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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8152028" data-attributes="member: 16814">You sidestepped this argument by focusing on a word.  Your analysis leaves all games as quantum ogres -- an analysis so broad that it renders the same judgement is useless.  The only way you can avoid this is by making the value statement -- that your play avoids the quantum ogres because a single player predetermining and deciding things removes this effect.  This the the argument that you've neatly avoided with a semantics attack.I'm not making it harder, I'm avoid the simple traps that allow you to make the mistake that your ability to freely imagine your character's mental state doesn't, in any way, translate into the game by itself.  Me imagining my character one way doesn't allow me to put that imagining into the game.  If I convince myself that I have agency to imagine, then I have to also convince myself that a lack of agency to do anything with this is okay -- these are severable.  In reality, the only way imagining your character has any weight whatsoever is if you can put that imagining into the game, and that's not part of the subdivision of agency you're claiming.  It literally hides the fact that it's irrelevant without additional authorities.And, you aren't free -- you're absolutely ignoring the many ways that the game you choose abridges your ability to freely imagine your character's mental state.  At this point, you're just willfully ignoring these as you seem to have completely abandoned even trying to lampshade them.No, this is another subdivision I disagree is useful.  I argue that agency is the ability to direct play in meaningful ways.  Here, the GM has done so in imagining water down a passage and then putting that into play.  Fynn's player has a nice bit of acting about the GM's decision, and then makes a choice that is no more informed than if he imagined his family used to have ski holidays.  This bit of acting by Fynn's player doesn't direct play in any meaningful way -- but it is entertaining.  Bob's player at least considers the options and his ability to deal with them and selects the option that he's most prepared to interact with in ways that can direct play (Bob can choose to breathe underwater, if that's something he wants to do).  This isn't at all ability to direct the setting at all.  No, that part was when I said that the only way that Fynn's acting could translate into agency would be if the acting leads to being able to imprint the fiction such that the acting was realized in play.  That's directing play in a meaningful way.Barely better than random?  He told a story to make a choice rather than roll a die, but, functionally, neither evaluate that choice in any way.  In other words, Fynn's player chose one way and then acted out a story to support the choice.  The story was post hoc the choice, which, while not entirely uniformed, was made arbitrarily.And if they hadn't, nothing else about the fiction is different.  If Fynn's character just said, "sure, water passage it is," then they've exercised the same choice but didn't act.  The lack of the reminiscence is unremarkable -- except in terms of entertaining the players at the table.  It's introduction changes nothing and only adds some flavor.  If this is the agency you seek -- the ability to add bits of otherwise unimportant flavor -- then it's a poor agency, and the observation that there's low player agency stands.</blockquote>

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