D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I dunno what burning wheel is, but my gut intuition is that it's gar-bage.

Mod Note:

If you don’t know what something is, the polite option is don’t default to denigration, inquire.

 

[Umbran]

I dunno what burning wheel is, but my gut intuition is that it's gar-bage.

Mod Note:
The insult isn't constructive.

Acting as if Snarf is somehow contradicting himself is pretty disingenuous.

So, you can accuse them of, in effect, lying. Or, you can remember that in a long thread, getting turned around is pretty easy, and cut folks some slack. Your choice. You have agency.

But remember - agency does not mean much if there's no meaningful consequences to your choices.

Folks, getting snippier at each other is choosing the path with the ogre. Maybe choose otherwise, hm? Thanks.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes there are. Or at least different systems look to different things to establish agency.

Nope. My agency is enhanced by it and would be diminished in a narrative system. It's really not hard. I don't want what the narrative systems offer, so forcing those things on me and ignoring my desires and sought outcomes to give it to me lessens my agency.

I’m only talking about D&D, not narrative systems.

 

[pemerton]

Do you prefer Burning Wheel or Torchbearer, which one is closer to D&D?

Torchbearer is closer to D&D. It has classes and levels, though the latter do pretty different work from what they do in D&D.

In technical terms they are fairly similar, but not identical. (The sequence of invention is BW => Mouse Guard => Torchbearer.)

BW offers the most intense, compelling FPRGing I've experienced. Torchbearer is more light-hearted: I think it has quite a bit of The Hobbit about it, with sprinklings of the Silmarillion. It also incorporates GM-authored and adjudicated dungeons as a core element of play, and so to that extent is lower player agency. Though as I've posted upthread, it can be run without dungeons - as per my most recent session, that I've referred to several times.

My mini-review of Torchbearer is here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2nd-ed-first-impressions.685558/ My thoughts have developed a bit since posting that, based on play experience.

Any opinion on TB1 vs TB2?

I don't know TB1e. My knowledge, experience and posts all pertain to TB2e.

 

[Maxperson]

I’m only talking about D&D, not narrative systems.

Then you're just plain wrong. My agency is greater in the type of game I'm describing. And you're describing D&D using a more narrative style, so same difference.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Then you're just plain wrong. My agency is greater in the type of game I'm describing. And you're describing D&D using a more narrative style, so same difference.

Actually, I’m thinking of two 5e games that I participated in. Neither was so different from the texts as written that they wouldn’t be considered 5e. The game I described didn't have narrative elements of the kind I think your assuming. Unless Background Features and the like are considered “narrative”.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Actually, I’m thinking of two 5e games that I participated in. Neither was so different from the texts as written that they wouldn’t be considered 5e. The game I described didn't have narrative elements of the kind I think your assuming. Unless Background Features and the like are considered “narrative”.

Well, they're definitely more narrative than most everything else in 5e.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually, I’m thinking of two 5e games that I participated in. Neither was so different from the texts as written that they wouldn’t be considered 5e. The game I described didn't have narrative elements of the kind I think your assuming. Unless Background Features and the like are considered “narrative”.

Doesn't really matter. This is fact. My agency would be reduced under what you have described and enhanced under what I have described. Nothing else matters.

 

[pemerton]

Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World might not be all that relevant to mainstream D&D, but a collaborative approach to worldbuilding absolutely is. The most popular D&D actual play, Critical Role, absolutely features some PC centered collaborative worldbuilding. The neotrad demographic is a strong element of the current D&D fanbase, particularly its younger demographic.

And the fiat aspect of the Noble feature is highly relevant to this, in my view. Upthread I posted:

I am not the biggest fan of fiat abilities, because I think dice rolls produce a more compelling pattern of success and failure (Robin Laws calls this the pass/fail cycle, and suggests that it is inherent to all stories). But where fiat abilities are tightly rationed (eg as is the case for Prince Valiant Storyteller Certificates), then they allow the player to really stake their claim - This is where I care, and will produce the outcome I want!

In the context of 5e D&D, the "rationing" consists in being able to choose only one background, and having the fictional circumstances that enliven it be reasonably narrow. I think this design is less compelling than Prince Valiant, as the player makes their choice at the start of play and in anticipation, rather than at the moment of truth as happens in Prince Valiant - but this would just be one way in which D&D design tends to favour "comfortable" over "compelling", and probably not the most invidious.

What I've described as "comfortable" is, I think, closely connected to neotrad preferences.

 

[pemerton]

agency only matters within the playstyle

This strikes me as implausible.

I have left games because I lacked agency in them. I have made deliberate decisions in the context of choosing games, and GMing games, having regard to the effect on player agency. In my Classic Traveller game, as I reported in some actual play reports, there was a sequence of sessions where the game drifted into lower-agency, high GM-exposition, play, and I took deliberate steps to change that.