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

 

[pemerton]

As I stated earlier, in one case the players are roleplaying the characters flipping a coin, simulated with dice. The players can choose to roleplay this however they like, including deciding not to abide by the result of the flip/roll. The flip doesn't dictate the character's thoughts/feelings, it just dictates how a coin landed in-game.

In the other case the coin flip is telling the player how to roleplay his character. "Oh, I lost the flip therefore my character must have been persuaded."

The first case describes part of the environment, the second case removes player agency.

If they agree to be bound by the coin toss, how has their agency been removed?

EDIT: I also don't think the coin toss "dictates the character's thoughts/feelings". The PC compromises. But the compromise might be grudging, resentful, cheerful, etc. The PC might be planning to go along with the others' plans when they arrive at place X, or to betray them all, or anything else.

 

[Sadras]

@pemerton I was just wondering given your style of play which you attribute the description 'player-driven' which is something I also would use to describe my games, but of course we might see it differently: Can your players fail (in a big way, I'm not talking about a loss of a familiar for 1 month)?

Generally speaking failure in your typical D&D sense = TPK but there are other ways a party could fail. In your typical ToEE adventure its perhaps releasing Zuggtmoy who wreaks havoc and essentially incurs substantial changes to the setting. Given that your adventures are being played from the angle of the PCs as drivers of the story it is rather less likely.

EDIT: What I'm getting at, and perhaps I'm not being clear enough, is that the 'player agency' you ascribe to your table delivers (from my perspective) a less than hazardous experience only because the players creativity allows for the get out of jail option (i.e. we search for a secret door for argument's sake).

Perhaps this is in the wrong thread. I don't know. It is so confusing now.

We have debated this consequence topic before and I think although your playstyle allows for an increase in player freedom given that they can mess with the setting/worldbuilding, they do lose out on what I would see as attaining a sense of achievement from defeating the BBEG in an AP given the unknown (setting, secret backstory..etc).

 

[iserith]

Or the argument ends when someone unilaterally takes action?

For example, while two characters are arguing whether or not to kill a captive orc a third one just walks up and kills it....

Whether that was acceptable or not probably depends on who said what first and how it proceeded from there. If the first offer was not to kill the orc and a second player started a disagreement (again, for color), then someone else killing the orc would be negating the first offer and that would not be okay. It would be okay if it were the other way around though.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton I was just wondering given your style of play which you attribute the description 'player-driven' which is something I also would use to describe my games, but of course we might see it differently: Can your players fail (in a big way, I'm not talking about a loss of a familiar for 1 month)?

The players can have in character goals that they don't achieve.

In my BW game, the mage PC, who is the lead PC (in that it is that player who participates in all the sessions, while others are a bit more hit-and-miss), entered the campaign with the goal of freeing his brother from possession by a balrog. At one point it was established that his brother was a nasty piece of work (because of the way that (i) another player had written a nasty magical mentor into a PC backstory, and (ii) the way the intersection between those two backstories was developed in play between the two players). Subsequently, it was established that the brother was probably evil before being possessed (hence his evil caused possession, rather than the vice versa that the PC had believed). This was the result of a series of failed checks by the player of the mage PC. The conclusion of this initial arc was the second PC beheading the brother before the mage PC could stop her (in the end, it came down to a contest to see who could be the first to get to the wizard's tower where the brother was recuperating from injury; the second character won the contest).

That was a failure.

In my main 4e game (which has been on hold for most of a year while one member of the group renovates his house), the PCs' amibtion is to make it the case that the time of the Dusk War has not yet come. Yet one PC is also committed to assembling the Rod of Seven Parts, even though it is known that this is a harbinger of the Dusk War. And most of the PCs are opposed to reformulating the Lattice of Heaven, but (i) help with the assembling of the Rod, which will then allow the Lattice of Heaven to be rebuilt, and (ii) keep doing things that further the interests of the Raven Queen, although that also seems to be about helping her re-establishe the Lattice of Heaven with her as the ruler of the cosmos.

These conflicts between hopes and actions, with interweave with discordant goals among the PCs, could well lead to failure.

There have also been local failures. Here's a report of one that I wrote up and, at the time, found rather poignant. The PCs bringing destruction to the duergar would be another failure, I think.

In my Cortex+ Heroic game the PCs set out to solve the mystery of the strange Northern Lights and the disturbances in the world of the animal spirits, only to get stuck in a dungeon after being teleported deep into it by a Crypt Thing. One was able to trick the dark elves out of their treasure and return to the surface to live it up; by the time the others escaped, and rejoined him, the Fell Winter had set in and reavers were roaming the lands destroying villages. Another instance of failure.

What I'm getting at, and perhaps I'm not being clear enough, is that the 'player agency' you ascribe to your table delivers (from my perspective) a less than hazardous experience only because the players creativity allows for the get out of jail option (i.e. we search for a secret door for argument's sake).

<snip>

I think although your playstyle allows for an increase in player freedom given that they can mess with the setting/worldbuilding, they do lose out on what I would see as attaining a sense of achievement from defeating the BBEG in an AP given the unknown (setting, secret backstory..etc).

A full discussion of the issue of "achievement" is probably for another thread. Composing a symphony is an achievement; so is throwing a discus 60 metres. Winning a wargame scenario is an achievement; in my view, so is devising a solution to the problem of defeating Lolth and sealing the Abyss.

I think there is something related in the neighbourhood. I had thought of posting it yesterday, but felt it might be hard to explain and/or misunderstood - but your post gives it a sensible context.

I have posted about using a particular mechanical method to reach a paeticular compromise - do we go to place X next, or to place Y. Some posters have treated this as (more-or-less) equivalent to - do we do thing A, or thing B; where things A and B are understood as extended over some period of time.

This makes sense if one assumes that place X is where thing A is going to happen, and place Y is where thing B is going to happen. But if that assumption doesn't hold, then nor does the equivalence.

In the sort of game I run, the assumption doesn't hold. Place X is different from place Y, and so offers different opportunities for players to declare actions (eg you can declare different actions in the Abyss compared to the Underdark). But there is no concern that X means some pre-determined A which is different from the B the compromising PC (and player) may have wanted to pursue. Even in place X, stuff is still going to happen that speaks to that PC (it will just be Abyssal stuff rather than Underdark-y stuff).

 

[Lanefan]

If they agree to be bound by the coin toss, how has their agency been removed?

EDIT: I also don't think the coin toss "dictates the character's thoughts/feelings". The PC compromises. But the compromise might be grudging, resentful, cheerful, etc. The PC might be planning to go along with the others' plans when they arrive at place X, or to betray them all, or anything else.

Ah, were this only so.

Remember, at some tables the "table mechanics" disallow betrayal: the PCs are more or less expected to co-operate at all times. The whole "Yes, and..." thing.

Othwerwise, yeah: false agreement and later betrayal are a fine workaround.

 

[Guest 6801328]

If they agree to be bound by the coin toss, how has their agency been removed?

EDIT: I also don't think the coin toss "dictates the character's thoughts/feelings". The PC compromises. But the compromise might be grudging, resentful, cheerful, etc. The PC might be planning to go along with the others' plans when they arrive at place X, or to betray them all, or anything else.

My "other case" is when the real life coin-toss represents not an in-game coin toss, but an in-game contest of Persuasion. Was that not clear?

It's less bad if the player agrees to resolve it this way (as opposed to the GM mandating "you were outrolled at Persuasion, so your character is now persuaded) but it's still not player-driven roleplaying. In my book.

 

[Lanefan]

Whether that was acceptable or not probably depends on who said what first and how it proceeded from there. If the first offer was not to kill the orc and a second player started a disagreement (again, for color), then someone else killing the orc would be negating the first offer and that would not be okay. It would be okay if it were the other way around though.

And this gets us into a question tangential - but not at all unrelated - to the main focus of the thread: instead of game mechanics and player agency we're veering into table mechanics and player agency.

By "table mechanics" I mean accepted modes of play, level of allowable metagaming, level of allowable disagreement and-or PvP, and so forth.

In this example, extended to generality, the only player with true action-declaration agency - and not just for a single PC but in effect for the whole party! - is the one who happens to speak first. All the other players' action-declaration agency is severely compromised (if not outright lost) for the duration of that sequence as they are bound by table mechanics to support that initial action or suggestion.

Given - as these other long threads have shown - that in most non-indie play the only true agency a player has is the freedom to declare actions for her character(s), to allow a table mechanic to take away so much of that agency so much of the time seems...odd.

Obviously it works for you and your crew. I just can't see it working in any situation where the players tend to have strong opinions in non-game situations...which describes most (or all?) of the people I game with...as those strong opinions will doubtless be reflected in the types of characters they play. We're not go-with-the-flow types!

Lanefan

 

[iserith]

And this gets us into a question tangential - but not at all unrelated - to the main focus of the thread: instead of game mechanics and player agency we're veering into table mechanics and player agency.

By "table mechanics" I mean accepted modes of play, level of allowable metagaming, level of allowable disagreement and-or PvP, and so forth.

In this example, extended to generality, the only player with true action-declaration agency - and not just for a single PC but in effect for the whole party! - is the one who happens to speak first. All the other players' action-declaration agency is severely compromised (if not outright lost) for the duration of that sequence as they are bound by table mechanics to support that initial action or suggestion.

Given - as these other long threads have shown - that in most non-indie play the only true agency a player has is the freedom to declare actions for her character(s), to allow a table mechanic to take away so much of that agency so much of the time seems...odd.

Obviously it works for you and your crew. I just can't see it working in any situation where the players tend to have strong opinions in non-game situations...which describes most (or all?) of the people I game with...as those strong opinions will doubtless be reflected in the types of characters they play. We're not go-with-the-flow types!

Lanefan

Nobody has "true action-declaration agency." Constraints abound both mechanically, fictionally, and socially in any game. In the method I describe, your agency isn't "severely compromised" nor "outright lost." You don't kill the orc if someone says they don't want the orc killed. Feel free to do anything else, including disagree in order to establish some aspect of your character or your character's relationship with the character with whom the character disagrees. But don't go and kill the orc. That would be breaking your agreement. Instead, think hard on why your character wouldn't kill the orc even though he might otherwise want to and, in that process, discover or reveal something about him or her. In some cases, this might even lead to the character going through a change.

What it also does is move the game along. While some groups will sit about and debate that orc's right to live, we're off looting the dungeon, leveling up, and carousing back in town. There's a reason why we cover so much more content compared to other groups I've seen in the same amount of time without sacrificing nicely developed characters.

 

[Lanefan]

Nobody has "true action-declaration agency." Constraints abound both mechanically, fictionally, and socially in any game. In the method I describe, your agency isn't "severely compromised" nor "outright lost."

You say this, but then you say this...

You don't kill the orc if someone says they don't want the orc killed.

...which is in complete contradiction to what you just said.

If someone says they don't want the orc killed everyone else at the table has just lost the ability to kill it...or even successfully argue for its death. That's a major compromise of agency.

Feel free to do anything else, including disagree in order to establish some aspect of your character or your character's relationship with the character with whom the character disagrees.

Why waste the effort making an argument the table mechanics have already banned me from winning?

But don't go and kill the orc. That would be breaking your agreement.

What agreement? I haven't agreed not to kill it, that's my point.

Instead, think hard on why your character wouldn't kill the orc even though he might otherwise want to and, in that process, discover or reveal something about him or her. In some cases, this might even lead to the character going through a change.

Well, we could keep it alive long enough to question it - maybe even very painfully - but assuming orcs in this campaign are sworn enemies of civilization the last thing we want to do is leave it alive afterwards.

Is this agreement binding forever, by the way? Can I arbitrarily slit its throat during the following night, for example?

What it also does is move the game along. While some groups will sit about and debate that orc's right to live, we're off looting the dungeon, leveling up, and carousing back in town. There's a reason why we cover so much more content compared to other groups I've seen in the same amount of time without sacrificing nicely developed characters.

What would really foul this system up (and at the same time make it way more fun!) would be someone playing a very-low-wisdom character properly, and leading the party into stupid action after stupid action because the table mechanics wouldn't allow anyone to change its mind or prevent its actions. Utterly unrealistic, mind you...

Lanefan

 

[iserith]

You say this, but then you say this...
...which is in complete contradiction to what you just said.

If someone says they don't want the orc killed everyone else at the table has just lost the ability to kill it...or even successfully argue for its death. That's a major compromise of agency.

I really don't think it is. I think it just looks that way to you. There's always the next orc.

Typically, when I see people on the forums raise objections to this approach, it's from a viewpoint that they'll forever be subject to some other person's decision. But don't worry - sometimes it's you who gets to decide what to do with the proverbial orc. Presumably all the players are properly socialized humans who share spotlight with each other.

Why waste the effort making an argument the table mechanics have already banned me from winning?

First, I think "table mechanics" is a silly term and looks suspiciously like you want to conflate actual game mechanics with an agreement the players have made about how to play the game that exists separate from the game mechanics. But anyway, as I mentioned previously, a player might want to have an exchange that suggests something about his or her character or the relationship his or her character has with the character with whom he or she disagrees.

What agreement? I haven't agreed not to kill it, that's my point.

You as a player will have agreed to an approach that accepts the idea of a fellow player and adds to it, rather than negates or subverts it. In this example, another player's idea is not to kill the orc. You would agree to that. Your character may take issue and you may decide to play that out for color, but ultimately he or she does nothing to negate or subvert that.

Well, we could keep it alive long enough to question it - maybe even very painfully - but assuming orcs in this campaign are sworn enemies of civilization the last thing we want to do is leave it alive afterwards.

Is this agreement binding forever, by the way? Can I arbitrarily slit its throat during the following night, for example?

I suppose if you wanted to make a game of torture for some reason (a red flag for me), you would still be keeping your agreement as long as you kept the orc alive. Your agreement is binding as long as you want to be seen as the kind of person who keeps his agreements. I realize that's not for everyone.

What would really foul this system up (and at the same time make it way more fun!) would be someone playing a very-low-wisdom character properly, and leading the party into stupid action after stupid action because the table mechanics wouldn't allow anyone to change its mind or prevent its actions. Utterly unrealistic, mind you...

Lanefan

There are no rules for how to play a low-Wisdom character "properly." But that's a whole other topic (and one that's been done to death). Anyway, it is sometimes the case that a player will choose to do something like that because it will be fun for everyone and help create an exciting, memorable tale. Again, bear in mind, the players willingly share the spotlight and the DM has some measure of control over it to boot, so someone acting in bad faith will be exposed pretty quickly. And someone acting somehow in good faith with what you propose won't have the spotlight all the time.