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What is player agency to you?
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<blockquote data-quote="Shiroiken" data-source="post: 9071602" data-attributes="member: 6775477"><p>Player Agency is a weird term, but it really boils down to the player being able to make meaningful decisions that impact the game and/or world. These can be in big or small ways, but players like to know their decisions actually matter. </p><p></p><p>For an example from my first 5E campaign, a group about to face a bunch of drow casts Heroes Feast to become immune to poison, since not only are drow known to use poison, but they also are known to have spiders as pets/allies. Little did they realize that they would also face the spider avatar of Lolth, whose primary form of damage was in the form of poison. As the DM, I could have altered the damage type to keep the encounter more lethal, but I allowed their decision to severely weaken the challenge. I fully expected at least 1 PC to die in this fight, but instead no one even fell to 0 HP. The player who's idea it was to use Heroes Feast felt ecstatic in their decision.</p><p></p><p>Note that illusionism, where the DM tricks the players into thinking their decisions matter is really the antithesis of player agency, even if the players don't realize it. Their decisions are irrelevant, with the outcome having already been decided by the DM. I used to be a big fan of illusionism until I played in a game where the DM accidentally dropped the illusion. After realizing that nothing we did mattered, we found ourselves recklessly trying to get ourselves killed, just to see if we still had even that level of control (we didn't).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shiroiken, post: 9071602, member: 6775477"] Player Agency is a weird term, but it really boils down to the player being able to make meaningful decisions that impact the game and/or world. These can be in big or small ways, but players like to know their decisions actually matter. For an example from my first 5E campaign, a group about to face a bunch of drow casts Heroes Feast to become immune to poison, since not only are drow known to use poison, but they also are known to have spiders as pets/allies. Little did they realize that they would also face the spider avatar of Lolth, whose primary form of damage was in the form of poison. As the DM, I could have altered the damage type to keep the encounter more lethal, but I allowed their decision to severely weaken the challenge. I fully expected at least 1 PC to die in this fight, but instead no one even fell to 0 HP. The player who's idea it was to use Heroes Feast felt ecstatic in their decision. Note that illusionism, where the DM tricks the players into thinking their decisions matter is really the antithesis of player agency, even if the players don't realize it. Their decisions are irrelevant, with the outcome having already been decided by the DM. I used to be a big fan of illusionism until I played in a game where the DM accidentally dropped the illusion. After realizing that nothing we did mattered, we found ourselves recklessly trying to get ourselves killed, just to see if we still had even that level of control (we didn't). [/QUOTE]
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