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What is player agency to you?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9125690" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>This prompted two thoughts:</p><p></p><p>(1) If there is stuff in the fiction that you want to <em>matter</em>, and your current mechanical framework isn't making it matter, then you need a better framework! (I think this is a version of [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s point upthread.)</p><p></p><p>(2) In many areas of human life, it is understood that there is a difference between allocating opportunities via (say) turn-and-turn-about, or via (say) the toss of a coin, than via the decision of another person. Doubly so when the other person is also one of those to whom opportunities are being allocated!</p><p></p><p>The point of the dice roll in AW or in BW - despite their important technical differences - is fairly similar: it establishes who gets to take the lead in having a say over the shared fiction. This also often involves establishing constraints that govern whoever gets the next say, so the agency of that person who got to take the lead ramifies into the circumstances where they no longer have the lead.</p><p></p><p>Replacing the randomiser with the decision of a spectator would be a non-negligible change. (Consider how controversial this would be as, say, a change to the rule for determining which captain gets to make the bat/field call in a cricket match.)</p><p></p><p>Replacing the randomiser with the decision of a game participant is a change that it seems to me quite obviously and profoundly alters the distribution of agency.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9125690, member: 42582"] This prompted two thoughts: (1) If there is stuff in the fiction that you want to [I]matter[/I], and your current mechanical framework isn't making it matter, then you need a better framework! (I think this is a version of [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s point upthread.) (2) In many areas of human life, it is understood that there is a difference between allocating opportunities via (say) turn-and-turn-about, or via (say) the toss of a coin, than via the decision of another person. Doubly so when the other person is also one of those to whom opportunities are being allocated! The point of the dice roll in AW or in BW - despite their important technical differences - is fairly similar: it establishes who gets to take the lead in having a say over the shared fiction. This also often involves establishing constraints that govern whoever gets the next say, so the agency of that person who got to take the lead ramifies into the circumstances where they no longer have the lead. Replacing the randomiser with the decision of a spectator would be a non-negligible change. (Consider how controversial this would be as, say, a change to the rule for determining which captain gets to make the bat/field call in a cricket match.) Replacing the randomiser with the decision of a game participant is a change that it seems to me quite obviously and profoundly alters the distribution of agency. [/QUOTE]
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