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

[Micah Sweet]

I feel the need to point out that you often take this “oh it’s too complex / more complex than your statement” tack - which is really frustrating. If everything is so complex we must write essays with every permutation considered, we can never discuss things. To say that “well we can’t know how much agency a player is given just on the basis of the rules without first unpacking the totality of “system” would suggest we can never really examine agency.

Also, a RPG is a game. It’s in the title . Once you’ve moved beyond free-form roleplay that functions purely on social consensus and added mechanics, you’re playing a game that can be analyzed using game theory and other tools. Edit: with the simple caveat of “we cannot account for all table cultures.”

Plenty of folks on the Narrativist side are writing essays too.

 

[AlViking]

I see a difference, I just don’t think it matters.

I understand that you and others have strong feelings about rules that remove your ability to control your character and/or your character’s thoughts and feelings. I don’t blame anyone who feels that way.

But that doesn’t mean that games that involve such rules are automatically removing player agency.

It matters to me, it matters to a lot of people I've played with in the past. But since you realize that they're different and presumably understand that it matters to other people on this thread why do you insist on ignoring the difference and making false claims of equality?

It's about who is the author of what the character thinks and attempts to achieve. I know my character can't do everything they attempt, I still want to control what they think, what decisions they make and how they react. Agency to me is making decisions for my character whether or not they succeed. Having another player roll dice to tell me my character what to do is taking away a decision point for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fair enough.

Edit: Although in looking over the maneuver, it's still one that's only rarely going to affect PCs--I don't think many DMs give NPCs Battlemaster maneuvers, so it's mostly going to happen during PvP. Not entirely, of course, but mostly.

No player I know of wouldn't push back at a non-supernatural battlemaster maneuver being used against them to force their behavior.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It feels like goalpost shifting most of the time. @hawkeyefan or myself or somebody else will make a set of statements operating under a constrained, workable for internet discussion set of either caveats or assumptions, and then Robert will go "well we can't really discuss that, because we need to expand to The Entirety of Play" or something.

Like, since he keeps bringing work into things: where I work we do a lot of analysis of highly complex human factor systems. We state assumptions up front that kinda level set the discussion that "we're not able to model everything here because of variation." So things like "we're using the rules of the game as a starting point for discussion of agency because we simply cannot account for all the house rules or bit and bobs added in."

If you want to further add in "some styles of play within the same ruleset allow for greater or lesser agency because of xyz" as has been pulverized around sandbox vs non-sandbox play here, cool! You can speak from teh assumption of "given the same ruleset, player-chosen direction/priority of play within a GM provided sandbox gives more agency then AP play because..." and we're on the same page.

I don't recall this discussion being limited exclusively to actual mechanical rules on the page, regardless of a constant stream of rules quotes in many posts.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It matters to me, it matters to a lot of people I've played with in the past. But since you realize that they're different and presumably understand that it matters to other people on this thread why do you insist on ignoring the difference and making false claims of equality?

It's because to them they're not false. That's what they honestly believe. This is a subjective discussion, and all claims are personal opinion only, no matter how an individual poster might present it otherwise.

 

[AlViking]

It's because to them they're not false. That's what they honestly believe. This is a subjective discussion, and all claims are personal opinion only, no matter how an individual poster might present it otherwise.

What amazes me is that on one side we have "This is what I prefer and why, play whatever game works for you." vs "You just don't understand and you're wrong. Let me tell you why."

 

[Maxperson]

My point has only been that they still fall under the category of player agency. And I think claiming that a game that only allows one type allows more agency than a game that allows both is flawed. That part... that need to advance your chosen play style... that seems driven more by ideology than analysis.

Me, too. Who did that?

The only claim of "more" that I saw was from you guys claiming that since you have both types, you have more agency. The game that has both doesn't allow more, because you can't engage both types at once. So if in a 4 hour period you engaged player agency 66% of the time, you only have 34% for character agency. In my game it's 100% for character agency. Same amount of agency in both games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What amazes me is that on one side we have "This is what I prefer and why, play whatever game works for you." vs "You just don't understand and you're wrong. Let me tell you why."

To me, this whole thread has read like that. Maybe because the Narrativist games were born from lengthy, academic game theory discussions, everything has to hammered out like a formal debate where one side is right and the other wrong. I'm not what's going on. All I know is I don't see anyone on the Trad-leaning side dismissing the validity of other playstyles, just explaining preference.

 

[Maxperson]

How do you find out if your character dies in D&D? How do you find out if you locate a secret door?

Because of a dice roll.

Okay. Nobody disputed that.

Saying that you don't find out about a character if their emotional or mental state is determined by a die roll seems to contradict the idea that you can find anything out that way. No?

What?

 

[hawkeyefan]

It matters to me, it matters to a lot of people I've played with in the past. But since you realize that they're different and presumably understand that it matters to other people on this thread why do you insist on ignoring the difference and making false claims of equality?

Because I think it matters to you as a preference, but doesn’t matter as pertaining to your description.

In both cases, you’re still finding something out. That there are differences that we can see in the two things doesn’t mean that there aren’t also similarities. So your description seems poorly applied.

Now… having said that, I totally understand why you might have that preference, and so avoid the games that include it.