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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8164794" data-attributes="member: 85870">Upon further reflection, I find that I am not fully willing to cede that your definition is somehow the assumed "writ large" for the hobby.My first exposure to RPGs was BECMI in 1985. I skipped most of the '90s, then continued my "adult" grounding in RPG play with D&D 3.5 in the early 2000s.In all my years of play and study of RPGs, I've never once come across your definition of "agency" as some set-in-stone, founding principle. In truth, I don't know that I'd ever fully formulated a complete picture/definition of what I'd consider player agency until I sat down and began working through this thread.  Though I had some ideas beforehand of what could constitute agency, it has become abundantly and comprehensibly clear that the concept of player agency extends well beyond the definition provided in your quote.If your definition of "agency" ever was held in primacy by the RPG vox populi, I imagine it was during some period in the '90s---which would be no surprise, given the general zeitgeist of RPG play was dominated by D&D 2e and Vampire/White Wolf. I've never played an actual White Wolf system (though I've watched other people do it), but it's my general impression that in some White Wolf circles, a GM not allowing a player to actually, you know, play their character might have been a "thing" back then. Between GM force and the massively heavy handed White Wolf metaplot (from what I've gathered), there might have been real concerns that a player might be forced by the GM to even avoid playing their character a certain way much of the time. So I suppose for its time, your definition at least identified some part of the problem.Newtonian physics still has a place in our understanding of the world. But it's been enhanced, supplanted, and overlaid with significantly more material since Sir Isaac Newton got bonked on the head with an apple.To say that the inner workings of RPG theory, play, and mindspace have radically evolved since 1995 would be an understatement. If your definition of agency worked back in the '90s, it doesn't work anymore.</blockquote>

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