Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7389663" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not sure what you mean by "doing fiction properly".I'm also not sure how you are using "agency". Authorship involves the use of language. Language is an inherited resource. It limits, as well as empowers. In the context of writing stories, or fictions, language (and the cultural associations it carries) offers tropes, motifs, genre, etc. Writing is going to draw on those to some extent - in fairly subtle ways for serious authors of literature, but probably more crudely in most RPGing contexts. But it seems largely unhelpful to say that any exercise of authorial agency is in fact to limit one's agency (because dependent upon this inheritance of linguistic and narrative resources). It seems more helpful to say that the exercise of agency draws upon certain resources.As the fiction unfolds, it will generate its own further constraints. To me, it also seems more helpful to see the development of a coherent and unified fiction as an exercise of agency - with later constraints being the manifestation of earlier exercises of agency - than to suggest that to write is to further and further limit one's agency.Turning, then, to Dickensian London: this establishes some elements of trope and genre - evil landlords, cynical (or hopelessly utopic) industrialists, orphans, legacies, trustees, fog, unexpected personages with curious names, etc. As far as action declaration is concerned, these establish what HeroQuest revised calls "Credibility tests" - an action declaration "I jump across the Thames" is not acceptable, but an action declaration "I find a ferryman to carry me across the Thames under the cover of darkness" is. The Burning Wheel rulebook makes the same point when it says that a player can't hope to have his/her PC find beam weaponry in the duke's toilet. 4e draws upon the "tiers of play" to establish this sort of credibility constraint, as well as the itemised capabilities of feats and powers at various levels/tiers (sometimes these itemised capabilities can come into tension with the narrative description of the tiers of play, or a particular paragon path or epic destiny: that's a weakness in 4e, though how big a weakness it is I'll leave someone else - eg [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - to judge).Insofar as the players have chosen to play in Dickensian London, these credibility limits are better seen as an exercise of agency rather than a burden upon it. In particular social circumstances that might change - eg if a GM starts wielding credibility tests as a club to block action declarations that players regard as quite reasonable - but at that point the game would seem to be spiralling into collapse in any event.However, suppose that the GM treats "Dickensian London" as an invitation to delve into archives, old maps and plans, newspaper records etc. And so when the player declares "I find a ferryman to carry me across the Thames under the cover of darkness" the GM replies "No, that's not possible. As per [archival source XYZ], on that evening such-and-such a vessel was floundering and all the London ferrymen were involved in the rescue and salvage effort." That would be an example of the GM relying not on genre credibility, but rather on unrevealed elements of setting established via detailed worldbuilding, to block a player action declaration. The player, now, to make successful action declarations, first has to establish all these unrevealed elements that might otherwise defeat his/her action declarations because treated by the GM as part of the fictional positioning, although the player doesn't know what they are.That is the approach to worldbuilding by GMs that imposes significant limits on player authority over the content of the shared fiction (eg in this case, a ferryman available to carry the PC across the Thames under cover of darkness). My own opinion, based on a mixture of experience, reading and conjecture that build on those, is that it is relatively common in RPGing. (Also notice that this is not how Dickens himself writes. He is happy to make up fictional ferrymen, business emporiums, etc, as needed for his narrative purposes.)Whether "Frank Herbet's Dune" is a way of establishing genre, or of establishing unrevealed elements of fictional positioning, would depend on what the play group was intending to do. I could easily imagine using Middle Earth as a way to establish genre and trope; but that's not how ICE treated it in their MERP products - they went for the establish unrevealed elements of fictional positioning approach.I don't accept your premise.Firstly, I don't think that agency is, in general, zero-sum in the way you seem to suggest. And second, I don't think agency in the specific case of authorship or establishing shared fiction need be zero-sum either. Bob letting Alice establish what is in the market isn't an exercise by Bob of agency in respect of that particular element of the shared fiction, but there are other elements that Bob can establish.Now if we are talking about a modest market scene, and there were dozens of participants, I agree that the situation could become (at least for practical purposes) fully established and resolved without everyone getting a chance to have a turn. But I think the typical RPGing group is closer to half-a-dozen or so people. So I think the number of situations that will be exhausted by Alice's contribution before Bob gets to have a turn is fairly small.Of course if Alice goes first, and Bob is obliged to respect Alice's contribution, then Alice's exercise of agency imposes some constraints on Bob's. That's part and parcel of collective authorship of a shared fiction. I have co-authored many (non-fictional) works, and ways of handling this have tended to emerge organically (and the number of authors has never been larger than three). In a game, there tend to be rules for managing these issues of who gets to go first.Yes. As I wrote above, this is going to be the case with any work of authorship (I'm putting dada-esque or Andy Warhol-esque approaches to one side; I think as a feature of RPGing practice these are an extreme minority, and I'm sure those who are doing it have already worked out their techniques to their satisfaction). Any work of authorship generates its own constraints of coherence, unity etc.Those are best seen as expressions of the agency of those who (by way of their authorship) brought them into being.I don't think you are using the term "worldbuilding" in the way it is used in the OP. You seem to be identifying the value of setting in RPGing.To the extent that you are saying (and I'm not sure whether or not you are) that it doesn't matter whether setting is established prior to play, or in the course of play, I don't agree. Experiencing the development of a setting that you help author is exercising and enjoying your agency. Experiencing someone else's relating to you a setting that has already been written is experiencing the exercise of someone else's agency. (The fact that you are happy to do this doesn't make it your agency, any more than the fact that Bob is happy for Alice to author the market as offering apples for sale means that Bob is the author of that element of the fiction.)There is no difference, except that Luke Crane has playtested his obstacle levels and so (one trusts) is somewhat confident that they will produce tenable pacing outcomes. The Adventure Burner has a discussion of the role of obstacles in establishing setting.But obstacles contribute to genre, and related elements of feel; but it is the actual action declarations, and their resolution, that establish the concrete elements of the shared fiction.My own view is that, by default, Story Now works better with pacing-generated obstacles - as in 4e, Cortex+ Heroic or HeroQuest revised - than with "objective" obstacles, as in BW. But BW has a number of bells and whistles that ameliorate what could otherwise be the railroading effect of "objective" obstacles.</blockquote>

Verification