D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

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

Name one. Seriously.

 

[Raiztt]

The DM is the iron fist of fictional reality. The totalitarian of the table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right, I think it is fair to say that 5e is largely a fairly trad game, and you can certainly extrapolate a fairly hard 'rule 0' sort of play, but it is not like old days. 4e benefits a lot from very nailed down rules for a lot of situations though that are much more ambiguous in 5e. I still like running 4e best.

Of course you do. Its the most narrative friendly version of the game. That seems pretty obvious.

 

[Maxperson]

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

Short of an unwanted railroad, I would argue that there's literally no such thing as low player agency. Players who want to be in a DM driven play system are getting exactly what they are seeking, which equates to high agency.

Comparing the different kinds of agency from different gaming styles and systems is apples and oranges at best. Rating one low just because it's not the kind that you enjoy isn't accurate. It's just different agency, not low agency.

 

[mamba]

Here's Oofta claiming it:

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

show me where he made any comparison of agencies at all here

 

[pemerton]

Both examples are so common and so accepted that no interference occurs, basically ever.

<snip>

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'.

The final sentence is obviously true. @hawkewyefan, @AbdulAlhazred, @Citizen Mane and I have posted it multiple times in this thread. Here's an instance (post ):

upthread @Citizen Mane mentioned the passages from the rulebook that speak about "no beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet" and "no superior gear-mongering in the village". What these really are, in my view, are statements of the basic principle of the credibility check. Robin Laws says something similar in the HeroQuest revised rulebook: if the genre of the game is a western, the fact that the cowboy has a descriptor Fast 16 while the horse has Gallop 14 doesn't mean that the cowboy can outrun the horse.

Generally, if everyone is on the same page as to credibility the issue doesn't come up. If there is some uncertainty over what's credible, it can be worked out via conversation among participants. If, despite such conversation, the most interesting action declaration that a player can think of is a Scavenging check to find an unmotivated vorpal sword in a random cupboard, then - to again echo Citizen Mane - the game has gone so badly wrong that we don't need rules to shut down player agency. We need all the participants to revisit the basics - why do the PCs have no priorities? why can the GM not frame interesting scenes? why does play seem to be unfolding in complete disregard of possible consequences?

Once those issues of ethos and expectation are resolved on the part of all participants, then the allocation of roles will do its job: the GM makes stuff up as part of framing and consequence; the players introduce possibilities as part of the declaration of their Circles, Wises, Scavenging, Perception etc tests, and if those tests succeed then the possibilities are realised.

This is not the only approach to high player agency RPGing - Apocalypse World exhibits a different one - but in my experience it works pretty well.

As for providing examples where the GM does not enjoy a power of veto, what those illustrate is exactly that: that the claim that at most D&D table the GM enjoys an unlimited power of veto is a false one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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


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

Not if they're playing in good faith, no. But that roll, even if rolling to secure an audience, has a chance of failure. It is not player OR DM fiat.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Short of an unwanted railroad, I would argue that there's literally no such thing as low player agency. Players who want to be in a DM driven play system are getting exactly what they are seeking, which equates to high agency.

Okay... so what's the difference between a game that largely ignores the Background Features and one that largely honors them?

There's more what for the players in the second game?

Comparing the different kinds of agency from different gaming styles and systems is apples and oranges at best. Rating one low just because it's not the kind that you enjoy isn't accurate. It's just different agency, not low agency.

Personally, I've been speaking almost exclusively about 5e D&D in this thread. I've run a ton of 5e and have been playing every week for the past two years or so, at least.

There are absolutely things you can do when you play D&D that allow for more agency for the players. The Background features are an example of one such thing.

 

[pemerton]

show me where he made any comparison of agencies at all here

He asserted that comparison of agency is not possible, by dismissing my comparison as resting on a uselessly narrow conception of agency.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

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.

It sounds like you would find the vast majority of D&D games (and not even all 4e games) an unbearable railroad then.