D&D General What is player agency to you?

[soviet]

Which is why I specified fictional reality. It should go without saying that nothing we do in the game world is real.

You say that, but then you claim that things that don't exist can be altered.

 

[Oofta]

You say that, but then you claim that things that don't exist can be altered.

It's a game. The only thing that matters is the fictional reality. Yes, the fictional reality exists as a shared construct of imagination. That fictional reality can be changed. I can't change real world reality any more than a fireball sets my kitchen table on fire.

 

[Oofta]

While it is described entirely in terms of what happens in the fiction - eg a PC interacts with a bit of architecture, or a PC attempts to convince a General to fight a lich king - we can have no idea what if any player agency was involved. Because player agency is a thing that occurs for real, in the real world; it's not something we imagine about the fictional world of the game.

If what happens when the player declares that their PC interacts with something or with someone is decided by the GM, then the player is exercising little agency.

So if we say that the player alters [fictional] reality in non-D&D games it's a falsehood. But then when a character in D&D doesn't have control outside of what their PC says or does, they have little agency. Yet other games do have agency. But how can they have more agency if the player can't alter the fictional reality in a way that the D&D PC cannot? Then you also insist that the GM controls the world outside of the characters just like D&D.

You don't see the inherent contradiction here? Either the player can alter the fictional reality outside of what their character does or they cannot. I'm not saying either is right or wrong and I don't think either is inherently better. I completely disagree with you on players in D&D having little agency, but that's a different issue.

 

[pemerton]

i see little real difference between being able to say 'XYZ is how griffin biology works' and 'i conveniently 'picked up' a scroll of revivify from somewhere' because it changes what the reality is outside the character.

This is the heart of it - 'players can't be trusted'.

Are you really saying that you play with people who would do that? And that if you did, no-one (including the GM) would be brave enough to say anything? 'Oh OK, adventure solved I guess, have a million XP'.

If I said "I see little real difference between being able to roll for hit and damage against an Orc and being able to conveniently declare that I just shot and killed Odin", people would laugh at me.

Yet these conversations happen again and again on premises that make no sense, and that are imputed to other RPGs and RPGers by posters who seem to have zero familiarity with how any other sort of RPGing works.

In my 4e campaign, the player of the invoker/wizard routinely told the rest of the table how magic works, what was happening with a particular magical phenomenon, what it might be possible for magic to achieve in a particular situation, etc. Here are just a couple of examples:

When they arrived, an Aspect of Vecna was waiting for them. It wanted to bargain to get the Eye of Vecna back from the party invoker. (Backstory to this is here.) The Eye is in the invoker's imp, placed there both to achieve a power up, and to stop Levistus (who placed the imp with the invoker) using the imp as a spy (by creating a Vecna-ish shield of secrecy). Unfortunately the party's conflict with Torog, as linked to above, had led to the invoker choosing the Raven Queen over Vecna as recipient of the souls of the Underdark's dead In retaliation, Vecna had used his control over the Eye to strike down the imp, which meant that the imp was currently lifeless (and hence the Eye inactive).

The bargaining was unsuccessful, however, as in an earlier session the invoker had already agreed to help the rest of the party try and destroy the Eye if they could find a way; and he now held to that agreement. The Aspect threatened a bit, but the PCs stood their ground and (recognising a superior force) it teleported away.

<snip>

But before even a short rest could be taken, the Aspect of Vecna reappeared bringing back up (undead cultists, lich vestiges and four demons under its control).

Despite having just come off the back of a 30th level encounter with the hags (and hangers-on), and having no recovery except action point refreshment (my one concession to a plea for something in lieu of a short rest), the players had no trouble dealing with this 28th level follow-up.

<snip>

While the other PCs cleaned up uptop, the paladin successfully solo-ed the now-bloodied Aspect, but (at the behest of the invoker) only knocked it unconscious (and then used his Marshal of Letherna daily utility to prevent any regeneration that might let it come back to consciousness). The invoker then came down and used an Undead Ward ritual, with the Aspect as a focus, to try and sever the connection between Vecna and his Eye. This was successful (between stats, feats and Sage of Ages the character has bonuses of around +40 to most of his ritual checks), so the imp came back to life, still powered up by the Eye but no longer subject to Vecna's influence.

The PCs (and players) then pondered how to get to Thanatos, on the 333rd layer of the Abyss. The invoker/wizard remembered that they had an Aspect of Orcus trapped back in the duergar hold that had been invaded by demons, and thought that it might have information about a secret way in.

<snip>

Attention now turned to the Aspect of Orcus - it had been trapped by channelling power from Vecna, and the player of the invoker/wizard had already pointed out that Vecna would be alerted if the PCs tried to steal secrets from it; now, a successful Religion check (made easily against a Hard DC, with a +40 bonus) allowed the invoker/wizard to make contact with Vecna and ask him to rip information of a secret entrance into Thanatos from the mind of the Aspect;

* Vecna indicated a willingness to do so, but only on conditions - that the trapped Aspect of Vecna (whom the invoker/wizard and the paladin had bound drawing upon the power of the Raven Queen) be released;

* The invoker/wizard would only do this if the paladin agreed, and the latter was not keen; I told the players that with a successful Insight check vs a Hard DC the invoker/wizard could read the secret from Vecna without needing to be overtly told - so the PC said to Vecna "We'll find another way" and then rolled the check, which missed by 1, but then he activated his Memory of One Thousand Lifetimes and rolled a 6, which was enough for a success and, he hoped, enough to mean that Vecna may not know that his mind had been read;

* With the secret entrance into Everlost, Orcus's palace of bones on Thanatos, now acquired, all that was required was to cast the Planar Portal to teleport there

The RPGs that I play have effective procedures and mechanics for resolving these player action declarations about what their PCs recall, or that are premised on assumptions about how (say) magic or griffons or Elven society or whatever works.

Roughly: if nothing is at stake then the action declaration succeeds and the posited memory is true. If something is at stake, then an appropriate check, or skill challenge, or whatever other mechanical resolution method is appropriate, is called for. If that check (or similar) succeeds, the player gets what they want for their PC. If it fails, the GM has licence to turn their premise or their hope back up on them.

These techniques have been well known for quite a while now - for instance they're found in the 2004 edition of Burning Wheel.

EDIT: My memory was faulty - the BW edition is 2005.

 

[Oofta]

If I said "I see little real difference between being able to roll for hit and damage against an Orc and being able to conveniently declare that I just shot and killed Odin", people would laugh at me.

Yet these conversations happen again and again on premises that make no sense, and that are imputed to other RPGs and RPGers by posters who seem to have zero familiarity with how any other sort of RPGing works.

In my 4e campaign, the player of the invoker/wizard routinely told the rest of the table how magic works, what was happening with a particular magical phenomenon, what it might be possible for magic to achieve in a particular situation, etc. Here are just a couple of examples:

The RPGs that I play have effective procedures and mechanics for resolving these player action declarations about what their PCs recall, or that are premised on assumptions about how (say) magic or griffons or Elven society or whatever works.

Roughly: if nothing is at stake then the action declaration succeeds and the posited memory is true. If something is at stake, then an appropriate check, or skill challenge, or whatever other mechanical resolution method is appropriate, is called for. If that check (or similar) succeeds, the player gets what they want for their PC. If it fails, the GM has licence to turn their premise or their hope back up on them.

These techniques have been well known for quite a while now - for instance they're found in the 2004 edition of Burning Wheel.

So if players can only change things about the fiction that have nothing at stake, then how to players in those games have more agency?

I'm not claiming that people can kill Odin "just because". I don't understand why you think players in some games have greater agency without being able to make significant changes to the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

You say that, but then you claim that things that don't exist can be altered.

It's a game. The only thing that matters is the fictional reality. Yes, the fictional reality exists as a shared construct of imagination. That fictional reality can be changed.

I've run a campaign for decades, they could easily contradict lore. On the other hand, if they ask to add lore outside of game time for something like this I'll work with them. I just want the final call because I want to make sure it fits my vision of the world so I can be consistent and logical with my own head canon.

The two posts from @Oofta seem to me to exhibit a degree of tension - is the fiction a shared construct, or is it one person's vision and "head canon"?

To me it seems obvious that the more the fiction is the product of one person's vision, the less agency others are exercising over the content of that fiction.

As far as "alteration" is concerned:

*If we count adding to the construct as altering it, then this happens all the time;

*In most RPGs, with a reasonably conventional GM/player divide, the method whereby players add to the construct is by announcing what it is that their PCs do;

*"Doing" can include thinking, remembering, and similar mental activities.​

There are at least four ways I know of to resolve I recall that X action declarations:

*The GM can say "yes" (this is good for low-stakes recollections);

*The GM can call for a check or other appropriate mechanical process to be applied (this is how Burning Wheel does it, how Classic Traveller does it with Streetwise, and how I did it in 4e D&D);

*The player can deplete a limited resource and simply declare their recollection true (this is how Prince Valiant handles some sorts of recollection, via player expenditure of a Storyteller Certificate);

*The GM can simply tell the player what it is that their PC recalls (this is how @Oofta and @CreamCloud0 appear to do it).​

To me, it seems obvious that the fourth of these ways subordinates player agency to GM agency.

 

[soviet]

It's one thing for a player to talk about their individual preferences and beliefs, but if the player is speaking for more than just their character it's different.

Actually, there I was talking about my game system where this is directly supported by the rules.

I've run a campaign for decades, they could easily contradict lore. On the other hand, if they ask to add lore outside of game time for something like this I'll work with them. I just want the final call because I want to make sure it fits my vision of the world so I can be consistent and logical with my own head canon.

Right. Players in your game have less agency. They can only add things to the gameworld if they clear it with you in advance and get your approval.

And then we go to the BS insulting attitude. It has nothing to do with players not being trusted...

I've played with people that if you give them an inch they will take a mile. People that are only happy when they, personally, dominate combat. So yes.

I mean, you say it isn't about not trusting players, but then immediately suggest that it is. The post I was responding to said that if allowed to have agency, players would claim to find powerful magic items just lying round on the floor.

 

[pemerton]

So if players can only change things about the fiction that have nothing at stake, then how to players in those games have more agency?

The passage you quoted shows that the position you've just attributed to me is false:

Roughly: if nothing is at stake then the action declaration succeeds and the posited memory is true. If something is at stake, then an appropriate check, or skill challenge, or whatever other mechanical resolution method is appropriate, is called for. If that check (or similar) succeeds, the player gets what they want for their PC. If it fails, the GM has licence to turn their premise or their hope back up on them.

The last sentence also sets out the principal technique that some RPGs use to increase player agency. As I've already posted multiple times upthread,

in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.​

 

[Oofta]

This is going nowhere. Have a good one.

 

[pemerton]

So if we say that the player alters [fictional] reality in non-D&D games it's a falsehood. But then when a character in D&D doesn't have control outside of what their PC says or does, they have little agency. Yet other games do have agency. But how can they have more agency if the player can't alter the fictional reality in a way that the D&D PC cannot? Then you also insist that the GM controls the world outside of the characters just like D&D.

You don't see the inherent contradiction here?

There is no contradiction. What you are ignoring is the differences on the GM side. I will now post this for about the sixth time in this thread:

in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.​

By the way, it's possible to run 4e D&D in the way I've just described - I know because I've done it. I know from experience that AD&D can also be played in this way, although it is not as robust and now that I know of systems that are better for this approach I wouldn't go back to it.