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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7331134" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think it is. I think Gygaxian dungeon crawling, though - of the sort that he talks about in his advice on Successful Adventuring in his PHB - is much less common (at least in proportionate terms) than it was c 1977.Well, this thread started with the question "What is worldbuilding for (given that we're not doing Gygaxian dungeoneering)?"The issue of "no myth"-type play only came up because some people said RPGing needs setting and hence RPGing needs worldbuilding in advance of play. The first is true; the second, though isn't - because there are well-established RPGing methods that generate setting in other ways.This was discussed in quite a bit of detail upthread.I think it is ultimately an uhelpful metaphor.In the real world, if I want to pick up a rock and throw it, that depends on (i) whether there are any rocks nearby, and (ii) a range of mechanical forces at work in my body, in my hand-rock interaction, in the motion of the rock through the air, etc.If I am RPGing, and I declare "My guy picks up a rock and throws it", whether or not that action declaration is successful depends on (iii) whether, in the shared ficiton, it is accepted that my PC is close to some rock, and (iv) what the action resolution mechanics say about picking up and throwing nearby rocks.The issues of agency that have come to the fore in this thread are about (iii) and (iv): who gets to decide whether or not it is true, in the shared fiction, that the PC is near a rock, and (iv) how is action resolution adjudicated.My contention is that if (iii) is primariy determined by the GM, either ahead of time (in writing his/her notes) or on the spot prior to any action resolution mechanics being invoked, then the GM has a high degree of agency in the game and the players correspondingly less. (Agency isn't always zero sum, but in this context the GM's unilateral power does indicate a reduced degree of power on the part of the players.)This is also the context for my remarks about the GM reading to the players from his/her notes: if a player says "I look for a rock", then in a GM-pre-authored backstory game that is a trigger for the GM to tell the player something. In my view, triggering the GM to tell you something isn't exercising a high degree of agency over the shared fiction.Now in some RPG styles player agency over the shared fiction is not a pre-eminent consideration. Eg in Gygaxian dungeoneering, the goal of play is to beat the dungeon, not to express your character by throwing rocks. And so the whole point of play is to learn what is in the GM's notes (ie what the dungeon looks like, where the monsters are, what their treasures are) so you can beat the dungeon by getting the treasure and (often) killing the monsters. In that sort of game, player agency is not about shaping the shared ficiton in any general sense, but about being able to put together the information gained so as to be able to come up with winning plays. To work, it depends on strong play conventions (ie what winning consists in, namely, earning XP; conventions around dungeon design, such as that it is typically if not always feasible to pick the dungeon off room by room; etc).I think that more contmporary play departs from those play conventions in various ways I've described in the OP and more recently just upthread. So I think the Gygaxian version of player agency probably has less relevance in much contemporary play.There's clearly a style of play that is quite popular (a lot of people seem to like The Alexandrian on "node based design" and the "three clue rule", for instance) but that - as far as I can tell - involves very little player agency over the shared fiction. My inference from that is that player agency over the shared fiction is not high on a lot of RPGers priorities. They prefer to be told stuff by the GM (normally this is described as "exploration" and "clues") and then put it together to work out the solution (eg who was the murderer? where are the cultists going to hold their ritual? what is the cure that will wake the sleeping prince? where is the McGuffin hidden? etc).My post not far upthread of this one elaborates on these ideas.</blockquote>

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