D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Oofta]

The people who keep saying that narrativism is all about players 'authoring the fiction' are the people that don't like narrativism.

Narrativism is all about players driving the fiction.

There's nothing stopping that in D&D either. The players in my campaigns always have a choice on what they do or do not do, what they do or do not pursue. That may not always be the case, the players may choose to sacrifice some agency in order to play a module for example, but D&D does not preclude player and character driven fiction. It just doesn't happen using the same mechanisms as PbtA.

 

[Raiztt]

Narrativism isn't trying to emulate a three-act structure or classic heroes journey.

This is definitely not a selling point.

 

[Manbearcat]

We're playing a game of make believe. Agency in the game is limited what we can do as players in the game.

This doesn’t looks like a rebuke of what @hawkeyefan wrote. It looks to be a rewording of exactly what he wrote?

Related to character and player agency not being inherently dependent variables, Immersion is an independent variable from agency. Attempts to make them inherently covariates is confounding to clarity on the subject, not illuminating. Its fine for someone to say “the particulars of my cognitive space and related immersionist priorities supersede the dynamics of agency as a player in a game.” No big deal, that is a fair enough thing to say. And further, its more than just "no big deal." Being clear about this both helps designers build game engines toward these goals and it helps players filter their choices about game engines.

 

[Raiztt]

This doesn’t looks like a rebuke of what @hawkeyefan wrote. It looks to be a rewording of exactly what he wrote?

@hawkeyefan said...

Because one is real and one is not real.

@Oofta is saying they are the same thing, and hence, if one is real the other is real because they are identical. It is in that way that he is disagreeing with/rebuking the other poster.

 

[Oofta]

This doesn’t looks like a rebuke of what @hawkeyefan wrote. It looks to be a rewording of exactly what he wrote?

Related to character and player agency not being inherently dependent variables, Immersion is an independent variable from agency. Attempts to make them inherently covariates is confounding to clarity on the subject, not illuminating. Its fine for someone to say “the particulars of my cognitive space and related immersionist priorities supersede the dynamics of agency as a player in a game.” No big deal, that is a fair enough thing to say. And further, its more than just "no big deal." Being clear about this both helps designers build game engines toward these goals and it helps players filter their choices about game engines.

@pemerton makes a distinction. I was just pointing out that I do not distinguish between character and player agency; to me they are effectively the same. The constructs we use to express that agency varies depending on the structures of the game and, in D&D anyway, group decisions about the campaign.

How that agency is expressed is a different issue, I simply don't believe that D&D is inherently a low (player) agency game.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm really not interested in whether or not Tordek the dwarf fighter has unresolved issues with his father. I am interested in how he and his party are going to steal the cursed ruby of slakesh.

players can drive the fiction perfectly well without the ability to directly affect how the fiction exists as players (not characters)

"Human issues" is being taken too literally here as in "this person has issues." Sub in motivations, goals, imperatives, ethos etc. Here is a very simple explanation (and yes, this doesn't capture the fullness of either Story Now gaming nor Trad gaming nor NeoTrad gaming nor D&D 4e…I've written a ton on these subjects so if you're looking for more, you can find plenty on them out there...here I'm just trying to distill a very simplified, foundational component of these playing styles to get peoples' brains on the right course):

* Take 4e D&D.

* GMs who use the Quest system to give players an endless sequence of Goals around the GM’s setting and plot are running Trad.

* GMs who index player Background/Theme/PP/ED + prior fiction when using the Quest system to give players an endless sequence of Goals which realize player conception of PC while simultaneously revealing GM’s prep (likely setting and plot though not surely so) are running NeoTrad.

* Games where the players index Background/Theme/PP/ED + prior fiction while authoring their own Goals via the Quest system are participating in Story Now.


EDIT - @Raiztt , we cross-posted. See the second part of my post above. Character agency and player agency are not inherently covariates (game engines are meat-space artifacts, they're UIs that don't, and cannot, translate the cognitive loop of the character to the cognitive loop of the player even close to a 1:1 relationship) just like immersion and player agency are not dependent variables (they may be coincident momentarily for one player or never for another and the factors that make agency and immersion coincident for one player may be detrimental for another player...or irrelevant to a third player).

 

[soviet]

There's nothing stopping that in D&D either. The players in my campaigns always have a choice on what they do or do not do, what they do or do not pursue. That may not always be the case, the players may choose to sacrifice some agency in order to play a module for example, but D&D does not preclude player and character driven fiction. It just doesn't happen using the same mechanisms as PbtA.

I agree there's nothing stopping it in D&D, or at least it can be drifted successfully in that direction ('vanilla narrativism'). However I think I am using a much stronger definition of players driving the fiction than you are. I mean that the goals and problems of the characters are absolutely central to play, such that even 'playing a module' is not really workable. I mean that the GM has no veto over whether things 'make sense' or are 'realistic' - short of people attempting things that are literally impossible, the rules are the arbiter of whether something works or not. And the GM has no authority over the rules.

 

[pemerton]

That's a helpful link, and segues to a comment I wanted to make - or a question, rather: how is agency measured?

<snip>

So the blog post isn't saying that sandbox play offers less agency than narrativism. It's saying that it offers the wrong kind of choices.

<snip>

Freely doesn't mean "free to do anything", it means that players (not game designer, not GM) are free to resolve the premises however they desire. That is a powerful agency and distinct to narrativism. Coming back to my opening thought: I don't believe it necessarily amounts to more agency, because what measures "more" depends on what I am counting.

Is the measure of agency how many times I as a player get to say something that happens in our fiction or system? Is it the breadth of choices I get to choose between? Is it effect, or how powerfully I can impact the game world?

Here are some posts of mine from pages 8 to 11 of this thread (posts 144, 146, 211, 219, 215):

if I declare an action for my PC, I expect - subject to the resolution procedure - to have it be able to add to or change the fiction. Even in a very simple D&D game, this would include things like my PC was over there but is now over here or this Orc was alive but now is dead.

To me, those look like changes to the "game reality".

I don't know what all these games are that let players make changes to the fiction other than by declaring actions for their PCs. I only seem to see them mentioned by people who don't play them.

the topic of this thread is player agency. To me, it seems obvious that if all players can do is establish "inconsequential", "minor" or "not directly pivotal" elements of the fiction - so that all the significant elements of framing, consequence etc are established by the GM - then their agency is modest at best.

And in order to pre-empt, or at least attempt to pre-empt, confused or incorrect statements about how (say) Dungeon World works: in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.

There may also be techniques that permit the players to declare actions or make decisions pertaining to their PCs' memories. This goes together with the players' establishing goals and aspirations, to overall produce characters that have "thicker" lives, relationships, etc than is typical of much D&D play.

Well, Google - citing Oxford Languages - tells me that agency means an action or intervention producing a particular effect; a thing or person that acts to produce a particular result.

Merriam-Webster tells me that it means a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.

In the context of a game, like a RPG, when we are talking about player agency, the person who acts would be a player, and the result produced or end achieved would be a change to what everyone is imagining together.

If all the interesting and important changes are established by one participant, then as I say the other participants have little agency in respect of the game. That is not a redefinition: it is an application of standard meanings of the term in this particular context.

If the impact of what the player decides that their PC says and does is decided primarily by the GM, then this does not seem to me to be a very significant exercise of agency by the player. They are prompting the GM to produce an effect or result; but they are not producing it directly via their own agency.

I am talking about the agency of players of a particular sort of game, namely, RPGers. RPGing involves the creation of a shared set of imagined events, people, places, etc, and establishing "what happens next" to some of those people and places.

Agency, in the context of this sort of game, means doing some of that establishing. It is done mostly by saying things, sometimes by writing things. If one participant gets to do all or most of that establishing, then obviously other participants don't have much agency in that game.

Now if someone wants to contend that RPGing involves something different - eg that it is not really about creation of shared fiction at all, and it's really about puzzle solving - then maybe we can talk about player agency from a different perspective. But I haven't seen that take on RPGing from posters in this thread other than, perhaps, hints from @FrogReaver.

I have not been ambiguous or unclear about what I am talking about.

And here is a post of mine from 2018, from a thread in which you participated:

I am talking about the capacity of a player to affect the content of the shared fiction. That's it.

In a game in which the GM adjudicates action resolution by reference to unrevealed elements of framing ("hidden backstory") the player has less of that than otherwise.

It may well be true that other RPGers don't care about that particular form of player agency. Obviously that's their prerogative. But it's a real thing, and it's something I care about. And it's the reason I don't like the role of hidden backstory as it has frequently been used in RPGing (especially in the standard 2nd ed AD&D style).

So I assert that I've actually been pretty clear for over five years now.

In that same 2018 thread I also posted this, which I have reiterated in this thread:

I do wonder what the point is of emphasising that agency consists in the player being free to declare actions for his/her PC - because that is true in any episode of RPGing at any table in the world (isn't it?), and so doesn't seem to identify any very interesting feature of various approaches to RPGing.

There may be things to say about player agency from other perspectives, but that the players get to declare actions for their PCs is not one of them. That is a threshold criterion for playing a RPG at all.

Notice that the blog I quoted from contrasts sandbox with railroad/illusionism. That's a contrast of GMing techniques. If someone wants to talk about the agency of players in a sandbox, they're going to have to talk with some precision about those techniques. In this thread, that has mostly consisted in reiterating that the GM is permitted to refer to their notes, or their intuitions of what "makes sense", in order to declare that a player's declared action fails. No one has explained how that particular GMing technique increases player agency.

 

[Oofta]

I agree there's nothing stopping it in D&D, or at least it can be drifted successfully in that direction ('vanilla narrativism'). However I think I am using a much stronger definition of players driving the fiction than you are. I mean that the goals and problems of the characters are absolutely central to play, such that even 'playing a module' is not really workable. I mean that the GM has no veto over whether things 'make sense' or are 'realistic' - short of people attempting things that are literally impossible, the rules are the arbiter of whether something works or not. And the GM has no authority over the rules.

Obviously the mechanisms and, to a large degree, the goals of the game are different. I just reject the idea that in D&D players are helpless before the all-powerful DM and cannot alter the fiction through the acts of their characters. For that matter, I discuss generalities of tone and direction with my players I assume most good DMs do as well.

Despite technical definitions I think there's a lot of gray areas when it comes to all of this.

 

[pemerton]

Narrativism isn't trying to emulate a three-act structure or classic heroes journey.

And even if it was, the post to which you replied would have missed the point in my view. To wit:

Worth pointing out that in your typical three act structure or classic heroes journey, the protagonist (or in this case, PCs) don't drive the story. The story happens to them and they react to it.


The easiest cultural touch stones to reach out to, (A New Hope and LotRs), the story is thrust upon the protagonists and it largely isn't concerned with what their goals are prior to that thrust.

This is why it matters to distinguish the player and the character. You, here, are talking about how the character in the fiction comes to find themselves caught up in their struggles. But this thread is about player agency, which is who gets to decide what the fiction will be about, what sorts of things it will include, etc.

Here's a concrete illustration of the point, from 4e D&D Dark Sun play:

The first half or more of the session was spent on PC building (despite my admonition to the players that they could only have 1 hour). With three players, we got 3 PCs: an eladrin bard with the virtue of cunning (with the Veiled Alliance theme); a mul battlemind gladiator (with the gladiator theme and wielding a battle axe); and a half-giant barbarian gladiator (with the wilder theme and wielding a glaive).

<snip>

As the final part of PC building, and trying to channel a bit of indie spirit, I asked the players to come up with "kickers" for their PCs.

From The Forge, here is one person's definition of a kicker:

A Kicker is a term used in Sorcerer for the "event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins."

For the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn! I can't wait to play this character!"

It's also the thing that the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game. At the start of the next game with the same character, the resolution of the Kicker alters the character in some way, allowing the player to re-write the character to reflect changes.​

In my case, I was mostly focused on the first of those things: an event or realisation that the character has experienced just before play begins, which thereby propels the character into the game. The main constraint I imposed was: your kicker somehow has to locate you within Tyr in the context of the Sorcerer-King having been overthrown. The reason for this constraint was (i) I want to be able to use the 4e campaign books, and (ii) D&D relies pretty heavily on group play, and so I didn't want the PCs to be too separated spatially or temporally.

The player of the barbarian came up with something first. Paraphrasing slightly, it went like this:

I was about to cut his head of in the arena, to the adulation of the crowd, when the announcement came that the Sorcerer-King was dead, and they all looked away.​

So that answered the question that another player had asked, namely, how long since the Sorcerer-King's overthrow: it's just happened.

That character, the gladiator, is called into action by events outside his control.

But that is quite distinct from the role of the player in deciding what the focus of play will be, what the dramatic needs of this character are, and how those are related.

@pemerton makes a distinction. I was just pointing out that I do not distinguish between character and player agency; to me they are effectively the same.

I've just given an example that illustrates how they contrast.

I simply don't believe that D&D is inherently a low (player) agency game.

As I have repeatedly posted, including several times in reply to you, nor do I. I've just posted another example of high player agency D&D play.