D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sure, but the term is pretty clear in most usages outside of this one. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, look at board games. They can be wildly different in play, randomness, all kinds of factors, but we can meaningfully compare "agency" in the sense of "how much impact on victory do the decisions of players at the table have?"

There are games that have essentially none, games that have a lot, and a lot of games that use variability in such a way that players have only a little. The term has utility in that context because the frame is clear. We're mostly fighting with competing conceptions of what TTRPGs are here, such that we can't come to an agreement on what our frame is.

I agree with this. The trouble, of course, is with the second part of the statement. "Player agency" does not have a clear definition in TTRPGs, and is instead just used as a statement to browbeat others about one's own preferences.

There is the side-problem that most TTRPGs don't even have a clear "win/victory condition," which makes the use of the term ... difficult ... in comparison to boardgames.

 

[TwoSix]

I understand your point, but I don't agree with the term "agency" in that usage!

I mean, that's fine, but the title of the thread is "What is player agency to you?" If I wasn't trying to define the term, I'd kinda be threadcrapping, right?

If your recommendation is that "player agency" is bad jargon and we shouldn't use it, I'm totally OK with that.

I don't use the term myself, normally, but this thread is where the cool kids are, so I figured I'd try and figure it out.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The problem always comes back to people thinking "This game has less agency" is a normative statement, not simply an explanation of play priorities.

"Characters in an OSE game have less agency over the fiction than characters in FATE" shouldn't be a controversial statement. I mean, going back many years, the statement "I just want to have control of my character and what they attempt, not anything else" has been a standard reply for many people who prefer trad/simulationist play, what is that statement if not an explicit desire to have less agency over the fiction?

Again, I don't think that the statement that players in FATE have more authorship or authority over the fiction is controversial.

But agency? I don't even know what that means in that context. There are rules that allow them that authority.

And when a person who plays a trad game says that they want to have complete control over their character's declarations, then they are asserting that they want complete agency as well. To them, the concept of agency is simply different. Which is why I can't agree with your statements.

 

[mamba]

Okay, so what would be a good reason?

as I posted a while ago, a long running feud between your two houses, but there are plenty, you could be on a different world where no one knows you, it could be a friendly noble, but he is too scared to meet you because your powerful enemies let him know in no uncertain terms that doing so would be very detrimental to his health, …

 

[TwoSix]

Again, I don't think that the statement that players in FATE have more authorship or authority over the fiction is controversial.

Sure, I agree that authority sounds to me like the superior term, since agency generally carries connotations of "authority over the self", rather than over something else, like the fiction.

 

[Pedantic]

The problem always comes back to people thinking "This game has less agency" is a normative statement, not simply an explanation of play priorities.

"Characters in an OSE game have less agency over the fiction than characters in FATE" shouldn't be a controversial statement. I mean, going back many years, the statement "I just want to have control of my character and what they attempt, not anything else" has been a standard reply for many people who prefer trad/simulationist play, what is that statement if not an explicit desire to have less agency over the fiction?

Less agency over the fiction certainly. But, consider an explicated process for say, breaking into a neighboring room in a hotel in a 3.5 D&D vs. FATE. D&D has several spells that might be valuable, say, meld into stone, warp wood and passwall, all of which have a specific process that will output different board states. The lock could be picked, the wall could be broken, an employee could be impersonated, all of which have different and specified resolutions.

FATE has a much less specific relationship between a skill check and a given outcome, and the complicating factor of aspects, which might be as effective as allowing a player to announce they have a room key or are invited in in exchange for the same resource (a FATE point).

Because the actions in FATE lead to less divergent board states, there is less of what I've been calling "ludic agency." Player's choices have less variability in their impact on the desired outcome; most actions will contribute pretty equally to victory and the distance between victory and the current board state is less variable, giving the players less room to adopt variable strategies, and less impact for a "good" or "bad" choice in how they approach the problem.

More agency to influence the fiction provides less agency in the "game" or "mini-game" of solving a giving problem.

 

[Mort]

as I posted a while ago, a long running feud between your two houses,

So the noble agrees to meet to either 1) settle the feud 2) execute a red wedding style betrayal.

but there are plenty, you could be on a different world where no one knows you

But you have the bearing of a noble (that's what the noble background IS) and they could ALSO be curious to meet you. BECAUSE you're a foreign noble.

, it could be a friendly noble, but he is too scared to meet you because your powerful enemies let him know in no uncertain terms that doing so would be very detrimental to his health, …

This, even more than the previous is a 100% DM generated "I don't want to grant you an audience..." obstacle. The DM could, as easily, have the friendly noble figure think/say "Everyone is telling me not to meet you, but you have a noble bearing..." Which, frankly, is likely to lead to a more interesting result AND not tromp on the player's picked feature.

The DM can come up with an INFINITE number of reasons to not grant the audience (and invalidate the feature) - shouldn't the onus be on the DM to find a reason TO grant the audience and have the feature work? How many times is this likely to come up in most campaigns? If (as likely usual) it's not a whole lot, invalidating it even once is a lot.

 

[TwoSix]

More agency to influence the fiction provides less agency in the "game" or "mini-game" of solving a giving problem.

Sure, I would agree with that. Narratives games in general aren't really focused on "solving the problem", it's one of their core distinctions from D&D-type games, IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So the noble agrees to meet to either 1) settle the feud 2) execute a red wedding style betrayal.


But you have the bearing of a noble (that's what the noble background IS) and they could ALSO be curious to meet you. BECAUSE you're a foreign noble.



This, even more than the previous is a 100% DM generated "I don't want to grant you an audience..." obstacle. The DM could, as easily, have the friendly noble figure think/say "Everyone is telling me not to meet you, but you have a noble bearing..." Which, frankly, is likely to lead to a more interesting result AND not tromp on the player's picked feature.

The DM can come up with an INFINITE number of reasons to not grant the audience (and invalidate the feature) - shouldn't the onus be on the DM to find a reason TO grant the audience and have the feature work? How many times is this likely to come up in most campaigns? If (as likely usual) it's not a whole lot, invalidating it even once is a lot.

See, to me this is an argument to twist the fiction of the moment in order to allow a particular rules widget to work the way the rulebook says it does. I have zero interest in that philosophy, and have given up on games that promote it. Doesn't make it inherently bad or anything, but very much not for me.

 

[mamba]

So the noble agrees to meet to either 1) settle the feud 2) execute a red wedding style betrayal.

I am not saying that in any of the scenarios they could not still meet you, I am saying that any of these are reasons why they could decide not to grant an audience

The DM can come up with an INFINITE number of reasons to not grant the audience (and invalidate the feature) - shouldn't the onus be on the DM to find a reason TO grant the audience and have the feature work?

no, the DM should choose what makes the most sense given what he knows. If that is no audience, fine. If that is an audience that turns into the red wedding, also fine. If that means just a regular audience, no objections either