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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8151793" data-attributes="member: 7025508">The GM here needs to make judgement calls in many of the same situations than in more traditional games, and yes, obviously in Blades they've less freedom and flexibility to do so. Whether this is a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion, I don't feel it is a good thing. And of course in any RPG the GM is in reality constrained by the fiction and the consequences of the actions must logically fit to what was established before. But I have no doubt that the GM in Blades has far less agency than in one D&D. This is the thing you seem to be obsesses about and to what I referred earlier with my post about 'relative agency'. Whether player has more agency, I am not so sure about. In a certain sense they have more narrative agency, they can poke anything to make it important. Then again, this is rather illusory. How much does it really matter whether you poked a painting with a magic skill and it ghostified it and it tried to life-drain you, or whether you poked a door with a physical skill and it spawned a guard that bonked you in the head? How meaningful this is depends on how much value you place on these different flavours. To me this sort of agency seems rather fake. There is no objective reality, there are no mysteries to uncover, there are no right or wrong answers. This is Quantum Ogre, the Game, except you get to influence the skin of the ogre.Holy crap! After twenty pages I got through!Obviously. It is a game with completely different purpose. And yes, the players accept those limitations in their agency when they choose to play that game, just like they accept different sort of limitations on their agency when they choose to play D&D.Yes. Your claim that there are no different types of agency obfuscates things.Different games offer different types of agency in different quantities. Recognising this is really important for analysing them and even more important for recommending them. Trying to count some ultimate total agency is of questionable value. If a game offers a player little the sort of agency they care about but 'compensates' is by offering a lot of the type of agency they do not care about, it will result the player feeling that they do not have enough agency. And whether the players feel that they have enough agency is ultimately the only agency question that really matters; everything else is just trying to find the best way to get there.Right. Earlier a mocking example of character reminiscing their childhood as a motivation to walk towards the water was used. This is the same thing. And yes, I strongly feel that these sort of things matter, but they matter in any RPG. Drop your bizarre double standard.</blockquote>

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