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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8014260" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is not the definition of player agency that [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] (who introduced the phrase into this thread) was using. And because I have been essentially following up on chaochou's posts, it's not the definition I've been using either.Yes, in more-or-less traditional RPGs players play the game by declaring actions for their PCs. I don't think that's controversial. But precisely because it's a ubiquitous feature of most RPGs it doesn't tell us much about ways in which they might differ.What @chaohou and I have been talking about is something in respect of which RPGs do differ, namely, the capacity of a player to exercise control over the content of the shared fiction. Probably the most important way this control manifests is by chaning or authoring the shared fiction. It can also consist in curating it eg by helping establish what the genre limitations might be on changes.So to determine whether I want to swim across the river actually involves or leads to an exercise of player agency in the sense that chaochou and I have used that phrase, it's not enough to note that it is legal for the player to say that thing as part of the gameplay. We need to look at how the player saying that thing then feeds into the process of establishing, maintaing, changing, etc the content of the shared fiction.This is not the way that most games I play unfold. Which is a point I've made upthread. The approach that you set out here tends to reduce player agency in ways that I dislike.For me, the canonical procedure is:(1) Is this a permissible action declaration? If there is no river (eg it's an illusion) or if the PC is bound and gagged or if the PC is a 1st level PC and the River is the Styx or for any other sort of reason, then it may be that the action is not permissible. Someone needs to decide this: if the fiction is not curated in this way it can lead to inanity or incoherence.When I GM I treat this as a matter of table conensus with the GM taking the lead - something like a chairing role. I prefer this approach to an approach of unilateral GM authority and curation because the latter reduces the agency the players enjoy over the shared fiction.(2) If the action declaration is permissible, determine whether a mechanical process is required or whether it just succeeds. In some systems, a mechanical process is required independently of the opinions of anyone at the table (eg Classic Traveller always requires certain checks to be made when a starship makes an interstellar jump; Apocalypse World has the notion that if you do it, then you do it - ie if a character in the fiction does a certain sort of thing, then the corresponding mechanical "move" has to be resolved). In some systems, if no one at the table cares about whether the action succeeds or fails, then it succeeds and play moves on. This is what Vincent Baker and Luke Crane call "say 'yes' or roll the dice". [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] posted an interesting example not far upthread of a player being the one who didn't "say 'yes'" to another player's actions (attempting to kill some winter fey) and hence mechanics being invoked to see which PC got to prevail in that particular situation.(3) If a mechanical procedure has been invoked, apply that procedure. This will generally tell us whose job it is to say what happens next, and in most reasonably traditional systems will set some constraints on what that is. These might be rather narrow - eg in Classic Traveller if a physical stat is reduced to zero as a result of combat resolution then the character in question is unconcsious in the fiction - or they might be broader - eg in Prince Valiant if Brawn or Presence is reduced to zero the character in question has lost the conflict but the GM is permitted to narrate this in a wide variety of ways, from swooning, or being tossed into the moat, to being dead, as seems appropriate given considerations of established fiction, verisimilitude, pacing, drama, etc. Generally if the player succeeds in the mechanical process a good chunk of what s/he was hoping for becomes true in the fiction, but not necessarily all of it; eg AW often allows "success with a cost/twist"; in Burning Wheel a Duel of Wits can be won but with a compromise required; etc.Step (3) is where "the dice decide". I think it is obvious that the way in which player agency operates here is quite different from "the GM decides". I've alread spelled this out in some detail upthread and so don't think I need to repeat it here.The first half of the first quoted sentence, and thhe whole of the second quoted sentence, are framed as if the fiction is self-actualising or exercises causal power. But it's not and it doesn't.How is it established, in the shared fiction, that there's nothing that can/will stop the PC from opening the door or that a tugboat can't do that or that there are these walls in this dungeon or even that (to go back to the OP) this NPC will call the guards on you if you insult him? Until we know the answers to these questions, we don't know much about how player agency is exercised in the RPG.I've given some answers to those questions, that are analytical accoounts of my own approach to play, in this and my previous posts. (In this post, see my steps (1) and (2) above). And I've explained how these differ from simple GM decides and how that difference creates room for player agency that GM decides would tend to exclude.</blockquote>

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