The game I made was an alteration of the TTRPG Everyone is John called Everyone is Special Agent John which followed John as an undercover CIA agent. Nguyen (2020) describes that “We can adopt new ends, which will guide our actions for the duration of the game, and then drop them in an instant.” (p. 5) In the case of Everyone is John, the ends is to win by getting as many points as you can no matter what so that you can beat the other players. However I wanted to alter the player agency in my version. When talking about war games Imperial and Risk Nguyen (2020) states “the game’s goals are set up in a peculiar way. The game tells you to care not one whit about the fates of the countries or their victories in war, but only about the total amount of cash that you have at the end of the game.” (p. 58), which also applies to Everyone is John, the game frames player agency to care only about completing their obsession and not worrying about what circumstances it puts John or the other players in. So by adding rule systems that cause players to act with consideration to John’s well being and by including a narrative I sought to frame player agency to take up the ends of keeping John safe and completing the story whilst keeping the obsessions and the goal of beating other players as secondary.

I think the most successful aspect of my finished work was the way in which it engaged players. I was very successful in framing the player agency to push them towards completing the goal of the narrative which was catching this criminal. It changed the game from one where players’ obsessions drove it forward to instead making the obsessions fun filler elements. When players didn’t know what to do in order to progress through the story they could act on their obsession which furthered the narrative and created funny situations which further engaged players. I believe I successfully framed player agency in a way which caused the obsessions to compliment the narrative through a unique play experience. I believe the most problematic part of my finished work was some of the redundancies. Schell (2008) encourages game designers to “make snap decisions about your design, commit to sticking with them, and immediately start thinking about the consequences of the choice you have just made” (p. 99) which I followed through the development of my game, even if I though rule additions might not work I ran them in my tests to see the results. My main concern was with the wanted system, after my playthrough with it in class I found it to be redundant and as a GM I was better at making my own decision on if police would show up or not. However when I ran it in the exhibition the wanted rules were a very good and engaging addition, working as originally intended. So I feel depending on the style of the players it can be useful or redundant.

If I were to keep working on this piece I would further test the wanted system to get a better idea of if the rule contributes to framing player agency and thus if it should stay and change or be removed. Furthermore I would add more rules pertaining to combat as the games I ran had much less than intended, however I do acknowledge the risk of adding more combat is that it could take away from the funny social interactions the game creates. So that too would need to be play tested. Ultimately I would have liked to play test more rule additions to try and see if there is a way which I could create a much more unique style of play that would better suit framing player agency to follow the narrative than the regular Everyone is John rules would.

One key thing I learnt from my studio experience was how valuable it is to consider the work of your peers and to explore their ideas. Ultimately everyone in the studio had the same task but what everyone came up with and how they interpreted the brief was vastly different. Learning of the other works of the people in the studio such as Reverse Monopoly, Vampire, and Eldritch Project pushed me to challenge my view of what I could make and the way in which I could frame and alter player agency. Observing other’s works allowed me to be presented with ideas I hadn’t thought of before, which ultimately made me pick Everyone is John as the system to run this mystery style adventure in because I was shown that flipping something on its head doesn’t mean it won’t work. 

My key take away from working collaboratively was that it is integral to get the feedback and have multiple play tests in order to refine a piece of interactive work. Although I developed this work by myself, ultimately the people around me helped shape it into what it is. If I hadn’t gotten the feedback that Dungeons & Dragons was too restrictive of a system for the mystery I ran earlier in the studio I wouldn’t have looked at different systems which allowed me to better control player agency. Additionally, multiple play tests allowed me to implement this feedback and explore if it worked or not. Ultimately working collaboratively though play testing and receiving feedback is what allowed my work evolve into a piece which effectively altered player agency as intended.

Nguyen, C. T. (2020). Games : Agency As Art. Oxford University Press. 

Schell, J. (2008). The Art of Game Design : A Book of Lenses. CRC Press LLC.

My Major project is Everyone is Special Agent John, an altered version of Everyone is John a TTRPG in which the players all play as voices in a crazy man’s head, taking over his body to complete their unique obsessions to compete for points. However my version of the game puts the players in the head of Special agent John, an undercover CIA agent in 1986 Australia trying to foil a plot to assassinate the then prime minister Bob Hawk. The story will take John on a wacky adventures meeting famous Australian figures, living and dead all the while John tries to crack the case and act on his obsessions along the way.

Link to game resources:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GuetPHckLSpK998-0fu2ctdcrp4eusNxV7lnrlYv6BQ/edit?usp=sharing

For my game I ran an altered Version of Everyone is John following John as a CIA agent. My goal was to shift the players agency from purely competing, to wanting to keep John alive and complete a goal which was a mystery in this case. I believe that I succeeded in achieving this however not in the way I expected to. As a rule addition I introduced the Wanted level, which would dictate if John was being pursued by the police, and the damage level, which was a health system which increased the likelihood of a single attack killing John the more he gets hurt. The objective of these rules was to provide a consequence for making harmful and dangerous decisions, thus pushing player agency to protect John as no one wins if John is dead. However in practice I found them to be partially obsolete, the wanted system was taken from Everyone is Sir John’s guardian system however it didn’t translate well as in the mediaeval fantasy context of that game the guardians are summoned to hunt down John where as in the context of Melbourne in my game, police exist in the world always. It wouldn’t make sense for John to not be pursued by the police for killing someone in the street, so most crimes had a police response even without rolling. I think in future it would be better to remove this rule and have the GM just decide if the police would hunt John or not based on the context of his crimes, it would be more realistic and not give the players a false sense of what is going on in the world. I think damage worked better, it allowed me to figure out what would happen to John if harmed through chance. Having an increasing chance to dictate whether John lived or died keeps a sense of stakes which motivated a want to preserve John, as it’s possible he could die after 1 hit, unlikely but possible. I did allow for willpower to be used for these rolls which I don’t think was a good addition, it would in effect allow players to just “buy” health for John, in future I will remove that. Although health did motivate the players to protect John, the idea that he could die, with the implication being the CIA would kill him if he fails, never motivated the players to complete the goal. Based on the feedback the players enjoyed that there was a goal, it gave them something to do when they didn’t know what else to do. The actual goal itself was motivation enough. This made me realise that I could strip back the wanted feature and the threat of John being killed, as the players would still want to engage in the story I wrote particularly as it allows for more crazy situations to occur which is ultimately where the fun of the game comes from. Through adding the rules that John switches when an obsession is completed, or a skill check is failed, It engages players more by having them switch more as well as creating evolving situations. Ultimately I view this as a success, I think there is very little I failed to achieve as I effectively altered players agency to value John’s safety and complete their goal, leaving the competitive obsessions as secondary. Although there were some parts which I should omit in future as they proved unnecessary, such as the wanted level and using will points for Damage rolls.

My experiment centred around Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition; the aim was to adopt the social deduction elements of Ultimate Werewolf and the investigation of Cluedo, to create a Whodunnit style murder mystery one shot that changes each time it is played. Each player was given a motivation card, such as the murderer, or kleptomaniac, which would alter how they played the game. Nguyen explains “We can adopt new ends, which will guide our actions for the duration of the game, and then drop them in an instant.” (Nguyen, 2020, p. 5) my experiment sought to lean into this idea, through players being assigned a role at random which would then dictate their agency for that round. The ends of the players are dictated by whether they are the murder or an innocent, with the murderer wanting to place the blame on another person and the innocents wanting to solve the murder. What I wanted to achieve was a game that changed entirely every time it was run, with players agency being influenced by the random factors meaning no two games would play the same. What I ran was a stripped back version of this concept with only four rooms, two clues, and one red herring. In a previous journal entry, I explained “Ultimately DND is a game where the technicalities of rules come second to the interaction of role play.” (studio journal, 7/08/2025), as such I did little to cater to the specific quirks of Dungeons & Dragons and instead used the system to facilitate roleplaying which would drive players into thinking more deeply about the mystery. However, I believe that through the motivation system I included it took away from the roleplaying element as players sought to just find the character who had a motivation rather than put together all the pieces of the Mystery. In hindsight I realise that there was so little to work off that players had no reason to try and hear out the murder because there wasn’t much important information, it only took 1 piece of evidence to point fingers. Ultimately, I believe I failed to frame players agency through roleplaying to be deeply involved in the mystery as they instead went for the clearest solution. One piece of feedback I received was “somethin more for players to interact with [in the] rooms would spark more conversation” (Nicole, in-class feedback, 28/08/2025) which I do think would be a valuable addition to the game if I were to keep working on it. Including more details that either added depth to the world or prompted discussion would better promote roleplaying as a means to solve the mystery.  

Molly ran an altered version of Ultimate Werewolf called “Vampire”. The main gameplay mechanic of the game revolved around the “Vampire” (replacement for the Werewolf) who would alternate between killing and “draining”, which would turn another player into a Vampire, on every second night. I feel this experiment was very successful because it ran just as smoothly as the original game whilst offering a different style of play. I found it was much faster paced, as the Vampires could quickly outnumber the Villagers. I believe this would lend itself well to big groups. Additionally, the cycle for draining and killing added a lot of strategy for the Vampires to employ. As one card couldn’t be turned it meant they had one night where they were safe, so you had to be strategic with who you picked and when. This altered players agency by making them think more about setting up strategies if they were a Vampire, however it also meant that the Villagers never knew who they could trust because someone they believed was innocent last round could now be a Vampire. I think it was overall a success, but it could benefit from having more roles like the “Vampire Hunter” which are adapted to the unique game mechanics. For example, if the “Priest” couldn’t be turned and the “Vampire Hunter” instead couldn’t be killed then it would push Vampires to try and figure out the roles of all the players so they can strategize when they acted. I found myself thinking 1 or 2 rounds ahead as the Vampire in this game which I wouldn’t do as the Werewolf in Ultimate Werewolf, so I believe the way in which the game alters the players agency should be further explored to create a more complex experience. 

Thi Nguyen C (2020) Games : Agency As Art, Oxford University Press. 

Throughout the course so far, I have been really interested in seeing how the core texts we have explored relate to the games that we have been playing and others that I play myself, exploring the ideas of states of play and agencies. I think that the session of Dungeons and Dragons I played with the class helped me explore these ideas in mor depth by giving me a point of reference to tie all these ideas to. The idea of changing agency really interested me, “when we play games, we take on an alternate form of agency. We take on new goals and accept different sets of abilities.” (Nguyen 2020, p. 1) this applies to D&D through the way you shift your understanding of the world and the goals you have. Ultimately, I believe that this isn’t just dictated by the system of D&D but also your individual character and group play style. Ultimately you do adopt a state of play where you are attempting to immerse yourself effectively into the world and as this specific character, however specifically what you are attempting to achieve can differ. D&D essentially does boil down to completing quests and goals however each character being different may present a different way of this. I think in the game we played this was best shown at the end when we defeated the doppelganger and each character had a different idea of what to do. Some wanted to turn in the doppelganger for faking her own death, some wanted to let her go and frame the guard captain, and others had no moral leanings about it and instead wanted to do whatever paid the most. Either way this demonstrated how despite all being immersed in the state of play and adopting the same agency to value being immersed and involved in the world we all had different goals. I think that is one of the best things about D&D, because you can be doing the exact same thing as the people around you, roleplaying, whilst working against or with one another and either way it’s a win, because ultimately D&D isn’t about achieving a goal. D&D centres around quest however id argue the point isn’t to finish them. Nguyen says “in games, we can take up an end for the sake of the means” (2020, P.1) which is precisely what D&D centres around as the journey to the quest, even if it’s as trivial as getting into an argument with a gnomish drunkard at a tavern, is more valuable than the outcome of the final goal. In real life you would want to do something like slay a dragon for its fortune to live the rest of your life in luxury, in D&D once you slay the dragon that’s when the story and the fun ends. So ultimately being immersed in the state of play is about engaging in the build-up to the end of a quest and bringing different characters together to tell a story with ups and downs.  

This and the whole murder mystery quest gave me the idea of running a session of a werewolf style, each round is different, murder mystery experiment in D&D where one of the players is the murder trying to save themselves and claim innocence, whilst the other players are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. This idea needs a lot more work, however. Upon reflecting I think a Cluedo style mystery would work much better as it would cause far less meta gaming, because watching one player kill another but having your character not know because they weren’t there would ruin that mystery. However, I do like the fact of having a little bit of that, forcing players to separate the knowledge of themselves from their characters knowledge. Infact, I think that it could maybe make it more fun, shifting the players agency by prompting them to seek evidence to be able to prove and act upon what they know. This might take players out of character a bit, but it would reinforce the idea that your character’s knowledge isn’t your own. Ultimately I do plan to build on this idea, I belive looking at the rules of Cluedo will help me as I can then look to adapt those in part to the rules of D&D

Thi Nguyen C (2020) Games : Agency As Art, Oxford University Press.