Should this be fixed

[Raven Crowking]

Perhaps I misunderstood the situation. But why would I be upset if another PC upset my PC, unless what the player of that PC did also upset me?

That's an interesting question, but I am not sure that it is relevant to what happened in the OP, or how a "Wisdom Check" is used in general. But, at least here, I can see what you're trying to get at.....even if I do not agree.

Yes, lots of folks play games where the metagame is entwined with what happens in-game. You play 4e; this can hardly be news to you. Group disharmony can arise from in-game actions, especially if those in-game actions appear to arise from a metagame "screw you" motivation. Or, obviously, when there is a metagame feeling of entitlement to freedom from the consequences of action, which is not actually played out in the in-game milieu.

In the case of the OP, the GM used a method to ensure that the player had the opportunity to know what the in-game norm was. Nothing more; nothing less.

In the case of the OP, the question is, should the metagame feeling of entitlement to freedom from the consequences of action be played out in the in-game milieu?

My answer is not only No, but Hell No.

Most of the others posters on this thread seem to be focusing on ingame consequences of choices, and primarily material gain and loss at that.

Yes.....because that is relevant to the question posed by the OP. The in-game actions of one player caused a material loss to the group. Should the metagame feeling of entitlement to freedom from the consequences of that action (by some of the group, and related specifically to that material loss) be played out in the in-game milieu?

If the OP's question had been about "thematic consequences within the gameworld - choices made, values affirmed, emotions realised or thwarted", then the answers no doubt would focus on the same.

It should not be considered at all unusual for an answer to a question to focus on the subject of the question. That doesn't mean that games in which material goods can be gained and lost cannot or do not also include other consequences.

Good fiction, or even mediocre fiction, is not generally concerned with affirming the causal patterns of reality.

Some people refer to the causal patterns of fiction as "plot", and refer to the causal patterns of character growth as "satisfying". Indeed, even fiction which is strongly character-driven or thematically driven relies upon imposing a natural-seeming causal process to make the fiction seem like anything other than the Hand of the Author Moving His Pieces Around.

Fiction that is not concerned with affirming causal patterns is usually called "Unpublsihed" and often called "Unpublishable".

It has been said that one of the primary draws that fiction holds upon is the affirmation of causality, which we are often unable to trace in real life, but need desperately to believe in to give our lives meaning.


RC

 

[The Shaman]

In fact, my experience is the opposite: if (i) improved mechanical capability produces a more fun game, and (ii) expedient rather than value-focused play is more likely to proudce that capability, then (iii) players will favour expedience over value. And, as well as my own experience, this is also the impression I get from stories of classic D&D play, where mercenaries are treated as expendable and sheep are herded through the Tomb of Horrors to detect all the traps.

Henryk Sienkiewicz describes Cossacks driving herds of cattle ahead of their advancing armies to force their opponents to waste powder and shot.

He writes about how the Cossacks loaded captives with bags of gravel and forced them into the moats in front of their enemies' castles, giving the defenders the option of watching the moat fill up or killing their own people.

And Sienkiewicz relates that peasants who joined the Cossack armies were used in mass attacks of attrition, to save the Cossack soldiers for the main effort after the enemy was worn down, often at great cost to these expendable tchernya.

Seeing these tactics in D&D affirms a certain reality, specifically our own. They are also statements of values, and if the referee has his <excrement> together, they should have consequences in the game.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It has occurred to me that this discussion is related to the "PC death" discussion.

The real question, AFAICT, is "Should the GM have impossed the consequences that destroying the treasure also therefore removes its monetary value?" This would seem to me to be a pretty obvious, and natural, consequence for the PCs action.

Previously, in "PC Death?" discussions, it was argued (by some) that PC death need not be the only consequence, and should only be a consequence if the player involved agrees to it."

In saying that the DM should make up for the shortfall, it seems as though there is a hidden argument (again, by some) that is saying "No consequence should befall a PC unless the player involved agrees to it."

I cannot express how vehemently I oppose this argument.


RC

 

[Aberzanzorax]

To extend this line further...

I see (at their extremes) two games being presented here:

One is a game of actions, randomness, and statistics representing the game world. The world is artificially "real" in the sense that things happen, and they effect other things...possibly reverberating throught the entire world.

Two/another is a game of story, a game in which the characters explore themselves and situations, and ultimately the world fits to the wills of the players (and to some degree/by extension to their characters).


Neither is wrong.

Only one is "standard" D&D.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Consequence is a natural part of story. If the characters in a story have control over all of the consequences, there is no tension, and hence no story. I can think of no stories in which this is not the case. Can you think of any?

Story arises out of context, action, and consequence.

"The queen died, and then the king died" is not a story. "The queen died, and then the king died of a broken heart" is. Without context and consequence, action is nothing.


RC

 

[Hussar]

It seems like what you're advocating, Hussar, is a consequence-light campaign. It sounds like you think PCs should be able to kill the king or spare him (or anything in between), and only be bound by how the country changes. If they are arrested, assaulted, assassinated, or otherwise retaliated against after killing the king, then sparing the king is obviously the "right" answer, while killing the king is obviously the "wrong" answer.

That seems incredibly weird to me. It's hard for me to fathom playing in a game world where the only consequences of PC action is how NPCs interact with one another after we, as PCs, act, with no direct reaction to the PCs themselves.

I think I understand you're saying something along the lines of "if they kill the king, there are repercussions against them from his supporters" and "if they don't kill the king, there are repercussions against them from his detractors" and I get it, to some degree. I do not understand how they need to be equal, though. That's not how consequences regularly work.

I'm all for games where that's the case occasionally, but it cannot be a constant motif for the campaign. Every decision cannot carry equal consequences. The GM then must necessarily decide the consequences of actions taken by the PCs. This is not a railroad situation. This is the GM fulfilling his role as arbiter.

No. You're not getting it.

Your situation isn't really feasible in what I'm talking about.

Look at Torchwood - Children of Earth. Do you sacrifice 10% of the world's children to save the rest? How do you choose that 10% if you do? Do you murder your own child to save the rest?

THAT'S moral gaming right there.

Or, look at Supernatural. Do you murder your own brother to save the world?

There's a couple of great examples of having real consequences to both options.

Please don't presume a lack of depth just because we're talking on the Internet and I don't go into exhaustive detail about the game.

 

[JamesonCourage]

No. You're not getting it.

Your situation isn't really feasible in what I'm talking about.

Look at Torchwood - Children of Earth. Do you sacrifice 10% of the world's children to save the rest? How do you choose that 10% if you do? Do you murder your own child to save the rest?

THAT'S moral gaming right there.

Or, look at Supernatural. Do you murder your own brother to save the world?

There's a couple of great examples of having real consequences to both options.

Please don't presume a lack of depth just because we're talking on the Internet and I don't go into exhaustive detail about the game.

I'd like you to please refrain from putting words or thoughts into my mouth. Further commenting along this line will result in a lack of response from me. Thank you.

Not all decisions can be like how you described, however. It would strip all meaning and believability if this were so. What path to take to our destination, when to go to sleep, who's on watch... these are not situations where it'd be reasonable to assume that they carried the same significance of what you're describing in a regular fashion.

On the flip side, what you're describing is very cool when it does happen, though it should not happen all the time. What I quoted from you seems to advocate all decisions being equal in consequences, one way or the other:

If doing X gives me a good result and doing Y gives me a bad one, then it's pretty obvious what the right answer is. If doing X or Y leads to an equivalent result (either equivalently bad or good) then the choice of doing X or Y comes down to what I believe is right, not what the GM wants me to do.

To me, this implies that all consequences must be equal, one way or another, else there are "right" answers, which you also speak against:

See, S'mon, my problem with that is that you have decided, as the DM, what the right answer is.

And that to me is a problem. Should consequences be unequal, then you seem to imply that it is somehow bad. I think that either you end up in a game where consequences matter little (which I stated and you seem to take extreme offense of), or the alternative (which you did not seem to acknowledge):

I think I understand you're saying something along the lines of "if they kill the king, there are repercussions against them from his supporters" and "if they don't kill the king, there are repercussions against them from his detractors" and I get it, to some degree. I do not understand how they need to be equal, though. That's not how consequences regularly work.

As you can see, the alternative is as you've described: either choice has meaning, and is potentially filled with many interesting twists and turns that players are sure to love.

I went on to say, however, that I do not think they need to be equal, and I stand by that. Consequences are not regularly equal, and the fact that you seem to have expressed they should be does not make sense to me. If all things are equally important, the game would be immensely exhausting (long discussion on who takes watch in what order each night), and the more stereotypically meaningful decisions (do we kill the king or spare him?) become just as meaningful as stereotypically lesser decisions. To me, that strips away the importance of "real" decisions, and would greatly devalue the game in my eyes.

Since I think the proposed methods (very light consequences for every decision or very important consequences for every decision) are both pretty fringe playing styles, I'm saying that it probably won't appeal to most people. I am not saying that moral decisions should not be made, and there can be a great many moral decisions to be made, even within something as restricting as an alignment system. I also do not think moral decisions need to have equally interesting outcomes, nor do the outcomes need to carry the equivalent implications (either good or bad).

As always, though, if you like that style of game, play it

 

[pemerton]

Consequence is a natural part of story. If the characters in a story have control over all of the consequences, there is no tension, and hence no story.

I think that this right here is the point at which our perspectives diverge.

The players of an RPG aren't the characters in a story. They are the authors of a story. And the author of a story does have control over the consequences that befall the characters in that story. The way that the author exercises that control is what makes the story interesting - and it can be interesting even if the author takes a non-standard approach to consequences (cf Camus's Outsider).

So, the way I see things (and this is why I used the notion "railroading" upthread) is that either the GM can attempt to impose his/her own critical/aesthetic judgement on the story - prewrite it, if you will - or s/he can leave space for the players to write the story that they want to write. I think that Dragonlance and its ilk take the first approach. I favour the second.

Not all decisions can be like how you described, however. It would strip all meaning and believability if this were so. What path to take to our destination, when to go to sleep, who's on watch... these are not situations where it'd be reasonable to assume that they carried the same significance of what you're describing in a regular fashion.

As a general rule, I prefer that most of these sorts of decisions have no consequences in my game - I can think of dozens of more interesting questions to address in an RPG than who's on watch when!

Path taken is sometimes interesting, and when it is I'm happy for it to be addressed in play.

These day, the question of when to sleep I treat as a consequence of skill challenge resolution rather than as something under the players' direct control - this works better with other aspects of 4e.

what you're describing is very cool when it does happen, though it should not happen all the time.

Why not?

In fact, in my game, many decisions are of less heavy thematic weight than what Hussar described, because ultimately my game is a reasonably light, fairly derivative fantasy RPG. But what would be wrong with a heavier game of the sort Hussar describes (assuming that the players had the emotional stamina for it)? I've played like that at Cons, and they're some of the more memorable RPGing experiences I've had.

What I quoted from you seems to advocate all decisions being equal in consequences, one way or the other:

<snip>

this implies that all consequences must be equal, one way or another, else there are "right" answers

I'm not sure I entirely follow all this, but there seems to be a disconnect here between Hussar and I, on the one hand (I hope, Hussar, that you don't mind me roping you in) and RC and you on the other (and likewise I hope that this creation of groupings is not out of line).

I'll try again: when I go to the theatre or watch a movie or read a book, the authors of the fiction do things that are (hopefully) engaging, interesting, and thought-provoking - not just because of the ingenuity of their plots, but because of the cleverness of their insight.

I want an RPG that is engaging, interesting and even perhaps thought-provoking in the same way. This means that I want my players to have the same sort of freedom as the author of a fiction has. The peculiarity of the RPG form means that much of their authorship is undertaken via the vehicle of their PCs acting within the fictional world.

But if I, as GM, purport to already settle all the interesting evaluative questions as part of my framing of the world, then how are my players to exhibit clever insight? To surprise me? To express their own views on the thematic and evaluative questions raised?

When Graham Greene wrote The End of the Affair, he didn't need a referee to tell him whether coming to love Christ via the medium of Catholic representations of Jesus's battered human body is a good or bad thing. Rather, he wrote a book that explored that idea and experience (among others). It expresses his complex view on the matter. And when I read it, it provides me with insight, and enables me to reflect, on my own views of the same matter. Piss Christ (admittedly a photograph rather than a traditional fiction) comes at something like the same topic from a very different perspective.

Not only is a referee's adjudication not helpful to the authors of these works, but I don't need or want a referee's adjudication to help me in responding to them. In fact, any attempt at such adjudication would just be another contribution to the same discussion - perhaps worthwhile, perhaps not, but no more or less definitive than the works themselves.

Likewise in an RPG. The players play their PCs. This tells us things about the players and can also be used by the players to tell us other things as well. I, as a fellow player or GM, can respond to that. But a referee's adjudication of the evaluative points made is not necessary. The points made carry their own meaning - they generate their own responses in their audience - this is the consequence that drives the game forward. How that consequence then relates to ingame matters is a secondary issue - there are any number of ways of handling that, and I think general prescriptions are hard to give.

 

[Hussar]

JamesonCourage - I agree, they don't have to be equal. They do, however, have to have some level of equivalency, if you see what I mean. If option X is 100% rewarded and Option Y is 100% punished, then no one is going to choose Y. At least, no rational actor will.

I will also totally agree that this is not for everyone. I think I said that earlier.

But, if you don't have equivalent outcomes, then there is no debate. Why would there be? If doing X means you win and doing Y means you lose, then, well, there's not a whole lot of discussion to be had.

Take another possible example. I want to explore the topic of terrorism in my game. I make sure that the players are groovy with this theme beforehand because, well, I don't want to start any fights.

Now, I set the game in the 1970's in Northern Ireland and the PC's are members of the IRA. Of course, not every decision point will be a moral quandary - the example you give of "when to go to sleep, who's on watch..." is a bit of a red herring. It's completely outside of the theme we want to examine.

But, during play, the question will come up - what is acceptable? Are civilian casualties acceptable? To what degree? What about escalation? How does this all fit within the context of a modern society? Etc, etc.

If the DM simply states, "terrorism is evil" then there is no more exploration of the theme. We know the answer, insofar as this campaign is concerned. It's no different than a physical exploration DM handing the PC's a fully detailed map of the area to be explored including all answers. It removes the primary motivation of play.

I don't think anyone proposed "very light consequences for every decision" since that would be pointless. The decisions that are based around the concept being explored should carry important consequences, regardless of what is decided. But, you cannot play this style of game if the DM simply labels things beforehand.

Is necromancy evil? Nope, not in this setting. Ok, conversation is finished.

Which is a perfectly fine way to play. There's nothing saying that you have to have moral introspection in the game. Heck, the alignment system is pretty much designed from the ground up to prevent this kind of philosophical discussion from grinding the game to a halt. Ten billion paladin debates show that. Why are we killing orcs? Because orcs are evil and they need killing.

If you take a moral position that killing evil is not self-justifying, then a great deal of D&D play gets really sticky.

 

[pemerton]

Henryk Sienkiewicz describes Cossacks

<snip>

Seeing these tactics in D&D affirms a certain reality, specifically our own. They are also statements of values, and if the referee has his <excrement> together, they should have consequences in the game.

Those examples suggest that the Cossacks were extremely expedient.

I don't object to players being expedient, but I do think that a game in which expedience is the only, or the only reliable, route to success will tend to discourage players engaging in play that expresses other values.

Of course, what counts as "success" is up for grabs across different groups and different playstyles - but for any sort of conventional ongoing campaign game, PC survial is probably a minimum element of it.

Hence my view that, if in this conventional sort of game you want players to feel free to explore or express a range of evaluative or thematic notions (of which expedience might be one), then it is helpful to ensure that the mechanics of PC life and death don't unduly favour expedience. This is one respect in which I think that 4e supports my play preferences better than classic D&D.

There are games that push this issue more overtly than 4e: HeroQuest and The Riddle of Steel, for example, make a player who wants to play expediently active choose that approach (because of the contribution to successful action resolution made by relationship-grounded augments, and spiritual attributes, respectively). 4e doesn't expressly say anywhere that the default to expedience is excluded. However, my view (and like the rest of my views, my views on 4e seem to command comparatively little assent!) is that 4e pushes in a similar direction to HeroQuest and The Riddle of Steel in a more passive-aggressive way - because it doesn't support classic D&D exploration very well, I think it will produce a pretty boring RPG experience unless the players actively engage it with some sort of thematic concerns in mind. (The alternative, which WotC seems to adopt in its modules, is to leave the GM in charge of theme and story and to reduce the game, from the player point of view, to a skirmish game with a very high degree of colour.)