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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8148787" data-attributes="member: 16814">Yes, this is clear, however what you're proposing in it's place is not.  Best I can figure it's a combination of retaining the ability to try things, subject to the GM's resolution authority, and to have full control over your character's imagined mental state, ignoring those mechanics that strip this control because you're used to them.  It's not coherent when you have to ignore mechanics.Further, neither you nor [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] has yet addressed the fundamental problem with the accusation I'm trying to control the language to win a point -- I both say that 5e has less agency AND advocate for it as a fun game to play.  If my intent was to control the language to win a point, why would I then enthusiastically proclaim that I like 5e?  Because my intent is to analyze play, not score points or claim a "better" game.  If I lack an ulterior motive such as this, why would I use tactics that support such a thing rather than being honest and clear about what's happening in play?This is incoherent because we're not talking about mostly acting healthy, we're defining what it means to act in a healthy manner.  You've moved the goalposts from defining agency to not caring all the time about having agency.  If agency is defined by having total control over your character's "inner life" (ad argumentum), then examples of these effect must reduce that agency.  It's not a matter of having a cheat day, it's an attack against the premise.That you can be fine with such reductions is a matter of preference, but now you've adopted my core argument while trying to deny it -- reductions in agency aren't an evil, they're just part of a game, and we can like or dislike that reduction like we can any other thing.  If this is the case, we don't need to do the strange definition of things such that you can try to both claim that agency is control over your character's "inner life" but the commonality of game mechanics that thwart this is not important to that agency.Of course agency doesn't mean ability to interact with the rules.  But agency only can exist where a choice is made and tested.  There's lots of ways to do this, and when we do this, it's important to look at how that test works and who has authority over resolutions.  In that case, if only one person ever has authority over that resolution after the test and it's not the player in question, then we can definitively say that this is less player agency than if the player has at least some authority in resolutions after the test.  This is what I meant by interacting with the game.  You imagining things in your head isn't part of the game until it's brought into test within the game.  And that's where agency lives -- not in your ability to imagine a thing, but whether or not you can place that imagined thing into the shared fiction.  It's funny you say this, and I address it above -- I have no motive to reinvent language, and you've yet to show that any of the ways I've used words is different from how they're normally used.  You just keep asserting that I'm doing so.  Please do the work.</blockquote>

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