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

[Maxperson]

Suppose that someone GMs exclusively adventure paths. And insisted to you that players in their game have as much agency in your living world sandbox, and that they prioritised player agency to the same degree as them.

Would that prompt you to retract your remark that "If I didn't think agency was important I'd just run a linear campaign or use a module" - a remark which*clearly* implies that an AP game does not prioritise agency?

Or would you form the view that the AP-er is mistaken?

Also: why are your criteria "natural" but mine "artificial"? Are the criteria by which you judge that your RPGing involves more agency than AP play artificial ones?

It depends on what they mean by agency. There are two different primary definitions for agency. 1) player control over the fiction(authoring, etc.), 2) the ability to choose what your character says and does and have it mean something.

You favor the first kind of agency. I favor the second kind of agency. Neither one is better or worse than the other, just different.

If the hypothetical DM you propose above were to claim to have as much of your kind of agency, I'd say he was wrong. However, if he was talking about my kind of agency, and his players had meaningful control over what their character says and does, I'd be fine with his claim to have as much agency as my game.

In both his game and mine, the players have full agency to declare what their character says and does. The DM above has just gotten his players to agree to linear play, so their agency goes fully in that direction. My players can go in any direction, but that doesn't increase their ability to affect the game through their actions and direct what their PCs say.

 

[Maxperson]

But as @pemerton pointed out, I didn’t say that you or anyone else doesn’t care about agency, just that at times, there are other things that seem to be higher priority.

I’m basing this only on what people post here.

No you are not.

We have repeated ad nauseum that the primary focus of sandbox play is the ability of the players to direct play through their characters actions. That is agency being the #1 priority.

 

[pemerton]

We have repeated ad nauseum that the primary focus of sandbox play is the ability of the players to direct play through their characters actions. That is agency being the #1 priority.

Until you tell me what principles govern the GM's response to those action declarations, then I can't tell if agency is the # priority.

If the GM's response includes a heuristic that foregrounds the GM's ideas about what should happen in, or what makes sense in, the setting, then I see that there is some other high priority which is sitting alongside and perhaps even displacing the priority given to player agency. That priority being something along the lines of the GM's vision of the setting.

 

[pemerton]

That's a nice hypothetical, but is anyone actually claiming that Adventure Paths inherently offer the same degree of agency as game styles specifically designed to promote agency? Is that person part of a large group of like-minded people?

I chose the example because of its simple and illustrative structure. That's all.

To me, it seems obvious that RPGers who, alongside player agency, also prioritise the GM's vision of the setting, are not prioritising player agency to the same degree as those who do not establish such a priority for the GM's vision, and who rather regard the GM's job - in relation to setting - as being to establish and deploy it so as to respond to player priorities.

(This is why, as I posted somewhere upthread or in some other recent thread, I regard Burning Wheel as a RPG experience that gives greater priority to player agency than Torchbearer 2e.)

But the simple analytical claim in the second paragraph of this post obviously is very controversial!

 

[Micah Sweet]

For 5e it's like that for sure. For 3e, they had all kinds of products detailing things in the South, the East, the North, and much more. And it still barely scratched the surface.

My favorite was Serpent Kingdoms.

 

[pemerton]

No, there isn't. Either the game tells you there is, or else you're trying to justify your decision to use a roll there, but nothing would change if you had them roll for something different instead.

The rules of the game tell the player to establish some priorities for their PC. The player did so. One of those was a Belief (a technical component of BW PC build): I will bring Joachim's blood to my master.

The rules of the game tell the GM to frame scenes that present the players with problems based on the priorities they have established for their PCs. I did that: Joachim's blood was spilling onto the floor, in front of the PC.

The rules also say (p 11) that "The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book." And go on to explain intent and task, let it ride and that there is no consensual resolution of conflict in BW - if something is at stake (which it typically will be, given the GM's job) then the dice must be rolled.

The PC's player uses his character's ability - namely, his ability to see - to overcome the obstacle: he looks for a vessel to catch the blood in. I, as GM, set the difficulty following the rules in the book - given that it is very likely there is a vessel to be seen, I set it appropriately low (I don't now recall whether it was Ob 1 or Ob 2 - many years have passed). The dice are rolled, and so the PC succeeds in his task - ie the vessel is seen - and succeeds in his intent - the blood is able to be caught in it.

That is - once again - an explanation of how the play of that episode, on the part of both player and GM, conformed to the rules of the game.

I don't know what you mean when you say "nothing would change if you had them roll for something different instead". Are you suggesting that I should have declared a different action, overriding the player's action declaration? That's not within the scope of the BW GM's authority.

Are you saying that I should have just said "yes" to the action declaration? That would violate "say 'yes' or roll the dice", by adopting a consensual resolution of a conflict (the conflict, here, being between the PC's desire to have the blood and the blood currently flowing onto the floor).

Are you saying that, having called for the roll to establish the presence of a vessel, I then should have called for further rolls? That would violate intent and task and let it ride.

To me, you seem to be imagining how a 5e D&D GM, or a 2nd ed AD&D GM, might resolve the scene. You do not seem to be applying the rules and principles of Burning Wheel.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No you are not.

We have repeated ad nauseum that the primary focus of sandbox play is the ability of the players to direct play through their characters actions. That is agency being the #1 priority.

Yes, but then there are other things that are said that show a clear conflict in the priority.

Realism… which I think is probably better considered plausibility… was sited as being more important than sharing information with the players.

So yes, I’m going off what people say.

 

[Maxperson]

Until you tell me what principles govern the GM's response to those action declarations, then I can't tell if agency is the # priority.

Your agency is concerned with that. Not the kind I use.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, but then there are other things that are said that show a clear conflict in the priority.

The conflict is only present with the agency that you prefer. Not the kind used in sandbox play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The conflict is only present with the agency that you prefer. Not the kind used in sandbox play.

I don’t believe that there are different types of player agency. There are different ways of promoting it, there are different ways of constraining it. And every game has its limits… there’s always some amount of constraint.

Different games will have differing levels based on how they function and the expected or desired experience of play.