D&D General What is player agency to you?

[FrogReaver]

The difference here to me is the goal. Our goal is to have anything that happens be a reasonable of the circumstances in the world, even if unlikely. Your goal seems to be making sure the rules widget works as advertised, by any necessary means.

I don’t think this is quite accurate. IMO. He wants reasonability as well.

I guess the best example is watching tv and you notice the plot lines feeling contrived. Nothing in the show is totally implausible but maybe a bit too convenient when combined together.

Drama is aided by twists and turns, but too much contrivance detracts. Of course that threshold is different for different people and likely watching the show vs analyzing it later makes a different on that threshold as well.

I'm proposing that this discussion is about a matter of degree not of kind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Our goal is to have player abilities actually be useful for the purpose they are intended.

And the point is, this whole pretzel twisting to make them fit doesn't actually happen - they fit right in with all the other gaming/roleplaying.

That sounds like a friendlier re-phrasing of what I just stated.

 

[FrogReaver]

And the point is, this whole pretzel twisting to make them fit doesn't actually happen - they fit right in with all the other gaming/roleplaying.

I fully agree. I'd just add, the 'pretzel twisting to make fit' as you call it also doesn't have DM's going out of their way to say no to players either. They aren't designing the scenario just to say no. They aren't saying no just to say no.

 

[FrogReaver]

Rules widget works as advertised by any means necessary...

Really?

Our goal is to have player abilities actually be useful for the purpose they are intended.

Help me square these 2 statements.

 

[mamba]

a ghost would suddenly possess the character. Then the player would was forced to sit and do nothing as I played his character for a whole real life hour

in case you were wondering where your players lack agency...

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes. No-one is meekly accepting ridiculous or nonsensical justifications for ability use. We simply do not agree that some of the things expressed as impossible (meeting efreeti) are so.

I wish this was 100% true. I really do. Because if it was this whole tangent could be laid to rest right now.

But while some of the posts say this exact thing, others seem to say something entirely different. Now maybe, me and at least 3-4 other posters have been completely misreading - or maybe it's not a coincidence that we all come away with the same misreading. Maybe there's some substance to the way we are reading those posts.

 

[mamba]

I haven’t seen anyone advocate for a ridiculous scenario. I think that’s the difference.

what about the one we were discussing, the lifeless plane a char is searching for eggs on? Not ridiculous? If it is, why do you care about the feature they are using...

 

[FrogReaver]

I haven’t seen anyone advocate for a ridiculous scenario. I think that’s the difference.

I’ve advocated for finding a way to make the ability work as described without it being ridiculous.

Let me make a change: "You've advocated for finding a way to make the ability work as described without it being ridiculous to you."

But what if 'the way you find to make the ability work as described without it being ridiculous to you' is ridiculous to me? Is your proposal that I'm unreasonable? Is it that i'm a power hungry dm? Is it that I wouldn't know ridiculous if it slapped me aside the head?

 

[FrogReaver]

but doesn't help when we describe 'sides' when they aren't unified

Describing sides is shorthand, nothing more.

I get there's some people that have a strong aversion to the 'sides' language - but that's never made sense to me - if you take a position opposed to mine then we are on different sides.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So you're saying your goal isn't to have player abilities always work, and find whatever way in the fiction is needed to achieve that goal?

I look at it as the use of the ability tells us what happens next in the game world. Just as a die roll would. The same way we have to take a die roll and determine what it means, we should take the use of the ability and decide what it means.

Think of the result of a roll on a random table that, for whatever reason, seems unsuitable to the situation. But when you give it some thought, you find a way to make it work.

So although, for me, yeah it’s about honoring the player ability, it’s also about discovering what happens.