Players choose what their PCs do . . .

pemerton · Jul 15, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
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.

Do you have much experience with 4e D&D?

It's a bit of an open question exactly what tools 4e provides, because the skill challenge is - as presented - such an open-ended or un-nailed-down framework that (experience suggests) needs users to bring ideas and/or experience from outside to really get the best out of it.

I think a skill challenge might be able to handle the scenario you're describing. Of course it would depend on table norms - and of course so does everything, but for this sort of thing among D&D players the need for clear norms I think is especially important.

In my long-running 4e game - currently on hiatus while one of the players finishes renovating a house, which is a multi-year project! - we've had memory stuff happen with the PC wizard/invoker who turned out to be a deva invoker/wizard and who has memories of 1000 lifetimes. There's been GM narration as well as PC narration of memories, but not quite as confronting/contested as what you're describing. So I can't say I've actually done what you describe in a skill challenge. But I think it could be done. Salient skills would include History and Arcana (knowing stuff), Insight (sifting wheat from chaff in one's own mind) and Bluff and Diplomacy (vs the Mindflayer). Failure narration would probably be a mixture of straightforward causal failure and introduction of the undesired plot points/backstory. And of course as each false memory falls away, the PC would also suffer level-appropriate psychic damage!

(I see there being three rationales for the damage. (1) It's D&D, and furthermore it's 4e D&D which means all gonzo all the time. (2) It connects the failures to the most robust resolution currency system in the game - hp and healing surges. (3) At least the way we play at my table, it would provide a type of assurance that this trick isn't going to be pulled again - the fact that the PC suffers that mental trauma as s/he loses his/her false memories is something of a validation that it really is his/her true mind that is being revealed via the process. This third thing is a bit amorphous and I don't know if I've eplained it properly, but to me at least it feels quite important.)

pemerton · Jul 15, 2019

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.

In your case, you seem to know both BW and D&D, which are the two systems I referenced in the post of mine that you quoted. Do you have any thoughts about this mind flayer and false memories example that might draw on either of the systems?

Or if you want to engage it by reference to another system, that would be interesting too!

Ovinomancer · Jul 15, 2019

pemerton said:
Do you have much experience with 4e D&D?

It's a bit of an open question exactly what tools 4e provides, because the skill challenge is - as presented - such an open-ended or un-nailed-down framework that (experience suggests) needs users to bring ideas and/or experience from outside to really get the best out of it.

I think a skill challenge might be able to handle the scenario you're describing. Of course it would depend on table norms - and of course so does everything, but for this sort of thing among D&D players the need for clear norms I think is especially important.

In my long-running 4e game - currently on hiatus while one of the players finishes renovating a house, which is a multi-year project! - we've had memory stuff happen with the PC wizard/invoker who turned out to be a deva invoker/wizard and who has memories of 1000 lifetimes. There's been GM narration as well as PC narration of memories, but not quite as confronting/contested as what you're describing. So I can't say I've actually done what you describe in a skill challenge. But I think it could be done. Salient skills would include History and Arcana (knowing stuff), Insight (sifting wheat from chaff in one's own mind) and Bluff and Diplomacy (vs the Mindflayer). Failure narration would probably be a mixture of straightforward causal failure and introduction of the undesired plot points/backstory. And of course as each false memory falls away, the PC would also suffer level-appropriate psychic damage!

(I see there being three rationales for the damage. (1) It's D&D, and furthermore it's 4e D&D which means all gonzo all the time. (2) It connects the failures to the most robust resolution currency system in the game - hp and healing surges. (3) At least the way we play at my table, it would provide a type of assurance that this trick isn't going to be pulled again - the fact that the PC suffers that mental trauma as s/he loses his/her false memories is something of a validation that it really is his/her true mind that is being revealed via the process. This third thing is a bit amorphous and I don't know if I've eplained it properly, but to me at least it feels quite important.)

I think that the default for D&D is that the GM can ask the player for a change to the mental state of the PC. I think this is important to D&D because the GM enjoys broad authority to directly change the PC's physical state, and has control over the fictional positioning at all times. Therefore, this narrow player authority is both important and essentially the third rail of D&D.

I agree 4e opened the door through the vague nature of skill challenges to alter this, both by giving players the ability to encroach into fictional authorities and the GM into PC mental authorities. This requires importing a form of play otherwise lacking in 4e, and, IMO, was a key part of the difficulty of adaptation to 4e. I played 4e for awhile before leaving it for a game that did even more narrative sharing, just more explicitly. Had I realized at the time that 4e worked well in tgat style, I'd have played it more/longer.

hawkeyefan · Jul 15, 2019

FrogReaver said:
How about you ask the guy that suggested it was a problem to begin with... your buddy @chaochou

Because it seemed like you might have the answer based on your posts in this thread.

I play plenty of D&D, so I know how my table handles the lack of mechanics in this area, but my group also holds much less tightly to the player being the sole authority on their character. So given your statements about players being sole authority, I was curious how your group handled a player who always made the easy decision.

Lanefan · Jul 15, 2019

aramis erak said:
I treat the term challenge as referring to a situation with at least two clear mutually exclusive outcomes, and the possibility of not attaining the desired one if it is chosen for the attempt.

This to me is a false premise, in that not all (or even all that many) challenges need only have two clear mutually-exclusive outcomes to still be defined as challenges. Outcomes often run on a scale, with highly-desireable at one end and highly-undesireable at the other and a whole lot of other options in between.

Except that some of us genuinely disagree with that premise, even caveated as it is...

In a game with a strong GM role, and a Gygaxian rule 0 (either The GM can change the rules on a whim or The GM is always right), the player never has the surety that the GM won't impose conditions on the character's mental state.

Which is fine provided it's done within the framework of the game mechanics. An NPC charms or dominates my character? Cool - I can run with that.

But if the GM declares my PC's actions or thoughts by fiat then at that point I think (at least 98% of the time) I've probably got a bad GM.

The character also has no surety that any action, even walking, won't require a roll or even outright fail.

As long as you-the-player retain control over declaring the attempted action, this doesn't conflict with what I said...though again it probably points to a bad GM unless there is in the fiction some difficulty in walking e.g. on an icy slope.

The best the player can assuredly pick what they attempt - everything else is subject to GM approval.

And the player can decide what and how the character thinks, and what its emotions are, unless that control has been removed as above.

I've chased away players in the past by using conditions upon their characters that reduced the player's choice drastically. 1 unintended, 2 others much intended. A fourth attempted, but the player enjoyed the challenge. ≤Sigh≥...

The thing is, if a GM wants to keep players, they don't take away agency (control over the character) too easily nor too often, but the social contract of rules implies (at least in most Traditional table top RPGs) that there are 3 portions of control over a character - the player's, the GM, and the mechanics.

To me the latter two of those three are concatenated: the GM gains control only when the mechanics allow her to.

The exception, of course, arises if a player is absent but that player's PC is still being played (e.g. it just doesn't make in-fiction sense to have that PC disappear for a while). Some GMs take over the PC as an NPC in those cases, others (like us) give the missing player's PC to another player - or a committee of the whole table - to look after.

Ovinomancer said:
How do you have a baseline of doing something one way so that you can talk about doing it another way? Take cooking, for instance. If the baseline is using the oven, because that's the most popular, is it worthwhile to have to refer to using an oven every time you want to talk about microwaving? No, you just talk about microwaving and skip referencing everything to the oven because how you do things in the oven is utterly useless when talking about the microwave.

Not quite, in fact.

If someone's baseline familiarity is cooking with an oven, when talking about microwaving you're going to want to frequently reference the oven as a point of comparison in order to give what you're saying a context that makes sense to the listener.

generic · Jul 15, 2019

pemerton said:
In your case, you seem to know both BW and D&D, which are the two systems I referenced in the post of mine that you quoted. Do you have any thoughts about this mind flayer and false memories example that might draw on either of the systems?

Or if you want to engage it by reference to another system, that would be interesting too!

I'm not familiar wiht the example in question, mind elucidating it for me?

generic · Jul 15, 2019

pemerton said:
In your case, you seem to know both BW and D&D, which are the two systems I referenced in the post of mine that you quoted. Do you have any thoughts about this mind flayer and false memories example that might draw on either of the systems?

Or if you want to engage it by reference to another system, that would be interesting too!

I'm not familiar with the example in question, what page was this on?

Lanefan · Jul 15, 2019

pemerton said:
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.

Even though this thread's in 'General RPG', given that historically D&D has represented more or less 80% of the RPG market and player base (and still does) talking primarily about anything else is going to quickly send much of the potential readership off elsewhere.

Using other systems for comparison is great. Ignoring the primary system, however, seems a bit foolish.

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.

Good question.

To me I'd say it comes down to whether or not the player has already come up wth a viable backstory. If yes, I'd say the GM (and by extension the game) is largely expected to leave it intact - or at least not subtract from it or overly alter it - though nothing stops her from adding to it in ways consistent with what's already there. For example, if in my character's backstory I have her serving a tour of duty with the 14th Legion before she started adventuring (assuming such makes sense in the setting) then the serving of that tour is locked in; but the GM is free to fill in details of what her unit did during that time, what her commanders and-or inferiors were like, what the general troop morale was, and so forth.

But if the player hasn't come up with a backstory, or only the most bare-bones verison of one - a common enough case in old-school D&D where characters weren't always expected to last very long - then the GM is free to fill in any level of details as needed. Some players even prefer this, and are quite willing to trust the GM to fill in those blanks if and when required for the story.

pemerton · Jul 15, 2019

Aebir-Toril said:
I'm not familiar wiht the example in question, mind elucidating it for me?

Reposted:

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.

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.

pemerton · Jul 15, 2019

Lanefan said:
Even though this thread's in 'General RPG', given that historically D&D has represented more or less 80% of the RPG market and player base (and still does) talking primarily about anything else is going to quickly send much of the potential readership off elsewhere.

Using other systems for comparison is great. Ignoring the primary system, however, seems a bit foolish.

I believe many more people have watched The Avengers than have watched The Seventh Seal. But that doesn't mean that every time I want to talk about the latter I talk about the former instead or as well.

If people who only want to talk about D&D, or who have no interest in talking or reading about how other systems do things, don't want to participate in this thread, that's a risk I'm prepared to take. I'm posting on a discussion board, not producing a community information notice.