NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9081052" data-attributes="member: 6785785">The background features, more specifically. It’s not new at all. I’m sure no one reading along is surprised. Two out of three, anyway. Background features do. They allow you to declare you know someone, or that you have a contact, or that certain types of people will shelter or assist you. It depends on the background. They’re often overlooked, but they’re a great example of something that gives the player agency. It very often is.I go down the western fork in the road. I speak to the innkeeper.I choose the door on the left.These and many more instances of play that require no mechanics are exactly that. Some would argue that even these basic declarations are subject to DM approval… but pointing that out only serves to prove there is no player agency.We can go even further if we want to include instances where the system tells us what happens. I want to cast fireball… we know how it works, we don’t need the DM to allow anything. I declare an attack… we know how it works… I tell the DM what my character is doing, the system tells us if I succeed or fail.It seems to me that people want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to have super detailed worlds with elements and backstory that are paramount to play, and still claim that player agency is paramount. But that can’t be. When these two things come into opposition, a GM has to choose which matters more, and adjudicate accordingly. It depends, as I described above. If the ability for the player to say what happens is absent from play, then so is player agency.</blockquote>

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