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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 9096753" data-attributes="member: 6801845">I've explained multiple times. A low agency game would be one where the choices of the players don't really matter, where their decisions have little impact on the outcomes.  But a lot of people don't care about agency all that much, it is no the holy grail of gaming, it's not what a lot of people care about.  I'm playing Curse of Strahd right now and while we make some decisions that theoretically matter, it's a linear campaign.  But that's okay, I'm still having fun playing, which is what I care about.  Frankly a lot of DMs simply aren't very good at running freeform campaigns, they just don't get how to make them work.  I started playing Dragon Heist a while back and it was a lot of fun.  We started a business, convinced a ghost to be our bartender, had a lot of fun with it.  Then COVID hit and it just fell apart.  Earlier this year had a chance to play it again and ... blah and dull.  Nothing against the DM, he's a nice guy, but he just didn't understand how to use the book as more of a setting book than a linear module.As far as agency?  A person has agency if they have a decent understanding of goals and ways to achieve those goals.  They don't have to have perfect understanding of what consequences of actions will be, but they should have a decent idea.  They don't always have to achieve goals but they should feel like they had a shot, especially when they're making the high risk but high reward choices.My definition of agency has little to do with games, game terminology or specifics.  It's that people can make meaningful choices within the constraints of the game, society or their current situation to have a decent shot of achieving their goals with a reasonable understanding of risk and reward.I like to think I have agency in my own life even though there are plenty of constraints and limitations on what I can do.  I don't control anything outside of what I personally do or say, I don't always know exactly what will happen when I try to achieve a goal.I view games the same way.  The exact options the player has don't matter.  What matters is that they have options that they understand and have, at least most of the time, have a decent idea of consequence to success or failure.There are many different ways to give people a sense of agency in a game.  No game has the corner on the market of agency, or fun.</blockquote>

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