D&D General What is player agency to you?

[Vaalingrade]

I know, I find we are frequently at opposite ends when it comes to what we want from the game

I apologize for my obvious and blinding greatness.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I use my Noble background to get an audience.
'No'
Oh, can I try to persuade them to change their mind, or let me meet someone lower ranked?
'No'

As has been said, it all depends on the circumstances.

 

[mamba]

See, this is different.

If the noble feature generally works.. And then when it doesn't work, the PCs not only smell a rat but an adventure results? That, to me, is a win. And a great angle on the feature.

It's a far cry from the DM constantly shutting the feature down "for reasons." Especially if those reasons are never revealed to the PCs.

I am not sure it is different. I have consistently argued for the audience not being guaranteed and there has always been someone saying 'you can find a reason to let them have the audience anyway', and they are not wrong. I can set up the same scenario with an audience, it is just a matter of how the audience is arranged and what happens during it.

So the argument about 'should the player be able to get an audience because the feature says so or can the DM deny one based on circumstances / reasons' still applies. This is not a matter of why the audience is denied but of whether it can be denied at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course they can. At the end of the day, all games of D&D are GM created worlds. What I was responding to was the notion that a character couldn't have a connection baked into the game in a larger environment. That they could only find connections core to who they are (and in real life, I have at least a couple levels in 'Packer fan') in a small, local game. That hasn't been the case for me in the real world, so it seems not crazy to apply the same ideas to a game world.

I was merely saying that I find a game world that is created as if the player characters were the important protagonists is more interesting and feels like it has more depth. It's a notion that's largely at odds with, say, OSR play. I think people coming from that perspective believe the exact reverse of what I do. And we're both playing the game correctly. I try and go out of my way and say "I find" or "it seems to me" because, well it does. That doesn't mean other people can't play amazing games using an entirely different core set of beliefs.

Fair enough. Obviously I'm one of those people who believes the reverse of what you do.

 

[SkidAce]

Personally I don’t think a player has to be playing in bad-faith to use an ability when the GM doesn’t think it makes sense.

Theres a few reasons for this
1. The player and GM simply disagree about whether it makes sense.
2. The player isnt privy to all the information the GM is and so makes a flawed determination.

Agreed.

Seems like this was mentioned 20 or so pages back, but we keep running into walls of extreme polarized positions. Shame, cause there is value in the discussion.

 

[FrogReaver]

Agreed.

Seems like this was mentioned 20 or so pages back, but we keep running into walls of extreme polarized positions. Shame, cause there is value in the discussion.

If you only remember 1 page back then everything becomes new!

 

[Mort]

I am not sure it is different. I have consistently argued for the audience not being guaranteed and there has always been someone saying 'you can find a reason to let them have the audience anyway', and they are not wrong. I can set up the same scenario with an audience, it is just a matter of how the audience is arranged and what happens during it.

So the argument about 'should the player be able to get an audience because the feature says so or can the DM deny one based on circumstances / reasons' still applies. This is not a matter of why the audience is denied but of whether it can be denied at all.

I can only speak for myself, but for me it would be fine. And I was strongly arguing in favor of the feature.

We'll see what others say. But, for me, your proposed scenario is quite different from a flat refusal to have the feature work "for reasons."

 

[Maxperson]

If the GM is deciding what does and doesn't happen, the GM is exercising agency over the fiction. And I, as a player, am not - even though the game rules tell me that this is a place where I am entitled to do that!

I'm not going to try and tell you that you don't feel the way you do and shouldn't play in a way that you don't enjoy, but the above is a False Dichotomy. Agency isn't an all or nothing thing. The DM and Player can(and do) both have agency in a game like D&D.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To demonstrate that all games have a credibility test for player actions.

Then why can't we have a "credibility test" for GMs that likewise casts them in the worst possible light?

I thought most if not all were reasonable.

And I did not. I found most of them reaching at least a little bit, and some actively unfair.

Did you agree with the City of Brass example?

Not really. While there is always room for conflict between rival houses and different nationalities and the like, class identity has always been a factor in human economic, social, and political structure. Aristocracy generally recognizes fellow aristocracy, even if only to disparage or "put them in their place" etc. Like, let's look at the actual text here.

Feature: Position of Privilege
Thanks to your noble birth, people are inclined to think the best of you. You are welcome in high society, and people assume you have the right to be wherever you are. The common folk make every effort to accommodate you and avoid your displeasure, and other people of high birth treat you as a member of the same social sphere. You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to.

It seems quite clear to me that, from this text, a broad interpretation is intended. You aren't just welcome among the aristocracy of your specific Lichtenstein-sized country. "You are welcome in high society, and people assume you have the right to be wherever you are." That's painting in extremely broad strokes. "Other people of high birth treat you as a member of the same social sphere." That is essentially identical to my statements above about class identity. Aristocracy recognizes aristocracy.

Now, I could absolutely see this resulting in a delicate diplomatic dance required to secure a proper audience with a local noble in the City of Brass. I could see it being that this merely gets you the proverbial foot in the door, because genies can be picky and capricious. But it sure as hell should not just be, "Nope, that only applies to the duchy you came from. You get nothing from anyone else." As Soviet said, getting an audience does not at all mean you get what you want out of said audience. The genie might just gloat, or use it to exploit the PC, and I have an example that cashed out as exactly that.

Note, as usual, this isn't 5e. But it's what I would do in any D&D game with something like this, e.g. a 4e character with the Noble Scion Background or Noble Theme.

Spoiler

PCs needed a favor from a Jinnistani noble (essentially, getting fake papers for a moderately large group of people that would pass muster in most places, so no one would ask where these people really came from.) They got a proper diplomatic appointment and went to Mount Matahat, an earth-genie court in Jinnistan co-ruled by four children, two sisters and two brothers, of the original ruler of that place, who take turns being the Padishah Sultan(a) for 200 years at a time. Kavur, the elder brother, wanted to supplant his older sister Malikah early by getting the court collectively to raise a vote of no confidence about her leadership. But he did not tell the party this. Instead, he said he wanted to keep his involvement in their stuff quiet, so he would help them if they helped him with something first--and to do that, they would go to his younger brother Zubayr and help him with something, and ask as their boon that they be able to attend an upcoming masquerade ball. The party did this, got their invite and fancy clothes, and attended the party.

Thing is, this whole thing was a set-up from the beginning. Kavur knew that someone was going to be murdered at the party and that the murder would be framed on one or more visiting nobles. He sent the PCs there as perfectly deniable assets whose positions would be carefully monitored so they would be unquestionably innocent of the murder, and thus poised to aid in solving the mystery. But, more or less no matter what happened, Kavur stood to benefit:

• If his agents failed to solve the crime, his sister would commit a diplomatic incident, allowing him to exploit the chaos to secure his position in preparation for a slightly delayed no-confidence vote.
• If his agents "solved" the crime by identifying the wrong culprit, he could then swoop in, reveal that this was wrong, and thus prove his sister had improperly trusted outside foreigners, enabling the no-confidence vote.
• If his agents did truly solve the crime, his sister would be made to look incredibly weak--not only allowing a member of her court to be killed, but getting deceived into risking a diplomatic incident in the process. By revealing his part in ensuring the problem was resolved, he could force a no-confidence vote almost immediately.

The best result was, of course, correctly solving the crime, but even an abject failure would serve his needs because of plausible deniability. That's why he agreed to help them in the first place; it was practically impossible for them to cause him harm and very possible (indeed, it actually happened) for them to give him a significant boost.

That's the kind of thing you can get from a cunning, ruthless, amoral noble "granting" an audience to a fellow individual of good breeding and better sense. That's the power of saying "yes" and doing something new and better and dangerous with it, rather than finding a reason to say no because it is inconvenient or too much effort or not on the rails you've set.

Or you can just do the incredibly easy thing of, "I don't really want to give you that audience, so I'm just going to say no because your features, no matter how generally worded, just don't apply." That's a thing you can do, I guess.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not sure it is different. I have consistently argued for the audience not being guaranteed and there has always been someone saying 'you can find a reason to let them have the audience anyway', and they are not wrong. I can set up the same scenario with an audience, it is just a matter of how the audience is arranged and what happens during it.

So the argument about 'should the player be able to get an audience because the feature says so or can the DM deny one based on circumstances / reasons' still applies. This is not a matter of why the audience is denied but of whether it can be denied at all.

I absolutely think it is about why the audience is denied. And, further, that this is driving at the heart of the issue.

You can, very nearly always, find a way. And very nearly always, that way won't actually require that much effort. So, if it can very nearly always be done and done without that much effort, what is the reason for adamantly saying no? What benefit is gained from saying, "Nope, it's not worth my time to support this"? Because it sounds to me like the main benefit is not having to care about what your players have chosen and not having to adjust around choices you didn't expect.