I have agency in real life. Players in my games have agency even though they cannot add to the fiction of the world outside of their players. The level of agency is different, but it's not directly comparable.
D&D General What is player agency to you?
- Thread starter bloodtide
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I have agency in real life. Players in my games have agency even though they cannot add to the fiction of the world outside of their players. The level of agency is different, but it's not directly comparable.
CreamCloud0
Hero
yes, because there are different types of realism, just because of owlbears and elves in the world it doesn;t mean that the world is as ethemaral and malleable as morning fog.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Players can invent new Bonds as their existing ones are resolved (whether reaching a conclusion, changing to a new form, or becoming irrelevant/getting repudiated). This is a central part of defining what things matter to the characters, and thus what things will be called into question.
Players can (and I personally encourage them to) develop their own Alignment move, which both shapes how that character behaves (as they are rewarded for following that move) and defines the parameters for what sorts of situations, challenges, conflicts, etc. they find worthy of attention.
Players can, after moves like Spout Lore or the Bard's A Port in the Storm move, make statements about their character's past experiences, sources of information, or other relevant details. These are, again, important parameters of the stated kinds.
Similar sorts of moves exist for other classes. The deity options for Clerics. The ancestral weapon and its improvements for Fighters. The lands to which Druids are attuned. The Quest a Paladin sets for herself (a particularly pointed example, since it explicitly involves back and forth between player and GM.)
When did I say anything to the contrary?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Yes. And that real-life agency is a different kind of thing to player-agency. The two are not directly comparable, other than being forms of "agency." For exactly the same reason that actions you can take as a player are not directly comparable to actions you can take as a human being in 2023 on Earth, even though both things are forms of "action."
...yes. That was literally my point. There are different types of realism. There are different types of agency. Player agency is not one-to-one equivalent with human-on-Earth-in-2023 agency. Using an example of how something cannot be done by a human-on-Earth-in-2023 is not a rebuttal to a statement about player agency for exactly the same reason that using an example of how dragons violate the square-cube law is not a rebuttal to a statement about realism in Dungeons and Dragons.
FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
what I have been repeatedly told in the past is that player action declarations in dungeon world must ‘ follow from the fiction’.
Players don’t get to simply look under a random rock to find Excalibur because that wouldn’t follow from the fiction.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Players must also obey the rules. All players--including the GM. Of course, "the rules" in DW include things like the Principles and Agendas, which some people don't think even are "rules" in the first place.
And if you don't want to play with those Principles and Agendas...that's what the many, many, many PbtA hacks out there are for. Finding Agendas and Principles that actually ARE what you're looking for. (But, to be honest, you're not going to see a whole lot of variation with the Principles...they're generally just good notions for running and playing games.)
You're redefining the word agency? So agency in real life is not an applicable definition for games? Seems like you're just redefining a word to only apply to your preferred style of game. Actions in game are, of course an abstraction of reality but they are still actions the character is taking (at least in D&D). Those actions include things I cannot do in the real world just like the fantasy world do not typically support things I do in the real world.
So agency doesn't really mean agency unless it means agency as redefined to only apply if you play a narrativist game. Like I said. Jello meet nail.
Which is fine. But it's still filling in the blanks. I can't go to a restaurant hoping it serves my favorite meal and make it so.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
No. I'm telling you that the limits of agency within one context can be quite different from the limits in another.
How is this even remotely controversial? The things a player, within a game, can do are often radically different from the things a human, within the real world, can do. Why should it be the case that every display of agency within the rules of a fictitious game should perfectly, bidirectionally match every display of agency within the real physical world?
One can have agency over how a game is played in ways that one could not ever have agency over how one's life is lived. That doesn't mean redefining agency. It just means that playing games is distinct from living. I know some people do their best to blur that line, but the two remain distinct.
You just stated that my analogy in my game of player agency was irrelevant because although the players drive the car and decide where to go, they can't decide what's in the building once they get there. Now, perhaps they can in DW. That's fine. But there are other, different restrictions in DW that don't apply to D&D because the rules have a completely different structure.
Players in my D&D game have agency. Players in DW also have agency. People in the real world have agency. It's just expressed differently.
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