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]

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.

I don't really agree with this.

I mean, I have to be committed to playing the game - obviously if my PC has a penalty and I just ignore that, like a chess player who doesn't care if s/he gets checkmated, then it won't work.

But assuming I'm committed to the game, then it is possible to have mechanics that align my orientation with that of my PC.

My favourite D&D example is the Chained Cambion's "psychic chains" ability (from the 4e MM3).

 

[Guest 6801328]

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.

Well, sure, if the player always does the exact same thing then I agree that's boring. Again, I'm counting on the player to actually enjoy playing the game.

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.

Fair enough. I particularly had the scenario in my head where an NPC is trying to persuade the PC of something. It doesn't take superhuman resolve to resist being persuaded of something to which you are adamantly opposed (unless the persuasion itself is somehow also superhuman). If, by choosing your own DC, you are modeling your initial receptiveness/opposition to an idea, then you shouldn't be spending any real resource to do so. Therefore any resource would be a metagame resource, which becomes hard to explain as a real thing.

Am I making any sense at all? I promise you it makes complete sense to me. (So I got that going for me. Which is nice.)

Example: the hag is trying to persuade the characters to drink the ensorcelled beer. One player claims his character hates beer, and would much prefer a Chardonnay. The DM says, "Ok, spend 1 Willpower Point to increase the DC to persuade you." Why would that cost a resource? The character isn't trying extra hard to resist; he just hates beer.

On the other hand, if it's "You may invoke a detail about your character to increase the DC to be persuaded or intimidated. You may do this as many times as your Wisdom modifier per short rest" then that's fine and fair, but that also makes it a metagame resource not a real resource. And, sure, we can always come up with some justification for why a metagame resource is rooted in some kind of reality, but there wouldn't be huge forum battles raging about martial abilities if there wasn't at least something dissonant about it.

(I'm not sure I agree with @Elfcrushers' (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).)

Yeah I'm not sure my characterization does justice to the reality, but at least it distinguishes between 1 and 2. And I agree about 1.

But @pemerton, 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.

Yes, it is hard to actually scare somebody, although some amount of worry for your character can at least provide a hint of the fear that your character feels (one reason I miss the old days of investing years into a character; I don't love the rapid leveling of 5e.)

The kind of immersion I'm talking about is challenging to achieve, and you don't spend an entire game in that state, but to me it's an ever-present goal to strive for. When the NPC betrays you, you should feel genuinely shocked and betrayed. An hour or two of "roll playing" is worth the build up for a great roleplaying denouement.

Or think about the scene in Stranger Things when Mike drops the Demogorgon on them. Those kids are immersed. (Which is ironic, I suppose, since they are only pretending to be immersed....)

 

[Hussar]

I’d just like to say that this thread has made a really productive and interesting left turn. Thanks people.

 

[pemerton]

I particularly had the scenario in my head where an NPC is trying to persuade the PC of something. It doesn't take superhuman resolve to resist being persuaded of something to which you are adamantly opposed (unless the persuasion itself is somehow also superhuman). If, by choosing your own DC, you are modeling your initial receptiveness/opposition to an idea, then you shouldn't be spending any real resource to do so. Therefore any resource would be a metagame resource, which becomes hard to explain as a real thing.

<snip>

if it's "You may invoke a detail about your character to increase the DC to be persuaded or intimidated. You may do this as many times as your Wisdom modifier per short rest" then that's fine and fair, but that also makes it a metagame resource not a real resource. And, sure, we can always come up with some justification for why a metagame resource is rooted in some kind of reality, but there wouldn't be huge forum battles raging about martial abilities if there wasn't at least something dissonant about it.

So if this wasn't a warlord thread, now it's become one?!?!

Given [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s optimistic post just above this one, I'll try to keep my deraiing of it to that one comment.

So I'll try a different way in: declining the offered beer seems like it might be rude. Does the PC in question have an unlimited capacity for declining polite invitations or requests?

In real life, there are innumerable occasions every day in which someone does something not because s/he really wants to but because some sort of social custom or expectation operates to produce the behaviour. A really simple example is greeting someone (whether a nod, a word, a handshake, whatever) in response to that other person's greeting; or perhaps just in response to his/her presence, if that then leads one to offer them a greeting.

If we assume that the PCs in a RPG never respond to social cues of this sort, and never participate in the associated practices, unless the player says so, then we're positing incredibly austere, alienated individuals as PCs. Because hardly any of the time is this sort of thing actually played out. (At least in my experience.)

In a classic D&D game, though, asking the player on this occasion whether or not the PC takes the drink offered by the hag of course causes all sorts of suspicion on the part of the player! There must be something going on to make this banality suddenly worth time at the table.

The previous three or four paragraphs don't offer a particular mechanical solution - but I think, if the game is going to produce verisimilitudinous characters who have somewhat normal social and affective responses, there needs to be some sort of structure or limit around the capacity of the players just to say "no, I don't like it and I don't do it" whenever some sort of social pressure comes up in play. Whether the limit is established by way of a resource, or by way of the need for a check, or - as is the case in many systems - some sort of interaction of the two, is a further more detailed design question.

(If the player takes Affectively Disconnected from Others as some sort of character trait that's a further complicating factor, but that should be affecting his/her CHA checks on behalf of the PC also, I think.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

So I'll try a different way in: declining the offered beer seems like it might be rude. Does the PC in question have an unlimited capacity for declining polite invitations or requests?

In real life, there are innumerable occasions every day in which someone does something not because s/he really wants to but because some sort of social custom or expectation operates to produce the behaviour. A really simple example is greeting someone (whether a nod, a word, a handshake, whatever) in response to that other person's greeting; or perhaps just in response to his/her presence, if that then leads one to offer them a greeting.

If we assume that the PCs in a RPG never respond to social cues of this sort, and never participate in the associated practices, unless the player says so, then we're positing incredibly austere, alienated individuals as PCs. Because hardly any of the time is this sort of thing actually played out. (At least in my experience.)

In a classic D&D game, though, asking the player on this occasion whether or not the PC takes the drink offered by the hag of course causes all sorts of suspicion on the part of the player! There must be something going on to make this banality suddenly worth time at the table.

The previous three or four paragraphs don't offer a particular mechanical solution - but I think, if the game is going to produce verisimilitudinous characters who have somewhat normal social and affective responses, there needs to be some sort of structure or limit around the capacity of the players just to say "no, I don't like it and I don't do it" whenever some sort of social pressure comes up in play. Whether the limit is established by way of a resource, or by way of the need for a check, or - as is the case in many systems - some sort of interaction of the two, is a further more detailed design question.

(If the player takes Affectively Disconnected from Others as some sort of character trait that's a further complicating factor, but that should be affecting his/her CHA checks on behalf of the PC also, I think.)

Yes, I agree with everything you wrote here.

Aaaaaannnnd....my conclusion is not that it's an expended resource, but that there should be an inverse/adverse reaction to the DC that you choose. Upthread I proposed a scenario-to-scenario mechanic that would function similar to how your "Affectively Disconnected" trait would work: that is, if you choose a high DC to be persuaded, that negatively affects your interaction with the NPC. But that's not a resource; you'd be free to continue choosing high DCs all day long.

I don't think it's terrible game design to tie something like this to a replenishable resource, I just think it would be more elegant to make it's cost be a consequence, rather than a resource. (Similarly, I've long wished that spellcasting came with increasing risk that reset with rests, instead of Vancian or quasi-Vancian spell slots. C.f. Gandalf's reluctance to light a fire with magic on Caradhras.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

Ooh...here's an analogy that treads dangerously close to a line:

At the moment there are literally millions of people in the U.S. who hold, shall we say, nigh unshakeable opinions about politics. On both sides. An extremely, extremely charismatic and persuasive person is going to face a nearly impossible task in convincing those people to change their positions. And a sequence of such persuasive people could try, one after another, all day long, and not change a single core opinion. Maybe they would find some success on minor points here and there, but we would not be surprised if they failed to change a single person from either supporting or not supporting a certain politician, in either direction.

And yet those millions of individuals don't necessarily have superior willpower or wisdom. They might easily be persuaded of other things. The fact that they spent the morning sticking to their opinions doesn't make them any more likely to change their minds in the afternoon (perhaps the opposite, really.)

On the other hand, they may very well be annoyed and ornery after being assailed all day for their beliefs. I can imagine that whatever patience and congeniality they started the day off with is going to be less present. But that doesn't leave them more open to persuasion.

 

[Lanefan]

Fair enough. I particularly had the scenario in my head where an NPC is trying to persuade the PC of something. It doesn't take superhuman resolve to resist being persuaded of something to which you are adamantly opposed (unless the persuasion itself is somehow also superhuman). If, by choosing your own DC, you are modeling your initial receptiveness/opposition to an idea, then you shouldn't be spending any real resource to do so. Therefore any resource would be a metagame resource, which becomes hard to explain as a real thing.

Example: the hag is trying to persuade the characters to drink the ensorcelled beer. One player claims his character hates beer, and would much prefer a Chardonnay. The DM says, "Ok, spend 1 Willpower Point to increase the DC to persuade you." Why would that cost a resource? The character isn't trying extra hard to resist; he just hates beer.

Which is fine provided that two years later in a situation where it's obvious that drinking beer would provide some significant benefit (e.g. a nectar-of-the-gods scenario), the player is consistent in having her PC refuse the beer.

Not all players will do this.

Lanefan

 

[Sunseeker]

Which is fine provided that two years later in a situation where it's obvious that drinking beer would provide some significant benefit (e.g. a nectar-of-the-gods scenario), the player is consistent in having her PC refuse the beer.

Not all players will do this.

Lanefan

Well okay sure, but that's a player problem. Not a game mechanics problem.

And frankly, two years later the player, or the character, may have changed their mind.

EX: My wife hates beer. But I still look for potential new beers she might like. So every once in a while, even though she hates beer, I make a good argument for her to try a new one. She usually doesn't like it, but she still tried it.

It's easy to resist a drink when a Hag is offering it to you. Maybe the sexy bartender might have better luck? Even if you hate beer, he is kinda cute. Beyond that, if a god of goodness literally came before you and said "I will give you great power and beauty and long life, all you have to do is drink my beer!" I can't think of a sound-minded person who wouldn't stomach even their least favorite drink for that.

It's not out of character to ignore your own personal predilections when it is in your benefit. I mean, I hate birds, but if you told me that this pet bird was going to give me god-like powers? Hot diggity I'd have a pet bird. I suspect most bird-haters would too.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Which is fine provided that two years later in a situation where it's obvious that drinking beer would provide some significant benefit (e.g. a nectar-of-the-gods scenario), the player is consistent in having her PC refuse the beer.

Not all players will do this.

Lanefan

Yes, that's totally fair.

And also a good example of how I like to see characters develop. Some folks want players to write out an extensive backstory, and if later on the player says, "Well my character..." it is expected to be in that backstory, or it didn't happen.

To me that's like having the first chapter of a book be a thorough description of the hero, which is then fixed for the rest of the book. I'd much rather start with knowing a little bit about the hero...partly so I can get to the story itself sooner...and then both see more depth be revealed in the story ("show, don't tell" and all that), and see other aspects change and grow.

Likewise, I'd rather players start off with a very rough sketch of a character concept, and then have them fill in the details as we play.

So in the above case, maybe it has never occurred the player until this very moment that his character doesn't like beer. But as long as it fits with the concept he is developing it's fine. Great, even. Maybe he didn't initially realize this character would be effete, or an epicurean, but it's something that has just kind of started happening during play, and now this "I don't like beers...unless it's a really light pilsner" fits the recent trend.

Or maybe this out of the blue, and he's been playing a Dwarf and speaking in a clichéd (and terrible) Scottish brogue. But this Dwarf hates beer. That's interesting, too. Especially if he's held to it later.

As another player at the table, I'm going to enjoy seeing dimensionality added to this character, in a way that I don't really get reading a prepared backstory.

 

[aramis erak]

So much for player agency in that game.

And...you give or withhold xp based on playing to alignment? Hell, that's even more old-school than me! Didn't think that was possible 'round here...

Lanefan

withhold only. Especially if the other character elements are unfilled in.

It's not so much old school as "skinner box"...

I don't allow evil PC's except when running AL (and then only the AL legal LE), and I'm not running AL these days...

I don't force them to act according to Alignment, but the out-of-alignment acts are not without consequence. If they choose to do so, they know the price.

Further, by disallowing certain ones openly, and up front, they have the option to walk away up front and not waste both their and my time.