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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7355544" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've not defined agency as anything. I have talked about a form of agency that I am interested in - namely, player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.I have also talked, at length and in many posts (eg some just made, which repeat points that appear to have been missed in earlier posts) about ways in which players can exercise agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.I have also talked about other sorts of agency - eg (apropos of your reference to "gamism") I have talked about the very different sort of agency that is present in classic D&D dungeoneering play (beating the dungeon by mapping it, and coming up with effective methods of looting), and have identified some of the conceits and conventions of play that are necessary to make this work.As far as <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">Eero Tuovinen's blog</a> is concerned:(i) He draws upon a pre-existing body of analysis - The Forge discussions of narrativism - in the blog I have linked to. He makes this quite explicit. Player agency in narrativism is all about agency over the content of the shared fiction: see eg <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a>: Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means: *Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place. *Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all. *Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances. Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about. There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). (2) Eero Tuovinen doesn't say that players have no authority to author backstory. Eg: One of the players is a gamemaster . . . The rest of the players each have their own characters to play . . . [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character Part of how a player knows his/her PC is because s/he knows the PC's backstory (which contributes to establishing dramatic needs).I'm sorry you find what I'm describing confusing. There are any number of RPGs that are written to be run (more-or-less) along the lines of the "standard narrativistic model", where the role of the players and of the GM is (more-or-less) as Eero Tuovinen describes; and in which players exercise agency over the shared fiction in the sorts of ways I have described in posts in this thread.I have given examples of what I have in mind. I think they're pretty clear:To the extent that an important part of play is making moves that trigger the GM to tell them stuff that the GM has (literally or notionally) in his/her notes, the players are not exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. They are triggering the GM to exercise such agency (if the notes are purely notional) or to relate the outcome of prior such exercised of agency (if the notes are literal). This may happen in a game with a pre-conceived story or plot; it may happen in some forms of sandbox; it is an important part of classic dungeoneering. To the extent that the content of GM framing reflects the GM's conception of the situation, the point of the game, the nature of the gameworld, etc, that is the GM and not the players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. Again, this may or may not be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot. To the extent that the outcomes of action resolution are determined by treating prior GM authorship of (hitherto unrevealed) bits of the setting as a component of the fictional positioning, rather than using the action resolution mechanics to determine what happens in the fiction, the GM rather than the players is exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. This may be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot (". . . and then they find the map where it got lost in the kitchen, which means that . . ."); or it may be simply because the GM has made a catalogue of gameworld elements ("the study has a desk in it with empty drawers; the kitchen has a map in the breadbin, where someone accidentally dropped it; the guard is not amenable to being bribed; etc, etc").These techniques are often related - eg the more that the third is a feature of play, then the more likely the first will be also, as the players try to make moves that reveal the hitherto unrevealed fictional positioning. (In this thread various posters have described this as "exploring the gameworld", "acquiring information", "investigating", etc.) And one and three tend to lead to two, as they lead to the GM's ideas about the gameworld becoming a prominent aspect of play.I don't see what is confusing about any of this.</blockquote>

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