D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[pemerton]

Because the example you've been using would be solved rather handily in traditional play (and real life, for a more mundane version of the situation), by having the person in question bring a cup.

At times in my life my problems would have been solved by bringing $100. But I didn't have it on me.

The character wasn't carrying a vessel. That's why he looked around for one. I don't see why this is so remarkable.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton said I lied.

Where?

 

[pemerton]

It would help if someone could clearly state whether or not the following is a true statement: "Items and equipment don't exist in game BW in the way that they do in D&D."

False. And bizarre.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Being systematic is good.

I didn't say there is anything wrong with it. And I was complimenting the article. But some people aren't as interesting in being as systematic. My approach is more trial and error, experimenting as I go. I don't have a list of principles I always abide by (though some have probably been used so much they are engrained at this point). Again I wasn't knocking the article, I was noting some differences between the article and how I tend to approach these ideas. But overall I thought it was a good piece.

Saying "I'm describing these principles, because I think they'll make for a strong, distinctive play experience", like that blog post does, or the Principia Apocrypha, or Matt Finch's primer, is how you make a convincing argument in the TTRPG space.

I wasn't saying I am entirely opposed to this. I was saying I am less systematic. I still do frequently lay out principles of play. I pointed to one I share with the piece (see Pinning it Down in the blog entries of mine I have posted). But I also tend to be more descriptive rather than proscriptive in my approach, and it is fine for both these approaches to exist (both can be helpful----it is when you rely soley on one that problems emerge I think)

"I'm just describing the way I like to do it" isn't really that helpful. Might be fun for the describer, but not very useful for anyone else.

Why not. Both approaches can work. Hey, if you don't find it useful that is find. I find it useful when people describe what they do and why they think it worked, but leave room for me to approach it in my own way. Different strokes. And again, I wasn't knocking the article. I think it was a very good post. But I can still talk about how I do things differently since it was raised as a defense of our style, I thought it would be important to point out there are other approaches to talking about this

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also for clarity, one reason I am less prescriptive or proscriptive is the rigidity that I mentioned emerging in some discussions of sandbox. There were many core principles of play we often talked about. Many of these felt like straight jackets after a while. So I take a much more flexible approach when talking about how to run a living world sandbox now, than I did say twelve years ago

 

[TwoSix]

Does your play background prevent you from understanding us?

None of your posts are confusing in any way.

I disagree with your usage of various terms, but I fully understand what you mean.

I mean, from the early '90s up until 2008 or so, trad/neotrad immersive "I am my character" play was all I did. I'm in no way confused by what you're describing.

 

[pemerton]

It doesn't seem to be confusing on our side.

@Campbell (just to pick one poster who I know has a deep understanding of a wide range of approaches to RPGing) has never been confused by anything I've ever posted about scene-framing, stakes, intent-and-task, etc. Nevertheless you complain endlessly about "jargon". But seem to be put out when someone asks questions about your ways of framing things.

Why are others expected to take your way of thinking and talking about things as a default; rather than you theirs?

 

[pemerton]

In this case that playstyle leads to events that make no logical sense to me. I'm not going to be ok with that personally.

Hang on - so you can't actually conceive of a person not having the equipment that would help them? Have you never been caught in the rain without an umbrella, or in the cold without a jumper, or found yourself locked out of your house with your keys inside?

Completely bizarre, from my point of view.

 

[TwoSix]

@Campbell (just to pick one poster who I know has a deep understanding of a wide range of approaches to RPGing) has never been confused by anything I've ever posted about scene-framing, stakes, intent-and-task, etc. Nevertheless you complain endlessly about "jargon". But seem to be put out when someone asks questions about your ways of framing things.

Why are others expected to take your way of thinking and talking about things as a default; rather than you theirs?

You would think after being immersed in these posts for a few years, you'd just start to pick up the jargon by osmosis. (Is "osmosis" too jargony?)

 

[robertsconley]

Stating "you don't have as much agency as you might think you have" isn't diminishing your agency; it simply makes you feel as though your agency is being diminished because your internal framework as to how play works is being challenged.

That kind of framing shows a lack of consideration for the creative goals of the person you're responding to. What counts as meaningful agency depends on those goals. If your model of agency is tied to one set of assumptions, and theirs is tied to another, telling them they have “less agency” isn’t neutral—it’s misaligned and can come across as dismissive, even if unintentionally. That’s how people end up talking past each other.

The same problem arises if someone assumes there’s an absolute scale of agency without first unpacking how the other person defines it or what kind of game they're trying to run. When that context is ignored, the conversation stops being productive.

"Sandboxes have near-maximal agency within the framework of trad GM-world creation play" is something I would generally agree with. The social contract of sandbox play allows for me in-fiction agency than one where the table agrees to run through module X.

"Sandbox play has near maximal agency for TTRPGs" is something I'm going to disagree with, because it seems to have blinders on to a lot of TTRPG play.

That’s part of why I started digging into the assumptions people bring to these conversations. I noticed a recurring pattern: we were talking past each other because different people were using “player agency” to mean very different things.

Eventually, I proposed that player agency in TTRPGs can be understood as a combination of two broad types:

Character agency—what players can do as their characters within the world.

Meta-agency—what players can do outside the fiction to shape the narrative or structure.

Framing agency this way gave us a more useful vocabulary for understanding how different systems prioritize or combine these elements.

Also, though it hasn’t been discussed much yet, each of those types has subtypes. So we can’t reduce a system to something like “80% meta, 20% character.” You have to look at the specific mix of subtypes to understand how that system expresses agency in play.

I know this adds layers of complexity, but that’s because the subject is complex. We’re talking about different play cultures, rule structures, procedures, and creative goals. If the goal is to understand what’s really happening at the table across styles, then we need to let the analysis be as complex as the situation demands. Oversimplifying just creates new confusion.