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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8151822" data-attributes="member: 16814">And D&D is not?  I mean, fundamentally, if you're going to break a game down to this level, it's utterly unfair to say that Blades is Quantum Ogres because people decide things and 5e is not because... people decide things?  The difference here is that you're assigning a value statement to single player prepared material as being good and that unprepped, multiple player input material is bad.  It's a value statement about your preference, where you apply different standards of analysis to validate the underlying preference.  It's entirely circular logic coupled with special pleading -- if you applied the same analysis to 5e, you'd end up with quantum ogres.  As such, this is useless except as a circular reinforcement of your pre-existing biases.No, you didn't, and if you read the rest of that paragraph, you'll see I discard this statement as obfuscation.  I did forget to add the (ad argumentum) to is, so that is my bad.  I was using your concept for the sake of the argument and showing how it fails, not agreeing with you.  I could have worded that better.Constraints are accepted, yes, but, again, player agency cannot be viewed on subdivisions of play -- this leads to obfuscation of what's going on and only enables flawed arguments that less agency exists in this narrowly defined context so it's the same or worse as the preferred arrangement."Nuh-uh, you are," is not a flattering mode of argumentation, nor one that convinces anyone except fellow travelers.  If your intent is just to get [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] to once again like your post, by all means, continue.  If your intent is to engage in discussion, this is a failed approach.  You should consider this.No, subdividing agency allows one to make flawed arguments about the game such that they can claim superiority in one capacity by ignoring the effects in others.  For instance, your continued claims that there is player agency in being the sole controller of your character's mental state (outside of allowed exceptions, naturally, special pleading be damned) allows you to claim more agency, despite the fact that this is empty in the broader context because you have no agency to actually enforce this on the rest of the game.  You've claimed agency, and winning agency, in an act that is ultimately irrelevant to the rest of the game -- as shown by me previously that I can get the same level of choice and action in game without acting in-character at all.This is the trap of subdivided agency.  The games discussed are not separate silos of activity placed next to each other -- they interconnect at multiple points.  Treating agency as something that can be evaluated in distinct silos totally ignores these interconnects and the ability of one to affect another or not.  If I can imagine my character however I want, but can't place that into the game without someone else's permission, then I am not actually exercising much player agency at all, especially since I can imagine my character in any RPG equally well.It wasn't mocking.  It was silly, but that's because I have a silly streak, not because I was mocking anyone other than my own strange choices.And, no, it's not the same thing.  The same thing would be if the player reminisced and then was able to establish that there was water down that passage and that was a true thing.  Here, the GM provided that -- it was entirely decided by the GM.  The player acted onto that, they didn't really choose it, and made choice not based on the player's interests, but instead molding their character to the GM's prompts.  That's not exercising agency, even if it can be fun, because no choice is being made in reminiscing in-character that impacts the gameworld.  The only choice is to go down that passage, and it's based on very little that's agency enabling.  Bob the Fighter made the choice based on things Bob the Fighter could control, at least in part, because Bob the Fighter knew they had a potion of water breathing and this was a way to exert control over a situation involving water.  Fynn just playacted against the GM established fiction and made a choice that was barely better than random.Now, was Fynn's action more entertaining to the table and the player?  Most likely, but not definitely.  If that's the axis you want to value, then, absolutely, do so -- I usually put weight on this as well, and not a little.  But it doesn't create player agency within the game to do so -- Bob's player has the same agency as Fynn's player, and Bob's player made a choice that enabled future agency via control over options in the fiction while Fynn's player just entertained everyone.  Again, if you like that kind of thing, great and awesome and please go get all of it you can!</blockquote>

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