What Makes an RPG Fun?

(Re)-introducing the Agency Theory of Fun

May 18, 2022

For the last 10 years I’ve used Mailchimp to occasionally distribute emails about my various role-playing game and comic projects. Today I’ve decided to convert my mailing list to Substack. If you’re getting this newsletter, it means you had previously signed up for that mailing list — either you opted-in to receive it during a crowdfunding survey questionnaire, you took advantage of the offer to sign-up in my book Arbiter of Worlds, or an enemy of yours wishes you to suffer my words. (I am sorry if this has befallen you; unsubscribe in peace.)

Mailchimp is designed for promotional messaging, but Substack is meant for articles and essays; so you’ll get more of the latter going forward. We’re going to open up this Substack with a discussion of the controversial “agency theory of fun” that I first introduced in Arbiter of Worlds. If you haven’t read the book, this will all be new to you; even if you have, some of it will be new to you. In either case, read on!

The Agency Theory of Fun

In philosophy, agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. It's my belief that in our everyday lives, humans in modern society feel an absence of agency. Most of our capacity for meaningful choice is illusory; our daily lives are routine, and our scope of choice limited by lack of opportunity or resources. Very few people really can "change the world" in even a small way. Almost all of us lock on to meaningless decisions, such as what football team to support, or what color to dye our hair, as a means of expressing our need for agency. (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).

In any case, 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. And because tabletop RPGs are an experience shared within a meaningful social circle of friends and colleagues, result Y feels meaningful. In a sense, in the context of your circle of friends, Nick really did save Erik's life last week. Moreover, because tabletop RPGs are enjoyed sequentially, in a campaign format, the number of choices made and the impact of those choices compounds over time. The game becomes more meaningful the longer it is experienced. 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.

However, in order for a campaign to effectively create a sense of agency, 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.

A Roller Coaster May Be a Wild Ride, but It Is Still a Railroad

Imagine that your party has only a few minutes to find the artifact that can close the gate to the abyss. The artifact could be underneath the dark citadel, or on the peak of the lonely mountain - but they don't have time to search both. Now, if you have real choice, the artifact is really in one location or the other, and your choice will determine whether or not you find it. On the other hand, if you have faux choice, then you only think you have choice. Whichever choice you make, that will be where the artifact is, along with an interesting, pre-scripted encounter of your level forcing you to fight to get it. So in the latter instance either choice is fun - but both are faux.

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.

For a while, a skilled sleight-of-hand artist can maintain suspension of disbelief about the reality of choice, leading players on a roller coaster ride that makes them think they are making real choices and facing meaningful consequences. It's the same art that a skilled novelist can use to make us believe that a favorite character is in danger, even though he's not. 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.

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.

Agency and Causality, Or Why Rules Matter

The agency theory of fun also explains why rules matter. Rules, in a tabletop RPG, are ultimately about what philosophers call action, where "action" means intentional effects caused by an agent. 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. For instance, virtually every RPG has rules that dictate when you may choose to attack a target, how the success or failure of this attack are determined, and the consequences of each.

A game without rules cannot provide a sense of agency, anymore than a world without causality can. If the players operate subject to arbitrary outcomes - what the ancients called "Acts of God" and RPG designers call "GM Fiat" - they have no meaningful way of knowing or understanding what the consequences of their choices will be, and thus no agency.

I believe that the agency theory of fun is the reason that esoteric games like Amber Diceless Roleplaying or Everway have never caught on, and why as games evolve, they tend to evolve in the direction of more rules. Comprehensible, detailed rules add to the player's sense of agency, just as playing with friends in an ongoing campaign does. (This does not mean that extremely complex games like Rolemaster are an unmitigated good - but that's a critique for another time. Let's just say that the simplest rule system that succeeds at providing agency is best.)

Agency also explains why dice are, and will always be, a popular mechanic with RPGs. As I explained above with the example of the hidden artifact, if the consequences are pre-determined, then the choice is not real. The inherent contradiction between omniscience and free will has plagued religion for thousands of years, and it plagues RPGs, too. For instance, imagine if tabletop RPG combat went like this:

Player: "I attack the dragon."

GM: "Based on your attack bonus and the dragon's armor class, if you attack, you are certain to miss."

Player: "Uh... well I don't attack, then."

It's hard to imagine that game being much fun because the result of the player's choices is determined before he's made them. (This is the same reason that Tic-Tac-Toe isn't fun.) Agency, then, requires that we be able to predict the consequences of our choices, but not with certainty. D&D creates agency with its Core Mechanic: "To determine if your character success at a task, you roll a d20, add any relevant modifiers and compare the result to a target number. If the result equals or exceeds the target number, your character succeeds. If the result is lower, you fail." The relevant modifiers and the target number provide causality. The d20 provides uncertainty. Both are essential.

Don't Change the Dice, Change the Rules

Because randomness is inherent to RPGs, every gamemaster soon becomes familiar with the temptation to cheat, or in gamer parlance, "fudge the dice." For instance, imagine that a new player, Carrie, is joining your campaign. In her very first battle, her character takes a critical hit, and is killed. The temptation will be very strong to pretend that the die roll was different - that a critical hit was just a normal hit, or even a miss. Especially if you think "my job is to make sure Carrie has fun," you'll convince yourself that dying is not fun, and that therefore Carrie's character shouldn't die.

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 - it's fudging the dice that destroys fun, by destroying the ability for the players to make meaningful choices. Letting the player live when her choices would have led to her death is essential to keeping the game fun, for all the reasons I explained earlier.

So what do you do about Carrie above? It depends. If Carrie died because she rushed in to a fight that she shouldn't have, or volunteered to take point, then you let her die. But if she died because she got killed by an invisible sniper before she even knew what was happening, the answer is "change the rules in advance to prevent that sort of situation from happening."

For instance, in the original edition of D&D, characters died instantly when they hit 0 hit points, and since starting characters could begin with as little as 1 hit point, that meant that death could come at almost any time, almost arbitrarily. There are several ways to resolve this dilemma. The classic approach was to maintain what one RPG blogger calls "ironic distance" during the early levels - the knowledge that you're not really your character. Early D&D supported this with quick and dirty character generation that let you replace your dead fighter with another fighter in about 30 seconds.

As D&D developed, though, the desire for increased player agency lead to ever-increasing levels of character customization, making choices that impacted what the character was like. This investment made it harder for players to maintain sufficient distance from their characters to tolerate arbitrary death. D&D's designers quickly introduced mechanics to address this, most famously by allowing characters to be "dying but not dead" until they actually hit -10 hit points. With a “dying but not yet dead” mechanic, then Carrie's party still has a chance to save her by defeating the sniper and healing her wounds.

In real life, many things can happen to us that really are the result of "Acts of God," and have nothing to do with our agency. There is, after all, a slim probability that sitting at my desk typing this article, I will be killed by a falling meteorite. And that sucks! In fact, the very abundance of these types of events is exactly what strips us of our sense of agency in day-to-day life. Since RPG rules are fun to the extent that they give the player a sense of agency, mechanics that strip away agency should be changed. The evolution of the classic D&D game shows us how this works. When you encounter rules in your favorite RPG that strip away player agency, you should change them, too.

What About Other Types of Fun?

The agency theory of fun is the most controversial section of Arbiter of Worlds and it led to some readers getting upset. Here’s an example from an Amazon review:

“This book is a well-written argument of ONE PERSON'S preferred philosophy of game-mastering, and a critique of all other philosophies of game-mastering. The biggest problem I have with this book is how Macris frames his argument; basically, Macris's argument is, "My philosophy = The 'correct' way to play. Every other philosophy = Total crap.”

I honestly think that’s a somewhat unfair characterization of my view. In the book (quoting myself), I wrote “I am not the exclusive arbiter of fun on Planet Earth, and many people find joy in things I find boring – golf, gardening, and scrapbooking come to mind. Conversely, many people don’t take pleasure in things I enjoy, like military history, spreadsheets, or sandbox campaigns.”

But it’s not a completely unfair characterization. Because, again quoting myself, “I believe that participating in an agent-focused sandbox campaign is the most fun a player can have in a role-playing game. Only the tabletop RPG can offer agency-centered sandbox play. And that’s why the advice in the book is all about creating a living, breathing world-in-motion that empowers yours players with the agency to make real choices in the game.”

Now, if you’re a careful reader, 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.

Since deriving “ought” from “is” has been verboten in Western philosophy since 1739, a due regard for my intellectual credibility demands I justify this. If I can’t justify it, then my Amazon critic is correct; all I’ve done is expressed a preference. Therefore, in my next newsletter, I’ll explain how the agency theory of fun is founded upon the aesthetic theory of essentials, which in turn affords us a solution to the is-ought problem and gives us criteria by which to evaluate role-playing games and gamemastery.1

That’s all for now. If you haven’t already stumbled onto my network of Discords, Patreons, and Forums, here's some links for other material related to Arbiter of Worlds, ACKS, Ascendant, and Autarch. (I really like the letter “A”, OK?)

I know that when I ground the agency theory of fun on the aesthetic theory of essentials, I will be challenged to ground the latter theory on an even deeper foundation. That would require a third essay to elaborate an epistemological theory upon which to ground the aesthetic theory, which in turn could be challenged, and so on, until I’ve been trapped in the labyrinth of Munchausen’s trilemma. To avert this woe, anyone who asks the foundation for my aesthetic theory will be told “It was once revealed to me in a dream.” If it’s good enough for Nikolai Berdyaev, it’s good enough for me.

Arbiter of Worlds