limited agency' that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] means. He just means "the players may not be defining what the game is about."

The players in fact probably aren't defining what the game is about, in broad terms e.g. court intrigue or gritty warfare or swashbuckling space marines, once play has started; as that would have been sorted out by all involved before play began. This usually goes something like:

DM: Hey, I've got this idea for a campaign - court intrigue, kings and nobles, that sort of thing. Who's in?"
Some players: "Yeah, sure - when do we start?"
Other players: "No thanks, not my cup of tea."

I mean, lets use another spherical cow example, what if the game takes place in an endless maze of basically identical rooms and corridors. Its true that the players have 'agency' in this game. In fact, in some abstract way, JUST AS MUCH as in any other game where the GM established environs and contents and thus topic of the fiction. However that agency is obviously meaningless in this hypothetical scenario, the PCs can go left, right, north, south, whatever. They're just going to encounter more endless and virtually identical rooms and corridors.

The point is, AT THE LIMIT, the type of freedom you posit has no agency about it. Now, realistic play isn't at that limit, but it is closer to it than what Pemerton does. So, I can see why he, at least claims, it represents less agency.

Yeah, at the limit this would be pretty boring to DM too - kind of the equivalent of "you are in a maze of little twisty passages, all alike".

But based on a more normal game my disagreement with pemerton is that it's not so much a question of less agency as a different type of agency, and the argument then becomes which type is more valid.

Now, if the players choice of going left leads to a realm of undead and a quest to defeat them, and going right leads to a realm of orcs and a quest to establish peace between them and the dwarves, then that's a meaningful choice, BUT the GM still decided the agenda in either direction. We also have to ask if the players knew which choice lead where. Lets say they did, well then they 'voted with their (characters) feet' and we might call that agency over the content of the game, at least within the menu of choices presented. Still, there are types of things that the players can't do here, like introduce an element into the fiction that wasn't thought of by the GM.

Well, they actually can after a fashion if - when presented with a menu of choices - they choose 'none of the above' and then proactively go looking for something else, thus forcing the DM to think up new things she hasn't thought of yet.

Obviously real games OFTEN include, informally, something like "wouldn't it be cool if my character was trying to find the cure for the disease that his town is dying of?" or whatever, and the GM taking the offered hook/backstory. So, probably for anyone that has played as long as we all obviously have, I suspect there's nothing too close to my spherical cow. We can still ask about the function of world building though, right?

We can ask, though I think everyone involved in this thread has at some point by now given a decent and considered answer one way or another.

Now we're just arguing about the answers.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

But player agency doesn’t mean they have full control of everything.

True.

And this is where I'll bring up a question -and a term - that hasn't yet hit this thread though it's been lurking behind the scenes the whole way: at what point does player agency drift into player entitlement?

Whether the discovery was pre-authored or not doesn’t really have anything to do with player agency. The players are not being restricted in their choices or actions. Just like I can go get in my car and go left or right. My free will has not been altered. If I come to a red light it still hasn’t altered my free will or agency, it’s just a circumstance that provides a decision point.

Well, a red light attempts to alter your free will in that it (or the laws behind it) expects you to stop there. You've still got the choice of going through it, I suppose, but there's strong discouragement for that choice.

Now [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] may prefer a game where the players have a greater ability to author beyond the actions and decisions of their characters, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the players have more agency, just a broader part of the authoring of the story.

However be advised that he's been quite consistent in this thread about tying authorship control and agency together in a you-mostly-can't-have-one-without-the-other kind of way, and has held steady through significant disagreement (including mine) with this position.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

How is this different from an invisible opponent?

I don't know that it is - why would it be?

If the GM has decided that there is an unrevealed invislbe opponent present, and then a player declares "I use my wand of truesight", that is making a move that triggers the GM to tell the player some bit of pre-authored backstory. Isn't it?

I'm not sure what you think the difference is.

As I understood your account, you had already decided that there was a blocked stairway. You then, as part of the resolution of the PCs' conversation with the orcs, decided that the stairway had been blocked to keep the boss from coming back. But it wasn't clear to me whether that was a note you made to yourself, or something that you told the players (eg one of the orcs says "The day after the warboss went missing, the shaman had us block up the stairs.")

the DM doesn't decide the moves that are sufficient. The DM sets some of the fictional positioning required, yes, but not the moves. If the players take a hostage and ransom the map from the others, they can go get the map and the players never have to be in the study. There's a difference between establishing a bit of the necessary fictional positioning and dictating the only moves (action declaration + fictional positioning) that can achieve the goal.

You're right that "deciding the moves" may not have been the right term - "establishing a bit of the necessary fiction al positioning" is more accurate.

The hostage example is interesting, because there are many ways that could be adjudicated, and the differences betwween them can be highly illuminating of the etent to which play is GM- or player-driven. There was an extensive discussion of a similar example (hiring an assassin to kill the king) upthread, between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], which I think brought out some of the relevant points.

not you seem very dismissive of play that doesn't have the players telling the DM new fiction[/quote]I've repeatedly posted, and I'm sure that some of those posts have been in reply to you, that none of the RPGs that I GM has a mechanic for player fiat introduction of fiction (and I have repeatedly drawn the contrast with Fate and OGL Conan in this respect).

Players don't have to be able to tell the GM new fiction in the course of play to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.

not The entire point, I thought, of your complaints about secret backstory was that is was pre-authored ficiton and it could be used to thwart player action declarations. Backstory that was presented as framing, even if prepared, and made known to the players was acceptable. Yet you've repeatedly commented that the notes employed, despite not thwarting player actions or even being secret (almost everything was known to players and the few things that weren't were trivially discovered and made known before having an impact), are pre-authored, secret backstory. It seems your goalposts are shifting, but I'm not sure as you may have just failed to make your points clear.[/quote]I'm not sure what you think the "goalposts" are here.

For the past X (> 200) posts, there has been an ongoing discussion about player agency. I've been focused on discussing player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. I've talked about various ways this can arise and be exercised, and various techniques that tend to reduce it. The use of pre-authored backstory to establish unrevealed fictional positioning is one way. The GM establishing the stakes of play, McGuffins, fetch quests, etc is another. If a fair bit of the focus of play is on the players making moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of the pre-established fiction, well that's another way in which the players will not be exercising a great deal of agency over the content of the shared fiction.

I'm sorry if the above is not clear - I've done my best to reitereate it many times over many posts. And I've linked multiple times to Eero Tuovinen's outline of the "standard narrativistic model" which also sets it out pretty clearly - the players build PCs with dramatic needs, the GM establishes situations that speak to those needs and hence provoke action declarations, those action declarations are resolved which generates various sorts of consequences, which feed into new situations, etc, etc.

There are a number of fairly common approaches to RPGing that constitute departures from the standard narrativistic model: the GM establishing stakes and goals for play that are not related to PCs' dramatic needs; play being focused on the players acquiring information from the GM about the content of the fiction, rather than on addressing the PCs' dramatic needs; the PCs not having any clear dramatic needs; consequences being established based on the GM's conception of what is important in the situation, or basedon GM pre-authorship of gameworld elements ("secret backstory" as a factor in action resolution); etc.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know that it is - why would it be?

If the GM has decided that there is an unrevealed invislbe opponent present, and then a player declares "I use my wand of truesight", that is making a move that triggers the GM to tell the player some bit of pre-authored backstory. Isn't it?

As I understood your account, you had already decided that there was a blocked stairway. You then, as part of the resolution of the PCs' conversation with the orcs, decided that the stairway had been blocked to keep the boss from coming back. But it wasn't clear to me whether that was a note you made to yourself, or something that you told the players (eg one of the orcs says "The day after the warboss went missing, the shaman had us block up the stairs.")

You're right that "deciding the moves" may not have been the right term - "establishing a bit of the necessary fiction al positioning" is more accurate.

The hostage example is interesting, because there are many ways that could be adjudicated, and the differences betwween them can be highly illuminating of the etent to which play is GM- or player-driven. There was an extensive discussion of a similar example (hiring an assassin to kill the king) upthread, between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], which I think brought out some of the relevant points.

I've repeatedly posted, and I'm sure that some of those posts have been in reply to you, that none of the RPGs that I GM has a mechanic for player fiat introduction of fiction (and I have repeatedly drawn the contrast with Fate and OGL Conan in this respect).

Players don't have to be able to tell the GM new fiction in the course of play to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.

I'm not sure what you think the "goalposts" are here.

For the past X (> 200) posts, there has been an ongoing discussion about player agency. I've been focused on discussing player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. I've talked about various ways this can arise and be exercised, and various techniques that tend to reduce it. The use of pre-authored backstory to establish unrevealed fictional positioning is one way. The GM establishing the stakes of play, McGuffins, fetch quests, etc is another. If a fair bit of the focus of play is on the players making moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of the pre-established fiction, well that's another way in which the players will not be exercising a great deal of agency over the content of the shared fiction.

I'm sorry if the above is not clear - I've done my best to reitereate it many times over many posts. And I've linked multiple times to Eero Tuovinen's outline of the "standard narrativistic model" which also sets it out pretty clearly - the players build PCs with dramatic needs, the GM establishes situations that speak to those needs and hence provoke action declarations, those action declarations are resolved which generates various sorts of consequences, which feed into new situations, etc, etc.

There are a number of fairly common approaches to RPGing that constitute departures from the standard narrativistic model: the GM establishing stakes and goals for play that are not related to PCs' dramatic needs; play being focused on the players acquiring information from the GM about the content of the fiction, rather than on addressing the PCs' dramatic needs; the PCs not having any clear dramatic needs; consequences being established based on the GM's conception of what is important in the situation, or basedon GM pre-authorship of gameworld elements ("secret backstory" as a factor in action resolution); etc.

Again, I think the issue here is your choices to limit your analysis to things you define as supporting your playstyle, like defining agency in respect to the content of the shared fiction. Even this definition is a bit vague, as you haven't clearly defined it at all. Using Eero's concepts, it's pretty clear that you accept that the DM has authority over backstory, in that the players do not have any ability or very limited ability to author backstory. You've repeated that you don't play games that allow players to author backstory by fiat a number of times, so it seems this is where your head is. So, then, you're correct that you don't define agency with respect to the shared fiction as the ability to author new backstory - that's the DM's job. Instead, it seems that what you really mean is that the DM has not predefined where the story goes, as in, there is no plot the DM is following. The play generates the plot through play, thereby giving the players agency over the shared fiction because they help generate the plot of the story through play. But this kind of definition applies to many kinds of DM-facing play as well -- my play example above had the players generating the fiction through their play, I had no notes or plot developed at all, just some prepared combat stats and a map. Yes, they received new information from me, either about elements of the map or the combat statistics, but I didn't provide any plot. In this sense, the 'notes' of the GM don't interfere with the kind of agency you're talking about, but you continue to say that it does. I can only surmise that when you say 'secret backstory' you don't just mean framing notes the GM uses to provide a scene for play, but also a presupposed plot the GM is using to corral play. If that's the case, you could have skipped a few hundred posts by being up front about that. If that's not the case, well, you still haven't clearly explained your position. That may be because you've defined your terms by the way you play and not by an overarching philosophy. You keep referencing Eero's works, but I don't see anything there that defines agency the way you do.

And, speaking of Eero and how you define agency, it would appear many of the things I've said about the different kinds of agency and how their achieved by the different playstyles lines up with some of Eero's thoughts. At least, in GNS theory, DM-facing play appears more gamist, and scratches gamist itches that narrativist play cannot, while narrativist play cannot scratch gamist itches. Not that I'm a big fan of GNS theory, but it has some uses, and this may be one of them: by defining agency as strictly a narrativist concern, you've excluded (perhaps intentionally) gamist creative agendas from that definition of agency. However, in doing so, you've also excluded your definition of agency from gamist definitions of agency -- how can I win in a narrativist game, for instance, for the GNS definitions of winning in RPGs?

So, by co-opting a narrow definition of agency and not being upfront about what it doesn't cover, you've introduced a confusing discussion where those that use a broader definition of agency (or a different one) are being met with you claiming that agency is increase in your style of play and decreased in theirs. A true statement if you use your narrow definition, but not in the general sense of agency. Given you've been very careful to state agency in terms of the shared fiction, I think this distinction is known to you, which means you've decided to not clarify this point intentionally, either because you failed to understand why it caused confusion because you have trouble stepping to the other side of the argument to see the confusion or because you wanted to make a superiority claim in a manner that was obtuse and hard to counter. I prefer the former.

ETA: there were some malformed quote tags in pemerton's post that I quoted that caused formatting issues with this post. I've removed the tags and the material from my previous post that slipped in with the tags to make this more readable.

 

[Ovinomancer]

<snip>

This seems to be completely orthogonal.

<snip>

Just as a side note, you've used this word a number of times throughout this thread, and I don't think it means what you think it means.

 

[Lanefan]

I've repeatedly posted, and I'm sure that some of those posts have been in reply to you, that none of the RPGs that I GM has a mechanic for player fiat introduction of fiction (and I have repeatedly drawn the contrast with Fate and OGL Conan in this respect).

Players don't have to be able to tell the GM new fiction in the course of play to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.

OK, now I'm a bit confused.

Up to this point you've been pretty steady in stating your view that, if I may sum up, comes down to player agency largely being defined by player contribution to the shared fiction. And note there's only two ways in which a player can contribute to shared fiction: by altering something that's already present in the fiction (e.g. successfully searching for a secret door puts one in a wall already known to be part of the fictional scene; or by blowing up the room with a fireball), or by introducing something new (e.g. adding a weakness for gambling to the guard's background via successful use of player-side mechanics).

And to me, successful use of player-side mechanics to add something to the fiction is when looked at in hindsight just the same as telling the DM that new fiction. The only difference at the time is that the player's addition to the fiction doesn't take hold until confirmed by the dice and is denied or altered if the dice don't co-operate.

So I'm confused when you say this doesn't have to be there for the players to still have agency, when all along you've steadfastly held that it does.

There are a number of fairly common approaches to RPGing that constitute departures from the standard narrativistic model: the GM establishing stakes and goals for play that are not related to PCs' dramatic needs; play being focused on the players acquiring information from the GM about the content of the fiction, rather than on addressing the PCs' dramatic needs; the PCs not having any clear dramatic needs; consequences being established based on the GM's conception of what is important in the situation, or basedon GM pre-authorship of gameworld elements ("secret backstory" as a factor in action resolution); etc.

I looked deeper at that Eero stuff last night and found something that surprised me: bluntly put, in his view the DM has control over backstory.

Given this, and given that backstory comes out of worldbuilding, there's your answer for what worldbuilding is for: to provide backstory.

Also given the above, and given that it only makes sense that not all of the game world's backstory is going to be known by the PCs at any particular time, the DM basing outcomes on backstory that remains yet unknown to the players/PCs is also implicitly endorsed.

Lanefan