D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

There are generally provisions built right into the features where they wouldn't work.

<snip>

No nobles - good luck using position of privilege.

This is why I'm baffled by all these discussions about using the feature to meet the president of a republic which has, as a founding principle, that there shall be no nobles. The feature literally refers to local nobles!

 

[soviet]

I tried to engage with the egg hypothetical in good faith (more fool me). It had no context of why it was being used or how important it was to play. I looked on it as a challenge and showed one example of how even in that situation one could potentially still find eggs. That isn't the same as saying that's what the GM should do or it's what I would do. Again, faced with a ridiculous hypothetical with no context and an apparently good faith expectation by the player that it could work, I found a possible solution - a fellow traveller.

 

[soviet]

This is why I'm baffled by all these discussions about using the feature to meet the president of a republic which has, as a founding principle, that there shall be no nobles. The feature literally refers to local nobles!

As a non-American, the idea that US politicians and military officers are treated as a form of nobility seems obviously correct, but we are veering wildly off topic.

 

[pemerton]

As a non-American, the idea that US politicians and military officers are treated as a form of nobility seems obviously correct, but we are veering wildly off topic.

Well I'm a citizen of a constitutional monarchy, but am reasonably well-versed in US constitutional law and theory. I'm an academic lawyer, and constitutional law and theory is one of my fields. So is theoretical sociology. I look at the notion of noble birth as set out in the Noble feature; then look at the constitutional arrangements of the US; then read posts about using the feature to meet with the elected president of the republic; and then my head explodes!

 

[pemerton]

Feels like there should be a poll or something for people to put where they ultimately stand, something like:

A: A feature only works if the DM has allowed in their setting / background notes for such a feature to work ahead of time
B: A feature works if the DM sees a reasonably plausible reason for such a feature to work, given the world / circumstances
C: A feature works if there is any plausible situation for such a feature to work , given the world / circumstances and with conversation between DM and players
D: A feature always works as written, DM needs to honour it somehow.

I don't play or GM 5e D&D. Off the top of my head, I don't recall abilities like the Noble background feature in 4e. But if I was GMing 5e, I would follow D which is what the rules seem to say.

I do GM Torchbearer, and it has rules which say when a PC returns to the home of their friend, parent and/or mentor they can meet with them and stay with them. I follow that rule. Of course, if the events of play change things - the friend becomes an enemy; or the parent's home is burned down; or whatever - then that change in the shared fiction affects future possibilities.

In 5e, this sort of thing - eg a PC falling from grace in some fundamental way - would suggest a change of background. In my 4e game, multiple PCs changed class, or paragon path, to reflect fundamental changes to the character.

 

[mamba]

Credulity is only broken by the GM cleaving to secret information that contradicts the reason presented at the table.

I don’t think so, that would be the case if it were secret information, but it could also be out in the open.

The players know why an audience is next to impossible and say ‘but my feature says can’ to put the emphasis on the ‘next to’ and secure that audience

 

[pemerton]

I don’t think so, that would be the case if it were secret information, but it could also be out in the open.

The players know why an audience is next to impossible and say ‘but my feature says can’ to put the emphasis on the ‘next to’ and secure that audience

Hang on, so now I have to assume that players will deliberately try and break the game? The solution to that isn't an approach to adjudication - I mean, flipping over the chess board when you're losing isn't a move in the game, and the rules don't need to tell us what to do about it!

 

[mamba]

Let's call the situation S. Let's call the range of reasonable outcomes R(O). It's true that S constrains R(O). The point that @hawkeyefan has made, and that I have also made, and have illustrated with my post 1891 upthread, is that - in a game of imagination - S can be varied. And the possible variations of S obviously, and very significantly, relax the constraints on R(O).

yes

Now if the GM has some S in mind, and does not want to vary that, that may be the GM's prerogative (at least at some, perhaps many, tables). But a GM who does that, therefore forms the view that the player's desired outcome falls outside R(O), and therefore tells the player that their desired outcome does not come to pass is not enhancing, or increasing, or even upholding, player agency. They are exercising their own agency as author of the shared fiction. In particular, they are insisting on their own authorship of S as they have envisaged it.

This is a very GM-driven style of RPGing.

if you assume that the DM only allows an R(O) that contains exactly the three or however many outcomes he could think of as reasonable then I’d say yes.

If R(O) is undetermined (we know of these three, but there can be others yet to be discovered), then no. Discovering those others is up to the players.

Let’s say there is a function f that determines whether an O falls into R(O) or outside it, the players do not know that function and neither does the DM, but the DM grants the idea when the function says ‘yes’ and rejects the idea when it says ‘no’. Does that affect player agency?

What if the DM came up with that function?

 

[mamba]

Hang on, so now I have to assume that players will deliberately try and break the game?

how is using a feature as written breaking the game? You can find a reason for the audience, that does not mean the players get what they want from it… this has been brought up countless times. Do you not agree with that?

Are you saying the players can decide when an audience is unreasonable (and then not ask for it) but the DM cannot (reject one they asked for)?

What happened to ‘D) I’d make it work somehow’?

if I was GMing 5e, I would follow D which is what the rules seem to say.

 

[Mort]

I don't disagree, but practically speaking that's not going to happen every time for every feature.

Sure, but seeing as the background it comes with expressly states that the player and DM need to discuss and work with each other to flesh it out?

It should probably happen for THIS one.