D&D General What is player agency to you?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sorry but no. Those are correctly placed in order of ascending amount of agency. Minimal agency is more than no agency. More agency is more than minimal agency.

My thesis, as advanced in another thread to @Pedantic, is that there are not really multiple forms of agency. Game state stuff blends indistinguishably into narrative and setting, they can't really be told apart, and in the end if you can't decide the value of, and kinds of, the things you are doing, then you're just a cog in someone else's wheel, ultimately.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've been a real big fan of Israeli Theory ever since I first heard of it. Couple of really subtle and powerful tools for table management, but the important lesson is that you don't have to be the GM to use them. Every player at the table shares the responsibility of keeping the game entertaining for every player at the table, and every player has the tools to bear their share of it.

Not every player has heard of Israeli Theory, or subscribes to it. Most players, I suspect, would not be caught dead doing homework to be better gamers.

If your players seem like they don't know what to do, don't know what they could do, pick one of them and ask-- "What do you wish your character knew about this situation?" If your players complain that you do not give them enough information, encourage them to ask more questions, and encourage them to tell you what kind of information you're not giving them enough of.

If they're arguing, pick the one who's arguing the least, address them by their character's name and ask them, "Character, what do you think we should do?" The simple act of picking them out to be the leader, more often than not, will coax the other players into following them.

Trick is, you don't stop the game to ask them how to improve the game. If you don't know what they to get moving, make asking them how to get moving part of the game, indistinguishable from any other "what do you see?" or "how do you want to do this?" The more of your campaign you make your players responsible for, without letting them know they're responsible for it, the more engaged they will be; the more engaged they are with your campaign, the more brilliant they'll think it is. That's just math.

My diagnosis is that the person responsible for that series of articles read Apocalypse World and actually understood it pretty well. Properly understood and employed this is the theory of narrativist play. No defined story, immersive techniques (AW/DW's always speaking to the character, AW's admonishments to spew craziness), the very nature of the PbtA moves and 'onion architecture' of the game.

 

[pointofyou]

My thesis, as advanced in another thread to @Pedantic, is that there are not really multiple forms of agency. Game state stuff blends indistinguishably into narrative and setting, they can't really be told apart, and in the end if you can't decide the value of, and kinds of, the things you are doing, then you're just a cog in someone else's wheel, ultimately.

I don't think I can disagree hard about the borders at least being very porous. I think one can have agency over different things though and that was why I put things in the order I did. The fewer kinds of things you can decide the more likely you are to be a cog in someone else's wheel.

 

[pointofyou]

I've been a real big fan of Israeli Theory ever since I first heard of it. Couple of really subtle and powerful tools for table management, but the important lesson is that you don't have to be the GM to use them. Every player at the table shares the responsibility of keeping the game entertaining for every player at the table, and every player has the tools to bear their share of it.

Not every player has heard of Israeli Theory, or subscribes to it. Most players, I suspect, would not be caught dead doing homework to be better gamers.

If your players seem like they don't know what to do, don't know what they could do, pick one of them and ask-- "What do you wish your character knew about this situation?" If your players complain that you do not give them enough information, encourage them to ask more questions, and encourage them to tell you what kind of information you're not giving them enough of.

If they're arguing, pick the one who's arguing the least, address them by their character's name and ask them, "Character, what do you think we should do?" The simple act of picking them out to be the leader, more often than not, will coax the other players into following them.

Trick is, you don't stop the game to ask them how to improve the game. If you don't know what they to get moving, make asking them how to get moving part of the game, indistinguishable from any other "what do you see?" or "how do you want to do this?" The more of your campaign you make your players responsible for, without letting them know they're responsible for it, the more engaged they will be; the more engaged they are with your campaign, the more brilliant they'll think it is. That's just math.

If you could provide a starter link for this I would be grateful.

 

[DammitVictor]

My diagnosis is that the person responsible for that series of articles read Apocalypse World and actually understood it pretty well. Properly understood and employed this is the theory of narrativist play. No defined story, immersive techniques (AW/DW's always speaking to the character, AW's admonishments to spew craziness), the very nature of the PbtA moves and 'onion architecture' of the game.

Maybe. I will confess to having bounced off of AW/DW so hard that I just didn't glean anything from the experience and what it considers immersive and character-driven feels excessively stilted and contrived to me. It's purely a matter of personal preference, of course, but I wanted to like them and failed. If you think this is... an outgrowth of Powered by the Apocalypse gaming philosophy, then I've gotten something from it after all and I thank you for pointing it out.

If you could provide a starter link for this I would be grateful.

My apologies. I thought to do so, and decided against it. Here's the more relevant article, which leads to the others: Intro to Israeli Theory - Everyone is a GM

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I wouldn't play in the game of the person that wrote that stuff. it was narcissistic at worst and at best uncaring.

Mod Note:

I’ve been reading the discussion you’ve been having with EzekielRaiden, and it seems to me you‘re deeply at odds with ER over them. That’s fine.
But calling another poster “narcissistic and uncaring” steps over the line of disagreement and into personal attacks, and that’s against ENWorld’s ToS. Please don’t do that again.

 

[Charlaquin]

Has the OP considered recording and uploading a session? We would have a much better understanding of the situation if we see it live.

This is a really strange ask, and you keep making it. Not all players are comfortable being recorded to be posted to the internet for random strangers to scrutinize. And of those who would be ok with it, not all have the necessary equipment to record and upload such a thing. Furthermore, I don’t expect many people here would actually be all that interested in viewing or listening to such recordings. A lot of people here specifically dislike Critical Role and its ilk, and nothing any of us would produce would have a fraction of the production quality or performing skills of something like that.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've been a real big fan of Israeli Theory ever since I first heard of it. Couple of really subtle and powerful tools for table management, but the important lesson is that you don't have to be the GM to use them. Every player at the table shares the responsibility of keeping the game entertaining for every player at the table, and every player has the tools to bear their share of it.

What is Israeli Theory?

EDIT: Oh, there’s a link. Thanks!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Maybe. I will confess to having bounced off of AW/DW so hard that I just didn't glean anything from the experience and what it considers immersive and character-driven feels excessively stilted and contrived to me. It's purely a matter of personal preference, of course, but I wanted to like them and failed. If you think this is... an outgrowth of Powered by the Apocalypse gaming philosophy, then I've gotten something from it after all and I thank you for pointing it out.

Yeah, I definitely get some PbtA vibes from this, though it might be a more complicated relationship than "PbtA grew and thus this came about." Certainly, the Dungeon World book references doing things like what that article refers to, just without a specified theory or rationale, e.g. when it gives an example of "ask questions and use the answers":

The easiest question to use is “What do you do?” Whenever you make a move, end with “What do you do?” You don’t even have to ask the person you made the move against. Take that chance to shift the focus elsewhere: “Rath’s spell is torn apart with a flick of the mage’s wand. Finnegan, that spell was aiding you. What are you doing now that it’s gone?”

That's an example of a guiding action used to spread the focus around to other players. It's not called out as such, but that's quite obviously what it is. Likewise, giving every NPC who speaks to the players a name is a type of guiding action--in this case, it guides the players to think of NPCs as (simulated) actual people, rather than as walking plot devices. (I will confess, I don't enforce this rigidly--we've already had hundreds of named NPCs in my game, so having every single guard, footman, and courier get a name, personality, and backstory would be overwhelming.)

My apologies. I thought to do so, and decided against it. Here's the more relevant article, which leads to the others: Intro to Israeli Theory - Everyone is a GM

I very much appreciate the link. Simply put, googling "Israeli theory"....did not lead to good places. The best places it led were about debunking nasty conspiracy theories.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yup. I care about both the extent of agency and the number of dimensions.

My theory is that adding more dimensions doesn’t increase overall agency. If you had agency due to dimension 1 then by adding agency in dimension 2 you still have agency. Even if you you removed all agency from dimension 3 then you still have agency due to dimension 1 and dimension 2.

That is, as long as you have agency in one dimension then you have agency.

I guess the question I have for you is, if agency is having your choices matter then what is actually meant by more agency?