Definition of Some Terms

[Cheesegear]

Unsurprisingly to everyone, we find that actions need to be meaningful in order for us to say they serve as causes for effects.

To which I disagree. Anything you do, is meaningful, including doing nothing at all, which is also meaningful. Go to the three doors. Doing nothing is a choice, which causes an effect. Doing anything at all, is a choice, which produces an effect.

Agency is when your actions cause effects.

You can do anything you want. The player produces an action. The DM produces an effect. However, the DM is willing to produce as little - or as big - of an effect that they want. If you make a choice, and the DM decides that the result of your action is insignificant, agency still existed. You just didn't get the magnitude of an effect that you wanted - which the DM does not have to give you. The bartender is not obligated to talk to you.

If the effect is not great, that is, not significant enough to have a bearing on anything beyond the pub right now, it's really straightforward to say actions available in the pub are of [B]limited agency, because they have no effect going forward.

Again, 'Agency is when my actions matter.' Which isn't what agency is.
When your actions matter, is a value judgement you place on agency, and how you expect your agency to be used. Which is a fine value to have. We all want our actions to matter. But we still have agency even when our actions don't matter, because if the action we took doesn't matter...We just take a new action, with the knowledge that we didn't do enough.

Choices that don't amount to anything significant cannot be said to have an effect and thus do not count towards agency.

If your choices amount to anything, significant or not, you have agency.

All's agency requires is that your DM acknowledges and/or allows you take an action, and responds in whatever way they think is best. Sometimes the action you take will produce an effect that is small. Sometimes your DM will rule that the action you took produces a 'significant' effect.

i) PC punches NPC. NPC slinks away never to be seen again. Scenario over. Next NPC. Next action. Who gives a **** the NPC wasn't even important.
ii) PC punches NPC, town burns down.

Both are agency because something happened.

The DM is twisting words to avoid admitting the fact that they are not giving a player much agency.

The players have as much agency as they believe they have.

It is pretty damn hard to act as an agent if no information is given on how decisions effect anything.

Nope. Strong disagree. Sometimes you just jump. Acting on no information is a choice you make, which produces a consequence.

How do you act when you have no information at all? It's a character-defining question. How you act in that situation says a lot about you and/or your character.

Meanwhile, as already established multiple times, if decisions between actions do not cause changes in the game world, that is, alter a game's state in mutually exclusive ways, in a way that carries forward in the future, that is, is significant, then there's no grounds for saying those actions are acting as causes for any effects, hence no grounds for saying they count towards agency.

You are using player agency in the sense that they are or would be aware of the DM's thought processes - which they are not.

Do you know that your actions will produce the same outcome as another action? If you don't know that, then you have agency.

The fact that players do not know their actions cannot have an effect does not change the fact that their actions cannot have an effect, and thus do no count as agency.

Again. So long as the DM allows an action, and the players believe that whatever the DM says next, is a response to their action, they have agency.

Players do not have agency if they are straight up told that their choices are meaningless. That way lies nihilism. You have to believe that you matter - even when you don't.

Now you're effectively arguing that whether acts actually have effects is irrelevant for whether players have agency - as long as a DM can make them believe they have agency, they have agency.

That's exactly what I'm arguing.

You can't simultaneously maintain "agency means acts have effects" and "agency doesn't mean things I do matter", because if things I do don't matter, there is no grounds for saying my acts are causing effects.

Action. You talk to the bartender.
Effect. The bartender nods at you and continues doing what they were doing, basically ignoring you.

Your action produced an effect. It just didn't produce an effect that mattered, and perhaps not the effect you wanted. Provided that you stopped the scenario at exactly this point. If you stopped the scenario here, you still had agency. You can choose to put a magnitude on that agency (e.g; Low). But you still you had agency, because cause and effect, is agency, and that did happen.

However, you can always make more choices. You can continue the scenario; Upon seeing that the bartender has basically ignored you, you can now perform a new action, perhaps one more meaningful, designed to produce a more significant outcome. Okay. Talking didn't work. What happens if I jump on top of the bar and start making obnoxious noises. Everyone looks at you. Security is called. Now we're talking business. Things are happening.

A meaningless action will produce a meaningless effect.
A meaningful action will produce a meaningful effect.
...Ooh. There's something in that. I just don't know what it is. 'Should meaningless actions produce meaningful effects?' ...I'll think about it.

Both are agency, because you are taking an action, which produces an effect. No matter how insignificant or meaningless. Punching an NPC should produce an effect. It probably shouldn't result in the town burning down. It could, but it is unlikely to. Punching an NPC one time, should probably result in the NPC walking away, never to be seen from again. Maybe you bring the NPC back in a few sessions? Maybe you don't. How long is a piece of string? But, if you believe that punching an NPC should result in the burning of a town, because that's a significant effect, that's a value you have, but it isn't the definition of agency.

Agency can be used that way, but that's not what agency is.

'Can I do [x]?'
Yes. Nothing happens.
'Well now my agency is ruined because there was no effect.'
Wrong. The effect of your action, is that you now know that [x] doesn't work. You can now try something else with the knowledge that [x] is not going to produce the effect you want. Take a new action, with your new knowledge. Always be making choices, even when the previous choices you made didn't do anything.