D&D General What is player agency to you?

[mamba]

I can only suggest going back and, for example, reading threads started by @pemerton . Sure they didn't use the term apex but they denied that anything else increased agency, what else does that mean?

A plateau. No one said it is all downhill from here.

That handling the situation differently has nothing to do with agency because it is an outlier.

Possibly that agency is more about you deciding your action than you being able to narrate the outcome.

That is not a novel concept and @pemerton agreed not too far back that deciding where to go in a dungeon is agency (albeit in his view rather limited), even if you have nothing to go on.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, people have repeatedly, in discussion after discussion stated exactly that. Blatantly

Please link to a post anyone said D&D was the apex of player agency. It doesn't exist. Different people have different definitions of agency. I certainly disagree that D&D has minimal agency. I don't think a background feature being available 100% of the time has significant affect on agency. The apex of player agency would likely be story time with friends with no rules or restrictions, but I don't think any game actually does that.

 

[pemerton]

if the GM is always at liberty to negate/veto, then the player is really just making suggestions that the GM can choose to take up or not. I regard that as low agency. Taken literally, the player isn't playing the game at all, just making suggestions to the GM who is playing solo.

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.)

My view is that, at many tables, the GM is actually not always at liberty to negate/veto. I think this is especially true if the action declared is (in a dungeon crawl, say, where an opening in the left wall has just been described) I take the corridor to the left. Or if the action declared is (in just about any game, if the GM has just described the physical proximity of another person or creature) I draw my sword and attack.

So now you're saying that games where players don't author all the fiction are barely games at all, let alone have agency.

I didn't remotely say that.

 

[pemerton]

Looks to me like he engaged in some free roleplay and then made a reaction roll.

Upthread I already posted quite a few times about the function of reaction rolls, for instance the following:

I think the encounter and reaction rules in classic D&D are intended, among other purposes, to help produce these sorts of events as components of the game - and not unlike the player's use of their Noble background, these often require the GM to invent some account, in the fiction, of why things happen as they do (eg the roll of 12 tells us that the Ent enthusiastically befriends the Hobbits - what explains this in the fiction?). The difference between my preferred approach and the classic approach is that the random elements are more tightly anchored to resolution of player-declared actions, and the elements of the fiction are more tightly related to priorities the players have established for their PCs.

Is the GM really at liberty to ignore the result of the reaction roll if they don't like it?

 

[pemerton]

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

No. Playing contrary to the rules adopted at the table is cheating. I think that's close to tautology.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, when you exclude the middle ground and grossly simplify and distort the other side's argument you have committed a fallacy (2 actually, but who's counting).

And you're saying you haven't excluded the middle ground? Not from where I'm sitting.

 

[pemerton]

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.

This is not true of all D&D play. You keep projecting your mid-to-late 80s approach to play onto everyone else and asserting that it is D&D.

In Moldvay Basic the GM is not the sole decider of what happens when a player declares an action for their PC: eg if the player declares that their PC turns left at the intersection, the GM has no veto power. If the player declares that their PC opens the door, the GM is expected to call for a roll to open doors, but has not veto power.

I've already given multiple examples, upthread, from the 4e rules and have given examples of 4e play.

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

Not remotely. Apart from anything else, it lets me very reliably predict whose RPGing I would enjoy participating in, and whose I would find an unbearable railroad.

 

[mamba]

My view is that, at many tables, the GM is actually not always at liberty to negate/veto. I think this is especially true if the action declared is (in a dungeon crawl, say, where an opening in the left wall has just been described) I take the corridor to the left. Or if the action declared is (in just about any game, if the GM has just described the physical proximity of another person or creature) I draw my sword and attack.

Both examples are so common and so accepted that no interference occurs, basically ever. Whether that is because the DM cannot or the DM chose not to is unclear until such an attempt is made. Maybe 50% of DMs could have, if they found a good reason to and actually wanted to in the first place, we will never know...

Not entirely sure what this is supposed to prove. By that logic a player is also not always at liberty to declare what they are doing, they are restricted to sensible things instead of saying 'I flap my arms and fly over the wall'.

Unless we find something that not everyone on the planet agrees to, this seems pointless to me.

 

[mamba]

Is the GM really at liberty to ignore the result of the reaction roll if they don't like it?

that would be a tough sell, they would have been better off not rolling in the first place

 

[pemerton]

Well... I say the same of yours! You claim that the situation where players are limited to declaring their PCs actions, strictly limited by GM rulings, some of you even stating without knowing enough to evaluate the costs and benefits, is the apex of player agency.

I don’t think anyone claimed that

Here's Oofta claiming it:

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.

That post was XPed by you, @Raiztt, @Micah Sweet and @CreamCloud0, suggesting at least some degree of agreement or similar inclination.

A plateau.

So your argument is that it's not an apex because it's a plateau? I don't even know what the difference of metaphor means in this context, given that both are places beyond which it is not possible to climb higher. In any event, that doesn't seem to contradict @AbdulAlhazred's point.