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

 

[Mistwell]

It's needed jargon - if we hadn't borrowed Psychology's term, we'd have had to invent a new one.

It has a definition. You are capable of using the words in the definition instead of the jargon. And unlike the jargon, the words in the definition will make sense to someone who hasn't heard the jargon.

It still amazes me that fans will go on for paragraph after paragraph reiterating the same points over and over again, but think they need this sort of shorthand. Really, typing out the words that the jargon means is that time consuming you just can't bring yourself to do it, in between your point-by-point lengthy refutation involving typing out the word "quote" with brackets and another one with a "/" as you split someone's text into 14 different points to refute individually? THAT you have time for, but not a few words (like, "sense of control over my actions") to describe a jargon concept?

 

[superstition]

How's this for a scenario?

1) GM creates NPC that is a higher level but only with mental stats, but physical ones

2) GM attempts to use persuasion or deception on PC, using the basic rules that exist in the core book

3) player whines, lectures about correct GM etiquette, then threatens mutiny if the GM doesn't cave

4) player's mutiny destroys the plot hook, wasting hours of detailed prep

5) GM tries to wing much of the rest of session but is mentally fatigued from all the prep work... barely manages

6) Rules lawyer at the table is emboldened by the mutiny and starts questioning correct rulings

7) player then tells his/her friends that the GM is an incompetent beginner who doesn't cater to the preferences of the player

8) (GM had designed an entire area to mainly cater to that player but the plot hook was needed to get there)

9) player and friends tell the GM later that the campaign wasn't authentic to the franchise

10) same player has history of GMing without having done any prep work — tells people to leaf through the books or abandons the session to sleep

11) forum-goers tell the GM that it was bad design because it used a plot hook that relied on the core rules being taken seriously

 

[pemerton]

Look at the reactions to "The orc hits you and you die" vs "No, your character wouldn't do that because it contradicts your alignment."

Isn 't this an argument against bad social mechanics? (Eg ones that let the GM veto action declarations on grounds that they know your character better than you do.)

Here's Loki scoring extremely high on his Intimidate check:

[video=youtube;wsbH_ljJ1fY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsbH_ljJ1fY[/video]

The PCs get to choose to be that one guy who stands up.

Civil War, similarly, has examples of Tony attempting to sway Cap with his extremely high social skills, and Cap choosing not to be swayed.

Its exactly as the Captain America example illustrated. Loki can make the most epic speech, and roll really high on his persuasion/diplomacy/social skill. That may sway the crowd, but Captain America can still stand up for his principles and defy him.

The players can do the same.

No matter how well a character rolls on their diplomacy check, ultimately the players have agency, and decide how their characters react. They can choose to not be swayed, and I don't think that is bad role playing. It might even be great role playing, depending on their reasons.

Here is an argument with exactly the same structure:

When the building blew up, all the extras were injured or killed, but Captain America survived the blast and even stayed on his feet! So therefore PCs are not affected by the rules for explostions.​

I think everyone would agree that I've just given a bad argument. The argument in relation to social mechanics is no different. All you're pointing out is that, from the mere fact that the result on a Diplomacy roll is X, we can't work out its effect on any given PC, any more than we can work out what effect a DC 20, 30 hp explosion will have. In both cases we need to look at the PC's abilities. (Which is how all RPGs that actually have player-side social mechanics handle it.)

In the game I GMed on the weekend (Cortex+ Heroic), one PC tried to explain to some frightened villagers how they could escape a difficult situation (stuck in the cold and snow being pursued by giants) but found himself reaching the conclusion that there was no solution to the problem of how to escape! (Mechanically, the PC was stressed out by mental stress.) Later on, another PC took mental stress as a result of an argument with another PC about how (if at all) they should go about trying to save the villagers from the giants.

LIke [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] said upthread, if the player doesn't want to be hindered by the penalty then actions can be declared that don't rely upon being clear-headed. And like [MENTION=20564]Blue[/MENTION] said, being stressed out from mental stress has no greater effect on player participation in the game than does being stressed out from physical stress.

 

[delericho]

How's this for a scenario?

1) GM creates NPC that is a higher level but only with mental stats, but physical ones

2) GM attempts to use persuasion or deception on PC, using the basic rules that exist in the core book...

Your GM has screwed up here, and that's true whether those mechanics work or not. Compelling the PCs to go on an adventure that the players don't want, whether that's achieved by mundane social skills or via the use of compulsion magic, is a really bad idea. Assuming your players don't outright mutiny, you're still setting yourself up for a bad game experience.

When constructing adventure hooks, the GM really needs to find a way to motivate both the characters and their players to go on the adventure. In fact, the latter is the more important - if the players want to play the adventure, they'll find a way to square it with their characters' motivations.

(The reactions you describe for the players in later steps in your chain are way over the top, of course. But I would hardly consider them a typical response.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

2) GM attempts to use persuasion or deception on PC, using the basic rules that exist in the core book

3) player whines, lectures about correct GM etiquette, then threatens mutiny if the GM doesn't cave

4) player's mutiny destroys the plot hook, wasting hours of detailed prep

5) GM tries to wing much of the rest of session but is mentally fatigued from all the prep work... barely manages

I'm not saying that mutiny was necessarily the correct choice here, but no GM should ever build a single point of failure into their entire session and expect the dice to cooperate. If the rules allowed for the possibility of the PCs resisting that skill, then the GM should have planned for that possibility. If the rules didn't allow for the possibility, then you've essentially dropped rocks on the party, which is a significant breach of etiquette and players are entirely justified in leaving.

If your entire campaign hinges on one die roll, then a better solution is to not play that out during the game. Put it in your backstory. Start the game with the players having already agreed to it.

 

[Skepticultist]

I'm not saying that mutiny was necessarily the correct choice here, but no GM should ever build a single point of failure into their entire session and expect the dice to cooperate. If the rules allowed for the possibility of the PCs resisting that skill, then the GM should have planned for that possibility. If the rules didn't allow for the possibility, then you've essentially dropped rocks on the party, which is a significant breach of etiquette and players are entirely justified in leaving.

If your entire campaign hinges on one die roll, then a better solution is to not play that out during the game. Put it in your backstory. Start the game with the players having already agreed to it.

I learned this lesson running a game of WEG Star Wars. The first session had the players tasked with extricating an Imperial defector from an Imperial controlled city. They were supposed to meet the defector at a set of coordinates, and when they got there a pair of bounty hunters were supposed to show up, snatch the defector, and flee with him. One of the bounty hunters was well within the party's capabilities to defeat, the second was basically Boba Fett -- full hard armor, jet pack, the whole deal. Because the meet occurred beyond a security check, the only weapons the party had on them were blaster pistols, and the second bounty hunter could easily survive a round or two of blaster pistol fire, so I knew he'd be able to grab the defector and jet pack away, leaving his comrade to get killed by the PCs. The entire adventure I'd written, all of my prepared material, assumed that the PCs would have to retrieve the defector from the bounty hunter before he delivered him to his employer.

Then the Gambler character whipped out his Hold Out Pistol, weeniest gun in the whole game, and managed to roll over 70 points of damage thanks to an exploding wild die that rolled something like 6 or 7 sixes in a row. The second bounty hunter's head popped like balloon. He was dead like four or five times over.

Never, ever expect the dice too cooperate.

 

[Sunseeker]

Your GM has screwed up here, and that's true whether those mechanics work or not. Compelling the PCs to go on an adventure that the players don't want, whether that's achieved by mundane social skills or via the use of compulsion magic, is a really bad idea. Assuming your players don't outright mutiny, you're still setting yourself up for a bad game experience.

When constructing adventure hooks, the GM really needs to find a way to motivate both the characters and their players to go on the adventure. In fact, the latter is the more important - if the players want to play the adventure, they'll find a way to square it with their characters' motivations.

(The reactions you describe for the players in later steps in your chain are way over the top, of course. But I would hardly consider them a typical response.)

Emphasis mine. It's a "Session Zero" sort of thing but I always flat out tell players to bring characters who are "ready to adventure". Because I've found that at times if I don't, players will make characters whose life-long goals are to hole up in a library. Though the solution to that is simple:
"Okay, your character wanders off to go do that, the party on the other hand is going to go on an adventure, so please roll up a new character who is interested in that." -You'll either weed out the snowflakes who want the limelight on their attention-hog of a character, or you'll get people to be ready for an adventure.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

How's this for a scenario?

1) GM creates NPC that is a higher level but only with mental stats, but physical ones

2) GM attempts to use persuasion or deception on PC, using the basic rules that exist in the core book

3) player whines, lectures about correct GM etiquette, then threatens mutiny if the GM doesn't cave

<snip>

11) forum-goers tell the GM that it was bad design because it used a plot hook that relied on the core rules being taken seriously

The GM made up a design that wasn't smart due to it having a bottleneck, but regardless it's very clear that the group's dynamics are totally, utterly out of whack. As in "why are these people playing with each other?" out of whack. Or "what the heck kind of crazy-@$$ power struggles are going on?" out of whack. I don't know, of course, but at least one of the players is the kind of person I'd vote off the island and if that didn't work, I'd vote myself off the island.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Emphasis mine. It's a "Session Zero" sort of thing but I always flat out tell players to bring characters who are "ready to adventure". Because I've found that at times if I don't, players will make characters whose life-long goals are to hole up in a library. Though the solution to that is simple:
"Okay, your character wanders off to go do that, the party on the other hand is going to go on an adventure, so please roll up a new character who is interested in that." -You'll either weed out the snowflakes who want the limelight on their attention-hog of a character, or you'll get people to be ready for an adventure.

I think you can have characters who are "ready" but seem to always grab onto things that are orthogonal to the rest of the group and have too strong an individual agenda. That can be a problem, too.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Here is an argument with exactly the same structure:

When the building blew up, all the extras were injured or killed, but Captain America survived the blast and even stayed on his feet! So therefore PCs are not affected by the rules for explostions.​

I think everyone would agree that I've just given a bad argument. The argument in relation to social mechanics is no different.

Actually, it is different.

The difference is that the effects of an explosion are about physics and physiology, and the effects of the social interaction are about thoughts.

If the GM can tell me what my character thinks, then he's not really my character, it's the GM's character.

If you really need my character to behave a certain way, then use magic and take control of him temporarily. (Or, heck, let me know before the session that it would be really helpful if I did X not Y.)

But don't tell me what my character thinks.