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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9621080" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Set aside the idea of narrative control... because it is itself a muddy term. I mean, telling the duke to go screw and heading off to the west... that's an exercise of narrative control. It's the players saying that they're not interested in this duke situation, and they want the characters to go west. Surely this will change the narrative. So, let's just set aside that phrase and instead look at it as what can the player do. In what way can they influence play. I agree that this difference of how it is viewed is often at the heart of disagreement in these discussions, but I don't think that means we should limit the idea of player agency to your view. Why would we? There are other ways to influence the game beyond the character, and that's true of almost every game, even ones that want to limit things to the lens of the character. Again, I don't know if either of us is capable of concluding what "most" people think of as agency in an RPG. I can only speak for myself, and for the concepts that the words imply... which I think is not limited in the way you describe here. Oh, I think complaints about that vary a great deal. I absolutely think some such complaints are system based. Look at the OP of this thread as something that pushes into that territory. It describes two games and their methods, and shows how one is susceptible railroading, while the other is not. Systems absolutely matter when it comes to this stuff. There are some systems that allow for a wide range of GM methods... and those can be used to railroad, or can avoid it entirely... and in those cases, you're right, it's a matter of the GM. But the system has to be one that allows the GM to railroad. And this is also why you see some variance in the idea of what even constitutes a railroad. Earlier in the thread, [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] challenged [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] about his view of railroading as it applied to an NPC being "important". And setting the term aside, I think we can all see why such a description of an NPC may be questionable for some of us. I think your use is far more about stylistic preferences than mine. The term as I'm using it is the literal definition when we combine the two words player and agency. Yours limits it because you think of a player exercising agency in a way beyond their character is undesirable. As for power of players over fictional elements in the setting and being able to make meaningful choices in the setting... I don't think these are different things. I think meaningful choices is one example of the power players have over the fictional elements. But there are other examples, as well.</blockquote>

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