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

 

[Scott Christian]

Upthread there was some mention of how high of a Diplomacy check would be required to move somebody from Hostile to Minion, or something like that. (If that was D&D, I skipped that edition...). So the implication is that based on starting attitude, a higher or lower roll would be needed to move somebody to a new attitude.

If the DM, or the game, sets the DC for the Duke persuading me to take his offer, it is effectively telling me how initially opposed I am to the offer. If I choose my own DC, I am choosing how initially opposed I am. It seems to me the player should be in control of that initial state.

And, again, there is the maturity requirement: a player who always chose DC 50 is not being cooperative.

I really feel like it is more dependent on the path leading to diplomacy or persuasion. An aggressive style works against some, others it doesn't. Same with flirting, flattery, or being subservient. DC's set by those seem more practical than a sliding scale, and imo, leads to more role playing.

 

[Scott Christian]

As to the original post, doesn't really only depend on time. A player in a group of three that's out for four rounds, goes by rather quickly. Put eight players at the table and make them a higher level, and it's an hour before they get to do anything.

 

[Guest 6801328]

And your third point about there being a disparity between the player and the character, to me that’s the point of role play. I’m not my character. I’m trying to experience the fiction through the lens of that character. So if the character believes X then I should do my best to portray that belief.

Yup, I think this is the core of the disagreement. There are really (at least) two different approaches to roleplaying here (and there is a better than even chance that my first attempt to define these is going to be seriously flawed):

1) Outward portrayal of a fictional character: this is analogous to an actor trying to portray a character that the writer/director define. This might involve trying to induce in oneself the emotions of the character, in order to make the portrayal more realistic.

2) Inward empathy with a fictional character: this is analogous to watching a movie or reading a book, and feeling scared/happy/angry/confused when a character does. It's not the result of trying to feel that way, it happens because you self-identify with the character and the fiction is immersive.

I don't think these two things are mutually exclusive, but they are different, and I suspect few players prioritize both equally.

 

[Guest 6801328]

My starting point for thinking about this is what resources does the player have to spend, to reflect his/her PC's resolve? This is somewhat analogous to setting a DC, but you can't always set it at 50 if your player-side resources are finite.

I don't hate this idea, but the issue with a "resource" is...well, the same as basing martial abilities on resources. It may make sense for game balance, but it becomes hard to explain without making it supernatural.

I'd rather see some kind of trade-off: sure you can set the DC at 50, but doing so has a negative consequence. Perhaps the DC you pick is also the DC to avoid shifting the NPCs attitude toward hostility.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yup, I think this is the core of the disagreement. There are really (at least) two different approaches to roleplaying here (and there is a better than even chance that my first attempt to define these is going to be seriously flawed):

1) Outward portrayal of a fictional character: this is analogous to an actor trying to portray a character that the writer/director define. This might involve trying to induce in oneself the emotions of the character, in order to make the portrayal more realistic.

Yep, that's been called 'actor stance.'

There's also 'author stance' and 'director stance.' FWIW.

2) Inward empathy with a fictional character: this is analogous to watching a movie or reading a book, and feeling scared/happy/angry/confused when a character does. It's not the result of trying to feel that way, it happens because you self-identify with the character and the fiction is immersive.

That's a more inclusive definition of 'immersive' than I've heard around here in a while. I don't think Game Theorists have ever acknowledged an 'audience stance,' though...

I don't think these two things are mutually exclusive, but they are different, and I suspect few players prioritize both equally.

Good to remember. Too often potentially useful characterizations get turned into antagonistic dichotomies. I suspect the priorities aren't even consistent over time for a given player. Some characters you might empathize with more than others, for instance.

I don't hate this idea, but the issue with a "resource" is...well, the same as basing martial abilities on resources. It may make sense for game balance, but it becomes hard to explain without making it supernatural.

Storyteller had a stat called Willpower, you could spend it to resist your nature, push yourself, overcome various conditions and so forth. You could recover it by acting in accord with your nature and the like. There was plenty of supernatural stuff in storyteller, but Willpower wasn't among them.

The concept was entirely non-controversial, we've all had the experience of reaching the limits of our self-discipline. But, it wasn't D&D (indeed, Storyteller fans, the provocateurs of the Role v Roll debate, liked to think of their pet system as the anti-D&D). It's really just a paleo-D&D system artifact that only magic is a x/period limited resource.

I'd rather see some kind of trade-off:

A resource pool gives you trade-offs, within your character, for instance.

sure you can set the DC at 50, but doing so has a negative consequence. Perhaps the DC you pick is also the DC to avoid shifting the NPCs attitude toward hostility.

That could have issues, abd working out a complete system of checks and balances like that could get quite complex...

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, I agree with this in theory, but to also maintain immersion it gets very complicated, perhaps impractically so. Elsewhere (very briefly in this thread, more extensively a year ago or so) I've written about the need for the mechanics to support positives, negatives, false positives, and false negatives in order for "detection" (stealth, traps, lies, etc.) to function in a meaningfully immersive way, by which I mean the player genuinely feels some mix of certainty/uncertainty; never (or very rarely) an absolute.

I guess I don't see it as being all that complicated...I'll explain a bit further below, after another quote...

Fair enough but, by far the same token, that’s precisely how deception works in the game. Your “disbelief” dc is set by your Insight skill. Whatever you the player might think, your character believes the lie if you fail to beat the opposed check.

And for persuasion it could easily be an opposed check. Your wisdom vs persuasion or something like that. The mechanics are there already.

And this is what makes it all more complicated than it needs to be: letting yourself be bound to the mechanics, and leaving those mechanics open to the players.

Secret rolls are your friend (thus the player retains the uncertainty born from not knowing the reason for the narration - did a "nothing there" narration arise from a good roll proving there's nothing there or a bad roll completely missing something?). False alarms are your friend (sometimes the rustling in the bushes really is just a raccoon). And most important, varying and changing up your narration is your friend. It's easy (and I'm guilty of this) to slip into a habit of using one narration for true results and another for false-true, and to no surprise the players pick up on this real fast.

Hard-coded mechanics for resolving social interactions really aren't anybody's friend, whether it's a PC trying to persuade or intimidate an NPC or vice versa; that's what role-playing at the table is for, yet there's nothing wrong with using an informal roll* to guide one's reactions when uncertain. But even when they're not explicitly used as such, formal hard-coded mechanics for this stuff just look from a distance like the game providing means of short-cutting or short-circuiting role-play at the table - which seems rather counterproductive to a game which in theory has role-playing as its raison d'etre.

* - I do this as DM all the time if I'm unsure what an NPC's reaction might be, particularly if a PC just said or revealed something s/he shouldn't have; a common occurrence. I also sometimes do it as a player, particularly if I-as-player have thought of something my character might not have, or if I'm considering doing something probably very stupid (but fun!) and checking to see if my character is as unwise as I am.

It's only complicated if you're a slave to game mechanics that IMO either shouldn't be there (social) or should be much nore nuanced (perception/hiding/etc.).

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Yup, I think this is the core of the disagreement. There are really (at least) two different approaches to roleplaying here (and there is a better than even chance that my first attempt to define these is going to be seriously flawed):

1) Outward portrayal of a fictional character: this is analogous to an actor trying to portray a character that the writer/director define. This might involve trying to induce in oneself the emotions of the character, in order to make the portrayal more realistic.

2) Inward empathy with a fictional character: this is analogous to watching a movie or reading a book, and feeling scared/happy/angry/confused when a character does. It's not the result of trying to feel that way, it happens because you self-identify with the character and the fiction is immersive.

I don't think these two things are mutually exclusive, but they are different, and I suspect few players prioritize both equally.

To go a step further, I think many immersive-style players kinda drift back and forth between one and the other from time to time without realizing it, and also sometimes drift into a third type of roleplaying which is more mechanically-driven (most often seen in combat, sometimes seen in other situations; and includes some minor meta-gaming).

 

[Hussar]

/snip.

The DM could assign varying modifiers to each. But if that's the solution, why not let the player decide where his/her character stands on each question?

Because by letting the dice do it players are forced to react in new and unexpected ways which gets to the heart of role play. If the player always determines his or her own reaction then it becomes predictable and frankly boring.

 

[pemerton]

I don't hate this idea, but the issue with a "resource" is...well, the same as basing martial abilities on resources. It may make sense for game balance, but it becomes hard to explain without making it supernatural.

I don't agree with this at all. I've seen academic presentations about willpower as a resource - eg if you do a "can the experimental subjects stand unobserved in a room full of trays of baked cookies, smelling them but not taking any to eat" experiment, it turns out (perhaps unsurprisingly) that soldiers are able to do this easily but generic undergraduate students have a harder time of it, and (for instance) will subsequently do less well on another timed exercise, because they've already exhausted their resolve by not taking the cookies.

What's unrealistic to me is a system that posits that everyone has superheroic degrees of resolve.

Because by letting the dice do it players are forced to react in new and unexpected ways which gets to the heart of role play. If the player always determines his or her own reaction then it becomes predictable and frankly boring.

I've got not issue with this. What I would add is: if the system and mechanics are going to tell me something about how my PC reacts, I also want them to produce some game play effect on me (the player) which aligns my reaction with that of the PC. I don't want to just have to pretend to feel what the game tells me my character is feeling. I find rolepaying as pretending in that way a bit insipid.

(I'm not sure I agree with [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]s' (1) and (2) above - in that I'm not sure they cover the field - but I think what I'm saying here is that I personally don't really like (1).)

 

[Hussar]

But [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], expecting mechanics to somehow align your personal feelings with the character’s is virtually impossible. Or at least extremely difficult.

To me, being able to immerse yourself in a role to the point where you react AS that character is the best part of role play.

It’s extremely hard for Bob to actually scare me at the table but I don’t find it insipid at all when a player acts as if his character is scared.