D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

I would agree that the dm is altering the reality of the game - but I would also say that's a core part of their role at the table.

I get where you are coming from, but I don't consider certain things that establish fiction to be altering the games reality, because i don't consider merely establishing fiction to be sufficient for that.

Examples of establishing fiction but not altering the game's reality:

• The GM preps an adventure and with player buy in runs it for his current campaign
• The GM is required to fill in some blanks that he hadn't fully prepped for and does so by using the prepped info he has and his understanding of the fictional world that he created to help fill in those blanks.
• The player at any point establishes his character wears blue shirts (as long as wearing a blue shirt isn't directly pivotal to anything already revealed).
• The player decides at any point (even during the parties first encounter with elves) that his character distrusts elfs due to some past experience with them. DM and player likely work together to establish details around that past experience, but the specifics don't actually have to be established.

For me, none of these things are game reality altering (or at least require very specific circumstances before they becomes so).

-I'm expecting the last bullet point to be somewhat controversial.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

From casually following along, it appears to me the "changing of reality" comes down to what people are defining as "reality" in the first place.

Some people seem to be saying that only things that have been declared is actually "real". That's the reality the characters are in. If the DM has not specifically made mention of a blacksmith in town, then the "reality" of the situation is that a blacksmith in town doesn't exist (yet.) If and when the DM OR a player makes mention of "going to see the blacksmith"... the "reality" is being ALTERED from a world where there was no blacksmith in this town to one where there is.

The other side being those folks here who are reading the idea of the change of the "game's reality" to be more about CONTRADICTING something having already been established. Adding something new that had not yet been defined is not "changing" by their way of thinking... but rather deciding by fiat that something that had been defined one way is now something different is "changing".

Until everyone is willing to accept either definition as the "correct" one for this discussion... there will never be agreement.

Is going from nothing to something a "changing of the game's reality" or is only something becoming something else a "changing of the game's reality"? Decide on that definition first and the discussion can probably continue on its course.

A hardline stance against any form of filling empty spaces is impossible--it would certainly make GMing impossible. There are, of course, poor ways of using this ability e.g. railroading, but if every GM were required to have every "empty" space perfectly filled before people ever sit down for the first session, no one would play. But the same goes for every character! We know that they must have had parents, yet those parents do not need to be strictly defined. We know they must have had a childhood, which entails things like friendships and the little (mis)adventures of youth. If you're playing a game with classes, they had to learn those abilities. Etc. Few games require absolute specificity about these things, because again, if you were required to produce Tolkien-level notes on the culture, fashion, language, religion, family history, cuisine, etc., etc. of every single character you play, people wouldn't play.

It seems clear to me that the real issue is, people are very adverse to anything which can be parsed as declaring an advantage simply because. You can make attempts at things, and you can declare context, but you can't write "this is just what happened, which is beneficial to me." That's why 99.9% of the time when people balk at this, they very specifically bring up that players are using it to their advantage. You wouldn't see such a strenuously repeated refrain unless it mattered.

it is in fact the third possibility that we are primarily caught up on of Conan being able to point at 'random Set priest #6' and declare "that's them, that's Thulsa Doom, i know Thulsa Doom from my backstory and i know they have XYZ traits" and thus Priest #6 becomes Thulsa Doom with XYZ traits.

Priest #6 becoming Thulsa or the contents of the room the player 'remembers', they're the same as Oofta's example, you can't 'remember' money into your bank account because there should already be a certain amount of money in your account, even if you don't know how much that is.

And I'm saying I've never played a game that lets you do that.

Spout Lore? You pick only what you're researching, and you only get what the GM considers "interesting and useful," with the "and useful" part only if you roll well. You cannot just declare what you want to be true. The only thing you have any control over, and that only if the GM actually asks, is where/when you learned that information. (Generally, I don't ask if the answer is "these books I just finished poring over"; it's only if the answer is actually a lived experience where it's worth asking.)

In fact, let's take a look at those Flashbacks, shall we? As I said, I've never played or even really looked at BitD, so I couldn't comment on them. I haven't played it in the last few hours, but I went looking. And it seems to me that, as usual, there's rather an overblown response here. Limitations and context are conveniently ignored or unstated and the actual, direct utility is exaggerated, rather a lot in fact.

So, with BitD, the game is centered on heisting. That's the goal. It's fantasy tabletop Payday. But the authors, rather candidly, note that one of the weaknesses of early-edition games (which were a heavy inspiration here) is that the "planning" part of a heist can sometimes be several times longer than the actual "playing" part, and a lot of that time and effort is spent doing or preparing things that are simply irrelevant. This is, in the author's eyes, rather unfortunate. It means that you get a low proportion of actually doing heisty adventures, and a high proportion of wasteful, and often out-of-character, faffing about.

Instead, BitD says: "You did some preparation work. We'll talk about that later. For now--ACTION." The preparation work explicitly already did happen. It's not a pluripotent thing; it must fit within reasonable established bounds. Hence, it is not, as so many are keen to suggest, a blank check for rewriting the world to whatever you want it to be. It is a "this space intentionally left blank" section that is meant to be revisited later.

Secondly, invoking a Flashback has a cost, specifically, Stress, which are effectively your HP. You only get 9 Stress to start (a thing rather inconveniently not described in the actual BitD rules, only visible in the character sheets), and with effort you can potentially get 11 total. If you max out your Stress, you're out for at least that scene, possibly the whole Score (the BitD term for each heist). Stress is also how you resist damage and various other things, so it's a precious resource.

Third, and most important, invoking a Flashback DOES NOT just give you something nice. It gives you the opportunity to find out if you have something nice or not. Once the Flashback starts, the player must actually roleplay through the process of earning their benefit--just as would happen if all the prep-work scenes were done in advance. The only thing that changes is the order the group witnesses the events, and that order is specifically shifted because it makes for a better, more interesting experience and narrative.

So, no, I'm not even going to accept Flashbacks as an example here. They're costly, done solely to produce a more enriching experience, and absolutely do not just let the player fiat declare their lives are happy happy joy joy forever. All they do is shuffle prep work scenes to a later point of the experience. That's it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I get where you are coming from, but I don't consider certain things that establish fiction to be altering the games reality, because i don't consider merely establishing fiction to be sufficient for that.

Examples of establishing fiction but not altering the game's reality:

• The GM preps an adventure and with player buy in runs it for his current campaign
• The GM is required to fill in some blanks that he hadn't fully prepped for and does so by using the prepped info he has and his understanding of the fictional world that he created to help fill in those blanks.
• The player at any point establishes his character wears blue shirts (as long as wearing a blue shirt isn't directly pivotal to anything already revealed).
• The player decides at any point (even during the parties first encounter with elves) that his character distrusts elfs due to some past experience with them. DM and player likely work together to establish details around that past experience, but the specifics don't actually have to be established.

For me, none of these things are game reality altering (or at least require very specific circumstances before they becomes so).

-I'm expecting the last bullet point to be somewhat controversial.

Yes, that is absolutely controversial, because I do not see any difference at all between that and how Flashbacks work. In fact, that would be more "altering the game's reality" than Flashbacks, because Flashbacks have a cost, fit into an already-established space and focus, and can't just be used to create an advantage with no roleplay or justification. Your description of "DM and player likely work together to establish details around that past experience, but the specifics don't actually have to be established" is what the Flashback is for. That is a structured way of doing exactly the thing you described!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Perhaps a better example of a PbtA game mechanic that grants the player some authorial power in the present scene are flashbacks in Blades in the Dark. Flashbacks allow a player within the current scene to spend a character resource and establish that the PC had done something beneficial prior to the current scene but beneficial to it (maybe bribing the rival gang's henchmen to conveniently not be around, or planting a bomb, etc). If I recall there's the basic Blades in the Dark resolution to achieve the action, but provided you roll high and have a high enough level of effect then what you proposed is now established in the fiction.

That is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.

 

[pemerton]

it is in fact the third possibility that we are primarily caught up on of Conan being able to point at 'random Set priest #6' and declare "that's them, that's Thulsa Doom, i know Thulsa Doom from my backstory and i know they have XYZ traits" and thus Priest #6 becomes Thulsa Doom with XYZ traits.

What RPG do you have in mind that permits a player to do this?

 

[Vaalingrade]

You mean, like the wish spell?

No. No I do not.

 

[DEFCON 1]

• The player decides at any point (even during the parties first encounter with elves) that his character distrusts elfs due to some past experience with them. DM and player likely work together to establish details around that past experience, but the specifics don't actually have to be established.

For me, none of these things are game reality altering (or at least require very specific circumstances before they becomes so).

-I'm expecting the last bullet point to be somewhat controversial.

Although it really shouldn't be. Players do what your bullet point says all the time, even without realizing it. They make decisions for their characters on the spur of the moment and the justification for the decision comes later.

A group's very first adventure has them going into the woods and they come upon a band of goblins. Almost arbitrarily the DM calls for initiative and the players then fight the goblins. But at no point prior to that moment did that player necessarily think about how their PC felt about goblins, the DM never specifically said how goblins were considered bu humans in the world they were playing in, and the only reason a fight happened was because of the collective unconscious of D&D players and DMs that said "Goblins-- low-level D&D enemies-- fight them!"

In this case the entire table decided on a whim to alter the reality of the world by deciding that goblins are only there to be fought. Something that up until that point had never even been thought of, let along considered true. None of us can think of everything for our characters beforehand, we always have to make snap decisions that end up changing the world without us even knowing it is happening.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Although it really shouldn't be. Players do what your bullet point says all the time, even without realizing it. They make decisions for their characters on the spur of the moment and the justification for the decision comes later.

A group's very first adventure has them going into the woods and they come upon a band of goblins. Almost arbitrarily the DM calls for initiative and the players then fight the goblins. But at no point prior to that moment did that player necessarily think about how their PC felt about goblins, the DM never specifically said how goblins were considered bu humans in the world they were playing in, and the only reason a fight happened was because of the collective unconscious of D&D players and DMs that said "Goblins-- low-level D&D enemies-- fight them!"

In this case the entire table decided on a whim to alter the reality of the world by deciding that goblins are only there to be fought. Something that up until that point had never even been thought of, let along considered true. None of us can think of everything for our characters beforehand, we always have to make snap decisions that end up changing the world without us even knowing it is happening.

To be clear, since I said it was controversial above. It's not controversial because of the action itself. I fully support players doing that, so long as they play fair (and I've never had to deal with players, whether as GM or a player myself, failing to play fair.)

The controversy comes from the thing described being either the same or "worse" as the thing being used as an example of utterly unconscionable actions. It's controversial because the claimed standard which finds fault with Flashbacks absolutely should find at least as much fault with this.

 

[pemerton]

None of us can think of everything for our characters beforehand, we always have to make snap decisions that end up changing the world without us even knowing it is happening.

Shush, you're giving away all the secrets!

 

[TwoSix]

A group's very first adventure has them going into the woods and they come upon a band of goblins. Almost arbitrarily the DM calls for initiative and the players then fight the goblins. But at no point prior to that moment did that player necessarily think about how their PC felt about goblins, the DM never specifically said how goblins were considered bu humans in the world they were playing in, and the only reason a fight happened was because of the collective unconscious of D&D players and DMs that said "Goblins-- low-level D&D enemies-- fight them!"

I think one underappreciated reason for D&D's enduring popularity is how much of the world-building work our collective knowledge of D&D tropes actually does.