I see this one thrown around a lot. And I've noticed cerain posters use it a certain way, while others seem to have a completely different definition for the term.
I'm an oldschool gamer. I started playing basic D&D right around when 2nd edition AD&D was released. Back then, nobody blogged about the game, terms like "agency", "narrative", or even "railroading" were not in common usage.
So I wanted to set the record straight, I went to google.
First result for "player agency" is this , which is interesting and gives a pretty good basic answer but it's really directed towards computer games rather than pen&paper RPGs.
Searching a little deeper, the best result relevant to D&D seems to be this article
Now, these are just things I found online, not really pushing my own opinion on this so far, but I'm curious if I've already ruffled some feathers. Is the above article accurate, or seen as some sort of troll/missinformation source?
The crucial point that I see in the above article, which makes it's definition of agency distint from common usage on these boards, is that agency is not about lack of choices- it is about meaningless or illusionary choices.
A player doesn't lose agency because he can't cast a given spell- he loses agency if he casts the spell, but the DM creates a situation where the casting is instantly negated and nothing changes.
A player doesn't lose agency when told he can't use a certain weapon- the agency is lost when the DM tells him he can use it while simultaneously making the weapon worthless or ineffective.
Lack of choices is just a realistic part of life, and can fit into an RPG just fine- that isn't an accurate representation of lost agency.
Agency is lost when the DM tells you you can try something, while he actually knows it has essentially no chance of making anything happen other than what he originally intended to happen anyway.
Agency is simply the capacity to act. This is how I use the term. It is in accordance with online sources as well.
A DM that denies a player character's capacity to act is denying that player's agency. If the DM says, for example, that a player cannot have his or her character try to do a thing because it would be "metagaming," then the DM is denying the player's agency based on how the DM thinks the player is arriving at decisions for his or her character. This would be an acceptable thing for the DM to do at some tables. It would not be acceptable at mine.
Of course, a character acting to try a particular thing has no guarantee of success. The DM must decide on whether the action the player has his or her character take succeeds, fails, or is uncertain. In the latter case, mechanics and dice may come into play to resolve it. Narrating the result of the adventurers' actions is the role of the DM as defined by the rules of the game and occurs after players have exercised their agency to make choices in the form of trying to take specific action in the context of the game world. So while a player may express agency in the form of having the character try to escape being tied up, the DM says how that turns out, sometimes calling for an ability check when the outcome is uncertain.
For me, agency is enabling PC actions to shape the campaign and adventure.
The removal of agency is not so much the “two path choices, but both have the same encounters” in that article, but rather more like “the PCs can aid one of two factions in the adventure. They decide to aid a third one the DM didn’t think of, and the DM says they can’t do it, or that it’s the same as if they had aided one of the two initial factions.”
It’s when a GM (as happened to me at a con over the weekend) tells us that no, we can’t come up with a clever strategy, we just have to charge in and attack.
Ralif_Redhammer wrote:
To address your specific examples given how I use the term:
Karnos wrote:
not really pushing my own opinion on this so far
I wouldn't base any understanding of agency off the quantum ogre scenario. The only way for the player to know if they lost agency in that scenario is for the player to read the mind of the DM. Since the loss of agency cannot be proven/shown then the whole complaint is invalid and the real issue is simply about lack of trust in the DM.
It's a term from The Forge. Generally, it's used by people trying too hard to turn RPG discussions into academic discussions. I find it best to avoid Forgisms and just say what you mean in plain ordinary English.
So just say "Things your character can try to do" instead. Everyone understands you when you put it that way.
I agree Quantum Ogres (or Schrodinger's Plot) do not necessarily have to invalidate agency. They can, but it's not a requirement for them just by existing. Depends on how they are used.
True, many adventure modules are written with a fixed climax, that will be reached no matter what actions the player's choose along the way. This doesn't remove their agency, but it can be bad railroading (one of the issues with pre-made adventures) if their choices don't impact the climax in any way, or if their options are severely limited along the way. The 5e adventures are less "railroady" and more "open world" than some in older editions but they still pretty much all lead up to a climactic fight no matter what the player's choose to do, just in general what they do does impact how the climax starts out.
Agency is only lost when they have no control over their character's actions, but this isn't always a bad thing. If they're captured by orcs, tied up, and dragged back to the orc camp but can't escape until the rest of the party rescues them that's a loss of agency during that period of time. It servers a plot purpose and is fine, though the player should at least be given a chance to try to escape, even if the DM knows it'll most likely fail (really high DC on skill checks, overwhelming odds on combat if escaping the bonds, etc.) Lost agency should be reserved for events outside the character's control (and therefore the player's control).
Bad agency loss is when the DM dictates the character's actions despite the player's wishes, like telling a PC their paladin refuses to kill an unarmed kobold because of their oath. The player should still be able to make their choice and do it, and face the consequences of their paladin becoming an oath-breaker. The DM should never override the player's actions, only respond to them.
Yeah, I think people in these sorts of threads just keep searching the fiction for their answer, when it's a matter of searching how you deal with people in real life. Trying to say it's realistic that you don't have a choice, or that being captured and not doing is lack of agency is just grasping at fiction for what is a person to person interaction matter.
It's consent. Someone agrees they don't have a choice on a matter (like, the ruleset doesn't grant them a choice on it) then they are okay with not having that choice.
Loss of agency is the bait and switch where the GM said they could do what is in the rules or some extra things the GM outlined, but then the GM takes that away (or pretends it could happens, while nullifying it/fudging it away)
It's consent based, it's not in relation to certain bits of fiction at all.
But the fiction examples will continue because people are, once they hit fiction which is at all like life, utterly distracted from real life by that fiction. Like a creature caught staring into the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.
Grazel wrote:
Okay so I'm an old school gamer too. 1st edition, and even before that with the Light Blue Box, with Dragon, a knight and wizard. It wasn't quite basic and it wasn't quite advanced...
Anyway, I think Iserith nailed it several posts back.
I've always preferred letting the players try things and going with the flow. For example, I had one player, a young, very clever lad who decided he wanted to try and lightning bolt a weak point in a tunnel ceiling and bring it crashing down on the advancing foes. Now, the module didn't say that was possible, I could have tried to discourage it by any number of suggestions of a reduced effectiveness but I didn't. I immediately said he could and basically gave him the same damage dice over a wider area. It was superbly successful, killed most of my advancing horde. The player was thrilled, his fellow players were excited, regardless of whether it was exactly "rules as written" or "in the module". I consider that sort of play as "old school" as it gets.
Ralif_Redhammer wrote:
Gwaithador wrote:
CCS wrote:
CCS wrote:
ChelseaNH wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
"A character wants to flap his arms and fly 20 feet into the air- no, I'm not going to give them a roll, it's not going to work."
I agree that would automatically fail. But I wouldn't tell a player "No, you do not flap your arms at all." I would say something like, "Despite your very best effort, you're unable to create any sort of lift, and after some time it becomes plain that this action will never enable flight."
bawylie wrote:
There's two different levels on which agency operates - true agency and apparent agency. The quantum ogre actually provides a great example of this.
Basically, with true agency, the players get to make choices and see them actually impact the world. For this to really work, not only do they need to be allowed to make a choice (go over the road or go through the forest), and not only do those choices have to have different results (the road has orcs, the forest has thri-kreen), but they need information that makes that choice something meaningful to them when they make it (there are demihuman bandits attacking caravans on the road, while woodsmen have seen skittering forms moving through the forest). Any one of those things being absent removes actual agency, because without all of them, the players don't actually get to make meaningful choices.
Apparent agency is the illusion of choice. It's the players believing that their choices were meaningful. The quantum ogre, done artfully, grants apparent agency - the players believe that their choice led to them fighting the ogre, and that other choices would have led to other outcomes. It's actually possible to do a situation where you have created actual agency but the players don't think they had agency. Inadequate signposting is a huge cause of this, but even a few bad Perception or Investigation rolls will conceal from them entire possible courses of action.
Apparent agency is more important for player enjoyment - very little kills engagement in a tabletop game like feeling that one's choices are either nonexistant or meaningless - but actual agency makes a game a pile deeper, and will let you do some really amazing things. I'm planning on stretching my wings on that hard on my next set of campaigns.
Actual agency DOES add a lot to prep time, though, since you end up getting content together that the players will never see.
Karnos wrote:
Also +1 I everything Tia's talking about.
i just use agency as a synonym for free will. DM's can railroad a plot, they can cheat the dice, they can throw in monsters or traps in a place that didn't have them because they want to adjust to the decisions you are making to foul up your chances of success. But they don't have to do any of that. Players can choose not to show up, con their friends into not showing up, and leaving the game all together. Somewhere in that mess is balance.
But hollow victories are a blight in the gaming world. No argument there.
Clever action should be rewarded, while punitive abolition of victory should be reserved for...well people like my players.
you have 8 million gold at level 5 cause your other DM was like "this sounds like a good idea" and you were laughing at him behind his back? OK.
you have almost 100 teleport without errors that target exactly one full adventuring party to skip encounters with the greatest of ease? OK.
you have legendary weapons from the getgo and you are using them to sneak attack while using maxed strength? Sure, no problem.
Choices are good. Agency is good. False choices are bad.
I gave these yahoos a choice. Two portals, open one. One will be somewhat difficult, but a familiar choice, the other would be so awful even the portal master warned them against it. Well, you can probably guess with millions of gold and super weapons, they went with door #2. Whenever they started whining, I reminded them politely, "You chose door #2... Just 2 hours ago your paladin was bragging, 'piece of cake'". Not my fault they went through a pack of cigarettes chain smoking in a nervous wreck after the first session.
ok, so maybe it was my fault... but their agency was left in tact. Can't say the same about the rest of them... caves full of vorpal monsters next to magnetic mountains sucking away magic items... didn't even have to quantum that adventure - it was genuine old school preplanned masochistic adventure engineered by the wishes of my old group.
I think the trick here is you have to know large areas like the back of your hand, and then if you present choices between these different areas, dungeons, worlds, maps, etc., the players retain full choice. It's only going to be hard when they make really weird choices or when you first start and don't have dungeons and worlds memorized, instead carving out reality as you go, like some kind of Never ending story.
Start with blank paper one of these days, then start letting your world flesh out around the player decisions:
Karnos wrote:
bawylie wrote:
The vast majority of the time - unless there's information their characters just don't have - I just tell my players the DC of things they're considering. Their characters have a pile of information that it would be largely a waste of time for me to give - little corner-of-eye things that we don't really process but that inform our decisions - and I generally figure that, knowing their own abilities and the situation, they can spitball their chance of success to within 5%.
Plus, it makes my life simpler. If I give DCs, I don't have to know everyone's modifiers because I don't have to tell them how hard it looks for them. The player can compare the DC against the character's modifier and figure that out themselves.
Karnos wrote:
Sure. The player wants to leap the chasm. (Goal: cross chasm. Approach: leap). So I say something like "The chasm is very wide, and quite deep, so it looks like it'll be hard to do this. I'm looking for a DC 15 Strength Check, I know that's not "hard" per usual, but if don't make it, you know you'll fall to your death. What do you do?"
ChelseaNH wrote:
Karnos wrote:
Karnos wrote:
ChelseaNH wrote:
Karnos wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
ChelseaNH wrote:
Karnos wrote:
Karnos wrote: