A Question Of Agency?

[Ovinomancer]

Merry Christmas to all argumentative nerds!

 

[FrogReaver]

Having the option to beg isn’t exactly the best example of agency, is it?

The man begging for his life acted and it influenced events such that the outcome he desired was arrived at. That's agency. (What's cool is that it could even be agency if he failed at his begging attempt).

Someone else having final say over whether you live or die doesn't mean you have no agency over that situation. Having the capability to influence the one with the decision making power over your life is having agency over your life.

You seem to be making the incorrect assumption that having agency requires the ability to guarantee the thing comes out the way you want.

 

[pemerton]

I think it's worth mentioning that in D&D the DM determines if the roll is even called for in the first place. He is well within his rights to determine success or failure with no roll at all.

Is this true of combat resolution in D&D?

Is it true of a declaration I try and climb the wall? Eg is the GM just allowed to say, Sorry, you can't find any handholds?

I think most common situation would be when there is something that the player doesn't know about the situation that prevents the thing from succeeding in the manner envisioned by the player.

This is exactly what I have described upthread as the GM relying on unilateral decisions about the fiction to make the determination that a player's action declaration fails.

When this is happening, I don't see how it can be said that the player is exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. It's inherent to the very situation that the GM is deciding unilaterally!

This can very easily bleed into the sort of circumstance that @Campbell has described not far upthread - where so little of the relevant fiction is known to the players that the GM's unilateral control over it turns into flat-out decision-making about the trajectory of play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The man begging for his life acted and it influenced events such that the outcome he desired was arrived at. That's agency. (What's cool is that it could even be agency if he failed at his begging attempt).

Interesting. At what point would you say someone actually does lose their agency?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Is it true of a declaration I try and climb the wall? Eg is the GM just allowed to say, Sorry, you can't find any handholds?

I have had this exact example come up. My group had a member who has since moved, but who would occasionally GM. He was a very old-school-minded DM. His games would always start strong, but would slowly devolve into the kind of DM as antagonist that you hear about a lot.

He would design encounters that relied on removing PC abilities all the time. I had a rogue and wanted to climb past some trap type situation he’d concocted. I guess he hadn’t accounted for that because at that point is when he decided to describe the incredibly smooth walls.

He did that kind of stuff a lot. To quote you from much earlier in the thread, it was the absolute pits.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sorry, I meant to reply to this bit as well, but something went wrong with the multi-quote.

You seem to be making the incorrect assumption that having agency requires the ability to guarantee the thing comes out the way you want.

No I don’t think I am. A peasant who has to beg for his life would likely be someone for whom who we’d say outside forces determined much of his life, wouldn’t you agree?

If a player’s ability to affect the direction of the fiction in a RPG is subject to the approval of another, then they lack agency.

 

[prabe]

Is it true of a declaration I try and climb the wall? Eg is the GM just allowed to say, Sorry, you can't find any handholds?

Per the 5E rules, yes. I'm not saying it's great, but it's the rules.

I've only flat said "no" once, that I remember. I personally treat that authority/responsibility as a plausibility check. "You're trying to climb an ice wall without tools/magic? Um ... no." Presuming the ice wall is established in fiction, of course.

 

[pemerton]

Per the 5E rules, yes. I'm not saying it's great, but it's the rules.

I've only flat said "no" once, that I remember. I personally treat that authority/responsibility as a plausibility check. "You're trying to climb an ice wall without tools/magic? Um ... no." Presuming the ice wall is established in fiction, of course.

I think the issue of credibility checking is very important and interesting. It can also be something of a litmus test - is it approached via table consensus, or unilateral GM ruling?

(It's also a genre thing - compare Traveller to 4e D&D, for instance.)

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think combat rules don't really add or take away agency. I would have to think about it some more. But I suspect different types of players will feel differently about how much having combat rules enhances or detracts from agency.

What do you think your players would say if you told them combat was simply going to be narrated? You’ll establish initiative and then players will declare action in order, but instead of rolling dice, the GM decides each outcome turn by turn.

Do you think they’d balk at that? Do you think their trust in the GM would be sufficient to play this way?

What I will say is I think combat is one area where it is really necessary to place constraints on the GM, while I think it isn't in other parts of the game. As a GM I wouldn't want to have to decide if Hector's gladius stabs the minotaur or not, I would want dice to determine that for me. However I have no problem having to decide if Hector's clever insult infuriates the minotaur.

Why not? What distinctions make you feel this way?

Keep in mind though, in D&D, traditionally, the GM still has final say.

Oh I’m well aware.

 

[prabe]

I think the issue of credibility checking is very important and interesting. It can also be something of a litmus test - is it approached via table consensus, or unilateral GM ruling?

(It's also a genre thing - compare Traveller to 4e D&D, for instance.)

When I'm GMing (which these days is 5E) and there's a question of plausibility, I'll specifically call it out, say what I think, try to see if there's any difference of opinion around the table, make sure the ruling and the reasons for it are at least clear-ish.

I guess what I'm saying is, I wouldn't just say "there are no handholds" under anything but a circumstance where it made no sense at all to me that there'd be handholds (such as a vertical ice wall) and I'd make it clear to the player why, and I'd be willing to talk about it around the table. And, as I said, it would have to have been a vertical ice wall before the player said they wanted to climb it.