Players choose what their PCs do . . .

Umbran · Jul 8, 2019

Lanefan said:
All true, but those are PCs influencing NPCs. We're looking for examples of the less-common reverse, where NPCs can influence PCs without magic.

You want one from outside D&D, perhaps?

Let's look at FATE. Generally, in Fate-based games, social or mental conflicts are on the same mechanical basis as physical combat/conflict.

As you take hits in conflict, you take stress. If you run out of available stress boxes, you get "taken out".

You can shunt some stress into Consequences. The player gets significant say in what the consequences are, but needs GM approval (largely to make sure they are appropriate severity). But, you can only take so many Consequences.

To end the conflict, there are two choices:

First, someone may concede. If the player (not the character, the player) concedes, they get to narrate the conditions of their loss, so long as they don't negate the fact that they lost. So, for example, if it is a fight, the player can concede, and narrate how they get beaten, but escape out a window. The side that concedes can also end up with some Fate points to use later.

If nobody concedes, then someone will get Taken Out. This is like conceding, except the *other guy* gets to narrate how you lose, within the scope of the conflict and social contract of the table. If you are in a knife fight, and it isn't a "no PC-death" game, then if you get Taken Out, the other guy can say, "...and I kill the character."

So, if it is within the social contract of the table, you can imagine a party scoundrel-type getting into a social conflict with an attractive person at the inn - "Who seduces who?" This could easily end with the narration that the PC is seduced, and in the morning they find that the key to the ancient treasure vault has been stolen from their pack. No magic involved, but within the scope of the conflict, the PCs actions can be narrated by someone else, all within the rules.

The bottom line in this system is that if you don't want someone else narrating what happens to you, you do not fight to the last stress box. If you soldier on, you are accepting any result within the scope of the conflict.

Nagol · Jul 8, 2019

Outside D&D there are a plethora of games where either the GM or other players can influence PC emotions, motivations, etc. or where other characters can without magic. The major clue are mechanics that directly support an internal landscape.

Umbran lays out an example above though uses physical combat example when FATE also offers the same mechanics for social and mental combat. An example social concession could be entering a depressed state and retiring your estate in the north conceding the rest of the social season to your rival. A social 'take out' could be Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil's end in Dangerous Liaisons (sans death of the other party).

Pendragon offers in-game tests of character so a character (PC or NPC) can offer a temptation the PC is forced to struggle with. A player who wants a PC as pure as Galahad needs to struggle as much as someone who wants a PC a as good a fighter as Lancelot.

The key is mechanics must be in place. Much like a PC conception generally cannot be "best fighter EVER" because the game rules and mechanics enforce constraints, conceptions like 'pure as the driven snow' 'entirely chaste', or 'only attracted to gingers' should simply be accepted as unchallengeable in systems without constraint. Without a way to challenge a conception, the player's view should simply win.

Just as a player can object when a DM uses fiat to ignore combat mechanics in inflict a state on a PC, a player can object when a GM attempts to use fiat to impose a state not touched upon by the game mechanics.

Umbran · Jul 8, 2019

Nagol said:
The key is mechanics must be in place.

That is the easiest way to manage it. And, if you are thinking in terms of publishing a game, yeah, you should have mechanics for things you expect to happen in play.

But, with sufficient trust among the people at the table, you don't *need* mechanics to do these things. The mechanics give us a basis of trust, but it not the only basis available in the world.

Tony Vargas · Jul 8, 2019

Maxperson said:
Soooo, that's not a rule that says the DM can run my character. At all.

To be even clearer: Narrating the results of actions give the DM more than adequate latitude to 'run your character' - describe action he takes as part of or reactions he has to those results.

That's a rule that says that the DM can create house rules

Not just in the sense of formally introducing a variant at the start of play, but in the sense of overriding or changing any rule, at any time. It's carte blanche.

Umbran said:
discussing *anything* has as much purpose as discussing with a brick wall).

Say, you have spent a lot of time on on-line forums, haven't you?

Nagol said:
Assuming psionics are considered relabelled magic then I got nothing pre 4e.

Interaction skills worked on PCs in 3e, bluff & sense motive would come up a lot IIRC, and in 4e and, to the extent skills work independently of the DM's judgement at all, in 5e, I suppose.

1e had a morale system and PCs were exempted from it. Apart from that, specific immunities don't leap to mind. I wonder if the impression that D&D characters' emotional and mental state are sacrosanct (except magic, as always) derives from that hoary exemption?

Nagol said:
Outside D&D there are a plethora of games where either the GM or other players can influence PC emotions, motivations, etc. or where other characters can without magic. The major clue are mechanics that directly support an internal landscape.

Nod. And that really should bring the digression to rest.

But the OP still stands: regardless of system, it's been common for GMs to narrate things PCs think/feel or do (examples given in OP). We can justify that by saying that they might involve/reveal things not evident to the player at the time of his action declaration, or simply for convenience to keep a description-declaration loop from going fractal and eating up too much table time, or whatever.
But, it's certainly familiar - enraging to some players, helpful to others, though it may be.

Ovinomancer · Jul 8, 2019

FrogReaver said:
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

i think there is a pre-step I’ve been missing that changes everything

in d&d I cannot role play the character that can never lose at combat as such a character isn’t supported by the rules of the game. The pre- step is that I as a player don’t conceive of a character that the rules wouldn’t support

so in the case of the maiden winking melting my heart I can imagine a game that possesses such a mechanic so that I know not to conceive of a character possessing a trait that would be against said mechanic.

Maybe that hat is the real crux of the issue.

Yes! Although, you're too focused on mechanics. Just the fact that your character is at stake in more ways that just dying in combat is the real crux. Contests are just, "might my character die in this fight," but may be, "do I find out my character isn't who I thought they were at all?!"

Aldarc · Jul 8, 2019

Bobble said:
ambiguous: doubtful or uncertain especially from obscurity or indistinctness.

NO it is NOT ambiguous at all. That is how it is mostly done in RPGs. The player decides describes what his character is doing or trying to do. THEN the GM takes over and describes the results.

Apart from numerous RPGs that are exceptions to this, which have been mentioned previously in this thread. So we return to "ambiguous."

Catching up on this thread after a weekend vacation:

Fenris-77 said:
As to the wink, I agree, there probably is a scenario where it makes sense, but it's going to be off the beaten track as far as systems go.

I don't necessarily think it's that unusual. Pemerton has mentioned this in the context of Prince Valiant/Pendragon and Cortex+. I am familiar with a similar idea in Monster Hearts (a PbtA game). Monster Hearts was really the game that opened my eye to this sort of thinking. You are playing teenage monsters and the like (think Twilight, Teen Wolf, etc.), but teenage sexuality also plays an important role for the game. One of the things that can happen is that while you may - with all your self-professed player "agency" - declare that your character is straight, you may also find yourself in a situation where you feel a sudden, unexpected romantic attraction to a NPC of the same sex. What now? How do you choose to react to that real emotional response? Your male character's heart just unexpected melted in the presence of another guy.

To me, that's where the actual player agency lies. It lies in deciding how our characters choose to respond to their emotional and psychological urges rather than in deciding the particular emotional and psychological urges themselves. These feelings are not necessarily something that lie within the realm of agency, though your response to such scenarios would be. It's not as if human agency has some grandiose authorizing power over every emotional response or erection you feel. Well, only if you have a +100-year-old out-of-date notion of a mind-body duality in which somehow your moral agency is utterly divorced from psychosomatic and biological cognitive functions.

Since [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned Pendragon, I would suspect that a lot of Arthurian courtly romantic complications could have been solved had Lancelot (et al) told the DM, "Nope, my heart doesn't melt for Guinevere, because I know that acting on that would have dire consequences for the kingdom and that it would involve me betraying my bro, Arthur." I think that gets close to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s accurately glib comment about how this only transpires when there are potentially negative consequences that a player may want to ignore.

FrogReaver · Jul 8, 2019

Umbran said:
That is the easiest way to manage it. And, if you are thinking in terms of publishing a game, yeah, you should have mechanics for things you expect to happen in play.

But, with sufficient trust among the people at the table, you don't *need* mechanics to do these things. The mechanics give us a basis of trust, but it not the only basis available in the world.

Or, the reason mecahnics are essential isn't because of trust, but rather that they set the boundaries for where you may freely conceptualize your character and boundaries for where you must refrain from conceptualizing any particular way.

Fenris-77 · Jul 8, 2019

Well, yeah, that would be a great example of when that does happen. However, citing Pendragon and Monsterhearts isn't exactly the same as saying the thing is common. Moreover, the fact that those games do have mechanics about that is very much a part of the contract a player is agreeing to when they agree to play those games. Most RPGs don't have that inclination to representing affairs of the heart though, which is why the wink example seems so nonstandard or jarring to some people. If the example had been a noble's sneer inciting hatred, a laughing baby inciting happiness, or even a well turned calf inciting lust, I don't think it would have occasioned nearly so much commentary in this thread. Romance and love have a weird place in TTRPGs. It's cool to have examples of systems that do romance though. I've been meaning to check out Monsterhearts anyway, and now I have another reason to.

FrogReaver · Jul 8, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
Yes! Although, you're too focused on mechanics. Just the fact that your character is at stake in more ways that just dying in combat is the real crux. Contests are just, "might my character die in this fight," but may be, "do I find out my character isn't who I thought they were at all?!"

Not at all too focused on mechanics. Without realizing it mechancis have always been the boundaries wherein I conceptualize a character. If the mechanics simply don't support being the combat god that never loses then I won't conceptualize that I'm the combat god that never loses. If the mechanics don't support me being able to react as I see fit to a maiden's charms then I will not make a character where that factor is important to my conceptualization of him.

On the flip side if a game doesn't have mechanics around having my heart melted by a maiden then I may have already decided to conceive of a character whose heart won't be melted by said maiden.

So really it is all about the mechanics because they define the boundaries for character conceptualization playground that roleplaying in an RPG places us in.

FrogReaver · Jul 9, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
Well, yeah, that would be a great example of when that does happen. However, citing Pendragon and Monsterhearts isn't exactly the same as saying the thing is common. Moreover, the fact that those games do have mechanics about that is very much a part of the contract a player is agreeing to when they agree to play those games. Most RPGs don't have that inclination to representing affairs of the heart though, which is why the wink example seems so nonstandard or jarring to some people. If the example had been a noble's sneer inciting hatred, a laughing baby inciting happiness, or even a well turned calf inciting lust, I don't think it would have occasioned nearly so much commentary in this thread.

It would have for me. It's not about what emotion is being incited. It's that absent mechanics (of which a DM conversation at session 0 suffices) that I have already conceptualized my PC and that conceptualizations reaction in that situation may 100% be different than the result the DM is citing. With mechanics that scenario is entirely avoided. Without them it's a jarring realization that I'm actually not playing the character I've been conceiving this whole time.