D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Pedantic]

We could perhaps just agree that 5e's backgrounds are poorly thought out and explicated, and could do a much better job of spelling out what precisely they do.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To be fair, I get player declarations. I really do. I mean, even when we were kids, and my friend's PC found, trained and started riding a giant eagle, and he said to me, the DM: "Wouldn't it be cool if I had a claw on a chain that I could attack with? Could we try to do that?" And three sessions later, after having to melt his precious armor, he had that exact weapon. That is a player creating the fiction. But, there is a clear distinction - it is out of character. And even if it was in character, it would probably be one of those in/out of characters.

But what you want. What you really really want, are simple examples. And...

The examples you crave will never be given without a long, ponderous, and often heavy-handed dose of vocabulary of non-succinct terms. I have read this book before, and it never ends the way I want it to.

Well, I don't necessarily want examples per se. I just keep getting told that a huge swathe of TTRPGs out there very specifically work by having a rule on page XX which explicitly says that the player can just instantly fiat declare that they have an advantage or benefit, and further, that the GM can do absolutely nothing but agree unquestioningly.

I have asked for no more than the name of an RPG that works like this, where it is explicitly written on the page. I'm perfectly happy to go look it up myself, as I did with Fate and Blades in the Dark. Now, if I am unable to find the rules text or commentary upon it, then perhaps I might not be so accepting, but I am quite willing to do the legwork here. Instead I have repeatedly gotten platitudes, with the exception of a handful of cases that literally don't say what is claimed here (e.g. DW's Spout Lore move doesn't let players declare anything at all except how they learned a fact...that the GM told them.) Rather than a response on how these things actually are the unacceptable thing—player declares, without constraint, fiat advantage and GM has no choice but to accept it—I have had all sorts of side conversations and responses that I am somehow insulting D&D or engaging in inappropriate argumentation or whatever.

I just...I keep being told that the way I play involves, in the explicit rules, openly crappy behavior from the player with literally absolutely no defense for the GM. I have asked prople to demonstrate this. No one has. Yet somehow it continues to be okay to make these completely false claims about essentially an entire branch of gaming, while it is utterly unacceptable to merely speak in aggrandized words about the criticisms.

I'm terribly, terribly tired of being told that essentially every version of a playstyle ALWAYS contains an absolute horror show, and when I ask (politely, impolitely, angrily, doesn't matter) which games these are, nobody can actually answer.

 

[Mort]

the text, if the Noble background said it enabled you to once a day lift a weight of a ton, you also always can do so. As soon as there are external dependencies, there is no guarantee.

Specifically the “Work with your DM to come up with an appropriate title and determine how much authority that title carries” to me means the DM has a say in this, and that can still be on the fly because not every possible situation was covered beforehand.

This is where "Be a fan of the players..." comes in.

As long as the result is interesting and leads to fun/interesting places - it shouldn't be a problem.

For example the background feature really only states "a local noble..." The DM can certainly decide that a specific noble is simply not available and substitute a different one (that just so happens to be directly involved/opposed to what the PCs are trying to do, perhaps?) if the circumstances dictate.

 

[mamba]

I think that in the case of the Noble background feature the DM needs to have a very good reason to flatly deny it. That doesn't mean the audience needs to happen right this instant when it's maximally convenient for the PC.

no disagreement to any if this, all I am saying is that there is no guarantee to get one, and I repeatedly said the default is to get one, to not get one requires a good reason

 

[pointofyou]

no disagreement to any if this, all I am saying is that there is no guarantee to get one, and I repeatedly said the default is to get one, to not get one requires a good reason

I think "the default is to get one" is consistent with "the player can reasonably expect to get one." I also think that if the player doesn't know about the reason it's worth considering it's not a very good reason.

 

[mamba]

This is where "Be a fan of the players..." comes in.

As long as the result is interesting and leads to fun/interesting places - it shouldn't be a problem.

being a fan of the players means rooting for them, it does not mean throwing a meteor on the dragon that was about to TPK them because they screwed up the encounter horrifically

If the realistic result is ‘no audience’ then that is what they get. If a better result is ‘audience but they get stonewalled’ or ‘audience, but with an assassination attempt’ then that could also happen.

 

[mamba]

I think "the default is to get one" is consistent with "the player can reasonably expect to get one." I also think that if the player doesn't know about the reason it's worth considering it's not a very good reason.

we are still in agreement, which you can see from my previous posts. My point simply is that there is no guarantee

 

[Mort]

being a fan of the players means rooting for them, it does not mean throwing a meteor on the dragon that was about to TPK them because they screwed up the encounter horrifically

If the realistic result is ‘no audience’ then that is what they get. If a better result is ‘audience but they get stonewalled’ or ‘audience, but with an assassination attempt’ then that could also happen.

This is exactly where my mind went. An audience means a meeting. No guarantee the noble isn't waiting for them with a large contingent of guards in tow!

If the PCs royally pissed of a noble and then DEMAND a meeting - they get one (it saves the noble having to track them down) but it isn't likely to go down how they want!

 

[TwoSix]

Talking about "increased player agency" in a game that explicitly allows players to create the fiction is not actually about player agency; it's just about players having authority (either through rules or style of play) to author fiction. That's not "agency," it's just a different way of using the rules.

That's where we differ, then. I would explicitly define that distinction as falling under agency.

Like most of these discussions, it's just semantics. And, more importantly, people assigning normative values to the words people are using that aren't intended. Playing a game with more or less agency doesn't make you a better or worse player, no more than Mike Trout is somehow a worse athlete than LeBron James because basketball players have more overall agency within their sports.

 

[TwoSix]

I take a different approach.

The feature (position of privilege) allows exactly what it says - basically anywhere you happen to be. Stuck in the City of Brass (elemental plane of fire) - you can get an audience with a noble if you really want to. This is a great way to drive the game forward! And it can really lead to fun and interesting things happening.

That's generally the way I play it, too. Like, in my Ravnica game one of the players used the "Ship's Passage" feature from Sailor to find a barge in the sewer systems, to get around a blockade of undead sanitation workers.