D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

@FrozenNorth

I agree with your agreement with me! But I also agree with @EzekielRaiden that concerns about "abuse" or "players giving themselves advantages" reinforce the base response. And of course if the game is about unravelling the GM's puzzle, or learning the secrets that the GM is keeping hidden, then that concern makes sense.

Not too far upthread @Oofta referred to "inconsequential" details as not generating the concern. Similarly, @Micah Sweet referred to "minor" things, and @FrogReaver referred to things that are not "directly pivotal".

Anyway, the topic of this thread is player agency. To me, it seems obvious that if all players can do is establish "inconsequential", "minor" or "not directly pivotal" elements of the fiction - so that all the significant elements of framing, consequence etc are established by the GM - then their agency is modest at best.

And in order to pre-empt, or at least attempt to pre-empt, confused or incorrect statements about how (say) Dungeon World works: in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.

There may also be techniques that permit the players to declare actions or make decisions pertaining to their PCs' memories. This goes together with the players' establishing goals and aspirations, to overall produce characters that have "thicker" lives, relationships, etc than is typical of much D&D play.

 

[Oofta]

@FrozenNorth

I agree with your agreement with me! But I also agree with @EzekielRaiden that concerns about "abuse" or "players giving themselves advantages" reinforce the base response. And of course if the game is about unravelling the GM's puzzle, or learning the secrets that the GM is keeping hidden, then that concern makes sense.

Not too far upthread @Oofta referred to "inconsequential" details as not generating the concern. Similarly, @Micah Sweet referred to "minor" things, and @FrogReaver referred to things that are not "directly pivotal".

Anyway, the topic of this thread is player agency. To me, it seems obvious that if all players can do is establish "inconsequential", "minor" or "not directly pivotal" elements of the fiction - so that all the significant elements of framing, consequence etc are established by the GM - then their agency is modest at best.

And in order to pre-empt, or at least attempt to pre-empt, confused or incorrect statements about how (say) Dungeon World works: in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.

There may also be techniques that permit the players to declare actions or make decisions pertaining to their PCs' memories. This goes together with the players' establishing goals and aspirations, to overall produce characters that have "thicker" lives, relationships, etc than is typical of much D&D play.

So do people in the real world have only modest agency at best because they can only impact the world based on what they do and say?

 

[FrogReaver]

So do people in the real world have only modest agency at best because they can only impact the world based on what they do and say?

I follow you but he may have a small point. Someone with authorial agency in the real world would be essentially 'a god'. Do you think gods have more agency than humans?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Assuming this is a D&D game and that all the declaration there was made up at that moment. If so then also assuming the DM has no issue with those details conflicting with something as of yet unrevealed (perhaps he had already wrote up the village as some important place that the players may eventually discover) I don't find that to be game altering. - though wanted to add, if the pcs goal had been to track down that sorcerer and campaign time had already been spent toward that end, then my answer would change.

I don’t disagree with your points here, but I think the caveats are instructive:
- if the change doesn’t conflict with something the DM already decided, but has not revealed;

To me, this is the core of the definition. If a character makes a declaration about a state of fact that conflicts with something the DM already decided, even if unrevealed, the DM will disallow it, regardless of whether it advantages the character, is neutral, or disadvantages them.

I believe that this is a better predictor of DM pushback than whether or not the decision advantages the player.

By way of example, consider a 1st level party. The players have created their characters, but because they are excited to play, they haven’t filled out some of the details before starting. They get captured by bugbears.

A player points out that he still needs to select a language, and chooses Goblin so he can communicate with their captor. Very few DMs I know would have a problem with this, despite the fact that the player is changing reality to advantage their character.

That said it would be a stretch for most D&D players to do that. The more likley scenario - Player: we previously established in my backstory that my town was raised by a sorcerer, do i know if this is that sorcerer? DM: rolls a die - yes this is the same sorcerer, or no but he may have info on that sorcerers whereabouts!

I have in the past run games for brand new D&D players. They have frequently done things that were analogous.

If players stop doing so, it may reflect that many DMs actively discourage them.

 

[pemerton]

So do people in the real world have only modest agency at best because they can only impact the world based on what they do and say?

I am talking about the agency of players of a particular sort of game, namely, RPGers. RPGing involves the creation of a shared set of imagined events, people, places, etc, and establishing "what happens next" to some of those people and places.

Agency, in the context of this sort of game, means doing some of that establishing. It is done mostly by saying things, sometimes by writing things. If one participant gets to do all or most of that establishing, then obviously other participants don't have much agency in that game.

Now if someone wants to contend that RPGing involves something different - eg that it is not really about creation of shared fiction at all, and it's really about puzzle solving - then maybe we can talk about player agency from a different perspective. But I haven't seen that take on RPGing from posters in this thread other than, perhaps, hints from @FrogReaver.

 

[Oofta]

I am talking about the agency of players of a particular sort of game, namely, RPGers. RPGing involves the creation of a shared set of imagined events, people, places, etc, and establishing "what happens next" to some of those people and places.

Agency, in the context of this sort of game, means doing some of that establishing. It is done mostly by saying things, sometimes by writing things. If one participant gets to do all or most of that establishing, then obviously other participants don't have much agency in that game.

Now if someone wants to contend that RPGing involves something different - eg that it is not really about creation of shared fiction at all, and it's really about puzzle solving - then maybe we can talk about player agency from a different perspective. But I haven't seen that take on RPGing from posters in this thread other than, perhaps, hints from @FrogReaver.

To me, you're redefining what agency means. I guess on a scale of 1 to 10, being able to control all aspects of the game lore and fiction would be a 10. But D&D's default of only having control of your PC is not a 1 as long as what the PC does and says has meaningful impact on the campaign.

 

[FrogReaver]

Depends. I had taken that as simply a preplanned backstory thing, e.g. "Agnar the Wrinklebrained prefers to wear the heraldic colors of his clan, primarily blue." But if it's meant to be something said later, e.g. session 7 establishes that Agnar the Wrinklebrained has always worn blue shirts, then there doesn't seem to be much gap there. Same as establishing some important cultural fact "after" it should already be super well-known, or any other such "this has always been true we just didn't mention it until now" stuff.

Thanks for the answer.

The only real difference I can see with the "My shirts are, and have always been, blue" and "My character hates, and has always hated, elves" is that the former is more conceptually self-contained, but not totally so, while the latter is more outward-focusing, but again not totally so.

Good analysis and I mostly agree - but i would say that 'always blue shirts' is more outside the character than 'hates elves'

Though, the reason for hates elves if ever specified is likely to involve more outside the character than a blue shirt.

That is, for example, the resolution to a mystery in my DW game once actually did turn on a player noticing that a fancy dress failed to remain a single distinct color (revealing that its wearer was a talented illusionist, and thus could have pretended to look like someone else, e.g. the murder victim, AFTER his actual time of death), while hatred of elves could end up being pure color in a game where elf NPCs are rare or irrelevant. The elf-hate is more likely to end up mattering, but neither has any guarantee of relevance nor lack thereof.

Right, but the elf hating is driving me to have my character act in certain ways and there's no obvious immediate benefit to hating elves, even if it could drive the campaign certain ways in the future.

So going back to your question

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!

IMO. A Flashback in BitD is specifically for a player to try and gain some benefit. The blue shirt, the hatred of elves, nor even introducing the scenario for why you hate elves (with DM approval), none of that provides a clear benefit. I think that if you detailed a scenario where it did and that benefit was clear to the player when they introduced the detail then i expect you'd see just as much pushback.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@FrozenNorth

I agree with your agreement with me! But I also agree with @EzekielRaiden that concerns about "abuse" or "players giving themselves advantages" reinforce the base response. And of course if the game is about unravelling the GM's puzzle, or learning the secrets that the GM is keeping hidden, then that concern makes sense.

Not too far upthread @Oofta referred to "inconsequential" details as not generating the concern. Similarly, @Micah Sweet referred to "minor" things, and @FrogReaver referred to things that are not "directly pivotal".

Anyway, the topic of this thread is player agency. To me, it seems obvious that if all players can do is establish "inconsequential", "minor" or "not directly pivotal" elements of the fiction - so that all the significant elements of framing, consequence etc are established by the GM - then their agency is modest at best.

And in order to pre-empt, or at least attempt to pre-empt, confused or incorrect statements about how (say) Dungeon World works: in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.

There may also be techniques that permit the players to declare actions or make decisions pertaining to their PCs' memories. This goes together with the players' establishing goals and aspirations, to overall produce characters that have "thicker" lives, relationships, etc than is typical of much D&D play.

To me, player agency is the ability for players to make decisions for their PCs, based on what that PC can reasonably know and do in the game reality, and predicated on information that is potentially knowable and not subject to change based on the player's choices.

Take the classic example of multiple paths in a dungeon. One leads to a goal the PCs are seeking, and the other does not. Agency means that the player's choice for their PC matters in this situation; ie, if they go down the path that doesn't lead to their goal, it isn't there, regardless of anyone's desires (including the DM). Agency also means that some information was or is available to the PCs that could help them make that choice; it isn't necessarily random from their perspective, although it can be.

That's it. The players have the opportunity to make informed choices, and the results of those choices are based on an in-game reality, either beforehand or through some randomization mechanic.

 

[pemerton]

To me, you're redefining what agency means.

Well, Google - citing Oxford Languages - tells me that agency means an action or intervention producing a particular effect; a thing or person that acts to produce a particular result.

Merriam-Webster tells me that it means a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.

In the context of a game, like a RPG, when we are talking about player agency, the person who acts would be a player, and the result produced or end achieved would be a change to what everyone is imagining together.

If all the interesting and important changes are established by one participant, then as I say the other participants have little agency in respect of the game. That is not a redefinition: it is an application of standard meanings of the term in this particular context.

But D&D's default of only having control of your PC is not a 1 as long as what the PC does and says has meaningful impact on the campaign.

If the impact of what the player decides that their PC says and does is decided primarily by the GM, then this does not seem to me to be a very significant exercise of agency by the player. They are prompting the GM to produce an effect or result; but they are not producing it directly via their own agency.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I am talking about the agency of players of a particular sort of game, namely, RPGers. RPGing involves the creation of a shared set of imagined events, people, places, etc, and establishing "what happens next" to some of those people and places.

Agency, in the context of this sort of game, means doing some of that establishing. It is done mostly by saying things, sometimes by writing things. If one participant gets to do all or most of that establishing, then obviously other participants don't have much agency in that game.

Now if someone wants to contend that RPGing involves something different - eg that it is not really about creation of shared fiction at all, and it's really about puzzle solving - then maybe we can talk about player agency from a different perspective. But I haven't seen that take on RPGing from posters in this thread other than, perhaps, hints from @FrogReaver.

It's not that the players don't have much agency in this scenario, it's that the DM has more. A lot of games work this way, and I suspect you know that. The players are responsible for their PC, and the DM is responsible for everything else, including whether or not to take player input on areas not normally under their purview.

Your framing of the situation put an unfair value judgement on the topic.