So I’ve read through everything I’ve missed. I’m seeing more and more evidence that agency is being defined by the advocates of non-traditional rpgs in such a way that effectively excludes traditional rpgs.
How so? There's obviously player agency in traditional rpgs. The argument isn't present/not present, it's evaluating relative levels of presence. Blades in the Dark has more agency than any version of D&D. That's because Blades allows for players to have more control over the direction and content of play via it's design and mechanics. The GM cannot just veto things. Fundamentally, this is the crux of the choice -- if one person has final authority over a thing, then everyone else has less agency with regard to that thing. The more things you put under a single authority, the less agency exists elsewhere. I mean, we've mostly figured this out in the real world, as we dislike autocracies and prefer democracies, right?
More importantly though, why should I care about agency that allows me as the player to drive the fiction (outside my character)? Why would I even want that kind of agency? Does having that kind agency take anything away from the experience?
THIS is the excellent question, and one you must answer for yourself. Having a heuristic that evaluates agency is helpful to this decision point, though. Dismissing that heuristic as unimportant because you don't want to say that you prefer less agency (which is perfectly fine) is less so.
Look, I really enjoy playing Gloomhaven. If you're not familiar, it's a very complex boardgame that's close to the RPG line. My agency in this game is much less than in D&D (with the possible exception of a rigid railroad game). Yet, I enjoy it greatly! Agency isn't the final determination of what's enjoyable, but it's a useful tool to look at how RPGs structure their play and what play you can expect to get out of a given RPG.
there are 2 common ways to play D&D. Optimal play and character driven play. I think most players go in and out of these play styles at various points during the game.
I disagree violently. But, there's some use to your example because you've arrived, again, at a crux point for why you might choose to play a game with less agency.
I think the non-traditional systems we are discussing don’t really leave open the option for optimal play - defined as Play where you were careful, made all the right decisions and get rewarded for that. Such systems are better in some respects for character driven play as they can ensure the game is about what is important to the characters. However, there is a cost to that even beyond the lack of optimal play. being able to on the fly introduce fictional elements that aren’t yet there is a much different experience than being “forced” to be limited to just what is in the scene the DM framed - thus allowing one to focus solely on their character and what is there before them.
And, here is where that crux point is. If you enjoy "optimal" play at all, then you need to evaluate where that play is situated. And that play is situated in finding the best way through an established puzzle. Who established that puzzle (which can be a trap, a combat, a social encounter, whatever)? Not the player, or you're smack dab inside a Czege Principle violation, and I'm pretty sure you'd recognize that even if you're not familiar with the concept. The GM. And optimal play requires the player to divine, usually through the above mentioned careful play, what the scope and allowed options exist from the GM. This is lower agency play -- the player is not directing play very much; the play is fully framed by the GM and the GM has final authority over any action the player takes. Granted, good GMing in this case is to strive to be impartial, but it's still entirely under the GM's authority.
Now, is this play fun? Absolutely, it can be! So, this is, as I said above, a great reason to eschew more agency because the lower agency play delivers exactly what you're looking for. This is perfectly fine -- agency is not a value judgement any more than dislike hitpoints is. Both will direct your choice of game to play while not actually saying anything generally about the game other than "this game has a good bit of player agency, so I have an idea of what play looks like," and "this game has hitpoints, so I have an idea of what play will look like."
I don’t think it’s that most people can’t understand how non-traditional playstyles work. It’s that many of us are happy with playing our character in a DM framed scene with a healthy mix of optimal focused play.
No, I'm absolutely certain, given these conversations, that there's a lot of misunderstanding about "non-traditional" (look, normative language!) playstyles work. That doesn't matter especially to this discussion, though. If you like how you play, awesome. The problem comes when you mistake an evaluation of a specific heuristic as being insulting to your play. It's no more insulting to your play than someone saying they dislike hitpoints. It's an evaluation of what happens during play, not an evaluation of worth or value. That's added when a given person looks at these things, checks their preferences, and then values things.
@pemerton, for example, appears to strongly value agency when selecting games to play. I'm less choosy on this axis (I still run/play 5e), but I can both do that and recognize that there's less agency in 5e than in many of the games
@pemerton advocates. Doing so doesn't, at all, mean I'm doing something of less worth when I run 5e than
@pemerton does. That
@pemerton would never choose to join my 5e game says nothing about my game -- it only speaks to
@pemerton's preferences and the heuristics he uses. In this case, that would include level of player agency and would, again, not be saying anything about me or 5e, but about
@pemerton's preferences.
I mean, if I thought that agency was a value statement, and that 5e has less agency than other games I play, why would I ever play 5e? This is hurdle that you and others that argue against the definition of player agency have yet to overcome -- how I can think that and still play a game I enthusiastically claim has less agency?
