D&D General What is player agency to you?

[mamba]

Okay… but I think an important question is less about what those circumstances are, and instead, why those circumstances are.

well, since we are talking in hypotheticals here, I do not have an example. Ultimately because the conditions in the campaign resulted in it, if you call that because the DM wanted it to be that way, I am not going to argue that point.

The goal is not denying player agency however, but to set up a scenario for the players to figure out and overcome, just like all the others

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's also not something we consented to participate in, not designed as a form of leisure activity, or various other things. "IRL doesn't work like that" is not a particularly compelling argument in this context. I'd really rather most games not expend excess effort resembling real life. My real life has far too many problems in it.

I really rather think it is, from my point of view. Agree to disagree.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's certainly true that your game world and our real world lacks intelligent design.

That sounds like a jab, and the meme clinches it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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. The wildest one was in Tokyo. My best friend is a Mason and they have connections all over the world. We were stuck in London when the Iceland volcano erupted, and we stayed with a member of Scotland Yard that was a fellow Mason. It was surreal.

Having those connections for characters based on your class/background/species ... and so on gives a world more depth to me, and it feels more real. That's just a feeling of course.

Is there a reason you can't have those kinds of connections in a GM-created world? Are there not guilds and organizations in such settings?

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Or they're actually different things, and equating them needlessly sows confusion and can contribute to acrimony.

 

[soviet]

Is there a reason you can't have those kinds of connections in a GM-created world? Are there not guilds and organizations in such settings?

I use my Noble background to get an audience.
'No'
Oh, can I try to persuade them to change their mind, or let me meet someone lower ranked?
'No'

 

[soviet]

Or they're actually different things, and equating them needlessly sows confusion and can contribute to acrimony.

What? My post says they are different things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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'.

Has anyone on this thread said those things, or is this something else?

 

[mamba]

I use my Noble background to get an audience.
'No'
Oh, can I try to persuade them to change their mind, or let me meet someone lower ranked?
'No'

you would have a point if this were the only case you ever encountered.

Also, no one argued the ‘or someone else’ part. It was about not seeing a specific noble / house

 

[Vaalingrade]

The goal is not denying player agency however, but to set up a scenario for the players to figure out and overcome, just like all the others

But that is undeniably the result, and putting what the DM wants ahead of the player's.

The resentment on display here is a resentment toward the players horning in on the DM's story; the DM's plans, which are considered defacto more important.