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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8133192" data-attributes="member: 6785785">You seem to be making a distinction between the player characters and the fiction here. Why is that? The PCs are simply one element of the fiction. Yes, they are the most likely to be guided by player decisions, but they are ultimately part of the fictional world. There really is no character agency of the kind we're talking about. The players are guiding the fiction, and the PCs are their main interface for doing so. Why does it not? I mean, I see how it may not. As you and [USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] go on to comment, sometimes what players want and what their characters want are different things. But probably more often, what they want is in some state of alignment. So, if you don't mind, I want to look at this a bit more using some examples.Let's say Mandy is playing Inigo Montoya, and Cary is playing Wesley. The character of Inigo certainly wants revenge against Count Rugen, the six-fingered man who murdered his father. So, when they finally meet in the fiction, Inigo will want to do everything he can to kill Rugen. The player Mandy, however, has no idea what to do with his character after the revenge plays out, so he wouldn't mind at all for this drama to continue, and if Rugen were to escape, he'd be okay with it. If the GM fudges a roll or uses some other application of force to ensure that Rugen escapes, you think this isn't altering agency; would that be accurate?Where as with Wesley, his goal is to rescue Princess Buttercup. And we also know that Cary is interested to see what will happen in the game after Wesley does rescue her. So if Wesley was on the verge of rescuing her, and the GM were to somehow fudge a roll or resort to Force to make sure she remained unrescued, you would consider this a subversion of agency, is that right? If I've followed correctly, then that's interesting. I get why you may hold that stance....as I say above to [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] , the characters don't have agency, so player desire is the big factor here. I think my only concern is that because the characters are the main means by which the players will cue their desires for play, a GM somehow being aware of less obvious player desires seems less likely. I've certainly had players who have been happy to have their characters suffer temporary failure or setback, but this is always mentioned after the fact. I can't recall any player ever saying to me ahead of time "you know, if my character doesn't avenge his father for a few more sessions, that's fine."I'm not saying that can't happen or that the GM and players can't have very candid discussions about the goals of play and so on, but that level of awareness of player desire would not be my expectation.</blockquote>

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