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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9042197" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I think it's more complicated than a "yes absolutely meaningful"/"no not at all meaningful."If you have two choices, and you have no idea what those choices entail, that seems pretty clearly lower on the agency totem pole than having two choices where you have some idea what they will entail. Using your T-intersection analogy, we could compare the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The group is lost, having fallen into an abandoned ruin. They have no idea where they are, nor what could potentially be in either direction, and may not necessarily be able to come back later. The choice is...pretty much devoid of impact, even if technically the results would be different had they chosen differently.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The group is exploring. They know some rooms in the dungeon are very dangerous, but there's lots of treasure as a result. They will go to as many locations as they can, but picking a wrong turn early can make their lives a lot harder or cause them to cut out early. The agency is small, but still present.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The group has a map, but it's not entirely reliable. They reach an intersection. The map is vague or cryptic, but they have at least some notion of what lies in either direction. Again, the agency seems weak but present, perhaps hinging in part on what the players are able to glean from the map or their surroundings.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The group has a map and it's reliable. They have a good idea of what to expect in any given location, at least in terms of what the room is for. Whether they know what defenses to expect is another matter. Moderate agency--ultimately both directions are gonna happen unless there's some kind of one-way passage, but priorities matter.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The group knows they can't take both paths, and has some moderate idea of what lies in each direction (perhaps taking a road that forks, with a map describing the different locations.) This seems like the maximal agency version of this choice, because their decision is informed (even if not perfectly so), there are real and observable consequences, and there won't be any backtracking to take both paths.</li> </ul>Again, I think it's more complex than that. If the choice can be replaced by a coinflip--because there is no reason to choose one thing over another--then it doesn't really make much difference whether the actual results are different. How could you possibly tell, unless you eventually get both things, at which point...did you really choose which, or simply the order? Again, I think these things result in weak agency, rather than no agency. It's not that it's a totally fictitious choice like quantum ogres or illusionism, but rather that the agency involved...doesn't really seem to amount to very much.This might also explain why some folks, who are otherwise adamant about preserving agency, don't seem to be bothered by certain forms of illusionism, quantum ogres, and other false-choice techniques. That is, they care about "strong" agency moments, and want to support those, but "weak" agency moments (like picking between two nigh-indistinguishable paths, about which you know more or less nothing) are sufficiently thin that it does notseem to be a loss to abrogate them.</blockquote>

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