Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9081049" data-attributes="member: 6790260">No. You should look at the context. I was asked for examples of player choices which cannot be mapped to character choices, or at least not mapped 1:1 with them.Sure. It's not character agency. But it is player agency.See, when you say things like this, this is why I talk about players being led around by the nose--and about tyrannical GMs who force players to obey, in your own words, mere "whims."What games? What systems? What rules? Just saying you see it is nowhere near enough. People see a lot of things.Which.Games.Do.That?Because you keep SAYING that these games exist. That there's a rule on page 44 which explicitly says it. But you have never--not once, not a single time--actually given me a game where such a rule exists. While I, and others, have given you game after game where it DOESN'T exist. Game after game after game where nothing of the sort occurs.Unless and until you actually give me a game where there's a rule on page X that says that, I think you are at absolute best grossly mistaken.So your players, by definition, have no agency whatsoever. Whatever you want to happen, you make happen, no matter what.Their choices are irrelevant. They will do what you have decided they will do. It's simply a matter of how long it takes them to clue into the "correct" choice. Lovely.You have said, repeatedly, that you will override what players are interested in, that in fact you aggressively do not care what they want out of a game. If they come out the other end copacetic to your goals, awesome; if they come out hating your guts, well, sucks to be them. Is that not correct?If so, why do you not apply that same concept one level higher? Instead of "running 5e because that's the only game players are willing to play" (meaning, you yield to the players' requirement that you run 5e), you go for the hilt, and tell people you just ARE running Call of Cthulhu or whatever and if they want to play some other game, sucks to be them, they can find a "buddy" DM that coddles them and never does anything they don't want to do etc. etc. whatever other things you think are bad about actually listening to others.First: How can I give you an example of something that does not exist? I am telling you that, in the entirety of the PbtA games I have played (which is easily 4-5 different systems), none of them have the kinds of rules you describe. How can I point to a page and say, "See? Look at the absence of a rule telling GMs to accept whatever a player invents." Seriously, you are asking for an impossibility. This is why I keep asking you to tell me what game--ANY game--that does what you claim it does. Because that's actually possible! It is actually possible to point to a page and say, "See, written on this page, it says 'the GM must accept whatever the player said.' " It is not possible to point to a book and say, "See, in the whole of this 120-page book, none of these pages say that!"Second: Above, I gave <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-player-agency-to-you.698831/post-9080569" target="_blank">an example of a (made-up, not actually real) Spout Lore roll</a>, which is a thing from Dungeon World (and similar such moves exist in other PbtA games, e.g. Open Your Brain to the World's Psychic Maelstrom from Apocalypse World). Someone in this thread explicitly called out Spout Lore, by name, as an example of a move that lets the player simply declare that something exists. I showed how that move actually works in practice, and that it does not permit the player to declare ANYTHING, let alone freely declare an advantage for themselves.So. Again. I challenge you to name any of these systems you claim to see "all the time" that have explicit rules forcing the GM to accept fiat declarations from players. Give me context. I am happy to go looking up the rules myself. But you have to actually name a game--one game--that actually works the way you describe. Unless and until you do, frankly, I'm calling BS on this whole argument.Why do you assume that telling the GM what happens means always giving yourself an amazing, unprecedented, unrealistic, overpowered advantage?Why do you instantly cast this in the most degenerate light possible?Why do you not account for the possibility of dialogue and discussion?Why is there no room for, as an example, giving a player the chance to explain what their childhood home looks like, under the condition that it has been attacked and set on fire by demons (remember, essentially every "narrative" game has the requirement that established fiction cannot be simply contradicted)? Or, for another example, describing what emotions they feel upon cresting the hill and seeing the shining city up ahead, and then saying what landmark they notice first? Etc. Because those examples are a HELL of a lot more like what playing DW is actually like.None of my players--not a single one, not even the most munchkin-y among them--ever even considered doing the kinds of $#!+ behavior you describe.</blockquote>

Verification