D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

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.

Let's start here. Non-rpgs where the players just take turns weaving together a story feature player agency! Other than yielding their agency when it's not their turn they could potentially have no limits on their agency!

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.

IMO. The agency wholly unique to RPG's is the players agency over their characters attempted actions within the shared fiction.

I think you can mix this wholly unique RPG player agency with the kinds of player agency found in non-rpg narrative games. That definitely seems to be your preference. But fundamentally we are talking about 2 different things when it comes to agency.

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.

My suggestion is that RPGing has further constraints on it than just the creation of shared fiction (games where you take turns telling a story are also about the creation of the shared fiction afterall). By the way - puzzle solving doesn't really enter into it for me.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Do you not think there's a rather large practical problem in a game where the DM has authorial control so that he can present the players with an engaging world to let players willy nilly override that?

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying with this wording, but I do have a problem with the DM having sole authorial control. They're not the only person in this experience.

 

[Pedantic]

Let's start here. Non-rpgs where the players just take turns weaving together a story feature player agency! Other than yielding their agency when it's not their turn they could potentially have no limits on their agency!


IMO. The agency wholly unique to RPG's is the players agency over their characters attempted actions within the shared fiction.

I suspect we probably agree about this as the defining feature of the medium, but I'd argue this formulation is backwards. Most games allow players to declare actions, "attempted" implies a risk of a failure that isn't definitionally necessary and so on.

I think the unique feature of RPGs is better understand as players being able to continuously set/abandon their own victory conditions, and play being unbounded in time when victory is achieved or is rendered impossible. There's a lot of focus on the breadth of available action declarations in an RPG, but that isn't necessarily constitutive, especially when you boil down a lot of actions to resolution: many of them are just different narrative glosses on the same underlying action.

I think you can mix this wholly unique RPG player agency with the kinds of player agency found in non-rpg narrative games. That definitely seems to be your preference. But fundamentally we are talking about 2 different things when it comes to agency.


My suggestion is that RPGing has further constraints on it than just the creation of shared fiction (games where you take turns telling a story are also about the creation of the shared fiction afterall). By the way - puzzle solving doesn't really enter into it for me.

This harkens back to my point about ludic agency earlier. It doesn't generally play well with extensive narrative agency. You generally need a fixed, knowable board state to enact strategies on, and a known, objective means of evaluating success in order for your gameplay decisions to matter.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the word “willy-nilly” is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. As other posters have indicated, no RPGs exist that give players unlimited authorial control.

Okay, but i'm not pushing back on those other games or saying they are wrong. Heck, i'm not even saying any give players willy-nilly authorial control. I'm simply stating at a high level that doing such would be potentially problematic for a D&D type game.

Just to be clear, the context was whether a player using their authorial intent to their disadvantage would be “altering the game reality”, not whether or not you would have a problem with it.

Just to be clear - if i said I was okay with it i meant that it was not altering the game reality.

I suspect that you might not have an issue with a PC “altering the game’s reality”, even as you acknowledge that some alteration of reality took place.

Then test it!

As an example:

In a seafaring adventure, the PCs are at sea, running low on supplies, but are carrying a cargo of valuable muslin. They see a ship in the distance. The DM intends the ship to be a merchantman, with whom the PCs will be able to trade to replenish their supplies.

The lookout takes the spyglass to scope the ship, and rolls a natural 20 on the Perception check.

The DM duly describes a standard merchantman.

The lookout’s player pipes in “To the untrained eye, this may in fact look like a simple merchantman. But there are too many sailors on deck, and I can clearly cutlasses. These are pirates lulling us into a false sense of security!”

Would you agree that the player is altering reality even if having a merchantman turn into a pirate ship is to the characters’ disadvantage?

Tell me more about the player and his motivations for having his PC say that.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying with this wording, but I do have a problem with the DM having sole authorial control. They're not the only person in this experience.

There's no RPG where the DM has sole authorial control.

 

[FrogReaver]

I suspect we probably agree about this as the defining feature of the medium, but I'd argue this formulation is backwards. Most games allow players to declare actions, "attempted" implies a risk of a failure that isn't definitionally necessary and so on.

It's amazing how often important clauses get left out in this discussions. I've provided my quote and bolded it.

The agency wholly unique to RPG's is the players agency over their characters attempted actions within the shared fiction.

Many games give players agency over their actions - but most games do not have a shared fiction that players are operating within. There is no shared fiction in Risk or Chess. RPG's have a shared fiction. So that clause already excludes all the games you are talking about.

I think the unique feature of RPGs is better understand as players being able to continuously set/abandon their own victory conditions, and play being unbounded in time when victory is achieved or is rendered impossible. There's a lot of focus on the breadth of available action declarations in an RPG, but that isn't necessarily constitutive, especially when you boil down a lot of actions to resolution: many of them are just different narrative glosses on the same underlying action.

You've lost me. I was talking about unique agency to RPG's and not unique features of RPG's as you do here.

This harkens back to my point about ludic agency earlier. It doesn't generally play well with extensive narrative agency. You generally need a fixed, knowable board state to enact strategies on, and a known, objective means of evaluating success in order for your gameplay decisions to matter.

I must have missed that. But I think I agree.

However, I'd add that if you have a game whose moves and board state are narrative constructs, then narrative agency need not conflict with ludic agency. It's just in games where that's not the case that you can get some of those conflicts.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's amazing how often important clauses get left out in this discussions. I've provided my quote and bolded it.

Many games give players agency over their actions - but most games do not have a shared fiction that players are operating within. There is no shared fiction in Risk or Chess. RPG's have a shared fiction. So that clause already excludes all the games you are talking about.



You've lost me. I was talking about unique agency to RPG's and not unique features of RPG's as you do here.



I must have missed that. But I think I agree.

However, I'd add that if you have a game whose moves and board state are narrative constructs, then narrative agency need not conflict with ludic agency. It's just in games where that's not the case that you can get some of those conflicts.

What's ludic agency again? Not jargon I'm used to.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Why does the definition of what constitutes a player “altering the games’ reality” matter?

I think you know what people mean. Changing reality by virtue of taking action that are within the ability of your PC to take is not the same as the  player making changes to the world outside of their PC.

'Changing reality' implies that something defined was contradicted. What's generally being discussed is filling in things that haven't been defined - 'creating reality'. Players in traditional games do this all the time.

If the player is given authorial power to establish a prior event or detail for the purpose of gaining an advantage in the games present - (whether that's via PC memory or other means), then that is very much what it meant by 'altering the games reality'. Further, while 'PC memory' can be argued to be part of the PC, the details in the memory are very much outside the PC - making the addition of those details a change outside the PC.

I would argue that the definition matters because resolving the stated issue depends on identifying the stated issue.

Take @FrogReaver ’s definition. It’s a definition that identifies “possible abuse by the player” as the issue associated with the player’s altering the game reality.

The issue “possible abuse by the player” can be resolved in a number of ways. And has been, by different RPGs.

If instead the issue is “the player is exercising an authority that the DM believes is rightfully his”, than it doesn’t matter that the player is restricted from abusing the alteration of game reality: the DM will still feel that the player is infringing on his prerogative.

 

[Pedantic]

What's ludic agency again? Not jargon I'm used to.

It's not an established term of art, I was using it to draw a distinction with narrative agency, which I think are two different things that get bound up when discussing player agency. I probably best defined it here.

 

[Atomoctba]

Perhaps an unpopular opinion here (and not in that other thread), but for me, player agency is "what my character would do in these circumstances, given these constraints". And yes, this includes they being mind controlled. While most people say mind control removes the agency from players, I say that they still retains agency: "what my character would do if mind controlled like that?". Even if there is only one answer for the question (he is dominated to do specifically that), the "agency" is "the character, if dominated with those orders, will do specifically that.