A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

The only way you can talk about literary agency is to treat the characters and the fiction as real and look at it that way. There's really only one form of agency, literary agency is a device by which you reify the fiction so as to evaluate it in terms of agency. It's a trick. And, it's absolutely incoherent to promote evaluation of literary agency and then, to argue against a point of literary agency (the character recalls some fact and acts upon it) you switch to treating the fiction as fiction. It's special pleading, where a thing is this way except when it's not, and the only way to tell which is which is if it agrees with your conclusion or not.

So, yes, it's coherent if we're using post hoc justification for evaluations. It's just that post hoc justifications are, themselves, incoherent. And note that I'm using incoherent as in "inconsistent with itself" and not random mumblings that cannot be understood.

First, no, you can talk about the characters having agency while also understanding they are not real. You can say, for the purposes of agency, I am going to think of them as real. Which is fine. But that is also what i am doing with the setting and keep getting push back from your side (for the purposes of character agency, we are going to treat this setting like it is real).

No it isn't incoherent at all. Not if you understand what I am saying. I am trying to describe how I think the term came to be adopted by most RPGers. I agree with Frogreaver, it was a response to railroading, and the literary term agency was adopted, but obviously adapted to the roleplaying conversation. It wasn't an 1-1 import of the term, and I wasn't ever saying it was. And when I made that statement I was just trying to make sense of the split in use here. One side is using agency to mean power in the game (including your power to narrative things and impact play through mechanics). The other is using it to mean your ability to freely act in the setting through your characters. I think the latter feels like it comes more from the literary useage (and my memory is that is where it was coming from when I started seeing it).

 

[Bedrockgames]

The only way

This is what a lot of your side's position in this discussion sounds like to me

 

[FrogReaver]

I never claimed that I was. Only pointing out the almost banal point that your belief in the coherence of your argument is not necessarily true because you believe it is. The coherence of people's positions on gaming have been put to the test numerous times in various threads, and sometimes as evidenced by people in this thread, those positions can change.

Obvious things are obvious. We could all be wrong. We could all hold incoherent positions. So what?

As a point of contention, "How we always talked about X before" doesn't mean it's the most accurate way or even the best way to talk about a subject.

Sure.

As a point of illustration, how we discuss gender, sex, and sexuality has also changed from "common usage" over the past century as our understanding of the human condition has changed from the so-called "traditional" or "common" viewpoints. Scientists and scholars in a variety of fields have challenged the "common" understandings of these things.

I think it's bad form to use examples that cannot be freely discussed on this forum.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As a point of contention, "How we always talked about X before" doesn't mean it's the most accurate way or even the best way to talk about a subject. As a point of illustration, how we discuss gender, sex, and sexuality has also changed from "common usage" over the past century as our understanding of the human condition has changed from the so-called "traditional" or "common" viewpoints. Scientists and scholars in a variety of fields have challenged the "common" understandings of these things.

You are not a scientist of RPGs though. You are assuming you are like the experts in your example. And you are not. Nor am I. We are just gamers having a conversation and running up against a linguistic tactic. You have to convince people to adopt the language you are using with agency and half the posters here are rejecting your useage because that isn't what they understand the term to mean.

 

[Campbell]

My understanding of player agency comes from video game discussions. It's the way I have always seen it discussed in meat space. Of course I play almost entirely with Millennial and younger gamers who are avid video game players.

Here's an example: Player Agency: How Game Design Affects Narrative

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also agency isn't an idea like the shape of the earth or like human sexuality. Those are things experts can study and develop objective experiments to test. This more like a coined term to identify something in an activity. There is a constructed quality to it, and its meaning is going to reflect how most people in the hobby are using it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

My understanding of player agency comes from video game discussions. It's the way I have always seen it discussed in meat space. Of course I play almost entirely with Millennial and younger gamers who are avid video game players.

Here's an example: Player Agency: How Game Design Affects Narrative

That is fair, but we are not talking about video games

 

[Bedrockgames]

Of course I play almost entirely with Millennial and younger gamers who are avid video game players.

Here's an example: Player Agency: How Game Design Affects Narrative

My groups generally range in age from early 20s to late 50s

 

[Aldarc]

It feels a lot like you are asserting things, then claiming not to assert them. The bottom line is I believe I was holding a coherent position, and you appeared to be accusing me of being incoherent. If you are going to make that kind of claim, I am going to push back.

Then push back. Debate my assertion that I made. But belief in having a coherent position does not equate to having a coherent position. The position requires being put to the rigor of testing. At which point your position may turn out to be coherent or it may not. But asserting that your position is coherent is contentious. If you disagree with this assertion, then go for it.

Which is a terrible point to direct at anyone as it can just as easily apply to you and your positions. And you did direct it at Bedrock.

And it certainly has been applied to me and my positions. Others with similar viewpoints have likewise been accused of having incoherent views of agency.

Obvious things are obvious. We could all be wrong. We could all hold incoherent positions. So what?

Then put the coherency of your position to the test with an open-mind.

This is what a lot of your side's position in this discussion sounds like to me

The pot calling the kettle black, no?

 

[Ovinomancer]

My understanding of player agency comes from video game discussions. It's the way I have always seen it discussed in meat space. Of course I play almost entirely with Millennial and younger gamers who are avid video game players.

Here's an example: Player Agency: How Game Design Affects Narrative

That's a pretty good essay.