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="SteveC" data-source="post: 9096924" data-attributes="member: 9053">I've been thinking about this thread a lot lately, especially since I'm both running and playing in a game at the moment. It gives me the chance to look at agency from both sides of the screen.I'm running Abomination Vaults in PF2. This is a dungeon crawl and the whole point of it is to explore the vaults and stop the big bad. That's baked into the cake for the game, and I had to get player buy-in at the start. If you want to open a cooking school or go on a world pilgrimage (both awesome ideas) this ... isn't the game for you. So that's less agency.But, I give the group as much autonomy as possible about exploring the complex and making allies or enemies with the factions they encounter. Some they have rolled initiative on sight with. Others they've negotiated with. They've tried to use their knowledge and abilities to figure out what's going on and tackle it in a different way than perhaps the module intended. And that's great. They seem to leave the game excited about what's next and coming up with plans for how to save the day. There are a couple of ticking clocks at the moment that they are just becoming aware of, so that brings a sense of urgency to the game so they can't do everything they might like, but I still give them enough time to do what's most important to them. I have high player engagement with the game, and the sessions are fun.I am playing in Dungeon Heist at the moment, and we're just about to wrap it up (at least I think so ... this is a "the princess is in another castle" adventure somewhat). The DM for this game is brand new, and is learning as we go. What's amazing is how well he's giving us agency about how to tackle problems. We have to acquire a MacGuffin and that's led us all over the city, but the DM has worked in our backgrounds into everything we do. I'm playing a bard and failed actor, and there have been so many scenes involving the theater and productions in the game. We tracked down an important location, and I was able to just bluff my way into the Green Room by knowing the culture and the people involved. Another character is a kobold from the dock ward, and he has known just about every important location we've had to go to. Even though a lot of the adventure is forced, we feel like we can explore it using our character's knowledge and backgrounds so that they make a real impact. And this is from a first time DM!What I'm trying to show is that even though these are pretty linear adventures, the GM/DM can still give a strong sense of agency to the characters by leaning into their backgrounds and just being flexible. I think both of these games are well within the confines of how D&D/PF2 are typically played, but flexibility and listening to the players has made both games better.Hopefully that sparked some thoughts from you.</blockquote>

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