GM fiat - an illustration

[Micah Sweet]

It may or it may not… that’s not really relevant to the matter being discussed about the bare minimum form of agency for an RPG to function is the player being able to prompt the GM with questions.

If the player can declare actions and have their character do things that affect the events of play… that’s greater agency than the bare minimum described above. And this is nothing I think you’d have a problem with the player doing.

Aside from the above point, and as far as being outside of the character’s knowledge… what about goals of play? Do you let players have any say there?

In session 0, absolutely I do. Things players want to see and experience strongly affect worldbuilding, right down to the PCs personal interests. For example, if a player wants their PC to rescue their estranged father from hobgoblin prison (in a setting where such a thing is reasonable), the opportunity to do so will exist in the world.

Once play actually begins, and the PCs are active in the setting, however, the player's influence extend only to their PCs knowledge base and actions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Two things on this. First, in either case, you’re talking about players who have more agency in the game than just the bare minimum of asking the GM questions and getting answers.

Second, characters have no agency. Players have agency. We really have to discuss agency from the perspective of the player. How much can the player influence the state of the game? That’s what defines agency. What can the player do? Not what can their token do.

Unless what the player can do (after a certain point, perhaps) is what their token can do.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think this is akin to analyzing a traffic accident and only considering the last split second before the head on crash. Sure, you can say the cause was driver X didn't swerve, but calling that the cause when driver Y was drunk, travelling twice the speed limit and in the wrong lane is missing all the critical factors.

No one is saying there isn't bigger picture. This was about examining a specific moment of agency and whether it existed in that moment or not (and if it did, to what degree).

Also we are talking about agency not cause or moral culpability. In the driving scenario, you list a number of things that would be the main cause (being drunk, speeding, etc). That still doesn't mean the other driver has no agency though. I was almost T Boned when someone went through a red light three years ago, and I only didn't get hit because I saw it and stopped short. Had me and my wife been killed, surely the moral blame and the big cause would have been that the drive blazed through a light. But me being aware a car was coming through the light, and me making the choice to stop, were also huge factors in why it didn't result in that (and also a choice I would say was very meaningful and important for me, as the wrong one would have been lethal).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is part of the key. A lot of people see agency more as a character's ability to make choices and do things within the setting itself, some seem to extend agency to the player having power over the setting. I think these two groups are talking about very different concerns. The latter is more about how power is distributed among players in the system.

There is that, but there is also more. Having agency means being able to make meaningful choices. So completely blind left-or-right choices do not really offer it, as it might as well be random. Players don't need to have perfect information, but for the choice to be meaningful, they need to have at least some information that differentiates the choices. Furthermore, the result of the choices need to have some impact to the direction of the game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is that, but there is also more. Having agency means being able to make meaningful choices. So completely blind left-or-right choices do not really offer it, as it might as well be random. Players don't need to have perfect information, but for the choice to be meaningful, they need to have at least some information that differentiates the choices. Furthermore, the result of the choices need to have some impact to the direction of the game.

I am not saying that given the choice to pick a number, and if you pick wrong, your brain is eaten, is a high level of agency. But I am saying it has more agency than if it were purely random and the player's choice played zero role. it is just to point out that sometimes blind options also add an important element to the game. In most cases though when such a choice arises, there will also usually the choice not to choose: i.e. you come to do doors in a dungeon and don't know what is beyond them, you can choose not to got though ether of them. So I would still include even blind choices as part of agency, especially if they have consequences. If the players blindly choose to go north, and there they encounter something that radically alters their life in a negative way, but had they gone south their lives would have been radically altered in a positive way, then that was still a meaningful choice. And it is the kind of choice that plagues most people throughout their life. There is a butterfly effect that adds up. But for that choice to be meaningful in that way, the background information needs to be established or pinned down before the choice is made (otherwise it is just a quantum life altering experience)

 

[hawkeyefan]

I would push back on the second point. When we talk about player agency, I think we are really talking about the agency of their characters in the setting most of the time. A character on a railroad has no agency. A character who can make choices and explore freely does have agency. Characters in novels don't exist either, but we speak of them as having agency all the time. This is about players ability to shape the action, shape the plot through their characters choices. I get that you can add an additional layer of the players having more control of the plot directly, in teh way a GM might be able to. But i think that goes beyond agency and into power dynamics among players in the system itself

I think that player agency is about the agency of a player. I mean, it's right there in the name. We wouldn't talk about how much agency a rook has in chess.

So player agency is about what a player can do to affect play. This is not limited to just what their character can do. That there may be people who want to limit their agency to be solely what their character can do doesn't change that. It also leaves a vast swath of gray area unaddressed.

Characters in novels likewise do not have actual agency. When we're discussing agency for characters in movies or novels, yes, we're talking about their fictional autonomy and capability. Like, we may say that Princess Buttercup has very little agency in The Princess Bride... she is pretty much at the mercy of other characters throughout the story. She doesn't really make any decisions that affect the story, beyond perhaps that she wants Wesley over Humperdink. But it's all really the decision of the author.

Trying to examine player agency in an RPG through the lens of that of characters in novels or movies doesn't really work since the media are fundamentally different.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Unless what the player can do (after a certain point, perhaps) is what their token can do.

Sure. You can absolutely limit the player's agency in that way. It's an understandable decision to do so, and clearly a lot of people like to go that route.

But then typically we get into these weird arguments about how it's not a limit and their games have as much agency as others and all that. Despite the conscious and willful decision to limit the agency in this way.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How would you analyze, say, AD&D then?

It is an incoherent convoluted mess? I don't know, it has been decades since I last played it, and I never player much of it.

It has initiative, surprise, stealth checks, saves, attack rolls, find traps, sense secret doors, hear noise, reaction, morale, wandering monster checks, probably others. That's all on top of the often unknown and possibly unknowable DM judgement calls and hidden facts. Yet we call it, generally, a game of skill! Dice determine MANY things in 1e, much as they do in BitD. Players play the odds in both games, balancing risk management concerns against gamist and others.

All games of course have random elements and old school D&D often had notoriously lot deadly and untelegraphed randomness. Not fan of that.

But how Blades work is that most rolls have some negative consequence and as there is no solid local myth (i.e. this is the floorplan, trap is here, four guards are here, direplatypus is here, the reinforcements arrive at four o'clock etc.) any roll can basically have any sort of bad consequence the GM can make seem plausible at the moment. Like it is sorta pointless to check in Blades whether a safe is trapped for example. Whether it is or not, if you roll consequences when you're trying to open it something bad will happen regardless.

I don't know, to me it just feels different. Like in D&D I feel I can try things, explore and use the things I learned to my advantage more than I can in Blades. And this doesn't mean it is a bad game, and I took "reckless" as my first trauma and stopped worrying about it. But at first It was frustrating when I tried to play it smartly and cautiously. Now I just enjoy the mayhem.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think that player agency is about the agency of a player. I mean, it's right there in the name. We wouldn't talk about how much agency a rook has in chess.

I get it is in the name but I think the meaning of that term usually refers to agency of the character in the world. When people complain that their agency is being taken away in a railroad, they are usually not complaining that they don't have the ability to say introduce an element of fiction to the world, they are complaining that their choices they make through their character are constrained

So player agency is about what a player can do to affect play. This is not limited to just what their character can do. That there may be people who want to limit their agency to be solely what their character can do doesn't change that. It also leaves a vast swath of gray area unaddressed.

I would reject this definition. What you are talking is certainly something that matters a lot, but it isn't what I would call, and what I think not what most people would call, player agency. I think this is more about power levels at the table. Also when you start talking about it as such, it just because easier to speak about. If we are constantly conflating agency of me in the game world, with things like how much GM authority a player has, that makes these conversions confusing (and I think we see that in how they often play out)

Trying to examine player agency in an RPG through the lens of that of characters in novels or movies doesn't really work since the media are fundamentally different.

I would agree with this, I do think it is an unnecessary tangent on my part to raise that point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. You can absolutely limit the player's agency in that way. It's an understandable decision to do so, and clearly a lot of people like to go that route.

But then typically we get into these weird arguments about how it's not a limit and their games have as much agency as others and all that. Despite the conscious and willful decision to limit the agency in this way.

I wouldn't say the games I prefer have the same level of player agency as others (such as the ones you obviously favor), but I don't want them to have more, as a player or a GM.