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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8138755" data-attributes="member: 42582">Who has narrated the PCs come to a fork in the road?Who stops to ask Which way do you go? Why does anyone care about that?Who has decided that an ogre will be met, and why does anyone care about that? Does it matter that it's an ogre and not (say) a medusa?I'm pretty sure that the posters who are saying you have DENIED your players agency are making the following assumptions about answers: the GM narrated that the PCs come to a fork in the road; the GM stops to ask which way the PCs go; everyone at the table is assumed to care about that, because there is an assumption that play is unfolding using "map and key" techniques; that the GM has decided that an ogre will be met; that the players care about it being an ogre rather than a medusa because that is relevant to tactical decision-making.Until you unpack those assumptions, work out what is true in your own play at your own table, and think about what techniques you're using and why, you can't work out whether the accusations of DENYING agency are true or false.EDIT: I'll provide a slightly parallel example from my own play.The system is Prince Valiant. The PCs are three knights, two of whom lead a holy order that they founded - the Order of St Sigobert - and a third who is somewhat reluctantly travelling with them, mostly at the urging of his wife.In the episode I'm describing, the PCs were on their way to Constantinople, offering their services as crusaders. In the previous session they had survived an encounter with a skeleton knight in Dacia. Here's the actual play report:In this episode of play, there were no "forks in the road". The low-sided galleys flagged to the players that something unhappy and watery was going to happen to them.Who decided the PCs want to go to Constantinople? The players.Who decided that the PCs had to trek across Dacia/Romania to do this? The GM. In the previous session I'd stipulated that their boats had had to make landfall on the Dalmatian coast, due to weather.Who established that the PCs met a "dragon" in the Black Sea? The GM. Did the players have any chance to avoid that through their play? No.Does it matter that it was a "dragon" (giant crocodile) and not (say) a "serpent" (giant sea snake) or "kraken" (giant octopus or squid)? Not really. We've already had a conflict with a kraken, though, so I wasn't going to repeat that. And I didn't have anything written up for a serpent. Hence the dragon.What are the real stakes in this episode of play? They are can the PCs make a good impression on the Byzantines? This was determined via action resolution: first the checks to travel, the results of which (ie debuffs to two of the PCs) then fed into the Oratory check at the border, and the conflict with the dragon. Success at these enabled the PCs to arrive at Constantinople on excellent terms.I don't know what your "quantum ogre" posters would make of all this, but I think it's worth noting how it departs from some of their assumptions. (1) The players, not the GM, are the ones who have decided why their PCs are travelling to Constantinople. (2) There is no hidden map - we're working from shared maps of the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia. (3) There is no action resolution via "map and key". The map is colour - it informs our fiction - but there is no resolution of travel in terms of miles per day, hexes crossed, encounter checks, etc. (4) The encounters with the border, and then with the dragon, are not ends in themselves. They are means to ends. I frame them, as GM, so that we as a table can find out what sort of impression these British knights are able to make on the Byzantine Empire. They are not a strategic threat that the players need to somehow negotiate or avoid; and they are not really a tactical threat either - resolution in Prince Valiant is very straightforward and not a tactical mini-game.I personally regard my Prince Valiant game as very high player agency. I suspect it is much higher in player agency than most of the games run by the "quantum ogre" posters.</blockquote>

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