AED,

Read your subtext below your post "PhD, MS, MA". As an educator myself---respect! Albeit, I'm only MaEd and MA--just a pleeb! PhD in the works.

"When discussing Agency, if you aren't aware of Structure, you miss the entire point of Agency and how it operates and what it means. By your reflection, every person on Earth lacks any kind of agency."

This whole section is spot on, we're bound by the laws of the universe. Agency as I'm defining it is exactly that, freedom within parameters, not freedom FROM parameters.

"A well constructed set of basic maps, a DM who knows what their setting is about (published or original), and effective improvisational actions can supply all the rest -- and do it without actually affecting Agency."

As a general component of games, I find procedural content to lack any soul, inherently, because it is simply content without purpose. Not to say that the content cannot have purpose though. In fact, the content itself is actually not the important part--it's the narrative component (calling it the purpose) that matters, which can be planned for. For example, lets say as part of your general narrative, you know that there will be a character that wants to inquire why someone is buying up all the silver bars in the region. Then your players request a store--the store can be made up on the spot, but you immediately have a strong narrative connection. So it all ties back to intentionality of content, rather than the simple existence of content. In this case, it would sort of be a hybrid "procedural" store but an intentional narrative component. 

"Structure is everything that limits Agency"

This is a quotable quote. Spot on, agree.

"Now, my approach to worldbuilding and creating adventures is that I create Structure. I create the framework and a series of events or locations and possible reasons that might lure the players to them. I am not making them go to those places -- I am simply saying hey, you can go do this if you want."

Spot on. This is identical to what I am doing.


"As a DM, I don't need to give them a set series of choices -- I let them decide both what their choices are, and then which ones they will take. "

Amen! This, I believe is the gold standard. This is what I define as true agency vs agency illusion and how I operate.  Mandated options feelings like agency virtue signaling.


" I already had more than half my fun jus making the world for them."

I feel exactly the same way. I absolutely love the creative outlet of manifesting a world and narrative from my head. It's like building a huge playground, and then enjoying watching kids use it creatively to have fun.

Great post AED.

A bit more

AED,

"What it comes down to is that I prep like a madwoman for months, lol"

Exactly what I do, identical! But I've read so many posts criticizing that feedback, but I see it as an ideal. There seems to be this common sentiment that planning equates to scripting or railroading--I'm guessing it's an egoic reaction rather than rational one. I'm new to DM'ing, but I see many DM's stating, and making videos about not planning at all as the best way to do things, and disparaging having a narrative component in the campaign. This argument that "The narrative is what they do..that's the true story!", which I think is just a very low standard of operation. "Their story IS the story" is just a history book, an journal. (their day to day is of course a story, but it operates parallel to a world narrative). I don't know why I'm getting such negative feedback for pre-loading the planning.

In my current campaign, my pre-prep is maybe about 150 hours of work before the first session--content is ready. Stories, narrative, quests, NPC's, etc--all ready. Now my session prep becomes minimal and only needs to adapt to the previous session.

Re: railroading start of session 1
Identical to my approach!

"" Oppressive Bargain in relation to Agency and Structure."

Researching now.

Great post, again. 

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I think you're never going to get to true True Agency with pre-planning, because the DM can't anticipate every single thing that a player could possibly want to do.

 Well, it's probably possible as long as you're okay with a game that's rather random and pointless. The basic problem is that you can't possibly generate everything ahead of the time, so if you give the PCs complete freedom you have to continually come up with things from scratch, and a creature, encounter, or NPC that I spent five minutes creating just isn't going to be very deep.

 Unless your players have incredibly short attention spans, complete freedom doesn't mean they'll force you to constantly be coming up with stuff on the fly. What happens is that they decide what matters to them within the world you're presenting, and then you develop that further. (And sometimes they wander off in ways you didn't expect, but once the game is established, it's much less likely.)

Quote from ekidhardt >>

"Ok, where do you want to go next?"
You say its anything but railroad--but there is really no option for them if they don't want to go where they said right? Not saying there is no agency, but there's no true agency if they have no choice to change their mind. I like that you'll ask them to step away to plan---then that seems to account for a change of plans.

 You say this takes away agency from players because they can't change their minds but really does it? From an in game perspective there's no difference between them saying "I want to go there" and it immediately happens and "I want to go there" and it happens a week later. The only difference is that the DM has a week to make the experience better for them. If they're constantly changing their minds then they're just being a dick to the DM and wasting their time and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the next campaign isn't a sandbox

Quote from ekidhardt >>

"Players deviating from their prior intent is OK but has consequences"

This sounds a bit like punishing players---where's the line there? If they ignore the goblins, rationally, anything could happen. They could be killed by another group, or town guard, etc. I feel like a lot of DM's use 'consequences' as a pejorative. Are there ever good consequences, or is it always punished? (negative consequences).

"Ok, where do you want to go next?"
You say its anything but railroad--but there is really no option for them if they don't want to go where they said right? Not saying there is no agency, but there's no true agency if they have no choice to change their mind. I like that you'll ask them to step away to plan---then that seems to account for a change of plans.

 Consequences, as I use them, are not negative, nor is the word pejorative. I find games where the world state is fixed and waiting for players to be boring—absolute rubbish. There's no suspension of disbelief in the shared virtual reality that the table creates. So, the narrative on the goblins changes in a way that feels right for the setting when the players spend time on other things.

The change makes the decisions players make with their characters feel real and important. It's not an amusement park where the rides sit and wait for characters. I find that unrealistic and, in impact, a railroad ("Do these things in any order but do them").

If players change their minds and don't go where they said, we circle back to me either doing improv, taking 30 to adapt, or being honest and saying I'm absolutely not prepared for that and will work on it for the next session. True agency, as much as we can offer, means that's the right move.

Lastly, I think you are letting "perfect agency" get in the way of "good agency" for the game. Your standard embraces the impossible and asks good questions that allow everyone to find their  "good agency" and keep the table moving. If you seek exceptions, you'll find them constantly and paralyze progress in the game. It's supposed to be fun, exceptions and all. It's ok to be as good as you can and run a fun game. That's the ultimate goal - a fun game.

Quote from Neepers00 >>

"My players can go to any of the districts ..."
This sounds like a great degree of freedom for the players. If they go to a district however, is the district empty of new content? So if they've visited there, when they return is it just what they've already seen, or is it evolving in some way? If they say "I want to go into this manor", are you ready for that, or would that be sort of unplanned improv (Come back in 20 minutes folks!)

I try to keep a general idea of the world-state so that wherever the players choose to go, they can see the effects of recent events on that region. A few sessions back, the PCs helped stage an escape for a pair of Imperial dissenters who had been assigned to protect a delegation engaging in peace talks with the city government. This had several effects that are visible around the districts: since the escape involved a ship, the harbor district is now subject to much tighter security. The empire has threatened to withdraw its delegation, so the city faction that was pro-peace has lost influence and the faction that was anti-peace has gained influence (neither of these is the good guys; there are very few good guys in this setting). Anti-Imperial sentiment is up, trust in city government is down. Also, the PCs planted evidence that a crime syndicate they've been in conflict with was involved in the escape, so that syndicate has gone deep underground and the cops are pursuing increasingly aggressive crime-prevention strategies. All of this is visible to varying degrees in the different districts, and it interacts with the key NPCs' plans and schedules in different ways. I can usually improv from there.

If the players want to go to a specific location that I don't have prepped, I can usually stitch one together using The Big Book of Home Plans, which I keep in my game bag. For locations I expect to be story-relevant, like the estates of the Major Families or the aforementioned crime syndicate's hideout, those places are about 50% planned in advance and I can fill in the remainder either on the fly or prior to the session I expect it to appear in. Location generation is one of my few points of what I'd call "talent", so it's rarely a sticking point.

Quote from Neepers00 >>

In your central narrative (the cosmic mystery), how is it presented to the players? Is there an incentive to pursue that path?

The cosmic horror/mystery has crept into the players' awareness from the conclusion of the first story arc; their first arc villain was a minor crime boss who utilized a strange power to match them in battle. The power backfired and killed this villain before they could ask any questions about it, but the PCs would run into it more and more as they explored other minor plotlines early on. Eventually their main goal became "find out what's going on with these weird tattoos that keep messing us up", and through that I was able to introduce NPCs who know more about the city's origins and the nature of the cosmic threat roiling beneath it. Two sessions ago, the PCs learned they have six months before total reality failure overtakes the city. But don't worry: the secretive faction that has been giving the PCs cryptic guidance thus far has promised they'll destroy the city and everyone in it before a containment failure can occur. So I guess that's what passes for incentive at my table.

So, first, thank you to to those who expressed appreciation.

I should note that my statements about Structure and Agency are neither original nor even anything "new", lol. I just used the science around them exactly as they are in the understanding of our current day. the "struggle" between Structure and Agency is a real one that we all deal with every single day of our own lives to varying degrees.

For some sociologists, the entire field is basically all about the division between structure and agency, and how it operates and is engaged. So while I am appreciative of the praise, I have to note that it is something already out there, and that is where the concept of Player Agency comes from, after all (because we sure as hell didn't know about it back in 1e days, lol).

THat said, there are some things that I think I should note.

Most Worldbuilding advice for newer DMs tends to be of the "start small" variety -- build the very limited local area first. This advice is given out because most new DMs don't really know a lot about building a world, or what is needed in one, or don't fully understand how a world interacts with the game mechanics, or how the game mechanics work, or...

So, really, it is advice to make it easier on the new DM. It is good advice -- if the goal is strictly ease of entry. But if the goal is going to be stuff like the core of a game where full agency is done and prep time is going to be minimal before a session, and improv is going to be a big function, well...

.... then it is horrible advice.

Caveat to that, however, is that how many new DMs or Experienced DMs want to build out a whole massive place (not even a world, let's just say something the size of Western Europe) before they can even do their first game? I know that even though I had built a bunch of worlds by the time I started, I certainly didn't want to spend the amount of time to do it. Yeah, it was ages ago, and dirt was a new thing, but I just wanted to play.

My advice to new Dms has even included the notion of start small. but what I mean by that is start building something small in a way that let's folks still have Agency -- and especially while they learn the game.  As Wysperra noted, not everyone is comfortable in a situation where they have to choose for themselves what to do. That's not just true in the game, that's true in real life.

So when I say start small, I think of how we started learning D&D in the first place: with a town, a couple days distance, and a dungeon. I mean the old style, crazy ass dungeons where things just didn't make sense. Corridors and rooms and weird doors and taps and monsters and the rest.

Here's why.

The Town gives you a place to go home, to go back, to stock up and resupply and interact with a world bigger than yourself.

The space around the town -- a couple days travel, gives you the ability to drop in all kinds of different terrain and learn to understand the nature of and how wilderness and travel stuff works. Random encounters, terrain and weather, time tracking, lets nature classes use their abilities, that kind of thing.

The dungeon is, however, your first experience in creating a story,  in understanding how encounter design works, in becoming familiar with the concept of a scene, and in providing Agency to characters.

Corridors in a dungeon have traps or not. They hide secret doors and concealed doors. They have a direction, and honestly act as a sort of funnel -- but the corridors can branch. Ever want to paralyze a bunch of new players, give them a star intersection -- 5 to 8 directions, but not from a room, just suddenly they stand at the mouth of where they are and there are 4 to 7 additional directions to choose (in addition to back the way they came).

Now, True Agency means they can pick any one of the 8 directions. Limited agency means they can only pick some of them, because the DM has blocked a few of them off in a way that they cannot overcome. Maybe the walls are impervious to magic or physical attacks and block teleportation or ethereal "phasing". That limits Agency.

But if it is a cave in, they can clear the rocks from a tunnel, if it is a monster they can fight negotiate, or buy their way through. if it is a trap, they can find it and get past it. All of these things still offer Agency. If the walls are not magical and impervious, then that means they have even more options -- but the scariest thing of all is just doing nothing. letting it be 8 paths out of a single spot, and they can use magic to break walls and dig holes and teleport out and whatever.

As they move through the corridors (Wilderness travel), they come upon Rooms. Each room is like a set up, a scene, a place where things are: answers, questions, puzzles, solutions, other beings, opportunities, stuff. You can do anything in a dungeon room. But the DM has to describe it, they have to know what goes in it, they have know how it connects to other rooms (to other scenes), and how it fits into the larger dungeon as a whole (if it is a dungeon that "makes sense").

When creating adventures that aren't in a dungeon, this is creating a moment that the PCs are possibly going to encounter -- just like they may not ever enter that one room in the dungeon. Again, here is Agency -- the goal is not to require then to choose something, simply to have it be something they could.

Now, some folks don't like to do that. They want something they create to be used, to be encountered, to be dealt with. That's hard. It is one of the problems of being a DM that sometimes work we do may never get used. I have always wanted to do the whole "big critter is fighting the party and as it becomes obvious the party is going to die, an even bigger monster comes along and eats the baddie, then leaves" thing -- had it set up a dozen times. And the party killed the big monster. 45 years, never been able to do it once.

You spend nine whoe hours creating the ultimate Final Boss encounter, and your party decides they finished the problem and go back. teeth grinding frustration. So you throw a barrier in their way "The walls suddenly collapse, giving you only one direction to move or die!" and so they have to fight the bad guy. Well, that's what it means to take away agency.

Player Agency does, in fact, mean that if you have a great huge story you want to tell as a DM, that they may not even participate in that story. If you want them to do so, then during a zero session, you need to agree on some kind of "hint" or let them all know "this is the story" and generally find  a way to make them understand that instead of thinking they are done, they have to go fight the bad guy. You have to get the Players to agree.

Or...

You can give them a reason. you can use gossip, hints, sudden deaths of family members, some ******* who poisons a beloved Companion, a squad of assassins, whatever -- something has been left unfinished, and there are things that happen as a result of it.

A scene -- a dungeon room -- is just an open ended event or encounter or thing that the party stumbles into. creating an adventure is really just making a bunch of these things, and giving them each a way of connecting to each other. A DM creates a whole bunch of them. Tons of them. This is the art and craft of DMing at its most basic.

create those, and you have a bunch of things that exist that you can use -- and re-use -- over and over again. tweak them as you need to. I have 100 small little sets of ruins floating around in my head. Each ruin has a few scenes -- sometimes, it is just digging through rubble, other times it might be a sneaky monster, yet other times other things can happen.  I have a couple hundred basic ideas for simple fetch quests that all have the thing being fetched in a place that is a scene. I have been using them for decades, lol -- but each time they are used it is different, because the circumstances, the PCs, the environment, the moment is all different and how I choose to connect them together to tell a side story or a link to the main story or whatever -- all of it changes the general experience.

That is the trick. THe same applies to everything you want to do with the story you want to tell -- and while I have said it before, I will say it again: if your final boss battle doesn't include both the condition of success AND the condition of failure (what happens after they win and what happens after they lose), then you haven't finished your final boss fight.

Because you cannot know if they will win or lose -- and if you do, then you already gave up their Agency.

Now, to some folks, this will sound like I am saying "there's no larger story!". I am not.

I run campaigns. The last time a campaign of mine fizzled out was in the last century -- and it was because of the births of three babies within about a 4 month period, lol.

A campaign for me always has a story (technically, more than one). That story is going to be big -- but the stakes are not usually "save the world" or "kill a god" or "fix time". not that I haven't or won't in the future, but those are not usually the stakes. In my current campaign, the long term Campaign story is "stop a war". But the Players won't really be aware of what they are doing until it comes to the "exciting climax" -- which will likely happen around 18th level. For the campaign.

They are 2nd level now. They haven't even gotten to the first marker of that Campaign story -- right now they are *supposed* to be figuring out how to end the threat of a demon that is terrorizing a town. Not all of them are doing that. Hell, they still haven't made any money, lol.

1st to 4th level is a group of small adventures that will end up with them hopefully beating the demon.

5th to 8th level is going to involve them stopping a plot to harm the princess of a realm a thousand miles away -- and there will be a lot of things that happen to get there.

9th to 12th level is them saving the emperor (if they can -- they might not, and the expectation is they will fail). 

13th to 16th level is them dealing with the challenge of the Crusades, an old foe returning, and some surprises.

17th level and up is them discovering that there is a whole new part of the world they haven't dealt with, and in the process learning of a threat that no one but them is aware of -- and stopping a war. If they fail, then the next campaign will take place in a world very changed from what they know as players -- and their task will be to undo it if they can.

There are 21 distinct 'parts" to this larger story, and each part consists of 3 to 5 small adventures. The fight against the demon (Pencewit) runs across the first six. They have completed 1 and a half -- and each of those six parts has at least three Scenes -- 3 dungeon rooms.  those three scenes will include the boss fight and all the stuff that leads up to it in the sewer caverns beneath the town.

so there is a story. How do I make them follow it? I don't. I provide rumors and gossip and quest givers and background chatter and I *hope* that I do enough to get them along the way, or I keep trying new rumors or whatever.

Now, I do have a sneaky thing to help me. It is called Milestones. I award them as points when they do something that advances the story -- but I also award them for accomplishing things that are pretty cool. A sidequest to break a curse that is poisoning a small hamlet. Exploring a buried ruin and discovering a long lost document that they get to the right person. Discovering that there is a series of underground caverns the town uses as a sewer system and finding a way in.

My Players can advance their characters in the game without ever participating in the story I wrote. Because the story being told isn't my story -- it is the story of these characters. But things happen no matter what they do, as well -- so if they skip the whole pencewit thing, something bad is going to happen, and they will know they could have stopped it.

That's the way that Agency works -- at least in my games.  And I prepared all of this long before I started the campaign. 

When I built my world, I started big -- but I only created the Structure, I only created the stuff I needed to know. No city maps, no town maps, no long list of NPCs that they will encounter if they go to a shop or a stall or run into someone on the road.

If it isn't part of a scene, then I improvise it. I have traps, i have encounters, I have things that are secret or concealed. The rest is always up to the party, and my prep is usually less than 30 minutes -- about an hour, max, and most of that is any random rolls I need to make.

Agency has two parts.

First, the players choose their characters' actions.
Second, the GM has the world respond in an appropriate way.

"Appropriate way" means in a way that the players expect the world to behave, but most importantly in a consistent way, a way they can predict.

If a player feels that their character's actions don't affect the world in any consistent fashion then the player has lost agency. If the character gets a different result every time they choose the same action, the player is going to (rightly) feel, "it doesn't matter what I do, the GM is going to do what they want anyway, so I'll just stop caring about the game."

Green,

I disagree with most of what you wrote. Don't really have anything to add beyond that.

AeD,

"Now, True Agency means they can pick any one of the 8 directions. Limited agency means they can only pick some of them, because the DM has blocked a few of them off in a way that they cannot overcome."

I think this should have a qualifier: If there is NEVER a way to overcome those routes, then I agree. If however there are unassailable obstacles that could be unraveled at a later time, then I would qualify it as having full agency. 

"Again, here is Agency -- the goal is not to require then to choose something, simply to have it be something they could"

Well said. I think DM's should be dealers of opportunity, not restrictions.

"That's hard. It is one of the problems of being a DM that sometimes work we do may never get used. "

This is where I don't relate to many others. I couldn't care less if something I built isn't used--my ultimate goal is players to enjoy their experience. In a general sense, when one aligns reality and expectations, there's no emotional reaction. If ones expectation is that "Players use my meticulously crafted content!" and reality disagrees, it's the expectation that is in error. Reality is never wrong--only expectations. Sure, I hope they do certain things--if not, so be it!

" Re: Bigger critter kills big creature"

Totally stealing this and using it immediately haha... I have just the scene! Have you ever tried 3 way or 4 way battles? As I'm carefully constructing a living world, my intent is that they'll have encounters where they're running into battles in progress--ideally with a moral dilemma (do you support the elves gunning down the goblin children?). They'll enter a battle mid-fight, or near the end of a fight--and they have to decide to intervene or not.

 re: roping players into your campaign line

100% agree. Seduce them into following it. But I would add on this: if you have to do a ton of work to have players consistently follow the narrative, maybe its time to reflect on whether or not the narrative is interesting.

"if your final boss battle doesn't include both the condition of success AND the condition of failure, then you haven't finished your final boss fight."

Agree. Great standard to follow. These are the sort of tips that belong in a DM book. Is there not a "DM's philosophy book" out there?

"which will likely happen around 18th level. For the campaign."

You seriously intend on players reaching that point? How many sessions would you expect that? Years right?

"Now, I do have a sneaky thing to help me. It is called Milestones"

This is where we'll diverge a bit in philosophy. I think though, 'milestones' is so widely interpreted that there's no clear standard--and XP or milestone, both can be done poorly or very well. On my end, I don't find milestone reward systems are narratively rational. It just doesn't make sense to me that the act of reaching a narrative point is an experience gateway. Several other reasons as well. On that though, I see the journey as the qualifier for experience--not the destination. It's the accumulation of a multitude of situations and the wisdom that that brings. Rationally, in any experience in life, the achievement is actually not the pinnacle--it's what you learned to REACH that point that is. The last step is just a recognition of a journey--and the journey is where all the growth happened. And then when referring to a qualifier of those experiences, you might say "I have 40 years of experience as a DM", and you certainly won't say "I have 40 milestones". For anyone who has achieved anything--what you learn along the way, not the goal, is the reward: your degree rewards you for the journey and the experience. So for me, this notion of milestones as quantifier of progress seems very odd, unless it's simply a matter of "I don't want to keep track of XP"--then sure, Milestone solves that. 

But there's more, in terms of engagement, which is a better system? XP or milestone? And I don't mean "kill 500 mobs to get a level" kind of XP, I mean rewarding for all interactions, quests, cooperation, creativity,  AND story progress. Anyone who has worked in academia is familiar with formative feedback. Formative feedback fuels growth, steers players, and XP serves as a phenomenal tool for intermittent reinforcement conditioning (which effectively produces engagement through dopamine response). An XP system is a perfect tool for consistent intermittent reinforcement over time. So the second point then, would be that XP is a far better engager.

Further, XP systems offer a way to steer behavior and condition players to what you would like. In a milestone system, what's the reward for being creative? What's the reward for good role playing? What's the reward for teamwork? In a milestone system, there's no reward for the QUALITY of the play, so why would players put in their A game when their C game is good enough? Should the 1st and last place finishers in a marathon get equal recognition? Milestone systems are like taking college classes pass/fail. So I see milestone achievement as missed opportunities to reward players for being amazing throughout their journey.

Then, Measurable progress! "You've spent 6 sessions crawling through the dungeon to reach Vecna...and....you're exactly the same place where you started." or "You've been playing for 4 months and your DM keeps pushing off the leveling because they're not prepared, or just forget." In an XP system, you're constantly watching your bar progress--you begin to anticipate and salivate as you scratch and crawl your way through experience after experience until, finally...ding! You've got that level from all your hard work. And it can happen anywhere! There's no narrative threshold gateway--and connecting back to agency: where's the agency in a milestone system? "If players do not reach X, they will not get to level X"--this seems like a departure from your earlier comments on agency. Should agency not also include their leveling progress? Should levels have DM dictated gateways?

There's a reason that virtually all RPG's out there use an incremental progression system--be it skill based or XP based, players love to feel like they're progressing and being able to see a clear goal that they can aspire towards.

This all being said: my plan is this--all gameplay is rewarded, ESPECIALLY amazing play. Not just for objectives--it could be for singing a song in a tavern, or amazing RP with no tangible benefit, or for simply being a risk taker. If it enriches the RL experience of the players, I'm doling out XP for it. Then, on top of that, reaching all objectives or narrative checkpoints will provide a very hefty thump of XP as well. That way no matter what players do--they're rewarded for the quality of the journey they took and the amazing memories along the way.

In virtually every other area: we're in complete alignment though. Your worlds sound amazing, for sure, and the care and deliberation you put into these tiny details to maximize player enjoyment no doubt make for a very engaging campaign.

cheers!

Quote from Neepers00 >>

"That's hard. It is one of the problems of being a DM that sometimes work we do may never get used. "

This is where I don't relate to many others. I couldn't care less if something I built isn't used--my ultimate goal is players to enjoy their experience.

 In a world of finite prep time, if you have to prep five locations and the PCs only go to one, it means you've done 1/5 as much prep on that location as if you knew ahead of time which one they were going towards.

So, I should note that as someone who has a lot of experience and started in the era when dirt was new, I still keep a lot of the mindset and approach that is derived from the once common dictum of "Make It Your Own". So I am one of those folks who has made the game work for my folks -- which means I do things that freak newer players and purists right the hell out, lol.

OK, let's get into some responses...

Have you ever tried 3 way or 4 way battles? 

Yes -- including situations where two different partis of PCs encounter two different groups of bad guys who allied in order to take down the parties. It was, in my opinion, fun, but perhaps the worst mistake I ever made. This is mostly due to still being TotM -- the use of a Map or some of the VTTs that exist today would probably make that much easier.

But I would add on this: if you have to do a ton of work to have players consistently follow the narrative, maybe its time to reflect on whether or not the narrative is interesting.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that should happen -- and is why I don't mind the work; if i don't use that scene at that time, well, i still have it written up and can use it down the road in another campaign or maybe at a different time in the current one. I collect scenes like recipes.

Is there not a "DM's philosophy book" out there?

There are probably dozens. And gobs of Videos on the YouTube the kids are all into these days (said in old person voice). Or the Tiktokity thingamajig. Since returning to the "online D&D world" and discovering that people actually haven't read the original source material and inspiration for the game, I sorta kinda maybe let cuynicism eat into me a bit.

You seriously intend on players reaching that point? How many sessions would you expect that? Years right?

Oh, yes. The last decade of 5e has always been a campaign that runs 1 to 20. Prior to that it was mostly still 1e/2e so no level caps, but definitely some "end of story" caps. Every campaign, every time, except the "learning" or "kid games" when my turn comes around to run them. Learning games run to 5th, kid games run to 10th (but have very different styles, lol). And it varies, to be blunt: some last only a year, a couple have run five years, but most are right around two and a half to three years. Previously, I would run one while planning out the next one, but I will be using Wyrlde for a good long time -- assuming I live that long, at least through 2030, if not longer.

The number of sessions can vary, but I generally plan that a Campaign will have 72 to 100 sessions for a fast campaign, or up to 210 for a long one. Four hour long sessions, so it depends on scheduling, obviously, with some bigger sessions at the end (like a three day "retreat" one). The benefit of having a stable, large group to play with is that folks will tend to stay in the game and be mostly committed to it.

We play every weekend (there are presently five games each week, and I run a game every week, but I have four groups counting my learning group), so yes, years, lol.

In a milestone system, what's the reward for being creative? What's the reward for good role playing? What's the reward for teamwork?

Heh. Ok, now we get to what I have talked around above, and why I intro'd this response.

We are Experience Point people mostly by habit in our group, but we didn't like the way XP was done before, so we just started doing things closer to the 5e way long before. But even that wasn't super exciting, so we tried Milestones as they are written, and that was better, but not ideal, and then the seven DMs in my group kitbashed a new way in a meeting.

The easiest way to describe it is we combined the two. Currently, in order to each 20th level, a PC needs something like 270 milestones. There is a bit of weird maths that makes it roughly equal 312,000 experience points, as well. So you have to earn a bunch of milestone points -- one side benefit to this is that it made it easier to figure out stories in relation to leveling; I know that if the PCs complete these particular scenes, they get a milestone point, and I can build out a campaign from there, so that it scales in much the same way as the capabilities of the PCs does.

And then we looked at the same questions you asked, and started playing with Hero Points and Inspiration. Combined, all three work together in order to track and reward Story Progression, general Experience (translation = completing most scenes), great roleplaying, doing heroic things, teamwork, and so forth.  And unlike a lot of tables, I guess, we use them. We let them be saved up, be stored, but you can still use only one point at a time in a given turn. And each of them gives a different kind of benefit when spent (including Milestones, which can be used for more than just leveling your character).

So, a character might describe the whole "I run up along the cliff, raise my sword high, and leap onto the Dragon's back, striking it" thing during a fight with a dragon. That's cool, right? Well, that's a Hero Point. If they do it because it is exactly the kind of dumbass thing their PC would do, based on role playing, that's an inspiration point. You can get both from a single action. At the end of each session, a hero point can be awarded by the players (no DM) and an Inspiration point can be awarded by the DM (no players).

Spending a point lets you affect outcomes in a certain way -- advantage, re-roll, or other things. depends on the point.

So Milestones are part of a system now that allows players to not only improve themselves, but to improve their outcomes during a game. They serve to help guide adventure creation, both in terms of how much there is to do, but also in terms of how involved the players are in a story without limiting them to simply following the story (though they may advance slower). This is one of the reasons that I also don't do the whole "single gigantic adventure" thing -- my campaigns are made up of a lot of little adventures, a bunch of smaller stories, that, ultimately are connected to a larger story -- even as there are woven into those things the stories of the individual PCs themselves (backstories, romance if wanted, goals and such).

So a 1st level adventure might only have 3 scenes. A 13th level adventure will have 22. A 20th level adventure will have 36. And those would just be the plotted ones, and assumes that a particular scene is only worth 1 point (which is not always the case -- some could be worth as many as 5). 

Sine side quests and fetch quests and just doing something interesting also counts, the advancement system gives the flexibility of Experience points, while still allowing for rewarding story progression without penalizing them for not doing so. 

Of course, to make all of this work, we also write out all the stuff like this and it is always available to all the folks in our group -- especially stuff like this that is used by all the Dms in the group. So we all have our own little House Rules books, lol. As the Doyenne of our little klatch, and both pedantic as hell and verbose beyond reason, mine are like 200 pages. But we know them -- so for us, it isn't a big deal like it would be for someone "new" coming to the group and having to learn new systems and mechanics.

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"That's hard. It is one of the problems of being a DM that sometimes work we do may never get used. "

This is where I don't relate to many others. I couldn't care less if something I built isn't used--my ultimate goal is players to enjoy their experience.

 In a world of finite prep time, if you have to prep five locations and the PCs only go to one, it means you've done 1/5 as much prep on that location as if you knew ahead of time which one they were going towards.

 
Quite true -- especially if you are a detail oriented sort that wants to make everything precise and orderly -- when you do it shortly before the session (say, in between two sessions).

That becomes the trade off, though -- really, you can prep before the campaign begins, or you can prep during the campaign. You can also do tons of details or you can improvise like mad, or somewhere between those two ends. 

There's no wrong decision there, either -- it is a matter of time, desire, need, blah blah blah.  I seriously doubt most folks are going to spend several years planning out one campaign while running another; I own my weirdness there. Hell, I had to extend my deadlines twice and go six months without running a game.

But if you do plan out ahead of time, you don't spend 1/5th the time, because you give each of them the same attention -- and you are still able to save them for use later if you get into the modular habit and way of thinking.

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That becomes the trade off, though -- really, you can prep before the campaign begins, or you can prep during the campaign.

The further in advance you prep, the lower the percentage of what you prep will actually be useful. Unless you prep injectable events or NPCs (something you think might be in the world... but you haven't decided where in the world it is), though that can get into the quantum ogre illusions of agency.

Note that running multiple groups of players through the same adventure will definitely give an advantage to more up-front prep. Thus, designing a module for publication is a lot different from designing an adventure for your private group.

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That becomes the trade off, though -- really, you can prep before the campaign begins, or you can prep during the campaign.

The further in advance you prep, the lower the percentage of what you prep will actually be useful. Unless you prep injectable events or NPCs (something you think might be in the world... but you haven't decided where in the world it is), though that can get into the quantum ogre illusions of agency.

Note that running multiple groups of players through the same adventure will definitely give an advantage to more up-front prep. Thus, designing a module for publication is a lot different from designing an adventure for your private group.

 
agreed on most points.

crafting an adventure for publication and use by others, however, requires a lot of forecasting that is always based on one's own often limited experience and general design goals, though -- it necessarily means reduction in general lore or direct effort to create and establish a more structured set up -- published modules, by and large, suck for sandbox purposes, imo.

Nt that all do, just as a general rule -- they often rely on lore and set ups that have a default expectation, and aren't very useful for a more modular approach. But then, that's the point of the Market, after all -- to provide something that is going to work as best as possible for the largest possible market in order to sell as many as possible.

My approach generally ends up with 80% of what I prep being useful, but that's also less a factor of my work, and more a factor of knowing my players well enough to have an idea of what will appeal to them -- and only then does my habit of designing scenes as modular and only altering linkages and lures come into play so that I can shift them as needed.

Not something readily done in a published module -- and my problem, not someone else's, lol.

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the very act of closing the system is a limitation on player agency.
they've precluded the player from choosing to do anything outside the simulated environment.

Counterpoint:

this argument presumes there is no such thing as Structure. When discussing Agency, if you aren't aware of Structure, you miss the entire point of Agency and how it operates and what it means. By your reflection, every person on Earth lacks any kind of agency. You have no Agency. in reality. This is a hollow argument, because it says that True Agency cannot exist, anywhere, in any time, since Existence itself is a limiting factor -- the boundaries of the Universe, even if they could possibly overcome the physical restraints of gravity and fleshly existence.

there is always Structure. Without it, Agency becomes meaningless, because Agency is the individual expression of action and activity within the constraints of Structure -- in the OP's foundational basis, it is the rules of the game, it is the nature of the setting, it is all the stuff you argue exists to limit Agency -- and it does; done well, it does so in the same manner that physics and chemistry and sociology and psychology act to do so here.

All right I lied, I am going to respond to this. The rules of D&D are not comparable to the laws of physics in actual reality, because at time of writing, people do not have the ability to opt out of physics. They do have the ability to opt out of D&D; in fact, opting out of D&D is the default state for most people, most of the time. When we run games, I believe we should ask ourselves why our players have chosen to play this particular game with us at this particular time. There are plenty of games that offer players more power over the outcome than D&D. They could be playing Sleepaway, The Quiet Year, Wingspan, Calvinball; any number of games that don't designate one player as the absolute arbiter of the rules and reality of the world. But they chose to play D&D. Why?

I do not believe "to maximize their agency" is a compelling answer to that question. Therefore, I dispute the validity of so-called True Agency as the ultimate objective for game design. I agree that players want to feel like they have a choice; but I submit that "feeling like" and having are indistinguishable for the purposes of game design. Thus we get back to Laplace's Demon and real world physics. Do we have agency in reality? How would you prove it? If you can't prove we have agency, but you feel like we do... What's the difference?

To be extremely clear about what I'm saying, because I anticipate this post getting cut up into little pieces: I am not saying that building your game for "true agency" is an invalid pursuit. Do what makes you happy. I am saying that I spend exactly zero minutes of my prep time worrying about whether the agency my players have in my games is True or Illusory, because it's never been a deciding factor in delivering the game experience my players want.

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the very act of closing the system is a limitation on player agency.
they've precluded the player from choosing to do anything outside the simulated environment.

Counterpoint:

this argument presumes there is no such thing as Structure. When discussing Agency, if you aren't aware of Structure, you miss the entire point of Agency and how it operates and what it means. By your reflection, every person on Earth lacks any kind of agency. You have no Agency. in reality. This is a hollow argument, because it says that True Agency cannot exist, anywhere, in any time, since Existence itself is a limiting factor -- the boundaries of the Universe, even if they could possibly overcome the physical restraints of gravity and fleshly existence.

there is always Structure. Without it, Agency becomes meaningless, because Agency is the individual expression of action and activity within the constraints of Structure -- in the OP's foundational basis, it is the rules of the game, it is the nature of the setting, it is all the stuff you argue exists to limit Agency -- and it does; done well, it does so in the same manner that physics and chemistry and sociology and psychology act to do so here.

All right I lied, I am going to respond to this. The rules of D&D are not comparable to the laws of physics in actual reality, because at time of writing, people do not have the ability to opt out of physics. They do have the ability to opt out of D&D; in fact, opting out of D&D is the default state for most people, most of the time. When we run games, I believe we should ask ourselves why our players have chosen to play this particular game with us at this particular time. There are plenty of games that offer players more power over the outcome than D&D. They could be playing Sleepaway, The Quiet Year, Wingspan, Calvinball; any number of games that don't designate one player as the absolute arbiter of the rules and reality of the world. But they chose to play D&D. Why?

I do not believe "to maximize their agency" is a compelling answer to that question. Therefore, I dispute the validity of so-called True Agency as the ultimate objective for game design. I agree that players want to feel like they have a choice; but I submit that "feeling like" and having are indistinguishable for the purposes of game design. Thus we get back to Laplace's Demon and real world physics. Do we have agency in reality? How would you prove it? If you can't prove we have agency, but you feel like we do... What's the difference?

To be extremely clear about what I'm saying, because I anticipate this post getting cut up into little pieces: I am not saying that building your game for "true agency" is an invalid pursuit. Do what makes you happy. I am saying that I spend exactly zero minutes of my prep time worrying about whether the agency my players have in my games is True or Illusory, because it's never been relevant to the game experience my players want.

I shall not chop your response to pieces.

So, you ask if we have Agency in reality. You answered your own question, though, when you said players have a choice to opt out of D&D.

How is it proven? Well, to answer that question, I will have to introduce you to some typically super boring sociological white papers from the late 1800's and early 1900's, and and then ask what you do when you walk into an elevator and everyone is facing one direction -- do you face the same direction or do you face opposite or something else?

However, rather than using Physics, let's use the practical reality of Law. What happens when you opt out of the legal system -- are you even able to opt out of it? What about using money - can you opt out of using money?

Agency does exist -- my point was that Agency cannot exist without Structure (physics, law, social convention), and that your particular effort in describing it was lacking an awareness of what Agency is -- not an uncommon state or issue. Most folks don't know what it is, or have unusual ideas about iit.

agency is the ability of individuals to make their own choices and act independently, while structure is the patterned arrangements that limit or influence those choices.

That's all Agency is.  The distinction between full and illusory is a representation of how structure impinges on that Agency -- either to the limits of the structure (true) or within a narrower, enforced form of structure (illusory).

Video games are an illusory example. There is still Agency to some degree, but it is severely limited, and it is the restrictions that create the challenge and the resentment and hostility -- especially if those restrictions seem arbitrary or directly hostile. not all people see the same restrictions in the same way.

that last bit is where your question of "if you can't see it, does it matter?" comes in -- and, ultimately, yes, it does, as a fundamental aspect of fairness. Doesn't mean people care or don't care -- if they knew a different way, they might be inclined to do it that way instead, or they might not because it didn't bother them.

But that simple possibility itself is an aspect of Agency in play -- and denying them the opportunity to learn of it is itself a form of denying agency, of "not being fair".

Now, does that change anything about how you run your game? 

Nope. Not a damn thing. Because this isn't a conversation about how you run your game, but about the nature of Agency within the game as a whole, and the thoughts and structure of how the OP views Agency through the lens of their experience.

nothing exciting (well, unless you are a professional sociologist who maybe has a teensy problem with verbosity.)

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I shall not chop your response to pieces.

So, you ask if we have Agency in reality. You answered your own question, though, when you said players have a choice to opt out of D&D.

How is it proven? Well, to answer that question, I will have to introduce you to some typically super boring sociological white papers from the late 1800's and early 1900's, and and then ask what you do when you walk into an elevator and everyone is facing one direction -- do you face the same direction or do you face opposite or something else?

However, rather than using Physics, let's use the practical reality of Law. What happens when you opt out of the legal system -- are you even able to opt out of it? What about using money - can you opt out of using money?

Agency does exist -- my point was that Agency cannot exist without Structure (physics, law, social convention), and that your particular effort in describing it was lacking an awareness of what Agency is -- not an uncommon state or issue. Most folks don't know what it is, or have unusual ideas about iit.

agency is the ability of individuals to make their own choices and act independently, while structure is the patterned arrangements that limit or influence those choices.

That's all Agency is.  The distinction between full and illusory is a representation of how structure impinges on that Agency -- either to the limits of the structure (true) or within a narrower, enforced form of structure (illusory).

Video games are an illusory example. There is still Agency to some degree, but it is severely limited, and it is the restrictions that create the challenge and the resentment and hostility -- especially if those restrictions seem arbitrary or directly hostile. not all people see the same restrictions in the same way.

that last bit is where your question of "if you can't see it, does it matter?" comes in -- and, ultimately, yes, it does, as a fundamental aspect of fairness. Doesn't mean people care or don't care -- if they knew a different way, they might be inclined to do it that way instead, or they might not because it didn't bother them.

But that simple possibility itself is an aspect of Agency in play -- and denying them the opportunity to learn of it is itself a form of denying agency, of "not being fair".

Now, does that change anything about how you run your game? 

Nope. Not a damn thing. Because this isn't a conversation about how you run your game, but about the nature of Agency within the game as a whole, and the thoughts and structure of how the OP views Agency through the lens of their experience.

nothing exciting (well, unless you are a professional sociologist who maybe has a teensy problem with verbosity.)

 

 

Thank you for defining your terms. I do not dispute the existence of agency. I dispute the distinction between true and illusory agency in D&D (and lightly in reality, but that's mostly for fun). With the definitions you've provided I can perhaps make that point in more agreeable terms. If true agency is defined only by the limits of the structure, while illusory agency is defined by enforcement narrower than the structure, it should be obvious that any game that is mediated by a GM cannot have a meaningful distinction between the two. As the arbiter of the rules of the game world, the DM is the structure. Sure, there's the rules, but the DM decides when and how the rules apply, and I imagine with decades of experience you know that the game can't function unless the DM's decision making goes beyond the written rules. So when the DM describes the result of an action, that is both "structure" and "enforcement". This is a key difference between D&D (and the legal system) and physics. D&D is ultimately arbitrary; physics either isn't, or at least the arbiter of physics is unavailable for comment.

The existence of the DM, their presence in the room with the players, gives the lie to the idea that the game can be completely "fair". The DM is mortal, fallible, and subject to bribery via snacks. It's not that I think "if you can't see it, does it matter?"; it's that I think "if no one can demonstrate that 'it' can exist, or that if 'it' can exist, that what they have is 'it', then why should I make 'it' a priority over other things that are immediately visible and testable?" ... I acknowledge mine is less pithy. I'm open to workshopping.

When I talk about "why we sit down to play games", it's these other priorities I'm thinking about. I can tell when my players are having strong, emotional experiences. I can tell when they're having fun. I can tell when they're enjoying a challenging combat or puzzle. After all this conversation, I still am not convinced that I or anyone else can tell the difference between true and illusory agency in D&D; so how can I possibly prioritize it over all those other things? If I am the judge, the physics, and the observer, how can it ever be possible to know that I've succeeded in protecting the players from impingement by myself?

Most of this is just a matter of difference of opinion, and that's no big deal. I am concerned about this last part, though; fairness is a critical goal, but we can't just decide we are fair because we've reached some outside standard we designed. Fairness is necessarily subjective, and it's the subjectivity of the table that matters. As I remain unconvinced that true and illusory agency can ever be meaningfully distinct in D&D, I worry that this pursuit becomes an excuse to declare ourselves objectively fair without the input of players, which ironically might deprive actual physical humans of agency in real reality.

Most welcome -- Agency vs Structure is one of the key aspects to my field, so it is always handy to have it around. Also, it is way easier to explain to people than Social Constructs, which tends to make people scream at you "gravity isn't a social construct!" even though, factually it is, they just don't know what a social construct is, but think that they do.

Now, I won't challenge you on your not finding a difference between illusory and True Agency -- the specific forms are those outlines by the OP, obviously, so I have been working within them, but Agency is not so readily faceted in truth.

The DM is indeed the representation of Structure -- as a small portion of their role. It could be argued that it is their only role readily -- even as a referee, which is still the core of the position itself, above and beyond all others.

However, it is incumbent on the DM -- in particular in relation to the aspect of being a referee -- that they make it possible to be fair, to follow the agreed upon systems that they are the enforcement agent of, because that's a function of the social contract that enables the play -- everyone agrees that the this person will be the Dm and that comes with an expectation and responsibility of fairness, and if they are bribable with snacks, and those snacks influence the outcome of actions and activities, then they are not being fair, because they are not remaining impartial in their role as referee. 

That impartiality extends to their own actions and activities, the nature and state of the world and setting and adventure, the function of the game's agreed upon rules, each of the players and each of the player characters, both collectively, collaboratively, and individually. You say that they cannot be "fair" because "fair" is subjective, but that's a cop out -- subjective things can be held in plenty of different ways all the time -- hell, we even have a yearly contest in one country to see who the "greatest team of players of this sport are in the world, calling them world champions" -- and that's a wholly subjective stance that is never given a possibility of being tested.

the communal subjective standard of the people who are playing the game is indeed the basis, however subjective and nuanced it may be, that can be applied as if it were an objective standard. And, in doing so, they have the glory, the honor, the responsibility, and the need to be fair as the referee, the moderator, and that arbiter of what is and is not, what could be and what won't be.

Now, as to your question of "how can you protect them from yourself", well, knowing thyself is a pretty damned old axiom, as is having an examined life (though that was expressed more negatively). And there is a simple way to do so -- you let them make choices that are not restricted by anything but the extant game rules that they know of.  

not saying it is easy -- if it was, then Player Agency wouldn't be the bugaboo that it is today and we wouldn't have new DMs writing about how they have this greater idea for a campaign that when they explain it is basically all about this unkillable super bad guy that they are very obviously proud of and seeking validation for having created -- but nothing else in the story. Hell, Agency is real life is WAAAAAAAAAy more complicated than in the game, lol. 

and that brings us back to the concepts that the OP was addressing -- focused, at least in part, on what they personally learned when they did take a few moments to analyze how agency in their games operates in relation to the descriptions and experiences of others they have encountered in other games, and the particular insight they drew from it.

So your answer is exactly the thing you say you have no interest in doing: taking some time to consider how agency impacts your players. Prioritize it -- at least for a few moments, and examine it. Of course, this only applies if you have a desire to do so -- not everyone does. Some folks are hostile to the idea of doing so, and some may not be hostile but could see it as an attack or an affront on the way the run their games.

The way I teach about it is pretty simple: never give players a problem that can only be solved in a single way, or a single way and death. 

it is deceptively simple -- it often changes the way that people build out their own adventures, because the published modules do not follow this rule. So the very guideline most people use is already choc full of stuff.

But if you don't examine yourself to ensure such, you can't protect them from it, whereas if you do, you find you can, because you begin to build with it in mind. I know for damn sure I didn't as a snot nosed 16 year old running an open game for two dozen other kids in the library when Reagan was still in office. But I did after the Army. I did in Uni, getting my first undergrad.

And my games became better for it, my players stayed playing even through the drama of the 20's and challenges of marriages and moving and babies and now we have seven of my original folks still playing together over 45 years -- and 40 plus other people (and some fascinating stories).

I am a sociologist -- no perception of a single person or even group of people can be subjectively fair; but collective, collaborative perception and agreement via a social contract (and agreement) can indeed, impose a form of objectivity upon those collective and collaborative perceptual bases that draws, if nothing else, an average or a mean that we can then say for this group, in this case, in these circumstances can be adopted as objectively fair.

because if we can't, then we aren't sitting down to play. It isn't so much about why (that's easy -- fun), it is about How.

Note, apparently Physics can be arbitrary -- but as I am not a physicist, I lack the appropriate math to describe it. So there does not appear to be an arbiter.

Agency implies an individual has an sense of being in control of one’s life and the ability to influence its direction and the surrounding environments.  It does not, however, guarantee the results are favorable, preferred, or in total control by the individual. There are limits to one’s ability to influence and to control the surrounding environment and consequences of actions.  It is important to distinguish between these because one needs to learn they still have personal control of their lives even though the outcome doesn’t meet their desires.

Some of the conversations here are implying that agency can only truly be achieved if the individual has full control until conclusion or to a point of conclusion that they select.  This is not a requirement of agency. For lack of a better term, this is selfishness. This means that all other players agency cannot matter or is inferior to one’s own; unless if there is a mechanism to ensure that all players’ agency align (which does sound like there really isn’t agency among the players).  So there has to be a limit to agency’s influence so that others may have their own agency as well.  Oh, there is one more player who also has a right to agency:  The DM.

Yes, I said the Dungeon Master is a player of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.  In fact, across all Table Top Roll Playing Games the Game Master is a player of the game.  And their agency matters.  They have just as much of a right to influence the direction of the game and environment and the story as the players who run player characters.  It is a collaborative exercise and all participants at the table have to respect the right to agency of each other.

How does this happen?  Well first we start with the roles of players and the rules of the game. The players of the player characters have the responsibility to respect the narrative of the adventure and the associated action presented by the DM and acknowledge the rulings made by the DM (based on accepted rules for the game the table is playing).  Now the DM (and other players) must respect and adjust based on the actions taken by a player provided they align with the rules of the game.  Most importantly no party at the table can dictate direction of the game or the conclusion of encounters, storylines, or fate of a character owned by another player. Following this very high level and loosely defined criteria will lead to players having their own agency. 

The denial of agency is when a individual is prevented reasonable progressions that should be allowed based on acceptable criteria.  Another way to look at it, if the rules allow a player’s requested action to exist but the DM decides to reject or deny it then the player’s agency is in jeopardy of being compromised. 

“Agency illusion

What I'm phrasing as Agency Illusion is where options are provided to you, and you choose one. There is a feeling of agency, but the choices are mandatory. "This or that"--in reality a choice is being forced upon you without the person perceiving that they're being forced into a decision. This is also a great parenting strategy. “

Being presented with choices or limitations is not an example of agency being taken away.  For starters, the players can still make wide range of choices and influence the direction of the story. Second, the options being presented could still be derived as result of previous acts of the players. This would imply that they choices being presented exist as a result of players’ agency because they have taken the story to this point and the logical progression that follow.

The feeling of agency shouldn’t be limited to “making the choice”; rather it is acceptance that upon making a choice your actions are still in your control and they influence the story. It is important to recognize that one still has their agency when facing decisions that do not appeal to them.  The denial of agency is making a choice but you are limited in execution even though the actions are logically sound, reasonable, and acceptable by rules or law. 

“D&D Agency Illusion

I have yet to play in what I consider a 'true agency' campaign, but I haven't been a lifetime player--so maybe some of you have. Wondering what you think.

I'm in a campaign where at the end of the session the DM goes "Ok, where do you want to go to next?" then we say "here" and then he preps for that. We can't do anything except for where we said we'd go however. So is that agency?

 

I feel like it's a bit railroady, but I can't quite identify why. In the end we're all having a good time--that's the point, but from a meta-play aspect, it feels like superficial agency: agency illusion.”

Let’s take your example and alter a bit it.  Suppose the DM asks the party for their next destination and the party selects the Delta option. Now instead of immediately ending the session the the game continues for another 20 minutes and the following occurs:

You proceed to climb the mountain range, deviating slightly form the trail to save time but sticking to terrain that is easily manageable.  Nearly 2 hours pass when you feel a rumble of the ground.  Suddenly, the terrain 20 feet ahead of you sunders and large ice chunks and debris shoot in the air (Make  DC 15 saving throw and take 6 points bludgeoning damage on a fail). Emerging in front of you is a Remorhaz. The creature's eyes scan across your party as if it to select the easiest but most desirable prey to devour for its evening meal….And this is where we will end tonight’s session.

Now the DM will proceed to go and prep for the next stage(s) of the adventure, similar to how you stated above, only now the party is in the midst of the a conflict that resulted from the players’ agency instead of breaking the game’s reality at a “next scene pending” moment.  In my scenario, would it be an example of agency if the players come back and say “Hey, we think we should go to destination Echo.  So retcon the whole running into a Remorahz thing.” Or would that not be acceptable; and furthermore would the party have been discussing out of session plans on how to engage the creature and win the combat? 

See I don’t really see a difference in the scenarios. As players, our agency led us to tell the DM where the next stage is and we should be planning for that event as if this “break between sessions” never occurred.  Could we get cold feet and be allowed to alter our strategy and change destinations?  Absolutely, but it should be executed in a similar fashion as if it was mid session.  Partly out of respect for the DM who has the right to influence the game’s story and also because we should make decisions based on characters in session play (even if its offline RP) and not as the people looking at it retroactively from outside of the game. Revisiting your players’ choices outside of session play or the game environment could lead to feeling that agency is being taken away because now the evaluation is based on an observer’s mindset and potentially not the player’s mindset.

It is not railroading if the DM is prepping for the upcoming sessions based on the decisions and actions of the players. It would only be railroading if the players’ agency have been ignored or blocked and the DM is driving, and not the characters, to this point in the story.

“True Agency

Wondering if any of you have had this experience, or whether this is too idealistic. True agency would be that you have a campaign map/area, and players go and do whatever the heck they want, anywhere they want. To make this happen a DM would need to prepare every single major location, city, cave, battlemap ahead of time with loot, quests, material--so that if a player wanted to say "I'm going this town" "I want to visit this ruin" or "Let's go explore the woods!"--there's always something. This would be a massive front-loaded preparation. Does anyone do this? (to be fair, that's exactly what a module does right?)

 

Ideally I would want a player to be able to go anywhere, do anything--and while that would require a ton of pre-prep, after that prep, session prep would be virtually nil (only need to prep on how they impacted the world).

 

Ultimately for me, agency means being given no choices at all--the players make the choices rather than select choices they're given.”

I disagree with the above conclusion.

True Agency is not about getting a favorable outcome based on one’s decisions or choices.  Nor is it the DM’s role to ensure their is an acceptable resolution or experience at every turn.  If the party tells the DM they want to go to a particular town and the DM says “Ok.  You arrive and there is nothing of importance there.”, that is an acceptable outcome and it does not deny the players’ agency at all. Nor is are the players’ agency being denied if they DM announces the evil army can be seen marching along river front and blocking your travel to Waterdeep”.  It may sound like the DM is denying your agency by preventing your travel to Waterdeep but consider this: You have influenced the story in a way that now presents a threat that wasn’t known before.  The table must now consider how this army can impact future (and even current) elements of the story.  For example, knowing the army is on the move might cause the party to revaluate their timelines to achieve tasks.  Or a discussion now takes place with the players and DM on what the characters might have to achieve to prevent this invasion.  Or the invasion is inevitable and they party must deal with the aftermath. The actions of the player characters have resulted in the DM presenting this new development.  It may not be the desired outcome the players wanted but it cannot be denied that the decisions and actions of the players are influencing the game.

Hence, I say that “True Agency” is achieved.  It is achieved by players being allowed to act within the guideline and structure of the game and their actions result in consequences and progressions.  It is not a requirement that the outcomes are desired.

So to summarize, the denial of agency is when the progression of the game is prevented from being influenced by any of the players choices or free willed actions.  Being presented with limited options can still allow for freedom of action as there are countless ways in which the game may proceed.  Agency still exists as long as the freedom of action by the players can have an influence on the game’s progression.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm the anti-agency guy, though I can see how I've supported that assumption here. My concern is strictly with the dichotomy between "true" and "illusory" agency as a valid framework for delivering agency to players in D&D. If we're now saying those terms don't really matter... Great? I'm glad we're on the same page? But I guess I don't know what we're talking about, then.

A lot of your reply assumes I'm not interested in player agency in general, or in supplying the closest approximation of fairness a fallible person can; these are false assumptions, but again, I see how I've given them support by not really supplying a positive vision of player agency and fairness. Let me try to do that now.

Fairness is a little easier: I don't believe in institutional fairness. That is to say, I don't believe a system can have fairness built into it. Fairness is an emergent property of buy-in; a system is fair not by any property of its design, but because those affected by the system agree it's fair. If this is true, then it follows that in D&D, a fair setting cannot be designed without player input. Examining yourself is great. Submitting yourself to examination, and correction, by those you arbitrate for is better. (I freely admit the biggest challenge of this method is applying it to kids' games. I still encourage kids to check my rulings, but there's always one who thinks "fair" is "when I win". I don't know how to consistently work through that in a timely way.)

I also implicitly distrust anyone who says a system they designed is fair. This may be generational, it may be that you seem to be an authority in your field while I am still in the "trick authority figures into accidentally giving me the knowledge I need to do my job" phase of my career, but ultimately I just think we'll never see eye to eye on this. I think it's much more trustworthy for someone to highlight the 2% of ways their system fails to be fair, rather than the 98% of ways it succeeds. (This isn't an accusation; it's an airing of my biases)

I think player agency in D&D operates in at least 3 overlapping spheres: the rules sphere, which includes world design; the DM sphere, and the table sphere. I think the rules sphere and DM sphere are well-addressed other places in this thread, and I don't feel a need to comment on them further. However, I think any framework for player agency that does not address the table sphere, the actual power dynamic that D&D imposes in the real world, is incomplete.

D&D players are creative people who could choose to do any number of other things with their time. The play environment, down to the world building, should reflect this. Sitting alone in a room and unilaterally designing a world for your players to submit themselves to denies them agency (at least in the vernacular sense, if not the technical) over their play time. This may be seen as a minor quibble; they agree to play D&D, thus they accept that they will play in a world you create and control. That's a valid perspective, but I think there is a way to return some of the power thrust upon us as DMs, and thereby reduce the agency (vernacular) sacrificed by players. You do this by letting them in on the world building process. This also allows them to monitor their own agency (technical) in game; they can tell the "structure" from the "enforcement" because they helped build the structure. This has to be balanced with other design objectives, of course; there's not a lot of tension for a player to crawl through a dungeon they designed, after all. But you can let them design the rumors about the dungeon; you can let them write the legends of the treasure within, and the ancient guardian that protects it. Then you make the dungeon based on what they give you. Maybe you change things up on them; they implied the dungeon had a dragon, but actually it's an immortal knight with dragon heraldry. You have to leave each other gaps like this for collaboration to work.

That's why I don't think it's possible to maximize player agency (vernacular) with pre-planning; you have to leave gaps for your players to not just breathe, but create. You have to be okay with other people touching your stuff and not just leaving their mark on it, but tearing it down and changing it and irrevocably entwining their self-ness into it. That is what ultimate player agency means to me. It may be possible by definition to maximize agency (technical), via a structure designed by one person alone, but I believe that is fundamentally a less beautiful game.

But of course the rules support absolutely none of this, which is why I'm always encouraging people to play other games and hopefully bring back the same indie RPG brain worms I have.

Anyway, don't lie to me and say you've never in 40 years given a player Inspiration for bringing snacks to the session. Inspiration is literally the snack quid-pro-quo mechanic, it's in the DMG or something