D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, but they're not. You need to look at the whole picture and not just fixate on any narrative mechanics you see. Consider, for example, that in Cortex Prime, a GM can run an adventure path for Tales of Xadia. So what you need to look at instead are what those narrative mechanics do, what the GM and player roles are, and how everything fits together.


It's likely confirmation bias. The people you are talking about relatively small active minority in a sea of traditional gamers. If our situations were reversed, I think that your viewpoint would be put into proper perspective, and I think that you would be quite humbled by that revelation.

I have no idea what Tales of Xadia is, and aspects are a turn off for me in every game I've ever seen them.

As to the second part of your post, all any of us have to go on are our experiences. If I am constantly encountering narrative supporting posters in multiple threads of the one gaming site I frequent, then that style has a strong lobby from my perspective. It doesn't matter if it's different elsewhere, where I don't go. Why would it?

 

[Aldarc]

I have no idea what Tales of Xadia is, and aspects are a turn off for me in every game I've ever seen them.

Tales of Xadia is an adaptation of the Dragon Prince cartoon series on Netflix for the Cortex Prime game system.

As to the second part of your post, all any of us have to go on are our experiences. If I am constantly encountering narrative supporting posters in multiple threads of the one gaming site I frequent, then that style has a strong lobby from my perspective. It doesn't matter if it's different elsewhere, where I don't go. Why would it?

How many people are posting in favor of narrative games? How many people are actively posting in favor of traditional games or not bothering to talk about narrative games because they are busy talking about D&D and other traditional games? I'll wait. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

 

[pemerton]

What does "bounce me back" mean in that context?

I am using the phrase as @mamba did: "In a module you are more likely to run into it’s boundaries than in a sandbox. At that time it is a matter of what the DM does as a result, roll with the punches or bounce you back when you cross this invisible border".

 

[Arilyn]

It's a nice post.

Thank you.

 

[mamba]

What is the difference in agency in these two cases?

despite saying that you are ‘going over here’, you only actually did in the sandbox. In the module the DM either invented something that prevents it or flat out told you that you cannot. That is the ‘bouncing back’ part, they ran into an invisible border.

I am not lying to my players saying ‘you find yourself in…’ if that is not located ‘over here’ on the map. That would make for a weird geography.
Adding to the map and finding something ‘over here’ would have been the ‘rolling with the punches’ alternative to it.

 

[pemerton]

Would you say that a high level wizard... able to cast spells of all levels has more ability to influence the game world than a low level fighter?

A low level fighter with a noble background could easily do more to change the world than a wizard with his 9th level spells. Roleplaying is more powerful than simple mechanical spells.

I read @hawkeyefan's question as being addressed, ultimately, to the player of the character, not to the imaginary capabilities of the imaginary characters. I read @Maxperson as interpreting it the same way, given his references to roleplaying and to mechanics, which are phenomena that obtain in the real world among the players, not in the imaginary world of the characters.

With that perspective established, I take hawkeyefan's implicit point to be that the player of the high level wizard has a great deal of agency to declare changes to the gameworld - creating things, changing things, destroying things, moving different people here or there, etc. Whereas the player of the low level fighter does not have comparable agency.

The fact that the player of the fighter can, through a particular technique, bring it about that the GM forms a view about what should happen to the gameworld seems a much more oblique type of agency to me!

 

[pemerton]

despite saying that you are ‘going over here’, you only actually did in the sandbox. In the module the DM either invented something that prevents it or flat out told you that you cannot. That is the ‘bouncing back’ part, they ran into an invisible border.

In both cases the player declared an action, and then the GM told them what happened next. What does it matter that, in one case, the PC achieved the player's intent and in the other case they didn't?

 

[clearstream]

I would like to hear from someone who actually  likes both kinds of games, not just played them.

I like all kinds of TTRPG. Our sessions from now through to October will be - a 5e one-shot (new GM, 2 players), RQ7 (very experienced GM, 1 player), a radical low-no-myth sim-mod of 5e (of my own design, 2-3 players), MotW (very experienced GM, 3-4 players), Avatar (new GM, 3-4 players).

 

[clearstream]

I play 5e every week. Literally just came back from a session tonight. I like it well enough, but i don't love it.

@Micah Sweet should have called for folk who  love both! Undoubtedly too, it's modes of play rather than game texts we should be considering.

 

[mamba]

In both cases the player declared an action, and then the GM told them what happened next. What does it matter that, in one case, the PC achieved the player's intent and in the other case they didn't?

If it doesn’t matter, then I guess we could have saved ourselves 150 pages… This started with the players wanting an audience and not getting it. Same thing.

If you think me saying this now is inconsistent with what I said before, I disagree. I always agreed that it affects agency, I also maintained that the audience being denied as an exception makes no difference, it would need to be more frequent than that to matter, and that there are other things to consider than just agency.

Same here, you running into the walls once makes no difference to me in the grand scheme of things, but since we were discussing that one case where you did and not the campaign as a whole, the agency is the difference between the two.