D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

I'm pretty surprised agency is scalar and not multidimensional. (Google seems to show a number of papers examining it multidimensionally, but I didn't check what field they're in or the abstracts).

Multidimensional sounds accurate to me.

Edit:
Wanted to add - something can be multidimensional and also be either binary or scalar along each dimension.

 

[bloodtide]

Some posters in this thread were criticising RPGs that allow players to "alter reality". I asked for examples of such games, but none were forthcoming. I provided some examples of play that, in my view, illustrate how player agency in RPGing can be high.

I mention this Play Style Choice as it is VERY common. It's the default for the Fan or Buddy GM, and is the treat for all the GMs 'buying' their friends(Like the GM thinks "Oh, If I do everything and anything Bill wants while I am GMing, then maybe he will ivnite me over his house to hang out at one of his cool parties."

If the impact of what the player decides that their PC says and does is decided primarily by the GM, then this does not seem to me to be a very significant exercise of agency by the player. They are prompting the GM to produce an effect or result; but they are not producing it directly via their own agency.

This is the basic foundation of classic RPGs in general: The game, being a reality simulation, simply can not ever even come close to rules for everything. The solution was simple: have one person be "God". That one person, the GM, gets to decide EVERYTHING in and about the game. It's literately how the game works.

But how does this other game your talking about work? An RPG where the player decides the impact of what their PC says or does? To me, that sounds like a DM less game......or even more simply: The player can just stay home and write their novel.

If a player in a game...specifically a person playing a game from a single character point of view towards some in-game goal.....how can they EVER decide anything and be anyway neutral and objective? I guess a couple players that are saints could do it, but what about everyone else?

Even in all those other games.....is there one that has the player produce an effect or result by themselves totally independent of the GM. Every example I've seen has the GM still 100% in control of the whole game. Unlike D&D, the game has some vague rules for the GM to follow about 'agency'. But they are vague. So any GM can "follow the rule(s)" and still just do whatever they want. That is what vague rules do.

Even if a player calls the GM out: "I don't like the way you are following rule 23!" how is that any different from in D&D when a player says "I don't like what you did"? In both cases would not a GM just say "you don't have to like it, but I say it happens." ?

 

[FrogReaver]

I was more using complexity and such as examples of relatively objective things, and I got the impression that people WERE equating complexity (and 'impact' which may be rather less objective) with agency, or at least tying them together in some fashion, at least WRT board games. I don't disagree that these are not correlated necessarily, and have said as much myself (maybe it was in the other post I made around the same time, I'm not sure).

Sorry I misunderstood then. Glad we are finding some agreement.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Last time. Chess has more pieces, more options of how to play the game. Go has 1 piece you do 1 thing with it. Yet Go is considered more complex and difficult to master. A computer could beat a chess master in 97, it was nearly 20 years and an entirely new paradigm later that the same could be said for Go.

You can't just look at the rules of two games and say this game is more complex because it has more options. You can't just look at two RPGs and say this one has more agency because it has more options to express agency for the player.

But seriously, I don't mean to be rude but this horse was dead long ago.

You're asserting that I said things I never said. Believe me, I could go chapter and verse with you on the mathematical aspect of complexity, and I never ever in a billion years stated that Chess is more complex than Go, nor consequently given some sort of explanation of it as you are imputing. In fact I'm pretty sure, without dredging back through every post I have made in the past 2 days, that I stated that Go is more complex than Chess. At the very least I said something about them both being in a more complex category than certain other games (Checkers being one IIRC). Whatever horse you are beating, it isn't even in this race!

However, I disagree with you as to what we look at when we refer to complexity. We look at the totality of possibilities when discussing board games, and then maybe in more detail at how different positions can be represented in slightly more abstract ways (IE Go contains a large number of what are recognized by analysts as functionally equivalent situations which all resolve down to the same sort of outcome if played through). When discussing RPGs, which are 'open games' (in all non-trivial cases certainly) the criteria must be more in terms of 'rules complexity' as there is no enumerable set of board positions to compare.

Etc. I can hash all this out as much as you want, and write you a book on game theory and complexity theory if you want, but the point stands, whatever you are imputing to me as simplistic wrong-headed answers, I am not giving them!

 

[Oofta]

You're asserting that I said things I never said. Believe me, I could go chapter and verse with you on the mathematical aspect of complexity, and I never ever in a billion years stated that Chess is more complex than Go, nor consequently given some sort of explanation of it as you are imputing. In fact I'm pretty sure, without dredging back through every post I have made in the past 2 days, that I stated that Go is more complex than Chess. At the very least I said something about them both being in a more complex category than certain other games (Checkers being one IIRC). Whatever horse you are beating, it isn't even in this race!

However, I disagree with you as to what we look at when we refer to complexity. We look at the totality of possibilities when discussing board games, and then maybe in more detail at how different positions can be represented in slightly more abstract ways (IE Go contains a large number of what are recognized by analysts as functionally equivalent situations which all resolve down to the same sort of outcome if played through). When discussing RPGs, which are 'open games' (in all non-trivial cases certainly) the criteria must be more in terms of 'rules complexity' as there is no enumerable set of board positions to compare.

Etc. I can hash all this out as much as you want, and write you a book on game theory and complexity theory if you want, but the point stands, whatever you are imputing to me as simplistic wrong-headed answers, I am not giving them!

I meant "you" in a general sense.

In any case, I've explained my thought process. I'm done with this particular conversation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Last time. Chess has more pieces, more options of how to play the game. Go has 1 piece you do 1 thing with it. Yet Go is considered more complex and difficult to master. A computer could beat a chess master in 97, it was nearly 20 years and an entirely new paradigm later that the same could be said for Go.

You can't just look at the rules of two games and say this game is more complex because it has more options. You can't just look at two RPGs and say this one has more agency because it has more options to express agency for the player.

But seriously, I don't mean to be rude but this horse was dead long ago.

I'm not sure the comparison is as apt as you might like. Especially because the way we actually discuss complexity has a better tool: the number of spots on the board (squares for chess, intersections for go.) Chess has 64 squares. Go has 361 intersections (19²). Further, there are far more valid go boards than there are chess boards, because (for example) it is perfectly valid to have a board with no white stones, but a board with no white chess pieces is not valid. Estimating reasonably, there are about 10^170 valid go boards: each intersection has three valid states--empty, black, white--and there are 361 such intersections, so 3^361 = 1.7^172, whittle off a power of two for good measure. The typical estimate for the possible number of chess games (not just board-states) is "only" about 10^120, and the number of possible boards (including invalid states) is estimated to be only about 10^45. Go is vastly more complex purely because of its board size. Even a novice board is 9²=81 intersections, giving 3^81 or about 10^38 possible board-states. A mathematical estimate of the number of actually valid game-states is around 2*10^170.

Go is more complex to code because you have to account for far, far more states than you do in chess.

So....yeah. You can in fact say that one game is more complex than another because it has more options; you just have to be careful about how you approach that, recognizing that "options" means more than just "distinct pieces." Go has more options by virtue of the size of its board. Chess simply makes it seem like it has more states because it has more pieces, but with far fewer places for them to be, that advantage is quickly irrelevant.

Hence why I have said, repeatedly, that we should look at both events/instances/moments/etc. of agency (since you can have few to no such moments, or many such moments, or anywhere in between), and also forms/types/kinds/etc. of agency (since different games may offer different types)--and those things can interact with one another. So--shorn of other context, just as a point of discussion--what would you say about the following statements?

• Statement P: "Two games offer the same kinds of agency, but game A offers more instances of agency than game B. Therefore, game A offers more agency than game A."
• Statement Q: "Two games offer equivalent* instances of agency, but game C offers more types of agency than game D. Therefore, game C offers more agency than game D."

*"Equivalent" since, as I hope you would agree, absolute and precise equality is an unfairly high standard.

It sounds, to me, like you would reject Q with prejudice; I think that's hasty, but not totally unwarranted. Simply offering more flavors, alone, with no other factors, would be inadequate. This is (IMO poorly) communicated by the "lottery"-type argument--e.g., that having a zillion numbers to choose from is irrelevant--and much better communicated by something like a "menu" argument. For example, a menu which offers your choice of 20 completely distinct entrees but no drink options, vs. one that offers a choice between two entrees and separately two drinks. The latter would in fact offer less agency, despite offering more forms thereof (entree-agency and drink-agency). That I can grant without difficulty. But now let us consider...

• Statement R: "Two games, E and F, both offer equivalent instances of type-1 agency. Game E intentionally does not offer any type-2 agency, at all. Game F additionally offers some instances of type-2 agency. Therefore, game F offers more agency than game E."

Which, to be clear, is essentially what I argued earlier that you took umbrage with. The responses to this have mostly been "you can't measure quantity of agency!" which is a non-sequitur because I'm not measuring anything, I'm counting things (instances/moments/events, and types/forms/kinds.) There is no "kilochoice" unit--there are simply times that something occurs, and ways that that thing can occur.

Further, note the word "offer" here. Games do not contain agency any more than games contain, say, adventure. Instead, games offer chances for agency, or adventure, or camaraderie, or betrayal, or whatever else. But what could that mean, other than furnishing the circumstances in which adventure, camaraderie, betryal, and yes, agency could occur? Those would be instances, events, moments, "decision-points," etc.

Returning to the "menu" argument above, if two menus both offer the exact same list of entrees, but one menu includes the potential to choose your drink and the other doesn't, I don't see how it is possible to argue that the drink-menu offers equal "dining" agency to the non-drink-menu. You have simply more control over what you consume and how you will experience the meal.

Thus, it seems you must deny one of the following:

1. that there can be kinds/forms/types of agency at all
2. that moments/situations/events/instances of agency can be counted at all
3. that "agency" is a concept with any meaning whatsoever
4. that "narrative" games offer equivalent character-agency to "trad" ones (or "neotrad" or whatever, I don't mean to hold you to a label here.)

1 is manifestly false, as players, authors, creators, etc. clearly have the ability to influence or control things within their creative space that ordinary humans do not within their existential space.** 2 is similarly false, because making a choice that actually matters--that actually has influence or control over something within the play-space--is an event, which can be counted. And 3, while not quite so manifestly false, is still pretty clearly a problem, given the formal discourse on the topic in many fields, all of which I am not fully qualified to directly analyze (philosophy, law, and psychology, maybe economics, maybe more besides.)

Which leaves us with a curious thing. If, indeed, you are forced to argue point 4, then you must be arguing that "narrative" games offer less agency of a particular kind than other kinds of games offer. But that necessarily implies the position you seem so strident against, that some games can offer more agency of specific types than other games offer. If you are, in fact, forced to argue 4, then it would seem you have conceded the greater point in the doing.

But perhaps I have missed another alternative? Certainly wouldn't be the first time.

**Further, even if we did grant point 1, it would simply collapse Statement R into Statement P: all instances of agency are simply agency, no classification allowed, and thus game E would offer fewer instances of agency than game F.

 

[Pedantic]

But perhaps I have missed another alternative? Certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I don't support or particularly want to engage with the weird binary argument, but I think you have missed something. I don't think instances of agency as you're laying them out here are strictly additive, unlike items on a restaurant menu. I was arguing something similar with my attempt to divide out narrative vs. ludic agency early; depending on your stated goal it's possible to add options that increase agency along one axis, while decreasing it as much or more along another.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Multidimensional sounds accurate to me.

Edit:
Wanted to add - something can be multidimensional and also be either binary or scalar along each dimension.

Though it would be rather an unusual vector, if that were the case. Though perhaps that's my physics perspective talking.

But let us use this vector analogy, really put it to work. The components of the vector are scalar. Either they are boolean variables (1/0, present/absent), or they are not (allowed other number values; amount or degree of something.) In the case of booleans, the analysis is quite simple: more vectors is more vectors, that's all you need. In the case of non-booleans, total magnitude of the scalar matters, but that simply feeds back into the already-discussed "it needs to be meaningful to be agency," so that's just proving something that's already been expected. More vectors of sufficient magnitude are longer, in total, than fewer vectors of comparable magnitudes.

Now: Compare the vector spaces spanned by vectors which only admit x and y components, vs vectors which admit x, y, and z components. Both are (uncountably) infinite, having the same cardinality (there is a bijection between them), but measure theory allows us to talk about their "size" in a meaningful way. For any sense in which their sizes differ, the one with x,y,z components is larger than the one with only x,y.

I don't support or particularly want to engage with the weird binary argument, but I think you have missed something. I don't think instances of agency as you're laying them out here are strictly additive, unlike items on a restaurant menu. I was arguing something similar with my attempt to divide out narrative vs. ludic agency early; depending on your stated goal it's possible to add options that increase agency along one axis, while decreasing it as much or more along another.

Alright. That's a reasonable stance to take, in the generic: it is possible to add options that increase agency on one axis and reduce it on another. Keyword possible.

As I have argued previously, I don't see how "narrative" games pay any cost in "character agency" terms. Like, at all. It doesn't seem to be the case that there is any "character agency" offered by "(neo)trad" games that is not also offered by at least those "narrative" games I have personally played. I have said this several times, and I have noted other posters who don't like "player agency" who have agreed with this assessment.

Do you have an example of such a thing? E.g., a place where Dungeon World has had to proverbially "swap out" potential character-agency moments with player-agency ones? Does "character-agency" actually map to your ludic agency? (It would seem to me that "character agency" is rather under "narrative agency" in your classification, only secondarily connected to agency over gameplay elements.)

 

[pemerton]

I'm pretty surprised agency is scalar and not multidimensional. (Google seems to show a number of papers examining it multidimensionally, but I didn't check what field they're in or the abstracts).

Yes it's multi-dimensional. Scalar in the sense that it admits of degrees - ie some people enjoy more agency than others.

 

[pemerton]

You can in fact say that one game is more complex than another because it has more options; you just have to be careful about how you approach that, recognizing that "options" means more than just "distinct pieces." Go has more options by virtue of the size of its board. Chess simply makes it seem like it has more states because it has more pieces, but with far fewer places for them to be, that advantage is quickly irrelevant.

I'm surprised this even needs stating! It's obvious that the relevant options in Go are not place a piece on a point on the board, which describes every move taken, but place a piece on a point on a board so as to change the state of the board from X to Y.

Your other stuff about menus, various sorts of agency etc I have mostly glossed over, as to be honest I don't find it all that productive. For instance, so-called "character agency" doesn't seem to describe a different type of agency at all (it is still referring to agency in respect of the shared fiction); rather, it just describes a particular constraint on the exercise of agency (ie the only direct change in the fiction the player can make is by declaring an action for their PC).

The fact that Apocalypse World, Dungeon World and Burning Wheel operate primarily via this mode of agency is (it seems) routinely ignored.

And the introduction of additional constraints (eg the player can't declare their PC's veridical mental states except by first consulting the GM about permissible contents of those mental states) seems to be typically intended by proponents of "character agency" but it is not normally mentioned by them - eg they will often say the player is in charge of what their PC thinks and feels but in fact that turns out not to be the case, given the GM's control over permissible veridical mental-state contents.

Doesn't BitD have a flashback mechanic that lets the player declare something was already prepared in the past and is ready to go now (to capture the feel of many heist movies). I believe I suggested that in a non-heist setting that's kind of like being able to wish things into existence.

How is it like being able to wish something into existence? What "reality" is being altered? The player declares an action for their PC. How does the fact that it is about the PC's past actions change it's character as an action declaration?