Changes to XP and Helping/Interfering?

Oh, I’m not angry/exasperated. More like shaking my head and saying, “yeah, uh, the point I was making was directly related to what Ebok said. And now we’re running opinion circles around each other while we explicitly ignore the ridiculous ‘THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY DYNAMIC‘ comment Ebok made”.

That one comment is the singular reason I even commented on this thread. If Ebok hadn’t said that specific inflammatory comment I would never have responded. I‘ve got better things to do than pointlessly argue opinions! Even if I do enjoy talking shop about Game Theory & Design kind of stuff. So no - I’m not angry. At the comment, sure. But me, myself, and I while I sit here typing? I’m not angry. I’m just rolling my eyes and snickering at how ridiculous it is.

But I’ll go ahead and explain why Dungeon World actually does have a healthy dynamic for rewards. In direct opposition to Eboks statements to the contrary.

DW retains player agency and I don‘t see how this is a bad thing. I choose my Alignment, I choose my Bonds, I choose to roll and even if I fail I get rewarded. So this is encouraging the player systematically for gunning for those things. I don’t see anything “unhealthy” about it. Getting players to roll dice is usually a good thing. I get rewarded fictionally if I succeed at a roll and I get rewarded mechanically if I fail at a roll. Seems win-win to me.

Not seeing anything dysfunctional about that. Sure rolling with a low stat means more potential for earning the reward, but I don’t see how that connects to “not a healthy dynamic”. And I certainly don’t see how Highlighting is superior in this regard either!

So now going back to the comment that somehow player agency/choice means that one is playing for “you” and not the group? That’s just ridiculous! C’mon man. Really? DW isn’t supporting anti-social play. Prove how it does! I dare you because you can’t! Which means it isn’t an “unhealthy dynamic” as you propose.

Now I have plenty of problems with DW, don’t read me wrong here. But that isn’t the point of this conversation. I’m solely talking about the reward systems (and Eboks unreasonable comment of course).

And I love some OOC and metagame action. It’s healthy and every game should have an explicit system to promote that behavior, because a bunch of problems can be avoided and everyone can be on the same page in the game-fiction. But that doesn’t mean that DW somehow discourages this or that Highlighting is superior in this regard. Nor does it mean that DW is playing for “you and not the group” as Ebok put it so very incorrectly.

And it isn’t “irrelevant” to say that playing one’s character is directly influenced by the system of Highlighted stats because AW is a reward-based game. Nor is it “irrelevant” to say that Highlighting then makes for some unhealthy dynamics. Nor is it “irrelevant” to say that ignoring a Highlighted stat is making the player choose a fictional agenda over a mechanical one. And that sucks.

Some systems actually encourage the fiction and the mechanics to be combined in a systematized way. Highlighting doesn’t do this. As I’ve demonstrated again and again. Highlighting is purely mechanical force not reinforced by the fiction.

[Warning: Tangent Ahead] Highlighting is analogous to telling the player playing Batman that they want to see him pick up the gun and shoot somebody and if he doesn’t he isn’t going to get any xp reward. That sucks and is total stick with no real carrot. I mean seeing the choice of what Batman does is great and a moment I live for when I RP! Character defining awesome! But I have a problem with the social-force involved here. The choice is actually: do it and get xp or don’t and retain control of what you want out of the fiction, but don’t get any xp. Highlighting isn‘t - let‘s see what interesting choice the player decides to make. It is all about trying to force a player to play their character how you want to see them play their character. [End Tangent]

For example: Manipulate is such a perfect Move. Either you go along with what the manipulating player wants you to do in the fiction and get rewarded. Or you go against the fiction and have to deal with the mechanical difficulties of Acting Under Fire. This is a great dynamic that actually supports player agenda/choice while simultaneously tying the fiction to mechanics. Nom-nom yummy!

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Man, that Seventh Sea comment brought me back to my early college days. And Backgrounds were one of the reasons that it was an eye-opening game for me too.

But that’s actually my point. Backgrounds are healthy because they don’t remove player agency. While on the other hand Highlighting does.

Anyway. Again Highlighting doesn’t say anything about my character. It doesn‘t follow any fictional choices like Backgrounds do. As your example showed. Highlighting only says that somebody else wanted to encourage me to play my character in a specific way. Without my consent no less.

Can I choose to ignore the Highlighted stat? Yeah. Will I get any rewards that session? No! Does that mean that the system is failing me? Yes.

[I deleted a bunch of my post, because: yeah, too long already].

Hahaha, I take your point. "Healthy" is one of those value-loaded opinion words like "cold" or "sexy" or "dumb" or "evil," so in that sense I can see why you reacted to it in the way you did.

One thing to be clear on though - when you use the term "player agency," I think you may be ascribing it a wider meaning than many people understand it. To me, a loss of player agency means your character is forced to do something (take some particular action, not take some particular action, or be or believe or behave a certain way) with no recourse. Highlighting leaves you with no choice as to how you generate XP, that is true. But to say it removes player agency is somewhat disingenuous; you are never forced to go aggro on someone just because your Hard is highlighted. Or prevented from going aggro on them because your Hard isn't highlighted.

In this regard it is no different from the experience mechanics of most RPGs. Take classic D&D for example - if the DM never gives you tasty monsters, or always has them run away, or does something equally slimy, you get "cheated" out of that XP. Or if you were playing a pacifist and thought that killing monsters was the epitome of reprehensible barbarism, you wouldn't get any XP there either. Killing monsters is pretty much the only way to reliably get XP in D&D, so if you're playing a game that's about political intrigue, would you say that the DM had taken away your player agency? Even if you knew that's what the game was about up front? Even the player-chosen Backgrounds of 7th Sea are no different; if the GM doesn't bring your Background into play during the session (which in a very real sense is purely the GMs choice), you don't earn any XP. At some level you are at the mercy of the table no matter what system you've chosen.

But this is a very different thing from the kind of mechanical loss of agency present in lots of other games (especially games with a heavy Simulationist bent), where your character can literally be forced to do something "out of character" based on the results of a die roll.

And for the record, our gaming group has had lots of lengthy discussions about that too. And for what it's worth, I too am of the opinion that seduce or manipulate is pretty much the most elegantly designed game mechanic I've ever encountered in this regard.

I don’t feel that I’m nitpicking the word “healthy” here actually. Honestly I don‘t. I’m taking the entirety of what Ebok said to mind, not just that singular word. It was even so very nicely put in ALL CAPS for everyone.

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And hell yeah, Manipulate is great! :D  And a far better way than Highlighting for the group to get a player to "do what they want to see the character do this session" too.

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Are you actually interested in my opinion? Because obviously none of us will convince the other! Ever! We maybe/probably want different things out of a game? I want meaningful choices. Choices that will be difficult and change the situation and my character. Where I have to fret and worry over what choice to make.

Highlighting doesn’t provide meaningful choices to me (in this way). It simply asks, “do you want to follow the fiction; Or do you want to be rewarded?” Obviously there are times the two intersect if the correct stat happens to be Highlighted at the correct time. But "at times" is kinda sucky.

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On Player Agency:

Sure, I will agree that I’m being loose with the player agency definition. Or am I?…

So yes, I’m mainly referring to the reward cycle, I agree with that! However, they are linked! System Matters right? By the reward cycle being the way it is the system is rewarding the player by forcing the player to use the Highlighted stats that other people chose according to their own agenda. So, no agency there. And of course that doesn’t exactly limit game-fiction choices, but it does take away game-fiction agency even if it is indirectly.

Because Highlighting is placing an incentive to roll a stat that the player had no say in with the penalty of not getting rewarded. And the fiction had no say in it either: follow the fiction and don’t get rewarded or follow the mechanics and get rewarded. That isn’t a meaningful choice to me, so I could argue that player agency was taken.

[And I was going to post more, and respond to the D&D stuff. But meh.] :p

No I wasn't saying nit-picking. And yes, I am interested in your opinion. Talking about game design issues intrigues me, largely because everyone is looking for something slightly different out of the game. Learning more about peoples' ideas and opinion broadens my own understanding, which makes it easier to diagnose any issues that arise in games I run or play.

[though as a side note, we've drifted from the OP and should maybe take this discussion to it's own thread in the hardcore theory subforum].

Lastly, I see what you're getting at with the wider definition of "player agency." I think perhaps I was mistakenly conflating it with "character agency." The two are related, but not the same.

First thing: it seems to me there are two different views on what forces or compels a player to (have their character) act a certain way.

On the one hand, highlighting means I might suddenly have an incentive to do something I normally wouldn't (e.g. use hard). If I'm going to play the game "as it wants to be played", I should go for those highlighted stats, right?

On the other hand, consider xp-for-failure. I have an incentive to do something I normally don't want to (fail a roll). I can't control my rolls, but I can control the odds for failure - by rolling for my worst stats. So if I'm going to play the game "as it wants to be played", I should go for those low stats, right?

Yeah there's a difference, since in one case it's a guaranteed xp for a guaranteed "out-of-character", and in the other case it's a higher chance (risk) of xp for a higher risk (chance) of an "unwanted action". But I'd argue that it's a difference in scale, not a difference in kind.


In the end, my guess is that something in your groups' dynamics, or understanding of xp, or whatever, is a bit off if you see the one thing as promoting a healthy dynamic and not the other. If the premise is that the xp system can irredeemable cause players to play in bad ways, then either system can. I don't know exactly what makes one group react to one and not to the other, and I'm not saying it's not something real. But this all seems a tad hypocritical to me.

This is me too:

First and most importantly: yes hacking it will change the feel. And to be honest I think that’s a good thing. Play it the way it’s meant to be played first [if you want to -VB] and then form your own opinion and hack if needed.

Irminsul's exactly right. The game is designed so that the other players get to tell you, with significant leverage to back it up, to violate your character's integrity (to you). I consider this to be a good thing for Apocalypse World*, but it'd be a terrible thing for any number of other games. It may be a terrible thing for the Apocalypse World that any given group wants to play.

-Vincent

* Partly because I think that we roleplayers overvalue character sole ownership, and partly because I'm a perverse bastard and I think Irminsul's story about the extra-humpy chopper is hilarious. What a shame for the breadth of human experience and culture if that had never happened.

If you make an AW character and you literally cannot imagine them ever using Hard, or Hot, or Cool -- you have pretty explicitly made your bed.

If it is the third session, and you are already completely certain your character would never do X -- if you already know them completely -- you might consider this a fault.

If it's the twentieth session and you still haven't figured out a way for your character to use Hot without breaking your own sense of the fiction, something might be missing from your Apocalypse, or your character.

Very interesting discussion. My group also got bothered with highlighting and also opted to use DW XP for failing with it. We also felt the lack of a more fiction-based reward (specially as we were coming from Marvel Heroic, and we loved milestones).

Fnord and Irminsul, what other alternatives for XP did you end up using on your tables ? Any idea on how to infuse AW with a more ficton-based reward system ?

I still stand by the comment I made on gaining exp on a miss. It actively encourages players to try to fail (preforming a task with their worst stats), especially when the risks are minimal. Additionally it removes incentives for taking or using stat substitution moves, as it tends to make them less rather then more rewarding. This statement is true mathematically speaking, and the comment was not intended to imply that highlighting is faultless.

I don't want to get back into things, I'd rather move forward.

I use neither system for my current WorldSystem game. It's neither dungeon world nor apocalypse world, but the experience setup might prove fruitful. I essentially have a Quest marker system, when characters take on a job, they get experience for seeing it through (successful or not). I reward experience at the end of scenes where a character preformed Acts of Heroism, Epic Narrative (when everyone around the table goes wow... damn that was cool!), or was subjected to a Crushing Defeat. Finally, I do run an end of the session type of thing, where the group asks each other Did the characters work as a team?, Did the players have fun?, for each yes they mark an exp. Finally each player asks the others, Did my character show growth? and if they agree another exp is marked. The last question tends to turn into a discussion where they share their thoughts and motivations, often in an attempt to defend their own growth--which has turned out great for self-reflection, and playing up those changes during the sessions.

I did this because when they played ApocWorld, they pretty much turned on each other and were ALWAYS each others enemy. And after 3-4 games of that people started feeling a bit bitter over certain things, despite awesome stories being told. And well, they were all playing scum bags constantly, so I changed up the system, built new playbooks/moves and set them to adventuring. <_>; Worked out really well!