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That's not quite what I'm getting at. I'm not sure I agree we couldn't do a choice by choice analysis, but it's not what I was driving toward. I'm purporting that an element of agency is not just influence, but discrimination. It's easier to talk about in competitive games, but I'm curious how...

I'm not sure that's relevant to my question, given we're talking about player agency. I can accept a different goal, but I'd still expect the comparison about agency to yield to multiple, and variably effective, lines of play to get to the result, if we're taking the same structure from other...

I'm curious about how that actually works. I understand agency in trick taking (setting aside bidding as a whole separate question) in that a player picks a card to play, and playing the correct card at the correct time through the conventions of trump and following and so on, forces the rest of...

No one needs me to rant about skill challenges again. I was going to go get some representative samples of my point to link to, but then I ran into literally you and I having this same discussion...

I spent years writing about the weakening of agency skill challenges represented, precisely because there are so few tools available for players to force their desired outcomes, and when 5e came on the scene, I saw it's skill model of 5 generic DCs as simply moving further in that direction. I...

Dusk City Outlaws was essentially designed for this, if you can find a copy

Just wanted to call this out: the normal rule for the parrying property does not use a reaction, parrying is a 1/round ability outside the rest of the action economy: I haven't done much in the way of house rules personally. I'm still using bonus action potions, which makes Rapid Drink sad...

I'm sure some would argue the D&D case is a mischaracterization, because there is some principle at play players are probably familiar with that underlies how their particular DM handles that kind of interaction they've intuited/deduced from play. Personally, I would argue this is an ongoing...

I settle for generic resolution (GM picks difficulty from scale, player rolls appropriate modifier), because it's what's taken over the zeitgeist post 5e, and I'm not going to persuade my players into a different play loop at this point. I want a game to strive for action completeness. Ideally...

I generally view this as a cure worse than disease scenario. The critique that a player might not know or understand the board state (the presence of absence of cups) and worse that the GM might be deciding something consequential (or more specifically, "more consequential than the player's...

I would love to see it all go a step further, with the party as the ultimate, collective agent as the norm. This point is mostly orthogonal to the broader conflict, but while I agree with you about most of these points, I wouldn't yield the point about intent; that leads to negotiation, which...

Actually, if this was a temporary class you eventually replace, it would be a great model for stat fixing, if you wanted to use rolled ability scores. Write in some ability score increases that are capped based on the standard array, so you can spend a few levels building into a Cleric.

That's just ridiculous on the face. GMs sign up for all kinds of constraints, and clearly go out of their way to design entirely new constraints for themselves. "It's not possible for a person to accurately use simulated causality consistently as the basis for their decision making" as a...

I'd focus on flexibility, and reactive abilities. The everyman fantasy is mostly about surviving when you shouldn't, paper with having narrative events compare to give you a chance to succeed/grow. I'd want to avoid giving this class traditionally structured abilities, instead letting them make...

Yeah, I like a certain degree of technical manual to my fantasy.

I certainly couldn't do it. Superhero settings just crumble under any examination, I struggle to maintain the correct mindset. There's just never enough there, when you've got the whole palette of gameable interactions instead of consuming media that's already been cleaned up to fit the right shape.

I mean, this is always the problematic bit. It being inevitable doesn't make it any more desirable, and getting told you should simply get over it to find some other enjoyment comes off rather like telling someone their interests are childish and shallow. I can see the case for trying to get the...

I'm mostly just annoyed that design and creative authority are so closely linked in the zeitgeist. I want more complete and better thought through rules, I'm simply not interested in compromising the "model an interactive fictional world" design goal, and hover between disinterested and confused...

I've always just leaned in and assumed the mechanics do what they say they do. Fighters jump off cliffs. It's easier to reify the mechanic as a setting norm and move on. I don't disagree. I think a lot of the contention that they only work in limited environments (usually dungeon crawling)...

Right, I'm definitely diverging, mostly I want to point out this isn't a discussion with binary poles. That being said I think it is important to clarify a difference in orientation here. I need the PCs to have complete knowledge of their own abilities, not of the situations they're in. It could...