D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

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’?

Obviously if a player believes that it makes no sense to seek an audience, they won't (if they care about breaking the game). That's just a trivial consequence of the fact that players control their action declarations for their PCs.

You said the players know that the usage is next to impossible, yet declare the action. If the player really believes it's impossible - which is what I took you to intend - then this player is breaking the game.

If in fact the player doesn't believe it's impossible, then we are back in the territory that @hawkeyefan covered thoroughly upthread - the player has something in mind, and if it's not obvious to the GM what that is then it can be worked out via conversation.

 

[pemerton]

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?

Where is the function recorded or encoded? If it is public, the players know it - it is a rule of the game - and no issue arises.

But if, as in the examples that recur in this thread, the function is located in, or is some manifestation of, the GM's mind/brain, then the player trying to discover the function is trying to discover how the GM responds to various prompts. I guess there's a type of agency there, but it's obviously not agency in respect of the game (unless the point of the game is to discover the GM's imaginative inclinations).

 

[FrogReaver]

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

And still practically speaking not every aspect of using the feature would be discussed.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

To me: change out quotes later

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

I think it’s more that they are the closest thing we have to it. Not particularly close to medieval or even modern nobility, but yea.

 

[FrogReaver]

Posts like this:
I mean, a player in a total railroad can choose between options, in the sense of declaring this or that action. It's just that the GM will narrate basically the same thing, whatever action the player declares.

A notion of player agency that says that a player in a total railroad has agency is not a helpful one.

And the underlying point is this: player agency in a game is the capacity to affect the way the game unfolds; the way that a RPG unfolds is by changes in the shared fiction; the pre-eminent way a player can change the shared fiction is by declaring actions for their PC; if the outcomes of those declared actions are just decided by the GM, then the player is not making changes; hence the player is not exercising significant agency.

I agree with most all here. But IMO the GM deciding in a principled way doesn’t take away agency. It’s when the GM decides in an unprincipled way that agency is taken away.

The difference is akin to rolling vs rolling with a weighted dice.

 

[mamba]

You said the players know that the usage is next to impossible, yet declare the action. If the player really believes it's impossible - which is what I took you to intend - then this player is breaking the game.

this was not a gotcha, I said from the very start the players may know the reason already or may learn it as the story progresses, depending on how it progresses. They can know about the long running feud between your houses or similar things.

So we are both saying that there are cases where an audience is not warranted, the difference is that for you this is for the players to decide, not the DM.

 

[mamba]

Where is the function recorded or encoded? If it is public, the players know it - it is a rule of the game - and no issue arises.

where is it encoded does not matter, the difference I was wondering about is whether it matters that neither the DM nor the player has control over it or whether the DM does. In either case the function intentionally was set up to not be known by the player.
A function known to both the DM and the players, is a rule in the PHB, that is not a case I am interested in, even if the players disagree with that rule.

So if you need an example for that case, a rule in the DMG.
I am ok with the players literally seeing the output of the function (green light / red light), so they know it is the function, not the DM, deciding this. However you would manage that in reality (computer / VTT /…)

The other is controlled by the DM anyway, so it does not matter if they wrote it down or just keep it in their head, as long as they folllow it. Let’s say they wrote it down so they can show it to their players in case there ever is an argument, but for my question it does not matter.

 

[Oofta]

I’ve played in games where background features don’t work the way I prefer them to. If they come up, and I try to use them, and the DM denies the use, I accept it. Then after the game, I explain my dissatisfaction, and I ask if there’s something else we can come up with to replace the feature.

This only happened once. I wound up getting a feat, which came up much more frequently in play.

There's a huge difference between a feature never working under any circumstances and a feature not working under rare and unusual situations.

 

[Umbran]

Nevertheless, the hypothetical and your refusal to actually deal with it does show the weakness of your claim that there's always a reasonable way for a feature to work as it says.

Mod Note:
You seem to be taking a fairly unpleasant and aggressive posture here, and read as if you are trying to "win" the argument.

Please consider that when you do that, people's failure to address points you make may be less an indication of the strength of your position, and more about how engaging with your style isn't something they want to do with their leisure time.

Maybe dial it back a little? Thanks.