Story Telling And Player Agency

tim-cain narrative-design player-agency storytelling rpg-design game-design-philosophy

Abstract

Problem: When designing a computer RPG, storytelling and player agency are inherently in tension — how should a designer decide which takes priority?

Approach: Tim Cain draws on his background as a tabletop game master turned CRPG developer to explain both approaches, their telltale signs, and common pitfalls when the decision isn't made consciously.

Findings: Neither story-first nor agency-first is the "right" way, but the designer must choose one at the very start of development. Failing to commit leads to frustrated players and confused teams. Each approach has distinct design consequences for character creation, world structure, NPC design, and endings.

Key insight: The single most important decision in RPG design is made before a single mechanic or story element exists: are you telling your story, or enabling the player's story?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCO4n6nMXOo

1. The Fundamental Tension

Storytelling and player agency are "a little contradictory" — at some point, any CRPG designer must consciously decide which takes precedence. Tim's bias is firmly toward player agency, which he traces to his origin as a tabletop RPG game master rather than a writer. He was used to creating settings and letting players loose in them, with stories emerging naturally from play.

This is also why he recommends designing RPGs in the order: setting → story → system mechanics. If you think of story first, that's valid — but it produces a fundamentally different kind of game.

2. What Story-First Games Look Like

You can identify a story-priority RPG by its characteristics:

  • Limited character creation — little or no freedom to choose class, race, gender, name, or background. Sometimes the only choice is a minor specialization or starting trait.
  • Linear progression — Act 1 must complete before Act 2 begins, each act has a specific ending, and the game concludes in essentially one way.
  • Unkillable NPCs — key characters are protected because the story depends on them to convey information to the player.
  • Identical player experiences — when players compare notes afterward, their stories are nearly the same. The only variation is in combat tactics or item usage, not in narrative outcomes.

3. What Agency-First Games Look Like

Tim's preferred approach, visible in Fallout, Arcanum, and The Outer Worlds:

  • Blank-slate characters — the player defines who they are. Only a minimal narrative hook explains why the game starts (e.g., Fallout's "you drew the short straw," Skyrim's unnamed crime and pending execution).
  • Open world — go anywhere, though some areas will "smack you down" if entered too early.
  • Non-linear quests — encounter NPCs in any order, complete their stories in any order, choose sides in conflicts.
  • Killable NPCs — including the final villain. You can oppose the big bad, join them, kill them and take over, or destroy their operation entirely.
  • Wildly different player experiences — when players compare stories, they've had fundamentally different journeys and endings.

3.1. Examples From Tim's Games

  • Fallout — always ended with being kicked out of the Vault, regardless of choices. Tim later felt this was too constrained.
  • Arcanum (Temple of the protagonist's journey) — the big bad demon at the bottom could be killed, joined, worked for, or dominated if the player had been sufficiently evil along the way ("You think you're evil? Look at what I did. You work for me now.").

4. How To Mess It Up

The worst outcomes happen when a game promises one approach but delivers the other:

  • Meaningless character creation — letting players build wildly different characters (criminal, royalty, specialist) but then having none of it matter. Everyone is treated the same way, and the story unfolds identically.
  • False open worlds — implying freedom of exploration but blocking progress with invisible gates ("You haven't finished everything in this area. You cannot continue forward."). A few gates are acceptable; a chain of them reveals a linear game pretending to be open.
  • False choices — offering the player options for how to resolve quests, but funneling every path to the same conclusion. Helping or opposing an NPC leads to the same outcome. This is the most frustrating pattern because it explicitly promises agency and then revokes it.

5. The Core Principle

Before writing a single mechanic or story beat, ask: What is the most important thing to you?

  • Your story, your way — powerful, impactful, a perfectly valid way to make an RPG.
  • The player's story, their way — powerful in a different way, equally valid.

Neither is right or wrong. Both have audiences who prefer them. But the decision must be made first, because every subsequent choice — setting, story structure, system mechanics, NPC design, quest design, endings — is constrained by it. An uncommitted or unconscious choice leads to a confused team and a frustrated player base.

There is no right way to make an RPG. There are just many bad ways to implement a decision you never clearly made.

6. References