D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Aldarc]

So to maximize agency the DM should just let them do whatever they want?

What part of you, if any, thought that this was a good question to ask in good faith?

Edit: IMHO, the logical ad absurdum is uncalled for.

 

[Oofta]

You act as if the game world has a will of its own. You've decided all these things.... the attitude of the Sultan, the prevalent views of the efreet, the lack of alternatives than the Sultan (the ability says a local lord, not a specific local lord)... and so on.

All the above is up to you. You've decided that these things... these decisions you've already made... matter more than the player's idea. Now, this is perfectly fine. It just is so. You can't say this and then talk about how you allow player agency.

Agency is not binary. There is nothing about saying "no" in some cases that means that players are suddenly in a railroad with no options. Just because one option is not available does not mean there are no a dozen other options.

I'm playing Curse of Strahd right now, my PC has the sage background. There is no way that my feature of accessing a library to gain information is going to be available and that's okay because I knew what I was signing up for. For a variety of reasons, a lot of my choices are limited. I have less agency than players in my campaigns, but it's not like my agency has been reduced to 0.

 

[Oofta]

What part of you, if any, thought that this was a good question to ask in good faith?

It's just a discussion point. Agency is on a scale. As I just posted, agency is not a binary thing something you have or you do not. Sorry if it was poorly worded.

I limit agency in a few other ways other than backgrounds. I don't enjoy entertainment that is focused on evil characters, for example I'll never watch Breaking Bad. I don't want to run or play in a game for evil characters. So it's part of my opening pitch to potential players that their PC can do whatever they want but if it crosses a certain threshold I'll warn players that they are about to cross that line. If they continue their PC becomes an NPC.

I assume we all have certain social contracts, limitations we put on players and their dialog and action declarations. As long as the players know about it, I don't see an issue.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sure. But I'm not saying every time a player uses a flashback it does this. When it's successful there's no loss of agency. The issue happens when the flashback fails.

This was the comment I previously referenced: success means agency, failure means lost agency.

Success and failure alone have nothing to do with whether the player has agency or not, whether in general or in this specific mechanic. Real-world heists often run into troubles along the way; that's part of what makes all those "true crime" shows interesting.

 

[Aldarc]

It's just a discussion point. Agency is on a scale. As I just posted, agency is not a binary thing something you have or you do not. Sorry if it was poorly worded.

I limit agency in a few other ways other than backgrounds. I don't enjoy entertainment that is focused on evil characters, for example I'll never watch Breaking Bad. I don't want to run or play in a game for evil characters. So it's part of my opening pitch to potential players that their PC can do whatever they want but if it crosses a certain threshold I'll warn players that they are about to cross that line. If they continue their PC becomes an NPC.

I assume we all have certain social contracts, limitations we put on players and their dialog and action declarations. As long as the players know about it, I don't see an issue.

Okay. To be clear, I think that there is a difference between permitting the players to doing whatever they want and pointing out that the GM has the power, authority, and imagination over the setting's fiction in ways that value, acknowledge, and utilize the fictional contributions of the players and how they use their abilities to exercise their comparatively limited agency over the fiction.

FWIW, I'm not sure if this discussion about backgrounds will have much value going forward. It does seem that WotC is going to drop these sort of background features. But the reason is probably not necessarily for the reasons that you dislike them. I seem to recall a number of statements by WotC that when it comes to One D&D, they are trying to move away from "Mother May I" character features. Some of the background features, such as the Noble's background in question, can entail "Mother May I," as we are seeing in this discussion.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I absolutely agree with what you wrote here, and it really does get to the heart of agency for me. If a player has an ability like you're describing, I would absolutely expect it to function in the City of Brass or on Olympus or pretty much every other realm. Maybe that's because I'm reading fairy tales and mythological stories to my daughter, but the social dynamics of the "real world" do seem to be reflected in higher planes.

Beyond that: it's a character taking some initiative to turn the game session in terms of their character's background, and that's something I want to encourage. Beyond even that: it's going to make for an exciting encounter that the players might be talking about years later. It's going to make for a more interesting game than: no, you can't do that. Go back to what the adventure is telling you to do next.

I can't imagine a GM who wouldn't be chomping at the bit to make the character's lives more interesting and dangerous with such an experience. Especially if most of the group has neglected social skills and graces. It could make for a very interesting experience indeed.

Just saying "no" is a cop out. At the very least, I'd give the player a skill check in situations like this where you could determine if they could proceed or not. And not at some insane super-human difficulty level either, that's just masking saying "no."

We're not at the level of Fate or PbtA here, we're just letting a character make the game more interesting and wonderous by using one of their character's abilities. Now I would argue that introducing some of the elements from those games into D&D makes it better, but it also makes it a different game, which is not to everyone's tastes.

Yup. Very well said.

If I were to have a longer term story arc in the underdark and expect the PCs to survive they would eventually have to find a way to have relationships with the locals.

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.

But they did escape, didn't they? So the island wasn't actually inescapable, was it?

Putting PCs on an "inescapable prison island" is an invitation for them to try and escape. They got off the island because of a loophole... and how was that loophole determined? My guess is that you had it in mind already because it's what "made sense" from a world building view.

So... you're in a thread about player agency, and you decide to share an example where you say you would not let any player side resources help them, but instead allowed them to proceed per the solution you'd already determined to the problem?

Okay. Again, that's fine... but if you don't see how that shows low player agency, I don't know what else I or anyone else can say.

A PC using the Sailor background to get passage on a ship when wanted for murder.

Good point! If a captain decided to risk his neck to smuggle me and my friends out of the city when I was wanted for murder, you’d better believe that I would be ready to jump at any future adventure hook to help him get out of trouble 3 sessions from now!

Yup, these things are like content generators. New connections, new favors owed, possible enemies and all other kinds of entanglements.

It seems like a lot of folks don't want this kind of stuff. I suppose when you already have the next 3 sessions plotted out, you don't need new content for them.

A GM can always use their imagination to come up with a logical reason why a particular ability doesn't work.

A creative player and/or GM can nearly always come up with a logical reason why it can at least be tried.

Prioritising 'no' over 'yes' is prioritising the GM's preferred outcome over the player's agency. Doing it with any frequency means players have less agency in your game.

Yup, it's really that simple.

 

[hawkeyefan]

FWIW, I'm not sure if this discussion about backgrounds will have much value going forward. It does seem that WotC is going to drop these sort of background features. But the reason is probably not necessarily for the reasons that you dislike them. I seem to recall a number of statements by WotC that when it comes to One D&D, they are trying to move away from "Mother May I" character features. Some of the background features, such as the Noble's background in question, can entail "Mother May I," as we are seeing in this discussion.

Yeah, this does seem likely. I stopped paying any attention to the playtests a while back, but that much seemed clear even very early on. I hope they're replaced with more clearly worded versions... perhaps feats of some sort, which people seem to allow to work as expected without much DM interpretation.

 

[Raiztt]

That is a big IF and hiring a second party to do the actual work does not get cheers from me

I'm a good enough DM that I can get anything to work.

 

[Oofta]

Okay. To be clear, I think that there is a difference between permitting the players to doing whatever they want and pointing out that the GM has the power, authority, and imagination over the setting's fiction in ways that value, acknowledge, and utilize the fictional contributions of the players and how they use their abilities to exercise their comparatively limited agency over the fiction.

FWIW, I'm not sure if this discussion about backgrounds will have much value going forward. It does seem that WotC is going to drop these sort of background features. But the reason is probably not necessarily for the reasons that you dislike them. I seem to recall a number of statements by WotC that when it comes to One D&D, they are trying to move away from "Mother May I" character features. Some of the background features, such as the Noble's background in question, can entail "Mother May I," as we are seeing in this discussion.

I'm not sure they'll ever get rid of "Mother may I" without locking down things to a point I wouldn't adopt the new rules.

Take stealth for example. In a game over the weekend, the druid animal shaped into a giant hyena(?) with the goal of distracting a couple of ogres. She was hidden when she wild shaped but I let her know once she ran out into the street and past the ogres that they would see her. She was trying to distract them so the rest of the party could sneak into the building on the street. As a DM I have to decide if this made sense - a simplistic version of stealth would say no that the ogres could clearly see them. But I took into consideration that ogres are monumentally stupid. So even though the rest of the group stepped out into the open, I let them be stealthy. It was a fun scenario with multiple rounds of the hyena trying to draw off the ogres (it mostly worked) while the rest of the group snuck around.

But there were points where it was just "Can I do this?" and as a DM I had to make a judgement call. That's just kind of how the game works at certain points, I think the game works best if you can color outside the lines now and then. Rulings over rules and all that.

 

[Oofta]

Yup. Very well said.



But they did escape, didn't they? So the island wasn't actually inescapable, was it?

Putting PCs on an "inescapable prison island" is an invitation for them to try and escape. They got off the island because of a loophole... and how was that loophole determined? My guess is that you had it in mind already because it's what "made sense" from a world building view.

So... you're in a thread about player agency, and you decide to share an example where you say you would not let any player side resources help them, but instead allowed them to proceed per the solution you'd already determined to the problem?

Okay. Again, that's fine... but if you don't see how that shows low player agency, I don't know what else I or anyone else can say.



Yup, these things are like content generators. New connections, new favors owed, possible enemies and all other kinds of entanglements.

It seems like a lot of folks don't want this kind of stuff. I suppose when you already have the next 3 sessions plotted out, you don't need new content for them.



Yup, it's really that simple.

For a background feature to work it has to make sense in the narrative of the game as far as I'm concerned. Whether I'm playing or DMing.