Josh Sawyer's RPG design rule: cap player agency to contain narrative scope
Summary
Obsidian's Josh Sawyer argues RPGs work best when players control a lot, but not everything
Applied across Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity 2, and Pentiment, the rule keeps key outcomes outside player reach
Bounded agency is a scope control mechanism: fewer branches, fewer resolution paths, predictable content surface
"You can control a lot, but you can't control everything"
01
Imperfect choices are the design goal, not a failure state
Sawyer frames "imperfect choices" as the intended emotional mechanism of RPGs, not a limitation
The designer's job is to force prioritization under constraint, not to let players resolve everything
"Even in a fantastic world, there are still going to be powers that are beyond you"
02
Two shipped Obsidian titles cap agency at a defined ceiling
In Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, the god Eothas cannot be stopped, and the player is told so directly
Sawyer confirms this counters the "I'm the protagonist, I can literally do anything" expectation
In Pentiment, the player must accuse someone of murder despite the crime being genuinely unsolvable
"Is it most important to me that I condemn the person I think did it? [...] it's not easy"
03
Bounded agency is a scope control mechanism for narrative RPGs
Every outcome outside player control is an outcome that needs no scripted resolution path
Unlimited agency creates exponential branching: each choice point multiplies downstream content requirements
Sawyer's model trades completionist fantasy for a bounded decision space that is fully authored and scoped
For investors evaluating narrative RPG budgets, defined agency ceilings reduce content surface to build and maintain
04
Reception risk: players may read the constraint as stripped agency
Sawyer acknowledges "varying levels of success or favorable or unfavorable reception" across his applications
Deadfire's Eothas storyline drew criticism from players who felt the design was arbitrary, not meaningful
Studios adopting this model must telegraph the agency ceiling clearly or the intent reads as restriction
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COMPILED BY GAMES ATLAS EDITORIAL
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