SamhainIA wrote:
...snip... think likewise you have misunderstood my response. I'm saying that player agency is not a binary/ on/off thing, rather its something that had gradations and those gradations are directly related to how close the writer and Judge are.
A fair point.
I don't think anyone expects the same freedom in a shared campaign that you would find in a home campaign. For example in the old campaign Jaeger used to burn for the chance to topple the Theocracy in Canceri. In a home campaign that might have become the focus of the whole shebang, if I could bring the DM and other players around to pursuing that same goal. But I never expected (or tried to) talk a party into abandoning a living module's plot to go attack the agents of the Dark Triumvirate (..."Yeah, c'mon guys. I know the mod is set in Altheria. Still, breaking the back of Canceri will be righteous!!!).
So by agency I am not talking about leaving the confines or scope of a module. I mean that you make significant choices, and those choices result in outcomes and conclusions. For your example, in the module In Darkness, Light, you travel with and talk to a priest having a crisis of faith. The priest, and whether or not he regains his faith is the heart of the module ... not the glory of the PCs. But still, the PCs have agency in that module. The outcome is driven by what they do and say.
On the other hand the soft point at Arcaniscon was a disappointment for me. Even with a great judge and some really good people at the table, I didn't have a good round. I would have been happier chatting in the bar. And the reason why (for me) was that I didn't feel like I had any agency during the mod. Nothing I did as a character or player made a difference on either the journey to the Vault or what I'll call the "side issues" that unfolded during the journey.
A halfway point on Agency is the "linear" module. Encounter one goes directly to two. Two goes to three. If you try to skip from three to six the module is at risk of breaking down...unless you have a good judge who improvises to get you back on track. Ditto if you want to choose a different faction or think "outside the box." Sometimes I find this style of mod to be less than stellar. But sometimes there are other pay offs. For example, I read some of Uncle Henry's mods as being linear ... but they also have some "Big Reveal" at the end. I love that stuff!!! I am willing to buy into just about ANY premise he wants to float because I trust there are impressive "goodies" at the end that will answer questions and raise new ones.
Still, with the local Portland group, To Shake the Pillars of Heaven was one of the hardest modules I've run. The module is fairly straight forward...when Patriarch Felician is arrested Elandre hires the PCs to help her steal the Sacred Scrolls of Illiir from the big Cathedral in Grand Coryan. One table had a loyalist who was convinced that Elandre was wrong to try to take the scrolls. He wanted to fight against the PCs to prevent her departure. I did let that happen, and by some careful strategy and a dollop of luck things unfolded "as they should" but let me tell you i was sweating it as a judge to get them all out of the mod alive and feeling that they weren't being railroaded (ie that their characters had agency). The other table was less problematic ... but was convinced they'd done something "wrong" when Felician was executed and the Godswall fell.
Pillars remains one of my favorite modules. But I believe I "sold" it locally only because I've earned the trust of the local players over time. There is something of an unspoken contract between players and GMs that goes something like, "Player: I am going to follow the hook and I'm not going to deliberately try to derail the module. Judge: Cool. I'm going to use the module as an outline and I'm going to try to accommodate all the reasonable things your character might do even when they aren't fully fleshed out in the module."
Since this thread is about writing modules I'll close by adding the writer to the contract: "Writer: I will try to think about how different factions would view this adventure that I'm writing. And if some major faction would have issues with the way things unfold I'll include a sidebar or other instructions to help judges and players."