Worlds of Design: "Your Character Wouldn't Do That"

The Mighty Jingles (on YouTube) described what he really disliked about Far Cry 5 New Dawn (video game). The game took away player control at vital junctures. I wonder how often this happens in RPGs, and offer some reasons why it does. With a poll!

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

I watch a few YouTube channels regularly, some about games, some about cooking. So I watched The Mighty Jingles’ review of Far Cry 5 New Dawn (video game). Jingles was dismayed that the game took away player control at vital junctures. In one particular case (there were several), the protagonist found the ultimate bad guys - and walks in without his weapons. He stands there passively and gets handcuffed and hung from the ceiling. And does absolutely nothing. (No, not magic or some kind of psychic slavery.) Later, once the villains are defeated and are making a tiresome speech, he can’t even fire a gun to shut them up.

This is closely related to player agency (which I discussed previously). How much opportunity do the players have to significantly affect the outcome of the game?

The specific question for RPGs: how often does the GM tell a player what his character does, that the player might not want to do? I’m not talking about involuntary reactions to events such as “your character falls unconscious” or “your character exclaims in surprise.” I’m talking about the kind of thing that happened to Jingles.

I recall watching an RPG session where the GM told the players that their characters were running after someone (whether they wanted to or not). I later asked him about it, and he said he didn’t normally tell characters what to do, but there was a time problem to getting the session done, so he hurried the players along in the easiest way available. I wouldn’t like it, but I see the point.

Typically, though, I think this “involuntary action” is part of telling a story. The author of any story must control what happens in order to express what they have in mind, to reach the intended conclusion. If they don’t control the action, how can they be sure they get where they want the story to go? So in some campaigns, say where the GM is telling the players a story, there might not be much player control (Player Agency) to begin with.

This depends on who is playing. Traditional hobby games players usually want to feel they control their own fate, that success or failure is up to them. On the other hand, RPGers who prefer an overarching narrative may not mind being constrained by the story. Other gamers fall somewhere in between.

I personally hate being “Led around by the nose,” that is, I want to be in control as much as possible. If I want to “consume” a good story, I’ll read a book by a professional storyteller, not rely on today’s GM. But I know of many people who disagree with that. If you want the players to write their story from your situation (as I do), you are unlikely to tell them what their characters do.

So I’d estimate that, generally speaking, the more the session is about storytelling, and the less about opposed game playing, then the more likely it is for the GM to say “your character does <such-and-such>”, the more the GM has characters do things the players might not/would not have their character do, in order to continue to control the story.

YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). I have the feeling that some people will read this and say, “of course I do, frequently”, while others will say, “I (almost) never do that.” The trick is to make sure that the GM and the players all like whatever style the GM uses.

This brings up another topic, how often the GM provides hints to the players about what they “should” do, but lets them make the choice. That’s for another column.

Let’s have another poll to see what readers do.

 

[Hussar]

Ok fair enough. But those are plural terms. The problem is the lack of a way to communicate plurality.

Sorry, the English teacher in me won't shut up.

No, those are not plural terms. They are uncountable nouns - there is no mafias or illumianatis. It's just an uncountable noun. And, since these are titles of groups, they must have a definite article in English. Same as The United Nations. Singular or plural has nothing to do with using a definite article in English.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If I encounter a situation where I think the player is “off base”, I generally don’t TELL them they’re doing it wrong, I ask why the PC would choose that course of action.

If it’s a case of violating an oath or something equally serious- something that could deeply change the PC or campaign- I point out the probable consequences of acting as initially described.

So far, I’ve only seen one player barge ahead through such a warning, but I wasn’t the DM, I was another player. Despite DM’s cautions, the player pursued a course of action that resulted in the PC getting exiled, which ultimately derailed the campaign.

 

[Don Durito]

Sorry, the English teacher in me won't shut up.

No, those are not plural terms. They are uncountable nouns - there is no mafias or illumianatis. It's just an uncountable noun. And, since these are titles of groups, they must have a definite article in English. Same as The United Nations. Singular or plural has nothing to do with using a definite article in English.

Yes. I know all this. I didn’t think it merited the level of thought it was have taken me to notice my lack of technical precision.

In fact reading back I thought I’d edited that post to change plural to “collective”.

 

[Don Durito]

Additionally, and before anyone says it, neither term is precisely the same as "boss"/"boss monster" either

In my experience they’re frequently used interchangeably.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

I have never told a player that his character wouldn't do something, not once in 41 years of gaming. Although I may ask them if they're sure about their actions.

If anyone ever did that to me, I would leave the game at that moment and not return.

As a player, no one gets to control my character but me, unless some sort of compulsion is in effect. That's why I would never do this to a player in my game.

When it comes to the scouting and narrating examples listed above, I ask the table if they want to play out an hour or so of exploration, or if they want me to narrate it. My players trust that I won't abuse the opportunity by putting their characters in terrible situations, or causing them to miss important stuff.

 

[Bohandas]

In my experience they’re frequently used interchangeably.

Frequently but not exclusively. It's also plausible for the final boss to be some monster that the BBEG has built or summoned

 

[pemerton]

I don't know why everyone thinks this is something I want to derail the thread by arguing about. I mean obviously if I cared to I would have actually put forward my position in detail - but that's at the very least another thread - or more likely a blog post (the best place to question things that have become orthodoxy).

I'll explain why I don't like the notion, in RPGing, of the BBEG. Which is relevant to the thread.

If the GM establishes a BBEG, then s/he is deciding who it is the PCs will confront in the context of play. In many contexts - eg modules that I've read - this establishes the basic outline of play from the get-go. Which is certainly a form of GM control over the player characters.

 

[Imaculata]

I never tell my players what their character does, that is their territory. I will however tell my players what feelings or suspicions their character might have. But what they do with that information is up to them.

If one of my players is about to do something really stupid, and I feel that this decision is based on a misconception or misreading of the situation, then I will clarify. But I would never block my players from taking an action, or force their character to take an action that they didn't agree on.

 

[Celebrim]

In my experience they’re frequently used interchangeably.

Possibly. And the BBEG is often also the boss monster as well, so sometimes using the term interchangeably is fine.

The truth is though most of us happy to use the term are happy with how the other people using the term in the thread are using it. The agreement we have over what the term means is much larger than the differences we may or may not have in our understanding of it.

More to the point, pretty much all of your complaints could be made against the term "villain" as well. The only stories where the term "villain" is unambiguous are stories that have a particular implied structure. In the more complex universe of stories, the term villain becomes ambiguous enough that different consumers of the story will disagree over whether the story has a villain or who the villain is.

Take a story like "Whale Rider". Is the Grandfather Koro the villain of the story? Well on one level maybe, in that Koro's decisions are in many ways driving the conflict in the story, and in particular the story is largely about the conflict between Koro and Paikea. But how do you reconcile a claim that he is with the protagonists great respect and affection for him? In fact, the protagonist is trying very hard to be more like Koro. This defies easy characterization. So is the villain here the son who has abandoned Paikea and the rest of his responsibilities and is spending his life in selfish self-expression? Is the villain the members of the tribe that are engaged in drug use and indolent behavior? Or is the villain a system that both Koro and Paikea are in their own way fighting against, and if that is the case what does it mean to call something that isn't tangible much less personified a "villain".

When you start looking at the universe of story villains, you start realizing that "villain" is an inadequate word and that you need more language to describe all the different types of bad guys, antagonists, and villains that can populate a story. Yes, it is true that these terms will imply a certain story structure, because a villain drives the conflict and thus the story. But the fact that we can label the sorts of villains that appear in different story structures doesn't negate the utility of those terms.

 

[dragoner]

Never tell the player what their character does, then you become the villain of the story.