What Makes an RPG Fun
Created: 2025-06-12
In philosophy, agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world.
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Created: 2025-06-12
Incidentally, cognitive scientists who have studied such matters have found that intelligent people can feel the lack of agency more poignantly than most, and often experience a sense of existential depression as a result. For more on this, see the fascinating book Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults by James Webb and Edward Amend).
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Created: 2025-06-12
I believe the great enjoyment elicited by tabletop RPGs (and some videogames) is a result of creating a sense of agency among their players. In an RPG, by making choice X, the player can impose result Y, which is the essence of agency.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
This is why long-term campaigns are more fun than one-off sessions, and why playing with a bunch of close friends is more fun than playing solitaire or with a group of strangers. Sustained campaigns with close friends create a stronger sense of agency.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
the players must be able to make real (not faux) choices that have meaningful consequences on the players and their world. And that’s a requirement which is in direct opposition to storytelling, or making sure everyone has fun.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
Many GMs never offer real choice, because the problem with real choice is that players can only be sure they have real choice when they suffer meaningfully bad consequences. And in the context of a tabletop RPG, that usually means permanent destruction of something unique - a favored henchmen, irreplaceable magic artifact, animal companion, or player character.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
But a never-ending string of perfect, dramatically appropriate, fun outcomes that defies probability eventually leads even the dimmest players to realize they don’t have real choice at all. A roller coaster may be a wild ride, but it’s still a railroad. And when the railroading gets revealed, the sense of agency dies, and with it dies the sense of fun.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
So this, then, is the paradox of gamemastering: In order to make sure that everybody could have fun, you have to be willing to let the players make choices that lead to results that aren’t fun. You can’t guarantee the fun. And if you try to make sure everyone has fun, eventually you’ll guarantee that no one has fun at all, because you’ll destroy the sense of agency which is the root of the hobby’s pleasure.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
It is the rules that dictate the results of action, and thus define the relationship between a player’s choices and the consequence he experiences. The rules provide the framework of cause and effect that gives meaning to choice.
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Created: 2025-06-12
Let’s just say that the simplest rule system that succeeds at providing agency is best.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
Agency, then, requires that we be able to predict the consequences of our choices, but not with certainty.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
The relevant modifiers and the target number provide causality. The d20 provides uncertainty. Both are essential.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
The agency theory says that you should never fudge a meaningful die roll. The desire to fudge is founded on the faulty premise that you need to make sure people have fun. But it’s a mistake to believe that letting a character die destroys fun. In fact, the opposite is true
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
When you encounter rules in your favorite RPG that strip away player agency, you should change them, too.
See in context at What Makes an RPG Fun?
Created: 2025-06-12
you’ll have noticed I just derived an “ought” from an “is”: The tabletop RPG is the only entertainment that can offer agency-centered sandbox play. Therefore, you ought to run your tabletop RPGs such that they offer agency-centered sandbox play.