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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8137174" data-attributes="member: 82106">Unwarranted? 'Problem lies'? See, this to me is really loaded language! I would say that any process, action, or situation which removes agency from a person lessens that person's personhood. It makes them subject to another in some way. It is never warranted unless it can be justified by some other good. This is the fundamental tenet upon which the idea of the virtue of human freedom rests! Now, we're playing games, and I am kind of sitting here writing this with a light heart. I certainly don't think anyone is being oppressed in playing an RPG, but I don't think I need to justify player agency, I think others need to justify denying it a lot more! Nor is something like bundling moves along with checks, IMHO, a 'problem'. I suspect it just defies ancient D&D convention, and that raises the hackles of the defenders of tradition! At the end of the day I have not observed anyone play DW (for instance) and complain about that. What I HAVE seen is a lot of veteran RPGers who have a very hard time wrapping their heads around anything but D&D and its analogs. Deep ingrained ideas of how these games are played have to be surfaced and dispelled. Often the symptom is an unwillingness/inability to actually take hold of the added responsibilities introduced by this kind of play. Players fail to volunteer information, act on bonds, and have difficulty expressing goals beyond responding to the GM's cues. Luckily there is almost always at least one player who gets it (or hasn't played an RPG before and thus lacks this mindset) and they can kind of just take the lead and treat the others a bit like henchmen for a while until they learn to assert themselves. Usually even the most hidebound at least do well with class moves, which usually are pretty direct. Things turn out well, mostly, but it can be an interesting challenge. It is like watching someone regain their power of sight for the first time in years, it takes a while to learn to use it.</blockquote>

Verification