Afaics a character might have agency without player agency if character made decisions without player input. Like when I played the Heavy Gear video game, I wanted to run off with the traitor lieutenant and make babies but the character decided to duel her to death.

Afaics player agency is player making decisions that affect the game. Insisting it only means metagame agency seems like being a massive jerkwad. Reminds me of people insisting only the Forgeist defintions of gamism narrativism and simulationism are permissable.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1032635I'm going to be honest, I've completely lost track of what you two were fighting about, what with the much more extremely loud foxtrot going on over on the other side of the thread. So for all I know, you are the bigger man in this exchange. I am also all for the Herbertian living well being the best revenge. However, if you have to tell the target of said subtle revenge that you are doing so (all the whilst name-dropping fancy booze), it kinda takes away the supposed respectability of the action.

If I wanted the moral high ground, I almost certainly wouldn't have referred to myself as a snob.

Quote from: Altheus;1032394When I hear the term player agency I don't mean having full control over your characters personality and behaviour (pendragon traits don't intefere with player agency) but having the ability to meaningfully influence events so you don't get the situation I had recently where the gm said "you can't succeed at that point, the module says I need that guy later on".

I don't even have a term for that as I lump it in with "horrible" GM and/or scenario design.

Quote from: Azraele;1032398Providing a framework  /= The dice playing your character

The first is fine

The second is indeed a plague on gaming

Seems to me different people and different game situations have different lines between those two.

Quote from: Skepticultist;1032429... What's being called "player agency" in this thread is not what the people who introduced that term into the lexicon mean by "player agency." ...

I must not have been at the agora that day. And if only I had surfed to the lexicon instead of the Internet (where it's being used in many different ways) I could have shared in your righteous rectitude.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1032644Jesus fucking christ! Someone mixed up player agency and character agency! Incorrect terminology! Everybody flip out and insult each other!

Listen here, asshat.  You are describing yourself.  All I did was politely point out that people were mixing up terminology, and you, Steven and the other little bitches are the ones who decided to turn rude and aggressive and come after me.  So go fuck yourself, you shit-eating hypocritical fuckstain.  I'm not "flipping out" because you used the wrong terminology, I'm fucking angry because I tried to offer a polite correction and got mobbed up by a bunch 0of useless twat shitstains who are so pathetically insecure they can't handle being corrected.

Don't fucking try to tell me about my behavior when you're clearly so fucking blind to your own, you whorespawn, mentally deficient, cockroach-fucking troglodyte piece of shit.

QuoteLet me guess, you're the guy who calls the police and reports a murder when a GM jokes about killing off the players.

No, but you're the kind of fucking oxygen-stealing waste of life that fucks little children, you mongoloid monkey-fucker.

QuoteCorrect! I'm glad you're paying attention. I posted it as an example of something I didn't quite grasp until explained to me in that way. And I found it relevant because it was about players making choices in games. The fundamental building block of RPGs.

But it's about VIDEO GAMES, you dumb sack of shit.

QuoteNo, his question wasn't confused at all. You just came along and nit picked terminology for whatever chip on your shoulder reason.

Eat shit and die you stupid fucking cockroach.  You are too stupid to have a discussion.  Do the world a favor and drink a bottle of bleach.

QuoteIt's good to see you've cooled off a bit. Why don't you try engaging with the original topic for a while. You might have something to contribute.

Why don't you go kill yourself, you subhuman slimebucket.

Quote from: Skarg;1032661I must not have been at the agora that day. And if only I had surfed to the lexicon instead of the Internet (where it's being used in many different ways) I could have shared in your righteous rectitude.

"A lot of other idiots don't pay attention and use terminology they don't understand, and I'm such a stupid chucklefuck rather than recognize that kind of behavior only makes having meaningful conversations harder, I'm going to use it as justification for remaining an ignorant piece of shit and further confusing the conversation.  Because I, Skrag, am a dumb motherfucker."

The fact that lots of other shitheads are also confused is a piss-poor argument for not educating yourself, you intellectually lazy sack of crap.

If I come of as self-righteous, it's only because I am so clearly mentally superior to you fucking halfwits with your constant excuses for your ignorance.

Quote from: Azraele;1032551That's a fair tack to take. But here's my question; how does removing the agency of making choices for your character lead to a more enjoyable experience? I'm a lot more interested in picking your brain about that point.

Assuming you might also be interested in hearing someone else's perspective:

It opens up a few different modes or roleplaying, which I've found entertaining whether playing a PC or NPC, or when playing with others who are doing so (especially when otherwise their play might be more generic and/or gamey). I don't these as more enjoyable, but different modes of play that offer different things. I still also enjoy playing without such restrictions, and with strong roleplayers (especially ones more interested in roleplaying than "succeeding" or "competing"), I think they often don't need a mechanic and can do as good or better without the mechanics. However sometimes/often as a player (or GM running an NPC) even though I don't need mechanics and dice, I like consulting the dice/mechanics and find it useful when I don't have a clear intuition how the character would be in each case, and I enjoy the uncertainty and experience of playing what the dice/mechanics show my character's reactions are like.

For players who enjoy the mode of being prompted by such traits and playing dice-dictated reactions, it offers that.

Also, sometimes without mechanics, I find that some players over-play their traits and/or have/feel expectations that characters with known traits should always be under the sway and/or ham up those traits, which can sometimes feel off and annoying to me.

Quote from: Azraele;1032551Clearly, I missed the boat on this one. As did everyone I ever played with. Perhaps you have a story, or an example of this awesomeness? A time when removing player choice led to a better experience than allowing a player to choose how their character felt or acted? (I'm willing to accept your definition of "better" for the sake of exploring the POV)
...
I comprehend that there is some reason you, specifically, like games that remove certain decisions from the hands of players (and possibly GMs) and places them in the hands of random number generators. As I said, what fascinates me is your reasoning.

I've had and seen several characters whose development rose out of such mechanics in ways that wouldn't have happened in a mode without them (not that something else wouldn't have happened without them).

Mainly it can be quite good for characters who don't have a strong roleplayer (or not enough attention from one, in the case of NPCs or games with multiple PCs per player). Without such mechanics, it seems to me a character can often end up being pretty generic, flat, and/or gamey in their responses to things, but mechanical traits can help them have more defined personalities and different responses than they otherwise would. I've seen them make a big difference in players who were otherwise not very engaged with roleplaying their characters other than as figures with abilities who show up to hit things etc.

I often have several NPCs with a player group, and such traits help me remember to consider their natures and exhibit them and do things I wouldn't always have time/attention to think instead of being the generic throng.

I've found it useful for myself too in helping me play character traits that are not in my habitual nature. If I have to roll not to be a blabbermouth, that helps me actually do that, and has been really hilarious because in real life I have a great aversion to substanceless chatter.

Similarly, I gave myself a "being a dumbass" trait, which was also really interesting and challenging to have to play, because (as you guys can see from my posts) I clearly have an ego thing about trying to be smart about things and being hostile to what I think is dumb-assery, so having to try to be a dumb-ass and not being able to not if I roll 11 or less was really fun and interesting (though I could only stand limited amounts of it!).

It was also really fun playing a very subtly suggestible PC who had a chance to believe what others were saying and get confused, in a way that I don't think the other players really figured out what was happening - I guess it was a bit like the film Being There.

It's also been interesting/fun/challenging for me and others to play characters with various vices and flaws and not being able to determine ourselves when/if our characters can override them and how severe their effects are has provided an interesting sort of challenge that's different from just roleplaying them, and a freedom from feeling like we're not roleplaying right if we aren't always roleplaying some weakness (because it's defined as only sometimes applying, or whatever).

It also seems appropriate for things your character is trying to beat and relates to as external, such as an addiction.

Quote from: S'mon;1032649Afaics a character might have agency without player agency if character made decisions without player input. Like when I played the Heavy Gear video game, I wanted to run off with the traitor lieutenant and make babies but the character decided to duel her to death.

Afaics player agency is player making decisions that affect the game. Insisting it only means metagame agency seems like being a massive jerkwad. Reminds me of people insisting only the Forgeist defintions of gamism narrativism and simulationism are permissable.

Well, you're a dumb idiot, you dumb idiot.  Your entire attitude is pig-headed, stupid and wrong.  This is exactly how dumb motherfuckers go through life.

If you refuse to engage with the definitions the Forge folk use for gamism, narrativism and simulationism (what the fuck?  is this the 90s?  GSN is a dead theory, how out of date are you?) then guess what:  You will never understand the argument those people are making, and will continue to be a dumb motherfucker.

You can't understand what other people are talking about unless you make an effort to understand what they mean by the words they use.  Insisting that they use your definitions to express their ideas makes you a fucking useless toolbag.

And note, I'm not saying you have to agree with their ideas, because GNS Theory is stupid as fuck, and the entire storygames crowd has no fucking idea what they are talking about and their theories are total garbage BUT a dumb motherfucker like you will never be able to explain why, because you're too willfully ignorant to even make the effort to understand what the fuck those people are saying, let alone understand it well enough to argue against it.

People like you are like people who tell automechanics that they are wrong about how cars work because you insist on using your own definitions, so when they say a car needs gas to go, you respond "Cars don't run on farts, you idiots."  That's the level of retardation dumb, ignorant pieces of shit like you are operating on.

That is literally how stupid you sound.  "Hur hur, cars don't run on farts! Why you so dumb?"

This is what happens when somebody snorts Alka-Seltzer and chases it with one of his mother's grape-flavored cigarillos.

Quote from: Skepticultist;1032667You can't understand what other people are talking about unless you make an effort to understand what they mean by the words they use.  Insisting that they use your definitions to express their ideas makes you a fucking useless toolbag.

But that is exactly what you are doing. You are the one here who is rejecting the OP's definition of 'player agency' (as player choice/freedom to act) and positing your own definition (as player metagame agency).

BTW could you at least provide a link to a good source where 'player agency' is discussed as meaning what you're defining it to mean? Googling, I see definitions like this at number 1:

What is Agency?
I personally define agency by three criteria:

The player has control over their own character's decisions.
Those decisions have consequences within the game world.
The player has enough information to anticipate what those consequences might be before making them.

ie what everyone else here is taking it to mean.

Quote from: Skarg;1032665It opens up a few different modes or roleplaying, which I've found entertaining whether playing a PC or NPC, or when playing with others who are doing so (especially when otherwise their play might be more generic and/or gamey). I don't these as more enjoyable, but different modes of play that offer different things. I still also enjoy playing without such restrictions, and with strong roleplayers (especially ones more interested in roleplaying than "succeeding" or "competing"), I think they often don't need a mechanic and can do as good or better without the mechanics. However sometimes/often as a player (or GM running an NPC) even though I don't need mechanics and dice, I like consulting the dice/mechanics and find it useful when I don't have a clear intuition how the character would be in each case, and I enjoy the uncertainty and experience of playing what the dice/mechanics show my character's reactions are like.

For players who enjoy the mode of being prompted by such traits and playing dice-dictated reactions, it offers that.

Similar to this, but not exactly the same fun, is the enjoyment and challenge of playing something dictated by the dice--sometimes out of the blue.  Specifically, the challenge is in the characterization.  It's similar to the enjoyment of playing a pre-gen or randomly generated character, but reacting to in play events, turned up to 11.   Suddenly having had your trait put into a crazy situation, that twists it in funny ways, how do you portray that?  This is particularly fun when it interacts with some other compulsion.  

For example, we had a character with a brash but helpful attitude that got a low-level charmed status.  The player went off on how the charm kept getting twisted as he tried to do brash actions to help his new "friend".  (It helped that the NPC charmer, played by me, was a bit gullible.)

Quote from: Skepticultist;1032663Listen here, asshat.  You are describing yourself.  All I did was politely point out that people were mixing up terminology, and you, Steven and the other little bitches are the ones who decided to turn rude and aggressive and come after me.  So go fuck yourself, you shit-eating hypocritical fuckstain.  I'm not "flipping out" because you used the wrong terminology, I'm fucking angry because I tried to offer a polite correction and got mobbed up by a bunch 0of useless twat shitstains who are so pathetically insecure they can't handle being corrected.

Don't fucking try to tell me about my behavior when you're clearly so fucking blind to your own, you whorespawn, mentally deficient, cockroach-fucking troglodyte piece of shit.



No, but you're the kind of fucking oxygen-stealing waste of life that fucks little children, you mongoloid monkey-fucker.

 

But it's about VIDEO GAMES, you dumb sack of shit.



Eat shit and die you stupid fucking cockroach.  You are too stupid to have a discussion.  Do the world a favor and drink a bottle of bleach.



Why don't you go kill yourself, you subhuman slimebucket.

I'm just boggled that you seem so wound up over all this.

Quote from: S'mon;1032670Googling, I see definitions like this at number 1:

What is Agency?
I personally define agency by three criteria:

The player has control over their own character's decisions.
Those decisions have consequences within the game world.
The player has enough information to anticipate what those consequences might be before making them.

ie what everyone else here is taking it to mean.

And regardless, almost the entire first page of google results includes some variation of that phrase "I personally define agency..." so it appears that there isn't even a consensus within the ttrpg blogging community (with all the official authority that entails).

Can we not make Estar close the topic, please?

Quote from: Skarg;1032665An actual response to the questions asked.

That is an extremely informative and enlightening perspective; thank you Skarg!

If I take your meaning, the appeal is more "Mechanics as RP inspiration" than "Mechanics as substitute for agency". This makes we want to write a "How does this NPC react to..." chart for recurring characters. That would address the issue of all the NPCs feeling "samey" after a while; shake things up a little but retain a core characterization. I like it!

I still fail to grasp the appeal to a player character though. If they're telling you what you do, rather than what you can do, that feels like an intrusion on the premise of roleplaying... This is going to require some pondering

Let me re-read and consider your post in depth and I'll get back to you on this. You left me a lot to chew on...

Quote from: Skepticultist;1032294Well, you're wrong. So...I don't know what else to say.  I've been in plenty of arguments with the storygamer types who whinge constantly about player agency, and that's what they are talking about.  I mean, you can say "Nope" all you want, but you don't know what you're talking about.  The whole concept of "player agency" is meant as a challenge to the very assumption that "GM powers" belong exclusively to the GM, so saying it has "nothing to do" with exercising GM powers only demonstrates that you literally have no understanding of the issue and your entire frame of reference is useless.

Have fun with that.

You think you're revealing new information?  Storygamers and Forge-style narrativists have been attempting to redefine the language for years.

In the context of roleplaying games, storygamer's ideas about Player Agency over the "story" or "shared fiction" matter about as much as a novelist's ideas about Character Agency.