D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

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

I would strongly disagree.

 

[CreamCloud0]

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.

a verisimile(???) world is not the antithesis to an exciting or interesting world, it's just one that feels like what would genuinely result if real people lived there, a world that isn't filled with robotic NPCs who regurgitate default voicelines and dont develop while 'offscreen', what would happen in a world where the people in it were just as capable of figuring out those 'PC exploits' with stuff like spells like fabricate

asking questions like how would a culture with access to the sending spell develop cross-country messaging? i remember a conversation in a thread sometime back speculating on the 'Lvl 1 farm wizard' who would be able to easily plough fields in a day with the unlimited mold earth cantrip and ritual summon an entire workforce of unseen servants

i lost the clear point i had in mind when i started writing this reply

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

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.

So playing in a way contrary to your preference is cheating now?

 

[jmartkdr2]

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.

What if it’s an anarcho-socialist commune? /s

I as a player would be annoyed if not one noble in Paris was willing to give the son of a margrave the tome if day - that would be the ridiculous contrivance. But if that happened, I would make sure the dm is factoring in the feature and there are still no meetings that’s obviously a plot hook I should be following up on.

 

[Vaalingrade]

a verisimile(???) world is not the antithesis to an exciting or interesting world, it's just one that feels like what would genuinely result if real people lived there, a world that isn't filled with robotic NPCs who regurgitate default voicelines and dont develop while 'offscreen', what would happen in a world where the people in it were just as capable of figuring out those 'PC exploits' with stuff like spells like fabricate

asking questions like how would a culture with access to the sending spell develop cross-country messaging? i remember a conversation in a thread sometime back speculating on the 'Lvl 1 farm wizard' who would be able to easily plough fields in a day with the unlimited mold earth cantrip and ritual summon an entire workforce of unseen servants

i lost the clear point i had in mind when i started writing this reply

Problem is, that once taught to use that word as a weapon against all things fantasy, people use it to enforce 'Like My Misconception of Medieval Europe, But With A (Very) Thin Veneer of Magic'.

 

[TwoSix]

a verisimile(???) world is not the antithesis to an exciting or interesting world, it's just one that feels like what would genuinely result if real people lived there, a world that isn't filled with robotic NPCs who regurgitate default voicelines and dont develop while 'offscreen', what would happen in a world where the people in it were just as capable of figuring out those 'PC exploits' with stuff like spells like fabricate

asking questions like how would a culture with access to the sending spell develop cross-country messaging? i remember a conversation in a thread sometime back speculating on the 'Lvl 1 farm wizard' who would be able to easily plough fields in a day with the unlimited mold earth cantrip and ritual summon an entire workforce of unseen servants

i lost the clear point i had in mind when i started writing this reply

Yea, but playing the "I'm going to run a mental world simulation using the game rules as my physics engine and see what comes out" can certainly produce a setting that has verisimilitude, but isn't necessary to create a fiction that possesses verisimilitude.

Running that kind of hypothetical simulation is fun, just like running Civilization or some other strategy game in Observer mode and seeing what the end result is fun. Whether or not it makes your game "better" is a function of your play priorities.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't know if I'd go that far. We have to assume that in principled simulationist/low authority play, the DM is bound (by play principles, if not by explicit rule) to not veto player intent unless such intent fails a credible fiction test. (Which yes, is decided by the DM, but I did say "low authority" play.)

I find this conversation uninteresting, as it is almost entirely people using jargon to try and assert that their playing preferences are superior.

It would be roughly equivalent if you had two people arguing about whether poker is better than bridge, because one game or the other is better at maximizing fnord.

 

[Oofta]

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.

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.

In D&D, the only thing a player has fictional control over is their PC's words and deeds. Whatever action they declare the DM determines what happens. It seems you've redefined agency that virtually no actions in D&D show player agency, which I think is bunk. By that definition, no one in the real world has any agency because we don't control the outcome of our actions. We can reasonably predict them, as I type this my expectation is that letters will show up on my screen, but I don't have any control over it. Guess I have no agency.

Your definition of agency is so narrow it's pointless.

 

[TwoSix]

I find this conversation uninteresting, as it is almost entirely people using jargon to try and assert that their playing preferences are superior.

It would be roughly equivalent if you had two people arguing about whether poker is better than bridge, because one game or the other is better at maximizing fnord.

Hey now, I swapped to using "authority" instead just like we discussed many pages back! I, at the very least, should get a pass.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Hey now, I swapped to using "authority" instead just like we discussed many pages back! I, at the very least, should get a pass.

You always get a pass, hombre!

I was building on your point, not using you as an example. I apologize if that wasn't clear.