Players choose what their PCs do . . .

Tony Vargas · 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.

The difference between subtle social queues overriding judgement & rational decision making and magic doing so, is that magic doesn't exist.

We've all experienced doing things we knew were bad ideas at the time and later regretted bitterly, because we were manipulated into it, or psychologically vulnerable in some way.

It's just part of being human.

In fantasy magic does exist, can seize control over a mind- and is often overcome by more powerful forces, like courage, faith, or love.

hawkeyefan said:
Why would a DM ever say “you lose 50 HP for no reason muhuhahahah!”?
.

I think the villain laugh is your answer.

Seriously though, hp loss can be used, arbitrarily, by the DM as a stick to shove a misbehaving player back in line, or punish inappropriate RP. It's crude code for "I'll throw you out of the game," but I've seen it done - back in the day - and even seen it work. By the same token there are RP carrots DMs can arbitrarily give out as rewards. There are even formal systems for them, like 5e inspiration.

Besides, hps can include factors like luck, fate, divine favor or the like that the DM could claim control over.

Satyrn · Jul 6, 2019

Maxperson said:
No it doesn't. Without it I have the opportunity to roleplay the wink as not affecting my PC or as melting his heart. I have two opportunities on how to roleplay(more than two really). With the wink forcing my PC to act a certain way, it removes every other way to roleplay and only offers up one opportunity, instead of many. It takes away opportunities.

Unless you feel that roleplaying means you always get to decide exactly how your character acts at all times. But of so, then why bother with any mechanics at all?

Click to expand...

To resolve things that are in doubt.

Aye. I do not want my DM telling me my PC is smitten by the maiden's wink. It's my character, my decision whether that's the case. Ideally the DM should tell me that's the maiden's goal for the wink so I can be better informed and choose to buy in to what the DM is selling.

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.

Sure, other RPGs will work differently, but the way D&D 5e works is my preference. Specifically its basic play loop and its assumption that players control what their character thinks.

Ovinomancer · Jul 6, 2019

So, at this point, I see that the [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION], [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] nexus is doing the following:

1) assuming D&D in their arguments, and

2) confusing choice/authority with roleplaying (at least Max and Frog are).

No conversation is possible so long as these are the assumptions, as these are different from the assumption set of the other side, who is talking about all games, not just D&D and is also not confusing authority/choice with roleplaying -- in fact, this difference is the point of the OP, in part.

Umbran · Jul 6, 2019

Maxperson said:
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.

Do you think that human beings are under their own conscious control at all times? Were you under the impression that attraction to people is somehow governed by conscious will? There is plenty of power in the simplest of human interactions. If you really want to try to argue that, with someone who knows psychology, you probably lose.

That, however, isn't really the point, so you shouldn't argue on that basis. There's a stronger argument:

There are agreed upon areas of agency. This violates the agreement you have at your table. Period. Full stop. Done.

This should not be a discussion about what forms of power are plausible. This should be about which person at the table has agency to do what, and when. This is about the social contract of play. Keep it there, and you can't lose the argument.

Satyrn · Jul 6, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
So, at this point, I see that the @Maxperson, @FrogReaver, @Satyrn nexus is doing the following:

1) assuming D&D in their arguments, and

2) confusing choice/authority with roleplaying (at least Max and Frog are).

No conversation is possible so long as these are the assumptions, as these are different from the assumption set of the other side, who is talking about all games, not just D&D and is also not confusing authority/choice with roleplaying -- in fact, this difference is the point of the OP, in part.

That's my first post in this thread and immediately you post this ugly comment without even trying to engage in conversation with me.

I was even directly answering the OP original question with my post: "What do others think about who does, or should, get to establish the truth of descriptions of PC actions, and how?" Well, not directly, but my answer is clearly there: the way 5e is written with its basic play loop is my preference for who gets to establish such and how it's done.

hawkeyefan · Jul 6, 2019

Maxperson said:
No, because charm is an accepted part of the game. I know going into the game that there are in-fiction mechanics such as charm, dominate, command, etc., to assert control over my PC. A wink is not one of those and shouldn't be.

While a wink may not be one of those for a given game (D&D), it may be for others. Should or should it not be is another question. Why not? Haven’t we all known people who don’t always act in their best interests because there’s a person who can always get under their skin, or because they’re a sucker for a pretty face, or any other number of things?

Sure, these things can be roleplayed without mechanical rules in place to promote them, but having such rules doesn’t deny roleplaying. It promotes it.

I mean, take a character who is never swayed by anyone’s influence ever never unless there’s magic at play. Then take a character who may be influenced from time to time.

Now tell me which character’s player will actually have to roleplay more often.

Maxperson said:
I already said that there are some games with out of fiction mechanics, that allows the DM to assert control over my PC via something a wink, and that I wouldn't want to play one of those.

Right. It pretty much always goes back to D&D and only D&D with you. It tends to make these discussions that are about RPGs in general a bit challenging.

You could add some social mechanics onto 5E relatively easily. The Traits, Bonds, ideals, and Flaws could be tweaked a bit so that in game events that pertained to them could pose more of a challenge. For example, a character could have a flaw of being greedy. So anytime a chance at an easy money grab comes up, the character could make a saving throw or similar roll to see if he gives in to his flaw. A character could have a bond with a specific town or organization. Learning of a threat to that town/organization maybe forces a roll or else the character’s obligation overrides his reasoning.

Regardless of how the roll turns out, though, roleplaying is involved. If successful, the player can have the character rise above their flaw....on a failure, the player can have them give in to the flaw. This last bit seems relevant to [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION]’s points.

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
In actual fiction, not the poor modeling job most TTRPGs do of fiction - it's pretty evident who's a main character, who's supporting cast, and who's an extra.

In the fiction as viewed externally by real-world viewers, yes; because it's been set up that way.

But as viewed from the POV of a character within that fiction? No. That character would have no way of knowing any of this - it would just carry on living its life. And it's that viewpoint that I use when looking at game/system/world design - does it end up producing something that is consistent within itself in the eyes of every sentient thing* within that setting. If yes, good. If no, there's a problem - I've done it wrong.

* - whether they ever enter play, or whether they are PCs or NPCs or whatever, is not relevant - it has to be consistent for all such that something happening *here* ('on camera', with a PC involved) can be safely and correctly assumed to turn out much the same as if that same thing had happpened *there* (somewhere five countries away where no PC has ever gone).

Minion rules are the absolute opposite of this.

hawkeyefan · Jul 6, 2019

Maxperson said:
No it doesn't. Without it I have the opportunity to roleplay the wink as not affecting my PC or as melting his heart. I have two opportunities on how to roleplay(more than two really). With the wink forcing my PC to act a certain way, it removes every other way to roleplay and only offers up one opportunity, instead of many. It takes away opportunities.

Unless you feel that roleplaying means you always get to decide exactly how your character acts at all times. But of so, then why bother with any mechanics at all?{/quote]

To resolve things that are in doubt.

Right. And sometimes, how people will behave can be in doubt.

As for taking away options, I don’t think that’s really the case, but that can also be remedied by allowing degrees of success.

Satyrn · Jul 6, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
I think the villain laugh is your answer.

Seriously though, hp loss can be used, arbitrarily, by the DM as a stick to shove a misbehaving player back in line, or punish inappropriate RP. It's crude code for "I'll throw you out of the game," but I've seen it done - back in the day - and even seen it work. By the same token there are RP carrots DMs can arbitrarily give out as rewards. There are even formal systems for them, like 5e inspiration.

Blue lightning. Just out of the, uh, blue. Whenever the players strayed. Or got uppity. I remember my DM using that long ago, when my buddies and I first started playing D&D.

And then recently, thanks to that, uh, recent thread here about druids and metal armor and all its talk about how 1e handled that sort of thing, I cracked open my heritage cut off the AD&D DMG and there it was: Blue lightning. I had never realized it was official!

Lanefan · Jul 6, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
That 4th example that made you cry Bloody Blue Murder is exactly how things can play out in Blades in the Dark. Sometimes, the GM will narrate a consequence. “You attempt to kill the Red Sash Swordsman with your knives, but he manages to draw his sword, parry your attacks, and run you through. You feel his sword slide into your gut and scrape alongside your spine. You take Fatal Harm.”

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.

At that point, the character is dead, unless the player chooses to resist the Harm. He makes a Resistance Roll which determines how much Stress it costs him (6 minus his highest d6 roll). The Harm becomes Level 3 and the character is merely incapacitated.

I only bring this up because it shows how different games can function, and how they give different power to the players to influence the fiction.

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.