RAW Mind Control

12 Oct, 2026

Should you play a TRPG system, or a module for one, exactly as written?

One perspective (that I attribute to Luke Crane & Jared Sorensen, but I don’t know if they got it from someone else) is that “game design is mind control.”

What seems to be meant by that statement is that a designer can shape not only how players behave, but also what they think and feel:

• through the presentation of the rules and play materials,
• the incentives players are given,
• mechanisms of player action and feedback
• and the prescribed rituals of play itself.

If the game is a precise magical formulae, then we should follow it exactly to get the of experience reproduction promised.¹ For a certain kind of compatible and absorbed player, I think this model is accurate. When we watch a film, most of us do not notice all the little finesses of composition, editing and sound that shape our experience and provoke predictable reactions. Game designers can pull tricks like that, easily.

However, I prefer a weaker version of the “mind control” hypothesis. When it comes to TRPGs, I think that game design is persuasion.

A user of a TRPG system or module, compared to a film watcher, will tend to be more sophisticated in their practice. Not least because we ask TRPG players to do a considerable amount of game design on their own to finish implementing the designer’s game.

Therefore, rather than the image of a director handing down their art to an audience, I like the model of a game designer engaging their peers in argument.

The game designer's job is to identify who they are persuading (because all good arguments have a recipient in mind). Then they must make players understand and believe their argument through any or all of the elements of persuasion.

You might be persuaded by vibes, or the author’s reputation, or a few punchy revelations, or an intricate logic which rests on each premise and deduction to reach its conclusion.

This model lets us answer our original question with more nuance. What you should do with game system or module depends on if and how you have been persuaded. You ought to know better than anyone if an alteration will preserve your belief in that particular game. If you don’t know, then you have to ask yourself if the designer has actually persuaded you yet.