D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Maxperson]

The passage in the PHB that I quoted does not say that players can make suggestions. It says that players can establish quests, which are a technical concept within the game - story frameworks within which particular encounters are located. The DMG passage tells the GM to encourage their players to come up with these quests - that is, for players to establish the story frameworks for the play of the game.

Players have been establishing quests since at least 1e.

Players: "Hey DM. You mentioned that there is a tribe of barbarians to the north?"
DM: "Yep. The We're Cold But Are Too Stubborn to Leave tribe."
Players: "We've decided that we are going to go north and install Bruce here as the new chief of the tribe."

A player created quest!

There is no equivalent of that paragraph in the Moldvay Basic rulebook, the AD&D or AD&D 2nd ed PHBs, or the 3E PHB.

You don't need it. 4e just formalized something that didn't need to be formalized and has existed since the game began. Players have always had the option to decide, including inventing, what it is that they want their character to pursue.

Unless the DM railroads the players into doing what he wants them to do. But then, if we're going to include railroading to stop players creating their own quests, then 4e DMs can do that as well.

 

[Mort]

World building logic trumps what are supposed to be minor story telling benefits from backgrounds. If it logically makes no sense, I'm not going to break that sense of the campaign world being real-ish by giving people a mystical override to accomplish something that is just not reasonable. I also interpret "You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to." as local to wherever you hold your title. Because that actually makes sense to me.

See for me, it IS logical and not the least bit magical.

There is large amounts of fiction (not to mention some real world examples) of Nobles doing exactly this. Or criminals who just know how to connect with the criminal element wherever they are - even in a weird foreign land.

For me, the feature (and those like it) are a fun way to help the campaign along and can easily fully comply with any worldbuilding.

 

[Maxperson]

So someone wants to have a meeting with the President of the United States. They claim they "deserve" an audience because they are the Prelate of Alpha Centauri B. Would that work? Let's take another example. The group is lost in the underdark. Everyone they've encountered is hostile and tries to either kill or enslave them. One of the PCs has the criminal background that has the feature that they can get a message to their criminal contact. I'm not going to invent a (relatively) friendly smuggler just so they can pass a message along. Perhaps once they figure out how to survive and somehow establish at least a temporary truce and relationship with the locals it can happen. But when every time they encounter other humanoids it's quickly followed by "Roll for initiative"? No.

I'm not going to twist world building lore that way. If that means I'm not the right DM for you, so be it.

Yeah. There's an unwritten, "if it's reasonable to be able do so." attached to those abilities. "You can get an audience with a local noble, if it's reasonable to be able to do so."

 

[Oofta]

We started talking about one audience being denied, that very much is the exception, and that still is what I am focusing on. I agree that 'you get no audience anywhere except in your local neighborhood' (interpretation of local that recently popped up) would be a lot more frequent and worth being clarified in session 0.

Since I interpret it that way, it is something I discuss with people if they take the noble background. Take another random feature, the Investigator " ...local law enforcement has firm opinions about you, viewing you as either a nuisance or one of their own." If you're new to a city and there are no connections to wherever you came from, how is the local law enforcement going to have any opinions about you one way or another? That and the "...you can gain access to a place or an individual related to a crime you’re investigating." For me, an investigator is going to have a huge leg up on any of these activities but it's still going to take more than just reading off the feature from the background in many cases. The PC will know how to game the system but if the place the crime was committed on was another place of existence, you're still going to need a way to get there.

I'm reminded of a game long, long ago in a century far far away. I was playing a thief and we came into town. As soon as we entered town I was approached and told that I had to pay tribute to the local thieves guild. How did they know I was a thief? Who knows! But somehow they magically did, even before I had a chance to even speak to anyone in town. That, to me, was just plain stupid.

The world needs to make sense to me when I DM.

 

[TwoSix]

World building logic trumps what are supposed to be minor story telling benefits from backgrounds. If it logically makes no sense, I'm not going to break that sense of the campaign world being real-ish by giving people a mystical override to accomplish something that is just not reasonable. I also interpret "You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to." as local to wherever you hold your title. Because that actually makes sense to me.

I think you're in the right on this one, even coming from a more narrativist direction; we might differ on some of the specific use cases, but I agree with you in principle.

Even using narrative techniques, a player declared move/action still has to pass a credibility test. Saying that finding a criminal contact or a noble when you're lost in the depths of the Astral Sea isn't a credible narration is entirely appropriate.

 

[Maxperson]

The Noble feature isn't a con, they ARE the prelate of Alpha centauri. And if that's the case, you better believe the president would take that meeting (and of course have the Men In Black Ready for action....)

That's one of the reasons that a player cannot pick the noble title in my game. I have to approve any nobility, because nobility is really nobility. You have resources, guards, sometimes even armies depending on your title. You also tend to have responsibilities that can occasionally hamper adventuring. It's a HUGE boon, well beyond the ridiculous background benefits, and sometimes a hindrance.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think you're in the right on this one, even coming from a more narrativist direction; we might differ on some of the specific use cases, but I agree with you in principle.

Even using narrative techniques, a player declared move/action still has to pass a credibility test. Saying that finding a criminal contact or a noble when you're lost in the depths of the Astral Sea isn't a credible narration is entirely appropriate.

That’s a fascinating insight.

 

[Oofta]

That's one of the reasons that a player cannot pick the noble title in my game. I have to approve any nobility, because nobility is really nobility. You have resources, guards, sometimes even armies depending on your title. You also tend to have responsibilities that can occasionally hamper adventuring. It's a HUGE boon, well beyond the ridiculous background benefits, and sometimes a hindrance.

If someone wants to have the noble background in my campaign they have to explain why they have no more influence or wealth than other PCs in the group. Are they the 5th child with no chance of inheriting anything of significance? The black sheep of the family who's had their ties cut? The title they have once meant something but now it's just a title and coat of arms? Something.

I've been in games where a player really abused the noble background, it was annoying to say the least.

 

[Mort]

I've been in games where a player really abused the noble background, it was annoying to say the least.

With me, abuse is a separate issue, and would likely be addressed out of game.

The big problem, for me, is abuse of something like this would be spotlight hogging (in addition to anything else) - and I'm not ok with that.

 

[SteveC]

But another scenario. Let's say you find yourself on a remote island because you were shipwrecked. If there are natives, friendly or not, they can't get off the island any more than you. I have a "prison island" in my campaign - escaping the island was a major task, considered impossible by every inhabitant. The PCs only got out because of a loophole. Virtually no one escapes the island. The whole point of the island is that you can't get out. There are no guards to bribe, no communication to the outside world at all. There is literally no way to contact anyone, much less your criminal contact.

The world needs to make logical sense to me as DM. Sometimes that limits options, especially things that are supposed to be minor benefits from backgrounds.

Once again, in both of these instances, I need to ask myself "what am I doing here? What do I want this part of the game to be about?" And then I frame that in terms of the group. Outside of this group at this time, is anyone else ever going to interact with these locations?

So if I'm running a scenario on a remote island, and I have a criminal and a noble character (hey, one of them is a scoundrel, the other's a princess), I ask myself: what do I do with this remote island to make it interesting for my group? What is my group going to want to do here (beyond get off of it, of course).

So the criminal might say "hey, this is a place that's never heard of my syndicate. But there are people who are criminals here, so that's an opportunity to establish my group in this distant land." And that character might want to integrate with that part of the culture, do some work for them, buy and sell some things and so on, so that they can expand the reach of their syndicate in the future. Plenty of opportunities for quests there and built in plot hooks! And it again makes that choice matter.

The noble might want to get involved with whatever power structure exists on the island. Who runs things? Once again, they might use a very different approach to try and get involved with the powers that run the island. And again, that's the choices the player made for their character shaping what they want to do at the same time as it gives the GM options about what to do next.

And as far as the prison, I can't think of a better place to put members of the character's crime family than a prison. As you're designing the factions and power bases, you know what one of them is. For the noble, I'm sure there might also be some disgraced nobles in the prison that make up their own faction and the player might become a part of. Once again, the players have built in plot hooks that are going to get them moving without you doing a thing. Maybe there will even be tension between the two characters.

In both of those cases, you're making what the players did in choosing their backgrounds matter and linking them to the game. You created the remote island and the prison, so you got to choose who was there. Making them align with the characters in the game makes it more interesting to me if I'm one of your players. In a lot of cases, the way you're describing the game is going to keep me at arms length from getting involved with it. And maybe that's what you want to do, having a more "this is the world, and you're just a small part in it," is an approach that it seems a fair number of GMs like to do. I've played in a lot of games like that over the years and they make me say "I'm dropping into this world and then I'll leave it," rather than being a real part of it.

What it does for me is make me say "I wish I was in that party that's more interesting than ours." I think it's been said a number of times already, but it's always possible to say "no" as a GM and have it be logically consistent, since you made up the world and put everything in it. I'd just ask how it's better world building to do that as opposed to building it around what your group does with their characters.

I really do get how a lot of the things I'm talking about are more based in other rule systems, but nothing I'm talking about breaks any existing D&D rules.