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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9065864" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Interesting is subjective. I'm saying that if you want player agency, then the players need to be informed. agency in and of itself is neither bad nor good... unless it's what one wants or doesn't want.Absolutely. I'm trying to avoid value judgments like that. I don't think that player agency is always appropriate. It depends on the game and the preferences and expectation of the participants.My comments have all been about when player agency is desired.No, failure isn't taking away agency. I mean, it may be, but it's not inherently.So I think the confusion may be coming from the idea of setting stakes and consequences. It's not about the player determining the outcome. It's about determining what is at stake, and what the probable outcomes may be. Whether it will succeed or fail is still up in the air, but the actual situation can be evaluated and the player can make a decision. For a simple example, imagine there's a need for the PC to get across a 20' chasm. There's a rope bridge that's 90 feet away, but their ally on the other side is about to be overrun by enemies. The player has to decide to make the jump... the GM should offer the DC up front, and say what happens if the check is failed. The player can then decide to risk the jump, or to spend the time running to the bridge. That's an informed decision.When we talk about player agency, we have to separate that from the in-game fiction... we have to think about the agency of the players who are taking part in the game. Imagine any other game, and what elements allow players to be informed. Think of the board game Risk for example... you can see the entire board. You can see how many cards each player holds. You know they can't turn in a match until they have at least three cards, and that they must do so if they have five cards. You know how the dice work. There is very little that is hidden. This means that the player has agency. They can choose which way to move, who to attack, where to flee... and so on. We don't know who will win the game, we don't know how things will go for certain... but we know how the game works.The idea of character agency muddies the clarity that we have when we talk about agency in other games. Set aside the characters and think about what the player needs for agency. It's not auto-success that they need. It's understanding of the way the game works. There's a tendency with RPGs to hide things from the players that would be hidden from the characters, and while sometimes this makes sense, when it comes to game mechanics, it's not a good idea if you care about agency. Tell them the DCs of ability checks, tell them the armor classes of their opponents, and so on.Hiding gameplay information from the players is antithetical to agency.I'm not so sure. I know many call it a spectrum, and I understand why, but I don't know if that's the case. The more games I play that make an effort to actually provide agency, the more clear it is to me when a game lacks it.And again, I don't make any value judgment about games that lack it. I have played and will continue to play those games as well. The only problem is when I expect a game of one type, and get another.But if they've agreed not to climb the mountains in the next kingdom, then how can you claim they have agency? They're limited in what's allowed. They need to stay away from the mountains and near the GM's plot. These two bits seem to be at odds.</blockquote>

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