Players choose what their PCs do . . .

pemerton · Jul 7, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
[MENTION=42582]I was more railing against impact by fiat rather than mechanic.

<snip>

I would propose however that there is a pretty vast gulf between the results you list, such as complication dice, or any other complicating modifier, and straight dictated action. I'm fine with the former but not the latter. My apologies if that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

I think dictated action, or fiat, or what Ron Edwards calls drama resolution, is interesting in this context.

I agree that it's not typical. In adjudicating a skill challenge I once narrated one of the PCs moving across the room - in the fiction, he was influenced by a Pact Hag; mechanically, this was setting up a complication (the Hag was going to pull a rope to open a pit); I can't recall now whether or not it immediately followed a failed check or not.

I do know that when I posted about it on these boards it aroused some controversy; but if a GM holds back from all narration like that in a skill challenge then it's hard to make it very dynamic.

I'm sure there are contexts in which sheer drama/fiat/dictation melting-PC's-heart-by-winking would make sense, even though we're not thinking of one here-and-now.

hawkeyefan · Jul 7, 2019

FrogReaver said:
Sigh, there comes the D&D only crap again...

Funny, that’s what I was thinking!

I have no problem with D&D. I love D&D....I play it all the time. But this is an area of play that doesn’t seem to be a focal point for D&D. A PC being influenced by an NPC in some mechanical way....are there any examples that don’t involve magic? I’m trying to come up with some, and the only thing I can think of is Surprise in combat, but nothing else.

Generally speaking, in D&D and similar games, the player always decides how his character feels and how they act and react to the world around them. My understanding is this is your preferred approach to gaming. Am I wrong on either point?

If you have another game in mind about all this, feel free to share. But so far, it seems that your stance is that any game that handles this differently than D&D does is not allowing “true roleplaying”. That any PC action or reaction must only come from the player and nowhere else, and that if it does, it’s not roleplaying.

So....if I’ve misunderstood your stance or if you want to discuss how this pertains to other games, great.

pemerton · Jul 7, 2019

FrogReaver said:
One thing that is getting over looked is that addding a special ability to an NPC in D&D is tantamount to saying there is something extremely special about this NPC's ability. That it has effects that other creatures that do similar things don't have when they do those things.

So if there was a special maiden NPC and she was soo good at charming men that she had a nearly supernatural ability to do so then she would have a special ability: "Maiden's Wink" in her NPC description. I would not be opposed to being charmed by her.

But a regular ole maiden using a regular wink - No, just no.

The category of "special ability", like the category of "magic", only makes sense in some games or some contexts. Some systems don't really have "special abilities" at all in the D&D sense. And even where a system does feature special abilities, the fact that some statblock includes such a thing doesn't necessarily mean that the relevant infiction capability is gated behind such a mechanic.

In Prince Valiant one of my players used a Story Teller Certificate that he'd acquired through earlier play to Kill a Foe in Combat. This didn't create an effect that he didn't already have access to. But it did enable him to kill a knight in a joust whom otherwise he had no realistic mathematical chance of defeating. The player narrated it as his PC's lance splintering on the NPC knight's shield and a splinter of wood passing through the knight's visor and into his eye and brain.

Special abilities in 4e D&D are often like this: they don't make new things possible in the fiction, but they do change the mechanical likelihood of those things occurring.

FrogReaver said:
If what you are trying to get at is, why can't I roleplay a character that never loses at combat then I'd say you can. I would call that roleplaying but it wouldn't be an enjoyable game for me. To elaborate a bit more - such a concept wouldn't be a valid character concept under most game systems out there today, so in that sense you couldn't create that character for any of those games.

Hang-on: so a game in which you character concept resolute in the face of the most heart-melting winks is not sacrosanct is a game that threatens RPing; but one in which your character concept puissant warrior who never gets KO-ed by mere orcs is not sacrosanct is not a valid character concept in most game systems?

What's the difference? Not from the point of view of aesthetic preference, but from the point of view of what counts as playing the character I envision?

Fenris-77 · Jul 7, 2019

I think you'll find that you'll get very little opposition to a PC being Held and then Levitated (and then dropped into a pit I guess). People understand the mechanics and there were probably saves or something involved. But when there isn't that comfortable buffer of mechanics to fall back on people treat the whole thing very differently, which I also find very interesting, since the difference in actual effect is minimal to nonexistent (you get dropped in a pit either way and can't do anything about it once it's happening).

Say you did all the rolling behind a screen, all the saves and whatever, and then just narrated the effect. I suspect you'd get a ton of push back about it that you wouldn't get if the players rolled (and failed) the same saves and suffered the same effect. Maybe even as much push back as you'd get if they couldn't see the mechanic behind the curtain at all.

There's something in there that's key to the RPG experience but I can't quite put my finger on it.

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.

pemerton · Jul 7, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
this is an area of play that doesn’t seem to be a focal point for D&D. A PC being influenced by an NPC in some mechanical way....are there any examples that don’t involve magic? I’m trying to come up with some, and the only thing I can think of is Surprise in combat, but nothing else.

Does D&D encompass non-5e versions?

In that case, I already posted the example of the Fang Tyrant Drake's furious roar (which paralyses with fear). In 4e there's no need to conceive of the fear caused by dragons as magical, either (which brings them closer to the Smaug-ish form of dragon terror).

hawkeyefan · Jul 7, 2019

pemerton said:
Does D&D encompass non-5e versions?

In that case, I already posted the example of the Fang Tyrant Drake's furious roar (which paralyses with fear). In 4e there's no need to conceive of the fear caused by dragons as magical, either (which brings them closer to the Smaug-ish form of dragon terror).

I was speaking of 5E, but I think it’s largely applicable across editions. There are other ways for PC actions to be dictated by DM or by mechanics in different editions. 4E Probably has the most because it essentially shed the distinction of “because magic” and just had all kinds of abilities that could inflict a status on a character, whether the source was arcane or martial or divine, etc. didn’t matter all that much. So 4E allowed for more examples by basically treating more actions the same as magic.

By comparison, 5E does have similar creature abilities, but without diving too deeply, all would mimic the effects of a spell and grant some kind of condition on the PC; frightened, charmed, paralyzed, blinded, etc. In that sense, they all likely fall safely under the “magic” umbrella.

Maxperson · Jul 7, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
So would a valid reason never be "my character was able to overcome his urge to give in to the maiden"? I mean, that seems a more likely and potentially valid reason than the crazy example you've provided.

I didn't provide a crazy example, but to answer your question, it would be a valid reason and here's why. Sometimes people who have flaws can just overcome those urges. Now, if the player is doing it all the time and/or only at times when it would be detrimental to the PC/party, then he's abusing the system and would need to be talked to after the game. If it's just once in a while, then it's fine.

If it's possible for the character to not give in, but it's entirely up to the player if they can do so, it seems a bit flawed.

No, it's not flawed. It just requires that the player not play in bad faith.

Umbran · Jul 7, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
I think you'll find that you'll get very little opposition to a PC being Held and then Levitated (and then dropped into a pit I guess). People understand the mechanics and there were probably saves or something involved. But when there isn't that comfortable buffer of mechanics to fall back on people treat the whole thing very differently, ...

(emphasis mine)

This is the meat of it, really. We are talking, in the end, about TRUST.

When there are mechanics that the table all agreed to use underlying narrated events, we generally extend trust to the result. We typically see it as "fair", even if we are somewhat surprised by the result.

When we don't have the mechanics, the question of trust comes into play. It also comes into play when there are actually mechanics, but we are not familiar with them - pemerton's story above sits as an example - in the game he was playing, narration of the character moving across the room to introduce a complication was *within mechaical bounds*. Folks who play D&D, however, don't generally play under such mechanics, and they then fail to extend trust.

This is where a lot of conflict ton such issues arises - I've been working with my group for something like a decade. They trust me not to screw them over on a whim. Folks reading about my session on the message boards don't really know me from Adam, don't trust me, and worry that I might be screwing my players over on a whim.

Maxperson · Jul 7, 2019

pemerton said:
Can you tell us more about exactly what the response is that is dictated?

Seriously? You don't see that it's dictating the response of warming the heart? That precludes greater and lesser responses that I might want to give for my PC.