D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

One aspect of 4E (not a slam against 4E, no game is for everyone) is the way we were just told "Don't try to make sense of it, it just works" attitude. How can you knock an amorphous ooze prone? Who knows? It just works!

There is nothing in the rules that say that nobles are supernaturally special. The description of nobles even includes "a former merchant just elevated to the nobility". If nobles are supernatural in your campaign, so be it. I don't want a supernaturally supported caste system in my game. It also doesn't explain several other background features. The rules of the game enable me to play a character in a fantasy realm, they're an expression of what the characters are doing. They don't define the world. At least not for me.

I would actually be fine with supernatural nobility being a thing, but only if it were called out as such. There is no reason such a thing would be simply assumed because the genre is fantasy. a Song of Ice and Fire is. A fantasy story full of nobles, but apparently none have the Noble background.

 

[Maxperson]

The analogy would be getting to roll to hit, surely. Even a guaranteed audience with the king doesn't mean he automatically gives you whatever you want from him.

And this itself is locked behind an ability that allows the PC to do that.

Yes, that was a more extreme version of what I'm saying, but the point remains. If I even get a roll to succeed for everything I try, nothing I do matters. Shoot a bow up in the air behind me? Sure, roll for bullseye. Shoot it away from the bullseye completely? Sure, it could ricochet! Roll to hit the bullseye. Nothing I do matters if the DM is working to say yes to everything. Even if success isn't guaranteed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Called out how, like a trait that gives you special abilities in the game rules?

Like a statement that says nobility is a supernatural trait. Even the rules widget doesn't say that, despite providing a clearly supernatural ability.

 

[Maxperson]

Agency is having a reasonable opportunity to try

Then getting a no answer sometimes does not remove agency. You had a reasonable opportunity to try.

 

[Pedantic]

Agency in a game is a product of inviolable rules which players know and can rely on to achieve known goals.

Each of these elements are placed under considerable stress by a lot of rpg play, which typically:

• does not treat rules as inviolable (for the GM)
• features no reliability in resolution for key elements of gameplay and passes it all to the GM to resolve
• assumes the GM will create ad-hoc resolution processes - with resultant lack of transparency for players
• assumes the GM sets goals in secret

High agency rpg play typically features:

• No agreement that the GM / MC / narrator can unilaterally disregard the rules
• Transparent rules and processes that offer guaranteed outcomes (good and bad)
• Transparent goals for characters - often through authorship of them by the players
• Faciliatation of that authorship through group creation of setting and/or situation such that character goals are given meaning and context by player choice, not secret GM backstory

I more or less agree with all of this as a general description of agency and I generally think your first 3 points about RPG design hold as problems (I'm not sure it matters how GMs set goals, or if they do), but I don't think this last point follows. Inviolable rules and a consistent setting are sufficient, regardless of how that setting was generated.

 

[Maxperson]

Or, if nobility is supposed to carry supernatural "social magic", as @pemerton suggested, then it is called out as such in the books  somewhere.

Right. If it's not specified in writing, it doesn't exist short of homebrewing it to be there. Homebrew isn't really relevant to a rules discussion like this one.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, that was a more extreme version of what I'm saying, but the point remains. If I even get a roll to succeed for everything I try, nothing I do matters. Shoot a bow up in the air behind me? Sure, roll for bullseye. Shoot it away from the bullseye completely? Sure, it could ricochet! Roll to hit the bullseye. Nothing I do matters if the DM is working to say yes to everything. Even if success isn't guaranteed.

I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Different actions can be given different odds of success. So everything can be given a chance of success and still have the specific action declaration matter.

 

[mamba]

Agency in a game is a product of inviolable rules which players know and can rely on to achieve known goals.

then I’d say drop any iteration of D&D and take a good look at games like Torchbearer (at least from my limited understanding of the latter). You never find this ‘platonic ideal’ in D&D

 

[Micah Sweet]

then I’d say drop any iteration of D&D and take a good look at games like Torchbearer (at least from my limited understanding of the latter). You never find this ‘platonic ideal’ in D&D

I really, really wish that people who have a specific vision of what they want in an RPG would just play a game intended for that.

 

[soviet]

Like a statement that says nobility is a supernatural trait. Even the rules widget doesn't say that, despite providing a clearly supernatural ability.

I agree it doesn't say that outright (IIRC), but I did take it to be the implication. Not supernatural but sort of inherent. A noble bearing that others see.