D&D General What is player agency to you?

[pemerton]

@Manbearcat

I think in mentioning the sorting of cranberries from almonds you're trying to railroad your table into trail mix as a snack. Whereas in my group people have high snack agency - they can bring chips or nuts or donuts or potato gems or whatever they like!

 

[Mort]

@Manbearcat

I think in mentioning the sorting of cranberries from almonds you're trying to railroad your table into trail mix as a snack. Whereas in my group people have high snack agency - they can bring chips or nuts or donuts or potato gems or whatever they like!

Whereas my group does not want high snack agency.

My wife insists we have an assortment (fruit, chips, salad etc.) in addition to Tombstone pizza, but all my group ever eats is the Tombstone pizza.

When I had actually GOOD pizza (Lou Malnati's for anyone who knows Chicago) my group actually looked betrayed and asked where the Tombstone was. Not everyone wants agency!

 

[FrogReaver]

@Crimson Longinus

System's Say isn't just about dice mechanics. It can just as well relate to the sorts of judgements and the basis of the judgements the GM and/or other players are expected to make. This matters for agency because my ability to anticipate, determine and constrain the sorts of things that can and will be said in follow up is a significant component of agency.

If I know the GM should be making decisions solely based on fictional positioning and their understanding of the NPCs involved it then becomes worthwhile to engage in exploratory play to discover information to leverage.

If I know what the consequence space and odds of success with Go Aggro are than I can consider that when choosing to do something in the fiction that would count as Go Aggro.

Knowing position and effect, stating my intent and knowing my action rating in Blades in the Dark provides me with a whole host of factors that influence my decision making and allow me to make decisions that should forward my aims.

When it comes to all sorts of math rocks it's less about the dice than knowing how those dice can impact what happens next and finding ways to influence what dice get rolled, what that target number will be, how those dice get modified and what happens as a result of those dice rolls.

It's not about dice versus GM decisions. It's about being able to foresee the impact of one's actions in order to make decisions that impact what happens next in predictable ways. There will be unanticipated consequences along the way, but a substantial component of agency involves the ability to anticipate and impact the chances and nature of success and failure.

A fundamental part of agency is that in exercising it you impact the agency of others. Once you have acted everyone else in the conversation is constrained by what you have added to the conversation. They must have a regard for it, and it will dictate and constrain the types of things they are allowed to add to the conversation according to the principles / agreements / system that dictate the terms of the conversation.

I have a few specific things to add - but before I get into them I agree with your basic point - some degree of knowledge is needed in order to have agency.

If I know the GM should be making decisions solely based on fictional positioning and their understanding of the NPCs involved it then becomes worthwhile to engage in exploratory play to discover information to leverage.

IMO - Story Now/Narrative/whatever we call that style of game explicitly tells the GM to ensure whatever fiction is introduced foremast speaks to the characters dramatic needs with the additional constraint that the introduced fiction doesn't contradict any already established fiction. There's a world of difference in that and in basing decisions solely on the fictional positioning and understanding of the NPC's involved.

When it comes to all sorts of math rocks it's less about the dice than knowing how those dice can impact what happens next and finding ways to influence what dice get rolled, what that target number will be, how those dice get modified and what happens as a result of those dice rolls.

For a single moment in time this sounds accurate enough. Except there's a few caveats

1. You still don't know precisely what the consequence of failing will be, just a general notion of how severe it will be and the probability it will occur.

2. Any resource based system to affect die rolls actually causes one to be faced with extremely minimal information around whether you should use that resource now or save it for later.

3. While you may know the probabilities for all outcomes for this particular moment you don't actually have quality information outside this moment. How many successes must you accomplish the BitD score? What will each particular one be for? So in relation to what matters - a BitD player and D&D 5e player both have about the same amount of info around what it will take to achieve their short term/long term goals at any given moment of play - virtually none.

4. If I were to say some game processes provided more agency than others - i'd definitely say a 5e D&D players ability to explore and ultimately leverage the fictional position to completely bypass die rolls to achieve his goals is more agency than simply expending resources to modify die rolls to give him a higher chance of rolling for success.

A fundamental part of agency is that in exercising it you impact the agency of others. Once you have acted everyone else in the conversation is constrained by what you have added to the conversation. They must have a regard for it, and it will dictate and constrain the types of things they are allowed to add to the conversation according to the principles / agreements / system that dictate the terms of the conversation.

I understand your perspective here - but I think there's a better one that's gained by looking at more than just what is constrained.

It's true that if I establish X that you can't establish not X. That's certainly a valid constraint. But it's also true that if I had not established X, there are many Y's you wouldn't have been able to establish. A simple example: X = I attack you. Y = You Dodge the attack. If I never attacked you, then in most games you wouldn't be able to establish that you dodged my attack.

In short - one participant establishing fiction doesn't just constrain the other participants - it also opens other options they wouldn't have had without doing so.

NOTE: all uses of 'you' except the obvious are the 'general you'.

 

[niklinna]

Whereas my group does not want high snack agency.

My wife insists we have an assortment (fruit, chips, salad etc.) in addition to Tombstone pizza, but all my group every eats is the Tombstone pizza.

When I had actually GOOD pizza (Lou Malnati's for anyone who knows Chicago) my group actually looked betrayed and asked where the Tombstone was. Not everyone wants agency!

Now see, if your group really wanted agency, they would bring their own Tombstone pizza every time. Clearly they are low-agency when it comes to snacks. And yet they have expectations—but getting what you want is not agency, and, ergo facto, not getting what you want is not not-agency.

I trust you force-fed them the Mainati's (or you know killed all their characters) just to show them who's got the agency in matters of snackage.

Anyhow, as usual, I am done with this thread.

 

[Cadence]

Anyhow, as usual, I am done with this thread.

If you exhibited any agency I might believe that...

 

[niklinna]

If you exhibited any agency I might believe that...

Well I did just get back from the bathroom....

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well my group was playing 2e. We just used some things from 1e (primarily the assassin class). We managed, but there were clearly different system expectations. The game wasn’t really backward compatible.

1e and 2e? Nah, they're within a gnat's arse of being exactly the same game. All your to-hit numbers are identical, AC, damage, ability bonuses, hit points, etc. all identical. 2e uses a d10 for initiative instead of a d6, and a few other VERY minor differences like that. It has a bit more extensive weapon specialization rules, etc. Some of the classes are tweaked a bit. The bard is a total rewrite, but would be unexceptional and work fine in 1e. Chaos wizard, specialist mages, those are slightly new, basically extrapolations of the old illusionist class. You can undoubtedly find a few other things, rangers got a fairly modest rewrite for instance.

We didn't even bother to convert our existing 1e PCs, just played them as-is in 2e, it was a non-issue. Typically GMs allowed people to go back and reallocate weapon prof slots and maybe pick NWPs, a few things like that. We picked up the new spell descriptions, though most spells didn't change (there was a bit of juggling to merge in illusions with the main wizard list).

Honestly, in purely mechanical terms what is notable about 2e is that not much is notable! Combat got a very superficial face lift. Oh, and some of the really high level monsters got a power boost, so 2e dragons are significantly upgraded. Also the 'repeat the 20 six times' got removed, which makes low negative AC a lot more scary.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Whereas my group does not want high snack agency.

My wife insists we have an assortment (fruit, chips, salad etc.) in addition to Tombstone pizza, but all my group every eats is the Tombstone pizza.

When I had actually GOOD pizza (Lou Malnati's for anyone who knows Chicago) my group actually looked betrayed and asked where the Tombstone was. Not everyone wants agency!

Lucky they weren't my group at Middlebury College. They kept stealing my Tony's Pizza (blows Lou Malnati out of the water) without asking (rich kids). Mike worked at the place, so he put together a couple of double anchovy pies, we dropped 'em on the table, sure enough they all went for it. Never saw so many disgusted looks. Had all the pies to ourselves for the rest of the year.

 

[FrogReaver]

Golroc, Max...

I mean...come on. What are we even doing here at this point? This is like some kind of crazy agency pea and shell game or something.

Yes, we can develop a menu of the most atomized, most irrelevant, most peripheral "agency coefficients" to any activity concievable within the universe...stack them...and then pretend that somehow, agency is all the same or even tilted in favor of this list of irrelevant, atomized, peripheral nothinburger list of things!

Yes, if we (a) detach anything resembling a unifying process and goal of experience and then (b) utterly atomize all related undertakings and incorporate all manner of irrelevant, peripheral activities (why don't we include the agency to breathe every 2 seconds vs 5...or the agency to sort the almonds in our trailmix vs the cranberries!)...then yes, in that WTF case...no concept of "higher or lower agency" can be evaluated. But at this point...what_are_we_even_doing?

There is no way this conversation can take place outside of ENWorld. Humans in meatspace just won't tolerate this kind of whatever-it-is-we're-trying-to-do-here.

EDIT: If we're talking about agency as it pertains to sport, we're talking about the capacity to impact the gamestate and achieve the win condition. We aren't talking about peripheral, atomized activities that have nothing to do with this. So yes, spectators have lower agency than participants, and yes, parents/guardians watching their children/wards play is the exemplar here. A parent having the agency to chew their nails and shout "COME ON JIMMY" vs engage in the wave is utterly irrelevant to agency as it pertains to sport. Bringing in another kind of agency is just a pea and shell game. And if you try to have this weirdly contorting, pivoting conversation with a human being outside of this arena, it absolutely won't work.

1. IMO what is actually desired by players that prefer Story Now/Narrative/etc games is best described in terms other than agency. Other terms allow greater specificity and less offense.

2. I'm confident that there isn't a single player that actually wants fully unconstrained agency (or if fully unconstrained agency is off the table because it wouldn't be a game - then as close to that as one can get and still have a game). And if this premise is accepted by all, there's no meaningful reason to ever talk about what game grants more agency. It's as unimportant a concept as everything you just spoke about above. As you said - 'But at this point...what_are_we_even_doing?'

 

[Campbell]

@FrogReaver

That was not intended to be a point-by-point analysis, deep dive into process or specific to one sort of play. The section on a GM being constrained only by the shared fiction was done with more disciplined trad play in mind. The math rocks section was not written with any particular game in mind.

The whole point was to dive into why the process a GM is using to decide what happens should matter to players.