D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

I think the main issue is that being a DM is difficult and some DM's can't improvise well. Thus, they shut things down that they didn't anticipate. Is that ideal no, but it is a thing.

This may be true - although I think there is a lot that can be done to help GMs learn to make decisions that don't require relying on their prior decision-making in the way being discussed in this thread.

But it's also a completely different reason from those being put forward by many posters in this thread. It's not an argument that players have agency despite the GM authoring much of, even the bulk of, the fiction. It's an explanation for why a GM may not be able to GM a high-agency game.

 

[pemerton]

You would hope. Hmm...

But what happens if player agency really wants to spend ten minutes talking to Goo'gal'ee, owner of Goo'gal'ee's Shop of Mundane but Pragmatic Items? What happens if he doesn't drive the story forward by any means because they are actually leaving town forever, but they want to hang out and listen to Goo'gal'ee tell them stories about his adopted goblin nephews and nieces? And what happens when player agency decides after doing all that, the paladin wants to check to see if Goo'gal'ee has some Pelor style decorative candles? And surprisingly, Goo'gal'ie does have candles in the shape of a little sunburst. And then the paladin spends ten more minutes trying to convert Goo'gal'ie to his god, Pelor.

It happens. DM prep. No DM prep. It happens. And the time falls through that hourglass.

Note: I am not mocking any of this play.

I'm not mocking it. I'm just saying I have zero interest in it, as GM or player.

 

[pemerton]

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.

As I posted upthread, I think the appropriate verb is thinks or believes or imagines, not wants.

That is, to say that conditions in the campaign resulted in it is just a needlessly obscure way of saying that the GM believed that this is what would happen, given everything else the GM believes about the imaginary world of the game.

if the noble isn't home due to having to travel away as direct result of player actions 7 sessions ago and the consequences thereof,
if it has been in the GM's notes for 6 sessions that the noble won't be home for 2 months,
if the players only decided to visit the noble at his manor 3 sessions ago (well before those 2 months have passed in game),
if the players make no effort to learn that/there is no logical reason for the players to learn that the noble isn't home,

then is it still the GMs fault that the noble isn't at his manor when the players visit it?

The GM made all those decisions - about what "directly results" from things done 7 sessions ago, about the 2 month absence, about what the players (and PCs?) have or haven't learned. So who else's "fault" would it be?

What does establishing the fiction as a player have to do with player agency?

Player agency refers to the agency that the player enjoys in the play of the game. The play of a RPG is about establishing a shared fiction. Hence, the agency of a RPG player is all about their capacity to establish the shared fiction. The canonical way of doing that - given the player/GM role divide that is mainstream for RPGs - is via action declarations for their PCs.

The more the GM decides what happens as a result of declared actions - eg as is being discussed in the Noble case, the eggs case, etc - then the less the player is establishing fiction and the more the GM is doing so. (I'm not saying that agency over the fiction must be strictly zero sum, but in the particular examples being discussed there is a pretty clear zero-sum structure.)

Why are the PCs on the City of Brass? Who established that part of the fiction?

Why does that matter?

If the player chooses to go to the City of Brass, then they have chosen to be among the Efreet, including the Efreet nobles. They may have further beliefs about what this means for the ability of their Noble PC to seek and be granted audiences. All of this is relevant to what sorts of decisions by the GM would affirm, or thwart, the player's agency.

 

[Scott Christian]

No need to apologize. It’s a legit, tangible concern. And honestly, time is a huge factor in why I’ve come to run games this way. I don’t have the time or inclination to spend as much time in between sessions coming up with the amount of material I used to.

I’ve learned to lean on my players a lot. To use their characters as much or more than my prep. It’s not a shift I made all at once, but I did it more and more. And the thing is, there’s like a feedback loop. You run the game this way, the players respond, then you do more, they respond with more, and with a little time your game is nearly running itself.

This is just a different approach than the more classic one of preparing everything ahead of time. It allows for the flexibility needed to let the players drive. And the more the players drive, the more invested they are, and the more agency they tend to have.

Their characters aren’t the icing on the cake, they’re the flour. They’re baked in, not added on top after the cake is made. The game is about them.

Again, this doesn’t make a game inherently better. It’s all a matter of preference. I ran games the way you describe for decades. Over time, due to both necessity and desire, I started looking for something different. Doesn’t mean everyone wants to do that.



In what other game would you describe a legal move being denied by the referee as an example of player agency?

I have found it interesting on this thread that other DMs/players seem to think people discussing more traditional style of play haven't played or DMed the style in question. So to clear the air, and to state experience, I have DMed and played in a campaign that is very much what you describe. (Although, to be fair, in @Oofta 's world, this is not a campaign, it is an interlude since they each only lasted three or four months.)

I DMed a court intrigue campaign. The players made their characters and built an entire faction around their character. Decided where they fell in that faction, and the NPCs for the faction. They also created the faction's goals. For example, the cleric in the group belonged to a church, the rogue was part of the thieves' guild, the fighter part of the military's navy, and the wizard part of a Harry Potter style school. They each had goals to influence the court, nobles, and kings. I created opposing factions. The group would sometimes do courtly things (think masquerade balls, have secret meetings, dinner parties, etc.) and also go off adventuring to gain renown and also find ways to undermine their opposing factions.

This was almost all player driven. And it was fun. It did lack some consistency from my side of the screen, but it was still an enjoyable experience. When we moved to our next campaign, the vote was to play possibly the most linear adventure ever - Hoard of the Dragon Queen. It was fun. It lacked lateral movement from my side of the screen, but it was still an enjoyable experience.

I bring this up only to say to you: I understand, like, truly understand where you're coming from. (And I will gladly admit it is a limited experience compared to some.) Yet, I don't see it as an increase in player agency. I don't see it improving the players' experience, nor the DM's experience. I just see it as different.

 

[Scott Christian]

Why would the player propose something that isn’t logical? It seems like your position is that if the player’s opinion and the DM’s opinion conflict, the DM’s opinion should prevail regardless of which is more logical.

Suppose the party is in a normal forest. They are relatively low-level. The fighter (trained Athletics) chooses to climb a tree to get a better vantage point. The DM says it DC 20. The fighter’s player, an avid climber (while the DM isn’t) points out that climbing trees is pretty easy for a trained climber, and points out that since the purpose of climbing is just to get a better vantage point, he can just choose a different tree to climb.

Your position isn’t that the most logical position prevails. It’s that the DM’s position prevails, by dint of being DM.

I find this example ridiculous. @Maxperson , I highly doubt, would agree with the example. (I will let him speak for himself.)

But every example given, throughout this entire thread, has refuted these silly examples. The DM here probably wouldn't place the DC at 20. They would listen to the climbing expert at the table. They would adjust the DC if needed.

Logic would dictate the DM would do those things.

The scenario you set up is illogical.

 

[mamba]

Why would the player propose something that isn’t logical?

because they might not have the same information as the DM, so for them it is logical

There are plenty of cases where humans considered something logical because they did not have sufficient information, starting with the Earth being flat, this is no different.

It seems like your position is that if the player’s opinion and the DM’s opinion conflict, the DM’s opinion should prevail regardless of which is more logical.

no, the one that is more logical given all available information, which just might mean the DM’s, as they know more about the circumstances

 

[mamba]

As I posted upthread, I think the appropriate verb is thinks or believes or imagines, not wants.

I agree, it is because the DM imagines that the world is like that, he is bound to the world as he believes it is, just like the players are, if the world is meant to be consistent / believable

 

[soviet]

because they might not have the same information as the DM, do for them it is logical


no, the one that is more logical given all available information, which just might mean the DM’s, as they know more about the circumstances

So to me 'having the same information' or 'knowing more about the circumstances' means the GM has already decided that eg the duke is away (and it may be in their notes, may have been alluded to in play, may have been discoverable through investigation, etc). I agree that would be a valid reason to say no to an audience.

But I think that's different from 'now that you ask, hmm, no I think the duke would be away right now because of XYZ'. That's not having additional information. That's making a decision not to allow something, and coming up with a justification for it. That GM could have easily made a different decision.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

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.

I wanted to circle back to this earlier comment.

I appreciate the thoughtful response, and I understand your position.

I think that where we differ is that I don't find "player agency" to be a useful descriptor between systems. Especially when the usage is completely different within one sphere (say, people who play D&D) than it is within another sphere (say, people who are playing BiTD).

There are a number of reasons for this, but the easiest one to point to is the same one we keep seeing in these conversations. Some games have very tightly integrated rules and processes of play that (for example) authorize the authoring of fiction and are designed specifically so that "the player's decisions are allowed to affect and drive play." More importantly, they almost always have a tight control of setting and genre (BiTD is a great game for heists in Doskvol, but it is not such a great system if the players want to fictionally author a portal to Victorian England and engage in some Wuthering Heights shenanigans) that allows for that.

On the other hand, there are games that, for a number of reasons, are much more agnostic about ... well, everything. From assumed setting, to assumed genre, to even questions about the way to DM responds. In those cases, it is easy to point to examples of dysfunctional gaming and say, "D&D has low player agency because there was this time that a DM once said no to something that was completely reasonable!"

Which is true- and that can suck. But that's really just a conversation about how varied the styles of play are within D&D, and also the collateral conversation of how D&D is often the entry point for new gamers- and a lot of new DMs have trouble learning the game.

IME, the major difference is these different games is that it still fairly rare for people to pick and play the indie games as their first game, and if people are playing it "badly" or "incorrectly" they will often bounce right off of it (or be told, since it is a tightly integrated ruleset and process of play, that they are, in fact, 'doing it wrong,' which is more difficult to do with D&D). Perhaps we will some day reach a point when these games are widespread enough among newbies, and have been played for so long, that we will get to hear regular horror stories. That's not a bad thing, by the way!

 

[FrogReaver]

So to me 'having the same information' or 'knowing more about the circumstances' means the GM has already decided that eg the duke is away (and it may be in their notes, may have been alluded to in play, may have been discoverable through investigation, etc). I agree that would be a valid reason to say no to an audience.

But I think that's different from 'now that you ask, hmm, no I think the duke would be away right now because of XYZ'. That's not having additional information. That's making a decision not to allow something, and coming up with a justification for it. That GM could have easily made a different decision.

This sounds to me more like pushback on DM extrapolation.

Let’s first say, DMs notes are never going to include everything. There will be gaps.

Your proposal is that for any gap the dm shouldn’t extrapolate and decide (often with a die roll I might add).

But what’s the alternative? The player authors the gap? What keeps the player constrained to just the gap so that he doesn’t accidentally add any details outside it (outside the gap is the DMs prep). I think in most situations it’s unlikely he goes beyond the gap but it seems like that’s always a possibility. In short without knowing all the dm prep the player doesn’t know where the gap begins or ends.