Advice and Tips for Players and DMs/GMs
Curated by: RPG PHD (133 videos)
Dr. Ben discusses the psychology of blame, near-misses, and failure in TTRPGS (Episode #178). #dnd #pathfinder #ttrpg #wfrp Website https://rpgphd.com/ Discord https://discord.gg/3TATFrkfd RPG PHD swag!!! https://rpg-phd.myspreadshop.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089593636905 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rpg_phd/ Bluesky @rpg-phd.bsky.social Special thanks to Evelina for the thumbnail template, much appreciated!! 😊 Description Why does a failed dice roll ruin someone's whole session while another player shrugs it off and moves on? The answer isn't personality. It's psychology. In this video, we apply three behavioral science frameworks to the experience of failure at the tabletop: Loss Aversion (Kahneman and Tversky), Attribution Theory (Heider and Kelley), and Regret Theory with Counterfactual Thinking (Loomes, Sugden, Kahneman, and Miller). Together they explain how much a failure hurts, where the blame gets aimed, and why some failures echo for weeks while others disappear by the next session. Whether you're a GM trying to design stakes that land, a player trying to understand why you're still thinking about that roll from three sessions ago, or a designer building systems that produce meaningful emotional investment, these frameworks give you a toolkit that goes well beyond "failure is part of the game." Tags tabletop RPG psychology, TTRPG game design, GM advice, loss aversion TTRPG, attribution theory tabletop, why failure hurts RPG, RPG PHD, game master tips, player psychology RPG, behavioral economics tabletop, regret theory game design, counterfactual thinking RPG, TTRPG emotional investment, RPG session design, how to design stakes RPG, near miss game design, D&D psychology, tabletop game theory, RPG academic analysis, game design theory, TTRPG failure mechanics, RPG player engagement, game master psychology, D&D game design, tabletop roleplaying theory --------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro 00:57 Loss Aversion 07:10 Attribution Theory 11:31 Regret Theory 15:00 Pitfalls 17:59 Step by Step guide 20:42 Thoughts? -------------------------------------------- Works Cited Heider, Fritz. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. John Wiley & Sons, 1958. Kahneman, Daniel, and Dale T. Miller. "Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives." Psychological Review, vol. 93, no. 2, 1986, pp. 136–153. Kelley, Harold H. "Attribution Theory in Social Psychology." Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, edited by David Levine, vol. 15, University of Nebraska Press, 1967, pp. 192–238. Kelley, Harold H. "The Processes of Causal Attribution." American Psychologist, vol. 28, no. 2, 1973, pp. 107–128. Loomes, Graham, and Robert Sugden. "Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice Under Uncertainty." The Economic Journal, vol. 92, no. 368, 1982, pp. 805–824. Mezulis, Amy H., et al. "Is There a Universal Positivity Bias in Attributions? A Meta-Analytic Review of Individual, Developmental, and Cultural Differences in the Self-Serving Attributional Bias." Psychological Bulletin, vol. 130, no. 5, 2004, pp. 711–747. Ross, Lee. "The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process." Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, edited by Leonard Berkowitz, vol. 10, Academic Press, 1977, pp. 173–220. Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk." Econometrica, vol. 47, no. 2, 1979, pp. 263–292. Music and Sounds: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/Erdns8jA3D/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/MRyCi54t7M/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/AQBpWzOsID/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/yCvSWOBYUe/ Music: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/c0X3Z8H8uZ/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/yCvSWOBYUe/ Music: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/bWHPOsoaql/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/uDAHxg3lIS/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/e3mQvva1kZ/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/e3mQvva1kZ/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/e3mQvva1kZ/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2dLRmfzdA5/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/jrNZjxJQqZ/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/c0X3Z8H8uZ/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/tracks/8c51eca6-dbb5-4925-b4ec-7ee51630322e