Hi ho! Angry the GM here. It’s been a while, huh? Well, as you probably know — thanks to my brief announcement last week — I’ve been sick. I don’t know what the f$&% I had. Or still have a little of. Maybe a cold. Maybe the flu. Maybe a certain variant of a certain virus of unknown origin. Who f$&%ing knows? Who f$%&ing cares? It’s waning now. But it did wreck me for the better part of two weeks.

Anyway, here’s a short Ask Angry thing wherein a get really addled and philosophical and stop myself just short of pontificating on the nature of free will and the meaning of life. It’s about the idea of agency. And also memory-erasing hydrae.

I promise I’ll give you that treasure thing I promised next week.

Incidentally, if you want to submit a question for a future Ask Angry column, send it to ask.angry@angry.games. And if you want some hope that I’ll actually answer your question, keep it brief and tell me what to call you.

Colin asks…

I know you consider player agency sacrosanct. Do you have an opinion of the popular false hydra homebrew?

And the award for the rabbit-holiest question I’ve ever gotten goes to… Colin! This was a juicy one. And considering Colin also told me exactly what to call him and got the entire question out in two short sentences, he wins the trophy for the Best Ask Angry Submission of 2022.

So far. But given the history of this column, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to top it in the next eleven months. Hell, it took almost eleven years for someone to submit a question I consider award-worthy.

Now, I didn’t actually have an opinion of the “popular false hydra homebrew” when I got this question. Because I had no f$&%ing idea the thing existed. Truth be told, I don’t follow online games and homebrewing and D&D content like I should. And I really should. Because, now that I’ve done my homework, I can say this thing’s pretty awesome. Which I guess gives away my opinion, huh? At least, it gives away part of it. This question took me on one hell of a f$&%ing journey. So, you’re going to have to sit through a few thousand words of vacation slides. Especially because of that totally unrelated sentence prefaced your question with. The one about agency. Did you include that s$&% just to prove you read my book? Because this false hydra thing has nothing to do with player agency. Not a single, f$&%ing thing.

Though, if I drank enough bleach to damage some of my key brain lobes, I could probably understand why you’d make that mistake.

Anyway, let’s start this story at the very beginning.

Once upon a time, I got an e-mail from someone called Colin. A short, simple e-mail. It contained just two simple sentences. In the first, Colin claimed to know my views on the importance of player agency in tabletop roleplaying games. In the second, Colin asked my opinion of something called the false hydra homebrew which is apparently an in-thing among hot young gamers these days.

I’d not heard of the false hydra, but I assumed it was some kind of D&D monster. And given the mention of player agency and the use of the adjective ‘false,’ I assumed it was designed to f$&% with player perceptions. To present itself as one thing when it was really something else. Probably to trick players into cutting its heads off, thereby screwing themselves.

I was keen to answer this question. Because player agency is something people are really stupid about. And I figured this was probably a really good example of people being stupid about agency. See, these days, if you do anything to do with illusions or false perceptions or anything even remotely mind-controlling, people start screaming their f$&%ing heads off about agency. Hell, these days, if you tell players they can’t invent their own origin cities or use certain classes from certain supplements, people scream their f$&%ing heads off about agency. I’ve gotten accused of limiting player agency because I’ve dared to suggest that if you want to play an elf, you’ve got to actually play an elf.

And considering I’ve committed all of those crimes against agency repeatedly and flagrantly and gleefully. And I’ll continue to do so until they pry my GM screen from my cold, dead fingers, it really confuses people when I talk about agency as a pillar of roleplaying gaming. “How can you say agency is one of the three vital components that makes a roleplaying game a roleplaying game,” people demand, spittle flying from between their quivering lips, “and yet include false perceptions, memory alteration, and mind control in your game whenever the hell it suits you?”

Point is, I was really keen to answer this question. And to write a long sermon on what player agency. And what it especially is not. And, for good measure, to piss and moan about how players these days can’t handle anything outside their control happening to their characters. And how that attitude runs counter to the very spirit of roleplaying games.

But even though I was fully intending to write the rant I wanted to write instead of answering the actual question Colin asked, I still had to know what this false hydra thing actually was. If only so I could be obstinately opinionated from a position of actual knowledge. Or a position of willful blindness. Whatever it took.

So I did my homework. And I found out what the hell the false hydra is. Turns out, it is a D&D monster. At least, it’s an idea for a monster. The false hydra is a many-headed thingum that grows underground beneath populated settlements, stretching its heads toward the surface and devouring the unwary to fuel its growth. Except it doesn’t just devour the unwary. It also devours wariness.

See, the false hydra is magically forgettable. Or unnoticeable. Even if it’s right in front of you, you just sort of ignore it. Or rather, you notice it but instantly forget that you noticed it the moment you look away. Or you forget it existed when you hear its magical song. And you don’t just forget about the false hydra. You also forget its victims. Your perceptions and memories just slide right off them.

Say the false hydra devours the town mayor. Everyone in town will just insist they haven’t had a mayor for years. That they’re just an anarcho-syndicalist commune. If you ask about the mayoral mansion in the middle of town or the big painting labeled “Our Current Mayor” in the library, the townsfolk will just come up with any crazy excuses they need to ignore the inconsistency. And the moment they stop paying attention to it — the moment they stop looking at the painting — they’ll promptly stop noticing the painting even exists.

If the heroes encounter the false hydra, the moment the encounter’s over, they’ll forget what happened. If they see it, they’ll forget they saw it. If they infiltrate its lair, they’re basically dealing with a creature they can’t even know exists. Running one involves a lot of mind screws. And dealing with one involves a lot of clever planning and possibly never really knowing what it was you dealt with. Even after you win.

Basically, it’s a monster that’s one part magical amnesia, one part cognitive dissonance, and one part Somebody Else’s Problem field from Douglas Adams’ Life, the Universe, and Everything. Actually, I could probably fill three paragraphs just calling out the tropes baked into this thing. Because there’s a lot of them. Everything from Doctor Who baddies to UFOlogist conspiracy theories about the Men in Black. The ones on which the graphic novels and movies were based.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this thing’s cliched or unoriginal. It isn’t. Not at all. I’m just pointing out there’s a lot of fodder in sci-fi and fantasy and horror literature for f$&%ing with memory and perception. And rightly so. Because this deals with some real primal-level fear s$&%.

Also, if I’m being a little vague about the false hydra, that’s because there’s a lot of different versions of it floating around now. But I wanted to give credit where it was due. So I did my best to track down the source. The original false hydra. Near as I can tell, all the different versions have evolved from one really beautiful, eight-year-old blog post from Arnold K’s Goblin Punch Blog. The blog’s definitely worth a read. Arnold K is still going, at least as of four weeks ago. His blog’s got tons of flavorful, fluffy, worldbuilding and adventure ideas.

It looks like, around the fall of 2019, there was a sudden surge of interest in the false hydra. Looks like it went viral and its remained popular in the online roleplaying gaming community since then. You can easily find several variations, podcast games featuring false hydra adventures, and a couple of different stat blocks. Hit up your favorite search engine and hunt down whichever versions you like.

So that’s the false hydra. It’s really a concept for a fantasy monster. A bit more Lovecraftian than I generally like in my D&D, but I’d totally use the idea — or a take on it — in my own game without any compunctions at all about agency. Even though I’d be screwing with my players’ heads and basically withholding information about their characters’ own perceptions and experiences as necessary.

Which means it’s time to talk about why that s$&% doesn’t really affect player agency at all.

Now, I’ve talked about player agency before. When I literally wrote the book on roleplaying gaming, I described it as one of the three hearts of roleplaying games. Roleplaying games are predicated on the players’ agency. Take that agency away and you don’t have a roleplaying game.

More or less.

See, while player agency is vitally important, I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘sacrosanct.’ At least, I wouldn’t use it without any qualifiers. Of course, I probably did use that word at some point. Without qualifiers. But then, I’ve used a lot of words over the years and I can’t be responsible for all of them.

Thing is, roleplaying games are subjective things. They’re entertainment and art and fun. They don’t run on math and logic. They don’t run on absolutes. And agency isn’t an on-or-off thing. It’s not a “you have it or you don’t.” Agency is to be treasured. To be prized highly. In that sense it is sacrosanct. But it is not inviolable.

Agency is an emergent and holistic quality. It’s an overall feeling. Not a moment-by-moment, on-or-off thing. Consider, for example, that I — and many other smart GMs — don’t allow evil PCs. This means some choices — some player choices — are expressly or effectively forbidden. Likewise, RPGs are team-based by their nature. The party generally sticks together. Split-ups are limited. The GM can — and should — run splits from time to time when the party members are doing different things in different places. But the GM’s also not going to run five totally separate games that never intersect. So, effectively, the players can’t decide to have their characters go their separate ways.

To keep the game from degenerating into a story of five a$&holes backstabbing each other, the players give up some of their agency. Either voluntarily or because the GM charges it as the price of admission. Blah blah blah social contract blah blah.

So agency’s sacred. It’s a foundational element of roleplaying games. But it’s neither inviolate nor absolute. Any buildings’ foundation has to be able to handle a few tremors without collapsing the building.

But the false hydra isn’t an acceptable break from agency. It’s not an example of the players voluntarily giving up agency to make the game playable. It actually doesn’t really get anywhere near true player agency. Neither do any illusions or false perceptions or memory alterations. Hell, neither does most mind control s$&%.

Of course, it’s hard to talk about agency without getting really high-minded and philosophical and life-advicey and even a little spiritual. Because the concept of characters as agents is really close to the concept of free will. Real free will. And what that s$&% actually means. I’m going to do my best to avoid most of that s$&% and keep this strictly in the realm of pretend elf and narrative and gameplay theory. But some real-life s$&% is inevitably going to leak in.

Agency is an internal thing. It’s about having sovereignty over your own will. And that’s all. You — and you alone — decide what you think. Or, in the case of pretend elf games, you — and you alone — decide what your character thinks. Or, more precisely, what your character chooses.

If you were writing a novel about a character, you’d decide everything. You’d decide what happened to your character and what your character thought about those happenings and how your character chose to respond to those happenings and how those responses played out. You’d control your character’s entire destiny. But roleplaying games aren’t like that. They’re not supposed to be. The very premise of the game is that you don’t have any more agency over your character than any person does in their actual life. You’re just imagining yourself as some character in some imaginary world. So you don’t control what happens to your character. You don’t control how your character’s responses play out. All you control is what your character thinks and chooses. Your character is subject to physical and mental and biological and spiritual and external limitations just like you are. Inside their head, they can imagine whatever they want. But they do not have an infinite capacity to make manifest those choices in the world.

This is, of course, one of the hardest things for human beings to accept. Their lack of control over their entire external world. And that’s what makes roleplaying games so compelling. In a very real way, they echo the human experience of an agent with internal free will trying to survive in an uncontrollable and essentially chaotic universe. But I don’t want to get all Victor Frankl on you. So back to pretend elves.

I’ve said before that a player’s sovereignty begins and ends at their character’s skull. But even that’s not quite true. Because players don’t have complete sovereignty over their character’s entire brains. For example, the stuff the character knows about the world? Factual stuff? That’s dictated by the game’s world and the character’s skills and dice rolls. And I — as a GM — can inject factual information directly into any character’s brain anytime I want. It’s called exposition. And the players have to accept that. I decide what facts are in their characters’ brains.

Of course, that makes sense. Because factual information isn’t really internal to the character. It’s external. Even though it’s in the character’s head, it came from outside. It came from the external world. It was learned. Or experienced. Or perceived. And the same’s true of perceptions. I tell the players what their characters see and hear. Well, perception is in the end, an internal experience. But those perceptions get transmitted via nerve pathways from sense organs and ultimately get picked up from the outside world. They’re externalities. Parts of the world that get in.

And facts and memories and perceptions? They can all get warped. And it really doesn’t matter where the warping happens. Because those things are still externalities. So, whether a character ends up with a false perception because a critter has camouflage or because of a magical illusion or a hallucinogenic drug that affects the character’s actual brain, that’s still not a matter of agency. As a GM, I decide what perceptions actually get into the characters’ heads. And what don’t. And if the perceptions don’t match reality, I’m still being completely honest as a GM. It’s the world that’s lying to the character.

And that’s why the false hydra isn’t really a matter of agency. The players are still totally free to decide their characters’ responses to what they know, perceive, and remember. The false hydra doesn’t touch agency. And, frankly, that’s what makes it so scary. Because humans rely on their knowledge, perception, and memory to exercise their will. They’re the only inputs they’ve got. And if something can f$&% with them, all the will in the world doesn’t help them.

But since we’ve already opened up this can of worms, let’s talk about mind control. S&$% like charm and dominate. And even s$&% like alignment-changing curses and love potions. Because I said I’m totally happy including even that s$&%. And that s$&% definitely does f$&% with agency.

Well, it does and it also doesn’t. But, before I address that, let me talk about the big honking problematic elephant in the room. I know full well some people really don’t like mind control s$&%. Like, it makes them genuinely uncomfortable. And it totally should. Because, again, it’s a really terrifying sort of violation. Some folks don’t want mind control s$&% in their games. That’s their opinion. And they’re entitled to play whatever games however they want to. I won’t tell them they’re wrong. But I also will not address the notion that mind control should be removed from everyone’s game. That it is, somehow, inherently wrong for me to include things in my game that make other people at other game tables uncomfortable. Or for publishers to include the possibility in their game systems. I am aware that the argument exists. It is outside the scope of this discussion. And it’s not an argument I find particularly compelling. Which is my polite way of saying “argue this bulls$&% somewhere else and keep it out of comment section.”

When it comes to mind control, the devil’s really in the details. It can be argued that mind control does rob a player of their agency over their character’s will. But it can equally be argued that mind control only interferes with the character’s ability to exercise their will. And in that sense, it’s no different from a perception screw. It’s all a matter of presentation.

Charm spells, for existence, generally alter a character’s perception. They see the succubus as a trusted ally, friend, confidante, or lover. The player’s free to react to those perceptions however they see fit, but they’re expected to go along with those perceptions. That’s another game-enabling agency limitation.

Of course, domination-type effects are different. When the vampire crushes the character’s will, the character’s a slave to the vampire. But, inside, the character’s will is still intact. He’s trapped. A prisoner in his own mind. His body obeys the vampire — he’s like a puppet — but he’s free to hate the vampire and plot his revenge and respond, internally, however he so desires. And when the magic’s broken, he’s free to revenge himself upon the vampire.

That’s why the various mind-control effects in D&D include various ways for the character to break free. Like repeated saving throws. That’s why there’s limits on what mind control can make a character do. Why spells break if someone’s forced to do something against their nature. Those aren’t just there for game balance or world flavor. They’re there to establish the fact that the character’s will is still intact. It’s still their own. It’s just trapped. Unable to manifest itself.

Presentation’s everything. It’s why some GMs can get away with this mind control s$&% and others can’t. And the presentation rule comes down to this:

As a GM, you dictate what the players’ characters know and what they perceive, but you can’t tell the players what to think or feel or choose. You can force a player character to act against their will, but you can’t dictate a player character’s will.

By the way, that’s why charm spells and love potions are totally fine, but you can’t roll interaction skill checks against PCs. A charm spell is an external force that warps a PC’s perceptions or makes them act against their will. But a Charisma (Persuasion) check is a matter of convincing a character to think, feel, or choose a certain way. And you can’t do that to a player character.

Likewise, when it comes to Charisma (Deception) checks and Passive Insight and s$&% like that, it’s okay to tell a player that their character doesn’t perceive any signs of deception. But you can’t force a player to actually believe something an NPC says. Even if it’s true.

This is okay:

Your character doesn’t see any signs that the guard’s lying to you.

This is not:

Your character believes the guard is telling the truth.

Presentation’s everything. But it’s also not a panacea. Remember when I said that agency is an emergent, holistic, feeling thing? Thing is, even if mind control doesn’t technically rob players of their agency, it does interfere with their ability to make manifest their will in the world. That is, to exercise their agency in a meaningful way. Once in a while, limiting a player’s ability to exercise their agency is fine. Presented properly. But do it too much and the players will eventually feel like they don’t have any effective agency. Yeah, they’re the masters of their characters’ wills, but that hardly matters if they spend most of the game trapped in their characters’ heads. That’s why all this s$&% with mind control and perception screws? It’s all best used occasionally. Sparingly. With a purpose.

Like presenting a compelling story or posing a challenging gameplay experience. Like that cool false hydra thing. Thanks for pointing me to it.

Faldohn asks…

What do you think about the Plot Points variant rule on DMG 269? Or similar systems that let the players shape the world or the narrative

I’m answering this as an afterthought. And only because the previous 3000 words provide all the context I need already. Hopefully, Faldohn, you didn’t skip down here just to see what I had to say to you. Because the answer’s in all the crap I said above. Hell, I probably don’t even need to say anything else. But I will.

For context, the Plot Points rule gives players these points they can spend to add elements or make declarations about the game world. Add NPCs, add plot twists, or even seize the GM screen and declare themselves game master. No. Really. And they’re pretty vague and underdeveloped compared to rules in other game systems that accomplish the same thing. That give the players some narrative control. You can find better examples in the works of Margaret Weis Productions and in the various Fate systems.

Narrative control’s a core assumption in some games. The earliest incarnations of Fate, for example, make it explicit even in character generation. Creating your character’s described as “writing the blurb on the back of a novel about your character’s first adventure.” And that exemplifies precisely how this sort of narrative control changes the base assumptions in the game. Because, in Fate’s games, the players aren’t really playing characters. They’re, effectively, playing authors who are telling stories about their characters. I s$&% you not.

Personally, I don’t truck with this s$&%. I expect my players to accept that their control only extends to their character’s wills, feelings, and choices. And to accept various “good of the game” constraints. If you go beyond that, you’re not really roleplaying anymore. You’re no longer imagining yourself as a character in a hypothetical situation and making the choices that character would make. Because you can make choices that that character couldn’t possibly make. You’re no longer aligned with your character’s will. You have to think outside your character’s head.

Now, don’t f$&%ing misunderstand me here like so many people have in the past. I’m not saying that’s bad or wrong. But it ain’t actually roleplaying anymore. It changes the game on a fundamental level. It changes the way the players engage with the game and it changes the feel of the gameplay experience. It turns it into a storytelling activity instead of a roleplaying game. That’s fine if you want it. But I don’t.

And the thing is, I’ve actually experimented a lot with different systems and subsystems that provide narrative control. And I’ve found that lots of players don’t seem to really want that s$&%. They don’t know what to do with it. But that makes sense. Because lots of players also don’t want to run games. If players wanted to write stories and shape worlds instead of playing characters, there’d be a lot more people willing to run games. And you can’t deny willing GMs are in short supply.

And people who are actually good at that s$&% are in even shorter supply.