D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

@Umbran

My apologies. I am going to bow out of the thread now.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The implication in how it's written is a local noble of your choosing. Generally YOU secure the audience, the audience doesn't secure you.

In Soviet Russia, the Politburo secures YOU!

 

[Raiztt]

My point is that (1) the things that are said to be impossible to reconcile with verisimilitude are not, and (2) if a GM decides to imagine fiction which precludes such reconciliation, in order to "shut down" a player's action declaration, that is an example of low player agency RPGing.

As I've said before, for me agency really is a sort of binary thing, so I'm not sure what "low agency" would mean other than "making fewer choices" but I don't see how these can even be indispute.

 

[pemerton]

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.

If the GM is deciding what happens (principled or not), what agency is the player exercising? In what way did they affect the content of the shared fiction?

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.

I don't see how a long running feud between noble houses would mean that an audience won't be granted. Or why the player wouldn't seek an audience - whether that's Romeo with Juliet, or Saladin with Richard the Lionheart.

 

[Raiztt]

If the GM is deciding what happens (principled or not), what agency is the player exercising? In what way did they affect the content of the shared fiction?

I don't see how a long running feud between noble houses would mean that an audience won't be granted. Or why the player wouldn't seek an audience - whether that's Romeo with Juliet, or Saladin with Richard the Lionheart.

This isn't a debate about agency, actually - it's a debate about GM authority.

 

[pemerton]

As I've said before, for me agency really is a sort of binary thing, so I'm not sure what "low agency" would mean other than "making fewer choices" but I don't see how these can even be indispute.

Well, Googling "agency" gives me the pretty reasonable-sounding action or intervention producing a particular effect. Given that the contribution to the production of an effect can be greater or less, and can be more or less deliberate, it seems to me that agency admits of degree. And in the context of the play of a game, we can talk about number of opportunities to make such interventions, the meaningfulness of the effects, etc.

 

[mamba]

If the GM is deciding what happens (principled or not), what agency is the player exercising? In what way did they affect the content of the shared fiction?

1) they decide what they do, but not the outcome
2) there are plenty of cases where their action is not just negated, then they do affect the shared fiction

I don't see how a long running feud between noble houses would mean that an audience won't be granted. Or why the player wouldn't seek an audience - whether that's Romeo with Juliet, or Saladin with Richard the Lionheart.

so we are back to ‘the player decides whether there is a good reason’

 

[pemerton]

This isn't a debate about agency, actually - it's a debate about GM authority.

Player agency and GM authority are (and I think obviously) very closely related. The more authority the GM exercises, the less scope there is for players to exercise agency. The limit case would be the GM simply telling the players a story about their PCs.

 

[mamba]

This isn't a debate about agency, actually - it's a debate about GM authority.

it’s both, because the two conflict with each other

 

[Raiztt]

Well, Googling "agency" gives me the pretty reasonable-sounding action or intervention producing a particular effect. Given that the contribution to the production of an effect can be greater or less, and can be more or less deliberate, it seems to me that agency admits of degree. And in the context of the play of a game, we can talk about number of opportunities to make such interventions, the meaningfulness of the effects, etc.

Agency (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Is what I use when discussing agency or when I need a definition.