Agency (not the Secret Kind)

Bear with me, this is 100% my opinion, and isn't necessarily going to work at your table. Everyone has their own desires at the table, and everyone's table is different -- and if you play a different game with me, it doesn't mean you're playing it wrong. If you're having fun, that's all that matters. Your table, your rules.

And with that out of the way.

If I'm going to have a new game master -- one I'm not familiar with (and it's been a long time since that's happened) the first thing I ask is this: do you fudge at your table. And if the answer is 'yes', then I walk away. I don't begrudge the GM -- I hope they find good players and have a blast -- but it's not for me.  And here's why:

Agency.

To me, agency involves the following: freedom of choice in character creation within the bounds of the campaign setting and rules. My attributes, abilities, feats, gear, etc, are all decisions I make.

During the game, agency involves being allowed to make my own decisions on how I approach each encounter and the environment. Do I try to talk with someone? Do I attack? Do I hide? What do I bring to the table for this encounter? All of this is important.

The random element is the third part of what I consider agency. Do the abilities, skills, and choices I have made help to mitigate the random element -- to increase my chance of survival. Sometimes things will swing my way, and sometimes they won't -- but my decisions can influence these random factors.

You take any of this away, you remove agency. If you fudge dice, you remove agency. If you tweak a monster mid-fight to be harder or easier, then you remove agency. The more you fudge, the less my decisions matter. Did I know that the monster was stronger than I expected? Okay, so what do I do about that? Am I getting a streak of bad rolls?  Okay, so what do I do about that? Did the GM mess up and we're in way over our heads? Okay, what do I do about that? Was the fight a curb stomp when it was supposed to be a dramatic finish? Cool, then my decisions paid off.

And that's what I'm looking for at the table. The decisions the group makes being more important than any story. The story should be the decisions the group makes and the consequences of those decisions. The story arc will write itself -- and might not go in the direction the GM expected.

Does this mean my character could get killed?
Yep.
Do I care?
Nope.  Sure, I'll feel bad my character died -- more so if I got really attached to it -- but at least the character died because of my choices. If you spare the character in spite of everything ... well, then my choices don't matter anymore. Get back to me when the story's done and tell me how well I did, I'm not needed at the table.

I've heard 'but the GM needs to have fun too'. Sure, I get that. Which is why if the GM wants the freedom to fudge, sure, go ahead. I just won't be at the table. That's fine and dandy - I'm not the player that GM wants.

And don't ever, ever lie to me about it, either. If I find out the GM's fudging dice and tweaking monsters mid-fight or doing whatever shenanigans, I'll walk. Even if it's the middle of the game. Because the GM lied, and I can't handle that. It means the GM's story is so important that he's willing to blatantly lie to players to have them at his table.

And honestly? Fuck that.  The GM broke the social contract, so I have every right to walk away from the game.

But what if the character is 'important' to the campaign? Or what if the boss has to escape for the plot to happen? Or what if the bad guy's got important information and you take him down too quick?

So what?

That's part of the game. Consequences. This isn't a book, or movie, or TV series, or whatever -- the game isn't scripted, the story isn't neat and tidy -- it's messy. The character was 'important' to the plot? Who decided that? And so what? Now we get to see the aftermath of that person no longer existing. How does that shake things up?

The boss needed to escape? Who decided that? Okay, they didn't. So how does that shake things up? Oh, he had critical information we were supposed to get? Cool, guess we don't get it. So, what's the consequences?

That's the interesting part. 'Okay, you did this -- so what's the consequences of those actions?' That's what I like about RPGs. 'Wow, this didn't go as we expected, so what happens next?'

My sister differentiates this as 'hard gaming' vs 'soft gaming'. This isn't a 'good / bad' dichotomy, it's how she sees what the players and game master want. One group might like the risk and reward, they want to play 'hard mode' where a string of bad dice can end the campaign in an instant.

(First time our PC party ever encountered a drolem, we were like 'okay, let's take it on'. Total TPK in the first round from its breath weapon...we'd not done any research on what the hell a drolem (dragon golem) was. Our bad.)

Soft mode, the players want the chance to chill, relax, not have to deal with stress, and have a good time. They're there to tell a story -- a beginning, a middle, an end, and they want to see the whole thing, and the GM accommodates them so they get the entire story arc.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If the group's having fun, that's all that matters, isn't it?

They're giving up some of their agency, to ensure they get a good story out of it - that's the social contract they made. Everyone at the table is on board with it, so cool, away you go.

So does that make me hard to game master?
Oh hell yes, and I'm well aware that I can be stressful as a player. I'm competitive as all hell -- not in the 'I need to win against the GM' but more a 'I need to survive for as long as I can'. I combine this with hard roleplaying -- a lot of making friends, getting contacts, talking around obstacles, coming up with plans on how to defeat whatever threats are coming, expanding the character's power base, and with an eye to ending any threat instantly if possible.

If the GM wants to 'challenge' me... as the game moves forward that gets harder and harder and harder. To me, a challenge is to be overcome as efficiently and as quickly as possible. I'm not there for the 'dramatic combat'. To me, a good combat is 'I attack' followed by 'it dies'. There's a bit more RP than that in it, but yeah, I'm not there for 3-6 rounds of combat, with dramatic tension as we try to get through the creature's defences to get in the finishing blow.

I'm there for the 'okay, so we defeated the threat, let's gather up what we can, go back into town, take a break, talk to our friends, sell stuff off, buy some new stuff, talk with one another, and figure out how the world's ticking and what we want to do next'.

To me, the roleplaying part - the interacting with NPCs, seeing what towns and villages are like, encountering colourful characters, that's what's important. Those fights? Those are interruptions - they're like commercials in the TV show, you want to skip past them to get to the good stuff.

"But D&D is all about combat - that's most of the rules."

So. What.

That's like saying Call of Cthulhu's about going mad -- you're not supposed to have gun fights with the mafia or take down the criminal underbelly.

Sure you are.

Because the world is more than the mechanics. The mechanics define how the world works, not what the world is about. If you've got a good game master, then the world is a living, breathing place you can explore the way you want to.

Are there 'better games' for that?
That depends. Are you having fun? If so, then no, there aren't better games for that, there's different games for that.

There's people who seem personally offended at the idea of people playing D&D without the goal of kicking down doors, fighting monsters, and gathering loot. Like it's a personal insult to them that people would play it differently.

And a part of me wonders, "what, do you feel like we're looking down on you for playing a very simple, straightforward game"?

Well, guess what.
To some extent, you're right. I admit that. To some extent, yeah, I feel you're not getting everything you could out of your game.

However.
I also admit, again, you're not playing wrong. If you're having fun, that's really all that matters. And how I feel about your game and your table doesn't fucking matter. Am I playing at your table? No? Then who cares what I think!

Everyone has an ego. I have my way of playing and game mastering. It's going to be different than your way of playing and game mastering. We all want to feel our way of gaming is validated, of course we do. But it's better to acknowledge that as a flaw in ourselves -- it doesn't mean any other way is wrong.

But to circle back.
Just because a game is 90% politics mechanics doesn't mean you're expected to play a 90% political game.  Or even a 50%.  Just because a game's 90% combat mechanics doesn't mean you have to have the campaign be 90% combat. It just means that's where the focus of the mechanics lie - no more, no less. Do the people who sell the game expect you to play along the lines they laid out? Of course -- but again, so what?

If you enjoy the mechanics, but want to play things differently, go right ahead -- you're not doing it wrong. As long as you're having fun it doesn't matter at all what kind of game engine you're using.

Vampire has oodles of pages on politics, history, society, using vampire powers, and skills. It's got a reasonable section on combat, but that's a small percentage of the game. So, what if you wanted to do a vampire police procedural? (and yes, I've actually done that -- I made a vampire cop who worked the night shift) -- then go ahead and do it. Does this mean you're avoiding the politics and such? Yeah. So what? Are you having fun? That's all that matters.

Shadowrun has stuff on weapons and cybernetics and magic and the awakening and corporate shenanigans and ... shadowrunning. Cool. So, what if you don't want to do shadowruns? I had characters who wanted to hobnob with high society, and had contacts in the upper echelons of the Tir and a few other places. We started with ... huh, you know what? Not a single shadowrun. We worked with dealing with our character's personal interests, got enough nuyen to do a big run of our own design to rescue someone, and were quickly making our way into high society.

Is that what Shadowrun is 'about'? Not even remotely.
Does it matter?
No. Because Shadowrun is a living, breathing world with layers, and you can decide to play on any layer you want. Want to be a dilettante and a part of high society? Cool. Want to be a news reporter digging out the truth in the shadows? Fine. Want to be a military unit in the middle of god-knows-where fighting who-knows-what? Awesome.
I had a group wind up working with someone doing a nature documentary on the awakened creatures of the world. Not a single shadowrun in the game.
Had a group of adventurers in Anima: Beyond Fantasy, who ran a circus. That was their thing -- to go from town to town and perform for the public.

Because the world is a complex place. That's what makes the world interesting.

And that is what agency is about. Exploring the world the way you want to - screw what the game engine says is 'what it's about'. If it can cover other stuff, then you can explore other stuff.