If the player says I look around the room for an escape route and you add "you stare at the window wishing you could escape through it" then you've subtley changed the players stated course of action. Is what you have changed compatible with the original stated action yes. But it's still not what the player originally stated. This kind of stuff is done all the time, mostly for comic relief. But, it's still having the PC do something additional that the player didn't state, especially considering there are numerous ways the PC could have looked for an escape route without stopping at the window to day-dream about escaping through it. Thus, it is an additional action.
Re-read the example. You're interpolating things (eg "day-dreaming") that aren't there. From Apocalypse World, pp 155-56:
“I read the situation. What’s my best escape route?” She rolls+sharp and . . . misses. “Oh no,” she says.
I can make as hard and direct a move as I like. . . .
“You’re looking out your (barred, 4th-story) window as though it were an escape route,” I say, “and they don’t chop your door all the way down, just through the top hinge, and then they lean on it to make a 6-inch space. The door’s creaking and snapping at the bottom hinge. And they put a grenade through like this—” I hold up my fist for the grenade and slap it with my other hand, like whacking a croquet ball.
“I dive for—”
Sorry, I’m still making my hard move. . . . “Nope. They cooked it off and it goes off practically at your feet. Let’s see … 4-harm area messy, a grenade. You have armor?”
Of course the GM's descriptions
aren't the same as what the player stated. (1) No one declares an action from the point of view of failing it. (2) If the GM could never do anything but restate what the player said, it would be a boring and somewhat repetitive game.
But the GM is not having the character perform a different action. The GM is just providing additional descriptions of the player's stated action of
reading the situation to identify her best escape route.
when it comes to roleplay - any moment you take away from the player and force his character (via out of fiction means) to perform some action or behave some way - that's depriving your player of a moment in which he can roleplay. You're depriving him of a moment in which he can really make his vision of his character come to life.
If you tell the player
You're paralysed. I'll tell you when you can act again. or
You're charmed. You think Orcus is your best friend you're also depriving the player of a moment in which s/he can really make his/her vision of the character come to life.
The fact that the infiction reason for the PC doing such-and-such is ensorcellment has no bearing on the real-world reality that you are pointing to.
Whether
roleplaying =
make my vision of the character come alive is a further question. This is the first post where you've suggested that particular definition. It obviously differs from other definitions that have been put forward, such as
portraying a particular character in an imagined world by imposing an authorship constraint on what counts as roleplaying.
pemerton said:
I reiterate what [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] says about Bob. Whether or not it can be roleplayed, and counts as roleplaying, has nothing do with the stuff the GM (or other player) is imagining as s/he tells you what has changed about your PC's mental states.
No idea what you are saying here. I've read it 3 times and still am drawing a blank.
Whether the GM, when s/he tells you what has changed about your PC's mental states, is imagining
a winking maiden or
a might sorcerer or
Ovinomancer's Bob or
the Orcus of my earlier paragraph makes no difference to whether or not you, as a player carrying out the GM's directions, are playing a role. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren't. That depends on what it means to
play a role. But whatever
playing a role means, it is not affected by what is happening in the imagination of the GM when s/he tells you what your player should do now.
For instance, if
playing a role includes the authorship constraint you have stated, whether or not that constraint is honoured doesn't change because the GM imagines magical pixies rather than subtle maidens when s/he tells you that your PC's heart is softened.
It's not more invasive to my authority for charm to work. It's far less invasive. Since there is an in game mechanic for the control, it's just another non-invasive thing. Only control where this is no in game reason for it to exist is invasive, because it takes away control that I should have.
<snip>
Having an in game reason for taking control is very different than not having it.
I don't think this refutes anything [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] said. Rather, it confirms it!
First, but somewhat tangentially, when the maiden winks at you and melts your heart, there is an ingame reason why your heart is melted - namely, the maiden's wink!
Second, the idea that you
should have control over your PC
except when an ingame magical enchantment effect occurs, is just reiterating the D&D categories that Ovinomancer said you were not seeing beyond. It's not stating a reason. It implies, for instance, that a fantasy game in which players spend about half the time playing their PCs as charmed is less "invasive" than a modern-day game in which players, for a few minutes each session, find the GM adding descriptions to what their players do, triggered by failed checks and with the purpose of reflecting things going wrong. But what is there about the logic of RPGing that explains this classification? Nothing that I can see. The activity is neutral vis-a-vis the fiction it engages with.
If the half-the-session charmed game is OK and fun, and a fine example of RPGing, then it doesn't make any sense for it suddenly to become an example of
not-RPGing because we relabel all the fiction (so the charms become eg cute winks and charming voices). That would be a change in aesthetic, but not a fundamental change in the activity.