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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 9105140" data-attributes="member: 5142">(1) Oofta, I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with your basic definition of player agency: i.e., it's what the player can do when playing the game. Where you say that you do not distinguish between player agency and character agency, I go one step further by saying that there is only player agency. Character agency to me is non-existent because the human player in real life is the only person who is actually playing the game. The human person may be doing things primarily in terms of roleplaying the character in the fiction, but they are nevertheless the actual doers rather than the character. I understand that in D&D, the player's primary means of affecting change and doing things in the game is through their character in the fiction. But my point is that it's not just that even in D&D. So we are dealing with a "yes, and..." situation. I gave the example of a player deciding to spend Inspiration in 5e. Regardless of how you, I, [USER=7040616]@Raiztt[/USER], or [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] may feel about Inspiration as a mechanic, spending Inspiration is something that the player rather than the character decides to do. So I believe if we are talking about player agency, we need to be aware that it's not just at the level of what the character decides to do in the game. There are other tools that the player may have to affect change. This is NOT an argument to the effect that some games have more agency than another. In case you miss that, I repeat myself again. I am NOT making an argument that some games have more agency than others. I am simply stating that player agency is not just about what the character does by interacting with the game fiction because a player in D&D can do more than that so their agency is more than that. (2) I am wholly uninterested in the urinating contest some people are having about what games have the most agency.</blockquote>

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