Quote from Shadeflayer >>

Spideycloned.... dam!  Well done.  Terrific capture of this topic.  You are definitely braver then me on this one!

<opinion>
The one thing I would like to (carefully) add is the whole "player agency" crap and how *I* believe it has damaged the game. Some of the people/groups you listed above I've listened to on occasion, and the second they start talking about ensuring "player agency" is when I move onto something more interesting, like boiling turnips, or painting cow horns videos.  All "player agency " really means, when you boil it down to its roots, is to give the kiddies what ever they need and/or let them do what ever they want in order to make them happy.  Dr. Spock on steroids.  Spare the rod, spoil the child thing.  Any DM who gives into that nonsense is part of the problem.

My closing point is that there are influencers out there (some listed above) that propagate stupid %&*#@%#$ ideas and deserve to have their D&D cards revoked and put in timeout.
</opinion>

 Huh. There are certainly people out there who make extreme cases for player agency (though they usually don't play D&D), but at its root, all player agency means is that the PCs have the ability to actually change the storyline of the game.

There are all different levels of player agency, and the different GMs/DMs online run the gamut. At one level there is "Here is a world, what do you want to do?" At another level there is, "Here is an adventure, which you WILL go on... but on it you can do whatever you want." At one level there is, 'You can be any race, class, subclass, or option available in any of the books." At another level there is, "My world only has humans, dwarves, and elves, but you can whichever one you want." It sort of depends what one means -- and significantly, what one values -- when talking about agency.

For example, someone who wants to go on a dungeon crawl, and is perfectly happy to have the adventure start the old school way, at the entrance to the dungeon, which provides very little player agency (at least in terms of deciding whether or not to go on the adventure), might balk at being told that in this world you cannot play a Dragonborn. He may want the total freedom of character creation but not give a halfling's toe about "adventure agency" as it were.

Someone else might have no problem with a world that has "only humans," as long as the DM lets her go on whatever adventure she decides to go on, rather than trying to funnel the PCs into the adventure the DM had prepped. She may want total freedom of choosing what to do after character creation, but doesn't care that much about character creation itself and might even be OK being handed a pre-made PC to play, as long as after that she can do whatever she darn well pleases.

These are, of course, extremes, and there are many gradations in between. And there are many other aspects to agency besides choosing which adventure to go on or which character to play. For instance, many old school dungeons give you zero agency about whether you are going on the adventure or not, but once inside the dungeon, there are many ways to go and many options you can choose -- sneaking, going in head-first, clean out the whole thing, beeline to the goal, etc. So you get lots of agency once you are inside the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, for instance, but none about deciding whether to go into it or not (at least, as written -- though of course DMs can provide that as well).

On the original topic, the various "influencers," streamers, etc. provide different levels of agency. Coleville, for instance, starts out the Chain of Acheron with what appears to be almost zero agency. There are several triggered cut-scenes and there is an unavoidable PC death right from the off. It was extremely railroady. This session had little player agency in it. However, what people watching the stream did not know (and he had to explain it later because of the objections raised in the live-chat) was that this session was the result of player agency. The players chose to play the Chain; they chose it knowing that they would be building it back up after the "fall of the Chain." And then when Coleville asked, do they want the fall to be the background or do they want to play through the fall, they said they wanted to play it out. So using their agency, they chose to play through a session with very little agency, as it were -- they volunteered for the railroad because they wanted to see the fall of the Chain. This would be rather like when my friends all bought me the G-D-Q modules and said, "Run this series." The series would have been a railroad (if we had ever gotten to play it -- but we never did get PCs high enough to do so) -- but this was a railroad they asked to play.

Thus, watching these streams can be deceptive. -- what looks like open world might have been agreed ahead of time by the players and DM, off-screen. What looks like a railroad might have been a player-made choice, off screen. We don't see all the back-and-forth, the session 0s, the negotiation, the "table talk" that happens before/after/in-between sessions. This makes it very hard to accurately judge how much player agency is actually happening in the streamed campaign, and therefore, makes it a mistake to try and copy that "level of agency" -- whatever one may think one is seeing.

Quote from BioWizard >>

 Guy from Great GM came up with 4 styles recently.... Epic, Open, Player, and Accidental. And his point is that not everyone as a DM, is going to be equally good at all of these. And I would add that not every player would like playing in all of these. Mercer runs what Guy would call a Player campaign. Coleville (in the Chain) runs more of an Epic campaign. There is no right or wrong here -- it's up to what you and your players would like..

 Now if anybody sounds like a pompous know-it-all it's this Guy. I disliked him when I first watched his videos. I also greatly disliked his promotion of World Anvil. I get it, it's a product he uses and loves.

However, in spite of how I felt at the beginning he has good advice. His method of campaign design, and GM theory are quite good especially if you have no idea how to start.

The person I can't handle is exp to lvl 3. I'm probably just too old to understand his humor. I just watch and think what a whiner he is and how poorly he GMs if his party can't make it through Tomb of Horrors at lvl 20.

Again, as with games, with the "influencers" themselves, everyone likes something different. There is at least one super-popular stream that I watched for a while until it became nails-on-chalkboard to me. So I stopped watching. But just because I don't like it doesn't mean that other people won't -- or shouldn't.

As I said above, I think having these folks around is great for promoting the games (which we want to happen, so that more product is sold and thus more is made), and for at a basic level teaching people the general way these games can be played. But I think they can be a problem in that people watching come to think of them as the "gold standard" way to play (which they are NOT, because there is no gold standard), and start trying to play the way Crit Role or Saving Throw or Chain plays, instead of each group finding its own sweet spot, as it were.

And that "sweet spot" concept is key -- it's important to remember that what you are watching on these streams is people either playing, or talking about playing, in their sweet spot. But their sweet spot may not be (and almost certainly isn't) yours. They found their own sweet spot. You can learn a lot from watching them play in their sweet spot. But the one thing you can't learn from watching them? Is what your sweet spot is. You have to find that on your own -- and be open to finding it, rather than just defaulting to playing Guy's way or Mercer's way or Callarman's way or Coleville's way. Use all of those and more to try things out until you come up with your (and your table's) way to play -- find your sweet spot. It's the only way the game will be fun.

I think the totality of popular dnd podcasts/streams is a good thing, as whole they offer a glimpse into the millions of different ways to play. However, they’re not often a representation of a game you play at home with friends. I think new players are intimidated because they think they need a character voice or to have this deep understanding of dnd lore, and don’t get to find their characters  in "our" game world.

One thing that can help with thinking "this is the right way to do it" from watching these shows is to watch several. Coleville and Mercer run games that are stylistically very different, and their players approach the game differently. The folks on Wildcards ETU are different yet again. After watching all 3 of these for several episodes (to many, in the case of Crit Role and ETU), it would be hard to point to any one way of running the game or playing it as "right." I think one of the reasons people get tunnel vision about "how the game is played" is that they only watch one way of doing it (and watch that way for 20, 40, 100 episodes, accounting for hundreds of hours).

Quote from Shadeflayer >>

Spideycloned.... dam!  Well done.  Terrific capture of this topic.  You are definitely braver then me on this one!

<opinion>
The one thing I would like to (carefully) add is the whole "player agency" crap and how *I* believe it has damaged the game. Some of the people/groups you listed above I've listened to on occasion, and the second they start talking about ensuring "player agency" is when I move onto something more interesting, like boiling turnips, or painting cow horns videos.  All "player agency " really means, when you boil it down to its roots, is to give the kiddies what ever they need and/or let them do what ever they want in order to make them happy.  Dr. Spock on steroids.  Spare the rod, spoil the child thing.  Any DM who gives into that nonsense is part of the problem.

My closing point is that there are influencers out there (some listed above) that propagate stupid %&*#@%#$ ideas and deserve to have their D&D cards revoked and put in timeout.
</opinion>

 Is that really what  you think player agency is? Because it's not, really. Player agency is just that, allowing the players to have agency in the story. It has nothing to do with giving them everything they want or not having to face consequences for the action, it's just the pretty obvious act of allowing the players to choose what their characters do instead of the DM forcing them to do certain things. You know, the difference between a co-operative rolepaying game and one person jsut telling a story that the people listening to has no input to?

Quote from BioWizard >>

There are all different levels of player agency, and the different GMs/DMs online run the gamut. At one level there is "Here is a world, what do you want to do?" At another level there is, "Here is an adventure, which you WILL go on... but on it you can do whatever you want." At one level there is, 'You can be any race, class, subclass, or option available in any of the books." At another level there is, "My world only has humans, dwarves, and elves, but you can whichever one you want." It sort of depends what one means -- and significantly, what one values -- when talking about agency.

 

 Goes to show how the term player agency has expanded and morphed that I don't consider these examples of player agency at all. These are restrictions that only affect the players, and most people who advocate strongly for player agency are totally fine with any level of campaign restrictions like this.

What I refer to when I talk about agency is the level of control a player has over their character's behavior and decisions.

Player 1: "I try to seduce Grok"

DM: Grok, roll a WIS saving throw to avoid being seduced.

* Grok rolls a 4 *

DM: Grok is seduced by Player 1. He must do what they say for the next hour.

That is a fairly classic violation of player agency. The player controlling Grok had no input whatsoever on how his character handled that situation, and for the next bit of table time is unable to make decisions for his character.

It often boils down to the DM just outright saying "You do this" when the player doesn't want to and they don't think their character wants to either. At the end of the day, if a player can't control what their character would do, they are just pawns in the DMs Storytime. That's why agency is important.

On the flip side, there may be times when a player might attempt to make their character do something that strongly goes against their characters stated alignment or backstory just because it's something the player wants to see happen. I think most advocates for player agency are just fine with calling out the player in cases like this and at the least requiring them to explain why their character would make such a choice.

At any rate player agency is the difference between D&D and a one-person puppet show, and just writing the term "advocates for player agency" feels ridiculous to me. Dismissing it as whiny entitlement is a straw man argument.

As for the original topic, I don't think it's fair to pin negative fan behavior on influencers. It's not the Matts' fault that players use their opinions as weapons against other players, or that players and DMs mimic them. They do everything they can to be friendly and inclusive and stress that you can play any way you want. In any fandom, you have toxic (or just misguided) people who are going to be negative regardless of what weapons they choose to arm themselves with. If all the influencers stopped producing content tomorrow, the people that use them to justify their actions would just switch to a different line of reasoning - they wouldn't just disappear.

They are great advertising persons for game. But some people think they are high nobles and the rest of us are just dirty peasants which need a good beating because we are doing in the Badwrongfun way.. A lot of the how to videos should have been published Aug 25,1980. It is nice seeing some people commenting and giving suggestions which I learn by the school of hard knocks. Others from the big list, I have never heard of. Or Voice, presentation, etc turns me off. 

Quote from Shadeflayer >>

Spideycloned.... dam!  Well done.  Terrific capture of this topic.  You are definitely braver then me on this one!

<opinion>
The one thing I would like to (carefully) add is the whole "player agency" crap and how *I* believe it has damaged the game. Some of the people/groups you listed above I've listened to on occasion, and the second they start talking about ensuring "player agency" is when I move onto something more interesting, like boiling turnips, or painting cow horns videos.  All "player agency " really means, when you boil it down to its roots, is to give the kiddies what ever they need and/or let them do what ever they want in order to make them happy.  Dr. Spock on steroids.  Spare the rod, spoil the child thing.  Any DM who gives into that nonsense is part of the problem.

My closing point is that there are influencers out there (some listed above) that propagate stupid %&*#@%#$ ideas and deserve to have their D&D cards revoked and put in timeout.
</opinion>

 It depends on what you mean by allowing "Player agency".  1. by PA you MUST allow any build. race, class, 3 party addon. 2 IF by PA you MUST Allow jasper to pick the King's belt to make his pants fall down. Or 3. if by PA you must let  Jasper TRY to pants the king but if he fails the player will be rolling up Jasper Jr. Or 4. Players and DMs talk to each other during session 0 and both come to the agreement what is and is not allow. With the knowledge some of the players are being or walking out the door never to be seen of again.  

Player Agency has become vary wishy washy definition unless defined ahead of time. 

I think one issue with player agency -- though I would be surprised if any of the people mentioned so far on this thread would advocate for this -- is that for some players, it has become an alternate way of saying "gimme!" And if you don't "gimme," you are "destroying player agency."

Player and DM agency are a give-and-take, but some folks seem to view them as a tug-of-war. I don't think any of the "influencers" mentioned here believe that... but one issue could be that if DM "A" lets players have a lot more choices than DM "B," then the players used to "A" could feel like "B" is "taking away their agency." He probably isn't...but again, there are so many ways to do things, and each group needs to find its "sweet spot."