The Delta Theory of Meaningfulness

[NichG]

I don't think that's the entirety of the issue though. There is the concept of player agency at build time (which, as discussed is important). But there's also player agency at play time. Considering the wand of magic missiles versus the wand of grease as a player purchase choice is one thing and certainly represents player agency and choice. But "what I choose to do with random loot" is also a major aspect as well, and ties into the concept of the GM allowing the players to come up with clever uses for such things.

It's one thing for the player to decide "my character will buy a wand of grease, since my concept for my character is all about figuring out how to use grease in clever ways". Great, right? But... I actually find things much more interesting when a player has no pre-made decision to go a certain way, or use a certain style of magic or method of resolution, but when faced with a specific situation, looks at their character sheet, notices this wand of grease he got in some random loot, and then figures out a clever way to use it.

It's also important for GMs to recognize when moments like that happen, and not just shut them down. It's just as much a violation of player agency for the GM, expecting the PC who is a blaster focused wizard to use his blaster focused magic to deal with the pirates boarding the ship, to say "I'm not going to allow you to use the wand of grease in that way", so as to force the player to "play the character based on the intended concept". And even if the GM doesn't go that far, it's also a potential violation of agency for the GM, knowing that this PC is a "blaster focused wizard" to intentionally put only wands that cast evocation spells into the loot pile, with the intention of "this is an item for that character", and never consider putting some other random, out of character thing in there.

Some of the best (and most memorable) character moments are when someone does something "out of character" because they picked up some random seeming item and decide to use it in a strange/interesting way. So it's not only just about GM rulings at the moment, but also GMs avoiding trying to "help the player with their chosen build" by tailoring item drops to just that build design. Heck. The GM may expect that the blaster wizard will choose to buy a wand of magic missiles over a wand of grease when given the choice. So why not hand out a wand of grease in a random treasure drop? Worse case, the PC ignores it and/or refuses to use it because "I ain't got much use for wand of grease". But that still sets up the potential of the awesome "just because I ain't got much use for it, doesn't mean I don't know how to" moment if/when it comes up (yes, Quigley Down Under reference there).

I guess this is kind of a side concept to the main topic here, but when putting in treasure (especially magic stuff) I will certainly keep an eye out in terms of PC needs/wants (cause hey. I'm a nice GM), but I also take into account "what items might the folks they just defeated or who's old storage shed they just pillaged have kept there". And yeah, I often put items in that have no direct combat purpose at all (or really any direct obvious purpose), but that are "useful" in other ways (utility stuff). So a pair of gloves from a dwarven forge that provide heat resistance. Makes sense, right? May or may not be super useful or something someone would wear all the time though. An Umbrella that magically blocks out light in an area (used by trolls in RQ maybe?). Well that may not be super useful, but might be... maybe... someday. These are not items I put in there with a specific purpose in mind ("you will need to use the umbrella to defend against the light beams protecting the vault door"), but just a "this is kind of a neat thing, that makes sense where you found it, and I have honestly no clue how/where/when you might find a use for it". In the same abandoned dwarven forge, they found a pair of tongs that magically increased the strength of the person when using the tongs to lift stuff. Had zero plan for how that might be useful (there was nothing in that dungeon/adventure that required it), but several adventures later, the person who kinda radomly got it as loot, found a use for it.

So I wouldn't say that directly adds to player agency, so much as allows for a greater breadth of potential player agency in the game. Certainly as regards to giving players "what they need/want". Sometimes, it is perfectly ok to hand PCs stuff that "doesn't fit" IMO. And as a side point, this is also why I'm not a huge fan of "magic marts" in game settings. I want my players to have things on their sheets that they would not have purchased or chosen if they had a direct choice, but that also don't cost them anything, and may very well be found to be useful later on. Think Roy with the bag o'critters. He would never in a million years purchase that item. But he's got it, and has actually found a couple of uses for it along the way. So I do think there's value in GMs not pidgeon holing the PCs in terms of loot either (or the PCs pidgeon holing themselves, or feeling that they need to if they don't trade/buy-for "appropriate gear")

I think this is misunderstanding the point of the example a bit? Like, I'm not saying 'its more delta when the blaster PC gets blaster stuff and the MacGyver PC gets MacGyver stuff'. It's more delta when the player can express, through the medium of the game in a way that influences its future trajectory, their choice rather than the GM's choice. If there is a situation where your PC could have taken the wand of Grease or the wand of Magic Missile, but the GM interprets your PC for you and removes that choice (even if the choice was obvious to everyone), that would be a reduction in delta.

To put it another way, at the base of this scenario the player has already made one significant choice - 'my character is a blaster' vs 'my character is a MacGyver type'. That choice is made in both the case that the PC chooses what wand to get, and the case where the GM chooses for the PC. But in the former case, the player gets an additional choice - they could for example choose to play against type, or play into type. They could, in principle, give their blaster the Wand of Grease. So in the former case, the player has two potentially significant choices whereas in the latter case they only have one. The important thing here being that it's their choice, not the GMs, even if that choice is somewhat predictable.

So a GM who hears 'I'm playing a blaster' and tries to make more stuff in the game appropriate to that isn't increasing delta by adding more opportunities to make choices, they're trying to increase delta by making the one choice have more impact. That can effectively increase delta if e.g. it causes choices that would mostly be cosmetic to end up having some consequences, but if you already have a very consequential choice then you're going to see diminishing returns. The story is already going to be influenced by the player deciding to be a blaster, whether they blast 4 enemies or 5 its kind of the same information. Also, this is where my own preference for predictable delta versus post-hoc delta makes a distinction. If I choose to play a blaster, I can predict that a natural consequence in the context of the story is 'I might solve some problems by blasting'. But could I predict within the story logic that it would mean that I'm going to find a wand of Magic Missile instead of a wand of Grease - I'd say not, at least not without the overall story being explicitly very meta. So even if the GM maybe thinks they're increasing the delta due to my original choice, they're not actually increasing the delta that I could legitimately have reasoned to be a causal consequence of my initial choice. Basically, even if it happened as a result of my choice, its not a happening that I can feel personally responsible for navigating towards, so it doesn't count for as much.

As far as what random loot looks like in an account of meaningful delta, the event of getting X vs Y from a random roll itself would have no associated delta - no choice was made. But like any scenario or context it can sometimes create opportunities for meaningful choices, e.g. 'Okay who gets this item? Who gets the next one?'. However I wouldn't say that random loot particularly creates more delta than various other forms of loot generation. It's just that if you had believed that 'I give the players things that re-affirm their roles' would have increased delta, well that would have been an incorrect interpretation of the idea and you'd end up surprised that it doesn't make things feel that much more meaningful. It's also not a violation of agency, because the loot isn't something the player had any expectation of being able to influence in the first place. It just has nothing in particular to do with agency at all because there's no choice there.