D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

It is binary, but it's just really hard to get rid of it completely. Depending on your philosophical preferences "agency" does not require much.

For example... if a person is the source of their action and they could have done otherwise, then they have agency.

You mean like having the agency to not commit the crime that sends them to prison in the first place?

 

[mamba]

Those are interesting metaphors for your players!

yeah, you consistently misunderstand this thread, I pointed this out repeatedly already, you just prove me right time and time again

 

[FrogReaver]

More Random Thoughts:

Players of dead PC's have no agency!
Of course the PC death was most likely due to them exercising their agency.

Does removing PC death from the game increase player agency? No. It just means players no longer have the agency to risk their PC's life for anything.

 

[FrogReaver]

yeah, you consistently misunderstand this thread, I pointed this out repeatedly already, you just prove me right time and time again

meh, IMO. it was a good joke and I certainly don't agree with him.

 

[mamba]

Depends on with respect to what

in comparison to the other case (prison vs house arrest), pretty much with respect to anything given the examples…

 

[mamba]

meh, IMO. it was a good joke and I certainly don't agree with him.

agreed on both counts, but I did have to wonder what thread they are reading a few times today already

 

[FrogReaver]

in comparison to the other case (prison vs house arrest)

You defined 2 states in prison, one state with agency and one state with no agency. Which prison state am I comparing the house arrest to?

 

[pemerton]

"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" seems to restrict the DM to things the players mentioned first, so while there might be something going on on the GM side, it cannot do so without explicit player decision / permission

Let me repeat a fragment of an example from upthread, post 581:

When the PCs step through the portal from their resting place to the top of the tower, they find that it is not where they left it - on the disintegrating 66th layer of the Abyss - but rather in the palace of Yan-C-Bin on the Elemental Chaos. This brought the PCs, and especially the chaos sorcerer, into discussion with the djinni who had retaken possession of the tower and were repurposing it for the coming Dusk War. Mechanically, this situation was resolved as a skill challenge.

Sirrajadt, the leader of the djinni, explained that the djinni were finally breaking free of the imprisonment they had suffered after fighting for their freedom the last time (ie with the primordials against the gods in the Dawn War), and were not going to be re-imprisoned or bound within the Lattice of Heaven, and hence were gearing up to fight again in the Dusk War. He further explained that only Yan-C-Bin (Prince of Evil Air Elementals) and the Elder Elemental Eye could lead them to victory in the Dusk War.

The PCs both asserted their power (eg the paladin pointed out that the reason the djinni have been released from their prisons is because the PCs killed Torog, the god of imprisonment), and denied the necessity for a coming Dusk War, denouncing warmongers on both sides (especially the Elder Elemental Eye, whom Sirrajadt was stating was the only being who could guarantee the Djinni their freedom) and announcing themselves as a "third way", committed to balancing the chaos against the heavens and ensuring the endurance of the mortal world.

Sirrajadt was insisting that the PCs accompany him to meet Yan-C-Bin, declaring that mercy would be shown to all but the sorcerer. (The reason for this is that the chaos sorcerer - who is a Primordial Adept and Resurgent Primordial - has long been a servant of Chan, the Queen of Good Air Elementals, who sided with the gods during the Dawn War and is resolutely opposed to the Prince of Evil Air Elementals; hence the sorcerer is a sworn enemy of Yan-C-Bin.)​

Things at stake in this episode of play:

*The PCs' access to, and ownership of, their Thundercloud Tower;

*Whether or not the PCs - especially the Sorcerer who is a servant of Chan, Queen of Good Air Elementals - will be punished (or similar) by Yan-C-Bin;

*Whether or not the Djinn will be able to regain the freedom they enjoyed before the Dawn War, or whether they may become even more imprisoned;

*Whether a Dusk War is coming.​

The players did not give explicit permission about any of this. That would (in my view) a boring and emotionally very flat way to approach RPGing.

What the players did was to establish and portray their PCs, and thereby signal goals and aspirations for their PCs, which I - the GM - used to establish framing and narration.

For instance:

*The players declared that they were teleporting back to their Thundercloud Tower, because they needed it to confront the Tarrasque;

*The Thundercloud Tower had first been introduced into play when the player of the sorcerer PC put it on an item wishlist, and the sorcerer PC found the Tower abandoned in the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl (details here);

*The same player had quite some time ago (in the play of the campaign) established that the sorcerer serves Chan, and hence is an enemy of Yan-C-Bin;

*In a recent previous session, a different PC had taken on the mantle of god of imprisonment, which has become "vacant" after the PCs killed Torog - this was the player's choice, made in response to an offer I put to him when he was in a somewhat desperate fight against Kas (details here);

*The players, as their PCs, had been debating for a long time what their attitude was towards the cosmic struggle between order and chaos, and the possibility of a coming Dusk War.​

The first two things are what put the Tower, and the PCs' access to and ownership of it, at stake. The second and third are what put a possible claim by Yan-C-Binn and the Djinn over the Tower at stake, reinforced by the fourth (given that, in 4e, the Djinn are an imprisoned people seeking their freedom). The third is what put the Sorcerer's freedom in dealing with Djinn and Yan-C-Bin, in particular, at stake. The fifth is what put the whole framing in terms of the Dusk War at stake.

This is an elaboration of why, upthread, I described this as high player agency play of D&D.

the highlighted part is why I say your GM has no agency, it all is decided by the players (and the rules). I am not really sure why a GM is needed in your vision at all.

I've repeatedly talked about the GM's role in framing, and in establishing consequences. Who do you propose is going to do that, if not the GM?

 

[mamba]

But if we're talking about rules serving the DM rather than the group as a whole, tell me what that means for player agency?

irrelevant, missing the point

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, that's an interpretation, I suppose.

No, it's really not just an interpretation. For specific to beat general you require..........................specificity. Unless you can point to the noble ability and show where it explicitly says that the rule rules the DM in this one case, you have no instance of specific beats general. You can't infer specificity. Not that there's even an inference of it in that ability. You have nothing. On the other hand, I have several passages which SPECIFICALLY allow the DM to alter the rules as he sees fit, which includes background abilities.

But if we're talking about rules serving the DM rather than the group as a whole, tell me what that means for player agency?

Nothing one way or the other. Player agency doesn't hinge on the players creating or enforcing rules, or always getting their own way. Player agency is that the player has the ability to declare that he is going to try and get the local noble to put him up for the night and that he can expect that it will work unless there's a valid in-fiction reason for it not to work.

Look at your example of a god coming down and shutting down healing magic. I mean, if this has anything to do with the players, then they know about it, so the failure would be obvious. If it's unknown to the players... then I have to ask why this is happening?

Why would they automatically know about it. If it's in my game, I will have ways for them to learn about it, but I'm not going to shove those ways in their faces to ensure that they do. The players still need to play the game and do research when going into an unknown situation. If they fail to look and are surprised by it, then that's on them. If they do look and find out about it, then they know in advance.

It sounds more like the DM's plot is blocking the player's idea.

That's because it appears that you have some super negative views about D&D DMs and they have to be going out of their way to block the players, put their own ideas ahead of the players because muahahahahahah, that's what D&D DMs apparently do, and so on.

Your hang-ups regarding D&D DMs, though, just plain don't apply to me. I'm not defined by your issues.

Why would that be? It's all made up. Surely we can think of ways to make it work instead of denying it. That's the point.

So the point is to deny agency? Because that's what happens when you go out of your way to say yes in virtually every situation. Why bother to come up with a reasonable way to open the locked door when you can just spit on the door lock and the DM will find a way to say yes?

You're invalidating the ideas of your players by diminishing their meaning. The meaning of clever idea I came up with is castrated by you saying yes to the ridiculous idea that the other player came up with. And there is no real meaning to ridiculous ideas when you aren't going to be saying no to them, because you want to think of a way to make it work.

I prefer to have real player agency where ideas actually MEAN something. Even if the meaning is failure.

Then offer some examples from actual play. Not hypotheticals that lack details, not absurd edge cases, not DM plot... talk about a time you did this in play and how it worked and why you think that's good.

I'll even broaden this to any player proposed ideas beyond just the background features. Share an example from play of a player making a reasonable request, and you shot it down.

I can't share something that doesn't exist. If the player makes a reasonable request I'm either going to say yes or give it a roll if the outcome is in doubt. I don't shoot down reasonable requests.

Sure I can. In my experience, that's not really the way the game works. The game typically works with folks actually following the rules. So all that stuff about the rules serving the DM... they're just there in the book. They're guidelines. I don't choose to follow them, generally speaking.

Where I on the other hand use them to override the rules when the rules hit a situation where following the rule would end up with a nonsensical situation.