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Then all games have equal character agency! That makes it quite a useful metric!

I’ve snipped your post up a bit, not in any attempt to change the context, but rather to focus on specific things that jumped out at me. If I as a player choose to put something on the line… if I knowingly take a risk… and it doesn’t go my way… isn’t that part of play? Is that a reduction in...

Shouldn’t this apply to you, too? Like… why is it a problem for anyone other than you to start out with a definition and assume it is the default? Don’t you see the issue there?

I would ask you to go back and look at the exchange again and see who is pressing who.

Thank you for addressing that very serious post in the serious manner it seriously deserved!

I’m focused on game play because that’s where player agency is found. Not doubling down. I’m asking because it makes no sense to me. Do you mean you’d just reject what the dice were telling you? Something else? I’m not following.

Why not? If you don’t know how a character will behave faced with a certain decision, and then we roll to find out… once the roll takes place, how is it you haven’t learned anything?

You forgot to count the time you and your players are staring at each other waiting for something to happen! No agency is happening during that time! So your game has the leastest agency evar!!!!

But prior to that moment, you wouldn’t have known the outcome…. Seems like learning to me, but whatever. We’re going in circles. You don’t like it, and that’s fine.

Not at all. It’s about the player and their choices in the game. In BW, the idea is for these things to be tested. That the dice may constrain what we can do. It’s a decision made knowingly, and it uses a set procedure that is known by the player. There are consequences in play beyond hit...

It depends on the context. If the loss of control of character is a known possibility of play, and the player is aware of this and makes decisions accordingly, then it’s a negative consequence of play. Has the player lost full control of the character? Yes. Does this mean the player has no...

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...

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...

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. 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...

Oh, I have no issue with you breaking down agency into different types like this if you want to examine them individually or what have you. 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...

Player agency is what it is. It doesn't change based on the game you play. What form the agency takes and how it works within the scope of the given game may be different... like, me dribbling and shooting in basketball is a different thing than moving my knight in chess... but they are both...

Sorry, let me clarify. Both are subsets of "player agency" as both are ways in which a player may influence the game. I don't know what you're on about. If the living portion of the world still happens, then something like what I've described should spring up. I don't really understand the...

One is a subset of the other. I’m not sure what this means. I play and run a variety of games, and I’m applying the idea of agency consistently to them all. I’m not changing agency for my Spire campaign from how I view it for my Mothership campaign. Ha okay. I don’t know who the “we” is...

I’m not the one that has a “different usage”. I’m using agency the way it works for everything else. As for RPGs being games… I don’t think that’s a point of debate. They are clearly games. There seems to be some debate about whether they should be viewed as such for the purposes of agency…...

I don’t know if we fundamentally agree… but if it helps for you to look at it this way, sure.