D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

Given games exist on account of suspensions of agency in just the right way to constitute the game, agency isn't scalar. It either exists or doesn't exist in respect of the game intents.

The error being - repeatedly - made is smuggling in a list of intents and then arguing that one will have more agency the more that list is satisfied. That isn't a case of having more agency, it is a case of not having suspended agency in just the right way to constitute the game you intended to play.

It's meaningless to talk about more or less agency, unless you first list the intents you want to have agency to enact. You can then judge how well the available ludic-agencies fit your list. What one cannot do is say that some other list of intents equates with less agency, because, as I have said, games are constituted by suspensions of agency. It's fundamental to what a game is to have given up vast amounts of agency in the first place!

While I mostly agree i think there’s an additional question.

You assert games are constituted by suspension of agency. What’s preventing some games from suspending less agency than others? I think your talk on games having different intents is spot on and probably part of the answer. I’m just not sure the notion of ‘suspension of agency’ on its own is explanatory (or really any different than claiming games grant agency).

 

[Arilyn]

Hey now! Some of us can multi-task! Now excuse me I have to go play Baldur's Gate 3 instead of prepping for my game this weekend.

I wonder if number of cancelled games is going up recently.

 

[soviet]

Out of interest and since you engage with both styles (and this is an open question to others), I'm imagining narrative games have shorter sessions, generally because of the constant creative mode they are on (referencing back to your "no coasting" comment).
We usually run 6-7 hour face-2-face sessions easy, am I correct in saying this would not be usually common for face-2-face narrative games?

We run 3 hour weeknight sessions normally regardless of game type, although I have GMed 6 hour weekend sessions with more narrative style play a couple before.

I think it probably is harder but certainly not impossible. It's maybe not so much about creative fatigue as just unpredictability - it's harder to know where things will go, so you can find yourself having to improv a royal court visit or the like. If it's a short session you have the week inbetween to regroup but if it's a long session you have to maintain the momentum and do it live. You can help yourself out a lot though by delegating things to players if appropriate - 'OK guys, what do we think the patron saint of oozes and jellies is actually like? Everyone give me a trait.'

I try to split the party too. Or at least, don't really try to force it to stay together unnaturally. This often makes more sense in the fiction anyway (Bob why are you coming with me when I visit my kids?) and the rules probably have less of an expectation of needing a group of different specialists. Cutting between two or more groups of PCs means players have short breaks inbetween to recharge their creative batteries and makes it easier for the GM to maintain momentum by staying with or going to whoever obviously has ideas to express.

In a more traditional game you probably have more prep to rely on, both because players have less agency to switch things around (there I said it) but also because the system is likely to take longer to resolve big set piece battles and so forth. If fights take hours rather than minutes to resolve then there is more game time to fill up with story and exploration.

 

[Oofta]

You're not wasting time, your getting ideas for future sessions! Umm yeah.

I did briefly think about starting a campaign with the opening scene where the tadpole is dropped into your eye. Then I remembered that one of my players is a softball pitcher and I think it would hurt when she threw her dice at my head. On the other hand, maybe bottomless chasms everywhere would be fun!

 

[Arilyn]

First, Thanks for elaborating!

I added a bolded clause to your post. Why didn’t you phrase it as I did with that bold?

Or more to the point - Why are you only associating agency with doing the things the narrative game supports but not associating it with doing things non-narrative games support?

My point is that both styles can have plenty of agency but narrative games have an extra pool because players are driving the fiction more. Lots of players don't like having that pool because they'd prefer to leave all the world stuff and NPCs to the GM. Didn't mean to imply that agency is not associated with traditional play.

 

[Oofta]

@mamba

In my view, agency in a RPG is about capacity to influence the outcomes of play.

I agree. At the same time different games just have different restrictions and roles for the people playing the game.

In my preferred RPGing, the main outcome is establishing a shared fiction.

Which is your preference, doesn't mean other games have less agency. The players in my D&D game help establish the shared fiction every time we play, they just do it through the deeds and words of their PCs.

In Gygaxian dungeon crawling, the main outcome is beating the dungeon, which combines puzzle-solving and wargaming.

Perhaps in old school dungeon crawls. Still a valid way of running the game but not by any means the default.

In either case, the capacity of a player to influence those outcomes depends on the GM being constrained: in the first case, constrained as to how framing and consequences are narrated (these are the core of the fiction that is being created); in the second case, constrained by their prep so that the puzzle and wargame scenario remain constant, thus knowable and thus beatable.

Disagree 100% that the GM must be constrained, this is jut another example of going from stating your preference to stating your preference as fact. As a DM I'm constrained by the social contract at the table. If I want to continue to be a DM I'll be a neutral referee and not be adversarial.

Are there bad DMs? Obviously. But almost all DMs I've had over decades of play have been decent to excellent. I've rarely felt like the DM was not being consistent or fair. Except in rare occasions (and DMs I chose not to continue playing with) DMs have been fair with no need for rules constraints.

There is a lot more that can be said about how to operationalise these constraints, in each case. But I hope I've set out the essence of them clearly enough.


Simply talking about a player having their PC go "somewhere on the overland map", without getting into the processes of play on both player and GM side which enable the player to influence the outcome of play, leaves me in a position where I can't say anything meaningful about agency.

What I will say, as I have said many times previously, that I think part of the genius of the dungeon conceit is that it is an artificially austere environment, with very clear conventions around how its architecture and interior design are relevant to play. Wilderness and urban exploration, with frequently non-austere environments that are not governed by clear conventions, is in my view far harder for a GM to hold constant so as to be gameable in the way that a dungeon is.

I have no issue with my open-ended urban campaigns to be constant or gameable. I've always found dungeon crawls boring after a while.

What's funny is that the more I read what you state, the more it feels like you want to make the game virtually into a card game when it comes to resolutions (RP is a different issue, I don't know how that plays in). D&D 4E certainly went that direction, especially if you used skill challenges exclusively to resolve pivotal moments outside of combat. To me having those kind of limitations and restrictions means the people at the table may have less agency and creativity. Many pivotal moments in my campaigns have nothing to do with the rules, it's the creative role playing interactions and decisions made by the group that drive the campaign forward.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@mamba

In my view, agency in a RPG is about capacity to influence the outcomes of play. In my preferred RPGing, the main outcome is establishing a shared fiction. In Gygaxian dungeon crawling, the main outcome is beating the dungeon, which combines puzzle-solving and wargaming.

In either case, the capacity of a player to influence those outcomes depends on the GM being constrained: in the first case, constrained as to how framing and consequences are narrated (these are the core of the fiction that is being created); in the second case, constrained by their prep so that the puzzle and wargame scenario remain constant, thus knowable and thus beatable.

There is a lot more that can be said about how to operationalise these constraints, in each case. But I hope I've set out the essence of them clearly enough.

Simply talking about a player having their PC go "somewhere on the overland map", without getting into the processes of play on both player and GM side which enable the player to influence the outcome of play, leaves me in a position where I can't say anything meaningful about agency.

What I will say, as I have said many times previously, that I think part of the genius of the dungeon conceit is that it is an artificially austere environment, with very clear conventions around how its architecture and interior design are relevant to play. Wilderness and urban exploration, with frequently non-austere environments that are not governed by clear conventions, is in my view far harder for a GM to hold constant so as to be gameable in the way that a dungeon is.

That's true. My campaign setting took a lot of work.

 

[FrogReaver]

My point is that both styles can have plenty of agency but narrative games have an extra pool because players are driving the fiction more. Lots of players don't like having that pool because they'd prefer to leave all the world stuff and NPCs to the GM. Didn't mean to imply that agency is not associated with traditional play.

Sure. And mine is that you readily grant narrative play an additional unique pool but you don’t grant normal 5e play any additional unique pool.

It sounds like you believe normal 5e play is better for certain things than narrative play - it’s just for whatever reason you dont associate those things with agency. I don’t think there’s a good explanation for why this is and your clarification above IMO doesn’t really address that either.

 

[gban007]

In a sandbox, I declare I (as my character) go over here. The GM consults their notes, or applies their heuristic (random table or extrapolation or whatever) and tells me *Here's what you see."

In a module, I declare I (as my character) go over here. The GM consults the module, sees it has nothing useful to say about what's over there, and so uses their control over fiction and backstory to "bounce me back", and tells me "Here's what you see" where some of what I see is the bouncing.

What is the difference in agency in these two cases?

To me, there is quite a bit of difference - in the sandbox version the customer has achieved what they set out to do - they wanted to go over there, and they got over there. In the module, they wanted to go over there, and they didn't get there, they were bounced back.

For a module - next step is they are going into a jungle, no matter which direction they pick, they end up in the jungle, which gets worse when most modules contain maps the players can access, so is clear they are being rerouted, and so lack agency.

In a sandbox setting, I see two main approaches:

The setting is preset, so there is a map with everything in it, and potentially a GM version and a player version if there are things the GM wants predetermined (e.g. dungeons, dragon lairs) that a character wouldn't know, and so in a potential concern about trust or just impacts of knowledge, you don't show these to a player.
In this set up - the players want to visit that forest, or that desert, and they can visit that forest or desert, they have full agency to make that choice.

The setting is not preset, then the GM is either making it up, or working with the players to determine what is in the new area, if the former, can be danger if the GM is wanting it to be jungle regardless, that it looks like the module version, and players lose agency.

To borrow / stretch your puzzle analogy, I'm thinking it as two options for the old great Fighting Fantasy novels:

Module version:
You come to a clearing, there are paths to the left, straight ahead, or right, and there is an old abandoned house. What will you do?
If go left, turn to page 98
If go right, turn to page 98
If go straight ahead, turn to page 98
If enter the house, turn to page 98
- there is no meaningful choice, to my mind no real agency, you are going where the module dictates. (I think module still has options for agency, e.g. in my dragonlance campaign, I certainly didn't force two characters in two different situations to go on the gnome flinger with no safety apparatus, they chose to do so and I facilitated that, but overall they still ended up in the village, and will end up in Kalaman).

Sandbox version:

You come to a clearing, there are paths to the left, straight ahead, or right, and there is an old abandoned house. What will you do?
If go left, turn to page 98
If go right, turn to page 203
If go straight ahead, turn to page 399
If enter the house, turn to page 42
And assuming they don't all circle back to same destination (which did happen occasionally) - then customer had agency in direction to go, they may or may not know some key differences between the options, but had the option and agency to choose, whether the gamebook or DM ultimately describes what they see.

 

[Oofta]

Sure. And mine is that you readily grant narrative play an additional unique pool but you don’t grant normal 5e play any additional unique pool.

It sounds like you believe normal 5e play is better for certain things than narrative play - it’s just for whatever reason you dont associate those things with agency. I don’t think there’s a good explanation for why this is and your clarification above IMO doesn’t really address that either.

Yeah, there seems to be this redefinition of agency to require players adding to the fiction directly for playershaveagency. I disagree. Or there's something I'm missing.