D&D General What is player agency to you?

[mamba]

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

that is not the same thing as comparing them, and it certainly is not declaring his way the apex of agency, or really any other level for that matter

 

[Maxperson]

that is not the same thing as comparing them, and it certainly is not declaring his way the apex of agency, or really any other level for that matter

Sure. And you can compare the different types of agency to see which is better for you personally. Pros and cons and such. You just can't rate one as greater than the other because it's an apple and an orange of the same size.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think the world is depressing.

Yep! It's the people of the world who are depressing.

 

[pemerton]

The principle I quoted was "If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself".

It is about creating interesting situations. It's not about setting goals. Nor looking for new ways to accomplish goals.

so where do goals and the actions to accomplish them come from? Don’t tell me there aren’t any goals, and you better not tell me the DM declares them either

As I've repeatedly posted upthread, in high player agency RPGing the players establish the goals/priorities/aspirations for their PCs.

But the principle I quoted is not about that. Here are some duties of players in Burning Wheel, stated on the same page as the players (which refers, at the top, to "the sacred and most holy role of the players"):

offer hooks to their GM and the other players in the form of Beliefs, Instincts and Traits . . .

use their character to drive the story forward - to resolve conflicts and create new ones . . . to push and risk their characters, so they grow and change in surprising ways​

Those are principles about adopting goals/priorites/aspirations and about declaring actions that give expression to them

But the principle I quoted is about establishing situations - and, as I said and as I explained, is the exact opposite of play where the GM establishes situations, and vetoes/negates player action declarations, such that the players then have to "experiment" with various action declarations until they find one that won't be vetoed/negated. (Upthread, you described this as the players having to work out, via play, what the function f is that will return results on S that fall with R(O).)

that sounds either far too random and aimless to me, or you had your goal and achieved it, you will have to tell me…

<snip>

So is the result that you just to have interesting scenes, like Simpson’s episodes, where nothing is connected to anything else and you can watch them in any order, or do they make up a natural progression towards something and have to be seen in a specific order?

Given that you are working towards a climax I must assume it is the latter. How is ‘working towards a climax’ different from ‘working to accomplish a goal’?

Here are two actual play reports. You can tell me whether or not they exemplify random and aimless play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe you missed this post of mine upthread:

I did miss that, thank you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is true. And I understand your preference would be to use dice rolls. But many here have advocated for DM fiat.

Of the two, I think one is very clearly pro-player agency and the other is very clearly not.

That's really what it boils down to. Just about everything else in the thread has been tangential to that.

If I were forced to play with that background feature, I would want the possibility of a veto. But I would far prefer free roleplay and a reaction roll.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

And everyone knows that Norway has the best fnords anyway.

 

[pemerton]

of course it is, I wasn't saying it wasn't, I was saying that is no different from the player not being able to do everything

Here's the difference: credibility based on agree genre and fiction is a collective decision; credibility based on the GM's secrets and the GM's sole judgement of what "makes sense* is a unilateral decision.

In a discussion of the distribution of agency among participants in a social activity, the difference between collective and unilateral decisions is quite salient.

A power you have and never exercise is still a power you hold.

Sure. Also, one source of evidence that someone lacks a power to do X is that they don't do X. This is especially true in low-stakes social situations governed by semi-formal norms.

I guess we will never find out if the DM has that power, because no DM is wielding it this unreasonably. I'd say the DM has that power, but no halfway decent DM will use this except in some very special circumstances.

Here's another thing that puts it to the test: suppose that, if the GM purports to exercise this so-called power, and the table breaks up. It turns out that they didn't have it: they failed to produce the shared fiction they were setting out to by exercising the power.

I think that many D&D tables would not last long if GMs purported to exercise veto power over the action declarations I described (very simple things like choosing which corridor to go down, which door to open, whether or not to attack someone).

 

[pemerton]

Correct me if I'm wrong or misunderstood. You stated that players only have agency if they decide the action and the outcome of that action, correct?

No.

 

[Oofta]

No.

Wow. Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply that helps me understand your point of view.