I think the questions I posed were about exactly that. I don't think anything is apparent, and that's why I asked.
I have hard time seeing how it could not be a form of limiting agency.
So if it is up to the player where to assign these points, then placing them in valor means the player is saying "valor is important to this PC", right? So they can approach play knowing this is going to come up.....that when their valor is questioned in certain ways, they may feel bound to respond in a specific manner, unless they can either succeed at a roll to resist that, or spend a player resource to resist it?
Is that understanding correct?
Well basically. Though the resistance roll is kinda backwards, they need to
fail at the virtue roll in order to not according the virtue. Not that it terribly matters. And of course you most choose at least one virtue to be high, you cannot opt out of this by just having low virtues.
Does it literally say that? It sounds to me like there is a check of some kind which may allow a PC to proceed however they wish, and then the player may also be able to use a resource to avoid that, right?
It is a dicepool system, and even one success on the virtue roll causes the compulsion. With three dice this has about 80% chance of happening. And the problem with using resource to overcome this is easier said than done. You have very limited amount of willpower points.
And if someone said that their character was valorous, and we trusted them to roleplay that, and they shrugged off every besmirching of their honor or ran from combat often.....aren't they actually saying that their character is not valorous? Aren't they actually NOT roleplaying?
But why would they do that? It would mean they're roleplaying badly and why would you roleplay badly? And if they indeed did all the time, then the GM could just instruct them to change their virtues, as they didn't obviously actually want to play a valorous person.
The problem with the system written that it is a completely context free compulsion. It doesn't matter what the situation is or how impossible the dare or the challenge. It also relies on rather specific interpretation of valour, coupling things that are not necessary related. A person who is unlikely to retreat from combat and feels honour bound to accept challenges needs not also be a person who accepts any crazy dare or wants to avenge every trivial slight.
And I remind that this part of the system is not supposed to represent anything supernatural, it is just a normal mundane personality mechanic.
Okay, so these elements are an important part of the game, it sounds like. I can see why this game might not be for everyone, for sure. But it also sounds to me like the players will know these elements going into the play, and will build their character in a way that their virtues or attributes will fit the way they'd like to play their PC, right? And then they have ways of mitigating any unwanted effect?
Again, it's hard to say, but it sounds to me like this game is simply enforcing roleplaying of the kind that seems relevant to the theme and genre. So if a player didn't want their PC to feel compelled to action based on honor, then the player would likely not place points in Valor. Does that sound right?
It is a crazy anime/wuxia/mythology/acid trip inspired game about demigodly heroes. It is supposed to be empowering. And sure, the limit break/curse mechanic is thematically important, but that the personality mechanics and the social combat kinda undermine it. Losing control due the curse is kinda big deal... except that you risk losing control all the time anyway. I suspect they just failed at tuning the mechanic. I think thematically the curse/ limit break thing would have worked just fine, if you could always suppress the compulsion from a virtue for free (without using willpower) but doing so would still give you limit break. (Though even that might me more than I like.)
But I say that knowing that I have an incomplete picture of the game and how it's meant to be played. My initial impression on this is that I'd likely agree with you that this is all a bit too much for my liking.
Yeah. a GM can mitigate it a lot, but by RAW it is pretty brutal.
I don't think in this case it would be so much about fixing as preventing.
What's the difference?
The system may not cause railroading, yes, but it does nothing to prevent it. That's my point. The system is vulnerable to railroading and force. It puts the onus on the GM to avoid doing these things.
Yes. Why is that a problem?
No. It does not do that, or not all of it. It says they have an emotional response, yes. However, it also says that their reaction is up to the player. It says that they should be honest about it, and roleplay accordingly. But what does that mean? It's up to the player to decide.
It forces an emotional reaction on you. You have control how to exactly interpret it, but still.
There is no difference between physical harm and emotional response in this way. Both are unwanted, both are imposed on the PC from outside forces, but the reaction to them is up to the player to decide.
They're different categories. I get to why this matters in a bit.
I honestly don't know. I haven't played Monsterhearts at all (the genre isn't my cup of tea). I agree with you that what they're going for is very genre-specific and that it fits. I don't know all the details that go into it, so I really can't say if this is all that big a limit on player agency. I don't think you and I agree about that because I don't agree that having consequences imposed on my PC is limiting my agency as a player; it's simply part of the game.
But the rule as described mentions Strings, and I don't understand their role in the game and how they come about. I'd likely need to know about those as well in order to understand the whole thing and evaluate it as a whole.
Yes. We might have exhausted the usefulness of discussing a game neither of us properly understands.
Blades in the Dark allows for mitigation of Harm through the use of Armor, and also through a Resistance Roll, which would most likely result in some accumulation of Stress. This is a player resource that can be used in a variety of ways, including reducing Harm as I've described.
It woudl seem to work remarkably similar to the willpower resource from Exalted. Odd that you view one as an increase in agency, but the other not as such.
Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because you've been conditioned to think of physical consequences to your character as being "normal" and a common part of a game, but mental or emotional consequences should be left entirely up to you?
Or do you think it's something else?
You are correct that 'increase' and 'decrease' of agency are relative terms from an assumed baseline. And that baseline is not some objective reality, merely a convention. As I said earlier, there could be (and there are) games where the player has complete agency over the physical integrity of their character; no physical harm can come to the character without the player's explicit approval. Now such games are rare, whilst games where the players have near complete agency over their character's mental faculties are pretty common. And now we get to why I feel you can't treat mental and physical in the same way. You obviously can have a RPG where the players have no agency over the physical integrity of their characters, mechanics or GM can inflict injury on their character, pretty standard. But you could even imagine a RPG where the players have no control over the physical actions of their characters. Quadriplegics sitting in a wheelchair, disembodied minds that cannot affect anything physical. As long as the characters can think and are able to communicate in some way, you can have a game. Rather limited, sure, but such a game could be played. And in effect such games are played pretty often. Ones where the characters just discuss, they have control over their bodies, but aren't really doing anything particularly important with them, just hanging out and talking. But can you imagine a roleplaying game where the players have zero agency over the mental faculties of their characters? Because I can't. It would not be in any way recognisable as an roleplaying game. So in that sense I feel that the player's agency over the character's mental faculties is more fundamental; there must be at least some amount of it for the roleplay to able to happen at all.
