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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    RedWizardGuy

    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Gender
    Male

    Default Info/Articles on Player Agency?

    I'm currently playing in a Discord game of Changeling the Dreaming (20th Anniversary Edition), and we just had a minor blowup at the (virtual) game table. The actual blowup was my fault (frustrations from earlier pre-game and other things, like heat in the room, set me on edge), but the basis of my reaction were a longer-standing issue.

    The GM runs a bit off the cuff, suggesting he hasn't played in a while, or at least that he isn't as familiar with the 20th Anniversary edition book (little things like how powers work, and referencing terms that only exist in other WoD book lines). He has the habit of taking over a bit in terms of what our characters do and say, especially in terms of etiquette and self-control. He asks for rolling Willpower or a skill check to not perform an obvious bad idea a lot. Some of that feels like old-school gaming style, and my reaction was how these kinds of rolls feel like they rob us of our agency over our characters, and it's a boundaries issue, to me.

    More recently-published systems will compensate for that kind of GM fiat or flawed-character behavior with some kind of hero/action/fate-point, either a temptation-of-the-player "do this, get this", or as an apology for no-sell fiat.

    He asked for youtube reference for GMs' styles that I like, but I'm not really a game-watcher. Does anyone know of any good articles or resources on this kind of thing that I can send him?
    Last edited by RedWarlock; 2020-05-25 at 09:15 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Devil

    Join Date
    Sep 2019

    Default Re: Info/Articles on Player Agency?

    I've found https://thealexandrian.net/ to be a valuable resource. I don't know that he writes about White Wolf's games specifically, but he seems to have a solid grounding in the theory of TRPGs, and to have run in a lot of systems, so I suspect someone running a system he doesn't mention can still find stuff there. There's a "Gamemastery 101" link that leads to where the relevant stuff is.

    There are other bloggers I pay some attention to, but they're mostly writing about (very specifically) D&D, so your GM might not find them as useful.

  3. - Top - End - #3

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