Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 7908587" data-attributes="member: 6993955">There's a lot of ink spilled about player agency in this thread. A lot of people who have some very specific and complex demands they want to make of the DM. Mostly this indexes "you can take my life but you can't take my freedom"  sort of take on player agency and the need for an entirely fixed set of fictional elements.  It should be obvious by now that I don't agree with those people, but that's ok, we all have different things we want out of the game. What I find a little disappointing is how many people seem to think that what they want as one player at the table is so much more important than what anyone else, especially the DM wants.D&D is a game that can be used in a lot of ways to tell a lot.of different stories. When  you sit down to a new campaign for the first time there is a contract involved between the players and the DM. An agreement about what kind of game we're playing, and, either spoken or unspoken, an agreement to try in good faith to play that game. Not any game, but the one we all agreed on. It's usually the DM who pitches a game, and very often that game is the product of significant labor on their part. I think it's pretty much a given that DMing is a lot more work than playing too. All the set up, all the between session prep, and all the improv necessary adds up to a lot, and a lot more than any player is putting in. That work is a product of the DMs desire to realize a particular story or idea, somehing they were excited enough about to put in all that work. And something they've agreed with the players to try and make happen as best they can. So what about DM agency? What about what the DM wants out of a campaign? What feels to me like the worst kind of player entitlement is the notion that despite the fact that the DM has more invested than any other single person at the table and despite the fact that planning an adventure is by its nature an enormously complex and recursive task, that the only thing that matters is player agency.  Are the players supposed to be completely free to adjust to curcumstance but not the DM? What that agency might look like depends entirely on the specific game of course, and could look very different in a complete sandbox than a more focused narrative. The entire game is spun out of gossamer by the DM, it feels like hubris to say they can't manage it at the table in order to tell the collective story they all agreed in the first place to try and tell. I can already imagine the replies about "well, nothing in your post means having move or change things, and yadda yadda". Just assume that behind this post are all my other posts. Not to be a jerk, but because it doesn't do the thread any good to rehash. I just wanted to point out that some consideration for DM agency might be appropriate.</blockquote>

Verification