D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

Well I do have different preferences, but it's your specific use of that hyperbolic language that I find absurd and not the actual play preferences themselves, which I have repeatedly validated and given the red carpet treatment in this thread. I also don't go around using hyperbolic language of feeling "oppressed" just because a game may expect the GM to play by game principles or a gameplay loop.

I don't find it hyperbolic at all. Narrative games restrain GM creativity to a degree I find oppressive, by insisting that all of it starts with what the players want. You don't agree, that's fine.

 

[pemerton]

I don't find it hyperbolic at all. Narrative games restrain GM creativity to a degree I find oppressive, by insisting that all of it starts with what the players want.

That is not an accurate characterisation.

(As noted already upthread, in reply to you.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't find it hyperbolic at all. Narrative games restrain GM creativity to a degree I find oppressive, by insisting that all of it starts with what the players want. You don't agree, that's fine.

Ah, the hyperbole shoe is now on the other foot--but of course it's perfectly fine and justified now.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't find it hyperbolic at all. Narrative games restrain GM creativity to a degree I find oppressive, by insisting that all of it starts with what the players want. You don't agree, that's fine.

You're right that I don't agree. I think that your argument would have been better served by simply saying "I don't like the constrains that Dungeon World puts on the GM" without engaging in the hyperbolic claims that it's oppressive.

 

[soviet]

I don't find it hyperbolic at all. Narrative games restrain GM creativity to a degree I find oppressive, by insisting that all of it starts with what the players want. You don't agree, that's fine.

How is it that the rules constraining the GM is 'oppressive', but the GM having veto authority over all player actions is 'just another kind of agency'?

 

[mamba]

nvm, posting was a mistake

 

[Oofta]

It isn't a comparison of degree. They are just different preferences regarding the type of agency. I know this because I can meaningfully impact the content of the shared fiction in the first type of agency, just in a different manner than the one you prefer.

Ultimately you're doing the same thing in both styles of game, attempting to influence the fiction of the narrative in the direction to the player's liking. It's just different methods of getting there. People still make choices. There are still constraints to what they can do. The divide between a player having agency through only their character's actions and through limited narrative control is a pretty artificial one to me.

The only real choice people make is in what type of game, what style of agency, they prefer.

 

[Manbearcat]

referees have the power to judge player actions, that is their job

You can call it enforcing the rules, but there is some leeway there

How does this engage with the content of @soviet 's question in any way? This seems a complete non sequitur.

The schematic of soviet's comment is as follows. The claim:

Systems that principally and rules-wise constrain GMing is "oppressive."

Ok. What is presumed to follow (otherwise what is the point of the claim, particularly with respect to the thread-at-large)?

Systems that principally and rules-wise constrain GMs curtail GM agency via oppression.

Ok. Don't agree in the slightest because this requires both (a) a significant drill-down of a textual analysis of a game in question and (b) actual experience to backstop that textual analysis and the claim being made as a result (neither of which is available here). But lets go with it (as soviet is). So if, in fact, oppression curtails GM agency, how is it that GM having veto authority over all actions doesn't likewise curtail player agency via oppression?

Its an interesting question and "its their (GM's) job" isn't engagement with that question because the only thing that follows from that (which engages soviet's question) would be "its their (GM's) job <to curtail player agency via oppression>." Oppression as a result of constraining the stuff a participant can do which therefore constrains their ability to shape play is doing different work in both situations, but at the level of evaluation of "agency" that is immaterial.

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As an aside, I've spent the majority of my GMing life running Pawn Stance dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls where the creativity is mostly before play in the enormous prep load and assimilation of that prep (though some of it is responding to interesting NPC Reaction Rolls and Wandering Monster "hits" in interesting situations). I've also GMed a metric f-ton of Narrativist games. The in-situ creativity and cognitive load required to run Narrativist games is titanically more than that of in-situ creativity in dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls (and Metaplot-heavy, Setting Tourism FR games of which I ran one for 7 years). Its not even comparable. The former frontloads the overwhelming amount of cognitive load during prep while the latter (Narrativist games) burdens 90 + % of the cognitive load upon GMs (a) in-situ and (b) that load is a direct byproduct of the systemitized constraint placed on GMs and their specific duties in terms of game-coherent situation framing and consequence handling.

So the claim is wrong in every way it can be wrong. The cognitive load in GMing those games (during the actual play) is just profoundly greater (because the other type of game frontloads the cognitive load during prep and assimilation of material to see play) and its married to the constraint. So if someone were to make the claim "GMing Narrativist games feels oppressive and overwhelming because the cognitive load during play is just so damn much...", ok...sure. Absolutely. That is an empirical claim that is trivially testable and trivially true. Likewise, if someone were to make the claim "GMing games with heavy prep models (metaplot, setting, dungeon and/or hex mapping/keying/stocking with table population et al) feels oppressive and overwhelming because the pre-play cognitive load of coming up with that content and then the material load of assimilating and executing it is just so damn much...", again...ok...sure.

 

[mamba]

How does this engage with the content of @soviet 's question in any way? This seems a complete non sequitur.

You may be right on this. I should not have posted in the first place. I am so over this whole debate, we went for 100 pages and there are definitely two camps and that won’t change in 100 more, so I am out.

There are two philosophies here and in both the players have plenty of agency. If you need more than traditional guarantees you, by all means play something else.

 

[pemerton]

Ultimately you're doing the same thing in both styles of game, attempting to influence the fiction of the narrative in the direction to the player's liking. It's just different methods of getting there. People still make choices. There are still constraints to what they can do. The divide between a player having agency through only their character's actions and through limited narrative control is a pretty artificial one to me.

As I've posted many times in this thread, including in reply to you, "narrative control" is a red herring, a furphy, and not the main point.

The main issue is about how the GM decides framing and consequences. In high player agency RPGing, those decisions are highly responsive to player-authored priorities for their PCs.