Aren't they? I must have missed that memo.
Upthread, I posted this:
I've not changed my mind over the course of our conversation. My approach creates compelling FPRGing with knight errant tropes, crises of faith, and the like (and has done so for me since 1990). Whereas your approach seems focused on the GM telling the players what morality requires or permits of them.
I prefer if the player gets to decide their own good and evil too. Problem is, they don't get to do that in DnD. Point of Fact, you keep quoting Gygax and his definitions of Good. Which would be fine if Gygax was a player, but he isn't. And he wasn't writing as a player. So, as you quote Gygax to tell me that lying is evil and not chaotic.... are you not engaging in that idea that as the GM, as the authority of the world, you are defining the morality at play? Exactly as DnD intends?
I want to drag you back to the start of this entire conversation. I got into this discussion because I responded to Umbran who was quoting Gygax, who stated that Stealth should be a "last resort" for paladins. And linked that idea of the authority prescribing morality like that, to the trend of Paladin players who present the Paladin as performative good, over and above doing actual good.
And, as a quick side here, the very concept of Providence is external. Providence is not found by the internal world of the character finding peace, but with the external validation of an omniscient power. So, for Providence to be what determines if a character succeeds, it must be an external force. And the Players cannot dictate what the Gods say and do. They can offer suggesstions, but the Gods are NPCs and NPCs are the realm of the DM.
This is very telling, for a couple of reasons.
First, it is not a lie. It is fiction. Authorship. Suppose that the GM makes something up about the Raven Queen, and then decides to narrate that as part of the fiction. That isn't more true, less of a LIE. The Raven Queen does not exist. We can make up whatever stories we like about her, using whatever methods we like. The method that I and my group use is roleplaying - with the rules of the game creating the constraints within which the fiction must fall. But nothing in the rules of 4e D&D says that the cause of a time-limit (as mandated by the rules) cannot be intercession by a god. Which is what it was, in our game.
If I didn't want the "literary point" of my RPGing to be influenced by dice rolls, I wouldn't use them. In fact I probably wouldn't play RPGs - I would engage in solitary or cooperative story-writing.
Second, you appear not to be able to tell the difference between (i) a fiction about a paladin's faith in his god, tested over many episodes in the fiction which have been dozens of sessions of play by the time of this particular event, and (ii) some nonsense about underpants. This reinforces my view that my method produces more compelling RPGing than yours.
Fictions are not true. They are made up. My player made up a story about the workings of the providence of the Raven Queen. It created compelling fiction in the moment of play. It created something memorable to me, more than ten years later. And that story was just part of an unfolding story about that paladin's faith, conviction and quests.
You are conflating two separate things.
Yes, Fiction is made up, but within the fiction it happens as stated. Sure, Frodo never set foot on Mount Doom, neither Frodo nor Mount Doom actually exist. But, in the world of Middle-Earth, Frodo did set foot on Mount Doom and Gollum bit off his finger and the One Ring was destroyed. And since the Author controls everything, if JRRT stated "And that was the Will of Eru, according to his plan" then so it was. Because the author is the final word and the control of the reality.
But DnD works differently. DnD does not work on the sole authority of the GM. The dice play a roll. I actively write stories where dice rolls are a key component, and so I do not have the full, sole authority to declare an action will succeed because of just cause. Nor, if an ability lasts one minute, do I have the full, sole authority to declare it lasts longer or shorter, nor could I realistically state that it only lasted one minute because the Gods intervened.
Yes, I get that you are declaring that it was an intercession of the Raven Queen, but would it have been the intercession of the Raven Queen if the cultist had targeted a rogue who doesn't worship any of the gods? Would it have been the intercession of the Raven Queen if the cultist had targeted the party's pet cat? Just like it would be nonsense to declare that an orc thrown off a bridge "was pulled down by the Will of Eru to die as his plan stated" instead of it being gravity, it is equally nonsense to my mind to declare the prescribed, unchangeable mechanics of how an ability works into being the will of the Raven Queen.
To your second point, no, I can tell the difference. The problem is that your paladin is making things up. It would be the same as saying that the dawn they see if the work of the Raven Queen, or the fact they find a delicious pie is the work of the Raven Queen. I don't know if you are familiar with many writings that feature Providence, but part of what makes them function is that there never eliminate the possibility that Providence is True. Sure, it makes for a great story for your paladin to yet again declare his faith in the Raven Queen... but we know the mechanics behind the action. We know the physics of it. The Paladin could declare that they found a relic of the Raven Queen at a thrift shop, by the will of the Raven Queen, but if we know meta-textually that the relic is a fake planted by a scam artist because the paladin's companion wanted to prank them.... then we know it wasn't her will that did it. Even if the Paladin believes it, declares it, and thinks with their whole being that is what happened... they are wrong.
It doesn't matter if the story is more compelling, it doesn't matter if the story sounds nicer, it is hollow because it wasn't true. Unlike JRRT writing and declaring what the truth of the reality is, and saying that the truth was XYZ, when we zoom out in DnD... it is dice. Random Number Generation.
There is a certain irony in presenting a fiction - Watership Down - as evidence of how RPGing, an actual thing that actual people do, works.
Here are two sentences:
*At my table, had I as GM narrated the enemy Hexer attacking a different PC, and - following the roll of the dice etc - had I narrated that that PC turned into a frog, and then had nothing else done by any of the participants triggered a rule about the ending of that effect, I would have narrated the PC turning back at the rule-specified point in the turn cycle;
*In the fiction of our 4e game, had another PC been turned to a frog by that hexer, they would have turned back after a short period of time.
The first of these sentences is a true counterfactual about the real world.
The second of these sentences is a counterfactual that has to be evaluated within the fiction. Is it true? I don't know. My players don't know. You certainly don't know!
The fact that you treat the two sentences as equivalent, or close to, is what I mean why I say that you seem to be only to imagine one way of playing RPGs.
Wrong. We do know that the Hexer's ability would have worked the exact same way against a different PC. Because the DM used the exact same ability from the exact same statblock. If an ability says "the target is frightened until the end of your next turn" then that is how long they are frightened for. The target does not matter, because it applies the same to every target. It didn't wear off because Pelor decided to bless the player, unless that ability always wears off that quickly because Pelor is constantly ending that effect across the entire multiverse every single time it happens.
Unlike Fiction, where a single author can manipulate reality to do what the story needs, the reality of DnD is bound by dice and rules that the GM does not alter based on a character's faith or lack thereof.
You accuse me and my players of being deluded, but to me it seems the shoe is on the other foot. At the very least, you seem to be confused.
To begin with, there is no factual reason as to why the paladin turned from a frog back to his proper form. Because it is a fiction. The reason can be whatever we author, consistent with the rules. At my table, the player of the paladin authored that the Raven Queen turned him back.
Second, you seem to be supposing that a story about providence must itself be produced providentially. But that is obviously false - as is shown from the fact that we cannot infer, from the fact that JRRT wrote LotR, a story about providence, that JRRT was guided by providence in his writing. In case there is any uncertainty, I do not believe that my RPGing is ordained by providence. It would not be ordained by providence if the GM or players made something up without constraint. It is neither more nor less providential if the dice rolls and rules of the game are treated as constraints. And this is before we reflect on the fact that the Raven Queen is purely imaginary, and so cannot ordain anything at all!
This does not mean that the story is not a story about providence, or a deconstruction. If, in the fiction, it turned out that the Raven Queen was rolling dice, then it would be different. Or if we were playing Over the Edge, which permits the PCs to discover that they are fictions, imagined by players of a RPG. But in my 4e game the Raven Queen does not roll dice, and there is no ironic or absurdist breaking of the fourth wall.
Just because the ability does not state that it ends because of a particular effect, does not mean you can insert whatever effect you think fits the story. Again, I could use the exact same logic that we can determine the reason to be whatever we want, to declare it was because the spell was cast on a Tuesday, and therefore only lasted 6 seconds. I would have the exact same evidence. Now, I will admit, "this was random" does not have the same satisfaction of "my goddess has blessed and protected me from harm", but being satisfying does not make it TRUE.
And no, I don't think a story needs to be created by Providence to feature providence, but the thing is, JRRT knew from the start that the heroes would succeed. He knew from the beginning the One Ring would be destroyed. He knew none of the Hobbits would die. He, himself, was the Providence in the story, because everything went according to his will to tell his story. DnD does not work that way. The GM can't just make up numbers that fit his story, he can't just arbitrarily alter conditions to punish the wicked, he can't control when or if the players make good choices, and he can't reward the just and true while punishing the wicked players.
Sure, you can look at a die roll and declare "And thus providence has declared my victory over Evil!" just the same as a man could look out of his bedroom window, see a cloud that looks like his house crest and declare "And thus providence as declared that land to the East to belong to me!" But as the consumer of the media, while we might not have the perspective to judge the cloud, we DO have the perspective to know that your die roll was not a pre-ordained event carved into the stone fundament of the universe.
This is why I call it a delusion, because the is seeing what are effectively natural laws and random chance, and declaring that they are divine will.
All you are doing here is pointing out the difference between writing a story, and playing a RPG. I'm quite familiar with that difference.
But the monks were just humans. Them having written a story about this or that does not show providence at work. They just made it all up! In RPGing, we also make things up, but using different methods from what the monks, or a contemporary novelist, uses.
I've already noted that your method for RPGing seems to rely very heavily on one participant, the GM, dictating things to everyone else. You seem to think that the GM dictating without constraint what we are all to imagine the Raven Queen doing has some providential overtones that are lacking from a player saying what we are all to imagine the Raven Queen having done when the rules of the game open up a space for the player to do so. But I don't see it. GMs are not gods. They are human authors, no more or less than monks, JRRT, and RPG players.
Yes, they made it up, but they controlled the entire narrative. They made up the omnicisient being controlling everything, which is the entire basis of the idea of Providence. And so within the world they made up, where they puppeted the omnicisient being, the omniciesent being acted.
But a DM cannot do that, because even if they puppet the gods, they cannot declare "and Sir John will win this fight because he is true of heart!" because the dice are going to determine that. And the dice don't care whether or not Sir John is true of heart, a scoundrel, or a polka-dotted elephant. And looking back on the dice results, and declaring that those dice results occurred because of Sir John's pure heart, is a post-hoc invention. The same as saying that only a witch would survive being chained in iron and thrown into a lake, after an accused witch survived that exact punishment.
All these strong claims, with no evidence provided.
I'm curious about what RPGs you have played other than pretty mainstream D&D.
Savage Worlds
Fate
Burning Wheel (briefly)
Sentinel Comics
Cold Steel Wardens
Warhammer 40K
Warhammer Fantasy
Icons
Blue Rose (once)
7th Sea (Once, it was terrible due to convention)
Convictor Drive
OVA
The one really popular OSR game.
The one based on the Gothic clowns war game, can't remember the name off the top of my head.
Sure, I guess you could play a game where the game rules state "you have a destiny, therefore your character is immune to death" but DnD is notably not that sort of game and does not have those mechanics.
