Definition of Some Terms

[Cheesegear]

Generally speaking, some ability to distinguish between the choices is required. The "3 identical doors" by Stonehead above is a good example of a meaningless decision. And it's a reason that so many discussions about player agency circle back around to the ability of players to gather information.

The 3 identical doors is probably something I've said before, and it's an example I use to highlight that players always have 'agency'. However, posters - such as yourself - will then assign a value to that agency (i.e; Meaningless decision), and then equate a low amount of agency, to no agency at all. However, in that situation, my argument with the 3 close doors, is that there is always a choice and no decision is meaningless, and agency always exists:

A player could open the door on the left, without any information at all. That is risky. That is a choice they made. They made a choice to act with no information at all. That has meaning. That may well be a character trait. That may well be 'what their character would do', and now the other players have to deal with that consequence. Whatever is behind that door, we now have to deal with it, because a door was opened. Were the other doors better? We don't know anymore. The consequences for a player opening the door is that the players now have to deal with whatever is behind that door - for better or worse.

With no information at all, a player could say '**** it' and open all three doors at once. That would probably lead to a disaster. But a player could do it, and there absolutely would be a consequence. Agency definitely exists.

With no information at all, a player could try and gain information. Peeking through the door. Using magic. Whatever. The consequence of their action is that they acquire knowledge. The players can now choose which door to open first, perhaps with greater or lesser, or more beneficiary outcomes.

With no information at all, players could say '**** it', decide the scenario is too hard, and disengage, leaving the three closed doors behind forever. The consequence of your action is that you don't get to see what's behind the closed doors. New scenario.

'Everyone move down the corridor. I want to Illusion a loud noise outside the three doors. We'll see what - if anything - comes out to investigate.'

To say that 'Agency is only "meaningful" if I'm aware of the consequences of my actions.' is simply not true.

'How can I make a meaningful choice, if I don't know the consequences?' is a value statement, that you put on the value of information. Perhaps the meaningful choice is acting without information? To be willing to act when you don't know the consequences is a personality trait, not an agency value.

How you choose to act, without information, is a meaningful choice. You can use your choices to gain information, absolutely...But trying to gain information, is one of the many things you can do, when you don't have any information. But, you could also choose to not gain more information, and just Chaotic Stupid your way through any problem.

What you wrote was that you want to use the word to talk to a group of people elsewhere, who use the word in a way you disagree with, and then you sort of went off about players asking for things to work a certain way and so on.

Here is the common definition of the word, with which I use that definition to discuss that word in many difference places.
Here is a colloquial definition of the word, seemingly only used by this forum, which causes problems for people who spend time outside this forum, but still participate, here.

[Vahnavoi]

Sure. But that's not what agency is.

[. . .]

'Agency is where I get to choose to between at least two mutually exclusive game states.' ...Is not the definition of agency, that's you adding value to agency.

'Agency is where my choices ripple through time.' ...Is not the definition of agency.

Those things might be how you want to use your agency, but those are not definitions of agency, that's you adding a value to your agency.

[. . .]

That is what agency is. That is how people use it. That isn't how this forum seems to use it. But that's how it is used.

You keep engaging in a pointless semantic argument. You argue against words like meaningful and significant, then turn around to say that agency means acts have effects, completely failing to realize that meaningfulness and signifigance is how different effects are set apart.

If in a game, opening any of the three doors leads to the game state "you die", and not opening any the doors also leads to the game state "you die", you cannot be said to have agency, because the lack of mutually exclusive game states means your actions do not have an effect on the game.

If in a game, you have nominal choice of eye and hat color, but nobody pays attention to such choices and they are forgotten ten seconds into a game, you cannot be said to have agency, because lack of signifigance means you actions do not have an effect on the game.

You can call such examples "bad GMing". We keep having to make these distinctions explicit because there are enough bad GMs around running games like this. The insanity is in you failing to realize meaningfulness and signifigance are implicit in your own definition of agency and thus every so often end up defending behaviours you yourself label bad elsewhere.

[Cheesegear]

You argue against words like meaningful and significant, then turn around to say that agency means acts have effects, completely failing to realize that meaningfulness and signifigance is how different effects are set apart.

That isn't what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying that agency is when your actions have effects.
If you talk to a bartender, the bartender talks to you. If you talk to a bartender and the DM says 'The bartender ignores you.', potentially because the DM doesn't have a dialog tree mapped out for the bartender, then your action does not have an effect, you do not have agency. But the bartender nodding to you, and asking you what you want, is an effect. You made a choice to talk to the bartender, and the bartender spoke to you briefly, before continuing with their work.
Cause.
Effect. It might not be a great effect. It might have no bearing on anything except what goes on inside this pub, right now. But the DM said you can do anything you want, you wanted to talk to the bartender, you did, the DM allowed it, the DM spoke some small talk, and the world continued. You probably didn't get the effect you wanted, but the DM didn't say 'No.' You were allowed to make your choice...Your choice just didn't amount to anything significant. It's Friday night, there's nearly 100 people in the bar, they're not going to talk to you right now.

To whit, I have seen written by other posters; Agency is when your meaningful actions have significant effects.

To which point; What is meaningful, what is significant?

The result becomes;
Agency is when I have exactly as much knowledge as I want, to make the decision that I am informed about, which results in a change to the game world that is persistent and will affect many future decisions from here on out.

That isn't what agency is. Except on this forum, where it is.

Other times you might talk to a bartender, they tell you their name, how long they've been working, and drop plot hooks for five potential quests, including one directly related to themselves and your personal standing with the bartender. You, talking to a bartender had the significant effect of five plot hooks and a potential patron for later. Holy **** isn't agency amazing? The DM let me talk to the bartender and I had an amazing outcome. Everything I do is relevant all the time!

If in a game, opening any of the three doors leads to the game state "you die", and not opening any the doors also leads to the game state "you die", you cannot be said to have agency

The players have agency, because they don't know that. They will never know that unless the DM makes a mistake. They should think that opening a door leads to 'You Die', because they opened the door, which they chose to do, and the consequence of that choice was that they died.

They took an action which had an effect. They totally had agency. That should be the extent of their knowledge. Unless the DM says 'Trollololol it doesn't matter what you did someone was going to die I'm very clever.' ...But why would a DM ever say that? Ever!?

EDIT: That being said, I also get the feeling, that if I really boiled things down, I might end up with 'Agency is where the things I do, matter.' ...Just, oof. That isn't what agency is. But I can see how you could get there.

the lack of mutually exclusive game states means your actions do not have an effect on the game.

Only the DM knows that - unless they make a mistake.

[Vahnavoi]

That isn't what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying that agency is when your actions have effects.
If you talk to a bartender, the bartender talks to you. If you talk to a bartender and the DM says 'The bartender ignores you.', potentially because the DM doesn't have a dialog tree mapped out for the bartender, then your action does not have an effect, you do not have agency. But the bartender nodding to you, and asking you what you want, is an effect. You made a choice to talk to the bartender, and the bartender spoke to you briefly, before continuing with their work.
Cause.
Effect.

If talking to the bartender makes them talk to you, and not talking to them means they remain silent, there are two mutually exclusive states of the game. You correctly identify that if the decision to talk makes no difference, that is, if the are no mutually exclusive states reachable via the decision, there is no effect, and hence no agency. Unsurprisingly to everyone, we find that actions need to be meaningful in order for us to say they serve as causes for effects.

It might not be a great effect. It might have no bearing on anything except what goes on inside this pub, right now.

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 limited agency, because they have no effect going forward. Unsurprisingly to everyone, we find actions also need to be significant in order for us to say they serve as causes for effects.

But the DM said you can do anything you want, you wanted to talk to the bartender, you did, the DM allowed it, the DM spoke some small talk, and the world continued. You probably didn't get the effect you wanted, but the DM didn't say 'No.' You were allowed to make your choice...Your choice just didn't amount to anything significant. It's Friday night, there's nearly 100 people in the bar, they're not going to talk to you right now.

Irrelevant. Choices that don't amount to anything significant cannot be said to have an effect and thus do not count towards agency. The DM is twisting words to avoid admitting the fact that they are not giving a player much agency.

To whit, I have seen written by other posters; Agency is when your meaningful actions have significant effects.

To which point; What is meaningful, what is significant?

The result becomes;
Agency is when I have exactly as much knowledge as I want, to make the decision that I am informed about, which results in a change to the game world that is persistent and will affect many future decisions from here on out.

That isn't what agency is. Except on this forum, where it is.

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

So again, saying "that's not what agency means!" while simultaneously holding "agency means actions have effects!" is paradoxical and hollow.

Other times you might talk to a bartender, they tell you their name, how long they've been working, and drop plot hooks for five potential quests, including one directly related to themselves and your personal standing with the bartender. You, talking to a bartender had the significant effect of five plot hooks and a potential patron for later. Holy **** isn't agency amazing? The DM let me talk to the bartender and I had an amazing outcome. Everything I do is relevant all the time!

Complete non-sequitur. A player sometimes having more agency does not mean everything they do is relevant all the time.

The players have agency, because they don't know that. They will never know that unless the DM makes a mistake. They should think that opening a door leads to 'You Die', because they opened the door, which they chose to do, and the consequence of that choice was that they died.

Humbug. 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.

They took an action which had an effect. They totally had agency. That should be the extent of their knowledge. Unless the DM says 'Trollololol it doesn't matter what you did someone was going to die I'm very clever.' ...But why would a DM ever say that? Ever!?

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. This is a self-contradiction. You can't imagine why a DM would say that thing aloud, yet are blatantly advocating for thinking in those terms.

Mostly this just shows how underdeveloped your ideas of imperfect information games are. It would be perfectly straightforward to say the players yad no agency, and if they thought they did, they were wrong.

EDIT: That being said, I also get the feeling, that if I really boiled things down, I might end up with 'Agency is where the things I do, matter.' ...Just, oof. That isn't what agency is. But I can see how you could get there.

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. You are once again contradicting yourself.

Only the DM knows that - unless they make a mistake.

Even if a DM is the only one who knows, it doesn't make the statement less true. Characterizing being open about how much agency players have as a mistake is a complete non-sequitur.

[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.

[Vahnavoi]

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.

What are you disagreeing with, again? The actual quoted claim was that in order for us to say an act is causing an effect, it needs to be meaningful. Repeating that "anything you do is meaningful" or that "agency is when your actions cause effects" does not actually disagree with the claim.

Your actual disagreement seems to be with the implicit claim that there are actions which are meaningless - which we can empirically show to be the case for games, and the three doors example is one such case. Again, the real reason discussions about player agency persist is because plenty of game masters put meaningless choices and allow meaningless actions in their games.

In other words, not only is your disagreement insubstantial when it comes to te actual point, you are simply repeating assertions which can be empirically shown to be false.

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.

Humbug. If a player's action is minimized to insignifigance, it cannot be said to have an effect, and thus it cannot be said to count towards agency. A zero-magnitude effect is a synonym for no effect, and if there is no effect, there is no agency. Furthermore, if the effects a DM is producing are completely uninfluenced by actions their player is producing, no causality can be said to exist between the two - effects that happen regardless of what a player does are hence not agency. Saying a DM does not have to give players any agency is irrelevant. You keep using words in oxymoronic ways to avoid conceding these very simple point.

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.

Fun fact: causality is of value for all consequentalist theories, including all theories of game design that seek to cause fun as effect of playing a game. So when you try to invoke Hume's Guillotine to separate "what matters" from "actions have effects", you are making yourself irrelevant to more or less everyone else in this thread.

Meanwhile, in common use, for more or less everyone else in this thread, actions matter when they produce effects, and don't when they don't. And, once more, the way we can actually tell if an action has an effect is when it is meaningful and significant.

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.

Another non-sequitur. The knowledge that a course of action didn't matter can only generate agency if the knowledge allows a new course of action that does matter - but this is not established anywhere. It's possible to have no agency and just not know it.

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

Once more, with feeling: if a choice amounts to nothing significant, it cannot be said to amount to anything, cannot be said to have an effect, and hence does not count towards agency.

You are simultaneously denying existence of meaningless and insignificant choices AND treating them as equal to meaningful and significant choices. Somehow it fails to get through that other people are omitting meaningless and insignificant choices when counting agency for a reason.

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.

Except that a DM can straightforwardly decide that the best way to respond is for the action not have any effect, thus negating any agency in the act. This is completely in line what you've said elsewhere. By failing to concede this simple point, you are effectively arguing players have agency even when a DM is giving them no agency, which is inverse but equally illogical to your stance in prior discussions where you argued players have no agency, ever, despite the DM's ability to give them as much as they want.

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.

It is perfectly straightforward to say the choice the makes PC is less meaningful & less significant in the first example, and that they overall have less agency because their DM is actively minimizing the effect of their actions. Funny how that goes.

This is of course presuming there is some causal connection between the PC punching the NPC and the town burning down in the second example. If there is none, the PC in second example might have no agency at all. As noted previously, "something happened" isn't enough, that "something happening" must be an effect of the act to count as agency.

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

This is completely different from and contradictory with your previous definition of "agency is when acts cause effects". Players can straightforwardly believe their actions are causing effects even when they aren't, which under your former definition straightforwardly means players can be wrong about having agency. Under this new version, it does not matter whether their acts have effects, as long as they believe they do.

Make up your damn mind.

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

Again, what are you actually disagreeing with? The claim that it's hard to act as agent when you have no information of how your decisions affect anything? None of your assertions offer a counterpoint to that. Your disagreement is completely insubstantial once again.

Acting on no information may be a choice, but with no information, it is impossible to know if that choice produces a consequence, or in other words, an effect. This means the question of whether you have agency remains unanswered. Not knowing if you have agency is unconnected from having it.

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.

You think it's a character-defining question. I think your statement is humbug. Virtually no interesting character questions are asked and answered with no information at all. On the contrary, they depend on a lot of knowledge on who the character is, what their situation and what they believe their situation is. Once again, your thinking of imperfect information games is underdeveloped. Lacking some information is not the same as lacking all information, and virtually all imperfect information games move from position of minimal knowledge towards positions of more knowledge. Quite often, the most interesting questions are only capable of being asked and answered well into the game, when some information has already been revealed.

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.

The players don't need to be aware of a DM's thought processes, but there is nothing exotic about, you know, a DM telling their players what they are thinking so that their players can gauge how much agency they have.

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

Once again a complete non-sequitur. If I don't know outcomes of my actions, I simply I don't know if I have agency. Me not knowing if I have agency doesn't somehow work to me having agency after all. Stop redefining agency as imperfect information.

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.

Which not the same as, and contradictory with, acts causing effects, as already shown.

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.

Somehow you gloss over the possibility of a game master straight up telling players when and where they do have agency, so that that players can actually focus on meaningful & significant parts of the game.

That's exactly what I'm arguing.

Which, as I've laboriously shown, is complete. nonsense. If this is exactly what you've been saying, you are contradicting yourself, wrong in every way, and no-one has a reason to agree with you.

Anything more would be superfluous.

[Composer99]

Personally, I think there's a lot of imputing additional meaning to the term "agency" where it doesn't belong.

To my mind, "player agency" in the context of a roleplaying game means nothing more and nothing less than:

Subject to any constraints imposed by the game system or the table culture, the (non-GM) players decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do.

Examples of constraints imposed by the system:
- Getting charmed or dominated in a D&D game.
- I'm not familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse games, but I'm led to understand that other players or the GM (whatever title they have in any given game) can make "moves" that can compel a particular action in the fiction by player characters.
- Apropos of the final clause "attempt to do", if the game system or the GM require a player to use some sort of resolution mechanic, there's a chance that they will fail to accomplish whatever they set out to do. That's not necessarily a conceptual constraint on agency - although it can be, since the GM is often the one who decides what you are even allowed to attempt to do - but it does constrain your practical exercise of it.

Examples of constraints imposed by table culture:
- If a player has a particularly strong phobia of some sort, the other players will avoid bringing it up even when it would make sense to do so in-character.
- Respecting table rules against PvP-style play.
- Avoiding in-character behaviour that makes other players feel uncomfortable or violated because of real-life considerations.

The more ability the players have to decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do, the more agency they have, and vice-versa.

With respect as the additional baggage being stuffed into the term "agency" being bandied about in this and other threads, it would IMO be better to unpack the concepts and give them their own terms.

For instance, a lot of the discussion in this thread seems to revolve more around "how much impact should player character activity have in changing the state of the in-game fiction?" than around "to what extent are the players free to decide what their characters think, say, do, or attempt to do?", and asserting that the former is (or is part of) player agency. Frankly, it seems to me that it would be for the better if that concept was articulated separately, with its own term of art - maybe "impact", although I'm secretly hoping for a word that starts with 'A' for reasons.

The two concepts are certainly related - the more impact the players' choices have on the state of the in-game fiction, the more leeway they have in exercising player agency, and vice-versa - but they are still distinct enough that they ought to be treated as such.

---

Some related concepts that I feel are distinct enough to be spun out into their own terms:

Agenda
Who gets to set the gameplay agenda?
- When NPCs or NPC factions act and the PCs decide (without regard to how voluntary or compelled this decision is) to react to them, the GM is setting the agenda. This is quite common for published adventures (the Dragonlance modules, most 5e adventures, etc.).
- When PCs decide to act to fulfill their own ambitions or to serve their personal interests, the players are setting the agenda. Most forms of open-world/sandbox/West Marches game revolve around this kind of thing.
- In many games, there might be a mixed agenda, with PCs and NPCs reacting to one another in a chain or cascade of activity.

Authorship
Who gets to establish in-fiction details about the setting? This will be shared between the GM and players to some extent, although D&D generally puts most responsibility and authority for authorship in the hands of the GM.

You can see, I hope, how these concepts relate in some way to the concept of agency - the more the players can set the agenda and the more authorship they have over setting details, the more leeway and freedom they have in exercising agency, and vice-versa - as well as to the concept of impact.

---

This also ties back into the thread where kyoryu was describing what I personally might call "fiction pre-definition". (*)

The more someone playing the game (usually the GM) already knows the future state of the in-game fiction, or has already decided what the future state of the in-game fiction will be, the more "pre-defined" the fiction is. Games with a sufficient degree of "pre-definition" across all levels of the fiction might fall under the umbrella of "Authored" games as kyoryu used the term. Likewise, the less is already known or decided about the future state of the in-game fiction, and the more the future state follows organically from gameplay as it happens, the less "pre-defined" the fiction is. Games falling short of a given degree of "pre-definition" across all levels of the fiction might fall under the umbrella of "Emergent" games as kyoryu used the term.

And just like some of the other concepts I've broken out above, we can see how this relates to player agency or impact without actually being player agency or impact: the less the GM (in particular) has "pre-defined" changes to the in-game fiction (**), the more freedom the players have to decide what their characters do or attempt to do, and the more impact player character activity is likely to have in changing the state of the fiction.

(*) Still looking for an "A" synonym. Or any better/pithier term at all, really.

(**) Planning contingent changes to the in-game fiction ahead of time ("If the players do A, the world will react with B, and if the players do X or Y, the world will react with Z") is not necessarily a form of pre-definition in this sense, although it can be - say, if in so doing you end up frequently discouraging the players from choosing some course of action you don't have a pre-planned reaction for.

[Stonehead]

If everyone is using 'Agency' to reference something it doesn't mean, yes, there will be problems.

...

Agency is where your actions produce an effect. Stop. No caveats. That is the definition of the word. If you want to change that definition, you need to be more specific.

The people in this thread aren't making up new definitions of agency or anything, it's out there in the world: https://www.universityxp.com/blog/20...-player-agency https://www.gamedeveloper.com/busine...ects-narrative

If you don't think that's what that word means, fair enough, but you can't just declare that this other meaning is the 'true' one with no substantive argument or source to back it up. Or, I guess you can, but you shouldn't expect anyone to be convinced if you do. Agency meaning "being in control of meaningful choices" has been the standard meaning in the game design industry for over a decade. We aren't trying to add anything new to the definition.

[Cheesegear]

The people in this thread aren't making up new definitions of agency or anything, it's out there in the world...

I typed 'agency' into Google:

'Action or intervention producing a particular effect.'

This is basically the definition I've been working with since as long as I can remember. That definition - or something very similar - works everywhere except this forum. Where at least a handful of regular posters also define a reduction in agency, as railroading- Point is:

In a DM-controlled RPG, the DM controls all the effects of your actions. The players can take whatever action they want, but if the DM ignores their action, or the DM says that they can't do an action, an effect, doesn't happen*.
*Remembering that sometimes having no effect, is the effect of the action. But we're not really talking about intentional non-effects. Fire does nothing against things warded against fire - it just doesn't.

Ergo;
Agency is where the DM acknowledges that you do things, and reacts to those things (ideally, in a way that makes sense). If you do something, and the DM says 'Okay.', and then says, well... Anything, that that player can construe as a result of their action, they have agency.

That is, the DM controls everything, and if you think about it, people only have as much agency as long as the DM is willing to produce effects. Sometimes the DM isn't imaginative enough to produce an effect that coincides with your action, sometimes a DM simply isn't willing to engage with whatever dumb **** you've cooked up.

Agency, in an authority-controlled game, therefore is more or less an an illusion. The players have agency for exactly as long as they can be led to believe that they have agency. So long as the DM keeps saying 'Okay...', and then says anything that makes you believe that you did something, the illusion is maintained. Something, something real-world comparison that prevents people from falling into deep depression, existentialism and nihilism.

At this point I'm just repeating things I've said in other threads, some of which I'm sure people in this thread have already seen. So I'll just leave with some final words:

So long as we're working with terms like 'significant' and 'meaningful', we're ascribing a value to agency, which simply isn't what agency is. But this forum defines agency differently to most of the world (?). Or, perhaps, when they talk about agency, they talk about player agency, but they keep not adding that word when they talk about it. Which is a fairly specific concept that I personally would define as high-value agency, not player agency. Because 'agency' isn't a game-term - it's a real word with a functional meaning.

[Real-world person with money, power and influence] doesn't have 'player' agency, they have high-value agency, or a high amount of agency. That is, they have the ability to make things happen - usually in the way that they want it to happen. Real people, in the real world, have agency...They are not players in a game.

...
None of that really matters. Because what I've learned is that this forum, defines 'agency' as 'player agency', and 'player agency' has bizarre specificity to its definition, which is simply summed up as 'A high amount of agency (the ability for an actor to affect change, ideally in the actor's favour).'

Therefore, this forum argues - quite strongly, turns out - that only a high amount of agency, is agency at all. Which is bizarre to me, because that leads to topics like 'A reduction from that high amount of agency, is basically a railroad...And a railroad is-'... But we've already had that conversation, and I now understand how people who believe in 'player agency' come to the conclusions that they do.

[Composer99]

[...]

Because 'agency' isn't a game-term - it's a real word with a functional meaning.

[...]

None of that really matters. Because what I've learned is that this forum, defines 'agency' as 'player agency', and 'player agency' has bizarre specificity to its definition, which is simply summed up as 'A high amount of agency (the ability for an actor to affect change, ideally in the actor's favour).'

So, while I've already said upthread that I prefer to unpack a lot of meaning from the term "agency", the fact that it's used in other contexts doesn't really make it illegitimate for it to have a specific meaning in the context of gaming.

I mean, the word "theory":
- has one meaning when used in commonplace parlance;
- has a different meaning when used in certain scientific contexts (the "theory" of evolution, for instance);
- has another different meaning in the context, of say, theoretical physics;
- has yet another different meaning in the context of music;
and this is all well and good as long as no one starts equivocating between these meanings.

[OldTrees1]

So, while I've already said upthread that I prefer to unpack a lot of meaning from the term "agency", the fact that it's used in other contexts doesn't really make it illegitimate for it to have a specific meaning in the context of gaming.

I mean, the word "theory":
- has one meaning when used in commonplace parlance;
- has a different meaning when used in certain scientific contexts (the "theory" of evolution, for instance);
- has another different meaning in the context, of say, theoretical physics;
- has yet another different meaning in the context of music;
and this is all well and good as long as no one starts equivocating between these meanings.

Theory is an example of a term of art. Your example explains it better than I was going to.

---

Upthread you suggested scaling back the meaning of Player Agency. Specifically you suggested scaling it back to

Subject to any constraints imposed by the game system or the table culture, the (non-GM) players decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do.

While this preserves the domain of options that player will find in their choices, it does not preserve the choice being a choice. Consider a game where the players only get non choices. They can still pull their levers (think, feel, say, attempt to do) but those levers are disconnected from the game. Similar to playing a game with a dead controller.

Since the majority of the value of this term of art is in its use describing choices, if we scaled "Player Agency" back to not be useful in this subject, we would just discard it for a new term.

As such, I think we need a term that does talk about the player's ability to make actual choices (in contrast to non choices*) in the game, and "Player Agency" seems reasonable with its current usage.

*Removing choices that are technically choices but only technically and not practically is also reasonable.


However I do think the current usage of "Player Agency" can be a bit overloaded if talking about both about the presence of actual choice and the magnitude. This is not as bad when the usage is more careful to phrase the magnitude as being the amount of the unit rather than overloading the word itself.

[Tanarii]

If you don't think that's what that word means, fair enough, but you can't just declare that this other meaning is the 'true' one with no substantive argument or source to back it up. Or, I guess you can, but you shouldn't expect anyone to be convinced if you do. Agency meaning "being in control of meaningful choices" has been the standard meaning in the game design industry for over a decade. We aren't trying to add anything new to the definition.

Far more than a decade, in the case of "player agency". The term was coined a long time ago.

It was heavily referenced as part of discussions of both combat as war and old school revival. Since it's integral to both.

[MoiMagnus]

To say that 'Agency is only "meaningful" if I'm aware of the consequences of my actions.' is simply not true.

IMO, what is true is "Agency dies if the player think they have no meaningful influence over the consequences".

Taking your 3 door example:

• It doesn't matter that the player had the choice to not open any if they didn't even consider this option, maybe because they're convinced that the GM will not let them do so and force them forward anyway.
• It doesn't matter that the player had the choice to open multiple of them if they didn't even consider this option, maybe because they're convinced that the GM would ensure this doesn't work.
• It doesn't matter that the player had the choice to seek for more information if they didn't consider this option, maybe because they're convinced the GM won't give them any additional information actually useful.

In general, it doesn't matter if the PC have some choices to make if the player are convinced they have no actual choice. Agency exists in the player's mind, and can easily die in it if the GM (or a previous GM) mishandled previous situations.

When in front of those 3 doors, a disillusioned (and quite rude) player could answer to the GM's "Which door do you open?" the following: "I open any of the 3 doors, I know it doesn't matter which one I pick, so in the same way I don't need to tell you exactly on which floor tile I walk on, I don't need to tell you which door I open."

[Composer99]

Upthread you suggested scaling back the meaning of Player Agency. Specifically you suggested scaling it back to


While this preserves the domain of options that player will find in their choices, it does not preserve the choice being a choice. Consider a game where the players only get non choices. They can still pull their levers (think, feel, say, attempt to do) but those levers are disconnected from the game. Similar to playing a game with a dead controller.

Since the majority of the value of this term of art is in its use describing choices, if we scaled "Player Agency" back to not be useful in this subject, we would just discard it for a new term.

As such, I think we need a term that does talk about the player's ability to make actual choices (in contrast to non choices*) in the game, and "Player Agency" seems reasonable with its current usage.

*Removing choices that are technically choices but only technically and not practically is also reasonable.


However I do think the current usage of "Player Agency" can be a bit overloaded if talking about both about the presence of actual choice and the magnitude. This is not as bad when the usage is more careful to phrase the magnitude as being the amount of the unit rather than overloading the word itself.

So when you refer to the analogy of playing a game with a dead controller, or how a player's choices are disconnected from the game, it seems to me as though you're referring to the impact that the player characters have on the in-game fiction when they interact with it.

In other words, in order for player agency to be player agency, the term of art, it's not enough that the players decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do - those things also have to have an impact on the fiction that (a) the players can perceive follows from the way their characters interacted with the fiction and (b) the players feel constitutes a meaningful change to the fiction, with what counts as meaningful depending on the players and possibly also the game system.

So perhaps if I wanted a pithy summary of player agency, I should instead go with something more like:

Players in a TTRPG have player agency when the players decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do within the in-game fiction, and when their interaction with that fiction results in an impactful change in the game state, subject to any constraints imposed by the game system or the table culture.

With a sub-definition of "impactful change" meaning something like

A change in the game state that the players (a) perceive has followed necessarily from their interaction with the fiction and (b) consider to be satisfactorily meaningful according to their gameplay preferences.

[kyoryu]

Meh.

Regardless of what specific word is used, I think the intent is clear.

Arguing semantics at this point is really just dodging the point.

[OldTrees1]

So when you refer to the analogy of playing a game with a dead controller, or how a player's choices are disconnected from the game, it seems to me as though you're referring to the impact that the player characters have on the in-game fiction when they interact with it.

In other words, in order for player agency to be player agency, the term of art, it's not enough that the players decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do - those things also have to have an impact on the fiction that (a) the players can perceive follows from the way their characters interacted with the fiction and (b) the players feel constitutes a meaningful change to the fiction, with what counts as meaningful depending on the players and possibly also the game system.

So perhaps if I wanted a pithy summary of player agency, I should instead go with something more like:

Players in a TTRPG have player agency when the players decide what their characters think, feel, say, do, or attempt to do within the in-game fiction, and when their interaction with that fiction results in an impactful change in the game state, subject to any constraints imposed by the game system or the table culture.

With a sub-definition of "impactful change" meaning something like

A change in the game state that the players (a) perceive has followed necessarily from their interaction with the fiction and (b) consider to be satisfactorily meaningful according to their gameplay preferences.

Yes, I think that is a reasonable phrasing. With suitable low requirements for the subjective components, this defines the players ability to interface with the game (instead of just a dead controller).

I also think that the base definition, outside of any conversation specific context, should start with low requirements. The impact does not need to be large, it just means the signal (character thinks, feels, says, attempts) went from the controller to the game system as an input to a choice in the game. Likewise the "meaningful" requirement should be set low unless the conversation has context to set it higher, in which case it would then filter out choices that are meaningless for that conversation.

I also appreciate your pithy summary includes both the type of input (decide what their character ...) and explicitly mentions constraints imposed on that input. Those parts are usually omitted from summaries but you are right they are important parts of the whole.

[Stonehead]

I typed 'agency' into Google:

'Action or intervention producing a particular effect.'

This is basically the definition I've been working with since as long as I can remember. That definition - or something very similar - works everywhere except this forum. Where at least a handful of regular posters also define a reduction in agency, as railroading- Point is:

...
None of that really matters. Because what I've learned is that this forum, defines 'agency' as 'player agency', and 'player agency' has bizarre specificity to its definition, which is simply summed up as 'A high amount of agency (the ability for an actor to affect change, ideally in the actor's favour).'

Therefore, this forum argues - quite strongly, turns out - that only a high amount of agency, is agency at all. Which is bizarre to me, because that leads to topics like 'A reduction from that high amount of agency, is basically a railroad...And a railroad is-'... But we've already had that conversation, and I now understand how people who believe in 'player agency' come to the conclusions that they do.

It's not "this forum's" definition, it's the game design industry's definition. Words can mean multiple different things based on the context it's used in, but I think the game design usage is fairly fitting considering we're in a forum discussing game design.

And again, it's really not a bizarre definition, as explained by the dozens of articles on the topic.

Far more than a decade, in the case of "player agency". The term was coined a long time ago.

It was heavily referenced as part of discussions of both combat as war and old school revival. Since it's integral to both.

Oh cool, good to know. I only started hearing of it about a decade ago, when I started getting into amateur game design.