A Question Of Agency?

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's less about amount of agency and more about type of agency. Player agency has traditionally referred to player agency over a character. It's a relatively new invention that player agency has come to refer to player agency over the fiction.

I'm not saying one type of agency is actually better or worse than the other. But to talk about player agency without acknowledging this distinction or the fact that many forms of granting the players agency over the fiction actually take away a players agency over their character - well I don't see how this discussion will ever productively progress until those points are acknowledged and considered.

I think you need to elaborate on this point, it doesn't seem obvious to a lot of us.

 

[Campbell]

Getting back to the main question for me personally what is most important in a game where I am meant to embody a character is freedom to choose my character's desires and goals with the assurance that if they are reasonable in the fiction I have freedom to pursue them. Freedom of action without freedom to choose my aims is not agency at all to me. It's hallow. I feel respecting a player's ability to engage in protagonism for their character - to set their sights on something and go after it is tantamount.

This is a big part of the reason why I believe the GM should only prepare situation and not plots. It's a players job to decide what their goals are. It's the GMs job to make that pursuit interesting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The idea that it is easy to predict how a given person would respond to a given provocation is in my view not terribly plausible, once the response-provoking behaviour gets beyond something banal like a simple greeting or extended hand in a typical social situation where both participants are familiar with the salient cultural norms.

If it was so easily predictable, then the real world would have fewer fights, less appeals-court litigation - because we would all know in advance how the judges would decide - and more successful diplomacy.

Absolutely. I think I've said it before in these types of discussions, it seems that "perfectly plausible" ideas are discarded in favor of the GM's idea of what's "most plausible". Which is just not the way things work in the real world.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think you need to elaborate on this point, it doesn't seem obvious to a lot of us.

A mechanic which forces a player/ PC to do X or constricts their choices on what they can do is a mechanic that takes away player agency over their character.

Most mechanical methods of generating agency over the fiction involve doing the above.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What many of us like is a playstyle where the only fictional thing we have direct control over is our character. We then indirectly affect the rest of the fiction via that character. This is the kind of player agency we prefer.

Those that dislike this traditional RPG playstyle have taken the term player agency and placed upon it a meaning incompatible with this playstyle. It now means direct control over the fiction - not just of your character - and so now they have accomplished describing traditional RPG mechanics as producing less “player agency” - which is most definitely a derogatory descriptor no matter how much they claim it is not.

I say we take back the term player agency so that it refers to what it has always referred to in traditional RPGs. A player’s agency over their character - which many of their touted “agency enhancing mechanics” actually get in the way of.

Less agency is not derogatory. It's the same as saying this game has less exploration, or that game has more combat.

If you take the idea of a game allowing less player agency as an insult, that's on you.

Whether intentional or not the very nature of the chosen language being advocated for to compare and contrast my playstyle with others is doing that very thing. It is diminishing my chosen style while exalting those other styles I dislike.

So you're allowed to dislike something, and that's okay? But others who dislike something are diminishing it?

It's all preference. You dislike my style of play.....cool, more power to you. I don't take it as an insult.

It's less about amount of agency and more about type of agency. Player agency has traditionally referred to player agency over a character. It's a relatively new invention that player agency has come to refer to player agency over the fiction.

I'm not saying one type of agency is actually better or worse than the other. But to talk about player agency without acknowledging this distinction or the fact that many forms of granting the players agency over the fiction actually take away a players agency over their character - well I don't see how this discussion will ever productively progress until those points are acknowledged and considered.

Sure, it is about the type of agency for sure. I think @Campbell 's most recent post points out the distinction clearly.

Having control of my PC within the world is pretty much the base level of agency, right? It should pretty much be a default expectation. So if a game has that and then also allows the player to choose their characters purpose in the game, then isn't that more?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A mechanic which forces a player/ PC to do X or constricts their choices on what they can do is a mechanic that takes away player agency over their character.

Most mechanical methods of generating agency over the fiction involve doing the above.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Obviously any rule/process/GM ruling/whatever which leads to a player not being able to describe some action, intent, or fiction, is circumscribing the player's 'natural agency' (unlimited ability to do anything at the table).

I don't see how methods of generating agency over the fiction do that. I mean, given that you are advocating for a style of play in which the player has ABSOLUTELY no authority over the fiction or the adjudication of what follows from an action declaration (it is either dice or the GM doing that) it is hard to see how saying to the player "hey, we're going to grant you the ability to declare your intent (IE a target fictional state) and attain it on a successful check" is reducing agency. This is something a player cannot do in, say, classic D&D. They can do it in, say, Dungeon World.

 

[Bedrockgames]

the player's 'natural agency' (unlimited ability to do anything at the table).

This is the point of contention. People are rejecting this definition. They don't see agency as the ability to do anything at the table. If so then a game or at a table that forbids me from pouring coke over my GM's head is infringing on my agency. But it is pretty obvious a lot of people just mean what your character is free to do in the setting when they speak of agency. You are talking about narrative power and GM/Player power. Those are very specific concepts. And part of why people are resisting your line of reasoning is it feels like agency is being used to slip those things in as superior or better.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Less agency is not derogatory. It's the same as saying this game has less exploration, or that game has more combat.

No it really isn't. Agency is pretty much seen as a good thing, as a positive thing that is valued in RPGs, literature etc. Exploration is a much more neutral term. Agency is more in line with labels like railroading, immersion or believability. I think it is no accident many of these discussions also revolve around terms like immersion.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is the point of contention. People are rejecting this definition. They don't see agency as the ability to do anything at the table. If so then a game or at a table that forbids me from pouring coke over my GM's head is infringing on my agency. But it is pretty obvious a lot of people just mean what your character is free to do in the setting when they speak of agency. You are talking about narrative power and GM/Player power. Those are very specific concepts. And part of why people are resisting your line of reasoning is it feels like agency is being used to slip those things in as superior or better.

OK, but even if you are only talking about what things the player can do that are "in the realm of the character" (in-game) things. Being able to do other things (meta-game) doesn't impinge on that, they are disjoint sets. So I am still not able to follow @FrogReaver's logic from A to B. Nothing I can do meta-game inherently restricts what I can do in game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Getting back to the main question for me personally what is most important in a game where I am meant to embody a character is freedom to choose my character's desires and goals with the assurance that if they are reasonable in the fiction I have freedom to pursue them. Freedom of action without freedom to choose my aims is not agency at all to me. It's hallow. I feel respecting a player's ability to engage in protagonism for their character - to set their sights on something and go after it is tantamount.

This is a big part of the reason why I believe the GM should only prepare situation and not plots. It's a players job to decide what their goals are. It's the GMs job to make that pursuit interesting.

Yes, well said. And this sort of agency can perfectly well exist in a 'traditional' RPG format. All it requires is an open world, players with initiative and a GM that is willing to let the 'story' go where the characters take it. Now you of course can do this with players having narrative controlling meta mechanics too, but they're by no means a requirement.