D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

4e had some of these things, but as I've said before that game, which is quite well-designed in its own right, would have been better off with a name other than D&D.

Why would it have been better off with a different name. I have many 4e D&D books, which in various ways contributed valuable content to my RPGing for several years. If the game had not been called D&D and published by WotC, it's very unlikely that most of those books would have been published. Which I think would not have made the game, or my play of it, better off.

 

[hawkeyefan]

funny, given that you are also up in arms about it. How about you accept that it is no big deal to get a 'no' then?

It depends on how much the participants care about player agency.

Generally, when I play D&D, I don't expect much.

When I run it, I worry much more about it.

 

[pemerton]

Deciding to cast a spell has nothing to do with anyone else but the PC making that decision.

It assume that the PC doesn't sneeze while trying to speak the words, that no wind gust comes up that is so strong that it stops the words being spoken, that nothing has happened to the PC's components to render them unavailable, that the PC doesn't trip or stumble so as to spoil their somatic components, etc.

Casting a spell in D&D is very dependent on the state of the world beyond the body and mind of the PC.

 

[Raiztt]

Maybe the President comes to visit the noble in the mental ward.

No ones going to answer my question it looks like

 

[mamba]

That is a non-sequitur.

maybe, but then I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious

I introduce ideas and twists. But I don't know them any more than the players do. Because when I describe them, I know them and the players know them.

So you come up with the twist on the fly, there was nothing being set up, it just happens in the situation. Is that correct?

Going back to

This would mean, for instance, that the PC will not end up on a lifeless demiplane unless the players have somehow put that at stake via their play. [...]

And it would mean, more broadly, that there would be no occasions where the GM works out consequences by reference to secret notes or their own intuitions about the fiction, rather than by references to concerns that the players have put on the table

If everything has to be initiated by the players, how can you add a twist, wouldn't that also have to come from the players then?

 

[mamba]

This is why I have repeatedly dismissed all talk of "player narrative control" as a furphy, and instead have focused on what the rule require the GM to do, in response to player action declarations. In a RPG with a fairly mainstream player/GM distinction - which is nearly all the RPGing I do, and is the RPGing I've been talking about in this thread - player agency is the result of the rules that govern the GM in their decisions about framing and consequences.

Which is something I've been saying since at least page 11 (so upwards of 1000 posts ago).

yes, you have been very consistent, so was I

You seem to adhere to the rules that bind the GM but ignore the rules that say the GM can override them. That clearly is your choice and there is nothing wrong with it, but neither is with using that other set too. We just want different things.

 

[soviet]

The twist is... none of your abilities work!

 

[FrogReaver]

No one says it is not affecting player agency,

I do, have, and will continue to do so.

Simply saying no to a player doesn’t remove their agency.

 

[mamba]

Where do the rules of D&D say that a PC can fly by flapping their arms?

nowhere, but not letting that player fly is still restricting the player's agency

I know where the rules say that a Noble PC who requests an audience from a local noble will receive one - it's in the Position of Privilege feature description.

yes, and I can point you to a rule that says DMs can override other rules...

 

[pemerton]

We're playing D&D - say set in Faerun - and the level 1 PCs are somehow transported into the actual (fictional) Washington DC. One of the PCs happens to have the noble background and declares that he will secure a meeting with the President of the United States - who is very arguably a type of noble/ruler.

How do you justify this person meeting the sitting President? As in, if I ask you "how" what is your answer?

Who decided that this transportation has taken place? Who put at stake that the world of the PCs would change from Faerun to the US?

I mean, this is no different from the City of Brass example, about which I asked exactly the same questions.

Assuming that the players have exercised their agency in brining about this reframing of things, then why would they seek to find a noble in a realm which has, as one of its founding principles, that "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States"?