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.
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.


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
 

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I wonder if this isn't a generational thing. AD&D allowed for all sorts of effects once you got a stat above 18. High Con granted you full on regeneration. High Charisma allowed you to Awe people based on their level/HD. High Wis flat out granted spell immunities. So on and so forth.

So, no, I don't have a problem with non-magical effects actually having an effect on PC's. They should, IMO.
 

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I like codified mechanics, but (again) I'd be wary of giving Persuasion that much power.

I'd just note that the bonus or penalties awarded can be very different. So a Persuaded person might have +1 to +5 to related actions, whereas Charm Person could be -10 to everything including AC (or how about minus X Hit Points per round due to the mental anguish fighting against the spell).
 

I wonder if this isn't a generational thing. AD&D allowed for all sorts of effects once you got a stat above 18. High Con granted you full on regeneration. High Charisma allowed you to Awe people based on their level/HD. High Wis flat out granted spell immunities. So on and so forth.

I started with AD&D in 1981 (well, one game with D&D before going to AD&D) but then again I'm really unbelievably immature so maybe I count as "one of those durned kids". So, sure, call it a generational thing.

My sense of what kinds of rules and priorities and roleplaying make for good gaming have also evolved a lot since then.
 
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I started with AD&D in 1981 (well, one game with D&D before going to AD&D) but then again I'm really unbelievably immature so maybe I count as "one of those durned kids". So, sure, call it a generational thing.

Ok, then what's the equivalent bonus for all the other skills. Because if you give one skill a concrete mechanical bonus like that (looking at you, Perception) then it becomes objectively better than all the skills that don't have such bonuses.
 

Somewhat more extremist than I had in mind...

That said, particularly at low levels death is a frequent companion; and level loss, item or wealth loss, charm-domination effects, and long-term non-death "outages" such as being captured and hauled away - these are all things that can and almost certainly will happen from time to time throughout a campaign. I don't even try to sugar-coat that adventuring is an extremely high-risk-high-reward thing to do.

It's still fun.

It was one of my players who quite some time ago said something in full seriousness that we've all kind of lived by ever since: "Dungeons without mortality are dungeons without life."

But if you want to be a hero, or a star, or anything special at all it's (almost certainly*) not going to be handed to you. It'll take perseverance, patience, and some luck.

* - the beneficial effects of Decks of Many Things et al notwithstanding; good things can happen to PCs as well. :)
I find it very enjoyable for dm and players when you dont **need** death to breath life into adventure.

I find it fantastic when they get so invested in thecworld and its inhabitants and events and have goals the breathe life into it beyond "my survival."

Been thru the ptsd-pc games where " bad things of all sorts can and will happen to PCs from time to time, so might as well get used to it." where every chair and table might be cursed or trapoed if you did not DM-proof it with a litany of checks - for breakfast.

And did we remember to say we looked up?

Of course, wont matter cuz of the "and will" part.

Each group and gm have different preferences and dufferent **needs** and i can definitely say we dont need mortality to breathe life in our gaming.
 

Sorry, I wasn't meaning to criticse your choice of words. I just thought you might be interested to know of some examples.

No need to apologize....it was not the best choice of word. And I knew there are systems that allowed for this, but not really which ones, so your examples were useful.


I don't have that great a grasp of how it works in Dying Earth, but I think it's similar to HeroQuest revised (both are Robin Laws designs): in circumstances where the flaw would apply, the GM can call for a check against the rating of the flaw, and if the check fails then the normal consequences for failure ensue (eg in HeroQuest this might be a penalty to subsequent uses of the ability that was tested ).

Burning Wheel, as well as Will, does have a Steel rating, and the GM can call for Steel checks in appropriate circumstances (eg seeing a grisly murder, trying to assassinate someone, being caught in an ambush, seeing a ghost or demon, etc). If the check fails, the character hesitates.

Okay, but with Steel, it sounds more like a fear check, for which many games have some kind of mechanic, and which usually involves some far out elements I wouldn’t attribute to something a person can achieve with a skill (dragon fear, horror checks, and the like).

This is something different, I think, no?

At least some of the concern here seems to be about poor mechanics.

And also about the running together of mental states and actions.

To mention the latter first: when the sales clerk persuades you to take out the extended warranty, of course you know that you may be being duped. But maybe you're not! You take it out "just in case".

In Burning Wheel's duel of wits, or in DitV where a struggle takes place using words and neither party escalates (to fists or guns), then losing the conflict doesn't have to mean that you're persuaded. In Dow it means that you've agreed, and you're (at least) resigned to keeping your promise. In DitV, it might mean that you reluctantly shrug your shoulders and say "OK, have it your way." You don't think they're right - you're just not prepared to keep pressing the point.

In DitV, you can see your will to dispute the point weakening, as your number of available dice to commit to the conflict reduces (DitV conflict resolution is by putting forward dice from one's pool, turn by turn, to try and match the opponent). You as a palyer wonder "Can I keep going with this? Am I going to escalate [eg draw a gun, which allows new dice in the pool]? Or let this one go?" Which is what your PC is thinking, too.

I think that if the game in question has mechanics designed around this, that’s fine. They may be great or lousy, as any game element may be. It varies from game to game, I suppose.

But when such mechanics are absent, or not clearly defined, that’s where I’d lean toward not allowing skills to be so influential. For me, having the PC use his skill against te NPC rather than the other way around is the easiest way to avoid any issue.

Personally, I find the idea that my character has an unlimited degree of resolve or social stamina as unrealistic as if s/he could be peppered with arrows yet unfazed. (A superhero game might be different - but then Loki probably wears away resolve at a superheroic rate!)

Resolve, sure...I think a game mechanic to replicate things far beyond the normal human experience influencing the state of mind of the PC is just fine.

But the skill of an NPC dictating the behavior of a PC just seems undesirable to me. There are examples we coukd come uo with that I would be more okay with, but generally it’s something I’d try to avoid. And I don’t think that avoiding it means that PCs are immune to fear or influence or the like.
 

I wonder if this isn't a generational thing. AD&D allowed for all sorts of effects once you got a stat above 18. High Con granted you full on regeneration. High Charisma allowed you to Awe people based on their level/HD. High Wis flat out granted spell immunities. So on and so forth.

So, no, I don't have a problem with non-magical effects actually having an effect on PC's. They should, IMO.

Almost the only way to achieve stats that high was through magic. So yeah, the idea that they would bestow superhuman ability upon a character seems in line with that.

If someone is supernaturally charming, that’s beyond the norm, and seems to have more in common with a spell.

I mean, the implications can be pretty severe. Let’s say I’m playing Godlike (a supers in WWII RPG) and my character has been sent into Berlin under cover by Churchill on a mission to kill Hitler....but then he hears one of Hitler’s speeches and decides to switch sides because Hitler made a really high speech roll.....

Tables would be flipped.
 

Almost the only way to achieve stats that high was through magic. So yeah, the idea that they would bestow superhuman ability upon a character seems in line with that.

If someone is supernaturally charming, that’s beyond the norm, and seems to have more in common with a spell.

I mean, the implications can be pretty severe. Let’s say I’m playing Godlike (a supers in WWII RPG) and my character has been sent into Berlin under cover by Churchill on a mission to kill Hitler....but then he hears one of Hitler’s speeches and decides to switch sides because Hitler made a really high speech roll.....

Tables would be flipped.

Actually, not really. Some races could start with 19's in various stats. So, it wasn't out of the realms of possibility. But, sure, you're right, it would mostly take magic to get that high.

But, then again, does that mean that really high stats are effectively magical, even if they weren't attained magically? So, any really high skill score should be effectively magical as well, no?
 

But, then again, does that mean that really high stats are effectively magical, even if they weren't attained magically? So, any really high skill score should be effectively magical as well, no?

Which means Warlords could never have high skill rolls because everything they do is non-magical.

Zing!

EDIT: Deleted a more serious response to the above, because I don't really think previous editions are relevant so don't want to argue about it.
 

Actually, not really. Some races could start with 19's in various stats. So, it wasn't out of the realms of possibility. But, sure, you're right, it would mostly take magic to get that high.

In 1E I think it was only possible through magic, but the rules were a bit all over the place, and my recollection of them is fuzzy. But I don’t think that the ability scores above 18 really showed up until 2E, which is where the regeneration and other abilities for high scores were introduced. But even then, regeneration began at Con 20, and a dwarf got a +1 racial adjustment, for a max of 19. I think the only race to have a shot at one of those abilities at character generation was a gnome with a 19 Int, which meant he was immune to 1st level illusions.

But again, going off memory which is hazy, which is why I didn’t want to fully commit to magic being the only way, just that it was nearly always so.

But, then again, does that mean that really high stats are effectively magical, even if they weren't attained magically? So, any really high skill score should be effectively magical as well, no?

Well, we’re comparing across editions, so that must be taken into account. I think that there must be a point somewhere when an ability has to be viewed as superhuman or supernatural. Where that line is drawn is likely different in each edition.

But yes, I’d agree with you that a really high score, beyond what is considered normal or natural, would be magical. Think Thulsa Doom from the original Conan movie. His ability to influence people is not an example of supreme skill, but rather it’s a supernatural ability.
 

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