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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 9111994" data-attributes="member: 7025508">I don't know why I did it, but I finally managed to wade through this gargantuan thread.Some observations (I had more, but I forgot most of them during the time it took to read this insanity):Early on a big deal was made about a GM saying "no" vs the rules/dice saying "no". I don't think it is such a big deal and unlike how several people seem to think, I don't think it really affects the player agency. There is the player's say, the GM's say and the system's say. Moving a thing from GM's say to the system's say or vice versa doesn't affect the player's say.But that is an undercurrent what I detect in a lot of this discussion. Many people seem to be super worried about what the GM gets to decide, much more than what the players actually get to decide.Also, given the length of the tread I would have imagined there had been more attempt to define agency. [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] has done good job and asked the right questions ("agency to do what?" for example,) but consensus doesn't seem to be even near and people keep talking past each other.[USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] defined it as "the ability to affect the shared fiction" or something like that. He has also expressed his preference for high agency games. But if that is the case and the definition is sufficient, why do the games he plays have all sort of rules that limit the player's ability to affect the shared fiction? Certainly even higher agency is achieved by just letting the players say what happens, no checks or such needed? No?Or is it perhaps not that straightforward? Is it perhaps that it is about meaningful choices, and giving the player too much authority erodes meaningfulness of the choices? For example if I was playing a murder mystery and my character could just "remember" clues I wanted into existence my agency to genuinely solve the mystery would be seriously harmed.There was also discussion about how in narrative games GM frames things in a manner which relates to the characters' wants/needs/fears etc. Now in my experience in most trad games GM does that sometimes too, and nothing in such games prevents doing so. It is just a matter of preference what you want the game to be about. I just don't have the foggiest what GM doing or not doing this has to do with the player agency. Granted, I would again feel that my agency to solve the murder mystery would be seriously hampered were the culprit be decided on the moment of revelation on basis of what would best challenge my character's beliefs!Oh, and Pemerton, we've been over this many times. It doesn't matter if you try to smuggle the reality editing via "knowing" or "remembering". It is still reality editing and you can dress up basically any setting addition/alteration in such a guise. It of course is fine to such a power to exist in some games, but I really don't get the need to try to obfuscate what's actually happening.</blockquote>

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