D&D General What is player agency to you?

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

I agree with you that players in actual RPG play that is not borked do have a good bit of sway. However there's also a lot of disincentives to using it. You need to play table politics to figure out what approach will work with a given GM to get them to hand over some real narrative agency, and it's not guaranteed to work. IME it's all too easy for whatever you got to be completely obviated later on, and not due to any bad intentions, just that the way D&D works tends to do that.

But, BEYOND all that, the primary focus in D&D is on situations that are constructed by the GM. I have not played in your game, so I cannot evaluate how you build those situations and with respect to what, but you do emphasize your priority of running a setting that doesn't center on the PCs, which seems at odds with the Narrativist locus of play/driving impulse.

 

[Aldarc]

Then why object to your completely legitimate definition of agency, if no one believes more of it is always better?

I'm not sure if I follow you or if I understand the nature of your question. Would you mind rephrasing this for me please?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I agree with you that players in actual RPG play that is not borked do have a good bit of sway. However there's also a lot of disincentives to using it. You need to play table politics to figure out what approach will work with a given GM to get them to hand over some real narrative agency, and it's not guaranteed to work. IME it's all too easy for whatever you got to be completely obviated later on, and not due to any bad intentions, just that the way D&D works tends to do that.

But, BEYOND all that, the primary focus in D&D is on situations that are constructed by the GM. I have not played in your game, so I cannot evaluate how you build those situations and with respect to what, but you do emphasize your priority of running a setting that doesn't center on the PCs, which seems at odds with the Narrativist locus of play/driving impulse.

He's not playing a Narrative game. Neither am I.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well we somehow manage it in real life, where we only ever get to control ourselves, we do so by interacting and investigating and making actions at the things that we want our world to involve more of

And nobody has yet shown any objective evidence that free will actually exists in the real world either! Lol.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure if I follow you or if I understand the nature of your question. Would you mind rephrasing this for me please?

You made a perfectly reasonable definition of agency and are getting pushback. Why is that, unless someone believes that more agency is always better, and doesn't want their game to be denigrated by that metric.

 

[Oofta]

I agree with you that players in actual RPG play that is not borked do have a good bit of sway. However there's also a lot of disincentives to using it. You need to play table politics to figure out what approach will work with a given GM to get them to hand over some real narrative agency, and it's not guaranteed to work. IME it's all too easy for whatever you got to be completely obviated later on, and not due to any bad intentions, just that the way D&D works tends to do that.

But, BEYOND all that, the primary focus in D&D is on situations that are constructed by the GM. I have not played in your game, so I cannot evaluate how you build those situations and with respect to what, but you do emphasize your priority of running a setting that doesn't center on the PCs, which seems at odds with the Narrativist locus of play/driving impulse.

I don't consider "Talk with your DM to see what kind of game they run and decide if you want to play at that table" to be "table politics". Different games have different widgets to move the game forward. Narrative control is no more of a game widget than the Teleport spell in D&D.

No one is arguing that they are different.

 

[Aldarc]

You made a perfectly reasonable definition of agency and are getting pushback. Why is that, unless someone believes that more agency is always better, and doesn't want their game to be denigrated by that metric.

Thank you for rephrasing your point. That has been helpful.

Denigration is still happening regardless of my definition. Clearly many of those same people have no problem denigrating the agency of other games by calling them railroads or claiming that other people's games of D&D are lower agency than theirs. So it's a bit hypocritical IMHO to be worried about being denigrated by others using that value-based metric while clearly doing it to others. If people don't want that value judgment used against them, then maybe they should abandon it themselves when talking about games they feel have less agency.

But my definition of player agency imparts or includes no value judgment that more agency is always better. Its goal is simply to include the play for the widest range of tabletop games as possible. That effort and commitment to descriptive accuracy seems more laudable IMHO than worrying about whether someone's feelings are hurt by their own judgmental double-standards.

Edited for shameful spelling and grammar errors

 

[Campbell]

I think people in real life can have a great deal of agency, even if, like in D&D we can only affect the world around us by our words and deed. If you take that as an insult I can't help it. It's certainly not meant to be.

I disagree with the very concept of "Lack of agency comes from not implementing this specific style of play."

Agency over things you would prefer to not have agency over or do not believe players should expect to have agency over is still agency. In previous conversations you and others have spoken about how binding social mechanics (even ones that just impact the chance of success when going along or going against suggested courses of action) limits agency over and above traditional play norms where players always get to decide what their character think and feel. That I personally do not have the ability to decide what I think and feel all the time does not mean that being able to choose what my character thinks and feels is not an example of agency at the table.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No.

4e's rules are clear and naturally give players a lot of interesting choices without a need for a GM override, which can act as a decent foundation for 'vanilla' narrativist style play. Some of the GM advice, and the skill challenges mechanism, also support this kind of play. But it's pretty weak sauce really, you can drift things that way if you know how to from other experiences but it's definitely not built into the game as it stands. You wouldn't play narr by accident from it.

There's a lot of pretty strong hints. PC abilities are written as if they 'just work', things like wishlists, players defining quests, the whole way that encounters have well-defined stakes, wincons, etc. both in and out of combat. All coupled with a rich and pervasive system of keywords that allow easy reliable reasoning about what logically follows from what. Why else require such a player empowered design EXCEPT to do Narrativist play?

 

[Aldarc]

There's a lot of pretty strong hints. PC abilities are written as if they 'just work', things like wishlists, players defining quests, the whole way that encounters have well-defined stakes, wincons, etc. both in and out of combat. All coupled with a rich and pervasive system of keywords that allow easy reliable reasoning about what logically follows from what. Why else require such a player empowered design EXCEPT to do Narrativist play?

To empower neo-traditional play.