Wow.
You say this:
And then you say this:
Which. Is. Exactly. What. I. Mean.
So, which is it? Do you understand? Do you not understand? Do you understand but you don't know you understand? If you're playing stupid, please stop; I know you're not stupid.
I don't understand what you mean by
the dice decide. And what you mean by comparing it to
the GM decides.
You seem to be asserting, or at lesat implying, that there is no differnce between
tossing a coin to see which of us has to do the dishes and
you getting to decide every time who has to do the dishes. But the difference between those two things is so obvious to children and parents the world over that I don't see how you could assert that they are the same.
Here's another way to come at it: when
@chaochou uses the phrase
GM decides he means
the GM decides what happens next in the fiction. When you use the phrase
the dice decide you seem to mean
the dice are used to work out who gets to decide what happens next in the fiction. How are those equivalent, given that the subject matter of the decision is different in each case?
If what you said was true, then there woudl be no difference between
resolving combat using the D&D combat resolution framework and
having the GM decide what the outcome is and telling the players. But I think that every RPGer has a very visceral grasp of the difference between those things.
In each case the difference is between (i) one person getting to decide what happens and (ii) using a randomiser to decided who gets to decide what happens.
Agency over your character is intrinsically good--it is, at least in more-traditional TRPGs like D&D, what the players can control directly, the only (or at least primary) way they have to shape the fiction.
<snip>
The players have agency over their characters, and thereby over the fiction. The players' agency over the characters is approximately absolute--barring magical effects like charm spells or draconic presence, the players get to decide what the characters do; their agency over the fiction is limited to what the characters can accomplish.
This is not very helpful analysis. The bolded phrase is an output of action resolution and the exercise of participant agency: eg
Can this character jump this chasm? Can this character kill this orc? won't know until the action is resolved. So the phrase can't serve as an answer to questions about who has what sort of control over the fiction.
Players in D&D exercise agency over the fiction by declaring actions for their PCs. The resulting influence on the fiction is not confined to their PCs. Eg (to borrow one of
@Lanefan's examples) if the player declares
I open the door and it is aready uncontentious that the door is unlocked, has working hinges, and is in the immediate proximity of the PC who is not in any way trapped or paralysed, then it becomes true in the fiction that the door is open.
I'm sure there are some tables which treat such action declarations merely as
suggestions to the GM to change the fiction, but I've never played at one as best I can recall.
Something being impossible doesn't negate player agency. The fact you have a player at your table who knows how tugboats operate kept that consistent with reality, but the fact that the operator couldn't (in the absurd) have the tugboat take off like a helicopter doesn't do change the options he has.
Again the analysis here is unhelpful.
Impossible is not a self-actualising category. Someone has to make the call. Who gets to decide, at the table, that a tugboat can do this but not that? I explaind how, in the game I described, it was a player who was not the GM who did that.
pemerton said:
In my games set in non-real worlds - eg my 4e game - the players also help decide what can or can't be done. Eg in that game it was the player of the invoker/wizard who generally took the lead in deciding what was possible to be done with magical effects.
That sounds more like authorship than agency to me.
I'm not describing authorship. I'm providing an example of a non-GM participant deciding what sorts of action declaration pass the credibility test and hence can be resolved by engaging the resolution mechanics. The player isn't authoring anything in the sense of contributing new content to the fiction. S/he is helping to curat the fiction to make sure it remains coherent/consistent. I posted the example to rebut the assertion that the GM is uniquely responsible for this.
But in any event, in a game whose main activity is
collectively generating a shared fiction, what is the contrast you are drawing between authorship and agency?