D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pointofyou]

Some folks in your social circle are talking behind your back. Who is kinder? The person who tells you what they are saying so that you can deal with it, or the person who keeps it to themselves so that you're not hurt by the discovery? It entirely depends on the context, and the people involved, and immediately becomes ungeneralizable.

Sure, you compare a person who apologizes for stepping on your foot, and one who does so maliciously, you can categorize those easily. But there are so many instances where the basic idea of kindness can have wildly different forms to the same situation, and to try and say one is definitively 'more' kind than another is an exercise in futility. With something as personal as the feeling of agency, the comparison holds, to me.

People have been debating morals and ethics for much much longer than they have been debating TRPGs. Mostly because they've been trying to intellectualize what people do more or less instinctively and partly because they believe what is specific should be general and the other way around.

 

[FrogReaver]

Over a long term general-you will likely be able to discern the differences between those things and actual kindness and roughly no one would call the possibilities you listed "kind."

They would if they didn’t know. Which is one of the major problems. We don’t have perfect situational awareness - ever. The naturally leads to divergent views.

But even if we did, we would still disagree on many edge cases.

 

[Maxperson]

Agency as I interpret the concept doesn't mean being able to affect everything, it refers to the subjective and objective experience of being in control and/or making choices. It is perfectly possible for one person to have full agency while being restricted greatly, whereas another person may experience no agency with full freedom of action - due to perhaps the actions of other players or the narrative made by the GM.

Agency is not a detached concept of degrees of freedom. It is tightly coupled to individual experience and expectation. Defining agency as freedom and/or some variation of power is distorting the concept in my opinion.

I think narrative agency is an interesting concept and it certainly is part of what separates systems/styles, but I don't think it is always required for maximum player agency, as the latter is subjective (in my interpretation of the concept). Some players might even feel less agency if other players have narrative agency.

This.

 

[pointofyou]

They would if they didn’t know. Which is one of the major problems. We don’t have perfect situational awareness - ever. The naturally leads to divergent views.

But even if we did, we would still disagree on many edge cases.

So you think you need perfect situational awareness to make any value judgment? That's an interesting position.

 

[Maxperson]

You’ve brought buckets up a few times so let’s continue with that analogy.

Bucket A has a 10 gallon capacity
Bucket B has a 15 gallon capacity

I ask if bucket A has the capacity to hold the contents of a 1 gallon milk jug. Your answer is yes. I ask if bucket b has the capacity to hold the contents of a 1 gallon milk jug. You answer yes!

The definition asks whether a person has the capacity for X. That’s the way I’m using it (as shown above) and not the way you are.

Even more. If gallons are options and coke is agency, then if the 10 gallon bucket has coke in it and the 15 gallon bucket has milk in it, there's less agency in the 15 gallon bucket, even though it has more options.

 

[Aldarc]

One thing that I would note is that we cannot just "measure" a concept such as "freedom." However, many international organizations often use a variety of symptomatic appraoches to evaluate how relatively "free" the inhabitants of various countries are, often using a variety of factors: e.g., income, class, laws, incarceration, etc. The same is also true for things like freedom of the press. These institutions will look at various features of the press in various countries: e.g., laws, censorship, health of the press corps, etc. These institutions are not free of biases or problems in how they approach this, but they nevertheless give us a way to gauge something as abstract as "freedom." It's not perfect, but it at least provides a means to talk about these things in a more concrete way rather than handwave everything away with the truism that we can't measure something as abstract as freedom.

 

[Maxperson]

"I want to have a loving relationship, except that I want it to be actually a loving relationship, and not simply someone faking expressions of love and care so they can get something from me." It's a reciprocity, not just a feeling in my head. The feeling in my head is an extremely important part. The status-in-the-world--that the feelings are sincere and reciprocated--is equally important. Without both things, it fails. Without me actually feeling love for another, it would be pointless. Without the feelings being reciprocated, it would be false and hollow--and would hurt to find out after a long period of believing it was true.

Feeling love and that I am loved is, absolutely, unquestionably critical. Actually being loved--and loving in return--is equally critical. They are individually necessary and jointly sufficient.

The point there was that love = agency. Regardless of whether or not the other person loved you. Regardless of whether or not you found out later and were hurt by it. Did you love that person? If yes, you had agency. Finding out later that they didn't love you back means that the ice cream turned out to be chocolate chip and not chocolate(you prefer love on both sides).

 

[Oofta]

Yes, every game has limitations.



I don’t think that’s true. I’m absolutely able to tell you which of the 5e games I’ve played in allowed more player agency and why.

This has been covered by others but I'll just repeat. You can decide for yourself whether you have more of a sense of agency or not while playing a game. I'm not disagreeing with that. Particularly in things like a D&D game with different campaigns. That doesn't mean you can generalize that to other people or other games. A sense of agency is in the eye of the beholder.

Let's say I play D&D. I have a DM who gives the players pretty free rein, important things happen during RP if I want to contribute, I have many skills, options and potentially spells at my disposal to great effect. Then I go to play DW. I now have spout lore (or some other random ability, it doesn't really matter) I didn't have in D&D, but I don't feel competent in that aspect of the game and it makes me nervous that I'm doing it wrong. It doesn't give me a sense of accomplishing anything, instead of a sense of agency it gives me a sense of dread.

Some people probably feel more of a sense of agency in D&D because they've mastered the ins-and-outs of what their character can do, even if they're playing a linear campaign. Others don't care much about their character, they care that they can make meaningful choices that change the direction of the game. Same game, perhaps even two people at the same table at the same session, different feelings of agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This has been covered by others but I'll just repeat. You can decide for yourself whether you have more of a sense of agency or not while playing a game. I'm not disagreeing with that. Particularly in things like a D&D game with different campaigns. That doesn't mean you can generalize that to other people or other games. A sense of agency is in the eye of the beholder.

Let's say I play D&D. I have a DM who gives the players pretty free rein, important things happen during RP if I want to contribute, I have many skills, options and potentially spells at my disposal to great effect. Then I go to play DW. I now have spout lore (or some other random ability, it doesn't really matter) I didn't have in D&D, but I don't feel competent in that aspect of the game and it makes me nervous that I'm doing it wrong. It doesn't give me a sense of accomplishing anything, instead of a sense of agency it gives me a sense of dread.

Some people probably feel more of a sense of agency in D&D because they've mastered the ins-and-outs of what their character can do, even if they're playing a linear campaign. Others don't care much about their character, they care that they can make meaningful choices that change the direction of the game. Same game, perhaps even two people at the same table at the same session, different feelings of agency.

I am literally only talking about 5e D&D games. I am avoiding talking about other games precisely to avoid the “apples and oranges” dismissal.

When playing 5e and only 5e, I can tell when I have more agency in one game than in another and why.

If that’s not essential to this whole discussion, then I don’t know what is.

 

[Campbell]

Does anyone actually dispute that there are profound differences in the impact of the decisions players make in different models of play (including different ways of playing trad games [5e included])? That your capacity to exert your will differs based on availability of reliable information, connections within the setting, etc.? Does anyone dispute that in a game in which the GM is obliged to frame scenes and scenarios around player character interests/premise/connections to the setting that players have more say over what is at stake in the game?

Not subjective feelings, but actual differences in efficacy. If we disagree here conceptually we can hash this stuff out. If we're in the technique doesn't matter, it's all in the feels we should probably just stop talking because there's nothing useful to talk about.