D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Scott Christian]

Has a thread about player agency on this thread ever not devolved into people trying to explain a style of play that doesn't exist at the average D&D table.

 

[mamba]

There seems to be a conflation, here, of events and probabilities in the real world, and events and probabilities in the fiction.

no, the probabilities are clearly different, as there is a 0% chance of finding a +1 sword in my world while every other D&D fighter has one

What is the same for both is that the probability of finding something in a location is independent of how much the person wants it to be in that location

What is the likelihood, in the real world, that the imagined events in a RPG will reflect the preferences of the participants? Reasonably high. What about the player participants? Reasonably high, if those players have agency. In a game with high player agency, if the player is hoping and expecting that their PC might find a sword in a cupboard, then there is a good chance that such a thing will come to pass in the fiction.

yes, because the DM caters to the player’s wishes more than the world I live in does to mine. That still does not mean that the probability is variable, based on whether the char ‘searches the cupboard’ or ‘searches the cupboard for a sword +1’, it does however mean it is higher in general

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Has a thread about player agency on this thread ever not devolved into people trying to explain a style of play that doesn't exist at the average D&D table.

No.

Because inevitably, any and all comparisons are about your game being played with terrible people, as opposed to my game that is being played with awesome people that communicate and get along.

 

[FrogReaver]

The answer to this question is fairly straightforward:


In Burning Wheel, it is the job of the GM "to challenge and engage the players" by "introducing complications to the story and consequences to the players' choices" (Revised p 268; the same text is found in Gold). And as pp 12-13 explain,

players take on the roles of characters . . . represented by a series of numbers . . . and a list of player-determined priorities. . . . Manipulating these numbers and priorities within situations presented by the game master (GM) is what the game is all about. . . .​

​

The conflicts of the characters' aforementioned priorities creates (sic) situations for the players to resolve, and resolving conflicts (and creating new ones) is what play is all about.​

So we shouldn't even be hearing about a cupboard, or a pickler called Horace, or the possibility of a magic sword, unless it somehow pertains to a player-authored priority, and hence is part of a situation in which challenges to those priorities, and/or conflicts, complications or consequences resulting from them, are present.

The only time a player declared a Scavenging test to find a magic item, in my play, was when the PCs, after being marooned in the Bright Desert, had successfully made their way north to the Abor-Alz, and to the tower where the sorcerer PCs had studied with his brother (as per his backstory, which included two Rogue Wizard lifepaths; a hostile relationship with his brother, with the hostility pertaining to the reasons why they had been driven out of their tower; an affiliation with a sorcerous cabal, and a reputation as a minor illusionist; his PC sheet also included a picture of the tower, a photo of an Indian castle taken from the interwebs).

At the start of the session where the PCs had returned to the tower, the player announced an additional bit of backstory - prior to being driven out of the tower, his PC had been crafting a nickel-silver mace (the Falcon's Claw) in anticipation of enchanting it. This did not violate any credibility test, and in fact seemed rather consonant with the already-established character and backstory. The PC therefore searched through the ruined tower, looking for the Falcon's Claw. A Scavenging check was called for, and failed. Thus the PC did not find what he was looking for: instead, he found something unlooked for - cursed black arrows in what had been his brother's workroom, which were significant because they seemed to indicate that his brother had been evil before the downfall of their tower, whereas the PC's plans for reconciliation with his brother had all rested on a premise that it was only afterwards that his brother had been corrupted.

This is an example of how searching is framed and resolved in a game that relies on player agency rather than GM notes to handle such things.

As an outside observer, the player introducing 'the Falcon's Claw' doesn't seem to really be related to the Beliefs, or if so only in the most tangential of ways. I mean it's good to have a more concrete example, but it kind of seems the Falcon's Claw was established in the fiction more by player fiat than anything else. Though maybe there's more to the example and more details will reveal this assessment to be wrong.

 

[FrogReaver]

No.

Because inevitably, any and all comparisons are about your game being played with terrible people, as opposed to my game that is being played with awesome people that communicate and get along.

If only D&D had put in the rules, don't be a terrible person, communicate and get along. So much bad gaming could have been prevented!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Has a thread about player agency on this thread ever not devolved into people trying to explain a style of play that doesn't exist at the average D&D table.

Not to my knowledge. I get told, point-blank, that people just fiat declare they win everything forever, or that GMs are ridden roughshod all the time. I ask for example games, and get told "oh, all of 'em!" It's quite infuriating, and I think I've had enough of it for the next month or so.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If only D&D had put in the rules, don't be a terrible person, communicate and get along. So much bad gaming could have been prevented!

I don't think that D&D can accomplish what countless religions, philosophies, self-help books, and kindergartens have failed to do over the centuries.

Don't be a jerk seems like an easy rule to live by, yet we all seem to fail to do it, each and every day.

 

[Oofta]

This thread is tagged "D&D general". 4e D&D is a version of D&D. In 4e D&D, players get to establish quests - that is to say, adventure frameworks that the GM is obliged to flesh out. This has more in common with the play procedures of Burning Wheel (where the GM's job is to frame scenes that will challenge player-authored PC Beliefs) than with (say) the modules Dead Gods (2nd ed AD&D) or Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (3E D&D), where all the quests and goals of play are already established by the adventure author.

Gygax's AD&D is a version of D&D. In his advice to players near the end of his PHB, Gygax makes it clear that it is the players' role to set goals for play, and to do their best to control what scenes are framed (he doesn't use the language of scene-framing; he focuses on entering/exploring dungeon rooms - but in dungeon-crawl play, to open a door is to trigger the framing of a scene). This is quite different from an approach to play which assumes that the players will proceed through a series of scenes determined by the GM (say, the 3E module Speaker in Dreams).

The idea that D&D has - across all its iterations - some monolithic uniformity in how it handles player agency is just wrong.

Player originated quests are just a suggestion in 4E, a paragraph at the end of 2 pages on quests that says (emphasis added) "[As DM] You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure." It's "should", not "must".

Quests in 4E are just a general way of codifying story arcs and goals, details of what happens are always left up to the DM. None of this is really any different from how I've ever played D&D in any edition. There's never been an issue with a player saying "I would like to do X." Such things are just a outline or goal that the player suggests. The DM is still the one taking the basic idea and making it happen. It's not the player giving any details, it's that their character Inigo Definitely-not-Montoya wants to become a great swordsman so he can hunt down the man who killed his father. In 5E, that's something that would likely be part of the PC's background.

I've always worked with individuals if they want to do something special. For the most part, goals in my games are driven by player decisions. It has nothing to do with edition.

Last, but not least, I disagree that this has much to do with player agency one way or another. It will always be up to the group of what kind of campaign they pursue. A module with clearly defined goals and targets? A sandbox campaign? Something in-between? All editions of D&D have been the same in this fashion.

 

[Oofta]

No.

Because inevitably, any and all comparisons are about your game being played with terrible people, as opposed to my game that is being played with awesome people that communicate and get along.

How dare you tell me I don't get along with my players!

 

[mamba]

So we shouldn't even be hearing about a cupboard, or a pickler called Horace, or the possibility of a magic sword, unless it somehow pertains to a player-authored priority

that sounds like a very strict interpretation of the text you quoted. I did not see anything that said the GM cannot introduce any elements and they all have to be based on what the players mentioned

At the start of the session where the PCs had returned to the tower, the player announced an additional bit of backstory - prior to being driven out of the tower, his PC had been crafting a nickel-silver mace (the Falcon's Claw) in anticipation of enchanting it. This did not violate any credibility test

That sounds like he made it up on the fly, not something he just forgot to mention… while I agree that it is possible that he might just mention it now (credibility test), this comes pretty close to wishing a +1 sword into existence. He was just one roll away from accomplishing that