GM fiat - an illustration

[hawkeyefan]

Though it can be undermined by a bad roll instead.

(And I broadly agree with the rest of your assessment.)

I think this is a flawed way of looking at it. That something can fail doesn’t mean agency is undermined or removed or anything like that.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Unless the DM is railroading the players though, what the characters say and do does affect play. That's why we use that as the metric for agency. We assume that the DM isn't railroading the players.

 

[Maxperson]

Set aside the idea of narrative control... because it is itself a muddy term. I mean, telling the duke to go screw and heading off to the west... that's an exercise of narrative control. It's the players saying that they're not interested in this duke situation, and they want the characters to go west. Surely this will change the narrative.

I agree with this. This action shifts the direction of play and results in a completely different narrative than if they helped the duke.
In one of my campaigns during session -1 where we determine the focus of the next campaign, the players decided not to have any input and have me surprise them. So I set up a demonic invasion storyline that was happening. During the first few sessions when they first started hearing rumors and ran into a very minor demon, their characters basically said, "Screw this. I don't want to mess with demons. Let's go south and become pirates instead." So they did. The entire campaign shifted direction and became pirate focuses, but with the demon invasion happening it he background as rumors and occasionally affecting them tangentially as it ran its course without them.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not getting into the definitional argument here again, but I do want to point out, many of us wouldn't consider this a narrative or a change of narrative. I'm not saying, you shouldn't describe your campaigns this way, but I wouldn't agree with this premise that if a character rejects the duke's concern, and they go west, that means is a shift in narrative. I'd be much more likely to call it a shift in focus or direction of the campaign. It may seem pedantic, perhaps it is, but I also think when stylistic concerns are being raised, it matters

I don't think it's pedantic. I think it's semantic. A shift in focus/direction of the campaign is a shift in the campaigns narrative.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think this is a flawed way of looking at it. That something can fail doesn’t mean agency is undermined or removed or anything like that.

Does that apply when the DM can say no?

 

[FrogReaver]

Greater ability to influence the shape of play.

Then IMO that’s the crux of the disagreement. Play in narrativist RPGs is fundamentally different than play in non-narrativist RPGs. If agency is about influencing the shape of play, then we have to ask, which play?

 

[FrogReaver]

I think I might summarize the difference here as player agency over their character vs player agency over the rest of the fiction.

 

[Maxperson]

Does that apply when the DM can say no?

I think it has to. If you tell me that your character is going to take a running start to jump over the grand canyon, I'm going to just tell you that you failed to make it across. Your agency is fully preserved, though, by your flailing body falling about a mile to a very meaningful resolution to your declared action.

Telling you no you can't make the attempt would be removing your agency.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Unless the DM is railroading the players though, what the characters say and do does affect play. That's why we use that as the metric for agency. We assume that the DM isn't railroading the players.

What the characters say and do may affect play, yes... but they only say and do things because their players have them do so. This is why it call comes back to the players.

Does that apply when the DM can say no?

It depends on so much. Why is the GM saying no? What led us to this point of play?

Then IMO that’s the crux of the disagreement. Play in narrativist RPGs is fundamentally different than play in non-narrativist RPGs. If agency is about influencing the shape of play, then we have to ask, which play?

RPG play. Player agency is about the agency of a player playing a game. The more that a player can understand and affect the state of the game, the greater the agency.

Now yes, each game will have its own constraints and limits on what the players can do. But there's plenty of commonality that we can compare and contrast.

 

[Maxperson]

What the characters say and do may affect play, yes... but they only say and do things because their players have them do so. This is why it call comes back to the players.

Yes. That was the point. The players have agency through having their characters say and do things that affect the game. We don't assume that a railroad is present and preventing them from exercising that agency.