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

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's fine.

Because making a reading or judgment is not entirely information-based, but is also rooted in emotions, feelings, and such. Cognitive science, behavioral psychologists, and the like have studied that "facts" and "information" often carry emotional, ethical, or "feeling" components and are not strictly something separate from some sort of objective rationalism. So the results of any such roll would inherently curtail what the player may feel is permissible for their character to feel. If one made a successful Insight check, for example, then the player would almost be daft to say "I feel that they are being untruthful," because the dice resolution establishes that the character's Insight falls within a certain spectrum of thought.

"I have no evidence, but my gut says they're lying" is a perfectly reasonable response to a failed insight cbeck. Heck, it's a reasonable response to a successful insight check that provided information to show that the NPC isn't lying.

You cite cognitive science but the PC's mind doesn't operate according to cognitive science, the player's mind does. So, if the player declares the PC still doesn't believe, there no PC cognitive process in effect for this. Cognitive science is a pointless aside when discussing fictional minds.

Further, I thought it was a finding of cognitive science that people's beliefs are often in direct opposition to known facts. So, by that, have the PC believe the NPC ous lying really doesn't have anything to do with how the skill checks resolved, as those establish what the PC ous able to know, not what the PC believes.

And, finally, I've yet to see an example of how this kind of GM force results in improved play. It seems that thers an unsupporyed assumption that abridging player agency in this manner is useful, but what is it useful for? I suppose, if you're invested in a process sim, and consider the skill checks to be simulations, then there's use because it fits the objective of process sim play. But you're a limited worldbuilding proponent (which is absolutely fine and good) and that's not usually part of the process sim style play. I'm not following the use you see for the technique.

 

[Aldarc]

"I have no evidence, but my gut says they're lying" is a perfectly reasonable response to a failed insight cbeck. Heck, it's a reasonable response to a successful insight check that provided information to show that the NPC isn't lying.

I know, and this is perhaps a sign that we are talking past each other. But that is my point, namely that a failed (or successful) check provides a soft limitation on what a PC can think. Your quote contains a caveat. A self-aware limitation brought about by an inability to confirm through the intution of Insight your "gut."

You cite cognitive science but the PC's mind doesn't operate according to cognitive science, the player's mind does. So, if the player declares the PC still doesn't believe, there no PC cognitive process in effect for this. Cognitive science is a pointless aside when discussing fictional minds.

Further, I thought it was a finding of cognitive science that people's beliefs are often in direct opposition to known facts. So, by that, have the PC believe the NPC ous lying really doesn't have anything to do with how the skill checks resolved, as those establish what the PC ous able to know, not what the PC believes.

The interpretation of the rolls influences the player who influences the PC. But the roll itself creates soft limits of what can be interpreted in the narrative. Not entirely sure what's controversial about that notion.

I'm not following the use you see for the technique.

Admittedly, this portion of the discussion is less about "use" but more of a philosophy of dice resolution and what it conveys in the narrative. My general angle is simply that dice resolution inherently creates limitations of interpretation for the in-narrative fiction, which can extend to the "thoughts" of the PC.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not really seeing how. Being subjected to bluffing and making an insight check involve the ability to read someone or a situation, judge motivations - not really seeing how that determines how someone emotionally feels about a situation.

Well, back in 3e, Sense Motive was described as a 'hunch' or feeling about whether someone was being truthful. That could have something to do with it. It's not "you not changes in his pulse and galvanic skin response: he's clearly being deceptive" it's more like "there's something off, what he's telling you doesn't feel right" or "something about his story makes you feel vaguely uneasy." Or, at least, can be.

Knowledge checks determine what the PC can recall at the time, what they might have learned in the past - again, not really seeing how that determines how someone emotionally feels about that information.

Knowledge checks also make connections and judge relevance. How many times have you seen a medical drama were the arrogant senior surgeon makes one diagnosis and the idealistic younger one has a second opinion, and the senior, even though he knows everything there is to know about the condition in question, dismisses it because he doesn't have respect for the kid yet.

I don't really see how affecting how someone feels about something, their emotional response to it, can be justified in the same manner as a roll to determine how much they can observe about the environment around them or what they know.

It's not that easy to see how either of those things don't involve emotion or judgement or opinion in some way - unless your PC's a Vulcan, of course.

"I have no evidence, but my gut says they're lying" is a perfectly reasonable response to a failed insight cbeck. Heck, it's a reasonable response to a successful insight check that provided information to show that the NPC isn't lying.

You're unlikely to have evidence /with/ a successful insight check when the guy is lying, too. AFAIK, Insight just doesn't much go into how it functions, but Sense Motive did, and it was about getting a hunch about the targets truthfulness.

For just a single successful insight check, "My gut says he's lying" is a pretty reasonable result for a success against the opposed bluff.
Bring some other investigative attempts in to get 'proof.'

You cite cognitive science but the PC's mind doesn't operate according to cognitive science, the player's mind does. So, if the player declares the PC still doesn't believe, there no PC cognitive process in effect for this. Cognitive science is a pointless aside when discussing fictional minds.

It's an anachronistic appeal to realism, but I think you'll also find characters having accurate 'feelings' about such things in genre.

Further, I thought it was a finding of cognitive science that people's beliefs are often in direct opposition to known facts. So, by that, have the PC believe the NPC ous lying really doesn't have anything to do with how the skill checks resolved, as those establish what the PC ous able to know, not what the PC believes.

And that's just back to using the player as the resolution system, and the character they're playing doesn't matter.

And, finally, I've yet to see an example of how this kind of GM force results in improved play.

It's not GM force, it's the GM /and player/ respecting the outcome of the mechanical resolution. GM force absolutely can and has, in innumerable instances, improved play (often improved it from 'disastrous' to merely indifferent, but still improved), especially where the mechanics fail or are absent/inadequate in the first place.

Admittedly, this portion of the discussion is less about "use" but more of a philosophy of dice resolution and what it conveys in the narrative. My general angle is simply that dice resolution inherently creates limitations of interpretation for the in-narrative fiction, which can extend to the "thoughts" of the PC.

My take on that, which I think is similar, if maybe not as sophisticated, is that mechanical resolution models the character's abilities, while insisting the player decides the PCs thoughts/feeling when those very things will weigh heavily on the result substitute the player's, so you can no longer play a character as different from yourself.

 

[iserith]

With regard to Insight in D&D 5e, a Wisdom (Insight) check might resolve uncertainty as to whether a character "can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms." Presumably, the player has described what his or her character wants to do along these lines and the DM decides that the outcome is uncertain and goes to the mechanics to resolve it.

On a successful result, the DM can simply state that the clues the creature is giving indicate consciousness of guilt or that he or she is being untruthful or whatever is appropriate. A failed check might mean the character can determine nothing or the DM can come up with some reasonable result for success at a cost or with a setback.

The rules state who gets to say what the character thinks, how it acts and talks: the player. Telling a player what his or her character thinks, e.g. "You think he's telling the truth..." or "You think he's lying..." or "You believe him..." violates in my view the delineation of roles between player and DM. It's the player's role to determine what the character thinks, not the DM. The DM may only describe the environment and narrate the result of the adventurer's actions. That can be done without telling a player how his or her character thinks.

Now some folks will want to obfuscate what "think" means in this context and how it can be warped into all manner of clever (and not-so-clever) ways to try and push the player into having his or her character act accordingly. But, despite how commonly I see DMs both declare what characters think and how they act, I think that is not in the spirit of the game and the player should be left to establish what his or her character thinks and how he or she acts outside of some magical compulsion or the like. Other games may handle this differently. That is how I see it in D&D 5e. It's simple and it works.

 

[Lanefan]

Admittedly, this portion of the discussion is less about "use" but more of a philosophy of dice resolution and what it conveys in the narrative. My general angle is simply that dice resolution inherently creates limitations of interpretation for the in-narrative fiction, which can extend to the "thoughts" of the PC.

This is the crux of it, right here; but can be expanded to several connected questions:

- do the dice results create actual limits of interpretation - hard rules - that a player is expected to adhere to in character? If no, then
- do the dice results create suggested limits of interpretation - guidelines - that a player probably ought to adhere to but doesn't have to? If no, then
- do the dice results create suggested interpretations without limits that, while possibly informing a player's direction, leave the player free to act as she sees fit? If no, then
- are the dice necessary at all? And for all four of these questions there is a fifth:
- are each of the above, when answered, good or bad game design?

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

With regard to Insight in D&D 5e, a Wisdom (Insight) check might resolve uncertainty as to whether a character "can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms." Presumably, the player has described what his or her character wants to do along these lines and the DM decides that the outcome is uncertain and goes to the mechanics to resolve it.

The player declared an action, there's uncertainty, it's resolved, and the DM narrates the results. Those results are necessarily about what the PC has seen, and what conclusions he draws from them.

 

[iserith]

The player declared an action, there's uncertainty, it's resolved, and the DM narrates the results. Those results are necessarily about what the PC has seen, and what conclusions he draws from them.

A reach used to justify telling a player what his or her character thinks in my view, often but not always in hopes of having the character act in a particular way. So, I'll pass on that one.

 

[Tony Vargas]

A reach used to justify telling a player what his or her character thinks in my view, often but not always in hopes of having the character act in a particular way. So, I'll pass on that one.

Telling the player what the 'clues' his character spotted indicate is telling him what conclusion he's drawn from those clues. If you want to avoid that, you could just describe the clues in question, but, at that point, really, what's the point of the skill? You're no longer resolving the action based on the ability of the character as modeled by the skill, but by the player's knowledge of what 'clues' the DM thinks give away a lie or affirm truthfulness.

And that seems like a lot to give up - and go through - to avoid simply saying "you think he's probably lying..." or "he seems truthful to you..."

 

[aramis erak]

The player declared an action, there's uncertainty, it's resolved, and the DM narrates the results. Those results are necessarily about what the PC has seen, and what conclusions he draws from them.

The process, as I've learnt it, from the 80's on, and taught it:

1. Player states attempted action
2. GM either doesn't interrupt, or interrupts to state some uncertainty or alternate resolution.
   • GM may decide to use an uncertainty based resolution
   • GM narrates results
3. play continues

Many a time a player may state a no-roll-needed action of walking down a hall, only to hear, "you stepped on a trigger - make a saving roll vs poison"..

 

[iserith]

Telling the player what the 'clues' his character spotted indicate is telling him what conclusion he's drawn from those clues. If you want to avoid that, you could just describe the clues in question, but, at that point, really, what's the point of the skill? You're no longer resolving the action based on the ability of the character as modeled by the skill, but by the player's knowledge of what 'clues' the DM thinks give away a lie or affirm truthfulness.

And that seems like a lot to give up - and go through - to avoid simply saying "you think he's probably lying..." or "he seems truthful to you..."

Again, and as I said in my first post, "Now some folks will want to obfuscate what 'think' means in this context and how it can be warped into all manner of clever (and not-so-clever) ways to try and push the player into having his or her character act accordingly."

If you're comfortable telling your players what their characters think, go for it. I choose not to for the reasons stated.