D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

The only thing that makes a noble special is a title, a sense of entitlement, and the social constructs of the society they live in that respect the title. Take them out of the culture that respects that title and they are no longer special.

As I, and @Aldarc, and I think maybe others, have repeatedly posted: this is not a general truth about fantasy as a genre. And it appears to be belied by the Noble background, which describes its feature thus:

Thanks to your noble birth, people are inclined to think the best of you. You are welcome in high society, and people assume you have the right to be wherever you are. The common folk make every effort to accommodate you and avoid your displeasure, and other people of high birth treat you as a member of the same social sphere. You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to.​

(Emphasis added.)

EDIT: As the Dreadnought host shows us, of course, sometimes a sense of entitlement is enough. But in the context of D&D that looks more like the Charlatan background.

 

[Oofta]

As I, and @Aldarc, and I think maybe others, have repeatedly posted: this is not a general truth about fantasy as a genre. And it appears to be belied by the Noble background, which describes its feature thus:

Thanks to your noble birth, people are inclined to think the best of you. You are welcome in high society, and people assume you have the right to be wherever you are. The common folk make every effort to accommodate you and avoid your displeasure, and other people of high birth treat you as a member of the same social sphere. You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to.​

(Emphasis added.)

I'm not going to support a rule that say some people are inherently better because of their ancestry.

Feel free to do whatever you want.

 

[FrogReaver]

we are honing in on the same thing, my post just above yours asks the exact same thing, just in a different way

I think so.

Thinking that some people are inherently better or more privileged at birth is not something I want in my campaign. So ... I'm not going to argue about that any more because it's not my real question anyway.

The real question that nobody seems to answer, is how does not allowing a specific feature under certain scenarios affect agency? Does a fighter that relies on archery lack agency because they don't have a bow when there are several options available to them? Why is this one feature different?

I’m fairly certain that also will be viewed as a lack of agency unless it’s not the DM causing it.

The issue really seems to revolve around the DM taking away any option no matter his reason for doing so. No matter if it was in his prep. No matter if he set a dc and had the player make a roll. All of that is viewed as removing player agency because it all revolves around the DM ‘causing’ it.

I don't think the definitions given of agency are fully coherent with this positions. Though, I don't think my definitions of agency are fully coherent either. Seems like agency is a hard thing to define, which I think is why there is a tendency to use agency in place of more definable concepts (concepts we wouldn't need to fight over definitions to discuss).

For example: There's a great discussion to be had around the DM as center of resolution framework in D&D 5e play. There's pros and cons there. We don't need to mention agency once to have that discussion.

 

[pemerton]

Explain to me how anything I do matters if you're always going to be trying to find ways to say yes? You are effectively railroading me down a pathway of yes.

what decisions you make Won't Actually Matter if everything you decide to do will succeed regardless of their actual chances of success, that's what is being said.
i don't have any agency if no matter where i fire an arrow it is declared a bullseye anyway.

These posts don't make any sense to me.

If the GM says 'yes' to every player action declaration, I think play may be quite boring - it becomes closer to a novel co-authored by the players rather than a game - but I don't see that players are having their agency thwarted. And they are hardly being railroaded - they are just enjoying the fruits of their own choices!

 

[pemerton]

you are making this much too complicated, we are still playing 5e here, so what Burning Wheel needs is not really of interest

Isn't it? To me, that seems a fairly narrow perspective. I think the idea that Position of Privilege makes it harder to pretend to be a commoner - an idea which the BW Mark of Privilege trait brings to mind - is an interesting one. I think 5e D&D could potentially be more interesting at some tables if these sorts of implications of backgrounds were reflected on and incorporated into play.

I was asking can the players decide that, the GM is not involved. We already established that he is not supposed to have an opinion on things and just follow the rules. So the question now is, are the players bound by them too, does the DM enforce them on the players.

And I've replied that this is a table-specific question. Given that I don't play 5e D&D, I don't have an actual play experience to report. In 4e D&D, which I think works best following a similar rubric to BW ("say 'yes' or roll the dice - this is not outright stated but strongly implied by the 4e DMG), the players cannot "say 'yes'" to themselves. If our Emergent Primordial wanted to conceal his nature, for instance, a Bluff check - in some context, perhaps a full skill challenge - would be in order.

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

How well do you know 4e D&D? In my view it satisfies @chaochou's desiderata.

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.

Who are you addressing with this post? I mean, I play games that deliver the experiences I want from them, and have posted about some of them in this thread. One of them is a version of D&D (4e). Of course, with that one I keep getting told it's the wrong game (for me or anyone else) to be playing, by people who have a specific vision of what they want and are unhappy that 4e doesn't deliver it!

 

[FrogReaver]

These posts don't make any sense to me.

If the GM says 'yes' to every player action declaration, I think play may be quite boring - it becomes closer to a novel co-authored by the players rather than a game - but I don't see that players are having their agency thwarted. And they are hardly being railroaded - they are just enjoying the fruits of their own choices!

It goes back to the concept of meaningful choice.

 

[Aldarc]

Thinking that some people are inherently better or more privileged at birth is not something I want in my campaign. So ... I'm not going to argue about that any more because it's not my real question anyway.

I'm sorry, Oofta, but considering your past positions with other issues regarding the intersection of D&D and racist tropes, this feels more like a post-hoc excuse and feigned moral outrage to get out of applying a player feature you dislike than a genuine concern about racism in the game. So it's personally difficult for me to take your claims here seriously. I apologize if that seems unfair to you or your position here, but it does reflect my own skepticism.

The real question that nobody seems to answer, is how does not allowing a specific feature under certain scenarios affect agency?

It does affect player agency, but it's hard to say how it affects it or to what degree when you are also speaking vaguely about things being denied "under certain scenarios." It seems like the how in question would depend on those certain scenarios.

Does a fighter that relies on archery lack agency because they don't have a bow when there are several options available to them? Why is this one feature different?

The player has agency in the game. The fighter is a game construct, and it thereby lacks agency. Please stop conflating the two when the topic is about player agency. So we are talking about the player's ability to exercise their agency in the game. Would you maybe like rephrase your question?

 

[pemerton]

The train is now slightly behind schedule, but at least the players are still on board?

I'm not sure if you're advocating railroading or not. In case it's unclear, I'm not.

Apparently not when it comes to background features. Those seem to always work no matter what the circumstances.

The real question that nobody seems to answer, is how does not allowing a specific feature under certain scenarios affect agency? Does a fighter that relies on archery lack agency because they don't have a bow when there are several options available to them? Why is this one feature different?

I've expressed no view, in this thread so far, about the relationship between player agency and access to equipment. It's a vexed question in D&D, going way back to spellbook shenanigans as a means to control the power of mid-to-high level MUs in the early years of the game. But my general approach is the same as to other examples of consequences: who put the loss of a spellbook, or bow, or whatever it might be, at stake - the player, or the GM?

As to what is distinctive about the Noble background: its rules text to me seems crystal clear. Just like (say) Action Surge, it grants an ability that can be deployed by the player whenever the conditions are right. Second Wind defines the conditions mostly in mechanical terms (using the jargon of the 5e D&D action economy). Position of Privilege defines the conditions in terms of the fiction. Neither requires the player to succeed on a roll.

There are at least two RPGs which gate an Action Surge-like ability behind a successful check: Rolemaster, with its Adrenal Moves (Speed) skill, and HARP (a type of RM-lite) which has a similar skill. D&D 5e could have gone down this path, but didn't.

There are likewise at least two RPGs which gate a Position of Privilege-like ability behind a successful check: Burning Wheel, with its Circles abilities, and Torchbearer (a cousin of BW) which has a similar ability with the same name. D&D 5e could have gone down this path, but didn't.

I'm not going to support a rule that say some people are inherently better because of their ancestry.

No one is stopping you houseruling D&D backgrounds. I'm just reading what the rulebook says.

 

[FrogReaver]

As I, and @Aldarc, and I think maybe others, have repeatedly posted: this is not a general truth about fantasy as a genre. And it appears to be belied by the Noble background, which describes its feature thus:

Thanks to your noble birth, people are inclined to think the best of you. You are welcome in high society, and people assume you have the right to be wherever you are. The common folk make every effort to accommodate you and avoid your displeasure, and other people of high birth treat you as a member of the same social sphere. You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to.​

(Emphasis added.)

EDIT: As the Dreadnought host shows us, of course, sometimes a sense of entitlement is enough. But in the context of D&D that looks more like the Charlatan background.

I'd say that the rule is ambiguous but can potentially be read the way you describe. I think all the potential readings of the rule end up a bit inconsistent when the rest of the rulebook is taken into account.

But the goal of 5e D&D rules is to allow for ambiguity soo all can play the way they want and for that goal i'd say it's absolutely well designed. And while that helped (not solely) drive it's commercial success, i do think it makes for a worse rpg rulebook. And that's really what the discussion about the noble background is really highlighting - when people come to the game with different expectations about how a rule is going to work there's going to be major issues. The desire of 5e to not pick a side directly causes those kinds of issues.

Might want to bookmark this for the next time 5e players are accused of not being able to be critical of 5e.

 

[pemerton]

It goes back to the concept of meaningful choice.

Yes, but this thread is the first time I've heard it suggested that someone giving me what I want when I choose it is denying my agency! As if a choice only has meaning if someone has veto power over it!