D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Aldarc]

Some friends in different gaming groups strive for immersion in character. For them, I think it's character agency not player agency they're often focused on. They want to say just what they could do were they their character.

Your decision to use the term in bold is where you completely lost me, as you apparently forgot who you're talking to and my consistent position in this thread.

 

[pemerton]

The important point here was that agency is contextual, and relies on the goal of play to be evaluated.

<snip>

Unless we proceed from a commonplace of "what is the goal of play?" I don't think we can meaningfully evaluate agency in a comparative way.

I and @Manbearcat both have multiple posts in this thread that addresses exactly this point!

Here are some of the most recent:

In games that lay claim to "story" as their core, there is an inescapable siting of protagonism (the motivations that propel play and give rise to story and compel its shape) as the apex expression of agency. "What the hell is the point of all of this (?)" is the most foundational question that play addresses and the answer to that is either PC-centered or setting-centered (including NPCs).

I have a feeling that this part of your post may have been missed. So I thought I'd pull it out for purposes of reiteration.

For me it fits with the contrast I've drawn repeatedly in the thread, for over 100 pages I think, between different goals/orientations in RPGing.

Your games that lay claim to "story" as their core is my games where the aim is to generate a shared fiction. The contrast is with what I have called "puzzle-solving" play - I've got in mind classic dungeon-crawling D&D, and you've pointed out that there are elements of Torchbearer strongly oriented towards that sort of play also.

In puzzle solving play, the agency of players is about solving the puzzle. The GM has to hold things constant in order for the solving to be possible. (There's no simple paradigm here. Is an evolving state that evolves in accordance with a solvable rule sufficiently constant? That will depend on very particular details of a particular group's experience and expectations.)

In "create a fiction"/"lay claim to story as their core" play, the agency of the players is about establishing the fiction: what its about, what its trajectory is, etc. This is what you call an inescapable sting of protagonism. Whoever is doing this is exercising the most important agency in this sort of play.

 

[Velderan]

That rule is in 5e. It's called a dex save. Unless the DM thinks that PCs are too stupid to try and get out of the way of a falling object that they see coming, there's no good reason I can see that the DM wouldn't invoke the appropriate rule and allow a save.

That's my take too. From the spell they described earlier if it creates a heavy object above the intended target and then the object drops down to crush whatever is underneath it, that should be more of a dex save to get out of the way than a spell attack roll to hit.

 

[Maxperson]

i'm not actually saying the 'character' themselves has agency when i use the term 'character agency' i'm talking about the range of reasonable actions available to the player as if they were the character that they are controling as a 'real person' in a 'real world' where all the magic and abilities of the gameworld actually existed.

I think this is pretty generally understood, which is why the responses I've been seeing are so puzzling.

 

[Maxperson]

An example: You character might have the agency to not get on the boat with everyone else when it sails for the Island of Adventure, but it would ruin the experience for everyone else if the GM had to either split the session or find some way to railroad you back to the Island of Adventure. So even if getting on that boat might be a stretch for your character, you work with the GM or on your own, to find a way to make events unfold so they make sense from an overall perspective. In this way you are exercising player agency to make sure the character agency doesn't negatively impact the game.

 

[pemerton]

Whose hands are on the metaphorical instrument--the player, or the GM? Because as far as I can tell, it's exclusively the GM. That's why every single time, someone asks something to the effect of, "Well, did you clear it with the GM well in advance?"

I took clearing in advance to mean something like this. Suppose we're playing RuneQuest: astronaut characters are unlikely to fit well, and it's more likely rune or spirit magic that has the cousin in the magical sleep. The herbs should be considered in terms of their connection with those things, and... the player has told the GM where they want to go and what they want to achieve. Practically begging them to add a twist... "and what problems await you in Townshire? Why did you leave?" Part of the GM's job is to help the player say things they otherwise wouldn't want to say, or say those things for them. They can't protagonise without antagony. Or in sim mode to encourage curiousity "Why would the tyrant need to do that to your cousin? Who is your cousin? How do they figure? What threat did your cousin pose to the warlock?"

I don't understand why you, @clearstream, are bringing out my example of a starting point for a PC, in order to try and rebut @EzekielRaiden.

What does my example have to do with RuneQuest? It was not located within any particular RPG. I made it up in response to a post from @Raiztt. Raiztt hadn't specified a RPG at all. I was imagning first and foremost Burning Wheel, and secondarily AD&D.

Why do you think Ezekiel Raiden is in need of any explanation as to the basic GM function of coordinating opposition and antagonism in relation to the player's goal for their PC.

This post is prompted by this from hawkeyefan:

I’ve done this again and again in this thread. I’ve talked about things I do as GM of 5e to promote agency. I’ve talked about things I’ve experienced as a player that have limited it. I’ve talked about how I prefer more agency, but I don’t require it… I find some games to be perfectly enjoyable with less.

I’ve touched on other games as well, though minimally because so many of these discussions result in cries of “we’re in the D&D forum” or “you’re talking about games no one plays” or “it’s apples and oranges” and so on. I’ve been very deliberate about that.

Perhaps you didn’t read my earlier posts. That’s fine, I don’t expect every participant to have read the entirety of a 150+ page thread. But I’ve absolutely done what you’re calling for in your post.

What I’d love to see if more people who are posting here actually put examples of play… like real examples of play, not hypotheticals… and share them as you suggest. To show how things actually work in their games.

A few people have. Most have not. Almost as if they don’t want their play to be analyzed.

So go back over the thread and see who’s not shared examples of play, and then ask them to provide what you just requested of me.

Some of us posting in this thread have provided endless actual play examples, tight descriptions of procedures of play for various games (eg 4e D&D, Dungeon World and Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Torchbearer), and the like.

It's about time that someone who wants to argue, say, that a player in a "GM story hour" game has as much agency as a player in a game of Burning Wheel GMed and played as per Luke Crane's instructions, to actually spell out how that works. Where does this player exercise their agency? What are they influencing or affecting or controlling.

Here is how Eero Tuovnin describes "GM story hour":

GM Story Hour
Or, “railroading” as it’s more commonly called – I prefer to use a different term to reduce preconceptions and draw attention to what’s pertinent for our purposes. (“Railroading” was conceived as a deconstructive critique of this practice; it’s the name an enemy grants to the phenomenon.)

“GM story hour” is a roleplaying game activity where one of the players – the titular GM – prepares a structured agenda platter for the session of play, and the play activity itself then concerns processing through this pre-prepared content. The content is usually structured analogously to a linear narrative, so there’s “scene 1”, “scene 2”, etc. that are processed through play in the order pre-determined by the GM. The story hour is defined by the content authority of prepared material, delivered in fixed order.

I’ve developed some modest story hour theory myself; to put it briefly, I believe that railroading play, despite how common it is, is generally misunderstood to concern itself mostly with the causal “A leads to B” path procession through the GM’s prepared material. This type of railroading theory leads to complex conceptualizations like hub models (alternate roads you allow the players to pick from) and magician’s choice (the players think they’re choosing, but really they’re not) and generally focusing your creative energies towards the dysfunction of trying to manage a GM story hour where the GM can’t tell the other players that it’s a story hour, and everybody else is trying their damnedest to jump the tracks. This kind of railroading theory is worthless because its central ambition is to make railroading do something it is not suited to – a pretense of the tracks not existing when they really, genuinely, practically do.

What I would like to offer as a modest alternative to old-fashioned railroading theory is that the purpose of the GM story hour is not to cheat and create an illusion of freedom; it is to exquisitely prepare nuanced literary material for intimate consideration. The strength of the railroading game structure is not in hiding the tracks, but rather in ensuring that those tracks travel through scenes worthy of spending some time in. You’re literally only bothering with the railroad tracks because you don’t want to waste time preparing complex content and then just have the other players skip it; it’s much better to take the track as a given and focus on how to make your content worth the trip.

I’ve written about this in more detail elsewhere, but the key consideration is treating your game prep the same way an adventure video game does: your core strength is being able to prepare carefully, and the freedoms you give to the player are carefully constrained to ensure that you actually get to show off your stuff. It is still interactive, as the player has the primary control over the pace (how quickly you go over your material) and focus (what parts of your material are particularly observed) of play, even as the GM by definition holds primary content authority. The GM decides what play will be about, but the other players decide how they investigate that aboutness.

The GM story hour is an appropriate game structure for games where a single player introduces specific subject matter to the other players. It is extremely important that the introduced matter is good stuff, creatively relevant to the participants. Tracy Hickman understood this in his magnum opus Dragonlance, pushing the AD&D content delivery chassis to its extreme ends and beyond in an effort to deliver a true high fantasy epic via a game structurally very poorly suited for the purpose; Hickman understood that if there was to be a measure of grace to the project, it would be in the fact that the GM would in his interminable story hour be delivering actually legit fantasy literature. (Not discussing the Dragonlance novels here, note, but the adventure modules.)

You never, ever want to be in a position to deliver a story hour with naughty word, trivial material. Respect yourself, respect your friends, and if you choose to play a game structured for the story hour, bring something you actually want to tell the other players about. Something that you can describe to them, and then let them ask questions, and then answer those questions gladly, confident that you’re engaging in an intelligent, meaningful activity. If you can’t convince yourself about your material being interesting, don’t expect others to care, either.​

Tuovinen clearly identifies the agency that the players exercise in this sort of play: they have primary control over pace and focus. Those of us who have played in railroads/GM story hours can reflect on his claims and form our own view as to how true they are: in my case, I think that there is truth to the claim about pace, but less truth to the claim about focus, which in this sort of play as I have experienced it remains under the primary control of the GM.

What is an analogy for controlling the pacing? It's not unlike rewinding or fast forwarding when watching a video. That is not zero agency. I think it is rather low agency. I certainly think I can compare the degree of agency I experience in this sort of RPGing to the degree of agency I experience in (say) Burning Wheel, and in performing that comparison can observe that Burning Wheel affords me more agency as a player.

If someone is going to argue that the degree of agency in the two games is in fact the same, or perhaps is not able to be compared, I want to see something more than just metaphor, or a reiteration of what Tuovinen has said, which I've already read and which is not particularly arcane.

 

[Oofta]

See, I find that distinction IS helpful to this conversation because as it happens this conversation is about player agency.

Not only that, but you would be surprised by how many people understand that player agency is ultimately about the agency of the human player at the table rather than the imagined agency of the character. As far as you know, it's only a handful of people. As far as I know, however, it's far more people than the limited you seem to be conveniently imagining for the purposes of belittling my argument, as this distinction is important for huge swaths of the hobby outside of your idiomatic play preferences.

Since D&D doesn't use the term the label attached to the thread I assume it's just talking about agency in general.

The problem is that multiple people seem to totally ignored the agency granted to the players via their character. It's fine to discuss agency types, but only if we include character agency as another dimension and type of agency. Some people don't and have been quite dismissive of agency in D&D. They just talk about how great BitD or DW is so amazing because people have actual agency, aka "player" agency.

As to whether one game or another has "more", I think that's not a relevant question. The relevant question is do people feel they have enough agency, enough ability to control the direction of the game to suit their goals. Too many choices and you get the paradox of choice where people are never satisfied when there are too many options. Too often and it would just be stressful for a lot of people.

 

[pemerton]

i'm not actually saying the 'character' themselves has agency when i use the term 'character agency' i'm talking about the range of reasonable actions available to the player as if they were the character that they are controling as a 'real person' in a 'real world' where all the magic and abilities of the gameworld actually existed.

And since somewhere around page 10 or 11 upthread, I've been talking about the way in which the outcomes of those action declarations are worked out.

 

[pemerton]

As to whether one game or another has "more", I think that's not a relevant question.

It's extremely relevant to me!

The relevant question is do people feel they have enough agency, enough ability to control the direction of the game to suit their goals.

Suppose that I, as a player, feel that I have insufficient agency (eg I'm being railroaded). Then what is necessary is techniques to increase agency - or finding a game which has already adopted and operationalised those techniques.

Or suppose that I, as a player, am considering which RPG to play or which RPG group to join. I want to make sure that it will have sufficient agency for me to enjoy it.

These are the sorts of practical ways in which comparisons of degree of agency across games, and across systems, becomes relevant.

 

[Oofta]

It's extremely relevant to me!

Suppose that I, as a player, feel that I have insufficient agency (eg I'm being railroaded). Then what is necessary is techniques to increase agency - or finding a game which has already adopted and operationalised those techniques.

Or suppose that I, as a player, am considering which RPG to play or which RPG group to join. I want to make sure that it will have sufficient agency for me to enjoy it.

These are the sorts of practical ways in which comparisons of degree of agency across games, and across systems, becomes relevant.

There are a lot of reasons people may not like a game, overall agency is just one. If you don't feel like you have enough agency it could be an issue with the campaign, the GM, any number of things.

I just disagree about comparing agency across games when the implementation of agency in the games is completely different. Compare a Pathfinder game to D&D? Sure. Compare D&D to DW? There are so many differences to the approaches that agency is thrown with a bunch of other factors and can't be separated out.

All IMHO of course.