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.

View attachment 95347​

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

 

[Tony Vargas]

How do you think it's painful? At worst it involves asking the player what the PC's personal characteristics are and then framing the NPC's proposal in terms of any relevant characteristics.

Remembering, tracking & judging those personality traits for every character.

To me, awarding Inspiration seems just as workable as compelling aspects

Awarding inspiration is exactly that, a reward for 'good RP,' as the DM judges it, based on multiple traits per PC. It could be /adapted/ to work more like aspects, which might not be a bad idea. OTOH, it already clashes a bit with alignment and the whole very-traditional D&Dness of 5e, in the first place. ::shrug::

What's unworkable about reversing the social interaction mechanics for use against a PC is their reliance on NPC starting attitude. What's a PC's starting attitude, and how do you assign one? Those questions aren't answered by the rules of 5e.

Nod. You'd have to ask or gauge the starting attitude. If you ask, some players are going to be inclined to whatever they think will 'protect' their control of the character via the highest possible difficulty.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The first and last line I've quoted above are at odds; because if the outcome is (2) then the party ARE being made to do something they clearly don't want to do.

Huh? Not following. How does this make the party do anything -- they're faced with the same dilemma they started with, just with an option missing. You're confusing a force -- I make the party do an action -- with a turn of phrase meaning the party now has a harder choice to make than before.

Further - and worse - is the "not open to continued rehashing" bit; which flat-out says you're using the check as a means of cutting off further roleplay. As the primary agency players own in the game is that of being able to roleplay their characters, this seems an obvious instance of using game mechanics to limit player agency.

Sure, if you'd like to play D&D: the Arguing, I'm not going to contradict you. Failing to bring a check to bear isn't anything like forcing a response by DM fiat. I'm speaking only to the case of using mechanics to further play at appropriate times. If you feel the time isn't appropriate to use mechanics, by all means, continue arguing between the players and the DM.

My group, though, isn't there to pretend argue ad naseum and prefer, once the sides are set and the stakes posted, to move forward in the play. YMMV and all of that.

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] handled this exactly right, IMO, by letting the argument take as long as required to play out and leaving mechanics right out of it.

The rogue example is great...but unfortunately also irrelevant to the question of "social mechanics". Picking a lock is not* a social action, cannot (usually) be physically played out at the table by the players, and thus pretty much all RPGs have reasonably robust mechanics for resolving the attempt.

It isn't?

Okay, how about we change the lock to a guard we want to bypass and then we change the lockpicking to a bribery attempt? Complications to the attempt can lose the offered amount without success or require offering more without surety. The example of using complications to skill checks holds true even in social situations -- there's always a way for things to get worse.

But social things can and should be played out by the players at the table, in the personae of their characters.

I have no problem with doing this, in fact, one of my loves as a player is acting as my character. But, there's a discord here when I'm playing a character who isn't me and has entirely different strengths and abilities. I disagree that I can play a character that is stronger than me and use the mechanics to effect this but I can't play a character who is more charismatic than I am or who has knowledge of magic I cannot but am forced to act these things out because of some idea that social interactions are sacrosanct and special. You're more than able to continue to play that way, and your preferred edition clearly supports this with no codified social skills or resolution mechanics, but your insisting that its the proper way to play even in gamesystems were it's clearly NOT supposed to be that way is... weird.

 

[Hriston]

That seems like how it's supposed to be used in 5e. I thought everybody did that (I know I do), but I guess not.

I'm not sure what you mean by "that". Although the rules leave what the DM awards Inspiration for up to the DM, the "typical" reason given is for playing your PC in accordance with its personal characteristics. The section on Inspiration doesn't mention, for example, awarding players with Inspiration for playing their PCs in accordance with the results of CHA checks made to convince their PCs of things. That's something I don't do.

 

[Hussar]

This ous the secind time you've said the mechanics say what the character thinks. I missed that in my rulebook. Where was it again? You can pick which rules, any will do.

Well, ok, if we're going to start playing RAW sillybuggers, which, I figured in the context of this thread, we weren't talking about RAW, let's start with Performance:

Performance. Your Charisma (Performance) check determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment.

Right there. I'm telling other people how they feel about my music. There's no particular reason that doesn't apply to PC's.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

At what point do I call for a roll? Both the PCs and the NPCs had valid arguments. I preferred not to resolve this through mechanics and I think it was the right call for the emerging storyline.

It would have been detrimental to my table if I as DM had forced the PCs into a contested persuasion roll and the PCs had lost. @Hussar can you not see the dilemma one could possibly face with your solution?

Then why would you call for a roll? You already decided what the outcome here is and you don't want a random roll. Great. No problem. Having mechanics does not force you to use those mechanics every single time.

You decided this is the "right call for the emerging storyline" and that's groovy. My argument is that maybe a more interesting storyline might emerge from using mechanics to place that situation in doubt. As a DM, I love it when the game goes in a direction that I didn't expect and that's what die rolling does for me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ah, we're down to partial quoting, fisking, and gish galloping. Good to know when you hit that point in the conversation.

Yep. And, sometimes, if you narrate a PC's state of mind or choice, certain players'll get all upset about it, as this thread illustrates. So you let them choose their PC's state of mind, and let them make a choice, so they stay all immersed and maintain their illusion of being in control, and then narrate the results the game needs.

Sometimes the truth is unhelpful to an argument, yes. The truth is some games leave the DM plenty of latitude to excise player agency via 'illusionism' (or 'Good DMing' or 'immersive play' or whatever, depending on who's making up the label), and others guard against it and/or build in greater player agency. The game in question happens to be one of the former. Arguing that you shouldn't do something the game enables you to do, and labeling that 'integrity' is essentially an argument that you shouldn't do it, because you said so. I tend to think DMs should use the full bag of tricks the game gives them, to deliver the best possible experience. In classic & 5e D&D, that includes not only engaging in illusionism, but also not using all the rules, not sharing which rules are & aren't being used nor the details of the mechanics when such would (for one instance) give away to the players things the characters don't know, and making up entirely new rules & mechanics (including situation-specific ones).

So many things wrong here. In order, the "truth" you're trying to say is unhelpful to my argument is that you said you can ignore the play procedure and abridge player agency. Hardly a truth that supports abridging player agency as it's a truth that just says player agency can be abridged. So, then, a truth not helpful to your argument, either.

Secondly, pointing out there's another method of abridging player agency, namely Illusionism, doesn't show any good reason for abridging player agency. That the rules don't prevent it is a strange argument -- are we to now assume everything the rules don't explicitly prevent is good technique? Clearly, not.

Third, you claim that DMs use all the tool to get the best possible experience, which is where you again beg the question by asserting that the DM KNOWS that using these tools delivers the best possible experience. ALL of my challenges to you have been on the basis that this is a flawed argument, yet you continue to point out ways to limit player agency and then claim that these ways show that the DM knows how to use them for the best experience, a thing the DM also somehow just knows.

This is a losing argument, Tony. You haven't done the work to show that the DM limiting player agency will result in a better game that not limiting player agency.

Are you sure labeling the thing you're arguing against 'corruption' isn't the circular thinking going on. You're arguing DMs shouldn't use a technique that worked well for decades, and the reasons you come up with amount to pasting a label with a negative connotation over them.

Yes, I'm sure, because I'm not the one insisting that DMs have magical abilities to know when to limit player agency for the best possible game. I'm not using a result as the basis of my argument. I'm arguing from the premise that limiting player agency is bad in principle and not using a possible outcome to justify other actions. So, yes, I'm absolutely positive I'm not engaged in circular reasoning where I'm using an outcome to justify a means to gain that will then cause that outcome.

As for successful, I disagree that the best possible game was caused. I believe that sometimes a good game happened, and that many other times poor to horrible games happened when DMs limited player agency through Illusionism and railroading, but I'll let your present the evidence otherwise and promise to review it carefully. So, then, we'll expect your proof that games that use Illusionism were all good? I'll accept mostly good, if you like.

Snark aside, I don't doubt that good games happened with these things. I've been in them. I ran one, a few times, before I <cough> reformed <cough>. But, I strongly believe that the strength of those games was in spite of tools like Illusionism and not because of it. When I review my uses of it, I see that clearly -- I used a crutch to prop up my game because I was too married to my ideas. I had good ideas, so it worked out, but I think that even better ideas would have happened if I actually let my players make choices that mattered and followed those. It's gone smashingly since. Hold on lightly.

Nope, you don't (well, you do have more information about the campaign as a whole than the players, and there's factors like breadth of exposure to different systems, depth & years of experience, etc..). But, ultimately, DM's are people too. But, as a DM, you do have a special responsibility to provide that better game. So you do your best.

I have more information about my ideas, yes. I've not seen a coherent argument that the DM's ideas are automatically the best for the game. I've run for players that have far more experience than I. As I get older, that gap closes significantly, but I'd say that two of my players have player longer, harder, and in more systems than I have.

The best I can do will generally be less good than the best everyone at the table can do. Why not use my best to provide situations for the players to do things in rather than outcomes to tell them about?

Really. I'm not aware of any objective measure of subjective player experience - though I suppose a neuroscientist could hook players up to the right equipment and figure something out. But, humans are pretty good at assessing how other human being sitting right in front of them and making no special efforts to mask their state of mind, feel about something they're doing. We're social animals.

No, we've well established that you cannot provide any way to know what a better game experience is, yet you base your entire argument on something you can't show and just insist that we all agree that you can (and, indeed, any DM should) be able to discern strongly enough to remove the one thing the player gets to do at the table: make decisions for their PC.

Sorry, Tony, but the level of impact here demands a better argument than knowing it when you see it.

I believe it does, based on having done & seen other DMs do that sort of thing with great success for many years.

How much failure was there, Tony, across the hobby? I hate to use another label, but confirmation bias seems to be strong, here. YOU had a good game (or, at least, a not bad one) and you then assume that the reason for that good game was because you railroaded your players a few (many?) times? Clearly, there can be no other reasons.

But, let me ask you something -- the most awesome moments of your games, where they the moments you limited player agency or where they the moments the players did something unexpected and you let it happen or they took a huge risk and the dice came out their way? I can tell you that ALL of the awesome moments in my games were those.

I've also seen games where such isn't called for nearly so much (if at all). They play better 'above board.' But they give a different sort of experience, too. 'Less immersive' some would say.

Whoa. You did not just compare limiting player agency to immersion, did you? As in, less agency, more immersion? Please tell me you see the wrong there and just made a hasty mistake in typing.

I'm happy to run either sort and use the tools they provide to deliver the best experience I can.

You just made the argument that limiting player agency is the way to provide the best experience you can. How to you also claim to be able to run great experiences in game systems that limit or prevent your ability to limit player agency? Also, are you actually making the claim the 5e (or any D&D edition) somehow requires limiting of player agency?!

]quote] Is it? Getting something wrong is a plausible result of trying to determine something. Further, the roll likely gives it away. If the system is on a moderately high DC, Insight reveals that the subject is either being honest or 'holding something back,' on a higher DC it gives an idea what the lie may be, while hitting an easier DC means you 'can't tell,' and flubbing it gives you the opposite information from what's really going on. If that were the system, you'd need to take the roll behind the screen, or the player can just believe the opposite of what you tell him when he rolls really low. [/quote]
Yes, it's weird. It's weird because there's nothing to say the person is lying except a hidebound reading of a die result.

Logical from a gamist perspective, but leaving out a range of plausible results, so not so great from a narrative or simulation perspective.

Sigh, I'm not going to ask you to actually back that up with more than labels from the Forge because I really don't want to see the gyrations and assumptions necessary to achieve. Let's just go with me saying this is absolute hogwash and ask to leave GNS Forge theory somewhere else instead of ineptly used to try to get a quick point score in.

Even if the DM rolls behind the screen and tells you "you're certain he's telling the truth" (either because the roll was a fantastic success and the NPC was being truthful, or because it's an abysmal failure and his deception was high), you can choose not to believe him - he could be mistaken, for instance, or you could feel that believing him would be too risky, or it could be that you believe something else with such conviction that a mere one other person honestly believing & truthfully relating a contrary fact is unacceptable to you and can be completely discounted.

Obviously, internet forum debates stand as strong evidence of the plausibility of that last.

I'm sorry, but I'm throughly confused. You're now arguing my position -- that the player should be free to chose their PC's actions and not be told what their PC thinks. That the phrasing is in terms of what the character thinks is largely chaff, here, if you're actually saying that the player is free to ignore that and can choose to instead have their PC disbelieve.

And, if that's the case, if you've been arguing for a phrasing rather than an outcome, I'm at a complete loss as to why you failed so horribly to make that clear posts and posts ago. So, I think that this is you trying to play both sides to secure another rhetorical gambit rather than an engagement of the ideas.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, ok, if we're going to start playing RAW sillybuggers, which, I figured in the context of this thread, we weren't talking about RAW, let's start with Performance:



Right there. I'm telling other people how they feel about my music. There's no particular reason that doesn't apply to PC's.

"Can" is doing a lot of work in that phrase for you, I guess.

 

[pemerton]

What is being proposed here is to take the "how the character chooses to react" for social engagements and hand it to the GM.

Actually, I think the only people in this thread making that particular proposal are those who are against it!
[MENTION=8713]Afrodyte[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] have proposed using the Ideals/Bond/Flaws/Inspiration mechanic in various ways - perhaps awarding Inspiration for responsing to a persuasive NPC; or having NPC requests, in appropriate circumstances, engage with PC Ideals/Bonds Flaws, thereby generating an appropriate pressure on the player to respond.

I have pointed out how other functional social mechanics operate, and none of them involves the GM deciding how the PC is to react.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In order, the "truth" you're trying to say is unhelpful to my argument is that you said you can ignore the play procedure and abridge player agency.

Heck, in some games (most D&D eds, for instance), you can /follow/ play procedures and abridge agency. Not ignore them, use them, arguably even as intended.

That the rules don't prevent it is a strange argument -- are we to now assume everything the rules don't explicitly prevent is good technique?

Not anymore than to presume that a technique some rule in some game is designed to prevent is a bad technique in some other game...

Third, you claim that DMs use all the tool to get the best possible experience, which is where you again beg the question by asserting that the DM KNOWS that using these tools delivers the best possible experience.

DMs have been DMing for 40 years. There's a vast pool of experience & knowledge out there. Techniques like 'illusionism' get negatively-connoted labels like that precisely because someone is irate that so many DMs have been using them for so long, and yet D&D remains stubbornly dominant in the hobby.

You haven't done the work to show that the DM limiting player agency will result in a better game that not limiting player agency.

I've done a lot of DMing, and it's certainly been my experience. It felt more like fun than work, for the most part, though.

Yes, I'm sure, because I'm not the one insisting that DMs have magical abilities to know when to limit player agency for the best possible game.

It's a non-magical ability, based on experience, applied to one table of gamers, in the moment. Seems like they'd have a better shot at it than a game designer trying to make the same kind of judgement for everyone who might ever play his game.

I'm arguing from the premise that limiting player agency is bad in principle

You might want to do more to establish that premise. Do you consider it an axiom or something?

So, yes, I'm absolutely positive I'm not engaged in circular reasoning where I'm using an outcome to justify a means to gain that will then cause that outcome.

Rather you're engaged in the circular reasoning of assuming the conclusion in your premise. A technique is bad because it's bad, so it's bad.

I believe that sometimes a good game happened, and that many other times poor to horrible games happened when DMs limited player agency through Illusionism and railroading

It's a powerful tool, you can mess things up with a powerful tool. That means 'be careful with it.' Not 'never use it.'

Snark aside, I don't doubt that good games happened with these things. I've been in them. I ran one, a few times, before I <cough> reformed <cough>.

So, convert's zeal, then. OK.

But, I strongly believe that the strength of those games was in spite of tools like Illusionism and not because of it.

IMX, it was often because of Illusionism being used to make the game good in spite of disruptive players or horrifically bad mechanics or the like, too. There's a lot goes into a good game, and a lot that can make a game go bad...
...if you're insistent that illusionism is innately evil, perhaps we can agree it's a necessary evil - more necessary the further the system in question strays from perfection? ...nah, you've already dismissed that agree-to-disagree option....

But I don't see it as innately evil, in the first place. It's a technique, you can use it to support a better play experience, or to be a giant douche to your players.

I've not seen a coherent argument that the DM's ideas are automatically the best for the game.

They're the ones that are going to have the greatest impact on the quality of the game, so he better strive to make them so.

No, we've well established that you cannot provide any way to know what a better game experience is

You're saying it's impossible to tell if your players are having a good experience or not?

How much failure was there, Tony, across the hobby?

Couldn't quantify it, of course. But, between personal experience, hearsay, and the tremendous growth RPGs have pointedly not experienced over the decades, I'd speculate a truly horrendous amount. Some of it from misusing illusionism and other such techniques, some of it from not using 'em, some of it from D&D being the de-facto entry point for most folks...

I hate to use another label, but confirmation bias seems to be strong, here

You don't say? It's sorta the gravity of the forums, really. Nothing much stands against it for long.

But, let me ask you something -- the most awesome moments of your games, where they the moments you limited player agency

Nope. They were often moments that wouldn't have happened at all had I not done so earlier, though.

As in, less agency, more immersion?

Yep. Immersion is this freakish, murky, subjective thing: you can't design it into a game, you can't lead a player to it nor make him drink it - but, sometimes, you can avoid him going off about it being 'shattered' with a little judicious application of illusionism.

You just made the argument that limiting player agency is the way to provide the best experience you can. How to you also claim to be able to run great experiences in game systems that limit or prevent your ability to limit player agency?

Because they're different games. Different games, different tools, different expectations from the players. We've both clearly had experiences on both sides of this little game-theory-manufactured divide, so I don't see the contradiction.

I'll happily put up a DMs screen and use illusionism to the hilt to run a good 5e game. I'm equally happy to take it down and have everything in the open and above board, in a system & with a group where I find that works better.

Also, are you actually making the claim the 5e (or any D&D edition) somehow requires limiting of player agency?!

5e and classic editions mainly, yes, benefit greatly from the technique labeled 'illusionism,' which I wouldn't say is identical with limiting player agency - often it preserves the sense (illusion, I guess) of having agency, for that matter.

Yes, it's weird. It's weird because there's nothing to say the person is lying except a hidebound reading of a die result.

The ability to detect the lie is based on the skill of the liar and perspicacity of the one being lied to. If that's modeled by a die roll in a given system, yeah, it depends on the result of that die roll. That can make rolling the die in front of the player a problem, because it will create the impression his thoughts/judgements or actions are being dictated or coerced in some way. Thus, take it behind the screen, so...

You're now arguing my position -- that the player should be free to chose their PC's actions and not be told what their PC thinks.

That should be the experience the player takes away from the table, yes.

 

[Hriston]

Remembering, tracking & judging those personality traits for every character.

It doesn't seem more arduous to me than keeping track of character aspects is for the GM in a game of Fate.

Awarding inspiration is exactly that, a reward for 'good RP,' as the DM judges it, based on multiple traits per PC. It could be /adapted/ to work more like aspects, which might not be a bad idea.

Clearly, I don't think it's much of a stretch. A fate point is a reward for accepting a complication from a compel, after all.

Also, Inspiration doesn't need to be awarded for portraying multiple personal characteristics in a single act of roleplaying, if that's what you're saying. I'd imagine most instances of awarding Inspiration are for playing true to one personal characteristic or another.

OTOH, it already clashes a bit with alignment and the whole very-traditional D&Dness of 5e, in the first place. ::shrug::

I'm not sure what you mean by "clashes". Do you feel there's an overlap?

You'd have to ask or gauge the starting attitude. If you ask, some players are going to be inclined to whatever they think will 'protect' their control of the character via the highest possible difficulty.

Right, it would have to be a resource, possibly spent at character creation, establishing what's important to the PC and what its beliefs are, perhaps something like personal characteristics but with an assigned point value to represent how strongly certain beliefs and attachments are held?