And yet, one of the reasons that characters were allowed saving throws against powerful spells and effects is that they should, in some way, have a say in their own fate. Coincidentally, that's one area where 4E differs from every other edition. I mean, I agree with your example, but there's still a (statistically meaningless) difference between the DM asking you to roll a save against death or the DM informing you that you failed your save against death.
From my perspective this has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with the DM allowing the 'fickle finger of fate' (yes, Laugh In was current in the early 70's!) to intervene. Imagine in an early Greyhawk campaign how things roll. There's a room with a poison trap in it. Remember, there ARE no thieves, all the players can do is RP their characters examining the room, possibly finding the trap, attempting to discern its function (purely by RP and this is purely a test of PLAYER acumen) and then SNAP! the trap goes off, the fighter is poisoned! Its perfectly reasonable for the DM to say at that point "OK, I'll give you a 50/50 shot that your character resists the poison, otherwise go roll up Fred#2!" There's nothing of player agency in this, its purely gamist, just a fun way to add a little luck to a situation which otherwise is purely DM fiat and player cleverness.
The GM of an RPG is the god who created that world. The PCs live in that world. The PCs should be more familiar with how things work in that world than the players should. Just like it's not meta-gaming to ask how many HP someone has left, because the PCs actually can see whatever the in-game reality is which corresponds to HP.
Sure, but we're talking about a situation where the players are making a choice, not asking for information. If the players seek more information through the agency of their characters, then I agree. The fact that the information is conveyed in the form of mechanical information (IE hit points) doesn't matter really, there's SOME meta-game involved there, but its not primary. In the case of a blind choice ALL the players can do is read the DM. What tone of voice does he use? Is he seeming to encourage one option or the other? Does the DM usually favor the right or the left? The players could ask if their characters can see or sense anything useful, and to the extent that the DM will provide information they may gain some level of agency.
They don't know. Just like you wouldn't know the outcome, if you were faced with that same decision in real life. The core of role-playing is imagining that you are the character, and making decisions from that perspective.
I think that just goes to show how far out of touch you are from what the game was intended to be, and how the game is actually played.
Out of touch? lol. The thing is, the quality of RP isn't predicated on the decisions you are being faced with being presented for any specific reason. It is NO less roleplaying because the choices are decided based on a dramatic agenda! Not one single bit less! Nor do I personally feel that you have some special say in how 'the game was intended to be played'. Again and again this theme has emerged, that only the agenda that you espouse is the real one true way.
This is not difficult for a skilled DM to emulate. The fictional world should also be constrained and driven by causal laws, even if the rules in the book only show us a sub-set of the ramifications of those laws, filtered by what is relevant to a sub-set of the population.
This again. Its far too vague and generalized, the DM has total leeway to construe facts and circumstances in any way he or she wishes, and then (though JC seems to close this last avenue) construe circumstances in whatever way favors his or her agenda. Frankly I don't even think any GM can do otherwise, the difference between what an RPG/Setting provides and a true world sim is like the difference between a grain of sand and the Milky Way Galaxy.
Very little within the game-world is not knowable to the players. It's just a question of what resources they care to spend on figuring it out. The GM creates the game-world, and populates it with monsters and NPCs and whatever else, but only the players can decide where the story goes. (By definition, the story is whatever happens around the PCs.)
But again, the point is that if the players are choosing from ignorance, then their choices are basically random, and what choices they are presented with, if any, is the key determinant, even if they do have choices, along with what information the DM chooses to release. Its still the DM that is at least often in the driver's seat. With a scene-framing kind of player-driven play the DM certainly isn't passive either, but if he's responding to the player's queues in a reasonable way then information isn't really the determinant of player agency, ability to select options is.
This sort of mismatch should sort itself out within a few sessions, and highlights the importance of talking about what kind of game it is before you start playing. I just wanted to cover the possibility that you might show up at my D&D game, and then not understand what your role in the game is supposed to be; you might feel that your choices don't matter, because you aren't asking the questions that would get you the information you might want in order to make informed choices later on.
This is entirely possible. The question is whether or not the players can really anticipate what they need to know. Its possible to be infinitely cautious and meticulous to try to avoid any surprises, but that's part of what I see as the legacy of this kind of play, it tends to be very procedural and dragged out. The players conceive elaborate backup plans, arcane procedures for opening every door and traversing every hallway, etc. It does work OK in the tradition of Gygaxian 'skilled play' in a dungeon-type environment where the 'right questions' are pretty obvious and relatively stereotyped. D&D just failed to evolve a way to extend that into a more general type of play, which is why we perceive problems in 2e.
As I've mentioned many times, no choice is ever truly random. If the left path leads to rocks falling, then there should be some way to determine that, or else it's a DM failure.
So, what is wrong with that choice being dictated by the rule of what is fun or interesting? In fact, isn't that what you are doing when you insure there's some way to figure out that rocks will fall?
The players have no way of knowing what any of those adventures will involve, or what threats or treasure might be there, unless they're meta-gaming (i.e. cheating). They have reason to believe that the first two options will involve some spelunking, and the last will involve a lot of walking. If any of them end up somewhere that the PCs don't want to be - giant spiders, for example - then they're free to abandon the quest and find a new one.
I think all that Pemerton is suggesting is that the DM figure out by some means, often how the players have selected character options, which one they're interested in and present that option? If they have a ranger who's an expert in desert survival and a wizard who is trying to capture a djinn, then probably B4 would be a good choice.
The decision to visit Tavern X is a decision to encounter those people who have also decided to visit Tavern X. If you then decide that the mysterious stranger possesses this trait, then you are letting player choice dictate her backstory.
There's no decision being made WRT the Mysterious Stranger, not unless the PCs can learn where she goes and have clues pointing at her as someone to investigate. There's nothing wrong with player choice dictating what the NPC does. Until the NPC shows up on stage she's not 'doing' anything, she's just an NPC that is off-stage. At the VERY MOST you may have decided she holds forth at Tavern Y, which isn't a lot of information. Is that the ONLY place she goes? Does it even matter to the nature of the NPC or was it just a random or haphazard DM choice?
If the DM makes decisions based on cues from the players, then the player is indirectly authoring the backstory. The player could cause other things to happen in the backstory, by asserting different preferences to the DM.
I think you mean something different by 'backstory' here. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is talking about whatever the player writes on his sheet to explain his character's background and history up to the point where the game started, and maybe beyond that the explanation narratively of the player's build choices and such.
The players are indeed, indirectly in most cases, authoring the story. Its a story about their characters. There's nothing wrong with them having a role in authoring it. The DM is still the primary world creator.
