Have you ever wanted to be bad? To break the unwritten rules?
The rules of etiquette around TTRPGs are critically important to keeping a game fun for everyone at the table. But at their most strict, they can be limiting for the story potential. The thing that makes the most interesting story isn’t always what’s the most fun at the table, and sometimes you have to compromise- and you should pretty much always choose player experience. But is it possible to have both?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about “safety tools.” What they are, what they’re supposed to do, the pros and cons of various specific tools. (My personal favorite right now is the Palette Grid by Jay Dragon). A lot has been said about them by other folks, but I’m interested in talking about a broader context they exist within: Permission structures.
Today I’m going to dig into what you’re allowed to do in a game. Not just by the rules of the game, but by the other people at the table. When, why, and how do we get permission to do stuff that we usually wouldn’t? Understanding when, why, and how we get permission will also help make anxious or new players more comfortable at the table.
“That Guy” vs the social contract
We’ve all heard the stories of “that guy” at the table. The player who has their own idea of fun and doesn’t care about the fun of anyone else at the table. I’ve been really lucky to only have that kind of experience once, but it was a catastrophe. Any good, experienced player will tell you the phrase “that’s what my character would do” is almost always an excuse to deflect the consequences of being a jerk.
In these cases, the players are acting without permission or without consent. While many of these stories come from personality clashes “above table,” a fair number of them come down to a violation of the social contract of the game.
What is a social contract?
The social contract is the set of rules, spoken or unspoken, that everyone agrees to abide by. A tacit agreement that as long as you follow these rules, so will I. And if you break the social contract, you are no longer protected by it, and will face social consequences.
By and large humans are terrified of social rejection and ostracism, so it’s usually an efficient enforcement mechanism.
When we say “contract,” we are being metaphorical; it’s not a literal contract anyone physically signs. But it is important be explicit about what is and is not acceptable, especially with new players or a new group. This is a defense mechanism developed out of necessity and something I highly, highly recommend.
This is one of the most pervasive sources of permission in games. If we’ve all already agreed that something is allowed, then it’s ok to do, even if normally you would hesitate for fear of social consequences.
Session 0: defining the social contract
One of the major reasons for running a session 0 is to establish the social contract explicitly, rather than relying on implicit assumptions. What are the expectations of player behavior and game content? This contract puts limits on what players can do above table and in game in order to make sure everyone has a good time at the table.
This is what “safety tools” are built to do- to pose questions to everyone at the table that force them to spell out the bounds of the social contract they will be bound by. Because every group redefines the social contract with every game, the things that are acceptable change every game, and so if you don’t perform this step, players can have wildly misaligned expectations, through no fault of their own!
Even with the same group of players, in a game about the tension between desperate criminals trying to survive in a corrupt and broken world, it might be ok to harm an NPC tied to another player’s backstory. But in a more lighthearted game, or a game focused on family, that would be totally unacceptable.
In this example, it’s not just about setting the right tone, though that is a factor. It’s also because different games have different sources of fun.
Social contract side-effects
People-pleasing
One major problem with using the social contract to enforce norms around a game is that the looming threat of social consequences casts an outsized shadow over some players. This can result in some unfortunate side-effects that can be difficult to overcome for both players and game masters.
For example, some players might diminish their own preferences to appease other players out of fear of stepping outside the bounds of the social contract. Or players might assume different unspoken rules. Either of these might lead to one player dominating the spotlight simply because they are less constrained in what they feel they have permission to do. In these cases, it’s important to find ways to give these players the permission they need to act.
This might seem like a challenge limited to particularly anxious players. But in some cases, every player might be overly cautious.
Consensus formation
I’ve had experiences like this time and time again. In a recent game of Doomsong in which I was a player, the GM confronted us with a simple situation: There’s an undead gravedigger standing in the middle of the road. It was our job as characters to deal with this, and we would be derelict in our duties if we didn’t. But we were worn down from an exhausting mission and weren’t confident we could deal with it unscathed. And so we discussed what to do… for what felt like forever. The game ground to a halt and the GM had to step in and push us forward, and in the end we left the road and gave it a wide berth.
In a post-session chat, multiple players independently admitted that their character would have wanted to rush in and deal with it head on. But nobody wanted to be responsible for putting everyone else in danger. None of us wanted to violate the social contract.
We didn’t feel confident enough to take a decisive action without consulting the table, and it hurt everyone’s fun and the pace of the game. We felt like we needed permission we didn’t have. This is because we each independently made assumptions about the social contract that was more restrictive than what made sense for the game. After that session we agreed: we were ok with individual player characters taking risky or reckless actions. We just might not always follow them into danger. We decided we were more interested in exploring the consequences of that in character than making sure the team is always of one mind.
A skilled GM can mitigate problems like this with good spotlight management. One tip I picked up recently is to always throw to a specific player, rather than to the table at large to avoid these moments of collective hesitation. But a well-designed game can go a long way towards giving the players permission without requiring that extra effort from the game master.
Why be bad?
So when do we want to push against the bounds of things we might normally assume are forbidden by the social contract or “anti-fun?”
The simple answer is that sometimes it’s fun to explore that kind of story. If all the players at the table agree, it can be a blast to play a game full of betrayal and interpersonal conflict. In fact, a huge number of indie games are built specifically to explore these themes. Look at Monsterhearts 2, a game that explores the messy drama and angst between teenage monsters. Many of the game’s rules are designed to push the characters pressure-cooker of emotions, and it’s delicious. The ways characters can hurt and manipulate one another is a core part Monsterhearts 2. But they certainly not be acceptable in a heroic party of fantasy adventurers!
But as is the case for any type of social norms, the answer gets more complicated than that.
A note of caution: Bleed
It must be said that many of the things experienced players assume as part of the social contract of being a “good player” are there for a reason. There’s a concept in tabletop games known as “Bleed.” (This is another topic that other folks have written a lot better about than I can right now, and if my laptop was working I would include some links here). Bleed, simply put, is when the emotions a player’s character “bleed” out into the real world, or vice versa.
The things we experience in a game can often feel just as real as the things that happen to us in our lives. So any time you peel back layers of that social contract to explore types of story, the risk of someone actually getting hurt increases. While it may be fun and interesting to tell a story about being betrayed by a friend, actually being betrayed by a friend feels really bad. And if you’re not prepared for that eventuality, it can lead to a bad time at the table for everyone.
This is part of why so many of the games that explore these types of themes come with well-defined safety tools. Systems like the X-card, Lines and Veils, and running a session 0 go a long way to help mitigate these risks.
So what can we do about it?
Permission and Consent
There’s an important distinction between permission and consent. Permission, by and large, comes from a position of authority. Consent comes from an agreement with a peer. For example, I might ask the game master for permission to use an ability in a way that bends the rules. I might ask another player for consent to steal something from their character.
In many cases, if a player has both permission and consent to take an action, it can even go outside the bounds established in session zero- though one should approach such cases with extreme caution!
Consent can only come from one place- the person whom the action affects. If you want to do something that affects another player, you need to have that player’s consent in order for that action to take effect in the fiction. This is true even if it’s been discussed in session zero, or even if it’s been allowed in the past. If I, for example, try to steal something from another player character, it only makes the game more fun if they’re also interested in the outcome of that action. If they’re not, it just makes me a jerk if I try to do it without talking it over first.
Permission, though, is a bit more complex, because there are numerous sources of authority in a TTRPG.
Authority & sources of Permission
The Game Master
The most obvious source of permission in most TTRPGs is fairly obvious- the game master. It’s a common truism in TTRPGs that the game master has the final say in what happens in the game, regardless of what the rules or any other player says.
“The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren’t in charge. You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game.”
– 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide (2014)
But this isn’t a complete answer. Plenty of TTRPGs don’t have a game master or any kind of facilitator at all. And though it’s not obvious, there are other sources of authority in the game that can even supersede the game master.
The Social Contract
The second place we can get permission is something we’ve already discussed- from the social contract established by the group during session zero. For example, if we’ve all previously agreed that we want to allow PvP, as a player you don’t necessarily have to ask the game master for permission! They might push back if it isn’t an appropriate time (and you should still ask the target of your ire if they want to engage in that right now). But you already have permission.
In this way, establishing a clear social contract through your session zero is even more powerful than asking the game master for permission in the moment, because especially timid or unfamiliar players may feel they need permission before they even ask, or that being told “no” will come with social consequences. But if it’s already established that romancing an NPC is ok, someone who’d be embarrassed to ask might feel comfortable to just go for it!
The Game Designer
Finally, we come to the core of what I’ve been thinking about. How does the game designer signal to the players what they are allowed to do in a game?
The simplest answer is: Write a rule for it. In the original edition of Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts 2, sex is explicitly allowed by default through “Sex Moves.” By implementing unique effects for each playbook which trigger when your character has sex, it grants players permission to explore that topic in the game, unless the players agree to re-flavor or ignore those rules (for example, I’ve seen groups that reflavor those moves as “intimacy” moves rather than specifically “sex” moves).
As another example, a rule could have a special case when acting on a player character; for example, in Dungeons and Dragons, there is no rule for persuading another player character, but in Masks: a New Generation, the move “Provoke someone” has a special case for being used on another player:
For PCs:
On a 10+, both.
On a 7-9, choose one.
• if they do it, add a Team to the pool
• if they don’t do it, they mark a condition
This gives the players at the table permission to make this move against other players’ characters. Importantly, this move does not actually require consent of the target to initiate. Why? Because the target of the move still has the choice whether to act or not. A success on this role does not force the target’s hand, it gives them an incentive to take that action.
And that brings us to an important part of permission structures in a game. Incentives.
That’s right, this whole post is a sneaky way for me to talk about designing incentives again.
In my recent blog post about incentives in horror TTRPGs, I talked about the different effects different types of incentives can have. Incentives can give a player something or take something from them. And that thing could be good or bad for the character. But no matter the incentive, if it encourages people to act in a particular way, it creates implicit permission to act in that way.
(As an aside, this is part of why not all systems are right for every table. If a player is given permission and incentivized to take some action forbidden by the social contract, it creates friction between the players and the game. At best, it makes the game less fun than it could be, and at worst could cause real conflict and hurt between players.)
For example, to go back to Masks: a New Generation, if a character has marked the condition Angry, they suffer a -2 penalty to the moves “comfort or support” and “pierce the mask.” This character is too angry to consider other people’s emotions or motivations- and the mechanical penalty incentivizes the player to play along. For a player in this situation it might be more polite to help someone who is hurting or try to understand a situation. But because of the penalty to doing so, the player is given permission to act rashly and disregard others’ feelings.
Doubling up on the incentive, however, is the way it is cleared: “To clear Angry, hurt someone or break something important.” This is effectively two incentives: You gain something bad if you act against the condition (a -2 penalty) and you lose something bad if you play along (clear the condition). But it also gives the player permission to hurt someone or break something.
Denying permission
The game designer can also deny players permission. As easily as we allow something we can forbid it. As above, we can strictly deny something: “Player characters cannot attack other player characters” is a very easy rule to imagine putting into a game.
However, as a designer, we have to be careful what we accidentally deny through implication. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, and something I see frequently in older TTRPGs and games from inexperienced designers.
The pitfall is this: If you explicitly allow one character to do something, you implicitly disallow all other characters from doing that thing.
For example, in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the Thief class had the ability to pick locks. However, because this ability was given to the Thief, no other character would be able to pick a lock. If the Thief wasn’t given this ability, in theory any character could attempt to pick a lock. Without specific rules for picking locks, a game master could grand permission to a player to attempt it making a ruling based on the existing rules. But because this ability is given to the Thief and them alone by the game designer, it would be unfair to the Thief if just anyone could do it!
Likewise, if a game has, for example, an ability that any character can take that grants the ability to drive a car, by implication any character that does not have that ability cannot drive. Without that ability in the game, one could make the assumption based on context whether a given character would know how to drive.
This can be used to positive effect as well- in Blades in the Dark, a character can unlock the ability to punch ghosts. By implication, this means that a character without that ability cannot punch ghosts. (The actual rule is a bit more nuanced than that). It’s a very elegant way to tell a player something that they can’t do: Tell them they can’t do it yet.
But when we give specific characters permission to do something as part of character creation, we also deny all other characters permission to do that thing. So we have to be careful what abilities we make exclusive!
Awkward denouement
Unfortunately, my laptop is in the shop and I’m not going to get it back until next week, so I don’t have a great conclusion written up to put here. BUT! In my next game design post (after the next Far Lands update) I will break down the different types of incentives you can put into a game and the effects they each have.
For now, open up a game you like and take a look at some of the rules. Ask yourself if the rule allows you to do something you wouldn’t assume you could do or forbids you from doing something you would have otherwise assumed you could.
Also read up on safety tools. They’re important.