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<blockquote data-quote="soviet" data-source="post: 9083753" data-attributes="member: 6925338">I guess what I mean by player agency is the sense that the player's decisions are allowed to affect and drive play. Rules that are followed rather than vetoed are one way of increasing that agency. But I don't think that rules should be followed 'despite what the fiction allows' or 'even when it doesn't make sense'. I don't even recognise that dilemma, barring edge cases or very poor rulesets. As I said earlier in the thread, I think that it's trivially easy for a GM to find an in-universe justification for denying a player's action. And I think it's often just as easy for a creative player to find an imaginative reason they should allow it. Ultimately any GM is either looking for reasons to say yes or looking for reasons to say no. I prefer to say yes unless there really is a very good reason to say no. I don't find that 'the GM came up with a reason to say no based on imagined factors within the gameworld' to be any more realistic or plausible than 'the player came up with a reason to say no based on the same'.&nbsp; I don't think increased player agency and narrativism are necessarily synonyms but they do naturally fit together. One can increase player agency in any game without spilling over into narr though. I think it's still a label or dial that has some value. I can imagine gamist or sim play that also features a lot of player agency but it's in the service of reflecting/realising the setting or creatively solving obstacles or the like. Maybe the higher ranges of player agency are inherently narr or narr-adjacent though.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="soviet, post: 9083753, member: 6925338"] I guess what I mean by player agency is the sense that the player's decisions are allowed to affect and drive play. Rules that are followed rather than vetoed are one way of increasing that agency. But I don't think that rules should be followed 'despite what the fiction allows' or 'even when it doesn't make sense'. I don't even recognise that dilemma, barring edge cases or very poor rulesets. As I said earlier in the thread, I think that it's trivially easy for a GM to find an in-universe justification for denying a player's action. And I think it's often just as easy for a creative player to find an imaginative reason they should allow it. Ultimately any GM is either looking for reasons to say yes or looking for reasons to say no. I prefer to say yes unless there really is a very good reason to say no. I don't find that 'the GM came up with a reason to say no based on imagined factors within the gameworld' to be any more realistic or plausible than 'the player came up with a reason to say no based on the same'. I don't think increased player agency and narrativism are necessarily synonyms but they do naturally fit together. One can increase player agency in any game without spilling over into narr though. I think it's still a label or dial that has some value. I can imagine gamist or sim play that also features a lot of player agency but it's in the service of reflecting/realising the setting or creatively solving obstacles or the like. Maybe the higher ranges of player agency are inherently narr or narr-adjacent though. [/QUOTE]

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