Players choose what their PCs do . . .

hawkeyefan · Jul 6, 2019

Maxperson said:
This is just flat out wrong. There is no power inherent to a wink that allows the wink to override the PC. None. Nil. Nyet. Zero. Zilch. Nada. They are very different.

What does “override the PC” mean? The PCs will? Their libido? The player’s desire to not face a specific kind of challenge?

This is a genuine question. What is being “overridden”? Let’s assume some kind of mechanics are at play and it’s not a case of a GM dictating results, but let’s also assume it has nothing to do with magic in the fiction.

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
This misses that, in games where this method is used, your objections don't matter. This outcome is the truth, and the players and GM have to figure out how it can be the truth, not look for ways for it to not be the truth of the game. If you're looking for procedural truth generation -- where every prerequisite is met prior to establishing the fictional truth -- then this is going to be very confusing and hard to grasp. It is, instead, a product of a fluid set of events where you can determine the outcome and then go back to set up the prerequisite truths. The only constraint is that you can't overrule previously established truths (without good cause, at least) or genre expectations.

So, in this case, when the maiden softens your heart, then she is the right type, the right gender, and the right species because your heart is softened. Your job as a player now is to play with this new truth about yourself and find out where it goes. Perhaps this is a good thing. Perhaps it's a major problem (this maiden is the daughter of your hated rival, for instance), but, whatever it is, your heart is softened. Play on!

That's a level of GM control over PCs that I suspect would cause mutiny at most typical tables.

It also gets the whole idea of cause-and-effect backwards: you've got the effect retroactively forcing the cause(s) (which, by the way, isnt how things work!) rather than the cause(s) leading to an end effect.

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

pemerton said:
[MENTION=6795602]If I'm told to play an angry person, I can do that. If I'm told to play a person who is pulling the trigger to assassinate the duke, I can do that. If I'm told to play a person whose heart has just been melted by a wink, well I can do that to.

Being told "The magician has ensorcelled you - play that" is no different from being told "The maiden's wink has softened your heart - play that." In some ways the latter is actually easier, I think, because it's closer to a genuine human experience! (Unless you've spent a lot of time in the company of Svengali!)

I'm quite surprised to see this coming from you, as you've otherwise consistently been one of the more strident voices in here regarding the sanctity of player agency.

Simply being told that the maiden melts your PC's heart with a wink - without reference to any game mechanics - takes player agency and chucks it out the window.

I also want to go back to the Apocalypse World example that I posted and that Ovinomancer mentioned. The player establilshes that her PC is looking for an escape route. She makes her check and fails. So the GM narrates that she is looking at her barred window, thinking about how maybe she might be able to escape through it, as her enemies attack her with a grenade.

The GM isn't contradicting the player's account of her PC's action. The GM is adding further true descriptions of it, which obviously are adverse to the PC. (It's a failure, after all.)

There's nothing there that contraverts the idea that the player is playing his/her PC.

I bolded the bit that matters - that there's a failed check means the GM's narration is backed up by game mechanics - the bad roll has given the GM license to throw in some narration regarding what the PC thinks/does to lead to the roll-given result. (that said, it's still not great; ideally the player should be giving enough detail of her PC's actions/thoughts that the GM's response can be reduced to merely narrating physical elements of and-or changes to the scene e.g. "You notice a few of the bars are loose" or "The bars are stuck and a grenade just came in the door")

Satyrn · Jul 6, 2019

Lanefan said:
That's a level of GM control over PCs that I suspect would cause mutiny at most typical tables.

It also gets the whole idea of cause-and-effect backwards: you've got the effect retroactively forcing the cause(s) (which, by the way, isnt how things work!) rather than the cause(s) leading to an end effect.

If it causes mutiny, the table clearly picked the wrong game to play. I mean, Ovinomancer did start that post you quoted by assuming a game that involved that level of GM control.

Apparently his assumptions aren't conversation killers . . . Oh. I see I'm still bitter about his last post.

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

pemerton said:
(2) You seem to be pre-supposing that the only way that human beings can influence one another's mental states is by way of magic. I see human influence one another's mental states all the time, and I've never seen a human use magic.

The influence isn't direct, however.

Ideally it goes GM-at-table ==> magic-in-fiction ==> PC-in-fiction ==> player-at-table. (italics show where the legitimizing game mechanics come in)

Short-circuiting it straight to GM-at-table ==> player-at-table is simply the GM taking arbitrary control over what the player does with her PC.

And one thing here, which goes back to the OP: the player has established that her PC is looking for an escape route. The GM isn't having the player do something additional. The GM is establishing further true descriptoins of what the player has had her PC do - you look at your barred window, thinking it might be an escape route. Of course these are descriptions that the player wouldn't choose if she had her way - that's because she failed her check!

The player can cut some of this off by giving more detail as to how-where she's searching before rolling any dice...

But the additional description isn't of an additional action. It's additional description of the same action (looking for an escape route).

Yes, and here the GM is simply filling in some of what the player failed to provide - the blame's shared on this one: on the player for not giving enough detail and on the GM for not asking for it.

But go back to the example of the winking maiden. When the GM tells the player her PC's heart has just been melted by said wink, what chance has the player had to give any input as to her PC's then-and-there reaction? None. This one's all on the GM: she's trampled all over player agency.

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

GrahamWills said:
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.

It's on the GM to say what she means and to use the right wording as far as possible, and there's a great big difference between the following:

"The maiden winks at you and melts your heart"
"The maiden winks at you and tries to melt your heart"

The first is an absolute - it's a done deal. Your heart is melted. And most players won't generally accept this or a GM who regularly does this sort of thing.
The second allows a chance to resist (or not - player's choice), and is the far more common and accepted way to go.

Now sometimes a GM will get the wording wrong and say something like in terms of an absolute where it wasn't supposed to be, and a player would ask whether that's what was really meant. No problem there as long as the GM takes ownership of the error.

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?"

This would depend on whether I-as-GM intended to phrase it as an absolute or not.

I'm not perfect - nowhere close, really. Most times if I said something like this the immediate and quite justified response would be "Don't I at least get a saving throw?" at which point I'd realize I'd said it wrong and rephrase (except for the very rare instance where I really did mean it as an absolute; and I'd be saying it out loud this way rather than passing a note as a cue that other PCs would notice the heart-melting and could then - if they wanted - act on it)

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

pemerton said:
But having someone wink at you is also an infiction act.

Absolutely. No controversy there.

I don't understand what distiinction you think you're pointing to here.

The "and melts your heart" bit, as that's where the controversy sits. Not only does it make a pile of assumptions (starting with that the PC even noticed the wink in the first place), but it then forces the PC's reaction. No die roll, no chance to resist, no way to avoid the effect.

And that forced-in-the-fiction reaction then forces the player at the table to do/say things she might otherwise not have wanted to, for no game-valid reason.

Yeah, that's not gonna fly.

These are just bare assertions of preference. As [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] already noted.

It's not "out of fiction". The wink occurs in the fiction. The melting of your PC's heart happens in the fiction. No difference from a spell.

Er...well, yes there is: most if not all such spells give the target some sort of chance to resist. That part seems to have been skipped here...

And this also brings us back to the assumption that both you and [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION] seem to be making but have not explicitly acknowledged let alone explained: what is the connection between playing a character and getting to decide whether or not that character is the sort of person who might be moved by a wink from another?

Simple: the connection is player agency over his-her own PC.

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
I don’t see what connection you’re making here. What out of fiction reason are you citing? Why would a DM ever say “you lose 50 HP for no reason muhuhahahah!”?

I don’t think anyone here is advocating for anything so absurd. I know I’m not.

Nor is anyone. But it's still a useful example in that conceptually there's no difference between these two:

DM: "For no particular reason you lose 50 h.p."
DM: "For no particular reason your heart is melted by the maiden's wink."

The esoteric and bad-country-song questions of whether a melting heart really does or can cause 50 h.p. internal damage I'll leave to others to hash over.....

Maxperson · Jul 6, 2019

Satyrn said:
Also Aye: Playing D&D, the mechanics are there to resolve an action when the outcome is doubt. I might decide to ask the DM to roll some dice if I don't know how my character would respond to the wink, but if I do know then there are no mechanics to invoke. Just like a DM doesn't need to ask me to roll dice if he knows how the maiden respond to my wink.

I rarely can't figure out how my PC will respond, but during those few times that I'm in that position, I can figure out the chances and roll my own dice between the possibilities that I come up with. The DM never gets involved.

hawkeyefan · Jul 6, 2019

Lanefan said:
Question, as it's not noted in your example: is this narration coming out of the blue, or is there any sort of game mechanic backing it up (e.g. a missed attack roll, a successful defense roll, the Swordsman has some sort of magic bolstering his defense capability, etc.)?

If the narration is coming out of the blue i.e. the GM has arbitrarily decided that the PC's attack leads to this result then yeah, all the bad-GM red flags go up.

If the game mechanics back it up - e.g. the PC's attack roll was egregiously bad, or the Swordsman has supernatural defenses (that even if the PC/player doesn't know about now she's in process of learning, and the GM can if needed point to the descriptor in the NPC's write-up later to verify) - on the other hand, then we're good; or at least a lot closer to good.

OK, you've invoked player-side game mechanics to resist; this at least is fine.

This example is also a little different than the winking-maid one in that here the GM isn't directly determining your PC's reaction to something, she's determining how her NPC reacts to being attacked and that said reaction is putting your PC in a world o' hurt. This changes the question from one of whether the GM is allowed to simply narrate your PC's reaction (as in the maid example) to whether the GM is allowed to narrate your PC into such a mess without game mechanics to back her up on it. Different question, and probably different discussion.

For the Blades example, you had it right that this was the result of a poor roll on the player’s part. The GM narrated the severe consequences accordingly. Perhaps worth noting is that the player likely had a decent idea of how bad the consequences would be based on the Position stated by the GM prior to the roll.

I think that the example of the wink was given with the expectation that there would or could be such mechanics at play, depending on system.