D&D General What is player agency to you?

[mamba]

you'll note throughout the thread that if the scenario is agreed as ridiculous, no one is advocating for an absurd result.

no, I have definitely not noticed that, quite the opposite, maybe that is a difference too then...

Suppose a background said you can always find eggs and the group ended up on a demiplane with no life(and never had life) at all. Are you going to expect to find eggs because the background said you could?

I gave an example earlier of how it could work: a traveller to the plane brought eggs with them.

So you find a scenario where a separate traveler visited the plane just shortly before the party in the exact same location as the party, brought eggs with them, accidently dropped some without noticing and left, and all that just so the player with the feature to find eggs can do so on a plane that has no life, not ridiculous? If this is not ridiculous, I do not know what is...

 

[FrogReaver]

I also don't think the given decision has to be the "most reasonable" and can just be "one reasonable decision among many." I just find ridiculously unreasonable decisions to be off the table.

I try to avoid contrivance. And while I used the language most plasuible earlier - it was to drive home the distinction between that and selecting 1 of any number of plausible outcomes (plausible is a very low bar for me). Maybe it's better to say I prefer to lean toward the 'more' plausible narrations.

 

[FrogReaver]

So you find a scenario where a separate traveler visited the plane just shortly before the party in the exact same location as the party, brought eggs with them, accidently dropped some without noticing and left. And all that just so the player with the feature to find eggs can do so on a plane that has no life. If this is not ridiculous, I do not know what is...

I think the better word there is contrivance. An extreme contrivance.

Like, I think you would agree the resulting story isn't ridiculous. Man finds egg on lifeless plane left by traveler there not long before him.

In fact, Drama wise that's interesting. Who is this mysterious traveler that left an egg?

What we are objecting to isn't really the resulting story, but the introduction of contrivance into the simulation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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?

No, I would say you should do whatever you want. You should run the game in a way that makes sense to you, and which satisfies your players’ expectations.

If you were so inclined to honor the use of the ability, then I would suggest you find a way to make it work that is not ridiculous to you.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you were so inclined to honor the use of the ability, then I would suggest you find a way to make it work that is not ridiculous to you.

What about if there isn't one? What do you propose then?

 

[Mort]

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...

Except there is no real background feature that says this. This was expressly introduced as a "would you let this ridiculous background feature in..." As some a strawman to knock down (look how ridiculous your position is). Again no one is ACTUALLY advocating absurd results.

The actual feature is Wanderer:

In addition, you can find food and fresh water for yourself and up to five other people each day, provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth.

It has its own inherrent limitation and would expressly NOT work in a truly lifeless place.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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...

I wasn’t really involved in discussion on that example, really. The reason being that the example itself seemed ridiculous. As I said previously, I’d want to know a lot more about this situation before I judged it… but since it’s a hypothetical that seems designed as an attempt to score rhetorical points, there’s nothing more to know, and so there’s nothing to really discuss.

 

[mamba]

I think the better word there is contrivance. An extreme contrivance.

no, I like ridiculous, there is such a thing as too contrived. This has reached that point and then some.

 

[Mort]

Yea, that would be the soft way. If they are lucky they would say just find the "bar" closed.....for a bit worse, and used in this game....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....then the ghost moved on.

THIS is why you would get a complaint of lack of agency. You literally took control of the PC on a whim - simply because you objected to how they were roleplaying.

This would anger just about anyone!

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

If your top priority is making sure the player ability works as described, then we're simply not going to agree on that.