Choices and Consequences in RPG Games

Role-playing games have come a long way since their debut back in 1974 with Dungeons & Dragons. What once started as a simple pen-and-paper game to unite a couple of friends became one of today’s most popular gaming experiences. The result of this evolution is a beautiful world that people can explore to escape their daily worries, experience adventures together, and roleplay whatever kind of characters their hearts desire. It’s a place where their identity is validated and their choices matter.

A role-playing adventure is a game of choice and consequence. Players make many choices. They choose skills for combat, armor to buy, stats to level up, and alliances to make. Every choice impacts the experience. This is what makes the genre so unique and refreshing. Thanks to its flexible nature, RPGs allow players to make real choices. These choices can impact the story, affect character development, and lead to interesting consequences.

It’s All About Agency

Nonlinear narratives have a common concept: “the illusion of choice.” This illusion prevents players from understanding their true impact on the world. Players only see their real agency when the illusion breaks. This often happens when replaying a game and choosing different options. Developers craft most RPGs to blur this notion, often due to time and budget constraints.

However, tabletop RPGs lack that limit, aside from the DM’s own time and creativity. DMs can give players a level of freedom unmatched by any other media. Robert Wardhaugh’s campaign is a good example. This adventure started 41 years ago and never stopped. His players can become politicians, influence nations, command armies, and build families. They can become legends, go on revenge plots, and much more. These characters have complete agency to shape the entire story as their reward.

Unraveling Your Hero

From a DM’s perspective, plotting is about testing a character’s resolve. This works best by using daring consequences. This could be a dilemma that shakes a paladin’s faith. It might be the need to sacrifice a loved NPC to stop a war. Or it could be a conflict between two equally special parties. Sometimes, a ticking clock alone adds enough pressure for careful thought. Regardless of the method, players should feel on edge during important decisions. This means they’ll worry more about the consequences. It also makes the outcomes less predictable.

Shaping a character’s story is more than an agglomeration of decisions. It hardly ends with the character’s background. Their decisions during the adventure will shape who they are. It also shapes how others remember them. Sometimes, it’s hard to separate the character’s intentions from the player’s. RPGs are a great sandbox to learn exactly that. This helps you find out more about a character. You learn how they behave and what they want, apart from the player. Curiously, therapists now use tabletop RPGs. They are a way to deal with personal challenges in a safe, controlled environment. They also help players learn more about themselves.

Creating a Safe Space

Sometimes, consequences won’t align with the players’ expectations, and in the worst-case scenario, it can surface trigger topics. Maybe one character does something that makes one of the players very uncomfortable. Maybe the DM has a plot that is too heavy for some players to bear. This is hardly a matter of moral choices. It’s about making people feel comfortable when playing an adventure with their friends. Because of that, it’s always important for the DM to talk to their players about what they expect from the adventure, and if any of them feel uncomfortable with a specific topic. RPGs are about experimentation and freedom. Consequences can punish a character; however, they should never punish the person behind them.

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