Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Ovinomancer]

I think the very specific kind of agency present in Delve play probably isn't the common usage of 'agency' although I completely agree with your reading of Torchbearer and Blades. Common parlance, IMO, is pretty firmly in the "create dramatic narrative" camp when it comes to discussions of agency.

Also, I probably should have been specific about my post in reply to @forgreaver above, that's all contextual to within D&D. Sorry 'bout that.

Here's a good question - what is it, exactly, that we thing D&D does well from an agency standpoint?

I strongly disagree. If you look to @Manbearcat's definition of agency, that's very much present in delve play, so long as the GM is following the principles of that play by adjudicating impartially and sticking to the prep. Players very much have the ability to both declare actions and enact them.

 

[FrogReaver]

Three things:

1) Agency, as a concept in social science, requires both the ability to make an autonomous decision and then to enact it with the same autonomy. Merely the ability to navigate a decision-point independently is not sufficient.

From Wikipedia -
In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

I agree with your definition and think it's a bit more precise than Wikipedia's. That said I must caution in it's use because "making a decision and actually acting upon it" is easily confused with "making a decision and successfully acting upon it".

3) I think contemplating the nature of agency in Heist/Delve play is very interesting and informative, but probably for a different reason than some think. Its not because of less agency in this type of play, but its because of the way system and GMing ethos integrate so well to optimize the very specific kind of agency required to achieve the apex play priority (to test player's skill in a confined obstacle course of danger). The gameplay is encoded with all of the coherent machinery to allow play to express exactly the kind of agency required to pursue its agenda with all vigor. Nothing more, nothing less. So talking about this sort of play as having less, or even more, agency than games that allege to identify with "create dramatic narrative" (no matter how that narrative is created) doesn't seem particularly apt I don't think.

I think what is apt is "what is this game trying to do" and "what sort of agency (including limits) is required to pursue that agenda with all vigor."

This is also why I think agency is often very tenuous, moment in and moment out, with a propensity to go wobbly in games that allege to try to do both things at once (test player's skill in a confined obstacle course of danger and create dramatic narrative). The type of agency required to do the former is often at tension to do the latter...and simultaneously, the system tech (but not GMing ethos, interestingly, the GMing ethos of the former and the latter can coincide perfectly) required to crystalize and propel the former agency is almost always not the same as what is required for the latter.

Fully agree here.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think the very specific kind of agency present in Delve play probably isn't the common usage of 'agency' although I completely agree with your reading of Torchbearer and Blades. Common parlance, IMO, is pretty firmly in the "create dramatic narrative" camp when it comes to discussions of agency.

Also, I probably should have been specific about my post in reply to @forgreaver above, that's all contextual to within D&D. Sorry 'bout that.

Here's a good question - what is it, exactly, that we thing D&D does well from an agency standpoint?

Separate response for your question as I don't want to mix the two thoughts.

It depends on the D&D. 4e does dramatic agency pretty well. Moldvoy Basic does delve agency very well. 5e mixes these up a lot, so agency is more up to the individual GM/table than particularly encouraged by the ruleset. Other editions seem to follow this model as well.

Fundamentally, D&D has an identity problem. I think that's why it's so successful -- it's moldable to many approaches so it's playable by many tables. I don't think it bakes in agency very much at all so much as leaves it up to the individual tables to find a GMing method that works for them. I know that how I run 5e is pretty different from a number of posters, and agency, therefore, resides in different places and amounts accordingly. I don't see that as a strength of D&D, honestly, because it does allow for so many bad options to exist (we all read the stories of play spiraling off, the OP is a modest example). I like it anyway because it's allowed me to alter how I approach 5e to 1) better use the system as it is presented in the rules and 2) make the minimum changes necessary to achieve my style of play. And, those changes are minimal. I'd say I have a large amount of dramatic agency for players in my game, but much less delve agency. I do this by limiting my prep to challenging situations and not solutions. Others have different preferences and so do different things and have different types and quantities of agency.

 

[FrogReaver]

Also, I probably should have been specific about my post in reply to @forgreaver above, that's all contextual to within D&D. Sorry 'bout that.

Here's a good question - what is it, exactly, that we thing D&D does well from an agency standpoint?

No problem. IMO. In D&D you can have your PC decide to do nearly anything and follow through with that action or die trying - which is pretty much the exact kind of agency we have in the real world.

 

[FrogReaver]

The Case for Adding options not increasing agency.

Let's say I am presented with 2 doors. Behind one is a prize of $10,000 and behind another is a goat. I have agency here as I can decide what door to choose and follow through in actions with that decision.

Now let's say I am presented with 3 doors. Behind one is a prize of $10,000, behind another is a goat and behind the third is a nothing. It's clear that adding the additional door to choose from didn't increase my ability to decide which door to take, nor did it increase my ability to follow through via action upon that decision. Therefore, adding additional options doesn't increase agency. This also applies to taking options away, because if you can't increase agency by adding an option then you can't decrease agency by taking an option away.

That said, there is a time when adding an option or taking an option away can add or remove player agency and that's any circumstance when adding the option takes you from no options to 2 options. And when removing an option takes you down from 2 options to no options.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't like any definition of 'agency' by which people IRL have no 'agency'!

The OSR adventurer can attempt to do whatever he/she wants. It feels like the sort of agency we have IRL. It feels like high 'agency' to me. High character agency. Because of player-PC immersion this also translates to high player agency.

Railroad games by contrast feel like low character agency and low player agency.

Story-building games have high player agency; they may have low character agency if the characters are at the whim of fate, but this does not matter much as there is little or no player-PC immersion.

Very well said. I think you should do the talking for me from here on

 

[Campbell]

As written without utilizing techniques and agendas curbed from other games or other versions of Dungeons and Dragons I do not think Fifth Edition is focused on providing player agency over the fiction. I think it is focused on providing satisfying linear storytelling. The advice in the DMG, the assumption of DM driven pacing, the adventures they have released, mechanics that have no real teeth, and their organized play program all point towards a focus on storytelling over game play.

You do not have to run it or play it in that fashion, but the game is tuned for GM story in my opinion.

From accounts I know @S'mon runs a game that affords players a very high degree of agency over the fiction. I suspect @prabe does too. I do not think the Fifth Edition is a great asset in that regard.

I know I will get blowback for saying this, but I think Fifth Edition does a phenomenal job at enabling GM storytelling. The only mainstream game on the market that is better for that purpose is Numenera.

 

[pemerton]

If the next encounter is [THING], whether you kick open the door or go down the hall, I don't think you really have agency.

Sure, that's true. A GM can always quantum ogre the situation and force certain outcomes. In such a case, agency may be taken away, but the illusion of it may remain. I'm not really a fan of that, and I think it's kind of a breach of play expectations.

I think these sorts of examples, divorced from any account of the goals and orientation of play, the processes of play and resolution, and other aspects of context, are almost meaningless as far as player agency is concerned.

If my character is a hallmage (eg in Burning Wheel I am playing a spirit-binder who can summon and control the spirits of hallways; or in Cortex+ Heroic I am play a character with the Sorcery trait who has a SFX that augments all effects created by using sorcery while in a hallway) then the real action might be getting my character into the hallway as opposed to having my character lured through the door into a chamber.

If I am playing a D&D game where my PC is a dwarf giant-and-ogre slayer, and we are playing a more-or-less vigourously scene-framed game (which is eg what 4e D&D is probably best suited for), then the GM presenting an ogre as an opponent may be an honouring of player agency.

Now of course is we are playing an OSR/"skilled play" game then the GM is meant to stick to his/her notes. But even there there is the following possibility: as per advice given back in the day (eg by Lewis Pulsipher) the GM might have rolled wandering monster dice in advance, and have a list of pre-rolled wanderers for each dungeon level. So whether the PC goes through the door or down the hallway, the turn clock is checked, the GM notes that itis marked as one that brings a wanderer, and looks at his/her list of Level X wanderers and sees there's an ogre there. And so in the fiction the PC meets an ogre.

In such a case, the player has exactly the amount of agency s/he is meant to have in the game: s/he's decided where his/her PC goes in the dungeon. And the GM has done exactly what s/he is meant to do: namely, applied the time-keeping rules, the wandering monster rules, etc. The key decision point for the player (when wandering monsters are concerned) was not to go through the door or down the hall, but to press on through that dungeon level rather than to fall back to safety;.

This is just like the question about movement and teleportation: without context a particular event or a particular PC ability is not evidence of any particular degree of player agency in RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

No problem. IMO. In D&D you can have your PC decide to do nearly anything and follow through with that action or die trying - which is pretty much the exact kind of agency we have in the real world.

How does imaging the fictional lives of some fictional people tell us anything about the actual (not imaginary) degree of agency enjoyed by actual (not imaginary) people who in the real world are engaged in the real social activity of RPGing?

If I play a RPG in which every consequence of every action I declare for my PC is decided by the GM as s/he thinks is fun or reaslistic or <insert other decision-making criterion here> then that would fit your description: my PC can do nearly antying and follow through with that action or die trying.

But that would be a game in which players have virtually no agency. I would not want to play in it. It would suck.

 

[Maxperson]

The successful night time raid rendered the plans for a battle the next day irrelevant. The enemy was defeated and dispersed, and the enemy captain taken prisoner.

Okay. That makes sense. They weren't really negating any fiction. All that had been established was that if the day attack happened, they wouldn't be leading.