Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Man. Years of playing with negative AC and I thought -6 was good! My bad. Animals starving to death is a negative, but if there is severe overpopulation, those deaths allow the species to live, which is good.Yes, they are. That's what makes them negative. It's the definition of the word.
Negatives are not always a bad thing, even if they feel like that in the short term.
It's a fact. Agency is the ability to decide what your character says and does. My accepting the risk* doesn't change the fact that it's still a loss of my agency.If it's a part of the game, and it's a known risk that the player is aware of, then it's kind of silly to say it's a loss of agency.
*and the idea that it's just a risk is ludicrous. It's an RPG with social interactions left, right and center. If you think you're going to succeed at every roll for the whole campaign, you're fooling yourself. It's not a risk. It's a certainty.
Punished for that choice with a lack of agency. You no longer have the ability to choose to play that game. It has been forcibly removed from you, costing you agency.Like if I'm playing hockey, and I slash one of the opposing players, I get sent to the penalty box. My agency hasn't been taken from me... I've been punished for my choice.
Choosing to accept risk(or certainty) of the loss of agency, doesn't change what it is. It simply means that you are okay with losing agency for those periods of time, and there's nothing wrong with you choosing that.