By the way, somebody compared 4e to Dungeon World but I really struggle with that comparison.
Dungeon World has even fewer specific abilities than 5e. Almost everything you do (or try to do) falls under a very general/broad skill, like "Defy Danger" or "Spout Lore", and every character can use any of them. The DM then has nearly unlimited authority to interpret the dice results.
I only vaguely recall the post you mention, but it may have been in reference to how constrained the DM is with regard to the rules. Dungeon World GMs are very constrained by D&D standards. The rules in the GM section of the Dungeon World specifically say how the agenda, principles, moves, fronts, etc. are a prescription for how they are to run the game rather than tips or guidelines on how best to play. A common perception is that D&D 4e DMs are constrained in a similar fashion and, while I find this to be true in practice (even when I run D&D 4e), it's not true by the rules.
Of posters on this board, I think the one who has the most to say about similarities between GMing 4e and GMing DW is [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION].
On the player/PC build side, I would point to class/character abilities that are designed to deliver thematic/archetypical outcomes rather than model ingame causal processes. (In 5e terms, stuff like (say) action surge or second wind but more of it, with greater width and depth.)
On the GM side, I would point to the whole orientation towards framing "entry points" rather than outcomes, and "playing to see what happens".
I also think it is a bit misleading to say that "a Dungeon World GM has almost unlimited authority to interpret the dice results". That doesn't convey how DW is meant to be run. (And saying the same thing about a 4e GM adjudicating a skill challenge would be similarly misleading.) The GM is expected to interpret the dice results having very close regard to the fictional positioning of the character, the broader fictional context, the player's stated intent for his/her PC, the thematic/genre context, etc, always pushing towards conflict and towards clear stakes that speak to the players' (and PCs') expressed concerns.
Another fantasy RPG that resembles DW in this sort of way (and hence whose GMing advice is very helpful for 4e!) is Burning Wheel. The key stricture that BW states for GMs is lifted straight from another Vincent Baker game, Dogs in the Vineyard, and is expressly labelled "Vincent's Admonition" (see eg BW Gold, p 72):
say yes or roll the dice. Luke Crane glosses it in this way:
When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.
That is good advice for 4e too, in my view. (Though 4e uses very different conventions for setting DCs/obstacles, which make it much less gritty than BW.)
I think we're using "player agency" much differently. It seems like you are using it to mean "range of available mechanical options".
So if, in 4e, a player doesn't have that particular daily ability, wouldn't he/she have to play "Mother May I?" in order to try it? And what would the DM say? "No", right? So that's absence of player agency (by your apparent definition).
Is there a move in 4e that allows a player to stab an enemy in the eye, messing with their depth perception and giving them a penalty to range shots? (Sorry, I'm not familiar with 4e so I don't know what whacky abilities are in there.) So if a player wants to do that, and the DM gets to decide yes/no, that's lack of player agency?
That's a very weird definition of player agency.
I use "player agency" to mean "the player and nobody else decides what the player does and thinks".
In the last sentence, should the third occurence of
player read
character?
When I talk about
player agency, I mean the ability of the player to shape (or "impact") the shared fiction. In some D&D games, the player has little such capacity - s/he can decide the feelings of his/her PC, and perhaps choose clothing, hair colour, etc, but the way the rest of the fiction unfolds is determined (either in advance, or in play) by the GM. (In the Alexandrian's node-based design variant of this, the player might get to decide the sequence in which a series of predetermined fictional events unfolds, and thereby perhaps change the peripheral colour of some of those events, while not changing their core content or significance.)
In another
recent thread, I tried to explain an idea around a certain sort of very limited player agency, in which the players get to choose the sequence and rate of resource expenditure over the course of play, but not much else (see around post 262ff, and the comparison of certain play approaches to solving sudoku or crossword puzzles).
In other D&D games, the players have a lot of capacity to change the fiction that goes beyond their characters - not primarily by abilities around backstory introduction (which, as I posted upthread, is fairly uncommon in D&D) but via action declaration for their PCs. I would describe this as the players having a lot of agency. I think classic Gygaxian D&D featured this sort of player agency, although the fictional situations that were in play were very narrow and somewhat artificial in scope (the dungeon). I think 4e is also well-suited to play in which players have this sort of agency.
Some approaches to "GM empowerment" can be an obstacle to this sort of agency, because if the GM cannot be bound by the outcomes of player action declarations for their PCs, then the players can't really impact the fiction - all they can do is try to persuade the GM (which is the "social agreement for resolution of conflict" that Luke Crane expressly eschews in the passage quoted above).
I don't know 4e well so I'm not sure what's in there and what isn't, but I'll hazard a guess that Paladins still had Detect Evil rather than Divine Sense. (Even if I don't have that right, this example should be illustrative.)
So in 4e if a Paladin said "I'll stare into the cave and see if I can sense the presence of any Fey" the DM might say "No way."
But in 5e the Paladin just declares "I'm using my Divine Sense" and roleplays it out.
And even if there isn't a single thing you can do in 5e that it's in 4e, there are still a universe of possible actions that aren't in either game. So the difference is a matter of degree and not a fundamental distinction.
It's hard to convey what is distinctive about 4e in this respect - but its depth of player resources, and its tight guidelines on setting DCs and adjudicating consequences, encourage a very different approach to improvised actions from traditional or even 3E D&D.
This old post talks about this:
This example is made up, but is very close to some real play from my 4e game.
The PCs are investigating an old catacomb. One of them is a plading of the Raven Queen. The player of that PC says "I'm looking out for any signs of Orcus infestation, and trying to sense if his evil influence is present".
In a simulationist game, the GM consults his/her notes, or perhaps rolls an encounter check. In a scene-framing game, the default answer to the player's question is "You see a niche with a statute in it. It's of Orcus." Or, perhaps,"Yes, he's here. [Roll d10] Take 5 psychic damage as the sense of evil ovewhelms you!"
What does the statue mean? What is the focus of Orcus's malign presence? That's to be worked out by the GM and players in the course of play: the little narration I described has framed the scene (it's a non-combat one involving the presence of Orcus in the catacomb) and now it's up to the players to engage it via their PCs.
As [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] pointed out in that thread (I think - or another thread around the same time), in 4e imposing an ad hoc d10 of damage (at 1st level) or an ad hoc 4d12 (at 30th level) is not the sort of punishment that it would be in other versions of D&D. For this sort of reason, that follows from the extent of player resources, the GM can be far more loose, and in many respects more permissive, in setting stakes for checks and finding out what happens.
I think 5e, at least from say 3rd level or above (once PCs aren't so fragile) might be amenable to being drifted in this sort of direction, but its resource structure (asymmetric across classes both in recovery times and in reliance on GM adjudication between spells and non-spells) could make it harder. I'm sure that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] or S'mon could speak more to this if they have the time and inclination.
EDIT: This seems relevant to the topic of
player agency:
Your example merely proves that point. Action? That's the player's call. "I use my action to make a diplomacy check to convince that guard to let us by". Look at the quoted text. "The Dungeon Master sets the DC using the Difficulty Class by Level table". Players know their level. They know the DCs. Heck, they might even have the table in front of them. Barring an outrageous DC modifier (which, the DM could do, but then becomes a whole other issue), they know what the roll has to be. Nothing in that says the DM calls for the roll. Nothing.
It's an action, and it has a defined outcome: "Success: The creature achieves the desired influence." That right there? That is a defined, codified outcome.
To my mind, I don't see how it could be otherwise: if succeeding on a check doesn't result in the player (and PC) achieving the desired outcome, then what was the check for?
The question is not strictly rhetorical - I think there are various answers that can be given.
What I think 4e has in common with DW, BW and similar games, though, is that the whole point of a check is to determine whether the fiction changes in the way the player wanted (if the check succeeds) or some other undesired way (if the check fails, and hence the GM gets to narrate the unhappy outcome).
As for "Yo, no way the King can beat my DC! He has to hand over his crown, queen and kingdom!" - that is all about framing checks. What is within the scope of a Diplomacy check? What is within the scope of an Athletics check (eg what is the DC to jump from the earth to the moon)? 4e doesn't answer that question directly - it is left for the GM and table more generally to establish organically. In my game, at 16th level, I allowed an Endurance check by the player of the dwarven fighter/cleric to test whether the PC could stick his hands into a forge to hold an artefact steady as the artificers tried to grasp it with their tongs so as to reforge it. The rulebooks don't set a DC for that: rather, they tell us (in broad terms) what it means to be a mid-paragon tier PC, and I as a GM then extrapolated at my table by reference to those broad terms in conjunction with the details of our play.
Is it a permissible check for a 1st level PC to try to persuade a King to hand over crown and kingdom? No - the description of the tiers makes that pretty clear. What about a 21st level PC? Depending on the details, a check may not even be required - the GM might just "say yes" because, in the fiction, it makes no sense that the king would even think about saying no to a demigod.
To my mind, that's pretty much the opposite of "codified results", accept for the basic principle that once the check is framed, then if the roll is a success the desired outcome occurs.
LostSoul had a good post, a while ago now, on this particular feature of 4e:
I think this has to do with the relationship between colour and the reward system in 4E. How the imagined content in the game changes in 4E as the characters gain levels isn't quite the same as it is in 3E. I am not going to pretend to have a good grasp of how this works in either system, but my gut says: in 4E the group defines the colour of their campaign as they play it; in 3E it's established when the campaign begins.
That's kind of confusing... let me see if I can clarify as I work this idea out for myself.
In 3E, climbing a hewn rock wall is DC 25. That doesn't change as the game is played (that is, as fiction is created, the game world is explored, and characters grow). Just because it's DC 120 to balance on a cloud doesn't mean that characters can't attempt it at 1st level; they'll just always fail. The relationship between colour and the reward system doesn't change over time: you know that, if you can score a DC 120 balance check, you can balance on clouds; a +1 to your Balance check brings you that much closer to success.
In 4E, I think the relationship between colour and the reward system changes: you don't know what it will mean, when you first start playing, to make a Hard Level 30 Acrobatics check. Which means that gaining levels doesn't have a defined relationship with what your PC can do in the fiction - just because your Acrobatics check has increased by 1, it doesn't mean you're that much closer to balancing on a cloud. I think the group needs to define that for themselves; as far as I can tell, this is supposed to arise organically through play, and go through major shifts as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies enter the game.
