"Player agency is overrated" or why some rails are good.

 "It was the best of games. It was the worst of games. A tale of two campaigns, the sandbox, and the railroad." The opening to an amazing video by Matt Colville, which was probably instrumental to shaping the very negative perception a "railroad" campaign has. But is it really so bad, or can it, just maybe, actually have something to offer?

Hot take: Freedom isn't actually that important for TTRPGs

I'm sure we've all heard the phrase "You can do anything in D&D!", or some variation of it - which on the surface sounds nice. "Wait, I can do whatever I want in this game, I'm free to come up with my own solutions? Can I even...?" is what most of us probably thought when we have first heard it. But I believe if we dig a little deeper, we will discover it isn't actually the main point. The main point is feeling like you are in control. The main fantasy of D&D - and all other RPGs in the same vein - is to be a hero, someone who controls both their own fate and the fate of the world around them. For many, it is a form of escapism from a world where we feel confined to social pressures and norms, feeling like nothing we do really matters. In this fantasy game, we can live that experience we lack, to be someone who has direct impact on things around them, and that everything we do matters.

But surely there are other experiences to be had.

Putting the "RP" in TableTop Role - Playing Games

The fantasy of the hero is instrumental to D&D, but the hobby at large covers a variety of genres - for a long time, the second most popular game after D&D (not counting Pathfinder, as that is "D&D from another company") has been Call of Cthulhu after all - which is almost opposite to the fantasy of D&Đ - you're playing a measly human in the face of cosmic forces beyond your understanding, let alone your sphere of influence. The experience is fear, madness and feeling of utter inconsequence.

It stands to reason that the point of "Role - Playing" is to "put yourself in somebody else's shoes" and to experience a life of someone different thant you. Even when playing an idealized self insert, it is often to be able to live through something we lack in real life - as was covered in the previous section. When you role-play as someone, you immerse yourself in the world through them and experience it through their eyes instead of your own. Experiencing new and exciting things in a relatively safe space is one of the main draws of role-playing games for many, and in order to facilitate those experiences, freedom sometimes has to go.

Player freedom is a tool

I should preface this by saying: The GM should never let their players feel like their presence in the scenario is worthless, or like they do not actually have an impact. Players should still ultimately feel like they are in control, especially with regards to their characters. This agency is almost sacrosanct to the act of playing TTRPGs, and should only be taken away if all interested parties are fully on board with the interaction. However, this does not mean that the players should always be free to do whatever they want and that the flow of a session should be reliant only on their actions - after all I'm sure if you've played in any one-shot or a pre-written module, you have had experience with "following the plot". While this seems to be generally frowned upon in TTRPG spaces, I'm of the opinion it is because it is often done poorly, not because it is bad itself. A game should always strive to provide some experience to the players, and in order to facilitate this, not everything can rely on the players. But where is the difference between providing an experience and simply dragging your group through what should have been a pulp novel?

Game desing is an art - so work like an artist

The main point is to always have a "theme" in mind for your creations, and ideally how you want your players to feel as they play. These should be your main objectives when designing - whether game or session - and everything else is either a tool to these ends, or noise. Here the advice of "Prep like a director" and "Make your game cinematic" is actually really useful. This can be akin to writing a script, or painting a picture. What is important, is to have a vision and choose elements which enhance it. Sometimes, this means letting the players wander and probe things at their own pace while the world lives regardless of their involvement - or lack thereof, as exploring the unknown, and the need to adjust are core principles of the experience, while other times you need to carefully prepare horrific scenes, build tension by slowly revealing only as much as to keep the players guessing, and introduce elements of danger once the dreadful atmosphere starts to dissipate, because the core experience is horror and powerlessness.

It is a gentle dance where you need to balance letting the players do what they want and feeling like the game world actually responds to them, but only so much to keep them immersed in the core experience. But I'm sure this sounds very nebulous, and somewhat unintuitive, how do we actually do this?

Example: Players only need to feel smart, not be smart

To provide an example I discussed recently: What is the point of a detective story as a role-playing experience? I believe it is ultimately to uncover secrets, and feel smart. In a written story, the audience usually mirrors the stumped police officers, unable to make sense of what happened, only following the detective along and watching in awe as they uncover the mystery through careful investigation, attention to detail, and sheer wit. But when players, who are also crippled by having their info filtered through the game master, are supposed to take on the mantle of the detective, how do you achieve this? You simply need to hand some information out to them, and gently show them things which will reveal the truth, but others in the world are oblivious to. This may even invlove making some clues seem outright obvious. While having the players act as brilliant detectives may sound appealing, what is key is that they feel that way, not that they actually need to be brilliant themselves.

In the end, it depends

To conclude, there isn't really "the correct ammount of agency players should have" in a TTRPG session, as it varies greatly depending not only on the genre and theme, but also on the individual players. Some groups are fine with only an illusion of choice, others demand that the world actually reacts to them in some manner to feel immersed. What is really important is to be aware of these concepts, and feel free to experiment even with things such as player agency, because as the wise man once said: "Sometimes less is more."

That is all, thank you for reading, and have a sane game!

Complexity - or how I build mechanics

 In my last post I brought up my concept of Complexity as a measurable metric in TTRPGs, but haven't really explained how to use it or how I came up with it - so here goes: Complexity and its steps - the Lego bricks of TTRPG mechanics.

What is Complexity?

To reiterate my definition of Complexity as a metric: It is the number of elementary steps a plyer needs to perform to resolve an in-game mechanic.

This "number of steps" seems kind of vague, so how do we measure them? A good rule of thumb is that whenever you try to describe the mechanic in simplest possible way and find yourself using a comma, period or the words "and" and "then", that's probably the boundary between individual steps. To use a new example, let's break down a Skill check in the Year Zero Engine games:

"... start by adding the skill value and the attribute value together. The sum determines how many six-sided dice you need to roll. Rolling a six counts as a success." - Vaesen, by Free League

I highlighted the breaks between individual steps with bold - in this case only periods. Observant reader will notice that the word "and" is not highlighted - that is because it if we took the sentence apart at that point, the individual parts would not make any sense.

So now if we try to simplify the language, the steps of a Skill check can be summarized as:

1. Add skill value to attribute value
2. Roll that many dice
3. Find all 6s

This puts us at Complexity 3 for average YZE skill check.

Not all Complexities are created equal

"Regarding the Complexity of operations, it's generally accepted that their order of complexity is:
comparison, addition, doubling, multiplication ~= subtraction ~= halving, division, and beyond that the more complicated operations."

As a comment on my last post (quoted above) rightfully pointed out, some operations are simpler to perform for an average human - which can be an issue if we're using Complexity to assess the mental load of a mechanic. The nomenclature doesn't exactly match mine, as whether you add or subtract, it is still only one step you need to perform, but the point that some actions are easier to process is absolutely right. If we had two mechanics, both at Complexity 3, but one involved comparison and the other division, there would be a noticeable difference in their mental load.

So how do we solve this problem? In my opinion, simply by being aware of it, as Complexity is not an "end all be all" metric to accurately assess the mental load of a mechanic. I would say that a task of Complexity of 4 will always be more mentally demanding than a task of Complexity 3, even if the former's individual steps were far easier to process. Much like Lego bricks, some are easier to connect and work with than others, but building something out of 10 bricks probably takes less than to build something out of 15.

To accurately assess the mental effort a mechanic demands, we'd probably need a new concept - like "Effort" - which would assign values to the individual steps and their number.

So, what is Complexity actually useful for?

Short answer: Quickly differentiating mechanics based on how much they take (time or mental effort).

Long answer: As I alluded in the previous paragraph, because mechanics with the same complexity have different individual steps, they also better serve different purposes - that's why I liken it to Lego. Based on what bricks you used, you can end up with drastically different sets. And more impressive sets generally tend to have more bricks and are assembled out of more individual sections, rather than built all at once. 

Complexity is only a tool for assessing your mechanics. It can help you quickly and relatively easily (and these are its main strengths as a metric) assess how much your project demands of its audience on average, help you clearly see which parts of its gameplay are more emphasized than others, and to compare competing ideas based on how much engagement (and accompanying mental load) you want at certain points.

Higher/lower Complexities are not universally better/worse. If you're looking for a core mechanic, lower score might seem better - because you don't want your players to mentally burn out over mundane and routine tasks, before they can get to the "larger, more impressive sections built out of more parts". However if you choose a slightly more complex core mechanic, but can utilize it throughout the whole game without needing to pack on many more steps (keeping the Complexity roughly constant), you can ensure everything stays "balanced", all parts of the gameplay feel almost equally as important and as if they carry actual weight - whereas lower Complexities lend themselves better to things that players are barely even aware they need to do, and can thus remain more immersed in the fiction part, rather than the "game" part.

Likewise, if you want to emphasize some part of the game to feel like it takes time and is more demanding, higher Complexity can better simulate that experience because the players will themselves feel like the procedure takes time and effort, so the immersion will be more natural, rather than acted out. After all, the main objective of any mechanic is to simulate a certain feeling/experience in the players.

Conclusion

I originally came up with Complexity as a metric roughly a year ago, when I needed to quickly assess competing ideas for a core mechanic, which ones to playtest first, or whether they would even be compatible with rest of the game. Since then, I have refined the idea somewhat, and found it a useful tool whenever I am coming up with something new. Do I want this to feel quick and easy - barely requiring the player to refocus from the in-game events, or do I want more mechanical rigor and more methodical approach? How does it compare to other mechanics within the same section of the game? Am I demanding too much for anyone to want to engage with it or would playing it feel rushed and unsatisfying?

While Complexity never answers these questions fully, it's been a useful tool for me to compare ideas for both the whole game, and individual sessions.

Thanks for reading, enjoy your next game!

Math in TTRPGs

Recently I was discussing a possible proceduraly generated puzzle, and issue that came up was that in order to reliably check whether you actually got the correct solution, you would need at least 5 equations. It was not a problem that I originally considered, but it reminded me of something I have long thought about.

Mechanics as mathematical models

3 out of 4 of TTRPG activity categories (as described by Proph at Traveler's Homebrew) can be described to varrying degree using math. (A case could be made for Freeform as well, but that is a discussion for another time.) For the Random side of the spectrum, this is quite obvious - whenever chance is involved, whatever occurs can be described as some form of statistical phenomena. As for the "Puzzle" a sort of binary "Pass/Fail" logic needs to be present, even if just to describe the outcome - for a simple puzzle this could look like a simple logical statement:

"In the room ahead lie two keys. A red key and a blue key. At the far end of the room is a closed blue door."

We can assume that the correct key will be blue, hence the solution can be written as a statement:
 " The key is blue, AND the door is open"; or in mathematical notation: (Blue key) ∧ (Open door). A simple table could then be constructed:

Key is Blue	Door is Open	(Blue key) ∧ (Open door)
1	1	1
1	0	0
0	1	0
0	0	0

Note that we used Conjunction instead of Implication to describe the solution, as the fact that the blue key opens the door does not mean there is no other key that could open the door, it simply means that the blue key will, but in our situation the only other key is the red key, which is (obviously) wrong.

I'm sure everyone is aware dice can be described using odds and number ranges, but we can actually use math to describe other tools we use - such as cards. We label each card 0 through 12 (0 is reserved for Ace and 1, 11 and 12 represent the Jack, Queen and King respectively - you'll see why shortly) and do so in a base 13 system - this means we can use the "thirteens" digit to represent the card suit (0 - Clubs, 1 - Spades, 2 - Hearts, 3 - Diamonds), and the "ones" to describe the individual cards (0 for Ace, 1 for the Jack, 2 - A for the respectively numbered cards, B for the Queen and C for the King*). So for example 1B would be the Queen of Spades. If we were to then design a game where whoever draws a King wins, their odds of winning are 1/13 (There is only one King for each suit), and this condition could be stated using logic, as described above.

* - highest digit in the tredecimal system is 12 - represented by the letter C.

As you can see I'm sure, with enough mathematical rigour, all mechanical procedures can be described using a combination of logic, and proper use of equations.

"But this is all obvious, how else could there be virtual tabletops that automate mechanics, how is any of this actually useful to a hobby designer/game master?"

Math for analyzing TTRPGs

Now that I have convinced you that mechanics can be described by using the proper math, how do we actually use this? Well, after we have found a way to describe whatever we are using as some form of a mathematical construct, we can now use this for gathering useful data about our game/session. For example AnyDice is a popular site for analyzing values and odds different dice can produce - which can be very useful for any game.

Another method is formulating aspects of our game as new mathematical constructs - my favourite example is Complexity.

My definiton of Complexity for a mechanic is "The number of elementary steps a player needs to perform in order to complete a procedure".

Let's break this down using Skill checks from D&D - how many steps does a player need to perform in order to resolve a skill check?

1. Roll the die (d20)
2. Find all relevant modifiers
3. Calculate the result (add the modifiers to the die roll)
4. Consult the Game master

This would put a simple Skill check at a Complexity value of 4 - fairly average, but it could be lowered by simply stating the odds of success on their character sheet before hand:

1. Find the relevant Skill rating on the Character sheet
2. Roll the die
3. Compare the roll to the number on the sheet

With one simple change, we reduced the number of steps a player needs to perform by 1 - a whole 25% in this case! Given how many Skill checks an average player makes, this can quickly stack up to decrese the mental fatigue over a whole session.

Now, not all steps are created equal, as some things are easier to process than others - Solving an inequality without any unkowns is much easier than solving an equation - everyone knows that 4 < 15, but 15 - 4 = X takes a tiny bit longer to solve. We could then create a new concept for how difficult something is to perform, or break it into constituent steps which would then impact the overall Complexity of a mechanic, and thus give a more accurate rating.

None of this is to say mechanics with high Complexity are bad - if something involves multiple steps a player will need to engage with it for longer, thus making them more occupied and, and the whole action will feel more important than something that comes almost instinctually to them. It is just important to understand this distinction and how Complexity impacts how players will engage with something - if a seemingly mundane task has high Complexity, players will probably tend to avoid it, because the whole process will feel like a meaningless ordeal because they need to expend a lot of mental effort for mediocre results. On the other hand, if a task of extreme importance has a Complexity of 1, then the victory might feel hollow and unearned.

Point is: Always use the right tools for the job.

Conclusion

Describing various parts and concepts of games using math can provide us with a clearer picture about what we are actually dealing with, and yield useful data to fine tune the experience, as if we were only dealing with ideas and established perspectives.

Thanks for reading, enjoy your next game!