Game Mechanics And Player Agency

The concept of player agency is a central pillar of all role-playing games. It is a balancing factor against the omnipotent, omniscient Game Master. For the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on the smaller-scale application of player agency and the role of game mechanics that negate or modify such agency.

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From the very first iteration of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, there have been mechanics in place in RPGs to force certain decisions upon players. A classic D&D example is the charm person spell, which allows the spell caster to bring someone under their control and command. (The 1983 D&D Basic Set even includes such a possible outcome in its very first tutorial adventure, in which your hapless Fighter may fall under the sway of Bargle and "decide" to let the outlaw magic-user go free even after murdering your friend Aleena!)

It didn't take long for other RPGs to start experimenting with even greater mechanical methods of limiting player agency. Call of Cthulhu (1981) introduced the Sanity mechanic as a way of tracking the player-characters' mental stress and degeneration in the face of mind-blasting horrors. But the Temporary Insanity rules also dictated that PCs exposed to particularly nasty shocks were no longer necessarily in control of their own actions. The current edition of the game even gives the Call of Cthulhu GM carte blanche to dictate the hapless investigator's fate, having the PC come to their senses hours later having been robbed, beaten, or even institutionalized!

King Arthur Pendragon debuted in 1985 featuring even more radical behavioral mechanics. The game's system of Traits and Passions perfectly mirrors the Arthurian tales, in which normally sensible and virtuous knights and ladies with everything to lose risk it all in the name of love, hatred, vengeance, or petty jealousy. So too are the player-knights of the game driven to foolhardy heroism or destructive madness, quite often against the players' wishes. Indeed, suffering a bout of madness in Pendragon is enough to put a player-knight out of the game sometimes for (quite literally) many game-years on end…and if the player-knight does return, they are apt to have undergone significant trauma reflected in altered statistics.

The legacies of Call of Cthulhu and King Arthur Pendragon have influenced numerous other game designs down to this day, and although the charm person spell is not nearly as all-powerful as it was when first introduced in 1974 ("If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the 'charm' is dispelled[.]"), it and many other mind-affecting spells and items continue to bedevil D&D adventurers of all types.

Infringing on player agency calls for great care in any circumstance. As alluded to at the top of this article, GMs already have so much power in the game, that to appear to take any away from the players is bound to rankle. This is likely why games developed mechanical means to allow GMs to do so in order to make for a more interesting story without appearing biased or arbitrary. Most players, after all, would refuse to voluntarily submit to the will of an evil wizard, to faint or flee screaming in the presence of cosmic horror, or to attack an ally or lover in a blind rage. Yet these moments are often the most memorable of a campaign, and they are facilitated by behavioral mechanics.

What do you think? What's your personal "red line" for behavioral mechanics? Do behavioral mechanics have any place in RPGs, and if so, to what extent? Most crucially: do they enhance narrative or detract from it?

contributed by David Larkins

 

[Guest 6801328]

Again, this is because ultimately, no one can actually force anyone to do something by word alone....so I don't think I would want that to be different in the game.

The Command spell begs to differ.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I would never (ever) do this. You just wrote "...you think that...". You just told the player what his PC thinks!

I might make the roll and say, "The Vistani gives an impassioned speech about honor and duty and family, and claim that he would rather die than abandon his home. Only a stone golem would be unmoved by his sincerity and resolve."

Then leave it up to the players to decide what they want to do with that.

Play a stone golem, perhaps?

If you are going to let the dice decide these things, then the only role of the roleplaying is to add flavor. It should all be dice.

Roleplaying will also determine what the dice are going to resolve, of course.

The Command spell begs to differ.

Not begs, exactly. It's magic, so it automatically gets it's way. ;P

A lot of what you have to say on this topic makes some sense, then it all goes *poof* as soon as magic comes into it. If it's OK for a saving throw (modeling your character's will/determination/etc in the face of some arcane mumbling & gesturing) to determine how your character thinks/feels/decides, then it's OK for some other check (modeling you're character's will/resolve/determination/etc in the face of an impassioned plea or reasoned argument) to determine something similar.



Also, I really feel like "framing" to /avoid/ the issue is the most practical solution, compared to somehow crafting mechanics to solve the issue. If we're going to model character abilities instead of falling back on corresponding player abilities, then we need to insert a degree of imagination/abstraction, to reconcile resolution & character concept.

 

[TheSword]

I would never (ever) do this. You just wrote "...you think that...". You just told the player what his PC thinks!

I might make the roll and say, "The Vistani gives an impassioned speech about honor and duty and family, and claim that he would rather die than abandon his home. Only a stone golem would be unmoved by his sincerity and resolve."

Then leave it up to the players to decide what they want to do with that.

Maybe it’s the way I have phrased the response. I am not telling the character how they should react. I don’t see that this is any different to saying ‘you think the branch will take your weight’, or ‘you think there is a trap on the doorhandle’ That’s how I phrase that info. I’m sure you could phrase things in your own words so the effect is the same. Other than that the difference is semantic.

This is basing the outcome on the arguments presented by the player. It's the player's, not the character's, cleverness that matters, as judged by the DM. So there's really nothing objective or character-centric about it.

So it seems inconsistent to me to then turn around and say, "...and I will decide how hard you will be to persuade (i.e., set the DC) and then let the dice determine if he persuades you."

If you are going to let the dice decide these things, then the only role of the roleplaying is to add flavor. It should all be dice.

I make a referee call on DCs based on how reasonable the request. A persuade test should be easier to ask for a sip of someone’s water than to be gifted the whole water skin, and that should be easier than asking them to gather all the water skins in the garrison when the castle is under siege.

At some point player choice should influence the dice rolls. There isn’t a hard rule for every possible stratagem a player could take.

Players make decisions, characters enact them. If a person has a skill in an area then I may give them extra advice based on that skill. However when that doesn’t exist the player’s decisions set the tone.

i can understand if you do things differently but I really do prefer to make the players choices matter before rolling the dice.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Maybe it’s the way I have phrased the response. I am not telling the character how they should react. I don’t see that this is any different to saying ‘you think the branch will take your weight’, or ‘you think there is a trap on the doorhandle’ That’s how I phrase that info. I’m sure you could phrase things in your own words so the effect is the same. Other than that the difference is semantic.

I do get what you're saying. I use the "you think" phrasing too, but only out of habit I try not to.

I guess the question is what you do if the player doesn't go along with what you told him he "thinks".

If the DM says, "you think the branch won't take your weight" and the player says, "I climb out on it anyway" I suspect most DMs would raise their eyebrow but say, "oooookay....". (Or "Are you sure...?")

But somehow when the DM says "you think he is persuasive" it's not ok...for some people in this thread...if the player takes an action that contradicts that.

I make a referee call on DCs based on how reasonable the request. A persuade test should be easier to ask for a sip of someone’s water than to be gifted the whole water skin, and that should be easier than asking them to gather all the water skins in the garrison when the castle is under siege.

At some point player choice should influence the dice rolls. There isn’t a hard rule for every possible stratagem a player could take.

Players make decisions, characters enact them. If a person has a skill in an area then I may give them extra advice based on that skill. However when that doesn’t exist the player’s decisions set the tone.

i can understand if you do things differently but I really do prefer to make the players choices matter before rolling the dice.

Yes, I agree. I was really making a devil's advocate argument. I was trying to point out that, for those arguing that it's the character's mind that resists the persuasion, not the players, then it's inconsistent to allow the player to...well...do almost anything, really, but in this case specifically I mean put forward an argument that might be persuasive. To be consistent would require that you only roll dice to determine how good the argument is. Which I think is silly.

As I said earlier, if the DM is going to decide how good of an argument a player makes to an NPC (in the form of DCs or bonuses) then it's only fair and consistent that the player gets to decide the same when the NPC is attempting to persuade his character.

 

[Lanefan]

If I may, I'd say this could have been a great opportunity for a check, but not to make the party do anything. ...

1. The party gets their way, but at a possible cost. ...

2. The party will have to re-evaluate their plans. ...

Either way, the import of the check should be clear -- the result is what will happen and it will not be open to continued rehashing.

The first and last line I've quoted above are at odds; because if the outcome is (2) then the party ARE being made to do something they clearly don't want to do.

Further - and worse - is the "not open to continued rehashing" bit; which flat-out says you're using the check as a means of cutting off further roleplay. As the primary agency players own in the game is that of being able to roleplay their characters, this seems an obvious instance of using game mechanics to limit player agency.

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] handled this exactly right, IMO, by letting the argument take as long as required to play out and leaving mechanics right out of it.

And that last bit is an important thing I've embraced about checks. If the dice are rolled, the situation changes. I work to do this for every check, to make every check meaningful. Being open about this and setting stakes can be a method, but I find I don't always have to set explicit stakes especially since my players have adjusted to this method. Picking a lock, even, can be more fun if a failure leads to a change in circumstance. An example, for my last game: the rogue attempted to pick a rusty lock on an old treasure chest and failed. I narrated that a pick had become wedged into the lock and was stuck in the mechanism. The player now had the choice to try to pick the lock but break the tool at the same DC, or attempt to save the tool but break the lock at the same DC. The failure put a resource (the lockpick) in jeopardy and made that failure a moment of drama rather than an empty roll that could just be re-rolled until it succeeds. The player, by the way, being cautious, recovered her tool and broke the lock. This meant the barbarian was up next to smash it open, a feat easily accomplished but rendering the chest unusable for it's purpose of holding things. Also noisy, which reminded me to check to see if anything nearby heard.

The rogue example is great...but unfortunately also irrelevant to the question of "social mechanics". Picking a lock is not* a social action, cannot (usually) be physically played out at the table by the players, and thus pretty much all RPGs have reasonably robust mechanics for resolving the attempt.

But social things can and should be played out by the players at the table, in the personae of their characters.

* - other than the exceeding rare instance where a lock is itself intelligent and requires persuasion to open.

Lanefan

 

[TheSword]

But somehow when the DM says "you think he is persuasive" it's not ok...for some people in this thread...if the player takes an action that contradicts that.

... ...

As I said earlier, if the DM is going to decide how good of an argument a player makes to an NPC (in the form of DCs or bonuses) then it's only fair and consistent that the player gets to decide the same when the NPC is attempting to persuade his character.

Yes I understand what you mean. Really what I should say is ‘you know the branch isn’t solid.’ Except ‘know’ implies certaintanty which is why I used ‘think’, maybe ‘believe’ would be better or ‘suspect’. You got my point that I was trying to convey what the characters knowledge was rather than their attitude to that knowledge.

I get what you’re saying about the PC setting DCs, I’m not sure what the metric would be. I prefer to stick to the easy/normal/hard/very hard scale. Would the PC?

I think where possible PCs and NPCs should be treated the same. However there is a little part of me that sees a halo around player characters that sets them apart from other characters as protagonists.

 

[Lanefan]

The deception check, I think, is useful only if the PCs are trying to do something to determine truthfulness. The NPC says whatever the NPC says. I don't change that based on how well they might have rolled. Instead, what is said is part of the framing, and the players can declare actions to engage that framing. In this case, I'd assume they'd state they were looking for signs of dishonesty in the NPC, which would be a WIS (Insight) check in 5e opposed by a CHA (deception) check.

What if it's the PCs who are lying? Do these mechanics then just get reversed?

Firstly, there's using Insight as a "truth check." A success would mean I would reveal to the players if the NPC was lying or telling the truth. A failure would would mean I tell the players they can't tell one way or the other. I suppose you could, at this point, decide that a failure meant you, as DM, should tell the player their PC believes the NPC, but what if the NPC is telling the truth -- do you now tell the player the PC disbelieves? That's weird. I'd rather go with getting information or not getting information - a success provides information relevant; a failure provides no new information.

That's rather generous of you - no chance to flat-out get it wrong means there's never any risk to the roll: the results from the roller's perspective must either be good (relevant info gained) or neutral (status quo); which means you've strongly incentivized rolling every single time.

So, in this case, the deception check by the NPC isn't to make the PCs believe the NPC, but to prevent knowledge that it is a lie (presumably) from being discovered. The players are still free to decide if the PCs believe or don't. I've had a lot of success with this method in my games, as it's been my default even back when I though NPCs should roll against PCs. It provides a way for Insight to be useful without being a 'you must believe' button.

It's not a 'you must believe' button if there's a chance of getting it wrong.

The second way is the way I've recently adopted: checks have meaning and change the situation. In this way, the setup is the same, but there's more consequence to the check. A success means the players don't just receive information about a lie, but find some concrete information/evidence that the NPC is lying -- they get a solid info chit they can use with other skill checks to prove the statement is a lie. Usually, I'd present this as the NPC continuing to speak but providing an obviously disprovable statement, or a recollection of a fact that the PC would know that shows out the lie. On the failure side, though, the PCs would not get any information, but would also now be in a position that they cannot prove the lie at all to others (all other (reasonably involved) NPCs believe the lie) AND the NPC is aware of their distrust (and perhaps others as well, depending on the situation). This puts the PCs in a decidedly more disadvantaged position with that NPC in the social conflict.

This is better, because there's some risk involved if you decide to roll; but there's still no chance to be mechanically convinced the NPC is lying when she's in fact telling the truth.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

That is an interesting idea, and I would be curious to see how that plays out, though providing a singular ladder for how do you rate on a Likert scale from to may be beneficial for providing standards for the DC.

Even as far back as 1e there were tables for determining an NPC's initial reaction (friendly, hostile, etc.).

Another possibility worth exploring along this vein is that the skill roll does not have a binary outcome. There could be attitudal shifts instead depending upon the degree of success or failure, leaving the PC free to interpret that shift as appropriate for their character.

This is much better than anything else I've seen here; better yet if it's the DM quietly rolling what would in effect be reaction rolls, to help her determine what the NPC thinks of what the PC is saying - but rather than revealing these rolls, having their effects appear in her play of the NPC.

On a broader scale, these rolls are being used to (maybe) shape the interaction rather than either resolve it or cut it off.

Excursus:
To answer Shakespeare's question - "What's in a name? - I suspect that the answer is "A helluva a lot actually." And in this case, as seems evident throughout our discussions, the names of these skills likely communicate a lot in terms of their use and efficacy. And differences in those names can and do seemingly result in different understandings of the skill's purpose and efficacy as well. Diplomacy, for example, actually does have a more restrictive sense than the more general name of Persuasion. So does part of the problem rest in overly vague sense of a skill named 'Persuasion' over a skill named 'Diplomacy'? Or would the skill represented by 'Diplomacy' and 'Persuasion' (among others) still be just as sweet or sour smelling if it was represented by another name? Here, I am intentionally excluding the possibility that we ditch these skills entirely. Sorry, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

Apology accepted.

Although, a shout out to @Iserth, @Campbell, @Manbearcat and a host of others ...

Ovi, it's [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] - there's another 'i' in there.

Lan-"Diplomacy, Persuasion...it's not the name that determines whether the smell is sweet or sour; it's the concept in general"-efan

 

[Sadras]

1. The party gets their way, but at a possible cost. In this resolution, the party will convince the survivors to return to the town regardless. This is useful because it allows the party to continue on their chosen path, but adds a potential complication to that path, namely how do the survivors feel about it? A check could be made with a success meaning that the survivors accept the party's argument and agree to return to town, freeing the party to continue without further issue. A failure, though, would have the survivors return to town, but be bitter about it and spread tales of how the party abandoned people they could have saved because they didn't care. Depending on what the party wants out of this and the future, this could be a big complication even as they're allowed to continue on their chosen path.

I never thought of this, but I do like the complication presented above and I might just incorporate some of it in a sense without the need of a roll. Thank you

And that last bit is an important thing I've embraced about checks. If the dice are rolled, the situation changes. I work to do this for every check, to make every check meaningful.

I find this technique provides colour and can lead to interesting decisions. As a DM it does 'push one' to be creative.

These are the failure options as I see them:
1a) Complication/Situation Change (your idea)
1b) We have fail forward - so success with complication. (Picked the Lock, but broke the lock-pick or lock itself)
2) We have failure. (Failed to pick the lock)
3) We have failure with complication. (Failed and the lock-pick broke in the lock, jamming it.)

 

[Hriston]

Like compelling an aspect by giving the player a Fate point in, well, Fate. Sure.

I've never played Fate, but yes, aspects in Fate look very similar to personal characteristics in 5e, and invoking and compelling aspects seems analogous to the awarding and spending of Inspiration.

Which is kinda a pain in 5e, which puts plenty on the DMs plate as it is.

How do you think it's painful? At worst it involves asking the player what the PC's personal characteristics are and then framing the NPC's proposal in terms of any relevant characteristics. The Fate Roleplaying Game SRD has this to say about compelling an aspect:

In order to compel an aspect, explain why the aspect is relevant, and then make an offer as to what the complication is. You can negotiate the terms of the complication a bit, until you reach a reasonable consensus. Whoever is getting compelled then has two options:

• Accept the complication and receive a fate point
  
• Pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening

Paying a fate point in this instance would be analogous to choosing not to be awarded Inspiration by not roleplaying in accord with your PC's personal characteristic that has been touched upon by the NPC's proposal.

It's just that the rules need to be workable. Fate, for the above instance, has workable rules for the GM getting a PC to do something that's in-character for the PC, but clearly a bad idea from the player's PoV - compelling aspects. 5e does not.

To me, awarding Inspiration seems just as workable as compelling aspects, but maybe it isn't explained quite as well in the 5e rules as compels are in Fate.

It has a Persuade proficiency that's, I think, clearly meant to used to resolve actions where the player has the PC do something persuasive, but could, with the 'what's good for the PC goose is good for the NPC gander' philosophy of DMing, be applied in reverse.

What's unworkable about reversing the social interaction mechanics for use against a PC is their reliance on NPC starting attitude. What's a PC's starting attitude, and how do you assign one? Those questions aren't answered by the rules of 5e.