D&D General What is player agency to you?

[nevin]

Another question is how much agency do people want, and how much agency is beneficial? You could maximize agency by just having every player write a story about what their PC does. Wouldn't really be a game, but with no constraints whatsoever it seems to maximize agency.

In other words, even if people agree on how to calculate amounts of agency then there also has to be a discussion of whether more agency, however measured, is always a good thing.

how much agency is beneficial is how much do the players care about their decisions mattering. I played in one game where I didn't have any agency. It was one of those stupid dark gritty the world is ending and the railroad did not bend. So me and the rest of the players decided we were hero's and we rufused to give up. We died, we rerolled, we died we rerolled till the DM gave up. We never accepted his view of how we were supposed to act. We refused to give up the agency he was attacking. Never forget no matter how much the DM tries, they can only take your agency if you are willing to let them. Just walking away from the game is agency. Agency can be surrendered it cannot be taken. many a game has blown up over the idea that agency was something the DM could just seize.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

how much agency is beneficial is how much do the players care about their decisions mattering. I played in one game where I didn't have any agency. It was one of those stupid dark gritty the world is ending and the railroad did not bend. So me and the rest of the players decided we were hero's and we rufused to give up. We died, we rerolled, we died we rerolled till the DM gave up. We never accepted his view of how we were supposed to act. We refused to give up the agency he was attacking. Never forget no matter how much the DM tries, they can only take your agency if you are willing to let them. Just walking away from the game is agency. Agency can be surrendered it cannot be taken. many a game has blown up over the idea that agency was something the DM could just seize.

This reminds me of a GM I played with many decades ago. He was part of the friend group, which is probably why people humored him as long as they did in games.

First, he was the GM type who should just sit and write the Great American Novel, for all the railroading he wants to do. Even down to the point where, we found a clue in a news printing. too small to read, we went to look on the microfiche - department was closed. We went to Walgreens trying to find a magnifying glass. No luck. Anywhere in a large city, no magnifying glasses.

During a discussion, he said that his idea of heroic action was, out of six times: the party wins once, they stalemate twice and the enemies win three times. That's insane. He also complained about no one wanting to interact with the ocean of plot he was giving them. A friend told him, yes, there may be an ocean of plot, but we're all in a train car passing on the railroad bridge over it. There wasn't an opportunity to interact with it in any way

 

[FrogReaver]

how much agency is beneficial is how much do the players care about their decisions mattering. I played in one game where I didn't have any agency. It was one of those stupid dark gritty the world is ending and the railroad did not bend. So me and the rest of the players decided we were hero's and we rufused to give up. We died, we rerolled, we died we rerolled till the DM gave up. We never accepted his view of how we were supposed to act. We refused to give up the agency he was attacking. Never forget no matter how much the DM tries, they can only take your agency if you are willing to let them. Just walking away from the game is agency. Agency can be surrendered it cannot be taken. many a game has blown up over the idea that agency was something the DM could just seize.

The nature of play is that even the big dog let’s the little dog win sometimes. Your post comes across to much as my way or the highway, which is directly at odds with how real play works.

 

[nevin]

The nature of play is that even the big dog let’s the little dog win sometimes. Your post comes across to much as my way or the highway, which is directly at odds with how real play works.

no I'm more than willing to flex. But at the point the DM starts telling me and or other players why thier decsions won't work and how bad it's going to get, that DM better have a way to make my "hero" in game have a reason to play it his way. The railroad in his/her head isn't in my head and I don't live in other people's heads anyway. I will admit that when someone pushes I either push or stand there and smile. Force, coercion, goading, loss of abilities, items etc won't stop my character from going for the goal. Just like in real life if someone tells me I'm confused and my goal should be xxxxx. I politely smile and move on towards my goal as defined on the players history that me and the DM created. Generally the few times i've encountered stuff like i posted, the DM can't understand anyone acting different than they would and therefore they try to railroad the game the way "it would have happened". I had a DM do the "You wake up it was all a dream" 4 times in a row till I told him, "If I wake up again i'm done. " My decisions are my decisions, good, bad, right, wrong, DM gets to give me the consequences. I'm ok with that. If I'm enjoying the company and the company is enjoying me I can die 100 times and still have fun at the table. I've noticed the guys that like railroads can't enjoy me enjoying my decisions.

 

[pointofyou]

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?

The question isn't whether you have agency. The question is how much agency you have or how much you have agency over. Your theory seems to indicate that having agency over one thing is the same as having agency over three or four things which seems palpably false.

No agency is the GM tells the players what the characters do without asking for action declarations or any other input from the players. Possibly the GM has decided everything ahead of time.

Minimal agency is the players get to declare actions but the GM decides and narrates all outcomes. Possibly the GM has a story in mind.

More agency than that is the players get to decide what success looks like and probably what failure looks like. Possibly the GM is reacting to what the players are doing.

More agency than that opens up the possibility that the players get to decide what's in the world or what the story of the game is about.

It seems to me that if you have agency over what success and failure look like then you must have more agency than if the GM is narrating all outcomes with no regard for your wishes and if you have agency over what is in the world and/or what the story of the game is about then you must have more agency than that.

 

[nevin]

Many attempts to complicate what should be a simple question. players should have agency to make thier own decisions and expect reasonable consequences based on those decisions.

in my opinion.

DM should have agency to decide reality and make decsions of what the consequences should be when actions occur.

If at any point the players start trying to tell DM how to decide consequences, right, wrong or not they are impinging upon the DM agency.
If at any point the DM railroads, or tries to tell the player how to decide (other than a reasonable story line. Not saying the thieves guild might not tie up the character and threaten them), then they are impinging on player agency. (Though repeated blunt use of such storylines would be impinging on character agency if character felt it was unfair. (yeah we dm's have to worry about what players think is unfair))

As long as those two are allowed to function in unison without one side or the other demanding it be done differently then the agency that is needed to keep the game "fun" (my opinon obviously) is on good ground.

As point of you pointed out. One side has agency over actions, the other side has agency over consequences. Never should either side be impinging on each other in a perfect world.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And if the 'consequences' aren't reasonable?

 

[hawkeyefan]

And if the 'consequences' aren't reasonable?

Simply trust in the DM! Trust is a one way street, everyone knows that!

 

[FrogReaver]

Simply trust in the DM! Trust is a one way street, everyone knows that!

Exactly! Trust that when I beat you to a Pulp that you will like it!

 

[nevin]

And if the 'consequences' aren't reasonable?

then start discussions and either fix expectations or leave game. If you can't agree on that then no point in moving forward.