Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8132859" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Well the entire thread began because [USER=7026405]@zarionofarabel[/USER] wanted to know if his style of GMing allowed for meaningful choices for his players. So I’ve been approaching the conversation with the expectation that agency is desired by those that are playing.If it’s not desired, then yes, I would agree with you that worrying about the level of agency allowed in a game would be pointless. But I don’t know how that really helps. Much as in the same way if a GM asked how to craft compelling intrigue scenarios for his game, and I decided to post “agonizing over how to incorporate intrigue is pointless because dungeon delving can be perfectly satisfying” kind of misses the point. The example was literally what if a NPC told something and it was true and then the GM later decides to reveal it was a lie. It’s about the GM altering what’s established on a whim. I’m sure that you’ll cite how if the actual status of the information’s truth was not known to the players, then how can their agency be affected....and that’s a relevant question. But it absolutely may be affected (may, not must.....we lack sufficient detail to really say for sure) because of how it was handled in the moment. The mechanics of play that were engaged in that moment cannot be changed as easily as the fiction can to explain away this change. To give a more specific example, let’s say that in the moment of play when the NPC gives the PCs the information, one of the players asks for some kind of check to determine if it’s true. Now, depending on the game, the result of such a roll could be definitively known to the players, meaning they know if this information is true or not.  In other games, perhaps they don’t know if they’ve succeeded; the GM simply says “you think he is telling the truth.”If this information is important to the players so that they can make informed decisions in play, then not letting the results stand is absolutely subverting their agency. If that doesn’t matter to you, that’s fine....but that doesn’t mean it’s not what’s happening.</blockquote>

Verification