NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 8016110" data-attributes="member: 6795602">Hear me out.  The more I read in this thread the more convinced I am that there are two types of agency and that this concept of 2 types of agency fully explains the conundrum we find ourselves in.  I believe those 2 types of agency are 1. Agency over the character and 2. Agency over the fiction.  For most of us, these concepts have morphed into a Chimera of sorts.  Some of us focus on aspects of the first type of agency and others on aspects of the seconds.  This also appears to be the reason that both sides can disprove the other and view the other sides focal aspects of agency as irrelevant and meaningless.  Essentially for most of us our general notion of Agency requires aspects of both Agency over the character and Agency over the fiction.  This is also why it's so difficult for us all to pinpoint when Agency occurs.It seems agency over character is the more straightforward and easy to understand concept.  You as a player must be capable of deciding what your character will do and the character in the fiction must be capable of an attempt to follow through with that decision.  Negating either of these things negates this kind of agency.  This kind of agency typically can be tested and thus determined at a definitive moment in play - when a player has a character attempt to do an action.  Whether the character succeeds or fails doesn't matter here, only whether he attempted the action.  Agency over the fiction is a bit more complicated (and perhaps there's a better term for this concept).  Essentially this is the kind of agency concerning whether a characters fictional actions are capable of having an impact upon the fictional world and it's fictional inhabitants.  More narrative style games come to mind here as the basic mechanics ensure that a characters fictional actions are capable of having an impact upon the fictional world and it's fictional inhabitants.  However, this concept isn't limited to narrative style games.  Games using dice to determine success or failure of a goal and approach would also fall under this same definition.  Then we get to the more controversial subject of whether "DM" decides is a resolution method that fits this definition.  My answer is that so long as the DM has the agency to ensure my actions are capable of that and so long as he chooses to allow my actions to be capable of that then I as player will have agency over fictional outcomes even though the DM sometimes determines my action fail with no dice involved. In fact using this framework I can pinpoint exactly when each type of agency fails.  The first fails the moment the player cannot have his character attempt something in the fiction.  The 2nd fails the moment anything takes away the capability for a characters actions to have an impact upon the fictional world or it's fictional inhabitants.</blockquote>

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