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

 

[Tony Vargas]

It could also be said that the supposed camp that wants "resolutions based on the players' abilities" don't necessarily want that.

Nod, to extend it, they're just willing to accept that characters aren't being modeled, in support of whatever agenda is actually important to them.

What we want is players to be explicit enough with their action declarations that the DM doesn't have to infringe upon their agency by assuming or establishing what the character thinks, says, or does.

I think that's an entirely compatible agenda. If you know going into a task that there's a risk of coming out of it in a given state - if even your preternaturally brave PC takes the 'face your greatest fears' test, he might come out of it screaming - your agency has been preserved.

The resolution is still based, in part, on the character's abilities as the mechanics may demand. Even so, some player skill is always involved. That is unavoidable.

'Player skill" has been left a little fraught by the old-school sense of the phrase, but yeah, player skill is inevitably part of it, it should just be skill at playing the game - system mastery, gaming the DM, abstract resource management, tactical decision making on the meta-game side, etc - it shouldn't be the player's skill at being convincing, for instance, overriding the character's skill or lack thereof in the same area.

 

[iserith]

gaming the DM

Unnecessary trolling in an otherwise reasonable post.

 

[Lanefan]

Many times 'what the PC thinks' or 'what the PC feels' is going to be a function of the PC's abilities, and have a significant, related game impact, so needs to be modeled on those abilities, not just arbitrarily decided by the PC, whether by good-conscious character-drive RP or CaW drive to win regardless, FWIW. So, not that mechanics shouldn't (even ideally) ever end up dictating a PC thought/feeling/action, but that it should be minimized, and that the modeling should be good enough that it won't often be at odds with the concept.

So if you want to play an amazingly brave heroic PC, you should be able to design the character such that he'll rarely or never fail a morale check or save vs fear or be intimidated or whatever. You shouldn't /need/ to fall back on the claim that it's 'wrong' for your character to be afraid, in order to protect that concept from the mechanics.

True. But if you've done your character design halfway well you'll not have to worry about fear effects most of the time...and as for the times you do - well, nobody's perfect.

And there's sometimes going to be character concepts that run aground either on the mechanics, or on the whims of dice, or on the game itself. My concept might be that I'm the toughest hombre around in these parts, but if I then turn around and roll 13 for my Con score and below average for my hit points my concept just got kicked in the teeth, and I have to go to plan B.

Sometimes, even though I've designed my character to be the most persuasive insightful character possible, I'm still going to blow the insight or fail the persuasion; just not as often as the other guy. No big deal.

Another example might be where the DM has said the game will be largely about fighting orcs, then giants, then off-world aberrations but the concept I have in mind revolves around dealing with undead.

Lan-"if this makes no sense I'll try to explain better later"-efan

 

[Hussar]

Thanks for the clarifications folks. I got it. Not a bad way to go at all.

 

[aramis erak]

Thanks for the clarifications folks. I got it. Not a bad way to go at all.

Not without its flaws, tho - I've a player who refuses to narrate a thing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

True. But if you've done your character design halfway well you'll not have to worry about fear effects most of the time...

Yeah, I chose that example for a reason, because its an obvious heroic archetype that D&D, and, indeed, most systems, can't seem to allow.

concept might be that I'm the toughest hombre around in these parts, but if I then turn around and roll 13 for my Con score and below average for my hit points my concept just got kicked in the teeth, and I have to go to plan B.Another example might be where the DM has said the game will be largely about fighting orcs, then giants, then off-world aberrations but the concept I have in mind revolves around dealing with undead.

Concepts need to be appropriate to the campaign, restrictions beyond that are just failures of the system.

 

[Guest 6801328]

OK. I suppose, in that case, "you think he's lying" is better than "he's clearly lying, and the truth is ________," but I still think that offering the conclusion based on the character's ability is more functional than inventing obscure clues for the player on a success, and counting on his ability to draw the conclusion you meant to telegraph in those clues.

I agree with that. It *is* more functional, but that doesn't mean it's a good solution. I don't have a better solution to offer (not for lack of trying). Detection is just a really hard problem in RPGs because it's hard to model false positives and false negatives on a useful probability spectrum.

Let me give you an example of something I came up with for a different but related problem: underground exploration. I wanted an abstract system that models navigating twists and turns and forks and such (this was for The One Ring) without having to draw maps ahead of time. I wanted character skill to factor in, not blind luck. So here's what I came up with:
1. As a result of a random table of obstacles you come to an N-way intersection (typically 2, 3, or 4 choices). Your odds of guessing correctly are 1/N.
3. Players can use various skills to look for clues (Riddle, Survival, Search, Explore, etc.)
4. For each success you get +1 on the final roll, but the odds never become 100%. Optionally, the DM can also pick from a list of canned clues to add flavor: "You notice a foul odor wafting from the left path." "It looks like there are recent tracks going right, etc." But doing so doesn't change the mechanics.
5. On (the equivalent of) a critical success, you conclusively eliminate a path, adjusting the odds appropriately. (So the only time you know the right way with certainty is if you can eliminate all options but one.)
6. After the players have used their skills, the players choose which path they think is best. Then the DM secretly rolls, using the adjusted odds plus the bonus to see if they were right. (Notice that he doesn't roll first and then say, "You think it's Option C.") But he doesn't tell them the result. However, based on their successes they will have a good chance of at least estimating how likely they are to be right.
7. As they continue exploring, if they chose the wrong path the table the DM rolls against to determine future obstacles becomes more challenging. So a chain of difficult obstacles, or possibly an outright dead-end, might be a hint for the players that they are off-route and should backtrack.

But even this, as complicated as it is, doesn't fully succeed. For example, there's no worsening of odds based on a critical failure. It would only work if the players mistakenly thought they were getting successes, which means the DM would have to secretly roll for the players, and I've already got one too many secret rolls in this system. (I really don't like secret rolls.)

I also failed to design it in such a way that some characters would conclude one thing, and others would conclude something else. I would have loved to have come up with a system that would lead to players bickering about who is right, because that's probably what their characters would be doing as their supply of torches dwindled. Immersion!

But what I do like about this system is that it doesn't require the DM telling the players what they think, or the players matching their own wits against the DM's ability to deceive them. It's the characters against the dungeon, and the DM is just the neutral arbiter.

(As an aside, while I don't think you actually would be a proponent of this, your previous arguments taken to an extreme would suggest that if the players began to suspect that they had taken the wrong route they would have to make ability checks to determine if their characters also suspected the same thing.)

So, set the DC so they need a natural 11 to succeed, then?

Again, I'm not advocating actually flipping a coin and telling the player what he thinks. I'm saying the approach of rolling dice to determine if a player can detect a lie is so terrible to start with that you may as well streamline it by making it straight 50/50.

 

[pemerton]

Bawlie is basically using the Burning Wheel approach.
State your desired outcome
State the method

I was think ing much the same thing.

What counts as sufficient statement of the method is always an open question. For example, if the goal is "kill the orc" is it a sufficient statement of method to say "I enter melee with my sword?" Or does the player need to specify some particular swordfighting technique?

The similar issue arises with traps.

In the swordfighting case, if the player fails the check (so that the PC misses, gets skewered by the orc, etc) is the GM allowed to narrate "As you try to parry, you suddenly realise the orc has deftly feinted past your defence"? And, if so, is the player allowed to respond with a more intricate description of his/her PC's fighting style which explains how s/he would never fall for that feint?

In the trapfinding case, if the check is failed is the GM allowed to narrate "As you feel for tripwires, you accidently trigger a pressure plate?" If not, how is the GM meant to narrate failure? And is a player of a trapfinder meant to be able to narrate detailed trap-finding techniques? Does this feed back into swordfighting? (And what about magical skills, where no one can know what the relevant techniques might be?)

I have used the Burning Wheel approach for a long time (in Rolemaster, 4e, BW, Classic Traveller, Cortex+ Heroic). But I still find it needs some sort of give-and-take between player and GM in the narration of failure, which very often (obviously not always) may involve the PC doing something that the player would prefer the PC had not done.

 

[5ekyu]

"Good RP requires accepting that there are limits imposed by the situation.The character is NOT the player, and the character is a piece in a game; that game includes Roleplaying as a fundamental concept and mode of play.The inclusion of mental stats means the mental abilities of the character are part of the game, not just the RP.Spells that affect minds are not limited to affecting NPC'sMorale rules are not exclusive to NPCs, either.I tend toward the simulationist mode of thought..."

To me the issue is **who** decides which actions fall into "good RP" for a situation and who decides which actions don't.

This is where the attempt to blur conclusion and choice or assessment and decision gets to be flawed imo. (The every observation is what you think neurobabble.)

Situation: Party is at the docks. Boat is damaged. Need to get to island.

My character has relevant skills so checks boat over. GM tells me "boat if far from,perfect, so not certainty but you figure you'll make it across."

Now seems that some would have that lead to go across or penalty for not roleplaying that assessment, that conclusion, that "what character thinks in this situation."

But to me, the guy responsible for running the character i created, it may not be so clear.

If my pc was not in favor of the mission, i could "roleplay" that "risks are too high. After all we could all die in this boat. No idea whats out there stirred up in the water after that storm and this boat, she has seen better days."

Just the same way a duke could make a good case for us dropping things and running off to save his relative but my character could not be convinced its more important than my own needs of the moment or worth it if my character want a different outcome.

At the point that "good roleplaying" is determined by GM and die rolls and penalties are used to enforce it, dont see why i am there beyong giving the gm his audience and time to rest thier voice.

Insight check vs lying... Give me the assessment but let me be the decider for what reprrsents *good RP* of my character.

 

[pemerton]

if you want to play an amazingly brave heroic PC, you should be able to design the character such that he'll rarely or never fail a morale check or save vs fear or be intimidated or whatever. You shouldn't /need/ to fall back on the claim that it's 'wrong' for your character to be afraid, in order to protect that concept from the mechanics.

I agree with this, and think I posted something along these lines way upthread.

But it assumes a mechanically mediated approach to play which is not uncontroversial! (As this thread shows.)