D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

Someone ultimately decides how it is, whether a player or the DM. I see no reason why it has to be the player.

I haven't offered any reason for it to be person A or person B, beyond what I enjoy.

But if it is not the player, then we can hardly say the player is exercising much agency, can we?

 

[Mort]

no, you allowing something unbelievable does not make that something more believable

I believe you that you played it out like that at your table, but I am not sure why you think that changes anything. If it were the reverse and I disallowed it at my table, would you now have to follow that? Would it affect your impression of how believable it is?

At no point did I say it could not happen at some table. I am pretty sure I consistently said you can find a reason to allow or to deny anything. The believability was entirely about the action in the fictional world, not about how some tables would handle the situation

can’t help you there, even a fictional world follows rules that make some stuff impossible / unbelievable, and that can be minor details too.

To be clear: You're saying the DM, in D&D, is the SOLE arbiter of what is impossible/unbelievable, yes?

And that's why, in D&D, the players cannot force the DM, feature or no.

I think that really is the core of the current discussion/disagreement.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

no, you allowing something unbelievable does not make that something more believable

I believe you that you played it out like that at your table, but I am not sure why you think that changes anything. If it were the reverse and I disallowed it at my table, would you now have to follow that? Would it affect your impression of how believable it is?

Look at how it was posted. This was not meant to be unbelievable in the in-the-world sense. This was meant to be "no DM could possibly make this make sense." I did. That's why I'm saying this.

At no point did I say it could not happen at some table. I am pretty sure I consistently said you can find a reason to allow or to deny anything. The believability was entirely about the action in the fictional world, not about how some tables would handle the situation

And I'm telling you it WAS about how no table could possibly handle that situation. That's extremely obviously why Oofta brought it up as an example in the first place. It was meant as a "we all agree this is completely ridiculous and couldn't possibly be made to work" kind of example. I mean, look at the original text!

Let's suppose a scenario. The party steps through a portal and is transported 5,000 years into the past. What features would actually work? There's obviously no contacts, criminal or otherwise. There may or may not be libraries for that sage to investigate. Even if you're Prince Grand High Poobah, it's of a country that won't exist for another 4,000 years so it's meaningless. Assuming the locals even recognize nobility as a thing.

Oofta even says, point-blank, "It would be jarring to me as a player and be completely illogical world building if all of our background features still worked as written." (Emphasis added, of course.)

This is NOT a "some DM can make this work." This is "it CANNOT work, for anyone, so we agree this must be beyond the pale."

And I don't. I don't agree that it's beyond the pale. Because it wasn't beyond the pale in my actual, live game.

What else was I supposed to get from this?

 

[FrogReaver]

Seems like a missed opportunity for the inclusion of a certain Vulcan gif.

But don’t you know - Vulcans aren’t real. They are fictional!

 

[Raiztt]

Hypothetical 5e-running me wants the noble PC to do their thing. Get an audience with the King. Chat to the lords and ladies of ancient history. Bargain with efreeti princelings in the City of Brass. These all sound like great sources of adventure and intrigue. I don't know why anyone would want to actively find reasons for them not to happen.

Because nobility isn't a metaphysical trait or quality that has stand alone existence. It's a cultural construct that is going to vary wildly from culture to culture in it's norms and expectations.

It's pretty reasonable/plausible to say that a French aristocrat in the 13th century could easily or on a whim secure a meeting with a Scottish lord - but it's only reasonable because the politics, geography, and culture of medieval Europe enable these two parties to be able to consider each other nobles.

In disparate geographies, cultures, or times two parties might not recognize the other as being 'noble'.

 

[mamba]

It's not my game that has egg-detecting PCs in it. Any justification for that ability is of course going to be ridiculous. The point is you can always think of something.

I never disagreed with being able to think of something. I disagreed with that something always being realistic / reasonable / believable / consistent / logical and that I have to take something that is less so, because the background feature maybe says so

 

[pemerton]

nobility isn't a metaphysical trait or quality that has stand alone existence.

Is this in the same way that dragons being able to fly, despite their size, weight, wingspan etc isn't a metaphysical trait?

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

I agree that it is just different. Whether it improves the experience ot not is entirely subjective.

But I’d say that the change in player agency is more an objective thing.

Some games, some campaigns, are going to have more or less player agency. That has little effect on enjoyment of the game. Some DMs are always going "find a way" for a feature to work no matter how illogical. Other DMs are going to base decisions on how things work based on how they view the world.

Clearly it matters to enjoyment quite a bit or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Also, what if I said how you view the world is illogical?

I think this is part of the problem. I don’t see what’s illogical about a noble being able to get an audience with another noble. Nearly everyone here has said that it makes sense.

The objection is clearly about the player being able to say something that obliges the DM to honor it.

I fully agree, but I don't think what this back and forth is revolving around.

At its core - One side is just vehemently against, in D&D, a player being able to force the DM to say yes.

Precisely.

True. Because in other games there are limitations built into the game. Someone in a post long, long ago in this thread mentioned that in PbtA anything the player declares still has to make narrative sense is part of the rules. We don't have that spelled out in D&D because it's not an assumption that the player can force the DM to say yes.

There are limitations on the background features as well.

because we don't think purely the 'rule of cool' is a good reason to allow something, and we think there might be mitigating circumstances involved

How are these mitigating circumstances determined?

100%. Nobody can force a DM to do anything. Nor can the DM force a player to do anything. If you're trying to force a side to act according to your wishes, you are D&Ding wrong.

Read it instead as as “oblige the DM to…”

I don’t think being obliged to follow the rules is doing it wrong.

can’t help you there, even a fictional world follows rules that make some stuff impossible / unbelievable, and that can be minor details too.

Who decides these rules?

 

[mamba]

I haven't offered any reason for it to be person A or person B, beyond what I enjoy.

But if it is not the player, then we can hardly say the player is exercising much agency, can we?

In this rare case, one way for the player to exercise agency was denied, yes. I would not extrapolate from there to anything.

 

[mamba]

To be clear: You're saying the DM, in D&D, is the SOLE arbiter of what is impossible/unbelievable, yes?

And that's why, in D&D, the players cannot force the DM, feature or no.

I think that really is the core of the current discussion/disagreement.

yes, ultimately the DM decides. In no way does this mean he can just abuse that position and force the players to do whatever he wants, but it does mean that he can deny an action the player would like to take when from the DM’s perspective there is a good reason why it should not be possible.

When push comes to shove, one person has to decide, for me that will always be the DM. 99% of the time we are not in that situation however and things get resolved cooperatively.

The premise was ‘because the feature says the noble can get an audience, that means there is no way the DM can ever deny one’, I disagree with that, pure and simple.