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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8014395" data-attributes="member: 6785785">That's probably a good way to phrase it. I would think that it's fairly safe to say, at least for the purposes of this conversation, that greater ability to exert agency or more opportunities to exert agency means that person has more agency in the game.Well, yes, if a character is subject to some effect that removes their ability to control their character, I think that's a clear reduction in the player's agency. It may be justified via any number of fictional reasons, but it still takes away their ability to change the game state. But I think this is just one example of how agency can be taken away. And I don't think that the reverse is true.....that giving a player control over his character may not in and of itself lend agency to that player, not if the system doesn't allow him to change the fiction in any way.Sure, that's true. A GM can always quantum ogre the situation and force certain outcomes. In such a case, agency may be taken away, but the illusion of it may remain. I'm not really a fan of that, and I think it's kind of a breach of play expectations.But that's not what I was going for. My example was admittedly simple.....but if we accept that there is something beyond the door, something that will only be revealed by getting the door open in some way.....then my character kicking the door open reveals that something....and then the fiction moves forward accordingly.I think we embrace a lot of limitations on our agency....genre, game mechanics, and so on.....and those are fine. I think these things are so accepted that they're being ignored by some....but they are absolutely constraints on how characters can interact with and alter the fiction.</blockquote>

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