D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Raiztt]

(and I passed my SAT with a perfect score and got Straight As in English in College, I'm not guessing here)

 

[Vaalingrade]

@pemerton, do you consider our very real lives to be "low agency" vis a vis our ability to effect outcomes?

Not pemerton, but most of us are shackled and brain-boxed to doing tasks we don't want to do under penalty of death by exposure or starvation with little to no ability to escape let alone change our geographic location.

 

[mamba]

It doesn't seem profitable to delve deeply into the metaphysics of rule following. But in the context of a voluntary activity, rules bind by being taken up by the participants. A written text can make this easier, but isn't essential.

it matters in the sense that without one the DM is never actually bound, they just go along. Other than trusting the DM that they are not abusing their position you have nothing. Same as us

 

[Raiztt]

Not pemerton, but most of us are shackled and brain-boxed to doing tasks we don't want to do under penalty of death by exposure or starvation with little to no ability to escape let alone change our geographic location.

Ya, that, now just in a fantasy world. You attempt to affect change given your constraints and it may or may not work out.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ya, that, now just in a fantasy world. You attempt to affect change given your constraints and it may or may not work out.

So the DM is the oppressive hand of the System and should be toppled?

 

[Raiztt]

So the DM is the oppressive hand of the System?

No because that assumes some sort of intentionality. The DM is just reporting what happens.

 

[pemerton]

Unlike with Aragorn there's nothing supernatural to that background.

The Dunedain has supernatural gifts, unlike those nobles.

I've read the passage in which Aragorn meets Eomer many times. Here is the core of it:

"Come! Who are you? Whom do you serve? At whose command to you hunt Orcs in our land?"

"I serve no man," said Aragorn . . . "the Orcs whom we pursued took captive two of my friends. In such need a man that has no horse will go on foot, and he will not ask for leave to follow the trail. Nor will he count the heads of the enemy save with a sword. I am not weaponless."

Aragorn through back his cloak. The elven-sheath glittered as he grasped it,, and the bright blade of Anduril shone like a sudden flame as he swept it out. "Elendil!" he cried. "I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the Elfstone, Dunadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly!"

. . .

Eomer stepped back an a look of awe was in his face. He cast down his proud eyes. "These are indeed strange days," he muttered. "Dreams and legends spring to life out of the grass.

"Tell me, lord," he said, what brings you here?"​

That's not magic. In D&D terms, Aragorn has not cast a spell. That's a dramatic example of one noble gaining an audience with another.

Because the 5e feature has no inherent supernatural reason for nobility. It's just about power and position, and despite lack of "noble birth," higher offices in the U.S. are effectively nobility. Basically if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, calling it elected isn't going to make it not a duck.

The 5e feature is clear: it refers to high birth and contrasts that with common folk. It doesn't talk about audiences with oligarchs, or merchant guild leaders, or abbots, or the leaders of communes. It talks about nobility.

 

[Campbell]

@pemerton, do you consider our very real lives to be "low agency" vis a vis our ability to effect outcomes?

For many of us, absolutely. I am personally very lucky to have been born into an upper middle class family and possess an aptitude for computers that has let me have more of a say in how I choose to live my life, but I would say a lot of the people I grew up with did not really have much choice.

 

[Vaalingrade]

No because that assumes some sort of intentionality. The DM is just reporting what happens.

...What happens in the world they run and make all the decisions for.

Just the messenger?

 

[pemerton]

There's a whole swath, an enormous swath, of people who play RPGs who want to say "Ok, you know how the real world works? That, but now fantasy".

And there are whole swaths of people who want to engage in, (what I do not consider to even be a game), collaborative fiction.

I don't see what the second sentence has to do with anything. I contrasted a total railroad (let's say the module Dead Gods) with the RPG Burning Wheel run as Luke Crane sets out in his very clear rulebooks.

These are FRPG experiences. They differ quite a lot in the degree of player agency.