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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9641617" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I was travelling earlier and not able to reply to many posts. I just skimmed back through the thread and quoted some snippets to respond to. Storytelling exercises and games are different things to me, for sure. Games have rules. Generally speaking, rules that are expected to matter... that they not be cast aside. As I've said in the past, and as the OP cited... if you look at almost any other game, it's very easy to see where and how players have agency. Character autonomy. I am free to have my character go here, or go there, to do this or do that. Which is almost always all material created by the GM prior to the start of play. I think this is absolutely what the OP had in mind when talking about wanting one kind of game and getting the other, and bouncing off it hard. If everyone understands what the game is going to be, and how it's going to work, prior to starting play... then everyone's on board. Agreeing to play an AP style game and then trying to run away from the plot? Yes, that's bad form. So would joining a player driven game and then just waiting around for plot hooks to grab you. No, I think for player agency, it has to be about what the player does. It's not so much about the content of the fiction as the creation of that content. What binds the participants? When can they create content? To what scope or effect?That's what players do. So it's best to examine player agency at that level. Without the rules, you're not really playing a game. This is related to my comment above about in response to the difference (or stated lack thereof) between storytelling exercises and games. Without rules... who gets to speak when, what are they allowed to say, how do we resolve conflicts... there's little game. And without game, the idea of player agency doesn't even apply.This is hard to judge solely from a player's perspective. Did the GM elaborate on how he ran the AI? Does this happen to be the adventure module "Gradient Descent"? If so, I am familiar with it, and although I think that it works per the rules of Mothership, which have a very skilled-play, old-school focus to them... part of Mothership is also that it is a horror game. And horror as a genre is very often about lack or loss of control. That may be very relevant. Yes, but as I said, there may also be other things they value. And at times, these two things may come into conflict. Let's say someone values immersion and also agency... for many, knowing the rules or understanding the processes or all the factors that may influence a given instance of play is an obstacle to immersion, and so they don't want it to happen. For those people, I would say they prioritize immersion more than agency. Would you agree with that? I don't really agree with that sentiment. In some cases, yes, it's as clear as day when you're playing with a biased GM. But in many others, you may just be playing with one with wildly different takes on the rules than you. If the rules allow for such broad interpretation, then conflicts are going to arise. Look at this discussion... look at many others here on ENW. I don't think anyone here is trying to advocate for capricious GMing so much as everyone just has different opinions about play and what makes for engaging and satisfactory play. I have! And not very long ago at all... last year, I believe. I did it out of obligation to a friend, who wanted to take a turn GMing. We were playing online, and I think he was so focused on trying to make sure that the combat encounters and the like ran well, that he basically just went from one to the next, while narrating bits of story in between.It was a very frustrating play experience for me. I'm willing to play many types of games... as long as I know what a game will be when I sign up for it, I'm usually just fine. But this was much more of a railroad than I ever would have imagined. Because the GM in question is a good friend and because he suffers from some neurodivergent issues, neither I nor the other players wanted to complain for fear of upsetting him. However, if it had been just about any other circumstance, I'd have either bowed out, or else spoken with the GM to try and address the issues.</blockquote>

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