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

[Maxperson]

Characters don't have any agency. They do not make decisions on their own. Their agency, like them, is fictional in nature.

Character agency as in agency through character actions, which is fairly obvious from all the context we have been using regarding agency. It's just easier to differentiate between the two types of player agency if we use different terms.

I think this goes against the idea of a living world that's been talked about. If the players do nothing, then things will happen. Situations change. So the pack of gnolls that's been raiding the countryside, if unopposed, now has resources to hire some giants to bolster their ranks, and they attack the town. Or similar.

No, it doesn't go against it at all. For the living world to function, game time has to pass. What I am talking about, also clear through the context, is that reactive players won't do anything. So in real time the DM and players just sit there looking at one another. NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Since almost no gametime has elapsed, there's nothing for the living world to do.

For something to happen, the DM needs to become proactive instead of reactive like he would be in sandbox play, so sandbox goes away. The world is still living. Things will still happen outside of the players, but the players will not be driving play in the same way as proactive sandbox players would.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No, it doesn't go against it at all. For the living world to function, game time has to pass. What I am talking about, also clear through the context, is that reactive players won't do anything. So in real time the DM and players just sit there looking at one another. NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Since almost no gametime has elapsed, there's nothing for the living world to do.

For something to happen, the DM needs to become proactive instead of reactive like he would be in sandbox play, so sandbox goes away. The world is still living. Things will still happen outside of the players, but the players will not be driving play in the same way as proactive sandbox players would.

Yeah the ideal in a sandbox is players take initiative and the GM is reacting to that. Living world can mean a lot of different things, but generally it is the idea that the world is in a moving state (world in motion is another term). and a lot of world in motion stuff GMs frequently handle through tables. It really depends on what aspects of the campaign you are talking about and not everyone has the same exact conception of it. Stuff like living world and world in motion, and sandbox are all things that have tons of conversations and threads online where you will find different ways of conceptualizing them, and different points of emphasis. As Rob said before, it is generally not a highly prescriptive style (there are no world in motion police)

 

[Maxperson]

IMHO it was replaced by WotC with a unified 3e design precisely because it had become unmanageable. 2e had reached a point of, essentially, collapse. Anything you attempted to add or change had to deal with 1000s of other elements. Or else just punt. For non-player-facing stuff punting is OK, but late era 2e is so bad you cannot really create a PC unless you sit down with the GM and hash out how everything works together on your sheet, what variant subsystems exist, etc.

Contrast with 4e which has at least as much material as 2e, yet 'just works' and could be expanded upon almost limitlessly and still work.

And I would argue that, through keywords and adherence to/establishment of thematic coherence, it can do everything 2e can do, but better. And note, I'm not addressing aesthetics like whether you like the classes or the balance of hit points to damage in combat, or even any arguments about the specific rules, like SCs. All that could be different and the same advantages realized.

So I have to reject your thesis.

I suppose you're talking about skills and powers, which no DM I played with used. Absent skills and powers, the vast majority of 2e variation was in the unique settings. The Complete Books didn't really add that much other than lore, so they didn't really cause any kind of mess.

Personally, I can't speak to how difficult it was to integrate the skills and powers, but I doubt it would be all that hard. They'd just be like books of UA options.

I personally couldn't stand 4e as it was written, so I didn't play it. That doesn't mean that it didn't have things that I liked. It did. It just had things that I didn't want to play with, but were so integrated into the system that I would have had to re-write the edition to play it and it just wasn't worth that much effort, so my group stayed with 3e, which we loved.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, @Maxperson appears to think that there is no difference, in degrees of agency, between a living world sandbox and an AP:

A few things.

1) My stance is dependent on the group being able to abandon the AP and do something else in the game world if the AP isn't fun. If they have to go through what's going on, it's a railroad and not a linear AP.

2) The original Dragonlance module series had no other things you could really do. The dragon armies and dragons were everywhere. That particular AP was forced on the players.

3) That's why the dungeon crawl old D&D is a railroad. If the players are unhappy dungeon crawling, there's nothing else for them to do. If they play D&D, they are forced into the dungeon.

 

[AlViking]

Is your contention that any game mechanic that would prevent the player from deciding every single their character says and does, such as those mechanics modeling anything from morale to willpower to sanity to mind control, is inherently limiting to or a lessening of player agency? Should a game that purports to center player agency avoid any and all such mechanics?

In my opinion when a rule of the game decides what a character thinks or does it takes away from the player's agency.

That doesn't mean such things should necessarily be avoided. Agency, or lack therein, has little to do with whether a game is "good" or not. Judgement of that nature is always going to be an objective opinion. You could analyze how such rules reinforce the goals and objectives of the game design but the player sitting at the table is the only one that can tell you if the result is what they are looking for.

People keep trying to find some objective thing that everyone can agree on makes a game somehow superior. It doesn't exist. No one aspect of a game elevates its inherent worth above other games.

Do I think it lowers agency? Yes. Does that make a difference on whether someone should play the game? Up to the person in question.

 

[robertsconley]

No, it doesn't go against it at all. For the living world to function, game time has to pass. What I am talking about, also clear through the context, is that reactive players won't do anything. So in real time the DM and players just sit there looking at one another. NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Since almost no gametime has elapsed, there's nothing for the living world to do.

For something to happen, the DM needs to become proactive instead of reactive like he would be in sandbox play, so sandbox goes away. The world is still living. Things will still happen outside of the players, but the players will not be driving play in the same way as proactive sandbox players would.

I've run into this myself, even when I worked with them on the initial context of their characters. While not 100%, I’ve found that the solution is to remember they’re not statues, but people in the setting. So eventually, someone, roleplayed by me, will interact with them. The exact situation depends on how they’re starting out.

However, since I insist on first-person roleplaying, what happens at the table is that an NPC, me, looks them in the eye and says something like, “Hey, hi!” or “Hey,” followed by a situationally appropriate greeting, question, or response. The vast majority of players will naturally respond, maybe not acting per se, but reacting as they would if approached like that in real life.

With that as a starting point, things start to unfold.

However, sometimes players are too shy or disinterested for even that to be effective.

None of my techniques is a magic wand, but using them together has a noticeable effect.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So I’m throwing this into the discussion of player agency: what’s everyone’s view on the structure of Dave Arneson’s original Blackmoor campaign?

Specifically, I’m referring to the earliest phase, before the creation of the Blackmoor Dungeons, where, from what I understand, there weren’t many of what we now call NPCs. Instead, the main antagonists were other players. Dave acted primarily as a neutral referee, adjudicating outcomes rather than creating story arcs or the opposition. Even some of the dungeon play retained that model before the campaign transitioned into something more recognizable as a traditional RPG campaign.

Now, suppose I ran a Majestic Fantasy Realms campaign in that style. With enough players involved, each session would bring in a different group of characters, each pursuing their own goals, with little to no centralized narrative. The campaign would be driven primarily by player actions, emergent conflict, alliances, and consequences stemming from what the characters themselves choose to do. The referee’s role would be to maintain the world’s consistency and arbitrate outcomes impartially.

Where does this kind of setup fall in terms of player agency as there is only character agency and no meta agency. And unlike my living world campaigns, the world is brought to life by the players, not the referee.

I've done something kind of like this and it works very well. The way I do it is I get a remote player to be one of the bad guys in a campaign. I usually call this Long-Distance Villainy. I also knew a GM where I lived who had a co-GM, and his role was handling all the non-player characters. I think stuff like this can definitely work if you are willing to go through a bit of trial and error to get it right. I did some recent campaigns like this too in my Ogre Gate sessions.

 

[Maxperson]

I've run into this myself, even when I worked with them on the initial context of their characters. While not 100%, I’ve found that the solution is to remember they’re not statues, but people in the setting. So eventually, someone, roleplayed by me, will interact with them. The exact situation depends on how they’re starting out.

However, since I insist on first-person roleplaying, what happens at the table is that an NPC, me, looks them in the eye and says something like, “Hey, hi!” or “Hey,” followed by a situationally appropriate greeting, question, or response. The vast majority of players will naturally respond, maybe not acting per se, but reacting as they would if approached like that in real life.

With that as a starting point, things start to unfold.

However, sometimes players are too shy or disinterested for even that to be effective.

None of my techniques is a magic wand, but using them together has a noticeable effect.

Yeah. I've had to initiate as well, and that the group would respond. What I found, though, was that every lull in the game where a proactive group would come up with something, these groups did not and I had to initiate again, and again, and again. That's not a bad way to play, but it's certainly not sandbox play.

Proactive players are a must for sandbox play.

 

[robertsconley]

In my opinion when a rule of the game decides what a character thinks or does it takes away from the player's agency.

Let’s just say I’ve noticed that the quality of roleplaying tends to drop when Charm Person or other mind control spells come into play. While I still include those spells in my Majestic Fantasy Realms, I keep this in mind when writing up their effects. I also avoid mechanics that require players to change how they roleplay, such as morale checks for PCs. NPCs may have morale checks, but I don’t apply them to player characters.

As it turned out in the long term, morale mechanics weren't needed as players were quite capable of panicking on their own and making poor choices as a result.

The Great Escape of 5e.

Out of the dozen or so people I currently roleplay with, I can only count on about three of them to roleplay being charmed or having broken morale in a way that feels convincing.

With GURPS, it got bad enough that, around 2001, our group just dropped disadvantages altogether, except for those that were physically disabling, because nobody was really roleplaying them. There was still roleplaying happening; it just came naturally out of playing the character rather than from traits written down on a character sheet at the start of the campaign.

I suppose all this reflects a progression in my thinking that started way back when I decided alignment was stupid in AD&D. I ditched it in the mid-’80s in favor of using codes of honor and tenets for classes where that kind of structure mattered, like Paladins and Clerics.

 

[robertsconley]

Yeah. I've had to initiate as well, and that the group would respond. What I found, though, was that every lull in the game where a proactive group would come up with something, these groups did not and I had to initiate again, and again, and again. That's not a bad way to play, but it's certainly not sandbox play.

Proactive players are a must for sandbox play.

I used to think, but I remember that the point is to let the players choices drive the campaign. Not choosing or rather not being proactive, is just as much of a valid choice as any other. Some players, some groups have more fun when they place their characters under orders.

Is that a sandbox? As far I am concerned it is. Because if they decided to do something different, I am always willing to let them trash the setting and follow along wherever they decide to go afterwards.

And out-of-game, I've been doing this long enough to see that pushing players into being something they're not willing to be is a really bad idea.

What usually happens is that the players still shape their lives and the direction of the campaign, but within the context of being subordinate to a higher authority. This is different from what happens with a more proactive group, but still leads to the group having an impact and making its mark on the world.

This was the result of something happening in a game store campaign with a group that wasn't particularly proactive. The Overlord of City State's daughter pissed one of the party members off. He bided his time and when the opportunity arose assassinated her by teleporting a wall of stone through a dimension door. Crushing her and the blue dragon she was riding.

Her father built a memorial next to where the dragon was crushed and forbade anybody from rebuilding that city block. The PC was never caught having taken steps to hide himself from divination before attacking.