D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Mort]

Oh, yep. I'd include the Cabinet as well. Not the heads of agencies, though. I view those like corporate CEOs. Influential as all get out, but not really nobility.

See I view them EXACTLY like nobility. The people getting these positions expend considerable resources and money to be "appointed" with the title they seek. Why, because of the prestige and massive side benefits that the position holds - AKA nobility. But again pretty far afield.

 

[Maxperson]

You joke, but this is EXACTLY right.

The DM can easily (and in some cases heavily) telegraph that that a meeting is a REALLY bad idea. If the PC pushes for it anyway? What happens, happens.

See, that's not an audience to me. That's a giant eating PCs, which can and would happen to each and every PC regardless of background ability if PC walked up and asked to talk to the giant noble.

 

[Maxperson]

See I view them EXACTLY like nobility. The people getting these positions expend considerable resources and money to be "appointed" with the title they seek. Why, because of the prestige and massive side benefits that the position holds - AKA nobility. But again pretty far afield.

That's just like a CEO. A CEO is an appointed title with considerable resources, and like a CEO, the agency heads have to do what the nobles(congress/executive branch) want them to do or they get fired.

 

[pemerton]

Likewise that a shared fiction in which player priorities loom large will lack verisimilitude. That's a nonsense concern. Villains, curses, twists and turns, don't become less verisimilitudinous because they involve or pertain to ideas that the players as well as the GM came up with.

There's a big difference between "can't work" and "wouldn't work for me" or "there still has to be some restrictions on the shared fiction". If shared fiction works for you, great. It would make the game less enjoyable for me.

<snip>

Just because it's not a concern for you does not mean it works that way for everyone.

I don't know what you are talking about as "working" or as a "concern".

I said that it's nonsense to assert that shared fiction in which player priorities loom large will lack verisimilitude: that is to say, would lack the sense of being true or real, or would burden suspension of disbelief. Are you disputing that?

 

[pemerton]

Hypotheticals are sufficient.

An efreeti noble in the City of Brass that views all mortals as insects unworthy of attention isn't going to give an insect unworthy of attention an audience. It's ridiculous to think that it would.

A group that finds itself on Earth and seeks an audience with the president of the U.S. based on being a noble from another universe isn't going to be granted that audience. It's absurd to think that he would grant it to the noble in the group just because of a minor ability that exists in an exceptions based system.

You keep presenting this fiction, with no account of how, at the table, it came to be. And then think it can tell us something about who, at the table, is exercising agency.

 

[pemerton]

This idea comes from the same school of thought where people watch a show and go 'how CONVENIENT that the plot just HAPPENS to follow the protagonists.' that I've seen on a lot of lazy react channels these days.

They need to livestream some Andy Warhol films!

 

[pemerton]

I figured establishing that the PCs were capable of things that were beyond understanding... that they were likely to in fact be visitors from another reality... maybe someone would consider talking to them.

Crazy.

Ack ack ack ack ack!

 

[pemerton]

I do always put my setting and world logic above the player's action declarations. I do that because it's the best way I know how to run the game, the game feels more "real" to me if I do this. For me, it makes for a better game and one that's more enjoyable in the long run.

How can you not recognise that this has implications for the agency exercised by the players over the shared fiction?

 

[pemerton]

while we don't 'look for a reason to say yes' to the players as you suggest we should be doing but we aren't by any measure looking for a reason to say no either, we just take the reason we see as the most reasonable one in the circumstances

The upshot of this is that, in your game, things like the Dreadnought hoax will never happen. Things like Aragorn persuading Eomer to lend him horses will never happen. Things like Faramir believing Frodo, and letting him keep the Ring, will never happen. Things like Jean Grey shooting herself in front of Scott will never happen.

Your fiction will be a succession of the most reasonable upon the most reasonable as imagined by one participant.

 

[Raiztt]

The upshot of this is that, in your game, things like the Dreadnought hoax will never happen. Things like Aragorn persuading Eomer to lend him horses will never happen. Things like Faramir believing Frodo, and letting him keep the Ring, will never happen. Things like Jean Grey shooting herself in front of Scott will never happen.

Your fiction will be a succession of the most reasonable upon the most reasonable as imagined by one participant.

Ya that's a giant reach. None of the events you just described are literally inexplicable - i.e.: there are reasons that explain why those events happened. And, in fact, that is what a lot of people are trying to say - they expect that the things that happen 'in game' have 'in game' explanations rather than soley out-of-game explanations.

He's saying that events that happen in-game must have sufficient in-game explanations for why they happen, that is coherent with the logic of the game world.

Then you give a bunch of examples that have explanations as to why they happen that is coherent with the logic of the fictional world.

Not sure where that was supposed to go.

When the poster says "reasonable", he doesn't mean reasonable to HIMSELF, he means reasonable as far as the NPC/world feature is concerned.