D&D General What is player agency to you?

[EzekielRaiden]

Sure. Gas mileage/electric can be another aspect you value.

That's still just full car.

And so have I. Different flavors doesn't equate to more or less, though. It just focuses on an aspect that you value more or less personally. You LIKE flavor X, so a game that doesn't give you flavor X will FEEL like lower agency. You don't actually have lower agency, it's just feels that way. Objectively you are still just going from one place to another just like any other working(non-railroad) car will do. Full car(agency).

No. It's not "just a full car." It does something the other car literally can't do. That's the whole point. It is a different kind of car, that can do things the other is physically incapable of doing.

You can drive in some way as long as you have any car. Having two cars of different design, however, lets you do more kinds of driving. That is a genuine change, a distinct benefit. As a general rule, you can't try to take something like a Porsche or Lamborghini off-road, it simply doesn't have the traction or design to handle such terrain. Conversely, you generally cannot drive a Jeep at speeds over 100 mph, because, again, the vehicle simply isn't engineered for that purpose. A Prius has a towing weight of under 1600 lb. A Wrangler can have twice that, and that isn't even a truck that well designed for towing purposes.

There are different kinds of cars. They are engineered for different kinds of things. Having a vehicle engineered for one purpose generally makes it bad or even completely incapable of fulfilling a different purpose. If you have both a sports car and a pickup truck, you can simply do more driving stuff than you could if you had only a pickup truck or only a sports car.

 

[Oofta]

Do you dispute that character agency is different from player agency? (Again, noting that multiple people in this thread have now explicitly granted this.)

If not, do you dispute that "trad" games offer, to varying degrees, character agency but not player agency? (Ditto, with those granting it saying that they prefer the fact that "trad" games do not offer such.)

If not, do you dispute that "narrative" games, in general, offer as much character agency as "trad" games? (As far as I can tell, this has also been granted by both of the aforementioned, but perhaps I could be mistaken.)

If not, do you dispute that "narrative" games offer player agency in addition to character agency? (Again, granted by at least two people in this thread, with the addition that that is not to their taste and thus they will avoid "narrative" games as a result.)

If not, why are we arguing?

More options to express agency does not necessarily increase overall agency. Or enjoyment of the game, but that's a bit different.

 

[FrogReaver]

i can't believe this thread is still going

Why dost thou underestimate us?

 

[mamba]

Okay. No one was asking you to like it. Genuinely nobody.

No one asked for your opinion on my post that was not a reply to one of yours either... I decided to mention it anyway. I see no problem with me volunteering that information.

If you do not like it, tough, I do not like a lot of what you post, but you do not see me whining about it.

But several people--IIRC, you among them, though with over 160 pages at this point, I'm not going to go combing back through it--explicitly said that there wasn't any difference in agency at all, or even that "trad" games have more agency.

if you do read back on this, you will find that I never said that. Certainly the post you just quoted says quite the opposite.

If you're willing to grant what you've said here, I don't really think there's much more to talk about.

I have pretty much left this conversation because there is not anything left to talk about

I do.

good for you, keep doing that

What is with this aggressive "how dare you yuck my yum" attitude?

maybe look in the mirror here, I just replied in the same way your posts come across. I did not even say anything about your yum while you frequently yuck ours.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Why dost thou underestimate us?

 

[Maxperson]

No. It's not "just a full car." It does something the other car literally can't do. That's the whole point. It is a different kind of car, that can do things the other is physically incapable of doing.

That doesn't matter to agency. Aspects one can do that another can't don't change the fact that full car = going from one place to another. So yours can offroad. Maybe yours doesn't play music(DM having full authority) and mine does. Both still just go from one place to another. Those aspects(going offroad, music, air conditioning, fuel efficiency) are just preferences.

 

[mamba]

Do you dispute that character agency is different from player agency? (Again, noting that multiple people in this thread have now explicitly granted this.)

no

If not, do you dispute that "trad" games offer, to varying degrees, character agency but not player agency? (Ditto, with those granting it saying that they prefer the fact that "trad" games do not offer such.)

yes

If not, do you dispute that "narrative" games, in general, offer as much character agency as "trad" games? (As far as I can tell, this has also been granted by both of the aforementioned, but perhaps I could be mistaken.)

failed the IF already... no idea here, but I guess they are relatively similar. I believe I would rule in favor of trad chars here. In narrative games there is more 'I wager X to accomplish Y', in trad it is more 'I attempt Y'. The latter is more agency / less restrictive to me. Not sure if you want to lump that on the player side instead.

If not, do you dispute that "narrative" games offer player agency in addition to character agency? (Again, granted by at least two people in this thread, with the addition that that is not to their taste and thus they will avoid "narrative" games as a result.)

no

 

[FrogReaver]

Do you dispute that character agency is different from player agency?

To me ‘character agency’ is player agency expressed solely through the character and limited to that which is in the characters control.

So yes, they are different - but in specific circumstances can be exactly the same.

If not, do you dispute that "trad" games offer, to varying degrees, character agency but not player agency?

I believe that because traditional games have character agency (no varying degrees) that they also have player agency.

I guess that puts me as in dispute here but likely not in the way you anticipated.

If not, do you dispute that "narrative" games, in general, offer as much character agency as "trad" games?

I think they offer character agency and since I don’t think there are degrees of agency then the obviously offer the same.

If not, do you dispute that "narrative" games offer player agency in addition to character agency?

it’s not ‘in addition’. Character agency is player agency exercised solely through the character.

If not, why are we arguing?

I answered with my belief that agency is binary. However, even if I agree that agency has degrees this wouldn’t show what you are trying to show.

I’ll coin a term player agency* which is any agency not expressed through the character.

Player agency* is different than character agency

Different Trad games would have varying degrees of character agency

Narrative games wouldn’t have as much character agency as traditional games.

No dispute on narrative games offering both some character agency and player agency*

 

[Maxperson]

To me ‘character agency’ is player agency expressed solely through the character and limited to that which is in the characters control.

So yes, they are different - but in specific circumstances can be exactly the same.

Right. They are different, but there is overlap. Player agency would include pre-game decisions like rolling stats vs. point buy and rolling hit points vs. taking the average. Character agency is actions made in-fiction. The character decides which wall to search for secret doors or whether to search in the first place.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Character agency is actions made in-fiction. The character decides which wall to search for secret doors or whether to search in the first place.

How does the character decide this?

The idea of character agency as you’ve described it here is simply an accepted limit on player agency. You actively want player agency limited in this way.

Which is perfectly fine. But because of some weird perception that games allowing more agency than that is somehow a slight, you and others are twisting yourselves into pretzels to try and deny that’s what it is.

But if we just forget the whole two sides arguing and stop worrying about proving something… you’re literally describing a voluntary limit to agency.

I’m just baffled.