Again, I am not criticizing games dong this. D&D even does it at times in different ways. My point is even if you are choosing the risk through informed gameplay, the consequence leads to a moment where you are clearly losing agency over the character. The point isn't to say therefore this thing is bad, and the games agency is utterly ruined, it was simply me pushing back on your claim that control of thoughts and actions were not losses of agency if loss of them was a result of fair gameplay. Agency seems quite bound up in your ability to control your characters thoughts and actions (to me and I would wager to the majority of RPG players )
Right, but I'm trying to view it in context... which you say is important to you.
Losing control of your character is a form of agency loss. But my point is that it is an understood risk and so, when we look at play on the whole, it makes far less sense to call that instance of play a loss of agency. From the player perspective, that moment of play came about precisely because of my influence on the game. That in that moment, it didn't go the way my character expected... that the character isn't willing to kill in that moment... doesn't seem to be taking anything away from me. Yes, technically, I've lost control of my character for a moment and that can be called a loss of agency... but it seems pretty silly to do so based on the context.
If I fail a climb check, my agency is limited in that my character is no longer able to access whatever is beyond the wall. But we wouldn't call this a loss of agency.
So...
Again, this is where context and agency matter
You seem to only be examining this kind of play from the lens you'd use to examine more trad leaning play. Which I talked about. It makes more sense to label this kind of thing a loss of agency in a trad game, where the moment most likely comes not as a consequence of a situation that came about as the result of player contribution, but rather as something entirely of the GM's creation.
1) There are multiple defitions of agency and people have been selecting the ones most convenient to their argument. Definitions of agency shift from one discipline to the next. Agency in RPGs has a particular meaning.
I am challenging the accepted meaning because it's limited. While it suits more traditional type play, it is an outdated way to judge all of TTRPGs.
What I have been doing is taking the idea of player agency as it applies to all games and applying it to RPGs. As far as I can tell, the only issue you're able to point to as problematic about this approach is that it means that your preferred play style is not as high on player agency as you previously thought.
That doesn't seem to me to be a valid reason not to apply this reasoning to the topic.
You can tell this when you hear players complain about loss of agency in a campaign and it is clear what they are complaining about. I also think agency is a malleable term depending on the context in an RPG. I think what you are talking about has more to do with control of the game than with agency, and you are largely limiting the discussion to the players engagement with the mechanics and not the setting, which overlooks half of what is going on.
I'm not limiting it to players engaging with mechanics and not the setting. I'm including both. However, I'm viewing both as instances of a player playing a game.
In terms of diminishment: you are. This all arose over a claim that sandboxes, which most people consider a pretty maximal agency style, was really not so. And it comes in a conversation where people are trying to frame sandbox as a gm driven style of play (and being contrasted with styles and systems like BW or PbtA). Throughout this discussion you have consistently been trying to deduct agency from sandbox play and criticizing our framing of sandbox. At the same time, I have been very accepting of your claims about BW and BitD or PbtA, and also very inclusive about saying systems like that can still be sandboxes in my opinion.
I did use the term GM-driven, and I should not have. I have since changed it to GM-focused, which I feel is more accurate.
That this type of play is not as player focused as is often sited is my opinion, and I've explained why. You may not like that opinion, but don't tell me it's problematic. And don't tell me it diminishes the amount of player agency in any game at all. The same amount of agency is available in your game after my sharing this opinion as was available prior.
It isn't a colloquialism, it is what the word means in the hobby. Dismissing common use as colloquialism doesn't strike me as a good argument at all.
Yes, if Strahd charms you, you have lost agency. But it is also a moment that shows how complex agency in a game can be, because the thing that lead you there, at least in part, was your agency .
Yes, that's the context I'm more concerned with than the technically correct use of the term agency. My use of the term colloquialism was just saying I wouldn't argue this if something like this came up in play and someone described it that way as a way of shorthand.
But if someone complained about a lack of agency in the game? I'd view that as a misuse of the term.
Sure I get that. But you are momentarily losing control of your character. I don't think that makes it a low agency game at all. I just think it his odd to say control of a characters thoughts and actions have nothing to do with agency, it is only about game play, seems like a weird way to talk about agency. But like I said, in the context of different games, that momentary loss might even be in the service of agency, because agency can be a balance of many considerations.
I didn't say that characters' thoughts and feelings "have nothing to do with agency". I described a very specific type of game with very specific outcome and how viewing it as a loss of agency is too simplistic.
You say context matters, but all you're focused on is the technical bit of "but you lost control for one moment".
And I am not saying he is diminishing my agency, I am saying he is treating agency as a zero sum discussion across styles: where he is building up agency in one style by taking away from the level of agency peopke think exists in another
No, that's not what I'm doing. Please don't tell me what my motives are, and please don't tell others what my motives are.
I've said exactly what my idea of agency is. I'm applying that same standard to all games. I'm not interested in building up one game over another. As I've pointed out to you many, many times... I play many kinds of games.
The issue is that I have an opinion that you don't agree with, and because it's not the mainstream opinion, you think I should change it.
Too bad. I'm not going to do that.
What's amazing is that at the same time that you expect me to conform to the norm, you're posting about feeling bullied.
This is why I keep mentioning context. I think agency is nuanced and I can see that you might limit one aspect of it, to enhance another, or even enhance it overall. The only thing I am really pushing back on here is having a definition so loaded it almost excludes a sandbox from being the high agency game most people think of them as being
I think that
@TwoSix described it pretty well. In the world of trad, GM created play, sandbox play is among the highest agency games you can find.
