Extreme Agency

This year I read both Dune and the Red Rising trilogy, enjoying both. There was something that nagged at the back of my mind as I read them. Paul and Darrow both border on the uncanny, not in terms of raw ability or even Chosen One powers, but more in terms of agency. Both protagonists share an almost superhuman ability to wreak their will upon the world around them. I don't simply mean that they have an iron will in the face of difficulty, but that they are able to assert their will and nothing other than another agent might stop them. It's not just that they are protagonists, other characters act as Extreme Agents in these stories and many others like them.

Extreme Agents are named characters. In these universes, all important events happen because one of a select few individuals made them happen. Extreme Agents are hyper-competent, unaffected by types of common failures that doom many of life's endeavors. They don't fail due to lack of tools, organization or cooperation. nor because of planning problems, or simply lacking the skills or wherewithal to succeed. Luke Skywalker will never be shot dead by random stormtroopers, nor will Sherlock Holmes fail to solve a case due to a lack of information.

In fact, the only thing that can stop an extreme agent is another extreme agent. In the case of Dune this is best exemplified in the idea of  'plots within plots within plots', like a chess game in which one player makes a move and the opponent responds until one side is defeated. It is clear in Red Rising as well. In Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle Kvothe's agency is so strong it seems at times that only he himself is capable of standing in his own way.

In Dune and Red Rising it not just the protagonists that are extremely effective. The world lore posits the idea that humans can be trained to levels of computer-like calculation and memory retention. In the Dune series this is a product of either extensive training or selective breeding or both. In Red Rising, genetic engineering and technological implants are at least partially responsible for raising humans to superhuman competence. 

Why are people in these stories so damned effective?

Let's consider the merits of this approach:

First, agency provides drama. The term drama comes from an ancient Greek term meaning 'to act / to do' and that meaning of performing a role has carried through to the term today. As an audience we watch a character perform an action intent on some goal and see the results play out. It is hard to even imagine what drama would look like without any agency (possibly Waiting for Godot?). Even the most marginal or ineffective characters have intentions and drama is derived from seeing whether those intentions are fulfilled.

Second, we see agency because we want to see agency. Humans are hard-wired to respond to narratives and they depend on a sense of control over their lives to provide happiness. People tend to attribute their success to personal agency even when it is due mostly to chance. Given that people tend to identify with protagonists it makes sense that they seek out stories with strong and effective central characters. 

Indeed, even when people are confronted with a series of seemingly unconnected events they will tend to create a story out of those events and they will imbue even inanimate objects with intentions and goals. 

Now clearly grocery lists and phonebooks are less compelling than actual stories with drama, but why use extreme agents rather than people who feel more realistic?

I suspect there are several reasons. First, a simple selection effect for higher levels of drama leads to characters with higher levels of agency. Let's look at an example:

In both Dune and Red Rising's settings martial combatants still use melee weapons because shield technology has limited the use of firearms. Individual duels between swordsmen are far more dramatic than massed combat with modern weapons because people respond to individual agents acting (and reacting) on their intentions. Each action is highly legible and these swings and parries are directly associated with the person doing them. When an infantryman shot by an unseen sniper is cut down, the bullet does not have agency, nor does the poor victim who didn't see it coming. 

These patterns of extreme agency aren't new, they are the stuff of legend. Mythic heroes doing battle with the gods couldn't be more powerful. Pierce Brown's characters intentionally echo heroes from epics like the Iliad and Roman history whereas Paul is positioned from the beginning of Dune as a messiah.

One final reason for extreme agency is fantasy. Secretly I think most of wish could be a hyper-competent problem solver. Reading stories of others like this temporarily lets us imagine ourselves to be more powerful than we are and escape the limits of reality. Indeed, I think the demands of realism are one of the main reason we don't see more extremely effective super-protagonists. Audiences craving verisimilitude rather than fantasy won't identify with them because they have very few of the challenges we face in everyday life.

Extreme Agency in Tabletop RPGs

Much digital ink has been spilled over Agency in RPGs. Generally people agree that agency is good. Agency has two components, first the choice to take action and second, the effectiveness of those actions.

In tabletop RPGs, the ability to make choices is of paramount importance. If drama is about watching others make choices and seeing the consequences of those choices, RPGs are about making the choices yourself. Players should be able to make meaningful choices. They should be given enough information to make those choices or at least have opportunities to learn the information through play. Railroading is an attempt by the game master to constrain player choices to fit a predefined set of anticipated outcomes. People tend to develop a consensus about the types of choices available to player characters (Can they choose to attack each other? Walk away from adventure? Start a haberdashery?) but generally freedom of choice makes for a better game.

Applying the second part of agency, effectiveness, in RPGs differs greatly from traditional narrative media (books, movies). The reason is that resolution mechanics provide rules so that RPG players can determine the consequences of their decisions. Game masters must balance the players' desire for control with a need for realism and coherence. At one extreme, players with ultimate agency are basically playing a story game, so powerful that they define the world around them. At the other end, players are totally ineffective, either acting as puppet to the whims of an omnipotent storyteller or randomly according to the dice. Falling back rules should help in finding balance, but there is considerable room for interpretation by personal style. 

The key to both of these aspects of agency is that pure randomness is not meaningful. Players should generally be able to make any choice they like and be able to affect the outcome of their actions, making choices that increase or decrease their effectiveness based on the rules and on verisimilitude with real world events. Games with too much control over effectiveness and consequences risk losing all stakes and meaning, dropping the players into a cardboard world.