D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

So just to be clear: my agency in relation to Critical Role is the same as Matt Mercer's, or any of his team, because I can choose whether or not to click on the Youtube link?

How is this possibly a helpful way to talk about participation in the play of a RPG?

 

[niklinna]

So just to be clear: my agency in relation to Critical Role is the same as Matt Mercer's, or any of his team, because I can choose whether or not to click on the Youtube link?

Precisely! If your own personal goal is merely to watch Critical Role, then you have exactly the same amount of observer-flavored agency as Matt Mercer does of executive-producer/star/GM-flavored agency.

How is this possibly a helpful way to talk about participation in the play of a RPG?

Oh, it isn't at all. But if you just want to observe the game, you have full agency over how that game turns out for you, even though you have no agency at all over how that game itself, you know, turns out. Well I mean you don't have agency over whether the rogue hits or misses, or if the party suffers a TPK, or if anybody actually participating can do anything to achieve their goals. But you can decide whether to watch them do or not do any of the above, or talk to your friend instead, or go to the bathroom. You have total agency over your own experience of watching the game in which you have no agency of any kind, except maybe to disrupt it by talking to your friend (assuming you are in the same room), who also has total agency over their own experience of watching the game in which they too have no agency of any kind.

Anyhow I am (still) so done with this thread.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No it's not.

Here's some self-quoting:
I am not putting myself down in any of these posts. I am describing, in general terms, the dynamics of the fiction creation in these various episodes of RPG play.

Actually to me it does sound as if any so-called "low agency" fun was reluctant at best on your part. You clearly make the point that you were actively trying to move the needle  away from "low agency" in these examples.

 

[Mort]

Edit: Note: The above is with adventures created by me. I don't run official adventure paths, but it wouldn't be any different if I did.

Well sure, If it's your own adventures or if you use the Adventure Paths as malleable kernels - that's completely different - they are no longer the published adventure paths.

But when run as written, which from what I've seen is the norm - the story is basically pre written.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well sure, If it's your own adventures or if you use the Adventure Paths as malleable kernels - that's completely different - they are no longer the published adventure paths.

But when run as written, which from what I've seen is the norm - the story is basically pre written.

And thus the solution is simple: don't run adventure paths. Just use as inspiration mines and sources of material. That's what I do. I don't think I've ever run a published adventure.

 

[pemerton]

Actually to me it does sound as if any so-called "low agency" fun was reluctant at best on your part. You clearly make the point that you were actively trying to move the needle  away from "low agency" in these examples.

Yes. Overall I prefer high-player-agency to low-player-agency.

That doesn't mean I'm denigrating myself when I describe my GMing or play in low-player-agency RPGs.

 

[Maxperson]

Well sure, If it's your own adventures or if you use the Adventure Paths as malleable kernels - that's completely different - they are no longer the published adventure paths.

They are all of them malleable kernels. It's seeing them as rigid that's the problem. They aren't. They're just a more detailed framework for DMs to use as an aid to running the game.

But when run as written, which from what I've seen is the norm - the story is basically pre written.

Can you point to me where it's written in one that they can't go to Baldur's gate and hire 200 mercenaries to help them out? That it's written that you have to play only what is in the book?

 

[Maxperson]

And thus the solution is simple: don't run adventure paths. Just use as inspiration mines and sources of material. That's what I do. I don't think I've ever run a published adventure.

I don't, but even if I did they would be malleable kernels. I really don't think that the designers intend those modules to be prisons that the DM and players should feel bound to follow word for word.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. Overall I prefer high-player-agency to low-player-agency.

That doesn't mean I'm denigrating myself when I describe my GMing or play in low-player-agency RPGs.

If that's how you see it, fair enough. It doesn't look that way to me though. It looks like you're describing times when you've "slummed it" from your point of view, engaging in play you saw as inferior for whatever reason and tried to make the best of it. Just my point of view, and I don't intend it as hurtful.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't, but even if I did they would be malleable kernels. I really don't think that the designers intend those modules to be prisons that the DM and players should feel bound to follow word for word.

I don't either, but I expect that the designers assume most people are going to follow the path. They're intended as complete, out-of-the-box adventures.