D&D General What is player agency to you?

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Perhaps, then, it might be useful to try to put some meaty steak on this salad?

@bloodtide

I said before, players want to feel responsible for their actions and the consequences that follow. Railroading, visible or not, harms that connection. Going on Space Mountain doesn't make you feel responsible for what you see. You decide, what, the outfit you wore? But anything that could actually change the track or ride is just impossible. If the destination is fixed, and the path to get there is pretty much fixed, it can feel like you are merely being told what to do. Sometimes, that's okay, it's what you want. But these players said that isn't what they want right now. Not a roller coaster; they want a jungle gym, or a box full of legos, or something like that. Scrape a knee, or have your tower fall over? That's on you, not something you just have to tolerate.

Such players, in those situations, feel they could really change the outcome if they choose differently. A weak form of agency would let players pick which bits of track to see on Space Mountain. They still can't control what track options there are, but at least they can control which ones they see, and (perhaps) what order. That's pretty low on the agency spectrum, but not nothing. Being "guided" toward certain choices is gonna be similar.

Lots of stuff with "agency" mentions "informed decisions." That's because it doesn't feel like you're responsible for the consequences if you made a choice because you were misled or deceived. Legally, this is a real defense: you can't commit perjury if you truly thought what you were saying was fact. Hence, if you want to feel like you have agency, part of that is usually needing to feel you had enough info to really choose.

If a player feels their choices don't do anything meaningful, or that they really couldn't choose for some reason (not enough information, being coerced, being forced to do only one thing even though other solutions also make sense), then they generally won't feel that they have meaningful agency in a game. If the destination is fixed, and the path to get there is pretty much fixed, what exactly were you doing when you participated?

Now, a big point here is, as you've probably noticed, I used the word "feel" at least a dozen times here. That's because, technically speaking, the feeling matters more than the actual fact. But this "technically speaking" comes with a huge caveat: If the players ever feel they were deceived about having agency, if they ever discover that you pretended to respect their choices, that all this stuff was merely an illusion, they will usually get VERY upset. We're talking "this can easily end games" upset. Because, while folks who desire agency might be annoyed or frustrated if presented with a game that they know doesn't actually give them agency....they'll feel betrayed and lied to if they ever realize that they didn't have agency but were led to think they did.

A player that feels the GM has lied to them won't trust what that GM tells them, and it is extremely hard to win that trust back. They'll second-guess everything you do, and steel themselves for another (perceived) betrayal, another (perceived) deception, which will make them much less likely to engage and participate, and much more likely to act out or criticize. This, for me, is the big reason why I don't--ever--engage in "illusionism" or "invisible railroads" or the like. I can fool smart people for a little while, but not for a long time. You have to fool your players indefinitely if you want to use these approaches, and I just don't believe that that is sustainable long-term.

Instead...the best way to make your players feel like they have agency--because they know enough to make choices, and those choices really do change the direction of the story and even the events that happen, and when they did so they weren't made to do it--is to actually give them those things. The best way to make someone feel that something is true is to make that thing actually true.

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.

It would seem to me that the burden of proof should be on you to first show that this is, in fact, such an onerous time burden that it should usually be ignored, not on others, who must prove an absence (the lack of situations where it would be onerous.)

Because I really don't think it's that onerous. More importantly, I think this is something that deserves a significant time investment anyway! This is the exact work that fosters player investment. Showing the player that it is worth their time to invest. Rewarding genuine player enthusiasm, perhaps the single most precious commodity a GM can get.

Further, as noted above, there are real dangers with using the kinds of short-cut tools that let you skip this sort of thing. Illusionism is a risk. I assert it is an unnecessary one; not only that, but that in general, not using these risky tools actually leads to more and better gaming, without being meaningfully more difficult to do. Some of it involves pre-game prep (e.g., preparing possible diegetic intrusions, a la "the god of goblins could intervene to save the goblin necromancer"), some of it involves developing your improvisational skills, and some of it involves being willing to confidently declare something now and work out what it actually is later. All of which are good, useful things to do regardless of your playstyle preferences.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I don't agree on "fundamental" either, as I said above. But "more often than not" sounds fair, and "in D&D its usually like this" does too. Not one of us really knows how special a snowflake we are.

 

[SteveC]

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.

I think this is a very important thing to keep in mind. There are many games out there where "player authority over the narrative" is a real thing, and the GM has serious constraints on what they can do. But that's not D&D. And since we're talking D&D, we should really be discussing agency in terms of what you can do in D&D. That's why I've suggested that applying Backgrounds (and Species/Class/Subclass/Skills) to the game fiction is really important and makes for a better game. (And that's what I believe for me, everyone else feel free to disagree).

I think that a game that's centered on the PCs and makes their abilities the most important thing to focus on is a better game. The DM defines the world and the situation the players find themselves in and I'd say that giving the players a sense of agency involves taking all those things into consideration.

But you can also run a perfectly cromulent game just setting everything up without thinking about your players at all. Maybe something will line up and that's great. Otherwise the world is what it is. I think that's a game with less agency and not one that I prefer to play in at this point in my life.

 

[Oofta]

I don't know if I consider the DM's role to "enforce their vision of how the world works". And that's what your use of "world building" means. The DM's choices ahead of play.

And I'm not talking about narrative control. I'm talking about abilities granted to the players by the rules. You're saying that your vision of the world trumps those rules.

Which is a perfectly fine decision to make. But it impacts player agency. It can't not do that.

Player agency is limited by the rules and constructs of the game. If you don't have restrictions you have group storytelling time. All games have limits. In D&D? It's spelled out everywhere that players and DMs have separate roles.

But what you said that I take exception with is "...most people only want the solutions the DM has already imagined to work." It's not true in my games. It's not been true in the vast majority of games I've played over the decades. This past weekend I ran two separate games, the players avoided a fight with a couple of ogres through clever play. In a different game they bypassed a trap from my "Big Book of Traps" in a way I hadn't anticipated. Heck, I had to improvise a cage match they used to get an audience with a gang boss.

That was just over the course of about 8 hours of play with two separate groups and there were many other, smaller, things they did that I had not anticipated. So you don't get to tell me, or anyone else, that just because we don't always say "yes" whether it makes sense in the context of the game that the players in our games don't have agency and can only do what the DM had anticipated.

 

[Campbell]

Personally, I think the most fundamental sort of agency is the ability to set your character's own goals. Mandates or social pressure to do otherwise have a strong impact on agency. It's also my view that your character's level of connection and efficacy within the setting are strong determinants of agency, whether comes from collaborative world building or not.

I also would hazard that collaborative world building is entirely within the purview of D&D. It's touched in 5e, 4e and PF Second Edition after all. Many 5e streams feature instances of it, including the most popular one (Critical Role). It's not like a requirement, but it is thoroughly a part of the D&D tradition.

 

[Oofta]

I think this is a very important thing to keep in mind. There are many games out there where "player authority over the narrative" is a real thing, and the GM has serious constraints on what they can do. But that's not D&D. And since we're talking D&D, we should really be discussing agency in terms of what you can do in D&D. That's why I've suggested that applying Backgrounds (and Species/Class/Subclass/Skills) to the game fiction is really important and makes for a better game. (And that's what I believe for me, everyone else feel free to disagree).

I think that a game that's centered on the PCs and makes their abilities the most important thing to focus on is a better game. The DM defines the world and the situation the players find themselves in and I'd say that giving the players a sense of agency involves taking all those things into consideration.

But you can also run a perfectly cromulent game just setting everything up without thinking about your players at all. Maybe something will line up and that's great. Otherwise the world is what it is. I think that's a game with less agency and not one that I prefer to play in at this point in my life.

It's not an either-or thing. Just because a background feature will sometimes not be available does not mean that we don't try to take backgrounds into account if the players care. That last bit? In my experience most players only select background based on what skills they have.

That, and as @Scott Christian pointed out, there's only so much game time available. In my main game we get together for 6 hours roughly once a month but by the time we chit-chat, have lunch and so on, we have maybe 4 hours of actual game time. I have 6 players (I have a hard limit of 6). There is no way I can have in-depth RP focused gameplay arcs on just 1 character while also engaging the other 5 characters on a regular basis.

I try to take background into account when it matters, but features still have to make sense in the narrative of the game. That and I'm not going to make entire sessions about courtly intrigue just because one of the PCs has the noble background. If getting involved with courtly intrigue is a thread the group wants to pursue, we'll go that direction and the PC with a noble background will likely play a starring role for some aspects of it. But the group always gets to decide what they want to pursue, what interests them. Not an individual player, not even me as DM.

So I completely disagree that focusing on one minor aspect of individual PCs makes for a better game. What makes a game better is creating engaging, realistic world that fits the vision of and is engaging for the entire group.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's a term that, when employed by the people who were using it in a specified manner to critique then-current playing styles in order to design new games (the narrativist and indie games of a little more than two decades ago) certainly had some use for that community.

As a general term of comparison between games, however, it adds nothing. It generates heat, but no light.

maybe. I think to some degree the negativity of the people that really like those game toward more mainstream play actually pushes a lot of people away from such games.

Like if someone told me blades in the dark is one of the closest games to emulating a heist like you would see on tv or the movies. I’d be instantly interested in that.

Telling me it give me more agency because it gives me some narrative control in places - I think that’s intended to be a strong selling point, but it really just leaves the typical d&d player thinking, I don’t have a problem with my agency in D&D and I’m not so sure having narrative control will be a good thing for me. I mean if the target audience are those disillusioned with d&d play then that’s probably a strong selling point.

 

[Mort]

It's not an either-or thing. Just because a background feature will sometimes not be available does not mean that we don't try to take backgrounds into account if the players care. That last bit? In my experience most players only select background based on what skills they have.

That, and as @Scott Christian pointed out, there's only so much game time available. In my main game we get together for 6 hours roughly once a month but by the time we chit-chat, have lunch and so on, we have maybe 4 hours of actual game time. I have 6 players (I have a hard limit of 6). There is no way I can have in-depth RP focused gameplay arcs on just 1 character while also engaging the other 5 characters on a regular basis.

I try to take background into account when it matters, but features still have to make sense in the narrative of the game. That and I'm not going to make entire sessions about courtly intrigue just because one of the PCs has the noble background. If getting involved with courtly intrigue is a thread the group wants to pursue, we'll go that direction and the PC with a noble background will likely play a starring role for some aspects of it. But the group always gets to decide what they want to pursue, what interests them. Not an individual player, not even me as DM.

So I completely disagree that focusing on one minor aspect of individual PCs makes for a better game. What makes a game better is creating engaging, realistic world that fits the vision of and is engaging for the entire group.

I agree with just about all of this. Especially the limited time part. My main group also meets about once a month and after the chit-chat, pizza eating, my dog deciding she needs attention from each and every player - we are LUCKY to squeeze in 4 hours!

But for me, stuff like the background features can act as a nice short cut rather than a player narrative control exercise (though i recognize, fundamentally that's what it is - which is fine). Say the group needs information/help, whatever from a Noble. They could spend a couple of hours setting that up (doing the "courtly intrigue" thing as you say), and I'd certainly go right along if that's what they want (that's NOT what my group wants). But if one of them has the feature, they can cut through all of that with a sentence "I'd like to set up a meeting with a noble please..." and we get right on to the stuff they do want to focus on

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

maybe. I think to some degree the negativity of the people that really like those game toward more mainstream play actually pushes a lot of people away from such games.

Like if someone told me blades in the dark is one of the closest games to emulating a heist like you would see on tv or the movies. I’d be instantly interested in that.

Telling me it give me more agency because it gives me some narrative control in places - I think that’s intended to be a strong selling point, but it really just leaves the typical d&d player thinking, I don’t have a problem with my agency in D&D and I’m not so sure having narrative control will be a good thing for me. I mean if the target audience are those disillusioned with d&d play then that’s probably a strong selling point.

I think that's the exact reason for the EnWorld maxim, "I double-dog dare you to describe how totally awesome your favorite (game/playstyle) is, WITHOUT comparing it to any others."

I know that it seems en vogue in current society to just trash things, but there's a reason that people have always said that you get more flies with honey than vinegar. I know that you are not alone with your negative feelings about certain things due to the way some people feel it is necessary to constantly trash the things you like. I am not entirely certain where the idea that "If you tell someone that the things that they like suck, often and repeatedly, they will bow before your wisdom and repetition" came from. But from my perspective, that idea does not seem to be effective.

Or, as Mama Snarf used to tell me, "Snarf, life is tough alright, but it's a whole lot tougher if you are stupid. Now shut yer piehole and get yer Mama some laudanum and a few bottles of Night Train at the packie."

 

[Scott Christian]

It would seem to me that the burden of proof should be on you to first show that this is, in fact, such an onerous time burden that it should usually be ignored, not on others, who must prove an absence (the lack of situations where it would be onerous.)

Why? Why should I have to explain such a simple concept as time is limited. A concept that permeates every. single. little. thing. anyone does, all day, every day. This is not a concept that needs explanation. It is the hand waivers that say they do all this in their games and/or say it only takes "x" time to do this that need to prove it. I have asked countless times for a video. Video one session that shows this player agency in your game. Video one four-hour session of your 8th level group getting through four combats, four role plays, and some explorations. And it never happens.
The reason is this - because if you were to video one month of a campaign across everyone on this forum playing D&D, there wouldn't be much of a difference. And to an outsider, there would be no difference in play, only personalities.

Because I really don't think it's that onerous. More importantly, I think this is something that deserves a significant time investment anyway! This is the exact work that fosters player investment. Showing the player that it is worth their time to invest. Rewarding genuine player enthusiasm, perhaps the single most precious commodity a GM can get.

Did you read what I was responding to? I specifically was responding to a time when the player does not care about their background. How in the world did you take the leap to a DM not responding to a player's enthusiasm? What I was talking about was the exact opposite.

Further, as noted above, there are real dangers with using the kinds of short-cut tools that let you skip this sort of thing. Illusionism is a risk. I assert it is an unnecessary one; not only that, but that in general, not using these risky tools actually leads to more and better gaming, without being meaningfully more difficult to do. Some of it involves pre-game prep (e.g., preparing possible diegetic intrusions, a la "the god of goblins could intervene to save the goblin necromancer"), some of it involves developing your improvisational skills, and some of it involves being willing to confidently declare something now and work out what it actually is later. All of which are good, useful things to do regardless of your playstyle preferences.

While this seems like a personal take against me, I will accept it is not.

What you describe as prep is a norm for many. I certainly have them. And they work great, until they don't. Improv skills can take you far, until they don't. And confidence, especially confidence when declaring something valid (you are saying to say yes, not no) can be great, until it isn't. These are all good things, and no one on this forum has argued against them. NO ONE.

All that has been argued is that sometimes circumstances allow a DM to say no to a background's feature. Sometimes circumstances allow a DM to diminish a class's strengths. And I am going to add another - sometimes circumstances allow a DM to override a species' feature.

That is the claim. The other side's claim - doing the above takes away player agency.