With spooky season upon me, I find myself gravitating back to grittier and at times more punishing table top RPGs like Call of Cthulhu and Ten Candles. Both games have the energy of a horror film about them, the players are the protagonists in a story about a massive unstoppable force that’s poised to destroy everything they hold dear. Mechanically, both stack the odds deeply in the “big bad’s” favor. In both, game masters generally encourage players to not become emotionally attached to their characters as death looms at every turn.
But despite these surface level similarities, I feel that they couldn’t be more different tonally from each other. This difference I believe hinges strongly on the element of player agency in the game.
In all table top role playing games, player agency is a delicate line that the game master has to tip toe along. Too much player agency and the game will lose its driving force, the plot and world that engaged the players falling to the side in favor of momentary fancies of the most vocal player at the table. Too little player agency and the game plays out more like a linear video game, or worse, a fan fiction of the game master’s favorite media tropes. A balance of player control and game master control keeps the tension and pressure on the story line without crushing the player’s enjoyment and creativity with their characters.
If we take a look at the two games I mentioned earlier, we can see how this twists the energy of each game. Call of Cthulhu is based on the writings of HP Lovecraft and features cults and monsters levels of magnitude more powerful and knowing than the players ever can hope to be. The players in reality have very little influence on the course the story takes outside of key pivotal moments. Which tracks, you wouldn’t expect a typical beat cop to stand a chance against an international cult worshiping an awakened old god head on. Instead, players have to embrace unexpected opportunities to nudge the story off a disaster path, maybe replacing a cursed idol with a fake or taking a cult leader out for drinks before the night of a ritual to lessen his effectiveness. The lack of agency adds a feeling of dread, hopelessness, and, at times, frustration.
Ten candles on the other hand tends to have a feeling of hope against the odds, bittersweet sadness, and catharsis. Ten candles centers on a group of players who are up against an entity that’s unstoppable and defined through play rather that set up front. The rules are that scene length is dictated by players dwindling luck and the burn time of generic tea candles, plus that all players die by the games end regardless of actions. With this in mind you might think that players have less agency, but in actuality the game is set up to allow players to rally against their impending doom in a spectacular display rather than being crushed beneath a gods foot. Players can make rolls to handle situations however they like, and playing true to their character grants them additional dice to even their odds. They can also choose for their character to go out on their terms, perhaps improving the state of the world in exchange for their characters life knowing the end is nigh. The collaborative storytelling at the heart of the system creates a surprising amount of agency for everyone at the table. Though we know that we cant take our character with us after the game, we can tell their story in a way that does them justice.
Player agency takes Ten Candles, something that sounds like a depressing slog on paper, into a heartfelt and exciting experience. And stripping out player agency takes Call of Cthulhu from a potentially fun and insane tour of classic literature into a fight against a game master and predestined story. One is not better than the other, but despite the similar desperate setting, the outcomes couldn’t be more different to me.
A word of advice to new and soon to be game masters for these games: talk to your players ahead of time about expectation for agency within the narrative.
DaiLynn Dietz 