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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8165874" data-attributes="member: 16814">I submit that it is very relevant.  You've closed off agency by restricting the discussion, when, in reality, you are doing something social with a small group of people.  By dint of reducing the scope, you've eliminated entire kinds of RPGs from discussion -- ones that do not so limit the scope.  As a point of reference, yours is only valid within a subset of games.  The other evaluates all games.  However, agency, in and of itself, isn't not a good -- it's a point of reference only, and how it is valued is related to many other things and personal preference.  More or less agency isn't a value statement, it's an observation that, with other things, can allow an individual to deploy their preferences more accurately and make their own value statement.  For example, I play and enjoy 5e, so for me acknowledging it has less agency than other games I might play is not indicative of my valuing of the game.  I don't really like FATE, but it has more agency than 5e, so that more agency is not really indicative of my valuing of that game, either.The point of my responses to you wasn't to tell you how to think, but to bring you up to speed on the position of the discussion in the thread.  So long as you continued with explaining how you use agency, there was going to be no progress unless you were contrasting that to the way it's being used in the thread.  I'm glad we've reached that understanding, and I think you're game sounds like a serious labor of love that's well enjoyed by those that participate.  That said, the kind of agency you're describing is pretty much the baseline for an RPG -- the ability to play-act your character or declare actions for your character is the default position.  It's present most everywhere, and where it isn't, it's exceedingly obvious -- you don't have to search for the difference.  It is limiting, though, in that the player can only ever express their character within the confines of the GM's chosen setting constraints.  However, games are designed intentionally with such limits so that they can do other things -- it would be silly to propose a game where you deal with the mortality of man but you can create potions of youth easily.  So, limits have great functions in games.  Noting a limit isn't a criticism of that game, it's observational only.</blockquote>

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