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]

Yeah...I added the Insight thing since the last time I proposed this. Definitely squares the complexity. I should have left well-enough alone.

 

[Tony Vargas]

My p.o.v. on this is that telling the player they hear a rustle, and then relying on them to "roleplay" not believing it is anything more than that, is not fun roleplaying. This gets us into the weeds about "immersion" and "meta-gaming" but telling me that I hear leaves rustling but asking me to not read anything into it because I failed my perception check is the same as asking me to pretend to not know that trolls regenerate.

They're both perfectly fair expectations in certain styles of play. If a game is run 'above board,' all mechanics in the open, 'stakes' and situations known to all players, then it's fine. Deception isn't handled by the DM tricking the players and the players progressively getting wise to the DM's personal style of trickery, it's handled by a check that models the cleverness of the characters' and their adversaries, and the results played out accordingly.

The reverse, keeping players in the dark and letting them make decisions based on 'role playing' their characters, doesn't necessarily even require there be mechanics 'behind the screen.' The DM could just make everything up - the players face a series of described situations, make decisions, and face the consequences of those decisions, whether the consequences are determined by the DM in advance, by dice in the moment, or by DM whim in the moment is immaterial to the experience, since the players don't know what goes on behind the screen.

So although the rustle of leaves that gets dismissed is a common trope in suspenseful movies, it's difficult (impossible?) to implement in a roleplaying game in a way that is actually suspenseful, as opposed to simple play-acting.

IDK. Where is the suspense supposed to come into it? Before the roll or after it? Because, if there's a success, the suspense is over. If there's a failure, you still don't know what's going on, the character thinks nothing in particular is going on, but the player knows he failed a roll. Then something happens, or not. Sounds kinda like the movie, really. The character on screen hears a noise and thinks nothing of it, but the viewer knows that the character wouldn't be on screen, and the noise wouldn't be audible to the viewer if there was nothing going on...

Those checks are about facts you know/remember, not how you feel and think. The distinction is clear to me, but perhaps not to others.

If they were just about knowledge, like retrieving data from a hard disk, they wouldn't be checks, you'd either know stuff or not. But information is more than data. It's bringing data into context and applying it. Doctors don't make diagnosis simply by remember what they learned in medical school, but by thinking about it and deciding which symptoms are important - and biases creep into that process, because they're human. That's the kind of thing that, in games, gets abstracted down to mechanical tests.

1) When somebody is on watch, you make several/many secret dice rolls against detailed tables that can produce positives, negatives, false positive, and false negatives.
2) Each time, you ask the player what they do.

I recall D&D games back in the day being run that way.

3) There is a mechanical cost to "doing something".

That might've helped, back then, encouraging something more fun that rampant continual paranoia.

Again, I wouldn't actually do this, but those are the ingredients to achieve what you are describing in a meaningful, immersive way. For me.

Sounds conflicted.

Ok, so that puts us back at the "anything involving brain activity is 'thinking'..."

When did we get away from that. Any check that uses a mental stat is going to involve what your character is thinking and/or judgements he's making. Any check that's at all abstracted is likely to include, or could conceivably generate visualizations of fiction that include, what your character is thinking and model judgements, even decisions, he's made. Erasing all the mechanics that /could/ lead to that would not leave you with a lot of game.

Puzzles, for instance, are a classic part of D&D, and you've already jettisoned them.

The key to retaining/expanding what the game can handle without interfering in the way players imagine their characters is that transition from what the results of a resolution were, mechanically, to how you visualize it and integrate it into the narrative. If the game leaves enough flexibility in that phase, the issue you're worried about can be avoided. In D&D, it's mostly been an issue, what mechanics represent have generally been locked down in the rules with rules and flavor hard to tease apart. But, in the WotC era, that's softened in different ways. In 3.x you had the privilege, as a player, of describing your character & his gear, so you could do some 're-skinning,' with the somewhat obscure Spell Thematics, you could even change how his spells appeared. In 4e & 5e, there's a lot more latitude. In 4e fluff was segregated from rules text & keywords, so you were free to describe how a power worked in whatever way fit the character best. In 5e, the DM narrates the results of all resolutions, so he has unlimited latitude to make them fit the story as he sees fit. In other games it also varies. Hero System, for instance, uses the concept of 'special effects' to let player define what the mechanical powers they buy for their characters actually represent, while in the superficially similar GURPS mechanics are 'reality checked' in the design phase.

In a fight, the enemy...a manipulative, trickster type...tries to lure a PC into a square that is trapped. I proposed that you secretly roll for the bad guy's Deception, then allow the player to roll Insight. If the Insight roll beats a fixed DC you tell the player that they can tell they are being or have been lured into a trap. Then you ask them what they do.
If their Insight roll did not beat the Deception roll, then no matter what they do they end up in the trap.
Thoughts?

That'd be a way to 'improvise' a deceptive action in a system that doesn't give you effects-based tools to model such things, and it'd be a fairly 'immersive' one. The player is being fed information such that his experience will as closely as possible mirror that of the character. He gets a sense of making choices and facing consequences, but it's false, 'illusionism' game theorists like to call it. The 'secret roll' is a big part of keeping the illusion - any secret roll could really be checked against a DC/contested-roll/whatever, or it could just be a 'placebo' there to make the player think the Dice Gods are choosing his fate, when really the DM has slaved his destiny to the story, but, either way, Game Theorist Logic, goes, the player's 'Agency' has been compromised.

Personally, I think 'illusionism' is a fine way to run a game, especially one where the rules may not work so well all open & above board. Older games were often run that way, without anyone going to the trouble of extensive Theorizing and jargon-invention in on-line echo chambers.

I also think taking it above board and using effects-based rules can be a fine way of modeling the same thing. In Hero System, for instance, a character who's especially tricky might have a heavily-limited Mind Control power they can use to influence their enemies with the special effect that he's just preternaturally deceptive, or in 4e D&D, the whole complicated contested check thing could be tossed in favor of a power that simply slides an enemy and has flavor text that suggests trickery (but could be re-skinned if a player were choosing it for his character).

 

[Guest 6801328]

If they were just about knowledge, like retrieving data from a hard disk, they wouldn't be checks, you'd either know stuff or not.

Right. And that's why you roll: to determine if you know it or not (or can't remember it, which amounts to the same thing.)

Sounds conflicted.

I don't feel conflicted. What on earth are you talking about?

Any check that uses a mental stat is going to involve what your character is thinking and/or judgements he's making.

And by that litmus test, so is any physical action. You can't swing a sword without thinking about it, after all. And yet I think we can all agree there is something different between swinging a sword and negotiating a price.

Perhaps the only objective distinction that would satisfy you is if I brushed up on my brain science, so that I could say "processes which take place in the cortex belong to the player; processes which take place in the cerebellum belong to the dice or the DM" or something like that.

But that would be a lot of work, and the distinction is clear to me without doing all that, and I doubt you would admit the distinction is clear to you even if I did do all that, so I don't think I'll bother.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't feel conflicted. What on earth are you talking about?

You said:

Again, I wouldn't actually do this, but those are the ingredients to achieve what you are describing in a meaningful, immersive way. For me.

It sounds like dealing with this distinction in the way you want ('meaningful & immersive') would be something you wouldn't actually do. So you want it, but you don't want to do it, which sounded conflicted to me.

And by that litmus test, so is any physical action. You can't swing a sword without thinking about it, after all.

If the resolution of the action is abstract enough, sure, it's going to model thinking on the part of the character beyond that done by the player, and relying on the character's imagined capabilities in that area. A player may know nothing about swordplay, but his character, a master fencer, knows just when to feint/parry/riposte. A game that were to model fencing down to a level of detail that the player makes all those decisions would both be unwieldy, and substitute the player's mastery of the system for the character's mastery of fencing.

And yet I think we can all agree there is something different between swinging a sword and negotiating a price.

The risk of death, for instance, sure.

What is not different is that both are tasks being accomplished by the character, based on the character's abilities, and opposed by the abilities of another (presumably an NPC under the DMs control, but not necessarily always).

Perhaps the only objective distinction that would satisfy you is if I brushed up on my brain science, so that I could say "processes which take place in the cortex belong to the player; processes which take place in the cerebellum belong to the dice or the DM" or something like that.

I'd be surprised if D&D-style quasi-Bancian wizardry took place in the same part of the brain as swordplay or barbarian rage. Do want to memorize spells, yourself, and recite them letter-perfect in order for your character to cast them?

But that would be a lot of work, and the distinction is clear to me without doing all that, and I doubt you would admit the distinction is clear to you even if I did do all that, so I don't think I'll bother.

The distinction isn't unclear, it's just not very relevant nor is it very constructive to try to deal with. What you want could be delivered by some sort of cyberpunk VR game. You load your consciousness into a virtual body with the simulated physical abilities and supernatural powers of your character and have at it the virtual world controlled by your DM/AI. It's not compatible with playing a character with different mental/social capabilities from yourself. But if you want to play Den (or whatever name your initials would spell out) from Heavy Metal, or, well, a lot of others - 20th-century schmuck transported into a fantasy world is a sub-genre unto itself, really - a system to do that wouldn't be unfeasible, and, it would reasonably abstain from statting out or resolving knowledge, IQ, 'cleverness,' knowledge, charisma and the like, since you'll be providing all that (filtered through the lens of your GMs perceptions/judgements, of course).

The much more important distinction, IMHO, in between character abilities (imagined by the player in general, hopefully genre-appropriate terms, and modeled by the game mechanics) and player abilities (which can include system mastery, and probably don't include swordplay, spellcasting, spelunking, finding & disarming intricate pseudo-medieval traps, elven court etiquette, hiring half-orcish assassins on the mean streets of Balder's Gate, or the like). The player should make decisions - set goals, attempt tasks - for his character, the resolution of those actions should come down to the characters' abilities. The player should decide to negotiate, threaten, cajole, fight or flee, the abilities of the character should be what weigh in to the resolution of that via mechanics (diplomacy, intimidate, bluff, combat, or pursuit & evasion).

 

[Guest 6801328]

You said: It sounds like dealing with this distinction in the way you want ('meaningful & immersive') would be something you wouldn't actually do. So you want it, but you don't want to do it, which sounded conflicted to me.

Oh, I just mean too much trouble for what it's worth, in that case. I was just describing what it would take to achieve the result he was describing, to backpedal from saying that you couldn't model it. I didn't say it was practical.

Hiring actors to jump out of the closet in vampire masks at the right time would also be meaningful and immersive, but I'm not going to go through that trouble, either.

The distinction isn't unclear, it's just not very relevant nor is it very constructive to try to deal with.

Aye, there's the rub. You don't particularly like my interpretation. I get it. It's ok to just say, "Meh...I don't like that way of playing."

Instead it's this unrelenting philosophical game to prove that there's no distinction between two different categories, when we both know there's a pretty clear distinction, despite the fact that we can, if we try hard enough for the purposes of being argumentative, come up with tricky edge cases in which the distinction is blurry.

The much more important distinction, IMHO, in between character abilities (imagined by the player in general, hopefully genre-appropriate terms, and modeled by the game mechanics) and player abilities (which can include system mastery, and probably don't include swordplay, spellcasting, spelunking, finding & disarming intricate pseudo-medieval traps, elven court etiquette, hiring half-orcish assassins on the mean streets of Balder's Gate, or the like). The player should make decisions - set goals, attempt tasks - for his character, the resolution of those actions should come down to the characters' abilities. The player should decide to negotiate, threaten, cajole, fight or flee, the abilities of the character should be what weigh in to the resolution of that via mechanics (diplomacy, intimidate, bluff, combat, or pursuit & evasion).

Then why *ever* let the players make in-game choices? If the DM leaves a hint of how to make a future challenge easier, do you ever let the players themselves figure out the hint? If so, you're contradicting what you just claimed. The player decides to solve the puzzle, through application of the mechanics vis-a-vis the character. Right? You should make them roll Int or Wis, and if they succeed they automatically "get" the hint, and if they fail then they're not allowed to use the information. It's fine if they say it out loud, of course, because everybody else at the table is also playing this way, so there's no harm in giving away secrets. "Oh, yeah, Tony, that would probably work. But we all failed our Int checks so we're not going to make the connection that the word on the scroll is the command word for the golem." In fact, the DM could just say, "You find the command word for the golem on the scroll. Everybody roll to see if your character figures out that's what it is." And it will be just as fun for everybody if they all fail the roll.

I don't think you play this way. (And if you do then CLEARLY we are not ever going to see eye to eye on this.)

Assuming you do sometimes let players use their own minds in place of their characters', then you are being inconsistent. So, do you just wing it, based on what feels right, or do you have objective criteria for which side of the line any situation falls on?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Oh, I just mean too much trouble for what it's worth, in that case.

I think a lot of the Game Theorizing falls into that category once it gets to the transition from theory to application.

Hiring actors to jump out of the closet in vampire masks at the right time would also be meaningful and immersive, but I'm not going to go through that trouble, either.

That reminds me: LARPs could also get a lot closer to what you're looking for.

It's ok to just say, "Meh...I don't like that way of playing."

I don't like that way of playing, and I particularly don't like it being used as a pretext to exclude large portions of the game from mechanical resolution. I mean, seriously, if it were actually consistently applied you'd lose half the stats and more than half the skills...

Instead it's this unrelenting philosophical game to prove that there's no distinction between two different categories

I've acknowledged the distinction.

when we both know there's a pretty clear distinction, despite the fact that we can, if we try hard enough for the purposes of being argumentative, come up with tricky edge cases in which the distinction is blurry.

I don't consider puzzles, traps, combat or perception checks or INT/WIS/CHA to be 'tricky edge cases.'

Then why *ever* let the players make in-game choices?

In one sense the player doesn't - he makes game choices. Those drive the in-game ("in the fiction/narrative/game-world-reality/whatever") choices we imagine being made by the character. Between the two are layers rules, abstraction, & visualization that can be perceived as a vanishingly thin semi-permeable membrane or a brick wall, but they're there, and they action on the other side is still driven by the player (unless there's "illusionism" going on, in which case they're driven by the DM) giving him "Agency."

If the DM leaves a hint of how to make a future challenge easier, do you ever let the players themselves figure out the hint?

A DM can drop hints for the players, or for the characters. The latter will depend on the character's noticing & understanding them. So if there's a hint in the form of an inscription in a cryptic arcane language, that depends on a allusion to the teachings of an obscure cult to make sense of, telling the players "there was an inscription there saying #al-zprh'vr'nn atl-n'gliii et-h'ram# I can't believe you didn't pick up on that," wouldn't be at all fair, while giving them arcana checks (or letting them cast Read Lang) and religion checks to figure it out might be more productive.
OTOH, if you describe the BBEG as looking a whole lot like a boss from a video game you know some of the players enjoy, they just might figure out what kind of attacks he's going to throw and/or be vulnerable too or something, well, that's the former, and some might object to it as meta-gaming or genre-bending.

Assuming you do sometimes let players use their own minds in place of their characters', then you are being inconsistent. So, do you just wing it, based on what feels right, or do you have objective criteria for which side of the line any situation falls on?

Like I said, the player has control of the character, they make game decisions for it, from decisions the character could not easily be imagined to have any conceivable control over (I'll be a an elf and put the 14 in CON and the 18 in INT and dump STR) to some they certainly should, if not necessarily in the same terms (I'll use my 2nd level slot to cast Sleep on the Orcs).

IMHO, though, the player should never substitute their RL abilities for the character's imagined abilities in the guise of 'making decisions,' nor be penalized for lacking knowledge their character should have when making game decisions. If a character doesn't have a clue how to build a fire, the player shouldn't get away with describing the actions he learned in the boy scouts to get a fire started, his character should just cope with the cold & dark. If a player with no clue how to build a fire is playing a ranger, and says "I guess I should build a fire" not only should he be allowed to, but if the DM figures building a fire in the spot he's in would be a bad idea (start a wildfire, loosen the snow on the branches of the tree above causing a minor avalanche that douses the fire, attract undue attention) he should explain the better place to build that, because the character would know that - or call for a check if he figured the character would /probably/ think of it...

Really, it's stuff that so obvious it'd be a non-issue, if the early days of the hobby hadn't produced games that left large swaths of character abilities undefined and/or depended on 'gochya' challenges that turned on whether the player was alert to something the DM said or had encountered (or read about) a monster or trap or cursed item or what-have-you, before, and those hadn't, in turn, left such a deep impression on the community.

 

[5ekyu]

"Those checks are about facts you know/remember, not how you feel and think. "

Agreed... You remember this is way different from you like this or you agree to this.

As for the rustle, especiallyvif we used the succeed at cost...

"Theres another rustling over by the bonnet trees. Might be something. Might not. If you move to get closer and a better look, you will leave your post and lose clea viewbof the pier. Do you investigate or what?"

Since we know the at cost may mean getting a higher result but losing something else, the player can see mechanically the issue of risk and reward just as the player can.

Could be nothing there and he exposes the pier.
Could be someone there and he catches or drive off.
Could be a planned distraction to open up the pier.
Could be an ambush.
Could be amorous racoons.

Like a sweet pie, you wont know until you taste it and then its too late.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Note that I haven't actually done this, and I'm not sure I would...I'm just theorizing. But what I like about this is that it doesn't dictate thoughts/actions to the player: you are allowed to say/do/think whatever you want. But the trap is wherever you go if you fail, and it's someplace you don't go if you succeed.

Thoughts?

Now you're violating causality, which is even worse than violating player agency. That players should maintain control over the thoughts and beliefs of their character is one thing, but it's just a social contract. That the world exists as an objective reality, and that your actions in the present cannot shape the past of the world, is another thing entirely.

As a player, I would much rather that the GM tell me I have lost control over my character, than to have my decisions become meaningless because the universe is literally conspiring against me.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Now you're violating causality, which is even worse than violating player agency. That players should maintain control over the thoughts and beliefs of their character is one thing, but it's just a social contract. That the world exists as an objective reality, and that your actions in the present cannot shape the past of the world, is another thing entirely.

As a player, I would much rather that the GM tell me I have lost control over my character, than to have my decisions become meaningless because the universe is literally conspiring against me.

I remember last time some people felt very strongly as you do (maybe you were even one of them.)

And I have the exact opposite reaction: I would much rather the DM let me do what I want, and then secretly move the trap, rather than tell me I have to move one way because an NPC successfully Deceived me. And not just because I would never know the difference: even if the DM told me afterward what he had done, I would still prefer it.

Which I guess is a sign that people play the game differently, and some of these debates will simply never lead to a single answer that satisfies everybody.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, here's a scenario to consider. I posted this a year or two ago and some people went postal.

In a fight, the enemy...a manipulative, trickster type...tries to lure a PC into a square that is trapped. I proposed that you secretly roll for the bad guy's Deception, then allow the player to roll Insight. If the Insight roll beats a fixed DC (maybe 10) you tell the player that they can tell they are being or have been lured into a trap. Then you ask them what they do.

If their Insight roll did not beat the Deception roll, then no matter what they do they end up in the trap.

Note that I haven't actually done this, and I'm not sure I would...I'm just theorizing. But what I like about this is that it doesn't dictate thoughts/actions to the player: you are allowed to say/do/think whatever you want. But the trap is wherever you go if you fail, and it's someplace you don't go if you succeed.

Thoughts?

I go with the far, far simpler answer of, "You believe what the NPC is saying, you are going to move to that square, go ahead and narrate it however you feel is most appropriate."

Mostly because I trust my players to actually be mature enough to role play out a situation that is entirely plausible without being asshats (oh, I heard a noise, it must be ninjas because you never mentioned a noise before).

Then again, this hard line "THOU MUST NOT TELL ME WHAT MY CHARACTER IS THINKING" is pretty far removed from my experience.