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That kind of framing shows a lack of consideration for the creative goals of the person you're responding to. What counts as meaningful agency depends on those goals. If your model of agency is tied to one set of assumptions, and theirs is tied to another, telling them they have “less agency”...

Also, the pre-game to establish the Initial Context in my living world sandbox campaigns is an example of meta-agency. The player are not acting as their character during that. They are proactively doing worldbuilding* with me to carve out a starting place for their character in the setting...

Sure I will let one my players explain. Initial Context: The party is crossing the Golden Pass into the Southlands to scout out rumors of Dark Elf activities in the Forsaken Desert. They stayed the night in the village of Hawksleigh. Also note, most of this is handled through first-person...

Quoting my last post, for emphasis: And yet, here we are again, with you repeating your point about fictional causation, as if I hadn’t already acknowledged it, summarized it fairly, and clearly stated that your conclusions make sense within your premise. That was the entire point of my...

It is a combination. When I say “not deciding outcomes on the fly,” I mean that I’m not relying on anything other than established details, notes, maps, keys, timelines, or logical consequences that follow from the current state of the world. If something was left open, like what’s happened to...

This is really well said, and I would like to connect it back to the core assumption behind my Living World sandbox approach, especially for the casual gamer who might be reading along. What you’re describing is how I handle adjudication. The idea that the circumstances of the setting, what has...

Yes, based on your assumptions, that follows. But you're in a conversation with people who don’t share those assumptions. So the real question is: do you want to keep pressing for agreement, or do you want to advance the discussion by exploring why people like @Bedrockgames, myself, and others...

You're affirming the idea that a fictional world has no causal continuity apart from the decisions of its author. That lines up with the view that all fiction is shaped entirely by authorial intent, where meaning and consequence only exist because someone decides they should. In contrast, my...

I agree. The distinction I’m making between character agency and meta-agency is not meant to replace the broader category of player agency. It’s meant to give us a way to talk about how different systems structure it. Just like physics didn't replace chemistry, but offered deeper tools to...

I’m not making things more complicated than they are. I’m pointing out that when we talk about agency in RPGs, the rules are only part of the picture. How those rules get applied, by the referee, in the context of a campaign, matters just as much. You can’t fully understand what kind of agency...