D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Raiztt]

What you are describing strikes me as very GM-driven play. I would regard it as low player agency.

The point is to construct a fantasy world that operates as if or like it was the real world - so if our actual lives are 'low agency' then so would the game world. I'll give you an example and you can tell me if you chafe against it:


Suppose there is a goddess in this game world who has a particular portfolio, rituals, rites, etc. One of those rights is to swim to the bottom of a pool and bring back a treasure. Let's say that the PC's character isn't very strong and can't actually even reach the bottom, but player says that their character is training as hard as they can, and doing better and better, and is eventually able to reach the bottom but doesn't actually bring anything back. I would allow that player to say "The treasure I brought back is self confidence/growth/progress/etc". No, it's not a literal treasure, but I can see the goddess being like "Ya, that tracks".

Now suppose a different scenario happens, suppose instead that the player says "to receive the goddesses blessing I'm going to do something completely different that has nothing to do with her in anyway - does that work? I want to use my player agency to find a way to completely circumvent this but I still want the reward."

 

[mamba]

I don't follow.

if the DM is willing to break written rules, and willing to break whatever rules your table established, then there is nothing that ultimately can prevent it. You need to trust that they do not, or that you spot it and call them out for it.

Depending on the rules influencing the game without player input might be easier or harder, and what you can weave in might be smaller, but it is never impossible.

If your players had not found the black feathers but something else instead, things would have gone a different direction. Yet it was the DM who decided what they find, so you ‘placing’ a different item would not have been detected

I guess you will argue that this is not cheating, but it is still influencing the game, possibly based on your ideas and goals alone and nothing else

 

[pemerton]

The point is to construct a fantasy world that operates as if or like it was the real world

That's not in dispute. The fantasy world in my Burning Wheel game operates like the real world too.

That has nothing to do with which participant in the game establishes what part of the fiction.

Suppose there is a goddess in this game world who has a particular portfolio, rituals, rites, etc. One of those rights is to swim to the bottom of a pool and bring back a treasure. Let's say that the PC's character isn't very strong and can't actually even reach the bottom, but player says that their character is training as hard as they can, and doing better and better, and is eventually able to reach the bottom but doesn't actually bring anything back. I would allow that player to say "The treasure I brought back is self confidence/growth/progress/etc". No, it's not a literal treasure, but I can see the goddess being like "Ya, that tracks".

I don't really follow this. Who invented the goddess? Why is the character trying to bring a treasure back from the bottom of her pool, and what is the significance of doing so? Should "rights" be "rites"? What rules are you using to adjudicate self-improvement - Traveller has them, and RuneQuest has them, and Burning Wheel has them, but D&D doesn't.

Now suppose a different scenario happens, suppose instead that the player says "to receive the goddesses blessing I'm going to do something completely different that has nothing to do with her in anyway - does that work? I want to use my player agency to find a way to completely circumvent this but I still want the reward."

I've got no real idea what is going on here either.

I've provided many examples of actual play in this thread. They illustrate what I regard as high player agency RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

if the DM is willing to break written rules, and willing to break whatever rules your table established, then there is nothing that ultimately can prevent it. You need to trust that they do not, or that you spot it and call them out for it.

Depending on the rules influencing the game without player input might be easier or harder, and what you can weave in might be smaller, but it is never impossible.

If your players had not found the black feathers but something else instead, things would have gone a different direction. Yet it was the DM who decided hat they find, so you ‘placing’ a different item would not have been detected

I guess you will argue that this is not cheating, but it is still influencing the game, possibly based on your ideas and goals, and nothing else

Of course placing the black arrows is influencing the game. That's the point! And on a different day, or in a different mood, I could have negated a different failure. I'm not sure what your point is in this post.

 

[Raiztt]

That has nothing to do with which participant in the game establishes what part of the fiction.

Players in my game, using your parlance, decide nothing except the actions they declare to that they do. "I open the chest", "I look for an inn", I attack the dragon". But if the PC said, "I'm going to the local shrine of Shalumba" - a deity I didn't create for my game world - and one that the PC wants to introduce - this may or may not be allowed. Most of the time, I really appreciate when PCs get creative and introduce new ideas, but it's possible for them to want to do something so radically different that it diverges into something I do not want to DM.

I don't really follow this. Who invented the goddess? Why is the character trying to bring a treasure back from the bottom of her pool, and what is the significance of doing so? Should "rights" be "rites"? What rules are you using to adjudicate self-improvement - Traveller has them, and RuneQuest has them, and Burning Wheel has them, but D&D doesn't.

I've got no real idea what is going on here either.

I've provided many examples of actual play in this thread. They illustrate what I regard as high player agency RPGing.

I feel like you are purposely obtuse. Like... it's just a hypothetical, everything you need to know is already contained in it.

 

[mamba]

I'm not sure what your point is in this post.

that the DM can still influence the game how they want to, the difference is in the degree only

I do not see a fundamental difference between steering the game by denying an audience and steering the game via having the chars find black arrows

 

[pemerton]

that the DM can still influence the game how they want to, the difference is in the degree only

This claim, though frequently made, isn't correct.

I'm pretty sure I quoted the text upthread from the Burning Wheel rulebook, that tells the player that "If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself" And their are rules for doing that, foremost among them Wises and Circles. I've posted examples in this thread.

Players do their job; GM does their job. The GM can't stop the players doing their bit, nor vice versa.

There are other ways to do high player agency RPGing. Apocalypse World is a different model. So is 4e D&D, though it's closer to BW than AW is. But in 4e D&D, if a player establishes a quest, that constrains the GM: those things are part of the shared fiction, and are achievable within the context of the (relatively tight) 4e encounter framework.

I do not see a fundamental difference between steering the game by denying an audience and steering the game via having the chars find black arrows

The fundamental difference is between winning a game of cards by playing well, and winning a game of cards by peeking at the reflection of your opponent's hand in the window behind them.

Me, as GM, doing my thing when it's my job; and the players doing there thing when it's their job; and those jobs being clearly allocated; is completely different from the GM doing everything but taking suggestions from time to time.

 

[pemerton]

Players in my game, using your parlance, decide nothing except the actions they declare to that they do. "I open the chest", "I look for an inn", I attack the dragon". But if the PC said, "I'm going to the local shrine of Shalumba" - a deity I didn't create for my game world - and one that the PC wants to introduce - this may or may not be allowed. Most of the time, I really appreciate when PCs get creative and introduce new ideas, but it's possible for them to want to do something so radically different that it diverges into something I do not want to DM.

I'm guessing that some of these uses of PC mean player?

I feel like you are purposely obtuse. Like... it's just a hypothetical, everything you need to know is already contained in it.

Well I'm not following it. I don't know what it is supposed to be illustrating.

Maybe an actual play example would be clearer?

 

[Raiztt]

...if a player establishes a quest, that constrains the GM...

Here is our fundamental disagreement. I do not subscribe to the view that the players can constrain the DM in anyway. I view the DM opperating the way that the SCOTUS operates: it is literally impossible for them to be wrong. You cannot tell the SCOTUS that they interpreted the constitution incorrectly because they have the sole authority to interpret it.

 

[Pedantic]

After a certain point, these discussions feel like two interlocutors both trying to use Socratic questioning to bring the other to their viewpoint instead of discussing their actual disagreements. Is there any point to this, if we're not going to establish actual commonplaces on the things we're talking about, i.e. fictional worlds, player authorship, split PC vs. player decision making and so on.

I think it's pretty clear the disagreements there are fundamental, and going for them directly would grind conversation to a halt, so why are we having a one-level up conversation?