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zarionofarabel
2020-11-17, 01:50 AM
So I don't prepare plots, or adventures, or stories, or scenes, or anything for the PCs to encounter in advance. What I do is come up with stuff on the fly as the game is being played.

I do have a world that the PCs adventure in, sometimes a published setting, such as the Forgotten Realms or the Star Wars Universe. Sometimes a homebrew world made up in my imagination based on the players desires and the premise of the campaign as decided in Session Zero.

Between sessions I do daydream about the Imaginationland that the campaign will take place in. I wander around in it and see the sights. I fly above it and watch as the peeps that inhabit it go about their lives. I think upon what has happened so far in the established narrative and how that has affected the world and it's inhabitants.

But I don't write anything down, or get stats ready, or prepare encounters for the PCs to take part in. I just imagine stuff between sessions, at times even dwell on aspects of the established narrative to make sure that I have that part of the story that was told at the forefront of my mind for the next session.

So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.

So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Composer99
2020-11-17, 02:06 AM
(A) Do the players know how you run sessions, and do they agree to play with that knowledge? If so, that's them exercising their agency. At the highest level, player agency starts with choosing to sit down to play at your table knowing how you run games.

(B) Do the players choose to set goals or objectives for their characters, and are they able to make progress towards achieving those during gameplay? If so, that's them exercising their agency. The ability of players to proactively set goals for their characters and attempt to achieve them is a component of player agency.

(C) When the players solicit plot or adventure hooks from NPCs, do they have options to choose between? If so, that's them exercising their agency. The players having meaningful choices with meaningful consequences, such that they can discern (down the road) how the game world is different because they chose path A over path B, is a component of player agency.

I would say that as long as you have (A) and (B) covered, you're basically okay for player agency, assuming that your improvisational style can make (C) difficult.

Batcathat
2020-11-17, 03:21 AM
I don't think improvising what happens necessarily mean less agency for the players, as long as their choices still matter. I suppose not having set options could make it easier for you to "cheat" and have the outcome be what you want regardless of what the players try to do but that can be avoided and on the other hand, planning out a lot of things in advance can also tempt a GM to force the party down the "right" path.

Maybe I'm biased though. When I first started GM:ing at the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of the mid-90s) I improvised literally everything which worked out okay as I remember. I got a complaint early on about railroading but I think that had more to do with my inexperience than my improvising and I took it to heart and didn't get any further complaints.

Pelle
2020-11-17, 04:41 AM
So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.


Not at all, planning and plotting out various choices ahead of time is more associated with the removal of agency IMO. However, not doing it and just improvising is not a guarantee for agency either.


So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Depends on how you improvise. If you all the time improvise something with one clearly optimal choice that the players should take, that effectively turns into a linear affair with low agency, even though you improvise it. If you instead improvise situations with many possible actions for the players to take, and you as a GM have to react more to what they do, then the players have plenty agency. I think it also helps for the GM to set some setting elements in stone and make sure the players know or has heard rumours of it; there are bandits in the woods, there's a political conflict in the city, there is a plague devastating the countryside, ogres in the swamp, etc. Then you have to take those facts into account when you improvise, and every choice the players make is informed by this, thus increased agency.

Pleh
2020-11-17, 05:20 AM
So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.

So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

You are not a no-prep GM. The time you spend immersing yourself in the narrative is prep, even if you aren't writing anything down.

The point of player agency is that the players have a chief influence over the emergent narrative of the game.

The issue of more prepping and less prepping can limit player agency in different ways.

Too much prep can railroad players and lock them in to choosing from a set of options where they might have preferred a greater variety of alternatives. GMs have to avoid letting their prep become a sacred cow and forcing players to reach a predetermined outcome (or worse, predetermined gameplay).

Too little prep can leave players with insufficient information to make meaningful or interesting choices. This one isn't usually as egregious, because the players can usually create new options spontaneously, but it falls to the GM to be flexible and proficient with improvisation.

But for some tables, the players prefer more structure because they don't want to do the work of thinking up the answers. They want the GM to run a straight module and roll dice to see what happens. I'd call this a version of a beer and pretzel game. They want to pkay a relaxed board game with friends, not so much to engage in the mentally demanding work of collaborative creative play.

At the end of the day, your players know if they have enough agency. The REAL reason most GMs need hard written prep notes for their sessions is they struggle with improvising content quickly enough to keep the game moving forward. It can sap the energy from a game to go flipping through monster manuals and rulebooks or stopping a fight to look up a monster ability because the GM picked something that looked fun and they didn't look into the details of how the monster works.

But if you and all the players are having fun and don't feel limited in their choices, there's nothing really wrong here.

Yora
2020-11-17, 06:06 AM
If players get to choose between door A and door B, and whatever lies behind the door is only created once they stepped through it, that choice was indeed completely meaningless.

But most choices and actions are not like that. Agency means that players' choices make a difference, and things in the future are shaped by the actions they took in the past. If new content is created as a response to the players' decisions, then they have agency to affect their own future.

kyoryu
2020-11-17, 09:04 AM
There's a super simple litmus test for agency. Are you ever surprised at what happens? Like, preferably at the "where they go and what they do" level, rather than the "how they reacted to my encounter" level?

If so, there's agency.

If not, probably not.

OldTrees1
2020-11-17, 09:23 AM
I do a similar preparation style for my sandbox campaigns. In my sandbox campaigns there is agency. The world is real enough to me, that if the players ask a question, I can give them the correct answer. If the players investigate the mountains instead of the desert, they will find different things because there are different things in my mountains vs my deserts. What they find is related to their choice in a way that makes sense. So they are making informed meaningful choices.

Now notice I did not say I gave them a choice between going to the mountains or going to the desert. Those places just happen to exist and the players happen to have enough agency to be allowed to choose what to choose about.

So the real question for this style of prep is:
When the Players ask you a question mid session, does your answer make sense in the world? Or is it completely random? The former allows informed choices and the latter renders choices uninformed. If the answer makes sense, then the Players can find questions that inform them of meaningful choices. Including choices you did not anticipate / plan.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-17, 09:29 AM
So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Player agency is counted in number of meaningful decisions a player can make; A "meaningful decision" is one that impacts the state of the game. Let's start with some basics:

Can your players kill their characters? If yes, does this end the game? If also yes, they have +1 agency.

Can your players make their character leave whatever situation their characters face (run from combat, abandon ship, leave a ruin unexplored, quit a job etc.)? If yes, does this have repercussions for the game world (orcs raid a village, ship gets wrecked, someone else loots the ruins, their boss gets angry and they don't paid etc.)? If also yes, they have +1 agency.

Extensive prepping is not required to give players agency. You only need to think, at most, one step ahead of your players. If you are improvising, do just that and focus on concrete moment-to-moment, turn-by-turn decisions your players make during play. Are they having an effect? Are you letting them have an effect? The answers should be clear as day. If they aren't, what are you even doing at your table?

Saintheart
2020-11-17, 10:16 AM
So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.

So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Here's the big secret: the fully-plotted adventure has no agency either. Middlebrow players call this "railroading" (which -- bar the most egregious and inept of bad DMs -- is analogous to the fat boor observing at volume from the peanut gallery that the lead male ballet dancer has clearly brought his sandwiches with him as he flies across the stage. "Look, Maw, 'e's wearin' a codpiece!" Yes, because if he wasn't, you wouldn't actually be paying attention to what you came to see and paid for).

Look, the bad news is that when you get right down to it there is no actual agency in any RPG, only the illusion of agency convincingly or unconvincingly portrayed by the DM. If the players kill the ogre leader, only the DM says whether or not that actually ends the campaign. Rule Zero implies that whatever the players do doesn't actually matter. Even levelling up is illusionary, you're just going to be throwing the same math at the players next week, just with a few strategically-placed +1s on the previous victims. Er, monsters.

But the good news is that human beings are meaning machines. Give a human being two events, we're hardwired to seek and often make up, a causal factor between them. The very fact that the written novel is still actually a thing proves that it's easy to cause people to fall into that wonderful, suggestible state we call the fictive dream or the suspension of disbelief. Odds are on you're not playing with literary critics or actual writers who can smell the lack of three-act structure, so stop worrying about whether you are offending some Grand God of Platonic Agency by shoving new actors out from the wings without fully formed plans or backstories, and just have fun. As Richard Pryor observed to Eddie Murphy when Bill Cosby criticised Eddie for swearing in his standup routines: "Do the people laugh? Do you get paid? Well, then, tell Bill to have a Coke and a smile and shut the **** up."

Vahnavoi
2020-11-17, 10:30 AM
@Saintheart: "players only have as much agency as the game master gives them" =/= "players have no agency, it's all an illusion".

Player agency is no more exotic or illusionary than candies. If I give you a choice between three candies, you can, at your will, have one non-illusionary candy to chew on. The fact that I only chose to present you with just those three candies instead of the whole bag doesn't render your choice moot.

Also, agency in a game has nothing at all to do with rules of drama, three act structures etc. Worrying about those is idiosyncratic behaviour of a particular breed of roleplayers who forgot that they're not directing a stage play. :smalltongue:

Quertus
2020-11-17, 10:48 AM
This is a complex topic.

So, first off, I am usually on the side of "write it down, like it's a module" because it is easier to demonstrate that you are playing fair, and to demonstrate exactly what agency you are giving the players. Because, usually, when we're at the point that we're talking about a game on the forums, we're already in a state where there's GM trust issues.

That out of the way, I pretty much agree with Pelle & Kyoryu.

The type of scenarios that you create, and the types of solutions / responses to those scenarios you allow, will determine how much agency you give the players.

The evil princess has kidnapped a helpless dragon. Do you allow the party of brave knights to charge in, slay the princess, and marry the dragon? Sneak in, carry the dragon out, and earn the princess's ire? Nuke the site from orbit, killing them both, then loot both bodies? Animate both bodies? Hire a famed dragonslayer to "kill" the dragon, then revive the "corpse" and set it free? Sell the evil princess a new line of dragon care products? Feed a love potion to the evil princess, marry her, and share the dragon? Kidnap a different dragon, and offer to trade? Or just straight up give / sell the second dragon to the evil princess? Ignore the scenario altogether?

Or do you railroad that the only possible response is to recover the McGuffin of Freedom from the Elemental plane of Taffy?

If I go a whole session without my players surprising me, it's boring, and I wonder why I'm not using my time more efficiently writing single-author fiction (other than the fact that I'm a terrible writer).

What type of scenarios you envision, and what types of responses to those scenarios you accept, determines how much Agency your players have.

Ajustusdaniel
2020-11-17, 11:04 AM
I'm struggling a bit with questions of player agency, but part of that is that I know my players and the characters they're playing, so I can make a pretty solid guess that if, say, there's some missing kids, then at least a couple party members will insist on investigating and drag the rest along. The result is a fairly linear game, where the PCs, so far, always have a solid goal ahead of them, although occasionally choosing which of several subgoals to pursue first.

I'm, hopefully, building to a point where they know enough of what's going on in the world to not have any one clear immediate goal, but a set of several options they could pursue. We'll see how it goes!

Pleh
2020-11-17, 11:07 AM
Player agency is no more exotic or illusionary than candies. If I give you a choice between three candies, you can, at your will, have one non-illusionary candy to chew on. The fact that I only chose to present you with just those three candies instead of the whole bag doesn't render your choice moot.

Illusionism comes in if the person offering candy has somehow rigged the choices to ensure a particular choice is selected while trying to make the chooser believe the choice is not rigged.

Such as putting three identical candies into three different wrappers.

Batcathat
2020-11-17, 11:26 AM
Illusionism comes in if the person offering candy has somehow rigged the choices to ensure a particular choice is selected while trying to make the chooser believe the choice is not rigged.

Such as putting three identical candies into three different wrappers.

Sure, that would just be a sneaky form of railroading but assuming the GM doesn't do that, the players can have meaningful choices and agency.

I mean, technically I suppose I agree with Saintheart in that every bit of agency a player has is at the mercy of the omnipotent GM but in practice they can have quite a bit of agency. It's like how an NPC side can only really lose a battle if the GM allows it ("You defeated everyone? Suddenly their much stronger reinforcements teleport in!") but that doesn't mean the players can't have a meaningful victory in combat.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-17, 12:00 PM
@Pleh: correct, but irrelevant to my point of criticism. Of course I, as the ultimate dispenser of candies, can opt to give you only identical candies or no candies at all. That doesn't mean your choices are illusionary when I actually opt to give you a selection of three candies. Even if I underhandedly tricked you before. :smalltongue:

OldTrees1
2020-11-17, 12:11 PM
Sure, that would just be a sneaky form of railroading but assuming the GM doesn't do that, the players can have meaningful choices and agency.

Yes a choice between 3 different candies is likely to be an example of agency.
They have a choice.
Their choice is informed (that one is in a red wrapper, the second in a green, and the 3rd unwrapped).
Their choice causes the outcome. If they choose the red wrapper, they get the candy in the red wrapper. And the 3 candies are not identical.

How this is related to the Opening Post / Opening Poster is a bit indirect. The OP does not design or plot out choices, but choices still exist (assuming the outcomes are not literally Random despite being unplanned).


I mean, technically I suppose I agree with Saintheart in that every bit of agency a player has is at the mercy of the omnipotent GM but in practice they can have quite a bit of agency. It's like how an NPC side can only really lose a battle if the GM allows it ("You defeated everyone? Suddenly their much stronger reinforcements teleport in!") but that doesn't mean the players can't have a meaningful victory in combat.

Technically the omnipotent GM can use their omnipotence to disable their omnipotence. When the GM credibly commits "I will not do xyz", then they will not do xyz. The ability to credibly commit invokes topics of game theory, but is possible and in practice it is commonplace. This helps explain on the technical side what you clearly observe on the practical side.


@Pleh: correct, but irrelevant to my point of criticism. Of course I, as the ultimate dispenser of candies, can opt to give you only identical candies or no candies at all. That doesn't mean your choices are illusionary when I actually opt to give you a selection of three candies. Even if I underhandedly tricked you before. :smalltongue:

Agreed, BUT there is a reason I usually add "informed" as part of my definition of a meaningful choice. If the players believe the 3 candies are identical, they might not count that as agency. Even if the GM (and only the GM) knows they were not identical candies. Which means I still agree with you.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-17, 12:53 PM
@OldTrees1: that gets back to the stuff we talked about in the recent GM agency thread, specifically the issue of player good faith towards their GM. If the players believe they have no choice because they believe their GM is giving them none, either those players have ceased to engage with the game authentically or the GM has flubbed up and their agency to design a functional game has been compromised.

Both scenarios escape the topic of improvisation versus planning entirely. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink - in game design context, meaning you can give players a choice, but you can't make them take it.

OldTrees1
2020-11-17, 01:11 PM
@OldTrees1: that gets back to the stuff we talked about in the recent GM agency thread, specifically the issue of player good faith towards their GM. If the players believe they have no choice because they believe their GM is giving them none, either those players have ceased to engage with the game authentically or the GM has flubbed up and their agency to design a functional game has been compromised.

Both scenarios escape the topic of improvisation versus planning entirely. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink - in game design context, meaning you can give players a choice, but you can't make them take it.

Agreed, and that was a good quick summary.

MoiMagnus
2020-11-17, 01:36 PM
Example of a situation:

The DM present three boxes Blue/Red/Green and ask the player to open one (the two other disappearing by magic). The players chose to open the Red box.

Prepared Illusionist:
The three boxes actually use the same loot table, or have specific content different to each other but totally arbitrary and unrelated to any information the player have access to. While the three boxes technically have different content, the choice is meaningless.

Prepared non-Illusionist:
The three boxes have a specific content or a specific loot table somewhat linked to the colour of the boxes (or any other information the characters could have access to), like fire/ice/nature.

Improvised Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but the result would most likely have been the same in the three cases.

Improvised non-Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but use the colour chosen as an inspiration, in order to ensure that the choice given to the player was actually meaningful.

Batcathat
2020-11-17, 03:00 PM
Example of a situation:

The DM present three boxes Blue/Red/Green and ask the player to open one (the two other disappearing by magic). The players chose to open the Red box.

Prepared Illusionist:
The three boxes actually use the same loot table, or have specific content different to each other but totally arbitrary and unrelated to any information the player have access to. While the three boxes technically have different content, the choice is meaningless.

Prepared non-Illusionist:
The three boxes have a specific content or a specific loot table somewhat linked to the colour of the boxes (or any other information the characters could have access to), like fire/ice/nature.

Improvised Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but the result would most likely have been the same in the three cases.

Improvised non-Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but use the colour chosen as an inspiration, in order to ensure that the choice given to the player was actually meaningful.

I like the division of types but I don't quite agree with the examples. In the first example I would qualify the GM with "specific content different to each other but totally arbitrary" as a non-Illusionist, since the player choice decided the outcome even if they couldn't make an informed choice. Sometimes you have to make a choice not knowing what the right one is, both in life and in game. Though obviously a GM who only put their party through unguessable, arbitrary choices wouldn't be very good.

That said, I mostly agree with the four types. It's like a way more eloquent version of what I was trying to say.

zarionofarabel
2020-11-17, 03:23 PM
Example of a situation:

The DM present three boxes Blue/Red/Green and ask the player to open one (the two other disappearing by magic). The players chose to open the Red box.

Prepared Illusionist:
The three boxes actually use the same loot table, or have specific content different to each other but totally arbitrary and unrelated to any information the player have access to. While the three boxes technically have different content, the choice is meaningless.

Prepared non-Illusionist:
The three boxes have a specific content or a specific loot table somewhat linked to the colour of the boxes (or any other information the characters could have access to), like fire/ice/nature.

Improvised Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but the result would most likely have been the same in the three cases.

Improvised non-Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but use the colour chosen as an inspiration, in order to ensure that the choice given to the player was actually meaningful.
The "Improvised Non-Illusionist" would probably be the one that describes what goes on in my head the best.

Spiderswims
2020-11-17, 03:26 PM
Improvised non-Illusionist:
The DM has no clue what is in the box, and improvise one the fly a content, but use the colour chosen as an inspiration, in order to ensure that the choice given to the player was actually meaningful.

I guess your saying that this one is the best? So this has the big problem that this choice is simply giving the players exactly what they want. And this makes for poor game play and it's not even a choice.

But there is a much bigger problem. So to use your example what does "red" stand for? Ask ten people and you will likely get close to ten answers. So this makes it unlikely that the players and the GM will be thinking of exactly the same thing. The players think red equals fire, the GM is thinking red equals blood. And even if they think close to the same, they likely be the same. The players wanted an orb of exploding suns and the GM was thinking more small fire stick.

And it just get worse when things get more complicated.

----

If players are making a choice between anything a GM has not created yet, that is really no choice. The GM will by default create whatever that GM thinks is best. But it will be personalized to that GM: whatever that GM thinks, feels, believes, supports, or knows about; is what the GM will create. Really, this is just how people work.

And it does not matter if the GM made the content a week ago or one second ago: it's still the GM's personalized content. What a GM likes, dislikes, knows about and does not know about, and much more, all factor in to both what a GM creates and what they do in the game.

Worse, a RPG very often can not have any sort of informed choices made by the players, simply because of the game play. At best, players might know some vague things, but not really enough to make an informed decision. To get a true level of information to make an informed decision would take a huge amount of time, and few players or GM are willing to take up game time to do this.

And ultimately it does not matter as the GM will act in a way personalized to themselves.

Example: The PCs have a chance to invest a ton of gold with a underworld criminal boss to make even more gold, do they take the risk? (this is one single boss, not a pick of three bosses)

GM A- believes strongly that crime does not pay, literally. So this boss will at least steal and betray the PCs.

GM B- believes strongly that some people are unfairly called 'criminals' and such people really have hearts of gold. So this boss will be an ally of the PCs 100%.

GM C- thinks of crime bosses just like any other business man. So this boss will do what is ever good for business.

Even if the GM has made up the boss character, and the players take the time to learn as much as they can about them it still won't help all that much. Such knowledge is often unhelpful. They learn the crime boss is a 'fair guy, mostly' who only betrays others 'when they deserve it' and such things. You will just about never have a perfect one sided crime boss, or any other character, in a good game.

If the GM has not even made the crime boss yet...then the players can;t discover anything about them. So it's a meaningless choice to do it or not.

Ultimately it does not matter. When the GM believes strongly that crime does not pay, something bad will just about always happen. It does not matter if the GM writes down 'boss steals PCs money and runs' a year ago or if the PCs simply go back to try and find the boss later and the GM just improvs right on the spot that 'the boss is gone and stole your money'.

If the GM believes in cool criminal businesses men then the PCs come back to find a nice pile of gold that is their share.

Either way it happens, because that is the way the GM thinks.

OldTrees1
2020-11-17, 03:51 PM
The "Improvised Non-Illusionist" would probably be the one that describes what goes on in my head the best.

Then your only real concern would be about whether the players get to face informed choices. You know the outcomes are related to the options in the choice, but would the players be making a blind choice, or one based on available information.

Not every choice needs to be an informed meaningful choice, but you want to make sure they happen. It sounds like that is the case already. Your "No prep" GMing where you daydream about the world, is a form of prep. You are becoming aware of the world and thus the world becomes more coherent even when you are improvising. That allows there to be trains of logic that the players could follow.

"We are in a elemental themed area and faced with color boxes? I suspect the colors must represent elements or forms of a specific element." Or a similar kind of player / PC thinking that would correlate with your improvisation.

jayem
2020-11-17, 04:02 PM
I like the division of types but I don't quite agree with the examples. In the first example I would qualify the GM with "specific content different to each other but totally arbitrary" as a non-Illusionist, since the player choice decided the outcome even if they couldn't make an informed choice. Sometimes you have to make a choice not knowing what the right one is, both in life and in game. Though obviously a GM who only put their party through unguessable, arbitrary choices wouldn't be very good.

That said, I mostly agree with the four types. It's like a way more eloquent version of what I was trying to say.

Yes I think that first example isn't quite fitting. The platonic illusionist example I think ought to be "exactly the same loot item".

If given those 4 boxes to squeeze it in, I'd put it in there, but it's not quite comfortable. The blatant railroad (improvised or planned) is also in a similar position, I guess technically it's non-illusionist...

Batcathat
2020-11-17, 05:15 PM
If given those 4 boxes to squeeze it in, I'd put it in there, but it's not quite comfortable. The blatant railroad (improvised or planned) is also in a similar position, I guess technically it's non-illusionist...

Why do you think that? Isn't the entire definition of railroading that you're forcing the party down the set path regardless of what they do? In MoiMagnus' example the most railroading would be to decide what the party will find in the box and have it be that regardless of what box they pick, ie. one of the illusionists.

False God
2020-11-17, 08:43 PM
So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.

So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Well, frankly, you're looking at this backwards.

In more sandboxy games, it's more like playing a game of battleship. You have limited information on the players, and your NPCs within the gameworld might have even more limited information, or no information. So they're all out making the decisions that are best for themselves, or if they are so inclined, decisions which best thwart the party.

You're not presenting choices for the players to make. Your NPCs are creating situations wherein the players may get involved, either because the NPC forces their hand by attacking them or kidnapping their family or whatever, or because the NPC has taken an action which has attracted the party's interest.

The party then gets to make choices based on these new situations. Maybe they'll get more involved, maybe they'll run away, maybe they'll think of something you couldn't possibly imagine and you have to work "on the fly" to figure out how that's going to work.

Don't create "choices" for the players. Create situations and allow the players to address them in the manner they choose. Of course there will be limits on choices, just as IRL sometimes the choice you want to make just isn't available (I want to drive my car to jump the gap in the bridge, but I'm not in my car and there are bad guys between me and my car. So I have to deal with the bad guys first.)

Quertus
2020-11-17, 09:28 PM
Don't create "choices" for the players. Create situations and allow the players to address them in the manner they choose.

Strongly agree with this advice.

Granted, occasionally, it can be interesting to create explicit choices. But the standard modus operandi should almost certainly be to focus on creating situations / scenarios / encounters / scenes / the like. That will lead to much more interesting and organic outcomes and openminded thinking that thinking in terms of hard-coded choices.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-18, 05:13 AM
That's a hairsplitting argument which isn't actually helpful. When creating a game scenario, creating a situation is synonymous with creating choices. When measuring player agency specifically, you want to talk about explicit, concrete choices, because those are what the players can and will actually do at a table.

Pleh
2020-11-18, 06:40 AM
Strongly agree with this advice.

Granted, occasionally, it can be interesting to create explicit choices. But the standard modus operandi should almost certainly be to focus on creating situations / scenarios / encounters / scenes / the like. That will lead to much more interesting and organic outcomes and openminded thinking that thinking in terms of hard-coded choices.


That's a hairsplitting argument which isn't actually helpful. When creating a game scenario, creating a situation is synonymous with creating choices. When measuring player agency specifically, you want to talk about explicit, concrete choices, because those are what the players can and will actually do at a table.

I think there's value in having a middle ground here. By that, I mean that I usually pre test my games by checking that both of these elements are present.

There needs to be an organic, unrestricted scenario so the players feel free to respond creatively. Hard coded choices can lock out creative problem solving that is essential to the experience.

On the other hand, not all scenarios are very inspiring and not all players want to do the creative heavy lifting all the time. You want to avoid the game stalling out over indecision and writer's block.

I've found what I want are a few "hard coded choices" that serve as a basic prompt. Perhaps it is better to call them Soft Coded Prompts. These events serve as a Plot Hook or Inciting Event.

I could see a lot of people argue this is just an, "organic scenario," but I think a soft coded prompt requires more effort than an organic scenario. A soft coded prompt takes the time to imply a few reasonable responses for the players, seeming like a hard coded choice, except that you allow the players to respond in any way they like.

If they feel inspired, they can treat it as an organic scenario. If they don't feel inspired, they can passively choose from one of the preset options and see what happens.

Cluedrew
2020-11-18, 08:06 AM
Yeah you can give player's agency while making things you go. Simply take into account their decisions while making things up. That's kind of how reality works (although reality has perfect setting knowledge) and I doubt you could get more agency than that. Just follow all the rules for planning an adventure with good agency except do it a few seconds ahead of time and you should be good.

On a less logical level: I play kind of like this for the sake of creating a campaign with even more (perhaps excessive) agency in it and I wouldn't like to learn it was all for nothing.

False God
2020-11-18, 09:01 AM
That's a hairsplitting argument which isn't actually helpful. When creating a game scenario, creating a situation is synonymous with creating choices. When measuring player agency specifically, you want to talk about explicit, concrete choices, because those are what the players can and will actually do at a table.

What players can and will do is heavily reliant on the players and the system and their avatars within in. I've had groups of highly creative players in frankly un-creative systems, and I've had totally uncreative players in much more open and free-form systems. I've had creative players make PCs who have little agency(like fighters) in the game and utilize them very well, and I've had uncreative players make PCs who have greater mechanical agency(such as magic users) who are completely stumped when any old situation arises.

Hence my comparison to Battleship. Both sides have limited information, but there are still a lot of pegs, "choices" if you will, on the board for both you and your players to try. Some of those choices will resolve situations "You sunk my battleship!", some of those choices won't. But you can only guess at their ability to find and make those choices.

Democratus
2020-11-18, 09:04 AM
So long as the players can have their characters respond to what is happening, you're golden.

Agency is the ability to freely react to a given situation.

It doesn't mean you can do anything you want.

A character locked in a jail cell has agency. They can chose to sit and wait, to try to push open the door, to do pushups, tell stories, etc.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-19, 06:58 AM
@False God: you don't need to know exact player ability to measure player agency - not in roleplaying games, not in Battleship.

To use Battleship as a simplified example, it's a closed game if you are playing on a finite grid. Before a single shot has been called, before you know anything about who's playing it, you can calculate a mathematically exact number of different shots a player can call on first turn. And since any shot reveals more about the state of the game board, any shot is meaningful and counts towards player agency.

You don't even need to finish counting to answer a hypothetical player asking "so what can I do?". Just looking at the board and saying "shoot at one of the corners" gives them four possibilities.

Same deal for an improvising GM, such as the original poster. They presumably already know their system and the characters in it - if they don't, they can check their rule book or peek at one of the character sheets. Just using those, they can probably think of four different things their players can do, at a specific moment of their game, and evaluate their impact on the game state, with no further knowledge of players needed. That's enough to determine that the players have (some) agency.

Yora
2020-11-19, 07:42 AM
So long as the players can have their characters respond to what is happening, you're golden.

Agency is the ability to freely react to a given situation.

It doesn't mean you can do anything you want.

A character locked in a jail cell has agency. They can chose to sit and wait, to try to push open the door, to do pushups, tell stories, etc.

Agency is not simply to be able to chose. It's the ability to influence what happens to you. It's when different things will happen depending on what you do and you have a meaningful way to progress to your desired outcome.

Pleh
2020-11-19, 08:23 AM
Agency is not simply to be able to chose. It's the ability to influence what happens to you. It's when different things will happen depending on what you do and you have a meaningful way to progress to your desired outcome.

I very much agree with this distinction.

The "agency" to decide whether to do situps or play card games in prison isn't really any agency most players care about, unless the choice between situps or card games affects their ability to leave the prison.

Players don't care about choosing the red, green, or blue ending while riding the railcar down to the end of the game.

They want the agency to change where the railcar ends up going, even if that means derailing the car.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-19, 08:49 AM
Be fair to Democratus. It isn't hard to imagine a game where even such limited choices impact the game state: trying the door might reveal the warden forgot to lock it, telling stories might increase a character's chance to get a book deal after imprisonment, doing push-ups daily might get them +1 to strength, playing poker with other inmates might win them +100 €, sitting and waiting might let them skip to end of their sentence (etc.)

If none of the choices matter, it's more often due to omission on the part of GM; the players would care about exercising their agency in such ways, if they had a reason to believe it'd work.

Democratus
2020-11-19, 09:11 AM
Be fair to Democratus. It isn't hard to imagine a game where even such limited choices impact the game state: trying the door might reveal the warden forgot to lock it, telling stories might increase a character's chance to get a book deal after imprisonment, doing push-ups daily might get them +1 to strength, playing poker with other inmates might win them +100 €, sitting and waiting might let them skip to end of their sentence (etc.)

If none of the choices matter, it's more often due to omission on the part of GM; the players would care about exercising their agency in such ways, if they had a reason to believe it'd work.

Exactly. Thanks.

Agency is "the state of acting or exerting power". And a character always has the ability to exert some kind of power.

Most of the complaints I'm seeing are about a lack of freedom, not a lack of agency. Either that or complaints that the DM isn't putting characters in exactly the kind of story that they wanted.

Great storytelling can come from characters who have had their freedoms greatly curtailed. Whether it be stories about escape, stories about redefining what is important in life, or stories about finding inner peace. I once ran a 2 year campaign entirely within a prison, and another year-long game entirely within a prison dimension.

There are players who really enjoy this kind of campaign. And those that do not.

But if you don't like these kinds of games, the issue is the style of campaign - not with agency.

Pleh
2020-11-19, 09:46 AM
Agency is "the state of acting or exerting power". And a character always has the ability to exert some kind of power.

And Power is Work Over Time, where Work is Force Through Distance.

We come to the question of what it is we are supposed to be Working On.


Most of the complaints I'm seeing are about a lack of freedom, not a lack of agency.

What Players can use their Agency to Work On is defined by the GM in establishing the scenario. A lack of Freedom correlates rather directly with a lack of Agency.

You can deny players Agency either by removing their Power to affect change, or by removing the objects they wish to exert their power upon.

Now, you're not wrong that limited agency can still be plenty of agency. Most RPGs are not free form, so they are all technically limited agency games.

The real meat of the question is where to draw the limits, which becomes a problem of Justifying the limits you want to set.

Which brings us back to the prison scenario. How do you justify the prison scenario so players can joyfully accept it as a fun concept?

OldTrees1
2020-11-19, 10:28 AM
Exactly. Thanks.

Agency is "the state of acting or exerting power". And a character always has the ability to exert some kind of power.

Most of the complaints I'm seeing are about a lack of freedom, not a lack of agency. Either that or complaints that the DM isn't putting characters in exactly the kind of story that they wanted.

Great storytelling can come from characters who have had their freedoms greatly curtailed.

-snip-

But if you don't like these kinds of games, the issue is the style of campaign - not with agency.

Agency is the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.

1) But what is Player Agency? Player Agency is like a term of art, in that it has a specialized meaning within a particular field or profession. While the definition of a term of art usually does not stray too far from the definitions of the component words, it does generally stray. Compare "paper" vs "white paper".

2) However ignoring that cavet, we can see Agency is a magnitude. It is the capability of exerting power. However power in this sense is a magnitude. Therefore the capability of exerting power is also a magnitude. I have the power to choose where I will eat (within some limits) but a prisoner has less power to choose where they will eat. They still have some, but it is not a binary or unary condition. We both have some agency in that area, and I have more.

This is why you see it used in a similar way as freedom. Agency is the capability of exerting power and freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. They are very related terms.

3) Now your initial observation is that PCs always have some agency. However different players have preferences for different ranges of agency. Some want more agency that the PC being locked away in a prison, and some want less agency that a sandbox provides. So if a player has a preference about amount of agency, it is about agency.

Great storytelling can come from characters who have had their freedoms and their agency greatly curtailed, but if a player dislikes that reduced agency, they dislike that reduced agency.

Democratus
2020-11-19, 03:29 PM
And Power is Work Over Time, where Work is Force Through Distance.



:smallbiggrin:


Which brings us back to the prison scenario. How do you justify the prison scenario so players can joyfully accept it as a fun concept?

Sitting down to play a game is the justification.

No matter what the game is: hex crawl, adventure path, tournament module - the justification is the same. "Let's play a game!".

Democratus
2020-11-19, 03:32 PM
Agency is the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.

1) But what is Player Agency?

The players are humans in the real world. They have as much agency as humans have?

Characters are a different matter, though. They can be mind controlled by eldrich beasts or put to sleep by an Elven spell. These kinds of things take away the characters ability to think for themselves.

zarionofarabel
2020-11-19, 04:21 PM
The players are humans in the real world. They have as much agency as humans have?

Characters are a different matter, though. They can be mind controlled by eldrich beasts or put to sleep by an Elven spell. These kinds of things take away the characters ability to think for themselves.

I have never been a fan of using enemies that take away the PCs ability to act. I'm not a fan of forcing the player to sit there while I tell them what their character is doing. Strangely, on the flip side, I have no problem letting PCs have abilities that force NPCs to act against their will.

OldTrees1
2020-11-19, 05:02 PM
The players are humans in the real world. They have as much agency as humans have?

Characters are a different matter, though. They can be mind controlled by eldrich beasts or put to sleep by an Elven spell. These kinds of things take away the characters ability to think for themselves.

Player Agency is essentially a term of art. A term of art is a word or phrase that has a precise, specialized meaning within a particular field or profession. In the context of RPGs, Player Agency is the Agency the Player has in the context of the game. This encompasses the agency the characters have, and does not go as far as to include all the agency the human player has in the rest of the real world.

That said, I believe you skipped the rest of my post.

Agency is the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.

1) But what is Player Agency? Player Agency is like a term of art, in that it has a specialized meaning within a particular field or profession. While the definition of a term of art usually does not stray too far from the definitions of the component words, it does generally stray. Compare "paper" vs "white paper".

2) However ignoring that cavet, we can see Agency is a magnitude. It is the capability of exerting power. However power in this sense is a magnitude. Therefore the capability of exerting power is also a magnitude. I have the power to choose where I will eat (within some limits) but a prisoner has less power to choose where they will eat. They still have some, but it is not a binary or unary condition. We both have some agency in that area, and I have more.

This is why you see it used in a similar way as freedom. Agency is the capability of exerting power and freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. They are very related terms.

3) Now your initial observation is that PCs always have some agency. However different players have preferences for different ranges of agency. Some want more agency that the PC being locked away in a prison, and some want less agency that a sandbox provides. So if a player has a preference about amount of agency, it is about agency.

Great storytelling can come from characters who have had their freedoms and their agency greatly curtailed, but if a player dislikes that reduced agency, they dislike that reduced agency.

Pleh
2020-11-19, 05:26 PM
Sitting down to play a game is the justification.

No matter what the game is: hex crawl, adventure path, tournament module - the justification is the same. "Let's play a game!".

You're putting the cart before the horse.

It very much matters what the game is. If players sit down wanting a hex crawl and the GM runs an adventure path, the table is probably going to have significant issues.

You've got to get player buy in to the type of game you intend to run, not just buy in to any type of game. If the players say they are down for anything, that is a different scenario than if they say they want to play D&D. If they want D&D, you'd better be asking what edition they prefer, not breaking out Fate, Warhammer, or Toon. This is where Justification comes in. Of course we are here to play a game, but are we really intending to play the same game?

This is why most prison scenarios go poorly. The prison scenario is a very distinctly different set of agency limits that many players prefer to avoid, and GMs often get ahead of themselves trying to apply the scenario before obtaining player buy in. They haven't Justified it.

It isn't good practice to assume that we have player buy in just because we all agreed to play a game. We have to continually revisit these assumptions and agreements as we progress through the game, as often as the agency shifts or changes.

Democratus
2020-11-20, 08:47 AM
You're putting the cart before the horse.

It very much matters what the game is. If players sit down wanting a hex crawl and the GM runs an adventure path, the table is probably going to have significant issues.

You've got to get player buy in to the type of game you intend to run, not just buy in to any type of game. If the players say they are down for anything, that is a different scenario than if they say they want to play D&D. If they want D&D, you'd better be asking what edition they prefer, not breaking out Fate, Warhammer, or Toon. This is where Justification comes in. Of course we are here to play a game, but are we really intending to play the same game?

This is why most prison scenarios go poorly. The prison scenario is a very distinctly different set of agency limits that many players prefer to avoid, and GMs often get ahead of themselves trying to apply the scenario before obtaining player buy in. They haven't Justified it.

It isn't good practice to assume that we have player buy in just because we all agreed to play a game. We have to continually revisit these assumptions and agreements as we progress through the game, as often as the agency shifts or changes.

It's more dependent on the table than the game. At the tables I frequent anyone can say, "I'm going to run a game" with zero more information than that.

Anyone showing up to sit at the table plays whatever is in the offing. It could be D&D 2e, it could be Dresden FATE, it could be DeadLands or even something very different like Microscope. No matter what it is, everyone has already bought in because they showed up.

Whatever happens after we all take our seats is justified, because someone said "let's play!" and we said okay.

Pleh
2020-11-20, 08:55 AM
It's more dependent on the table than the game. At the tables I frequent anyone can say, "I'm going to run a game" with zero more information than that.

Anyone showing up to sit at the table plays whatever is in the offing. It could be D&D 2e, it could be Dresden FATE, it could be DeadLands or even something very different like Microscope. No matter what it is, everyone has already bought in because they showed up.

Whatever happens after we all take our seats is justified, because someone said "let's play!" and we said okay.

My point is that you are over generalizing a specific scenario, when the more general case looking at a wider variety of tables shows that the devil is in the details you are skimming over.

In a thread talking about the more general state of agency in RPGs, we need to consider more than the small subset of solutions that work for any one specific table. We need to understand the more general function of Player Agency at any given table.

In general, you need player buy in. At your table, players are expected to buy in to whatever game is offered. That is HOW your table has resolved the general issue of player buy in. But the point is that there are many ways to resolve player buy in and it is worth understanding the pros and cons of various solutions available to us.

Democratus
2020-11-23, 10:53 AM
In general, you need player buy in. At your table, players are expected to buy in to whatever game is offered. That is HOW your table has resolved the general issue of player buy in. But the point is that there are many ways to resolve player buy in and it is worth understanding the pros and cons of various solutions available to us.

Which is why I said it is more dependent on the table than the game.

I've run at scores, if not hundreds, of different tables since I started large scale GM-ing at at GenCon in the early 90s. I say this only to point out that I have had a fair bit more of a sample set than one home table with one group. Of course, nobody has been at every gaming table in the world. I'm sure there will always be those rare exception players and GMs. But those are the exception, rather than the rule.

Players complaining about "lack of agency" just hasn't been a big deal at the tables I've seen, whether running a published module or custom material.

Player buy-in as I have seen it in the real world (rather than forum white-rooms) has been easy to come by. To the point that I can treat it as a given that if someone has taken a seat at the table, they have agreed to take the leap with whatever comes next.

OldTrees1
2020-11-23, 11:37 AM
Players complaining about "lack of agency" just hasn't been a big deal at the tables I've seen, whether running a published module or custom material.

Player buy-in as I have seen it in the real world (rather than forum white-rooms) has been easy to come by. To the point that I can treat it as a given that if someone has taken a seat at the table, they have agreed to take the leap with whatever comes next.

I think the forums reflect that when examined. These "forum white-rooms" talk about preferences/agency/buy-in as if it were normal for groups to be doing something that works for them. In a happy group those aspects probably blend in with "game as normal" (just like in your experience). It is the uncommon unhappy group, or the concept of such a group, that creates threads like this. So the white-room discussions are about investigating the hidden assumptions/structure/mechanics of RPGs as social games to help identify why the abnormal unhappy group (real or theoretical) is unhappy and how to restore the normality of everyone enjoying themselves.

kyoryu
2020-11-23, 12:36 PM
Players complaining about "lack of agency" just hasn't been a big deal at the tables I've seen, whether running a published module or custom material.

Player buy-in as I have seen it in the real world (rather than forum white-rooms) has been easy to come by. To the point that I can treat it as a given that if someone has taken a seat at the table, they have agreed to take the leap with whatever comes next.

Also, at con games there's typically lower expectations around agency. People know that time is constrained, and so things have to be fairly zippy.

That's a different scenario from a home game on a regular basis with longer sessions.

Now, I'm not saying that every home game will have high expectations around agency. They don't. Lots of people are perfectly happy going through and basically consuming content, and that's cool.

But that doesn't mean that people who do care are wrong or in some way inferior or just being disruptive. They just want different things out of their gaming.

As far as "gaming like normal" goes, it's a bit of a self-selection problem. A given table approaches gaming in a way that is particular to them. People that stay in that game find the activity, as presented, to be enjoyable, and so of course don't complain about that.

The problem comes when people go to other games that do things in different ways.

zarionofarabel
2020-11-23, 01:48 PM
Which is why I said it is more dependent on the table than the game.

I've run at scores, if not hundreds, of different tables since I started large scale GM-ing at at GenCon in the early 90s. I say this only to point out that I have had a fair bit more of a sample set than one home table with one group. Of course, nobody has been at every gaming table in the world. I'm sure there will always be those rare exception players and GMs. But those are the exception, rather than the rule.

Players complaining about "lack of agency" just hasn't been a big deal at the tables I've seen, whether running a published module or custom material.

Player buy-in as I have seen it in the real world (rather than forum white-rooms) has been easy to come by. To the point that I can treat it as a given that if someone has taken a seat at the table, they have agreed to take the leap with whatever comes next.
I have my doubts that the extremely short shelf-life of convention games have much bearing on a discussion of player agency. As others have stated, at a convention most payers are there to experience what the GM has brewed up. The much longer shelf-life of a regular gaming group's games are where these issues are much more likely to crop up because of the buildup of narrative momentum. If I am participating in an ongoing narrative for dozens of sessions I want to know that my character's choices actually matter, in a single session convention game not so much. Same goes for if I'm GMing a one-shot to try a new system. I'm probably going to present my players with a real run-of-the-mill mission style adventure with basic clear-cut goals for them to complete. For a lengthy campaign I'm going to draw on as much player input and character background as I can so I can ensure the campaign is as player-driven as possible. Besides, if all I was looking for was people to fill seats at my GM show, I wouldn't have started this thread in the first place.

Ashiel
2020-11-23, 03:04 PM
So I don't prepare plots, or adventures, or stories, or scenes, or anything for the PCs to encounter in advance. What I do is come up with stuff on the fly as the game is being played.

I do have a world that the PCs adventure in, sometimes a published setting, such as the Forgotten Realms or the Star Wars Universe. Sometimes a homebrew world made up in my imagination based on the players desires and the premise of the campaign as decided in Session Zero.

Between sessions I do daydream about the Imaginationland that the campaign will take place in. I wander around in it and see the sights. I fly above it and watch as the peeps that inhabit it go about their lives. I think upon what has happened so far in the established narrative and how that has affected the world and it's inhabitants.

But I don't write anything down, or get stats ready, or prepare encounters for the PCs to take part in. I just imagine stuff between sessions, at times even dwell on aspects of the established narrative to make sure that I have that part of the story that was told at the forefront of my mind for the next session.

So this has made me wonder about the existence of meaningful player agency within my campaigns. If I do not plan ahead and plot out various choices for the players to make, this surely means they lack agency.

So my question is whether or not a no prep GM such as myself is actually able to offer my players meaningful choices? Or am I actually only offering them the illusion of choice and thus robbing them of any agency they might have in a campaign that has choices plotted in advance?

Personally I think it's just the opposite of your players not having agency. It largely seems that you are forming a solid sandbox environment and then building the adventure and story directly by what your players are doing. If anything they have the most agency because they are directly leading to the creation and expansion of the world by their own actions and interests.

One of the issues that seem to crop up for planned adventures is if players don't take an expected path then they either wander away from the "plot" or cannot progress in a meaningful way. Building the adventure dynamically in response to the players circumvents this issue entirely, and even if you are running a pre-planned adventure this is an incredible skill to have mastered since you can very easily adjust things to give your players more agency than pre-planned adventures do.

Pleh
2020-11-24, 08:50 AM
Also, at con games there's typically lower expectations around agency. People know that time is constrained, and so things have to be fairly zippy.

That's a different scenario from a home game on a regular basis with longer sessions.

To add to this, it's not like there aren't dozens and hundreds of awful convention GM stories out there where the GM just completely disregarded player input they didn't want to allow.

Conversations about player agency become fundamentally unproductive when you gloss over the edge cases where it breaks down, much for the same reason all analysis breaks down when you stop examining exceptional cases just because the system works most of the time.

The point is that we examine the breakdown points to learn what causes them, so that we can prevent them at our tables.

If you aren't having trouble with it, good for you. But it is still worth talking about *why.*

Null solutions are valid solutions, but they're also extremely limited in their application. Ot is no help to people struggling with player agency issues to tell people there should be no problem if they do it right. We have to be able to identify the source of the problem and actions that can be taken to remedy.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-24, 10:58 AM
I have my doubts that the extremely short shelf-life of convention games have much bearing on a discussion of player agency.

Convention games don't have "extemely short shelf-life" as any kind of inherent feature. The contemporary standard of self-contained one-shots is a result of them being easy to make, and not much else.

To give some contrast for that standard, the longest-running local campaign for a yearly convention has been running for 25 conventions - that's 25 years of commitment from the GM. It's had children of the original players show up to play the game!

My own current convention campaign, a comparatively meager effort, is as of now 4 years old, and has been played in 10 conventions, with average of 2 session per convention, for a total of 20 sessions, plus 5 sessions held at other hobby venues.

As far as player agency goes, the feedback I've received has been highly interesting: players have, for example, criticized my games for being difficult to get into because it's hard to tell what they're supposed to do in them, commended them for having more freedom than comparatively more restricted Pathfinder Society games, and recurring players have stated it as one of their motivations to return to the game that they wanted to see how their actions helped shape the events in their absence!

Another GM I know has been running a BECMI campaign for 60+ games now, at conventions and hobby venues. Last I heard, the characters of that game are going through the late Champions, with a goal of playing all the way to Immortals.

Lesson of the day: if you want to talk about what long convention games tell about player agency, talk to players and GMs of long convention games. :smallwink:

zarionofarabel
2020-11-24, 11:45 AM
Redacted to save space
Not much for TTRPG conventions where I have lived. The few convention games I have been witness to (never played in one) were very short scenarios that were one-shots. As for the multi-year convention games, well, that would basically be a regular home game just with a single session per year, right? As in each single session the GM would takes notes, then the next year the same players would meet and play the next session, right? Or is it the same one-shot scenario played over and over again by different players in different locations and in different years? Just curious cause I do know a guy who runs a campaign wherein he and his players only meet once or twice a year but the narrative continues to build upon the narrative from previous sessions. Anyway, just curious how these long convention games work. How do they work?

Vahnavoi
2020-11-24, 12:26 PM
They don't work in any single way. Each campaign is designed by their GM to suit their whim.

The three long-runners I mentioned all have a different schema:

The 25-year-old campaign has a simple rotating cast: each player makes their own character, and they either make it to a session or don't. This means some players and their characters have stayed in the game for years, others have come and gone. Continuity is based on the campaign following the events of a real war.

My campaign makes no assumption of who makes it to a session. Who plays which character varies: returning players can resume their old characters or make new ones, new players may make new characters or be handed surviving ones. The continuity of the game is based on players of one session writing notes for the GM (me) and me passing those notes to players of the next session.

In the BECMI game, the characters are set (untill they die, at least). The players vary, with whoever shows up assuming the role of one of the characters. Continuity of the game is based on cataloguing the history of these characters.

For yet another campaign model, look up Paizo's Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society.

Finally, I don't consider repeating one-shots to be campaigns, but they are pretty common too: one of the longest-running multi-year repeater locally was Cube, based on horror movie of the same name, which had gotten to 30 sessions last I checked. My personal record for repeating one-shots is 12 sessions, for LotFP's Tower of the Stargazer, with Death Love Doom taking the second place with 10 sessions. These have mostly different players and characters, with some exceptions. (Some people want to go through the same module again with a friend who hasn't played it yet.)

Kimberfrost
2020-11-24, 01:48 PM
The problem I always have is how subjective Agency is. Some tables say the DM has godlike control over the narrative, but if players can decide in-scene actions like going left or right or choosing to flee instead of fight, that's agency. Others (I fall into this camp) say that players need to have some pull on the direction of that narrative or even on the setting as well, like being able to veer away from the current plot or even having players make up their own village or something.

For me personally it all comes down to info, as a player. If your DM/GM gives you enough info to make decisions with, whatever those decisions, then your level of player agency will be significant, rewarding. If the info you get from your GM/DM is instead extremely limited it doesn't matter how big a decision you make, you'll always find you regret at least some of them after you learn more.

So, again for me, player agency is largely dependent on engagement with the person running the game. Put another way, the GM/DM's attitude about the revelation of info in the game and allowing players to see "behind the veil" so to speak is a major determinant of player agency.

So to the OP, if you don't prep anything ahead of time but you have a feel for what the overall narrative and setting are, how you REVEAL those narrative and setting details will strongly influence whether your players have agency or not, in my opinion. This is why I always encourage GM's/DM's to be wordy and open with plot and setting. Obviously if you're running a mystery or the antagonists depend a lot on surprise attacks don't reveal a lot, but otherwise go nuts.

Say you have no idea what monsters are coming up next in a D&D game session, but you know that the current mission sees the players going from one town to another. Give yourself 5 minutes to honestly think about what they might encounter, or what's going on in the setting at the time that might be of note. For example, say you know that the only thing you DID daydream about this past week between games was that there's a big ol' empire that rules the town the PCs are heading towards with an iron fist.

RUN with that, and give the players the info to react to that fact.

As the PCs travel the road they come across banners of the empire, or soldiers at a toll booth. Have the characters meet some travelers leaving the imperial area that badmouth the oppressive nature of the government. You could even describe the change in the road and scenery to illustrate the tone and theme you want associated with the empire.

If the PCs stop and ask the soldiers or travelers about the empire... answer them. Don't hold back or be coy, reveal the setting to the players when they ask. By you engaging with the players and revealing solid, actionable intel about the empire it arms them with the tools to make choices like how they'll act in Imperial lands, if they care to help any feeling oppressed by the government and so on. The players get involved or choose not to based on the fact that you gave them that info up front.

On the other hand, if they enter Imperial lands without any prior knowledge of how strict or oppressive they are, the players may unknowingly perform some actions in town that puts them at risk of getting attacked by soldiers. What has been commonplace for them til now, like parking their horses outside the tavern or not registering with the town magistrate or whatever may suddenly be a death warrant that comes out them out of left field. Had they been forewarned they may have still made the same decisions but the players would've understood the risks. They would've had agency to make the choice, rather than having it made for them.

zarionofarabel
2020-11-24, 04:43 PM
Redacted to save spaceI try to do the thing where the players at least get a heads up that the empire is bad. I hate info dumps cause I can see peeps eyes glaze over when I tried it in the long ago past. Besides, it's much more fun to reveal info about the setting from in setting sources. Also, I don't think I have ever just attacked the PCs out of the blue for breaking laws in an evil empire where they didn't know the laws, or something like that. That's a total **** move, and my number one rule as GM is DON'T BE A ****!

zarionofarabel
2020-11-24, 04:45 PM
Redacted to save space.Those are a very strange way to run TTRPGs and definitely not something that would interest me, but thank you for detailing them!

Democratus
2020-11-27, 09:28 AM
On the other hand, if they enter Imperial lands without any prior knowledge of how strict or oppressive they are, the players may unknowingly perform some actions in town that puts them at risk of getting attacked by soldiers. What has been commonplace for them til now, like parking their horses outside the tavern or not registering with the town magistrate or whatever may suddenly be a death warrant that comes out them out of left field. Had they been forewarned they may have still made the same decisions but the players would've understood the risks. They would've had agency to make the choice, rather than having it made for them.

This is a common trope in storytelling and in gaming. And it can be a very fun one. There was even an entire episode of Star Trek TNG dedicated to it.

In your example the characters have total agency. They lack knowledge and must then deal with the consequences of it. But how they deal with it (flee from authorities, fight the guard, explain themselves to a judge, start a rebellion to overturn the ruler, etc.) is entirely up to them.

Lack of Knowledge != lack of Agency.

If it did, there would be no games with mysteries to solve or hidden villains working behind the scenes. :smallsmile:

OldTrees1
2020-11-27, 09:50 AM
This is a common trope in storytelling and in gaming. And it can be a very fun one. There was even an entire episode of Star Trek TNG dedicated to it.

In your example the characters have total agency. They lack knowledge and must then deal with the consequences of it. But how they deal with it (flee from authorities, fight the guard, explain themselves to a judge, start a rebellion to overturn the ruler, etc.) is entirely up to them.

Lack of Knowledge != lack of Agency.

If it did, there would be no games with mysteries to solve or hidden villains working behind the scenes. :smallsmile:

1) They did not have "total agency" nor did they have zero agency. For example they did not have the option to time travel. Or to change the sky to jello. Instead they had some agency.

Which is normal, nobody has argued in favor of "total agency".

2) Do you remember that Player Agency is a "term of art"? It deals with meaningful choices and often defines meaning choices as choices with consequences that logically follow from the informed options. If the players are only ever given uninformed choices, then they don't have the capability of exerting power. Knowledge is a power after all.

However it is fine for some choices to not have player agency and for others to have player agency (discuss details with your group). Kimberfrost is right that the initial choice is an uninformed choice and thus has low or zero player agency. You are right that the resulting situation provides the players with plenty of meaningful choices and thus those following choices have player agency.

jayem
2020-11-27, 06:22 PM
However it is fine for some choices to not have player agency and for others to have player agency (discuss details with your group). Kimberfrost is right that the initial choice is an uninformed choice and thus has low or zero player agency. You are right that the resulting situation provides the players with plenty of meaningful choices and thus those following choices have player agency.

And going on from there you can have the freedom, knowledge and effectiveness (&others?) axes to play with.
If you have a choice that contains high levels of two of these I think that counts as being a meaningful choice. Although something is missing if all choices are the same type. (and you can also have choices that are only strong in 1 of these, but they are less meaningful)

So the free choice of what to do first in a town, where the following encounter (and hence following options) are dependent on what you do first.
Similarly captive in chains with the option to plead guilty or not-guilty, and knowledge of the consequences.

I'm not sure what I'd strictly call Agency[tm] (and then how to categorise) the rest.(also I suspect I want the weakest option to at least be theoretically there, sure you could try and overpower the guard, you could have checked about the laws, there was some action you could take).

Finally the rationality of the choice should be clear and match. They should be able to work out that they are uninformed/ineffectual/limited from the context.

OldTrees1
2020-11-28, 12:21 AM
And going on from there you can have the freedom, knowledge and effectiveness (&others?) axes to play with.
If you have a choice that contains high levels of two of these I think that counts as being a meaningful choice. Although something is missing if all choices are the same type. (and you can also have choices that are only strong in 1 of these, but they are less meaningful)

Low in one axis? Yes. Zero in one axis? I don't think so, but you only mentioned low.

We can examining this by decomposing complex choices into smaller parts that are coordinated.
If buying saw without dancing a jig is against the law, and the PCs buy a saw without dancing a jig, they have 2 consequences.
1) They had a choice to buy a saw, the knew the outcome of buying a saw, they obtained the saw
2) They had a choice to break the jig saw law, they did not know about the law, they broke the law
Part 1 is a meaningful choice since all the axes are non zero. Part 2 has no knowledge, so the players could not interact with the choice. I don't think it was meaningful. But what about the choice as a whole? They had a meaning choice in buying a saw but not in avoiding the jig saw law. The choice as a whole was meaningful, even if it could be altered to be more/less meaningful


So the free choice of what to do first in a town, where the following encounter (and hence following options) are dependent on what you do first.
Similarly captive in chains with the option to plead guilty or not-guilty, and knowledge of the consequences.

I'm not sure what I'd strictly call Agency[tm] (and then how to categorise) the rest.(also I suspect I want the weakest option to at least be theoretically there, sure you could try and overpower the guard, you could have checked about the laws, there was some action you could take).

Finally the rationality of the choice should be clear and match. They should be able to work out that they are uninformed/ineffectual/limited from the context.

Good point to highlight related choices before and after the partially informed choice.

As for "strictly call Agency[tm]", I kinda solve that by saying players will have preferences about player agency and treating it as a continuum. That helps extract some of the subjective parts into the player preferences. Which we should expect to be subjective becauses people can and have disliked excess in both directions.

jayem
2020-11-28, 05:58 AM
Low in one axis? Yes. Zero in one axis? I don't think so, but you only mentioned low.
My opinion changed mid-post. I think my overall position would be they can be so low that it's effectively zero,but it shouldn't technically actually be zero (subject of course to the vector making sense to the situation.)



As for "strictly call Agency[tm]", I kinda solve that by saying players will have preferences about player agency and treating it as a continuum. That helps extract some of the subjective parts into the player preferences. Which we should expect to be subjective becauses people can and have disliked excess in both directions.
Sounds sensible, I'm also open to someone saying that only one axis is 'agency'/'meaningful' so long as they give nice names to the others.

I liked the metaphor, I'd like to go into it further. I think my reply will argue for defining meaningful choice as being any choice from 'informed&effective' or 'informed&free' or 'effective&free' (or 'informed&effective&free'), with then agency applying to combinations of these choices. But this ties into the 'what do we call it'.
But it needs thinking over first.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-28, 09:18 AM
@jayem & OldTrees1:

Your discussion about informed agency versus uninformed agency dances around the same point I made to False God: you don't need to know your players' abilities, in this case meaning you don't need to know what they know, to begin counting agency.

A decision being informed or not is more important for the subjective feeling of having agency, than for actual countable agency.

You can simplify the problem a lot by thinking of Battleship again: you don't need to know positions of enemy ships to count how many meaningful moves you can make, because any shot you make with no or incomplete information will provide you with information.

This leads to a more general point about how humans learn to play games. Even in case of games with theoretical complete information, humans learn to play them through trial and error. Agency is realized by gaining information from uninformed choices and learning to make informed choices based on the consequences.

OldTrees1
2020-11-28, 10:16 AM
@jayem & OldTrees1:

Your discussion about informed agency versus uninformed agency dances around the same point I made to False God: you don't need to know your players' abilities, in this case meaning you don't need to know what they know, to begin counting agency.

A decision being informed or not is more important for the subjective feeling of having agency, than for actual countable agency.

You can simplify the problem a lot by thinking of Battleship again: you don't need to know positions of enemy ships to count how many meaningful moves you can make, because any shot you make with no or incomplete information will provide you with information.

This leads to a more general point about how humans learn to play games. Even in case of games with theoretical complete information, humans learn to play them through trial and error. Agency is realized by gaining information from uninformed choices and learning to make informed choices based on the consequences.

Quick sidenote: Informed relates to what information was transmitted, not to what information was retained. So you don't need to know your players' abilities. Consider a PC that could teleport. Case 1: The player forgot. Case 2: The player was never informed. In both cases the PC has the option to teleport but in case 2 the player was never given the option for the PC to teleport.

Battleship uses informed choices. Not perfect information, but there is relevant information available which is enough for it to be an informed choice. Even the first shot is an informed choice. But what if, after the game of battleship, the GM informed you that 12 civilians were executed because you said "E" 5 times and "2" 7 times. You still had agency during the game of battleship with your choices hunting down the enemy ships, but did you have agency in how many civilians were going to be executed?

Think about it another way, if I roll a die, does that die have player agency? If I treat a Player as an RNG by giving them a completely uninformed choice "Pick a number 1-3", do they have player agency? What if an RPG only had those choices? If I staple that choice onto another choice that does have player agency, did I increase the player agency, or did it remain constant?

For countable agency I would not count any choices or fractions of choices that provided no relevant information to the players. I can see utility in either counting system.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-28, 11:09 AM
For your hypothetical extended game of Battleship, the GM presumably knew the position of civilians and could calculate how the player's choices affected the scenario. The only thing that sets the player's decision to shoot civilians apart from shooting enemy ships is that the feedback is delayed. Agency is there and if the player can play multiple games under the same rules, they can realize it, in process exactly identical to finding the locations of enemy ships.

As for whether dice have agency, there is a case to be made from systems theory viewpoint that any RNG used to make decisions does have agency, and by committing to results of an RNG, both players and the GM are surrendering agency to it.

So, I would argue a Random Player (= an RNG used to emulate player decisions or a player used to emulate an RNG) does have agency in the mathematical system of a game.

Where this line of argument ends is the situation when none of the information transmitted by consequences of a choice can matter even if retained. The simplest example is if a player only ever plays your extended game of Battleship once. Information is transmitted, but nothing can be done with it, because the game (and thus player agency) ends at the point of receiving it and no new game can benefit from it. A more complex example is a game where a player chooses a number from a set, but every choice of numbers maps to unique set of consequences, so no amount of trial and error can inform the player of what choices they are making. In such cases, I agree player agengy is reduced or eliminated outright. Additionally, I say there's little point to making a human play a game where all player are reduced to Random Players.

But, and this is important: it is possible for a human acting as a Random Player to feel as if they agency. It's been proven psychologically that even when humans ought to know (because it's been explained to them etc.) that events in a game are random, they still attribute success to their own skill, while attributing failure of others to their lack of skill.

This is a long way of saying that counting agency granted by mathematical structure of a game should be contrasted with decisions made by an informed player. Regardless of exact terminology, I concur that if you're designing a game to be played by humans, a Random Player ought to be distinquishable from a human player engaging in trial and error.

OldTrees1
2020-11-28, 02:14 PM
I believe we are on the same wavelength. When designing/running the game I don't count/measure the choices/parts of choices that have the players be Random Players but I do count/measure the choices/parts of choices where the players are informed (even with partial information like in normal battleship). The resulting metric* (by whatever name) is useful to me as a gauge for how capable the players are to knowingly impact the game state.

One reason I use this metric is because I run sandboxes and sandboxes can exist with only uninformed choices (although I have only ever seen that in a strawman) but rarely risk having too few choices. So my main concern is making sure there is enough informed choices to make the players' preferred range of agency.

*Technically this is a rough heuristic. If faced with a situation that needed more precision, I would talk to the player in question.

Democratus
2020-12-01, 01:07 PM
1) They did not have "total agency" nor did they have zero agency. For example they did not have the option to time travel. Or to change the sky to jello. Instead they had some agency.

Agency != Freedom

Agency is the ability to react however you wish to your circumstances. Not the ability to dismiss the circumstances altogether.

OldTrees1
2020-12-01, 08:35 PM
.

Do you remember that Player Agency is a "term of art" rather than a literal translation of the component words? Clearly you do because you have been going out of your way 3 times to avoid acknowledging or addressing that point despite it featuring prominently in my replies.

The GM chooses how much player agency to give to the players by deciding the frequency, scope, effectiveness, meaning, and flexibility of the choices presented to the player (including open ended choices like in a sandbox). As such Player Agency is a measurement.

Player Agency is not the ability to dismiss the circumstances, but the GM chooses how much player agency the players will get by the circumstances they set. The more Player Agency, the more freedom the Player has in having their PC react to the circumstances however the Player wishes. The less, the less.