D&D General What is player agency to you?

[bloodtide]

1. Autonomy: The ability to determine the goals your character pursues and the actions they take in pursuit of those goals.

Well, if this is saying a tyrant author player can force a GM to run their game 'novel' for them...well, no I'd disagree.

A player can make up goals all days long....but can only play them out in most RPGs IF and only IF the GM agrees in general and wants to do it.

2. Impact: The ability to bring about irrevocable change to the setting as a result of the actions your character takes (without it being essentially given to you). Success must be earned / taken.

I think this is a given.

The problem is way, way, way, way WAY to many players want an Easy Button game. Just like the see on Tv or the Movies: they want their characters to do crazy clumsy things and alter game reality.

3. Content/Thematic Influence: Your ability as a player to influence the content and/or stakes of the setting and scenarios that will be played out at the table.

I guess you can say "influence", but this goes right back to number 1: only if the GM agrees.

I hope we can all agree that there are various levels and tolerances of all three that will play out from game to game and will be influenced by both game design and GMing technique. Whether or not you think an aggregate like score of overall agency here is helpful I do think you can talk about it in those terms, although it's likely more useful to address individual dimensions.

I just don't see how a player occasional making vague 'suggestions' is any sort of agency.

 

[gban007]

@gban007, thanks for the reply!

I want to try and give a general, slightly abstract, description of the technique you're describing, and I wonder if you think it's accurate: the stuff that the GM is imagining but not revealing helps the GM coordinate what it is that they do reveal to the players in play.

I feel that that is accurate, though reserve right to change my mind if you point out some flaws in my thinking Having in my head the background information (or detailed in notes in some instances) does help me work out the responses to actions the players undertake. Doesn't always work, as sometimes they elect to do something that I hadn't considered, and then I need to think something up on the spot, or occasionally say I need a time out to work out what happens as a result of their actions, in order to:

1: Come up with an outcome that I can implement
2: Come up with an outcome that feels right for setting in, but at same time;
3: Allows their actions to have meaning / take affect - it may be like in Maxperson's example above, they decide to become pirates, but I don't have anything to hand to support that, so need time to allow that to occur, or they have come up with some smart way to deal with a situation, e.g. allying with one lot of potential enemies against the other, and I need a bit of time to work out what that then entails in terms of potential encounters remaining - what ones need changing, which ones might no longer occur etc.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No. There's a reason why I keep using the word "idea" and not "goal." I have no goal. There's nothing that I want to happen. I just have an idea of what might happen

I mean… you used the term “end goal”.

Yep. I react to what they choose very often. I'd estimate that about 2/3 of the time they want to go for one of the hooks I've prepared and the other 1/3 of the time they decide to go off in another direction and I have to react to what they do. Usually they don't go completely AWOL from the theme, but the themes are pretty wide and they do things that they think of or want to do within the theme a lot.

Gotcha.

Yes. Less realistic. Realism is not binary. It's a sliding scale and the Realms exists on that scale just like every other setting. It can be more or less realistic depending on how the DM runs it.

I didn’t say realism was binary. I’m not gonna try and frame things that clearly have degrees (however difficult the degrees may be to quantify) as binary.

My point is that you are in control of what happens. There’s no reason that you can’t devise a reason, for whatever sense of realism you want, to have whatever event work out differently.

Now, having said that, it sounds like everyone was fine with it, so no worries.

It was a bit more. In the first session that had made a friend who was involved in the event. The friend contacted them and said that she knew that they didn't want to be involved, but asked for a favor. Behind the scenes a random roll had determined that there was literally no one else that could stop what was happening. She didn't tell that to the PCs, but that's why she asked. They could have said no and I was actually expecting them to say no. Instead they jumped on it since it was just a one time favor and she was paying well.

So your story kind of came back and looped them back in via this NPC. So this is like one of your hooks, right? And the players decided to take it.

What would they have been likely to do if this NPC hadn’t showed back up, I wonder.

No. They chose to go and could have chosen to remain. Both are valid choices and they didn't show MORE agency by going south. They simply made a different choice that had meaning to them. Choice without meaning isn't agency.

But you honored their choice, is my point. At least, mostly. They left Waterdeep and you let that happen. You didn’t contrive to keep them there. You didn’t force your story on them. It came back up, but it sounds like in a less direct way, and was presented as a choice for them to get involved or not.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Coming from a lot of PbtA type play, and such, I have this strong feeling that it isn't really the mere taking of choices like "we go pirating instead of staying in Waterdeep" that is truly consequential. Either way, in say a game of Dungeon World, the GM and players will continue to make the same sort of moves in basically the same sort of loop. What MATTERS is how this relates to the PCs and how it reflects on their internal personal stories.

I mean, some decisions can be consequential in a 'do I live or die'? sort of way, or maybe in terms of specifically leading to the proximate loss or gain of resources and thus other opportunities, but the GENERAL outcome is "we continue to have adventures." So, really what changes? Well, I could be in Waterdeep helping to enforce the law, or I could be on a pirate ship flaunting it. Very different lifestyles, probably very different personal experiences (IE murdering people and taking their stuff vs upholding law and order). I think that, while PbtA games talk only about the smaller bits, the game is ultimately really more about the larger and more personal questions.

And surely this was one of the, maybe THE, motivation for Stonetop, the action is definitionally highly personal to each character, and thus 'weighty' in a way that simple action-adventure without that superstructure really isn't. So the choices have a sort of weight and effect that they don't in other games. BitD aims for that with the whole structure of the crew and such as well. It is certainly achievable in more trad play, but it is HARD to 'go for'. Play often tends to get mired up more in details, or just focus on things like basic survival, or loot.

 

[pemerton]

When the PCs have an in-universe reason to know something they can know it. Just like real life.

I think I know the answer to @Citizen Mane's question - by "in-universe reason" you mean "in-fiction cause".

But this doesn't help me understand what it is that your players are enjoying. In any RPG, when there is an in-fiction cause that means a PC will know something or other, that PC comes to know it. But this doesn't depend upon the GM imagining things that they don't share with the players, some of which is backstory, or the "true" in-setting explanation for, things that the GM does tell the players. For instance, the true in-setting explanations can be generated post hoc (as is very common in serial fiction).

 

[Maxperson]

Huh? Did the choice have meaning or not? See this is why 'meaning' isn't a good measure, whereas 'effectivity' is much stronger. I seem to recall a definition of agency earlier that was 2 parts; were the choices consequential, and were they informed.

Here I think you're trying to say that the choice wasn't informed. The players could not gauge the outcomes of each choice. I don't think ultimate or long-term outcomes are the best measure here, necessarily. Otherwise nobody can ever be said to have agency except trivially!

It's enough that the PCs choice to be pirates was a conscious design, and that it was realizable.

Knowing the outcome isn't necessary for agency or meaning. Had they chosen to stay with the first event, that would have been a choice with meaning. They knew enough about the first event to evaluate whether they wanted to pursue it or not. That gives them just the same amount of agency as going south to be pirates. Another choice with meaning.

 

[pemerton]

I feel that that is accurate, though reserve right to change my mind if you point out some flaws in my thinking Having in my head the background information (or detailed in notes in some instances) does help me work out the responses to actions the players undertake. Doesn't always work, as sometimes they elect to do something that I hadn't considered, and then I need to think something up on the spot, or occasionally say I need a time out to work out what happens as a result of their actions, in order to:

1: Come up with an outcome that I can implement
2: Come up with an outcome that feels right for setting in, but at same time;
3: Allows their actions to have meaning / take affect - it may be like in Maxperson's example above, they decide to become pirates, but I don't have anything to hand to support that, so need time to allow that to occur, or they have come up with some smart way to deal with a situation, e.g. allying with one lot of potential enemies against the other, and I need a bit of time to work out what that then entails in terms of potential encounters remaining - what ones need changing, which ones might no longer occur etc.

I don't want to point out flaws. But want to point out that - if I've followed you - there seem to be two things going on in what you've described here.

(1) The coordination function of background information. Apocalypse World uses this too.

(2) The use of background information to work out what happens. This is the bit where different processes of play make a big difference! In AW, there are rules - including rules about when the dice are rolled and what the result is - that tell the GM when and how to use that background information. (Eg the GM can't just declare a failure because that's what the background information might seem to imply. There are procedural constraints around this.)

But in a lot of what many (not all) posters in this thread have called "trad" play, the GM can use the background to decide what further play process will be used - eg they can declare a failure before calling for a dice roll. (Eg maybe the notes say "This guard cannot be bribed.) As we saw upthread with the Noble background in 5e, some posters even reserve the right to use that background to override what seems, in the rulebook, to be a clear conferral of a power on the player to generate a particular in-fiction result.

I think these different ways in which background information is used by the GM, in relation to other play procedures, is where a lot of the action is in different approaches to RPGing.

Though they're not all the action. There's also stuff like what I pointed to upthread with a Torchbearer example: if a player declares that their PC goes off to do some research, and the dice roll succeeds, who authors what it is that the PC learns? Torchbearer approaches this differently from Burning Wheel, and both are different from Apocalypse World.

Overall, I think the way that background info, and its coordination function, and the way other procedures of play are connected to this, can be quite a subtle matter.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean… you used the term “end goal”.

Then I misspoke. I don't have goals.

So your story kind of came back and looped them back in via this NPC. So this is like one of your hooks, right? And the players decided to take it.

What would they have been likely to do if this NPC hadn’t showed back up, I wonder.

No idea. Something else for sure. The point, though, is that they choose what they do and where they go. Not me.

But you honored their choice, is my point. At least, mostly. They left Waterdeep and you let that happen. You didn’t contrive to keep them there. You didn’t force your story on them. It came back up, but it sounds like in a less direct way, and was presented as a choice for them to get involved or not.

I didn't present it as a choice. The event happened and they dealt with it and discovered that it was part of something bigger. Then they decided not to engage the something bigger and go south. Of course everything is a choice by default, so there's no need for me to present something as one unless it's an NPC is offering a choice.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If I want to know something in real life, I'm generally not constrained by needing to have a reason to know it. I'm constrained by my ability to learn it, either physically or intellectually or through opportunity or availability, but my reasons can be anything. I could misrepresent them. And they aren't really subject to external approval. (At least so far as I know -- I suppose there could be a big old DM in the sky, who's like, "Ah, that's not good enough, man. You'll never know how ASoIaF ends.") Do you just mean that they need to be capable personally and situationally to learn something or are there other circumstances that come into play? Conceptually, I've never approached things in a game in this way, so I'm genuinely curious.

Wanting to know and taking steps to find out with the authority of the PC counts as reason to know it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think I know the answer to @Citizen Mane's question - by "in-universe reason" you mean "in-fiction cause".

But this doesn't help me understand what it is that your players are enjoying. In any RPG, when there is an in-fiction cause that means a PC will know something or other, that PC comes to know it. But this doesn't depend upon the GM imagining things that they don't share with the players, some of which is backstory, or the "true" in-setting explanation for, things that the GM does tell the players. For instance, the true in-setting explanations can be generated post hoc (as is very common in serial fiction).

They can, but as a personal preference I try not to.