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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8013807" data-attributes="member: 29398">How to put this and not go on all night with it?If I'm reading things right, we're discussing what happens in play with regards to player agency; and how either can/will/does impact the other - right?So, overriding influences e.g. social contracts, houserules, etc. can and often are felt in the immediate here-and-now of play.  An example: if my idea for a character going in was to be Evil-aligned but I find Evil PCs are not allowed at that table, that affects my play at every moment.  Or, if my idea for my character is to be a hopelessly romantic flirt and I find there's a social contract banning PC romances (or that they'll always be kept offscreen), that too will affect my play at every moment.In both cases that constant and ongoing effect on my here-and-now play will simply be that I'm not able to play the character I wanted.  I'm either playing a watered-down or amended version of the concept I first had in mind, or I'm playing something completely different because my first concept has been negated by a houserule.  Either way, my agency's taken a kick in the head - I can't play the character I originally wanted and therefore I can't affect the fiction in ways I might have otherwise.You're not always engaging with every rule.  Travel rules, for example, are rather irrelevant when standing in a throne room talking to a courtier.  But some rules - mostly those dealing with things like allowable character personalities, racial traits, and other 'always-on' stuff - you're engaging with at every turn. Most of the time that engagement is invisible; it's when it's not invisible that problems arise, usually to the detriment of player agency.</blockquote>

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