D&D General What is player agency to you?

[bloodtide]

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.

I just understand things differently then the Gaming Collective.

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.

It's true I don't know the problem players well....and don't really ever plan too. We just don't get along.

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'm not really in favor of changing everything to fit the players whims. Or making them feel like they have "agency".

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.

Yea, this is too much word salad for me. I want the players to not complain and be good players. Simple.

*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'm sure they did NOT sign up for it. The players in question are the worst casual player types. They want to play the game where they can say "oh, um, um, we go back to the um, guy, um, the one with the hat, um, over in that, um place and buy some of his potions of healing." And they wnt a fan/buddy DM that will just say "ok doki, you go there and buy some potions." They don't fit with my style of "if you can't tell me where your character wants to go....they can't go there".

I said

Thanks for this detailed post.

Personally, I think the most fundamental sort of agency is the ability to set your character's own goals.

I like this one. I would be fine with this sort of "player agency".

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."

But that is SO easy. There should be a thread.....

 

[soviet]

See, when I read that, it dovetails into exactly what I see if the problem when people are discussing "player agency."

What, exactly, do you mean by player agency? To you, and in that example, the concept of player agency in that example is nothing more than "Rules are followed, despite what the fiction allows." On the other hand, a person might reasonably say that 4e constrains player agency to the extent that ... wait for it .... "Rules are followed, despite what the fiction allows."

So while you might credibly say, "Look, a player has this cool ability. He should be able to use it, even when it doesn't make sense. The GM must accommodate the player in order to increase player agency," another person might look askance at that and say, "Sure, but in that ruleset, the player's agency is constrained because while they might be able to 'trip' a gelatinous cube, 'tripping' is a defined function of the rules, and it can only be employed in the exact manner of the rules, no matter what the player wants and the fiction allows. Therefore, those rules deny player agency."

In essence, it's nothing more than rehashing an old debate about the utility of certain specified rules while employing the term "player agency," which doesn't add to the conversation. It's a terrible term because it's essentially a meaningless term when people use it.

The most notable feature is when you say that "A more narrativist or agency-supporting approach ..." Here, we see what was earlier discussed with @TwoSix in the analogy with sports (and defining "player agency" in terms of "ability to influence winning"). What you are doing is simply using the term as a synonym for narratavist, which means that the term add no value- just like saying that an amateur bowler has more "player agency" than LeBron James because that amateur bowler is playing individually.

As far as I can tell, having seen this argument countlessly replayed, it's a completely pointless term that doesn't add, and usually subtracts, from any conversation.

I guess what I mean by player agency is the sense that the player's decisions are allowed to affect and drive play.

Rules that are followed rather than vetoed are one way of increasing that agency.

But I don't think that rules should be followed 'despite what the fiction allows' or 'even when it doesn't make sense'. I don't even recognise that dilemma, barring edge cases or very poor rulesets. As I said earlier in the thread, I think that it's trivially easy for a GM to find an in-universe justification for denying a player's action. And I think it's often just as easy for a creative player to find an imaginative reason they should allow it. Ultimately any GM is either looking for reasons to say yes or looking for reasons to say no. I prefer to say yes unless there really is a very good reason to say no. I don't find that 'the GM came up with a reason to say no based on imagined factors within the gameworld' to be any more realistic or plausible than 'the player came up with a reason to say no based on the same'.

I don't think increased player agency and narrativism are necessarily synonyms but they do naturally fit together. One can increase player agency in any game without spilling over into narr though. I think it's still a label or dial that has some value. I can imagine gamist or sim play that also features a lot of player agency but it's in the service of reflecting/realising the setting or creatively solving obstacles or the like. Maybe the higher ranges of player agency are inherently narr or narr-adjacent though.

 

[soviet]

A creative player/DM can nearly always come up with at least a weak justification, sure. Nearly always a logical reason? No.

No vs. Yes generally does not enhance or limit player agency, because entertaining weak justifications is not adding to player agency. Players don't have a right to expect that the DM will say yes to those sorts of things.

I agree that weak justifications can and should be rejected.

I think how strong a justification really is can be affected by the attitude and willingness of the GM. The attitude and inclination of the players matters too. There's probably a certain amount of self-selection going on in terms of groups who like to come up with creative justifications for such things and groups who don't.

 

[soviet]

Players doing whatever that want =/= more agency. Agency = having choices matter, and failure is very often a result that matters, even if that failure came without a roll from the player.

'You're not allowed to try because I said so' isn't failure

 

[Mort]

Yea, this is too much word salad for me. I want the players to not complain and be good players. Simple.

A few things.

If you hold players in clear and obvious contempt (as is evident from a few of these posts) best let those players know the game is not a fit - rather than torture yourself AND them.

In my experience, it's a give and take. You have to trust that the players are willing to give your game a fair shake and that they are putting forth effort. But THEY have to trust that you aren't just messing with them at your leisure and are not out to screw them at any moment you feel is amusing (for you).

If you don't like the players and they don't like you (or others in the group) that's a hard sell and best just move on from each other!

 

[soviet]

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.

there's a reason that people have always said that you get more flies with honey than vinegar.

This seems to be a regular misconception in these sorts of threads.

No offence meant but I couldn't care less whether you want to play like I do. I'm not trying to convince you to try it. I'm not even trying to convince you to buy the game I actually published. Seriously, don't, you won't like it. I just assume you have already found a playstyle and a game that works for you and that's great.

What I and I think others post against is the often-expressed idea that these 'other' games don't work, aren't plausible, are hollow, aren't even RPGs, etc etc. Then when we come in and say no, they do work, no, it is possible to increase player agency, we get a response of 'stop proselytising' and 'stop insulting my preferences'.

I am just trying to explain my experience of how these games work. Not trying to sell you a copy of Other Worlds or whatever.





$14.99 PDF on DrivethruRPG, a bargain at twice the price ;-)

 

[bloodtide]

If you hold players in clear and obvious contempt (as is evident from a few of these posts) best let those players know the gam is not a fit - rather than torture yourself AND them.

If it's not clear, the players I have problems with hold no illusions about what I think of them.

In my experience, it's a give and take. You have to trust that the players are willing to give your game a fair shake and that they are putting forth effort. But THEY have to trust that you aren't just messing with them at your leisure and are not out to screw them at any moment you feel is amusing (for you).

Except there is no trust.

If you don't like the players and they don't like you (or others in the group) that's a hard sell and best just move on from each other!

Well, it's only for the summer.

 

[mamba]

You might be surprised. I'm from Wisconsin, and I travel with a Green Bay Packers jacket. I have found Packer bars and had people connect with me all over the world.

TV, internet, planes, etc. have a lot to do with that… this is definitely not how it would have been in the middle ages, some special groups like the Masons, agreed, but other than that…

 

[mamba]

'You're not allowed to try because I said so' isn't failure

it certainly is closer to that than to a success

 

[Oofta]

'You're not allowed to try because I said so' isn't failure

That's also something I've never heard a DM say at the table. "It doesn't work because [reason]" happens. Even the occasional "You think it should work but it doesn't" comes in now and then with the reason typically revealed at some point later.

But the arbitrary, no reason, no explanation? Doesn't happen in my experience.