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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8159877" data-attributes="member: 16814">I dislike trying to separate agency into different types, because I think it obfuscates the issue, which is, to me, who can say no.  If someone else can unilaterally say no, then I do not have agency.  To have agency, though, more needs to be present that just the lack of negation, namely places where decisions matter to the game.The first set of buckets you've listed doesn't really illuminate these points, because no game really separates play into these categories and then define who has what say where.  That it works to show that a wizard in D&D has more agency than a fighter isn't because of the framework you've built, but because the magic system in D&D has more places where the GM cannot or is limited in how they say no.  As such, the framework doesn't do a good job of answering the questions of who has agency in which bucket because agency isn't assigned by the bucket, but by access to the magic system.  By this I mean that the separation of agency doesn't clarify where the wizard has more agency because the wizard doesn't actually have agency by these buckets, but rather has access to a system that occasionally provides agency in these buckets.  The buckets don't really define where agency is available, the tool of magic does.Secondly, your second framework is a bit of a mishmash.  As others have noted, the protagonist bucket is very blurry with the other two -- can I have protagonist agency and not have tactical or strategic agency?  I don't really see how.  I also don't see how I could have strategic agency without tactical agency.  This division is messy and unclear and far to interdependent to really call out the nature of either.  I can see how I can have tactical agency but not strategy agency (I can operate in a combat how I want, but the outcome of the module is fixed).  So, maybe a reframing that shows that you need a to have b, and a and b to have c, etc.  I'm still not sure this is very illuminating, but perhaps.</blockquote>

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