D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Oofta]

Who has said that players should be able to jump to the moon?

And I didn't get the impression that this hypothetical noble being denied an audience got much of an opportunity to make a counter-argument, it was a lot of heavy-handed 'you can't even try to do that, nothing happens' - as though the player really did want to jump to the moon.

I have no idea why you included quotes from me and @mamba. I can only assume you're trying to make some kind of point?

 

[mamba]

And I didn't get the impression that this hypothetical noble being denied an audience got much of an opportunity to make a counter-argument, it was a lot of heavy-handed 'you can't even try to do that, nothing happens'

well, it was meant to be an example for reasons why there should be no audience granted. We cannot very well then consider granting one when not doing so was the whole point and the question was what would justify not granting one

This started as a ‘I don’t agree that an audience should be guaranteed, here are cases why it could be denied’, you are now twisting it into ‘see how rarely these guys grant audiences, they find all kinds of reasons not to’

 

[Maxperson]

Who has said that players should be able to jump to the moon?

And I didn't get the impression that this hypothetical noble being denied an audience got much of an opportunity to make a counter-argument, it was a lot of heavy-handed 'you can't even try to do that, nothing happens' - as though the player really did want to jump to the moon.

Someone in this thread, I thought it was you, said that you should say yes to everything the players come up with.

What you view as "heavy handed" really isn't. Applying logic to the situation isn't being heavy handed. An Ifrit lord in the city of brass isn't going to give a fig who is a lord on some backwater prime world. He's probably going to view pretty much all mortals as peasants.

 

[pemerton]

A game, where sometimes, buying 50' rope can turn into a 10 minute RP session.

I would hope there is something at stake, if we're going to spend 10 minutes on it! I'm not really a big fan of low-stake, just-for-colour roleplaying through this sort of thing.

Meanwhile others will state that any action declaration a player takes in a PbtA game has to make narrative sense. Which makes sense. But if I say that an action declaration in my D&D game has to make narrative sense, how dare I put limits on background features.

Surely you can see that there is a difference between the two constraints:

*Must conform to a shared fiction that has been established at the table and is known to all participants;

*Must conform to a fiction that is known only to the GM, and is being extrapolated by them from notes and ideas that are authored by and known only to them.​

we all live in a world that was not designed with us specifically in mind. Doesn't make it any less real.

I don't understand this at all. Playing RPGs is something I do in the real world - as @Scott Christian noted, it is a real activity that takes up real time in my real life. So the question for me is Is this a worthwhile way to spend some of my time? There can be many factors that help answer that question. One of them is Will I enjoy the experience playing this game? And one of the factors that helps answer that question is Will it be a gripping, intense, immersive play experience?

I think someone upthread - or anyway, something I read recently - talked about play in which the player character is just a device whereby the player is inserted into the imaginary world and situation, and learns about it. That seems to me an accurate description of some RPGing - eg it seems to fit with how some classic designers (eg Gygax) describe their sort of play - but it's not an approach to RPGing that is of much interest to me. For me, what makes a fiction gripping, intense and immersive in general is that the situations and their resolution are compelling. In the context of a RPG, where I engage the fiction via a particular persona - the player character - what makes a situation and its resolution compelling is that it speaks to me as my character. Among other things, this makes me feel like I am living this character's life. (In some metaphorical fashion at least.)

The world where I live is filled with people and places that I have more than a surface connection with. A fantasy game where I know and have relationships with the characters that make it up feels more real to me.

This, and more.

If my character is a farmer, then the local land, the crops, the clouds, the weather, the way of baking bread, what happen when an animal gives birth - these are all things of intimate familiarity to me. Likewise the prayers and customs and rituals that attend all these things.

If my character is a hunter or a forager or a scout, then the nature of the local woodland, what trees are easy and/or safe to climb, the animal ecology, where to find eggs, how to take cover - these are all things of intimate familiarity to me. And, again, so are all the social practices that go with them.

The same is true if my character is a knight, or a magician, or whatever, in respect of the worlds of those characters.

To relate this to the Noble background: it is me, the player, who is portraying this Noble. Every time I declare an action - including the seeking of an audience - that flows from that background, and another participants (eg the GM) tells me that it can't happen, that is contradicting the proposition that I am intimately familiar with the world of my character. It is telling me that I am, in effect, an alien, a self-insert, in an unknown world. For me, that's not a play experience that is worth turning up for.

 

[pemerton]

Who has said that players should be able to jump to the moon?

Are we talking about players or characters?

Suppose a player sincerely declares an action - my PC jumps to the moon!

What is going on? What does the player think about the fiction, and their character's position in the fiction, such that this makes sense? In a game in which the GM is supposed to be the source of all fictional truth, a GM who (i) prompts this action declaration, but (ii) thinks that it makes no sense, must have done a pretty bad job!

 

[mamba]

To relate this to the Noble background: it is me, the player, who is portraying this Noble. Every time I declare an action - including the seeking of an audience - that flows from that background, and another participants (eg the GM) tells me that it can't happen, that is contradicting the proposition that I am intimately familiar with the world of my character.

no it doesn’t, it did not get denied because you did not know how to approach the subject / the proper etiquette for wherever you are from. It got denied for reasons beyond your control.

This is no different from your forager not finding any eggs because it is winter

 

[Oofta]

I would hope there is something at stake, if we're going to spend 10 minutes on it! I'm not really a big fan of low-stake, just-for-colour roleplaying through this sort of thing.

Surely you can see that there is a difference between the two constraints:

*Must conform to a shared fiction that has been established at the table and is known to all participants;​

​

*Must conform to a fiction that is known only to the GM, and is being extrapolated by them from notes and ideas that are authored by and known only to them.​

Default for D&D is quite clear. The DM is responsible for the world, the players are responsible for their characters. If some aspect of my world and it's inhabitants is affecting what the characters can or cannot do the players will know why. Occasionally the reason will not be revealed immediately, but I can't think of a time where it wasn't known to the players. Sometimes it's as simple as "The noble you're trying to get an audience with is not here." It may be revealed later that they were summoned to a war council.

My campaign world does not revolve around the PCs and their desires.

 

[Maxperson]

Are we talking about players or characters?

Suppose a player sincerely declares an action - my PC jumps to the moon!

What is going on? What does the player think about the fiction, and their character's position in the fiction, such that this makes sense? In a game in which the GM is supposed to be the source of all fictional truth, a GM who (i) prompts this action declaration, but (ii) thinks that it makes no sense, must have done a pretty bad job!

A player stating an impossible action for his PC does not mean that the DM "must have done a pretty bad job!" Players sometimes don't think things through, or don't understand how some things work, etc. It can be a failing on the DM's part, but just as often, if not more often, it's just a player declaring something impossible for his PC.

 

[SteveC]

no it doesn’t, it did not get denied because you did not know how to approach the subject / the proper etiquette for wherever you are from. It got denied for reasons beyond your control.

This is no different from your forager not finding any eggs because it is winter

I actually think this is a really important part of the agency discussion. My reaction would be "of course I do! As a noble I'm acquainted with the proper procedures to ask for an audience at any level. I was taught that when I was very small." At the worst, I'd expect some sort of check to determine if that was true or not.

Saying "you don't know," well that assumes a lot about a character's background that we've never talked about, doesn't it? Maybe they do know, or maybe not. Does the DM actually know what the answer is, or are they just saying "there is a way to do this but the character doesn't know about it."

In many game systems, you'd have a framework for figuring that out, and I'd argue that D&D's skill checks along with the character's Background provide one. It's just that the DM is the ultimate authority on the issue ... and that's where agency comes into play.

 

[Maxperson]

no it doesn’t, it did not get denied because you did not know how to approach the subject / the proper etiquette for wherever you are from. It got denied for reasons beyond your control.

This is no different from your forager not finding any eggs because it is winter

Yep. Suppose a background said you can always find eggs and the group ended up on a demiplane with no life(and never had life) at all. Are you going to expect to find eggs because the background said you could?