D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Raiztt]

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?

I've been saying this for a while

 

[Vaalingrade]

The GM!

Can the DM microwave a burrito so hot even they can't eat it?

 

[mamba]

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"

how is that different from the players finding another way to accomplish their goal after the audience was denied, or setting new goals altogether?

 

[Raiztt]

Can the DM microwave a burrito so hot even they can't eat it?

That dilemma has been solved since at least the medieval period.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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've worked for more than a decade now to preach the wrongs of 'verisimilitude' as a design goal and I don't think I've ever quite formulated a better argument on how terrible it is to make your world 'like the real world'.

Them more depressingly like our world a fantasy world is, the less of a fantasy it is.

For example, in our world Chrome has 'phantasy' as an autocorrect option and correct 'nto' to 'knot', but not 'not'. That would not happen in a well-constructed world.

 

[mamba]

Can the DM microwave a burrito so hot even they can't eat it?

obviously, but it will cool down enough afterwards to eat it, in accordance with the rules of the world

 

[mamba]

That dilemma has been solved since at least the medieval period.

more like danced around and agreed to ignore through some clever wording… that reminds me of something, but I cannot place it

 

[Raiztt]

more like danced around and agreed to ignore through some clever wording… that reminds me of something, but I cannot place it

No, it's been solved.

 

[mamba]

No, it's been solved.

either you are thinking of something else, or we will have to disagree. Not relevant here either way, so we do not need to go down this path

 

[pemerton]

Can the DM microwave a burrito so hot even they can't eat it?

There's always a player who has to unsettle everyone else's immersion . . .