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="clearstream" data-source="post: 9100396" data-attributes="member: 71699">The above was already explained by the American philosopher Bernard Suits fifty years ago, in saying thatWhich he summarised asSuits' wrote in the spirit of a "Situationist", folk who were convinced that in the coming technological reign of leisure, play would replace work. In any event, agency is corrosive to games: it's suspension of agency that matters. In one sense, the "ideal" game would suspend all agency except that strictly needed to play it. You can observe that almost all TTRPGs are "unideal" in the ability for folk to play them different ways. To me that makes them ideal in a different sense, notwithstanding that it also leads to more arguments over how the game should be played!By my lights, one can correctly argue that one's prelusory goals (in particular one's list of outcomes, and the ways they ought be able to be influenced) are brightest and best. If they are brightest and best, then surely all players ought to adopt them equally. Thus, any game failing to supply ludic-agency matching said brightest-and-best-list is... well, not brightest and best. Dark and dour, I suppose. An ugly duckling.It's in that light (or gloom) that I interpret some posts to this thread. The question raised is - why shouldn't I enjoy the brightest-and-best rather than whatever ugly ducklings I'm presently surrounding myself with? To assess that for myself, it is obfuscating to try to in some sense count or scale agency, because, for example, I will want folk to have zero agency to achieve outcomes that are invidious! And, as the Defend example hopefully showed, I can benefit from a lower-agency mechanic that sustains interest in the outcomes. Presenting arguments for brightest-and-best in terms of more or less agency just begs the question. Restoring "unnecessary" suspensions of agency in itself doesn't improve a game: still yet to be explained is what is distinctly better about the commended outcomes and ways they ought to be able to be influenced?It's worth reiterating that last: game outcomes are very often - usually, in fact - made excellent through reductions in agency to influence them. If you like, agency is the marble that game designers carve their games from: we want David, not a featureless rectangular prism.</blockquote>

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