D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[pemerton]

I pointed out that some of the priorities of the Living World/Sandbox folks place a priority on something other than player agency.

So you start out with the declaration that people who run living world campaigns don't prioritize agency. Then you wonder why you get pushback. I may have a different approach to player agency but I absolutely prioritize it. You have no idea what I, or others, prioritize.

If I didn't think agency was important I'd just run a linear campaign or use a module, which is also a perfectly good way of playing.

@hawkeyefan didn't say that you don't think agency is important.

He did say that some of the priorities of sandbox RPGers place a priority on something other than player agency. In otherwords, agency is not their highest priority. And here's a post where you say the same thing:

There are circumstances where people in real life have very limited agency. A prisoner in jail only has a small amount, someone who is very poor will typically have less than someone who is financially stable and so on. But no person in real life is always going to achieve their goals, they are not always going to know the odds of success, will not always know the outcomes. Those things can be added to a game, but at that point you're no longer talking about the real world definition of agency.

In a linear games you're very limited on what options you have to have real long term impact, in my living world sandbox game you have far more options. Infinite options? No, because we all agreed on broad outlines of the campaign when we started the game. Control over how other NPCs react, or fictional world events that you haven't interacted with? Again, in my game, no. Just like I can't control whether my wife wants to go to a movie, all I can do is ask and attempt to convince her to go. I can exert my will and have a meaningful chance to change my environment but there are no guarantees of success.

That is, in this post you say that the GM exerts control over important aspects of setting and consequence. You connect that GM control to realism.

This is exactly an instance of what @hawkeyefan is talking about!

 

[Bedrockgames]

This conversation is really bogging down. But on the idea that sandboxes don’t have agency as their primary goal? Absolutely absurd. Agency in a sandbox comes before realism. The whole structure is intended to maximize agency. People can redefine agency to make this a zero sum game so it seems others styles maximize it more. They can redefine sandbox. I think that is flawed thinking.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So you start out with the declaration that people who run living world campaigns don't prioritize agency. Then you wonder why you get pushback. I may have a different approach to player agency but I absolutely prioritize it. You have no idea what I, or others, prioritize.

If I didn't think agency was important I'd just run a linear campaign or use a module, which is also a perfectly good way of playing.

This. Living world sandboxes have as their main priority agency.

 

[zakael19]

oh no we get to have the “what do we mean by agency” talk again. I guess it’s been a hundred pages.

This is as bad as oil arguments on a motorcycle forum.

 

[Bedrockgames]

oh no we get to have the “what do we mean by agency” talk again. I guess it’s been a hundred pages.

This is as bad as oil arguments on a motorcycle forum.

If people are going to use agency definition to mischaracterize sandboxes: what else can be expected ? There is a reason people are pushing back hard on this idea

 

[pemerton]

oh no we get to have the “what do we mean by agency” talk again. I guess it’s been a hundred pages.

This is as bad as oil arguments on a motorcycle forum.

"Living world sandbox"-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than DL-esque or AP play - that's A-OK, unbiased reportage.

BitD-er or BW-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than a living world sandbox - that's outrageous bias!

 

[zakael19]

"Living world sandbox"-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than DL-esque or AP play - that's A-OK, unbiased reportage.

BitD-er or BW-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than a living world sandbox - that's outrageous bias!

We’ve spent pages (and threads! 3 in the last couple months alone!) spinning on the fact that there’s a number of different definitions of agency, and some styles of play put more emphasis on different degrees or types. The priority on “how much of what sort” seems to be intractable!

 

[pemerton]

No, I fully understand why. However:

1) For a game that says the GM should only call for rolls if there's a lot at stake, you seem to have people call for rolls for things that only the most nitpicky games would call for, even when such rolls disregard either the flow of action or established character traits; and

2) I don't understand how you can have told me all the things you have about BW and still think it's player-driven.

<snip>

Still a completely unnecessary roll in my book. A roll to get the vessel to collect enough blood, because there's stuff in the way and actually moving around is tricky? Sure, OK. A roll to keep other people from trying to get the filled vessel away from you because it's obviously being used for creepy evil magic? Yep, definitely. A roll to see things that are out in the open? That just slows things down and, as I said, means that another player can use metagame knowledge to try to screw the PC over.

<snip>

there's nothing at stake to be able to see a cup.

The last sentence in this quote contradicts the first. Because if you did grasp the principles that governs how scenes are established in Burning Wheel, and how rolls are called for, then you would see why there was something at stake in being able to see a vessel, and hence why the roll was not unnecessary, but in fact what the game rules called for.

 

[AlViking]

"Living world sandbox"-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than DL-esque or AP play - that's A-OK, unbiased reportage.

BitD-er or BW-er explains how their approach to RPGing supports more player agency than a living world sandbox - that's outrageous bias!

Saying that if people really prioritized agency they'd play the game you prefer is the issue. We take different approaches and the only reason one has "more" agency is because you measure it using artificial criteria designed to suit your narrative.

 

[zakael19]

Saying that if people really prioritized agency they'd play the game you prefer is the issue. We take different approaches and the only reason one has "more" agency is because you measure it using artificial criteria designed to suit your narrative.

Is it artificial if it’s a specific meaning with weight around dynamics of the game, player facing mechanics, premises of play, and table outcomes, just because you don’t agree with it?

@hawkeyefan seems to generally prefer a degree of player-side agency that is greater in aggregate then what most conventional systems provide even with sandbox style play (which we’ve seen tend to weight “character-set goals within the enumerated setting” as the agency Id say?).