D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Aldarc]

This is just shifting a debate about what the aims of the game should be into one about relative agency. Agency will look different in two different games constructed of different acceptable actions, and once those games have divergent goals and divergent magic circles, won't really be comparable. Without getting to a commonplace on the goals of play, this will never go anywhere. This is just that argument again, by orthogonal means.

No, it’s not. I even included spending Inspiration in 5e for a reason. Is the player choosing to spend their Inspiration out-of-character something that a player can do when playing 5e or not?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Okay. Specific circumstances would be a subset, then--the intersection on the Venn diagram. The two circles are otherwise separate.

So long as A⊄B, A < A∪B. If there are forms of character agency that aren't player agency, and vice-versa, then any game which excludes one of the two will necessary offer less (or "fewer types," if you prefer) than one that includes both.

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.

Yes, it would, considering I see these as pretty completely distinct things. Just because the two can coincide does not mean they are identical. I assume, then, that you can explicate further how the two (which others have seen as pretty clearly distinct) are actually the same?

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

That's...okay. If that's how you see it, I don't think it's even possible for us to discuss it. Because that has re-defined player agency to such an extent that we would now need some new term for the thing that has, up to now, been called "player agency."

From my perspective, up to this point, we've been talking about rhombuses and rectangles. Some things--squares--happen to coincidentally be both things. Your assertion reads, to me, like someone saying "so we should just call all of these figures rhombuses, because squares exist." Assuming I grant that in the first place, I would then need to say, "Okay. What about all the quadrilateral figures with four right angles but non-equal adjacent sides? We still need a name for that."

Unless, of course, you can show that there is no such thing as a "rectangle" at all--that absolutely all character agency is always and identically a form of player agency. That sounds to my ear like a pretty tall order, but I'm willing to listen!

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*

Only just got to this point, so kind of funny that we came to the same point.

My question is: Why do we need "player agency*" when we could just call that "player agency" (no asterisk) and use a different term for the thing you're bringing up, this idea that there's an agency superset that contains both character agency and player agency. Perhaps call it "game agency"?

It seems more useful to invent a new wider category word, rather than asking everyone else to stop using the narrow category word and instead invent something else.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I seriously do not see a difference worth speaking about when it comes to character using their Inspiration or the character using their Shield spell? Why it is touted as some sort of mechanic outside the game as opposed to another resource like a HD or spell expended for Smite.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I seriously do not see a difference worth speaking about when it comes to using your character's Inspiration or the character using their Shield spell?

Did you mean to say, " you seriously do not see a difference?"

 

[AnotherGuy]

Did you mean to say, " you seriously do not see a difference?"

No I mean, me. There is no difference from my perspective.

EDIT: To further clarify, I equate it to VtM's Willpower.
My character really wants to succeed at x action in the same way my paladin really wants to hurt his opponent when he expends a 3rd level spell smite spell. I'd argue as per RAW smite is far more metagame-y than Inspiration since you can declare it after a successful attack whereas you declare your intention to use Inspiration before the roll.

 

[Oofta]

But I'm not breaking it down into different categories! You are.

I am talking about player agency in terms of what a player can do when playing the game as per your own definition! I am using YOUR definition.

However, spending fate points in Fate or Inspiration in D&D 5e lies outside of decisions that the character can do or make in the fiction, but these are things that the player can do when playing the game, but they would be excluded as player agency if you talked about player agency strictly in terms of the in-fiction agency of the character.

I don't distinguish between player and character agency, there is only agency granted to the person playing the game by the rules and constraints of the game. Different games have different options, that does not mean they have more or less agency.

If I'm playing the card game War, I have no agency. It's just a random gamble. If I'm playing Go, I only have 1 thing I can do but the strategy of the game gives me quite a bit of agency. Chess has more moves than Go, but a computer was able to beat human players long before they could defeat the best Go human players. If agency is the ability to make decisions that matter, that's quite the conundrum. More types of moves in Chess doesn't seem to mean more agency, Go seems to be more complex than chess. At least for a computer. Which game gives the player more agency?

We can't quantify what a unit of agency is and I don't believe it matters how that agency is expressed. Some people want the player to have more direct control over the game results, I prefer D&D's approach where most of the agency is expressed through my character. That's all it really comes down to and I don't see anything useful coming out of further discussion.

 

[Maxperson]

and this is why I don't allow inspiration

I allow it because it enhances the realism of the game. We've all been in situations where we are stuck for a solution and then suddenly out of the blue we have a flash of insight(inspiration) on what to do. Sometimes that inspiration allows us to succeed and sometimes it doesn't work out.

The inspiration mechanic models that part of the process. And it's not something that we consciously control in our lives. It pops in or it doesn't. We don't choose when it happens, so the player being the one to choose when inspiration happens is also part of that enhanced realism.

 

[Maxperson]

I seriously do not see a difference worth speaking about when it comes to character using their Inspiration or the character using their Shield spell? Why it is touted as some sort of mechanic outside the game as opposed to another resource like a HD or spell expended for Smite.

Shield is more problematic for me. It unwinds time. You have been hit, then you cast Shield, then you are suddenly and retroactively not hit. I much prefer the "After the die is rolled, but before you know the result" or "Shield has a duration and you cast it in advance of being attacked" models.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No I mean, me. There is no difference from my perspective.

EDIT: To further clarify, I equate it to VtM's Willpower.
My character really wants to succeed at x action in the same way my paladin really wants to hurt his opponent when he expends a 3rd level spell smite spell. I'd argue as per RAW smite is far more metagame-y than Inspiration since you can declare it after a successful attack where as you declare your intention to use Inspiration before the roll.

Your point about smite is well-taken, but a PC has no ability through their actions to always force the sort of things inspiration, as well as many background features, allow them to force. Additionally, inspiration can and usually is used in a way that has nothing to do with why the PC was granted inspiration in the first place, which certainly snaps my reality suspenders. It is a metagame mechanic, plain and simple, designed only to push the narrative as the player wishes it pushed. That fine, of course, if you like that sort of thing, but that is what it is.

 

[mamba]

Shield is more problematic for me. It unwinds time. You have been hit, then you cast Shield, then you are suddenly and retroactively not hit.

haven’t you cast shield before, and the hit just initiates the shield ending as it has been ‘used up’?