Sure. I'm not disputing or even commenting on your preferences. I'm commenting on whether or not something is RPGing.
Thanks (taking this at face value and not as ironic/sarcasm). But what's happened to your tags?
Players choose what their PCs do . . .
- Thread starter pemerton
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FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
No idea what you are saying here. I've read it 3 times and still am drawing a blank.
You act like I deny this? Of course human's influence each other.
Yet 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.
It causes his PC to feel ever so slightly less like his and sometimes times can even cause a total disconnect from the character he's been envisioning as roleplaying and the one he is now being forced to roleplay.
So in your example of the maiden melting the PC's heart. The player can definitely roleplay with that truth in mind after you've established it. But establishing that truth deprived the player of a potentially meaningful opportunity to roleplay his character and bring the character he envisions his PC to be to life - as opposed to the character the DM is dictating him to be.
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.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Right, the mechanical means in most other games is that you fail a check. If you insist it must be a save against magic before you're comfortable, that seems like an overly specific exception that really isn't -- it's just an exception you've internalized as okay and so you wave it away when it comes up. Charm Person is actually far more invasive a mechanic into player authorities than most of the games others are talking about where the DM gets to say things about your character.
This is what I meant by missing the forest for the tree -- D&D has some very strong DM authorities that often run roughshod over the very limited player authorities. Those that are steeped in this have a really hard time seeing other play structures because they automatically try to orient everything to their understanding of D&D. Here, you reject the idea of the DM having control over your character unless it's one of those D&D ways, where the DM gets a huge amount of control over your character -- then it's fine. I fail to understand why you make this exception but hold out fiercely against much more minor transgressions in other games where the player has much more authority over the game in general than in D&D.
I mean, preference is preference, and other play structures aren't better objectively, but this now seems like an odd hill to defend -- that's it's okay for the DM to take away your player authority to be the sole declarer of actions for your PC if magic (which is no different than Bob Says).
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I'm disappointed. I was hoping there would be some sort of interesting or profound twist.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
This is wrong. 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. Charm does not take away control that I should have, because I shouldn't have it.
D&D, Middle Earth, Marvel Superheroes(the 80's version), I.C.E., World of Darkness, Gama World and more. This isn't even close to being something that I've encountered in D&D alone.
If by no different, you in fact mean very different, then I agree with you. Having an in game reason for taking control is very different than not having it.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
If I have taken on the role of a barbarian with X background, then whatever happens in game is a part of that role. If the DM cast charm person on me and I have to treat the caster as my good friend, I get to determine the actions of my character under that restriction. I am now roleplaying a barbarian with X background that is charmed by Y wizard. The DM does not get to dictate to me how my PC reacts, only the limitations of what I am roleplaying. Even with more restrictive spells like dominate, I still have the ability to embellish however I see fit, so long as I don't take an action outside that is not allowed to me(assuming the caster is using the more restrictive aspect), so I can still roleplay my PC.
I look at it a bit more holistically. When someone asks me how long I worked today, I tell them 8.75 hours. Now, I do get 2 ten minute breaks, and sometimes I stop and tell a coworker a joke for a minute or two, and technically I'm not working then. That still doesn't change that I worked an 8.75 hour day. I've never stopped and said, "Well, 8.75 hours, minute 20 minutes, minus 2.4 minutes for a joke, minus 3 minutes for a bathroom run..." I've never heard anyone else do that, either.
Roleplaying is no different. While there are times like running to the bathroom, listening to a DM description, food breaks, etc., a 4 hour game session is still a 4 hour block where I'm roleplaying. I can understand your point about the times where you technically aren't roleplaying in that moment, but I don't stop to break the game session down like that when talking about it to someone else, and I haven't anyone else break theirs down like that for me.
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GrahamWills
Hero
If you want to play in a game where the GM's word is incontestable law, go for it, I guess. I haven't played or run in such a game for 20 years. I don't think most people play in games where no one questions the GM ever, but maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe that's the confusion in the thread -- some people play games where it is always wrong to challenge the GM and for them, absolutely, the GM should say "try" or whatever words permit the players to summon up the courage to oppose their word. It's just way outside my experience. I am too fallible as a GM ever to try that line of running a game. If a player says to me "actually, that's not what I'd do" I don't say "my word is law -- you don't get a chance to resist!" as apparently happens in your games, I tend to say "Oh, all right, would would they do?"
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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