D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

Why? If you're happy with the amount of agency you're getting in any given game, what does it matter how much you actually get?

Because the thread asks What is player agency to you?

Because it is interesting to talk about the way in which different techniques in RPGing conduce to different degrees of agency for different participants.

Because I am interested in how to use different techniques in my own RPGing.

I didn't realise this was a forbidden topic!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because the thread asks What is player agency to you?

Because it is interesting to talk about the way in which different techniques in RPGing conduce to different degrees of agency for different participants.

Because I am interested in how to use different techniques in my own RPGing.

I didn't realise this was a forbidden topic!

It's not forbidden, it just seems to cause nothing but acrimony. Too much noise vs. signal, as it were.

 

[Campbell]

It's not forbidden, it just seems to cause nothing but acrimony. Too much noise vs. signal, as it were.

For me personally a lot comes down to respect. I think it's important to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of different play methodologies (including those in different sorts of trad play) and give them their due. I think there are a fair number of posters who really only play roleplaying games under one particular methodology who emphasize and want others to acknowledge the unique strengths of their preferred methodology but seek to marginalize and refuse to give other methodologies their due. More importantly they do not give skilled practitioners of other methodologies their due.

It gets really frustrating for me personally when I go out of my way to give flowers to play methodologies that I do not personally enjoy to have people acknowledge the strengths I mention but refuse to acknowledge the relative strengths of other play methodologies. Particularly Neotrad and Story Now play. Really anything character centered tends to get dismissed on these boards.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It says nothing about the game .

It says Bob has available to him more choices than Sue does, which is EXACTLY saying something about the game. I mean, you all realize at this point you are attacking the very basis of epistemology right? I mean, the only way for these sorts of arguments to be true is that nothing can be known about anything beyond visible concrete objects and their concrete attributes. Its a philosophical position, no doubt, but a pretty useless one!

 

[Oofta]

As I said, this is a trivial truth.

The question that is raised in this thread, and that I've been discussing for around 170 pages, is which of those ways of granting agency to players grant them more or less agency.

For which my answer doesn't change. More options, especially just the addition of different types of options, do not necessarily lead to more agency. It would be like saying chess is more complex than Go because chess has more pieces and possible moves. In addition, there's no objective way to measure to measure agency since it's agency is subjective.

That's all.

 

[Oofta]

It says Bob has available to him more choices than Sue does, which is EXACTLY saying something about the game. I mean, you all realize at this point you are attacking the very basis of epistemology right? I mean, the only way for these sorts of arguments to be true is that nothing can be known about anything beyond visible concrete objects and their concrete attributes. Its a philosophical position, no doubt, but a pretty useless one!

Is Chess more complex than Go because it has different types of pieces and more rules for how those pieces move? If we look at number of options, maybe Monopoly is more complex than either one! How does scrabble, where you're limited to the words in the dictionary stack up?

Those games have different complexities, just like RPG games have different types of agency. Lacking a type of agency doesn't mean less overall agency. Even if we agree which games have more agency, that doesn't make those game better for a lot of people.

 

[pemerton]

More options, especially just the addition of different types of options, do not necessarily lead to more agency.

I have said nothing about options at any point in this thread. I've talked about the processes whereby players get to establish the shared fiction, and have emphasised the rules that govern the GM as being central to those processes.

there's no objective way to measure to measure agency since it's agency is subjective.

Thus does Oofta refute important parts of sociology!

Personally, I incline towards the sociologists.

 

[Oofta]

-- nm --

This is going nowhere and has stopped being a discussion of even minimal value.

 

[hawkeyefan]

For which my answer doesn't change. More options, especially just the addition of different types of options, do not necessarily lead to more agency. It would be like saying chess is more complex than Go because chess has more pieces and possible moves. In addition, there's no objective way to measure to measure agency since it's agency is subjective.

That's all.

Then why did you provide an example of Sue’s agency being limited by the removal of the options she was expecting to have in play?

 

[Oofta]

Then why did you provide an example of Sue’s agency being limited by the removal of the options she was expecting to have in play?

I'm done with this thread. Seems like no explanation will ever be enough.