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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8165290" data-attributes="member: 6779310">A good analysis, as far as it goes....The point of rules being ot limit options sufficiently to enable meaningful interactions. Excess agency doesn't lead to more play, but to a lack of direction to move in. The point of session 0 is likewise to set limits on story so as to productively produce interesting-to-the-players situations.One of the things covered in an MAEd program is how to elicit maximum creativity from children - and it is proven that maximum creativity is attained with clear directives and a framework to work within. So, not, "how was your summer?" but, "What cool thing did you do this summer?" The first gets 1-liners. The second gets kidergardeners trying to write essays... in stickfigure drawings, with the few words they can spell...RPGs are much the same... a framework makes creativity easier. For some, the level of maximum creativity is more constrained, and they need a clear combination of rules and setting to be comfortable being creative - sometimes down to the level of minis wargame with connections. For others, it's just a casual agreement to genre and trusting others to not overwrite one's contributions, with a provision controlling who gets to narrate when.Agency without framework lacks meaning. Framework without agency is literature, theater, movies, television...An interesting literary corpus has a character that, if played in a game, would have too much agency - Q only works because the medium has no true agency, and the authors have chosen to limit the characters choices by Q's warped morality - Q isn't lacking in a moral code - he's clearly got one, and it's the only thing that keeps him testing humanity. We know Q is one of at least 5 Q in the continuum... the level of agency each would have is comparable to a GM's... and 4 GM's with no limits is almost unplayable.A party of 4 members of the Q continuum are limited only in their morality and the Continuum's ethical standards. (Noting that Q {DeLancie} is clearly borderline on continuum ethics... as we see in several episodes. Q{Bernsen} points this out explicitly in one episode.)The highest level of agency I've encountered in play is not quite Q-level - Wick's HotBlooded engine, in the form of Blood and Honor, which is samurai. It sets just enough framework to enable story control to be meaningful...Story requires conflict - many stories are conflict in the form of combat. It's an easy method - one that is also mechanically interesting in most rulesets.Too much agency makes conflict meaningless, because one can just narrate it away with a handwave if one has sufficient allowed agency. So, Agency isn't the ultimate parameter: it has to be a resource used in appropriate levels. It's part of a package that makes the game.</blockquote>

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