D&D General What is player agency to you?

[EzekielRaiden]

He also assists them by letting them know what the theme(playstyle and setting) for the music is so that they can play music that fits the theme.

This is literally telling people what to play. You are telling them what music to play. That's not "assisting." That's commanding. "You will play this piece."

 

[Maxperson]

This is literally telling people what to play. You are telling them what music to play. That's not "assisting." That's commanding. "You will play this piece."

It's literally not. Pick any genre of music and then try to tell me that every song is identical, because that's the only way it's telling them what music to play.

I don't control whether they play Van Halen, Aerosmith, or come up with their own rock song. I don't control any of the lyrics in it. What instruments they play. When they play them.

I am in fact assisting them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This appears to be saying the move must pass a fiction credibility test.


Based on the above definitions I think it does 'follow from the fiction'. For me following from the fiction entailed much more than what it seems you mean by it. I would have said that following from the fiction meant you would only use elements already introduced in the fiction. Apparently that isn't the case. The player introduced the falcon claw to the fiction without even it's existence being established beforehand.

Yes. Following from the fiction does not mean you can never introduce anything. Otherwise nobody could do that, not even the GM, which would be a pretty poor way to run a game!

Instead, "following from the fiction" means doing things which are in keeping with the tone and style of the game, consistent both in terms of self-consistency and in terms of being in agreement with what has been established, and warranted or inspired by the things meant to guide play forward (e.g., for Dungeon World, the bonds, alignment moves, descriptive text, and when relevant, the instructions given by individual moves, etc.)

You do have the power to craft new fiction. But it must be appropriate (tone), consistent (the "history," if you like), and reasonable (grounded in gameplay structure.) As the GM generally has the task of framing things, they do quite a lot of "following from the fiction" without being beholden to only that which has been expressly established!

It's literally not. Pick any genre of music and then try to tell me that every song is identical, because that's the only way it's telling them what music to play.

I don't control whether they play Van Halen, Aerosmith, or come up with their own rock song. I don't control any of the lyrics in it. What instruments they play. When they play them.

I am in fact assisting them.

The analogy was a conductor! Someone telling others not just what music to play, but how to play it! You literally aren't even using the analogy anymore!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes - in this hypothetical, the sorts of things I plan are directly influenced by things like that. For example, if you're a criminal sorcerer trying to pay off a debt, then I know to include that element in my broader plot.

See, this is how I know we would not be playing the same way. In actual narrativist play, my PC IS THE PROTAGONIST, and thus there's no 'my broader plot.' What you are describing is some sort of side quest, or color applied to some hook or something along those lines so that what you want to do mentions my PC. Yes, its probably closer to narrativist than pure classic DC play. It might verge into neo-trad more or less strongly depending on the degree to which the players get to vet these elements, etc. It could veer more into narrativist play, but that will either require a different plotting mechanism, or some real mechanical heft to the push narr play which 5e totally lacks.

 

[Maxperson]

The analogy was a conductor! Someone telling others not just what music to play, but how to play it! You literally aren't even using the analogy anymore!

Conductors don't do either one of those things. They keep the time, and help guide the orchestra in their timing by letting various groups know WHEN to enter into the composition. They do not tell them what to play, or how to play it. They also help guide the orchestra by through that timing to recover mistakes in timing made by a group of musicians.

In other words, they assist the musicians.

 

[clearstream]

There are degrees of agency. This seems obvious to me. Look at the matter of the background features for an example. Many others have been provided in this thread. Different methods of play or different games provide more agency to players. Again, many examples have been provided.

Our views are not quite in direct conflict, but also not quite in agreement either.

I say that the voluntary suspension of agencies in just the right way - how agency is structured - is what defines a game. This proceeds from arguments long accepted in game studies. So if you say that form of play X has some other agencies than Y, you are at that point speaking of two different games. It is then meaningless to try to compare amount of agency. And counter-productive, obscuring the very questions we might hope to address.

Focus on the meaningful differences between the games! How do they play differently? What mechanics are involved. What will I experience differently? "More agency" just begs the question. What does your putatively "more agency" feel like? What does it lead to? All of those questions have answers and have been answered in various ways and to not one of those ways is the best answer "more agency lets me experience more agency". We don't play games for the sake of agency: to think so is a major misconception.

In game X I am able to do Y in the given way Z: enabling me to satisfy an urge to do or experience Q. This kind of analysis is not enhanced by any claim to "more agency" in what is in fact a different game from X because that different game will be destroyed by changing the voluntary suspensions of agency that comprise it. So far as I can make out, the only purpose served in claiming more agency is to claim some sort of high ground. Before you complain, think about what you lose if you drop that claim? Nothing right? If it's not what I just described.

 

[clearstream]

Conductors don't do either one of those things. They keep the time, and help guide the orchestra in their timing by letting various groups know WHEN to enter into the composition. They do not tell them what to play, or how to play it. They also help guide the orchestra by through that timing to recover mistakes in timing made by a group of musicians.

In other words, they assist the musicians.

Even more importantly, to my mind, the conductor assists the musicians to achieve a greater performance than they could without. In that vein, it's really instructive to watch Vincent Baker GMing. He's very conductor-like.

It seems hard to find common ground with arguments predicated upon a verdict that players don't initiate actions that GMs assist them to resolve. I would think it would take only a moment's reflection on the GM role in DW when the game isn't played narrativistically, to see that is mistaken. But in any case, in discussing agency structures it's not particularly helpful to progress if parties have such profoundly different ideas about what can be counted among them!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just so I'm clear. You are saying that midgame inventing Bonds do not need to follow from the fiction? They can introduce people/places/things/specific locations and fiction around those things that have hitherto not even been mentioned in the broadest of terms within the fiction?

I don't know if that's how inventing new bonds midgame in DW works so that's why I'm asking.

Its a reasonable question:

Writing New Bonds
You write a new bond whenever you resolve an old one. Your new
bond may be with the same character, but it doesn’t have to be.
When you write a new bond choose another character. Pick
something relevant to the last session—maybe a place you traveled
together or a treasure you discovered. Choose a thought or belief your
character holds that ties the two together and an action, something
you’re going to do about it. You’ll end up with something like this:
Mouse’s quick thinking saved me from the white dragon
we faced. I owe her a boon.
Avon proved himself a coward in the dungeons of
Xax’takar. He is a dangerous liability to the party and
must be watched.
Valeria’s kindness to the Gnomes of the Vale has swayed
my heart, I will prove to her I am not the callous fiend
she thinks I am.
Xotoq won the Bone-and-Whispers Axe through
trickery! It will be mine, I swear it.
These new bonds are just like the old ones—use them, resolve them,
replace them.

Is the Alignment move created midgame or at the start of the game?

It can be altered.

I think Spout Lore is probably the most controversial and hardest to nail down. Sometimes when I ask about that move it can essentially let the player author a specific tower being nearby. Other times I ask about it everything it does must follow from the fiction AND the DM is still authoring and only asks players some questions. I think we could devote a whole tangent to that one move and still wouldn't get it nailed down. So I'm going to skip it for now.

In Dungeon World Spout Lore is just the player getting to specifically tell the GM what they must talk about (assuming a good roll). The GM does all the actual talking.

Perhaps some elaboration on the 'Quest move' for a Paladin would be illuminating. An example of it being used in the game would be helpful I think.

The player literally makes up a quest at game start. You then choose some 'boons' (special abilities) to go with it, and the GM picks a 'vow' which is a requirement to keep the boons. I assume you can redo this process if the quest is ever fulfilled.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suspect following from the fiction to them may mean something closer to ‘passing a credibility or plausibility test’.

And if that’s what it boils down to that’s fine. But That’s certainly not how I take following from the fiction to mean. It’s such a different concept it’s very misleading (not intentionally I’m sure).

It is pretty simple really, something 'follows from the fiction' if it is drawn out of some sort of projection, extrapolation, clarification, consequence, etc. of some existing fiction. I can't simply state that my battalion of space spiders drops down onto the field and kills off all the baddies, because nothing in the previous fiction ever even hinted at the existence of such a thing. It isn't FOLLOWING FROM anything that came before. Notice that this is a pretty restrictive requirement! The GM is NOT necessarily bound by such a strict requirement, as they can frame into existence entirely new stuff. Now, both GM and players are ALSO bound by genre expectations, and maybe other measures of appropriateness, as well as principles and agenda in the GM's case. Additionally, there really are only a very restricted number of 'moves' in DW that let a player declare something really new at all, like almost none.

As for 'credibility' or 'plausibility', I'm not sure what those exactly entail, and they're probably pretty subjective. If you mean "is this likely to happen on any given random Tuesday" well, DW is a game of fantastic adventure in a fantasy world, so a lot of crazy unlikely stuff probably happens.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Conductors don't do either one of those things. They keep the time, and help guide the orchestra in their timing by letting various groups know WHEN to enter into the composition. They do not tell them what to play, or how to play it. They also help guide the orchestra by through that timing to recover mistakes in timing made by a group of musicians.

In other words, they assist the musicians.

....Yes, they they do. They literally do.

Conductors usually select the music the orchestra will play. This is one of the primary jobs a conductor has when they aren't standing at the podium, baton in hand. Conductors are also called music directors for a reason. They select which pieces will be played, and assign roles for who will play what things. (This is, in part, also selecting the pecking order--if there isn't an actual assistant conductor, it is traditional that the first-chair violin is the prime substitute.)

They study music carefully, analyzing its ins and outs, to find places where they can bring it to life, make it stand out. That's why they make more gestures than just timekeeping. They're also giving instructions to the performers. They are calling for changes in dynamics (quiet/loud), articulation (hard/soft), and sometimes even intonation, directing when and how soloists should participate, and communicating other components of style and approach.

Conductors tell their players what to play, and instruct them on how to play it. That is literally their job. I have no further interest in debating with you about something that is actual documented fact.