D&D General What is player agency to you?

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Yes, I understand that. My point is that the DM is the one that decides what makes sense in the setting.

Adhering to your concept of the setting isn’t wrong. It’s perfectly fine. All it means is you care more about that than about player agency.

Sometimes failure and frustration is what makes the game enjoyable. I don't want to play on "easy" mode, so always succeeding would not be the game for me.

No one’s suggesting that.

It is definitely established beforehand. 100%. That is part of the point. Circumstances can dictate the feature's accessibility. It could have just as easily been we were inland at the dwarven mine and told we needed to go to the island. So, I would go to the nearest port town and look for passage using my feature. Then surprise! When we get there, it is barricaded. To me, that is legitimate too if the DM had already had plans for that. (Although, a great DM would have foreshadowed or placed it as part of the military dynamics. You know, the old caravan riding empty two days from town complaining about how no goods are coming in or out of the port. But maybe we were stupid and didn't take the road. Maybe we went off-road to search for some ranger herbs or something.)
And yes, it can definitely lead to something interesting. But, in my experience, sometimes a DM has to plan for those things. Therefore, I wouldn't mind waiting to see what they had planned.

I mean, whenever there’s a blockade like this, there are people looking to break (or sneak) through.

I think the big question here is, what’s the reason for the blockade? Is it meant to be some kind of obstacle to be dealt with? Or is it more of a meta construct, meant to keep the characters contained in some way? If that’s the case, what’s the reason for keeping them there?

I think here you are placing too much liability on the DM. I have seen many DMs try. I have seen them try to work things in. I have seen them ask questions out of game to see where these types of players wanted to go. And almost all the responses are: "I took it for the skills."

I don’t think I’m placing too much on the DM here. I acknowledge that some players may be indifferent to their character’s background. But even if they are, it doesn’t mean the DM needs to be.

Nobles (and many other backgrounds) suggest all kinds of potential fodder for play. Family members, obligations, powerful enemies… the DM should bring this stuff into play. Doesn’t have to be all at once, but ease them in. Get the players used to the idea. Show them what backgrounds should be.

Then maybe they’ll start picking them for more than just the skills.

I feel you are looking at this as a DM not putting in the work. Sometimes, the work can be put in, and the result is still the same.

I think it’s more that I’m saying the DM shouldn’t ignore when the player does the work.

So could it be the DM? Yes. In my experience (because I have had many great DMs) it never was. It was always the player not caring about their character's background. Mind you, they cared about their character, but they did not care about its background. To them, it was a means to start progressing their character - which can be fun in its own way.

I don’t really get how someone could care about their character but not their background. In my experience, sometimes players are far too precious about backstory.

I agree, interpretation can go both ways. I have said such. But why fault the DM that interprets it the other way? Because it doesn't allow player exactly what they want? That seems petty to me, especially when every DM I know would have allowed its use 9 out of 10 times.

I’m not faulting anyone. It’s a choice. Both choices are valid.

Because, to be clear, we are discussing circumstances that are not normal. We are discussing extraneous circumstances that lead the DM to say no. They are not doing it to just say no. They are not doing it to force their will. They are doing it because there is a circumstances that tells them, not here, not now, or not with this person.

But those circumstances were crafted by the DM. So I don’t know if I can agree with the distinction you’re making here.

You're probably going to let them get out of the situation somehow, why not through a feature they have and want to use?

It would seem that most people only want the solutions the DM has already imagined to work.

 

[clearstream]

We had "session zeros", and many players said they wanted "player agency" in the games. Of course, no one could tell me what that was other then the "internet buzz words". So I got a lot of "player agency is when the player feels fully responsible for their own actions (whether they were guided or not). As long as the player feels like their hand wasn't forced, they feel like their actions in a game are their own." Or "Player agency is whenever the player performs any input to make any (informed) gameplay decision." Or "Player agency is the ability of a player to affect the course of the game."

So to me, that is all Word Salad. And without anyone having a definition with any bias in reality...we just start the games. In my Classic Old School Hard Fun Killer DM Railroad Tycoon Unfair Unbalanced Style.

So, now, six game sessions in...a couple players in each game are complaing about the "Lack of Agency" in my games. They don't "feel" like they have any "player agency", but they are not sure "why". The rest of the players are fine, or don't care.

For clarity, Two Big Things I notice:

1. I'm not a fan of the players or characters. And the big part of this for me is I don't give out advice or help to the players ever. As the DM I answer factual questions, but not "Hey, is it a good idea for my 1st level halfling bard to dive into the Pool of Deadly Lava and look for treasure?'' I know a great many fan DMs would say "No, wiat, don't do that your character will die", I am NOT one of them. So..in the wacky way: because I don't tell the players what to do...they feel they lack Agency.

2.My game is loaded with lore and information. It's one of my favorite things. Even the player that just coasts through the game will have to go through a little. But then they would have to remember things and use things in gameplay. And plenty of casual players refuse to do this. They are "forced" to listen to flavor text, but they never speak to NPCs in character or interact much with the game world. Their character walks into an inn common room and sees an open book in the fire place that is not being consumed by the flames...and they just ignore it and say "when are we going to fight something?" This comes up a lot for the "informed agency" thing. Players say they "don't know stuff", so they can't make informed decisions. My counter is the players are unwilling to role play, interact or immerse themselves in the game to learn anything. And the classic "they don't write anything down"

So again, I turn to the 'Net. What is player agency to you? What "should" a DM do? What "should" a player do?

I believe a crucial question to ask is: how do you want the ludic player duality (player as simultaneously audience and author) to be expressed? The ludic duality seperates playful exploration and story creation from other forms. The answer to "how?" depends on your shared purposes. Deciding purposes happens - as I believe @Umbran rightly implied - even before session 0, when you form a group with a system and setting in mind.

So in order to answer your question, you need to ask some questions of your own. You've named two things that are important to you - don't give out advice, incorporate a high-level of lore. Those are are obviously in tension: if you are not forthcoming with information, then how can players best benefit from your lore?* However you resolve that, you still haven't asked players what their purposes in playing are.

You will be able to solicit from players clues about what they want, and form those (along with your own wants) into an agenda. That agenda will inform where you must give players agency, and where your group will want to assign agency to you; such as over adversaries, and perhaps lore if that is one of the strengths you bring to the table (I would not rule out the possibility that some of your players could make equally strong contributions to lore.)

I'd suggest starting there: asking your players some questions. In saying that, I am also saying that while it is helpful to understand common preferences, and while some very useful agendas have already been formed and many game texts have mechanics that explicitly enable their expression, no one today has any robust empirical basis for giving a finite list of possible agendas.


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*EDIT @hawkeyefan's post helped me better grasp the point I wanted to make here. If it is part of your agenda to supply an abundance of lore then the steps needed are to find out if players signed up for that? If so, the agency they will require is over how that your lore is explored, and the capacities their characters have to explore it will need to be responded to by you with a bias toward effectiveness.

I don’t think I’m placing too much on the DM here. I acknowledge that some players may be indifferent to their character’s background. But even if they are, it doesn’t mean the DM needs to be.

Backgrounds situate characters in lore. It would be consistent with a lore-promoting agenda to care about their backgrounds. And through caring about them, provide players avenues into lore.

Nobles (and many other backgrounds) suggest all kinds of potential fodder for play. Family members, obligations, powerful enemies… the DM should bring this stuff into play. Doesn’t have to be all at once, but ease them in. Get the players used to the idea. Show them what backgrounds should be.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, one edition of the game and scattered bits from the next one is not much compared to all the rest of D&D. I wouldn't say "fundamental premise", but D&D is more that way than yours, and I see no reason to insist on the exception.

I think if there are exceptions to the premise in 4e and 5e, that suggests the premise is not fundamental. It is a possible premise for some approaches to D&D. I was departing from the premise in the second half of the 1980s playing AD&D, and I don't think I'm that much of a special snowflake.

 

[dave2008]

I think the second quote here answers the first: it asserts that a fundamental premise of D&D is players-explore-the-GM's-world.

That still doesn't, to me, imply D&D can't be played differently. I guess I am biased since I know D&D can be played many ways and maintain its fundamental nature (to me). Therefore, I always take these type of statements as personal opinion, not declarations of fact.

 

[dave2008]

We had "session zeros", and many players said they wanted "player agency" in the games. Of course, no one could tell me what that was other then the "internet buzz words". So I got a lot of "player agency is when the player feels fully responsible for their own actions (whether they were guided or not). As long as the player feels like their hand wasn't forced, they feel like their actions in a game are their own." Or "Player agency is whenever the player performs any input to make any (informed) gameplay decision." Or "Player agency is the ability of a player to affect the course of the game."

So to me, that is all Word Salad.

Just looked at the OP and just realized that if you think the definitions above are just "word salad" you are likely going to have a hard time understanding the issue. I think your in a car that can't turn left, you may want to go in for tune up.

 

[pemerton]

That still doesn't, to me, imply D&D can't be played differently. I guess I am biased since I know D&D can be played many ways and maintain its fundamental nature (to me). Therefore, I always take these type of statements as personal opinion, not declarations of fact.

My approach comes from my own experiences, I guess.

I am a bit interested in, but not especially good at, classic D&D play. I GMed and played it, clumsily, for the first half of the 80s without really knowing what I was doing. I still try it out for a session or two once every year or two, normally digging up an old module and using my modified set of AD&D rules.

In the second half of the 80s I played a lot of AD&D (using the original OA, and also an all-thieves game) that in retrospect I can identify as "vanilla narrativist" in the Forge sense. But I've never been into the sort of GM-driven, setting-heavy, players-bite-the-GM's-hook approach that has been very popular since the mid-to-late 80s up until the present day.

From 2009 to 2016 most of my RPGing was 4e D&D, and I spent a lot of that period being told (in online contexts) that I was a "traitor" to D&D or similar sorts of sentiments. Although to me, 4e seemed the best realisation possible of the design features of classic D&D PC build and resolution. (In my view obviously not classic D&D play procedures - I don't think 4e has much to offer as a dungeon-crawling ruleset.)

The World of Greyhawk has always been my default setting for FRPGing - the most recent RPG session I GMed was a Torchbearer game where the action is in a village about a Wizard's Tower in the Bluff Hills, north of the Bandit Kingdoms. I've GMed campaigns set in Greyhawk for probably half of the past 33 years. And for another 10 of those years I was using material published for the original OA and Kara-Tur (though the system was Rolemaster, not AD&D).

So I'm a bit allergic to assertions of what is fundamental to D&D that tend to frame my many decades of involvement with D&D, in one way or another, as if it were deviant.

 

[clearstream]

Question: Is someone suggesting D&D can't be played with high player agency or just that they don't play it that way?

D&D can certainly be played with high player agency. The more I dig into it, the more I think that "agency over what?" is rather an important question. Consider agency to say what adversaries (the foes of player-characters) do. Who should exercise that? Does whoever holds that agency need to have agency over all aspects of setting? What about what designers have said? What about what players want to say?

Until a group gives some thought to their shared purposes, it's haphazard whether players will have the agency they need.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I agree with both premises but not the conclusion.

I think the conclusion is that in a game about exploring the GM or adventure paths world (a fundamental premise of D&D) that the DM being forced to make up a fictional reason to say yes to the player actively violates that fundamental premise.

You’re using some loaded terms here: “forced to” “fictional” (aren’t all the reasons fictional?) and”violates the fundamental premise” (so, it’s not possible to have a game that is a out exploring the DM’s world that gives wide latitude to player agency?)

 

[FrogReaver]

You’re using some loaded terms here: “forced to” “fictional” (aren’t all the reasons fictional?) and”violates the fundamental premise” (so, it’s not possible to have a game that is a out exploring the DM’s world that gives wide latitude to player agency?)

If you are using player agency as a thinly veiled code word for ‘player authority over the narrative’ then no. Players having control over the narrative conflicts with players exploring the DMs world.

There is player agency required to explore the DMs world. So I think the actual problem is that the premise of equating narrative authority and player agency is flawed.

 

[Scott Christian]

I mean, whenever there’s a blockade like this, there are people looking to break (or sneak) through.

I think the big question here is, what’s the reason for the blockade? Is it meant to be some kind of obstacle to be dealt with? Or is it more of a meta construct, meant to keep the characters contained in some way? If that’s the case, what’s the reason for keeping them there?

Sorry, I assumed from my previous texts that the DM is not making things up on a whim. They are setting plot points and inciting events into notion, ones they have planned. This is not a case of the DM setting a more linear story into motion.

I don’t think I’m placing too much on the DM here. I acknowledge that some players may be indifferent to their character’s background. But even if they are, it doesn’t mean the DM needs to be.

Nobles (and many other backgrounds) suggest all kinds of potential fodder for play. Family members, obligations, powerful enemies… the DM should bring this stuff into play. Doesn’t have to be all at once, but ease them in. Get the players used to the idea. Show them what backgrounds should be.

Then maybe they’ll start picking them for more than just the skills.

In a game that people spend, on average, 8 hours a month playing. A game where combat will often take approximately 1/2 of those hours. A game, where sometimes, buying 50' rope can turn into a 10 minute RP session. A game where there are often plot points or exploration points that need to be decided and/or dealt with. And a game that has four to six players, all with backgrounds and aspirations. How often do you think the DM should try?
I mean two or three scenarios, at best, is probably all they would have time for. And if the player takes none of it? Should they keep trying?

This is often a sticking point for me, so I am going to dig my heels in a bit. Everyone preaching about what DMs should do almost never look at the in-game time. And when it is pointed out, they either hand-wave it by saying, it doesn't take long, or they insist on these non-realistic time perimeters, such as, "Our group's 8th level combat only takes seven minutes." Yet, when asked to show proof of any of this, they never do. They actually, never can.

So, I get your point. I do think the DM should try. But, every time a DM tries, and the player doesn't bite is also a time that takes away from others - and game-time is not unlimited!

To use an analogy, it's the couch-coaches of the world. "These players should be stronger, if I were coach, I would have them in the weight room. These players should have more endurance. If I were coach, I would have them running all the time. These players should have better fundamentals. If I were coach, we'd be drilling fundamentals every day. These players should have tricks up their sleeve. If I were coach, I'd be practicing all sorts of tricks. These players should have more creative styles. If I were coach, I'd have them do drills that increased their creativity."

There is only so much practice time for coaches, just like there is only so much prep time, and more importantly, play time for a D&D group. Therefore, a table sometimes needs to decide what to focus on. And sometimes, that comes at the expense of not incorporating a background.

Sorry for the rant. But when this time piece is ignored, it really "grind my gears." (But we are in agreement, the DM should try.)