Players choose what their PCs do . . .

Maxperson said:

It used to be the case that you could choose to fail saves. 5e doesn't have that rule. I would personally allow it, but it's a house rule now.

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Actually, the text is ambiguously worded.

PBR v3.4 said:

Saving Throws
Many spells specify that a target can make a saving throw to avoid some or all of a spell’s effects.

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Generally, can is a choice word. If the save was obligatory, it should say "must," "shall," "will," or "neets to"...

Noting that the PBR text is an exact subset of the PHB... and is electronically searchable...

it can be interpreted either direction.

So I've skimmed the recent bits of the thread. In a follow-up post, I'm going to relay a recent PCC social conflict in Strike (!) and invite folks to chime in on how they perceive this anecdote (a) contrasts with gameplay where social conflict isn't formalized and (b) there are neither mechanical feedbacks nor PC build components involved.

But first, I want to post some text from Strike (!) and Dogs in the Vineyard as I think it relates to the conversation. What do people think about the below as they pertain to Decide vs/and Discovery and how systematized incentive and constraints can hook into that (augmenting or delineating):

On Strike (!) Twists and related (and a bit of Dogs):

Twists

A Twist means that something threw off your plans. Your task may or may not have been successful, but something somewhere has gone wrong. It may or may not be your fault. It might not even be a bad thing, though it often is.


When you get a Twist, the GM gets to narrate how you came to the Twist—in the course of their narration they might say something your character does. This is part of the game. If the GM oversteps their bounds, speak up and talk to them like an adult, but in general your job as a player is to roll with it and make it real. Maybe your character screwed up. People do that. You don’t get to say “no, my character would never make a mistake like that!” Sorry, the dice disagree. That’s part of life and part of the game. Remember, you don’t know everything there is to know about your character and part of the fun of playing a character is finding out new things about them. Twists are a vital part of that process.

Quick note on Action Points - you can deploy one of your Complications against you to net a Twist, which will, in turn, earn you an Action Point. Action Points can be deployed to help your character (a) succeed in the future and simultaneously (b) earn the system's analogue to xp toward advancement.

2nd note - Dogs in the Vineyard has a similar schema, though there are distinguishing subtleties based on the system...but, principally, its the same.

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On sin and worse (Dogs):

Either way, the characters will uproot it, judge it, and enact upon it the will of God. God's mercy? God's justice? God's vengeance? That's theirs to decide.

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On revealing (Dogs):

The game's rules job is to help you, the GM, reveal the pride, sin, and corruption in the towns you create, and provoke the characters' judgement...

Over time, the players (through the playing of the game and the system) will reveal their characters in depth.

They'll choose where to stand, where to give way, and whats worth killing or dying for (this is a the narrative created by the Poker-derived dice mechanics of the game which involves Seeing, Raising, <effectively> Folding, or Escalating...and the attendant Fallout for the characters, which is both setback and advancement).

Reflection (after any/all situations in a Town have been resolved and we're travelling to the next Town - this is a component of the advancement scheme where players pick 2 things that will help them or hinder them or both)

What did the events of the town reveal about your characters (especially regarding duty, obedience, responsibility, sin, love)?

What are you saying about people through the actions of your characters?

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FrogReaver said:

the playstyle I suggest doesn't lead to that unless a player ignores their character conceptualization.

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If the player is avoiding expedience by sticking to conceptualisation, how is that conceptualisation going to be challenged? Or changed?

If the player is at liberty to change conceptuatlisation in response to choices, what governs those choices? Self-evidently it can't be conceptualisation. You don't want it to be expedience. Is it whim?

Do you have actual play examples to post that illustrate the point you are trying to make?

Maxperson said:

Before the hard decision, I did not know X about my character. Until I made the decision, X was still unknown to me. After the decision, X is now known to me. That's a discovery about the character, which makes it something I learned.

How many times over the years after someone ends up in a unique situation and makes a hard decision, have we heard, "So and so really learned something about himself."?

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As [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] pointed out way upthread, we are not talking here about actual people living actual lives. We're talking about actual people authoring imagined lives. When an author chooses to have his/her protagonist do X rather than Y, perhaps s/he learns something about him-/herself. (Eg I empathise more with an X-er than a Y-er.) But s/he doesn't learn anything about the protagonist. S/he makes a decision that the protagonist is an X-er rather than a Y-er.

The idea that decisions cannot result in discovery is absurd. If decisions prevent discovery, then we shouldn't make any decisions at all. Let the dice randomly determine everything and make tons of discoveries.[/quote]Discovery implies externality. That's why, for instance, philosophers once spoke about our knowledge of the external world, and why one of my teachers once glossed idealist theories of knowledge in this way: you can't get more out of knowledge than you put in.

To discover something about my character requires something external to take place. I've given examples in this thread. So have others.

It doesn't have to be done through random number generation. There are other resolution systems possible. But it does require some way of establishing salient elements of the fiction other than via decision-making by the player of the PC.

To my mind this is actually not a radical thesis about RPGing, given that this type of game has relied on resolution mechanics, including random number generation, to establish external constraints on player choices and interpretation of the fiction from the outset.

Aebir-Toril said:

D&D is (though not necessarily should be) the baseline assumption. If we can't argue from a base of some sort, then there is no argument.

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By my count, there are only three recurrent posters in this thread who make D&D the baseline assumption: [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION].

I'm not interested in talking primarily about D&D. It's not a system I'm playing at the moment, and I doubt think that focusing on it is going to shed any particular light on the questions raised in the OP or subsequently in the thread. If you think that there is some aspect of D&D mechanics or play that will help address those questions, then by all means post it.

Ovinomancer said:

a player that has a backstory as a mind-flayer thrall and has staked his lack of recollection of his past as at risk met with a mind flayer. The mind flayer proposed that what the player thought their memories were are false memories, and that, instead, there's something about the character that caused him to be recruited rather than enslaved. That the character was a dangerous tool that the elder brain thought it could control. Is this true? I don't know, maybe. That really depends on how the player chooses to interact with it. So far, the player has chosen to enter into a temporary agreement for mutual benefit (the mind flayer wishes to disrupt some plans of the player's former masters -- different mind flayer factions at play here), but not to trust the mind flayer. Meanwhile, I've planted seeds of doubt, as what the mind flayer has said may come true. But, again, because D&D, it's the player that will decide if his character is swayed or not.

If I were playing a different game, then the stakes of the player's background would have been directly challenged, and, if the player lost, I'd have been able to establish alternate truths that the player would then have to engage with.

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This is an interesting question - in general, and about D&D play: To what extent is the GM permitted to rewrite player-authored PC backstory by drawing upon a combination of (i) situation and stakes and (ii) failed checks.

In BW (for instance) I think this is fair game. The only version of D&D I can think of able to handle this is 4e. I don't really see how it would be done in AD&D. And from what your saying it's not really feasible in 5e.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

Many authors describe the process of authoring as letting the character speak to them, or even through them; dissociated from their own personality to some degree.

So, while they are just making the choices, the choices don't always feel like choices to the authors.

Manbearcat said:

I want to post some text from Strike (!) and Dogs in the Vineyard as I think it relates to the conversation. What do people think about the below as they pertain to Decide vs/and Discovery and how systematized incentive and constraints can hook into that (augmenting or delineating)

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I'm not sure about incentives.

When I read the Strike(!) I think of "intent and task" and failure narration in BW. Or the example from AW that I posted upthread. If the check fails, the GM is entitled to narrate the failure by imposing a new and unwanted description of the PC's action. But I don't think in any of the systems this could go as far as you've fallen in love with the maiden unless that was the mere capstone to already-established fiction. More like your eye is caught by the maiden's wink, and you fail to notice . . .

When I read the DitV I think of the examples I've posted upthread about the paladin and Nightcrawler. At least as I recall it, there is no mechanic in DitV for making it true that (say) a PC loves another PC or an NPC. But it is quite possible to produce outcomes that the player didn't choose and that reveal the character as falling under a new unexpected description (eg I'm a killer). And these then provoke choice, reflection, crisis etc on the part of the PC as mediated through the player.

pemerton said:

This is an interesting question - in general, and about D&D play: To what extent is the GM permitted to rewrite player-authored PC backstory by drawing upon a combination of (i) situation and stakes and (ii) failed checks.

In BW (for instance) I think this is fair game. The only version of D&D I can think of able to handle this is 4e. I don't really see how it would be done in AD&D. And from what your saying it's not really feasible in 5e.

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I think, in D&D, it would be a serious overstep to do so. In the scene above, the player threw me for a loop. Previously, the player had established that the character had no recollection of their time before being a thrall. But, in the scene, the player revealed that they dud recall. I had been planning to offer a way to recover memory in exchange for helping this mindflayer, but that went right out the window (hold on lightly!). Instead, I had the mindflayer insinuate that these memories may well be false and dangled a deeper mystery as maybe existing (refering to the character as a dangerous tool). At the same time, i introduced that the mindflayer isn't trustworthy. So, now, the player can engage on "do I have false memories?" or assume the mindflayer is lying and keep ahold of their idyllic memories. It will, however, be the player's choice. I have no tools in D&D to bring this into a challenge for characterization nor to resolve such a challenge.

In another system the player could have challenged the mind flayer's assertions, but would be risking finding out they might be true. I don't see how that could work in D&D without crossing the one bright line of authority in the game.

EDIT: So, to sum up the above, in D&D, the way this works is the the GM can ask for a change, but it's the player's authority to accept or refuse.

As an aside, I had sketched up this scene a few weeks ago, but we've been unable to play for awhile due to life. So, when I had a bunch of cranium rats deliver the PC to a mindflayer in the basement of an abandoned wharehouse, it wasn't until I was doing it I realized the uncanny simularity to a recent Netflix show. I had to laugh.

Ovinomancer said:

In another system the player could have challenged the mind flayer's assertions, but would be risking finding out they might be true. I don't see how that could work in D&D without crossing the one bright line of authority in the game.

EDIT: So, to sum up the above, in D&D, the way this works is the the GM can ask for a change, but it's the player's authority to accept or refuse.

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I have been leveraging the characters Ideals/Bond/Flaws in D&D, essentially I as DM bribe them with an Inspiration Point if they do or not-do a course of action which is supported by their Ideal/Bond/Flaw. To be clear my bribe is an incentive to complicate matters in game. And as you say it is the players' right to choose.

But I'm wondering if I could then also offer a player their character an auto success in an intricate Social Encounter with minimal to no risk to the PCs at the cost of a change in a character's Ideal/Blond/Flaw (Of course this change would need make sense storywise). Player could always choose to roll ofcourse, but then something in-game would be stake.

pemerton said:

This is an interesting question - in general, and about D&D play: To what extent is the GM permitted to rewrite player-authored PC backstory by drawing upon a combination of (i) situation and stakes and (ii) failed checks.

In BW (for instance) I think this is fair game. The only version of D&D I can think of able to handle this is 4e. I don't really see how it would be done in AD&D. And from what your saying it's not really feasible in 5e.

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If we cannot agree to argue from some base point, then you cannot assume that everyone will know every system. Realistically, almost every RPG player knows D&D, not because it's the best, but because it is the definitive RPG. Thus, D&D is not the only thing we should discuss, but you have to remember that it is what many people assume as the base. If you would like to have a different base, please say so.

Aebir-Toril said:

If we cannot agree to argue from some base point, then you cannot assume that everyone will know every system. Realistically, almost every RPG player knows D&D, not because it's the best, but because it is the definitive RPG. Thus, D&D is not the only thing we should discuss, but you have to remember that it is what many people assume as the base. If you would like to have a different base, please say so.

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Using D&D as tge baseline, how can I, as GM, have an NPC mauden wink at a PC and melt the PC's heart without it being an ask of the player?

This is why the baseline argument fails -- D&D is a specific model, not a general one. You can't logically argue from the specific to the general. This is amplified in cases where the model is of poor skill, such as D&D and social skills. As I said before, the D&D way is akready endlessly argued from within the ruleset, so hiw can it be an effective model for general discussion.

This, frankly, smells of "but if you just agree with me upfront, you'll see that you agree with me."