NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[pemerton]

That does not seem like a decision characters could do, whilst deciding to escalate into a fight after a failed negotiation would. This game of yours doesn't seem like roleplaying to me, in a sense that it would be making decisions from the PoV of the character, it seems more like making decisions about mechanics which then produce a story about the character.

To be honest, I'm a bit worn out by this sort of commentary from people who have not played the RPG in question, and so have not experienced the actual phenomenology of play, and who seem to have giant blind-spots for the games they play.

In 5e D&D, for instance, all the following things are true:

*A player of a PC of midd-ish level (say 3 or higher) can have their PC face down an archer or crossbow-wielder knowing that a single shot cannot kill their PC. The PC cannot have that knowledge.

*A player of a PC can know that their PC can move from <here> to <there> without being intercepted, without stumbling, etc, in virtue of their ability to read the squares on the battle-map. The PC cannot have this knowledge (they do not live in a stop-motion world, and they do not know that they never trip over on small bumps in the ground).

*A player of a PC can know that their PC will never sneeze while casting a spell, or mispronounce the arcane words, etc. The character can't have this knowledge.

*A player of a PC can know that their PC will never falter, panic, be smitten, smile at the simple beauty of a carving above a gate, etc unless they the player choose for this to happen to their PC. (Or unless their PC is ensorcelled.) The PC cannot have this knowledge, anymore than any human being can have knowledge of what their emotions will be and will cause them to do. The result of this is that the player of a PC can make tactical and operational decisions that pay no regard to morale and other emotions at all. The PC cannot make this decision.​

(I think there are other examples that might be given, too, but these are some of the main ones.)

If I posted that, therefore, 5e D&D "seems more like making decisions about mechanics which then produce a story about the character", I would receive pages of replies telling me why I'm wrong, full of special pleading about the abstraction of hit points and stop-motion combat resolution, etc.

In the actual play of Torchbearer 2e, as I have experienced, it is 100% about roleplaying the character - making choices about what actions to declare, how to follow through, what the PC wants to risk, etc. The fact that the mechanical parameters unfold in different ways from 5e D&D doesn't change that.

So yes, this game seems to severely curtail the players' agency to roleplay their character, which is the sort of agency I primarily care about in a roleplaying game.

Just as in 5e D&D I can't roleplay a character who involuntarily stumbles, or sneezes, or is suddenly swept away by seeing something or someone beautiful. I would have to choose any of these things, which would straight away make them not involuntary. To put it more bluntly, to me it feels as if in 5e D&D I can't actually play a human being.

EDITed to fix tags.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, this is how I feel about it, too. The game pemerton describes is certainly a roleplaying game, but is also really quite alien to what I think of as a roleplaying game, and although it's interesting it's just not to my taste.

I think what you said earlier about agency is getting to the difference. There are, I think, two definitions of "agency" that people use:

1. The ability for their decisions to impact the game world
2. The ability for players to make decisions for their character

It seems to me that Torchbearer gives players more of Type 1, but at the cost of less Type 2. I wouldn't say the Type 2 is "taken away" since the players are agreeing to it, or even proposing it, but nevertheless it constrains their choices.

See my reply just above. I think this is just wrong.

Unless by "decisions for their character" you mean authorial decisions (about what the character feels, how they behave, etc) which are not things that the character themselves has control of. In which case I agree that TB2e has less of this than 5e D&D, which is why I think the characters feel more human. Because the player has less authorial control that does not conform to the actual capacity of the character to make decisions.

 

[pemerton]

I would say the constraints coming from the game rules rather than from the fiction and the PCs and NPCs in it is different.

Here is the fiction: the PCs tried to outwit the bandits but failed, and so the bandits persuaded the PCs to surrender.

 

[Aldarc]

Unless by "decisions for their character" you mean authorial decisions (about what the character feels, how they behave, etc) which are not things that the character themselves has control of. In which case I agree that TB2e has less of this than 5e D&D, which is why I think the characters feel more human. Because the player has less authorial control that does not conform to the actual capacity of the character to make decisions.

Some play preferences seems to presuppose the PC as a fully rational ghost in the machine with the inner self removed from outside affect unless willed so by the inner ghost that the player controls.

 

[Manbearcat]

Just as in 5e D&D I can't roleplay a character who involuntarily stumbles, or sneezes, or is suddenly swept away by seeing something or someone beautiful. I would have to choose any of these things, which would straight away make them not involuntary. To put it more bluntly, to me it feels as if in 5e D&D I can't actually play a human being.

“Would I know <x>?”

Having to GM-vet information spanning from the innocuous to the exceptional before you fully orient to a situation or declare an action also seems a hair…habitation-opposed. Especially when a character is presumably not an alien to either their own accumulated knowledge or their lived-in setting!

Feels kinda “I can’t play a human being”-ey! But maybe that’s just me. Maybe you all actually do that sort of 3rd party vetting in your lived lives and I’m the anomaly!

 

[aramis erak]

There are games and approaches where players can have their characters to "notice" or "remember" things of the player's choosing into existence.

They can be great fun with the right group.
If you cringe at the thought, you're probably not one for the right group.

Many games with non-experience metacurrencies allow buying truths. Several (FFG Star Wars, Blood & Honor) allow a spend to "have remembered to bring" something, but it's an easily missed reference in FFG-SW.

A number of games allow rolls and/or spends to establish truths; Burning Wheel (and Burning Empires) you can use Lore skills to define truths on success; the GM sets the difficulty based upon how likely it feels. MG1e has lore skills you can roll; 2e doesn't... but they also don't count against the skill limit. But MG doesn't explicitly allow narrating things into truth...
Several FATE Flavors explicitly allow it; VSCA's Diaspora is the one most plain about it: Sensor rolls are "What do you think it is? ... Ok, that's a good difficulty" with difficulty set by likeliness or GM's sense of setting or ties to plot.

I used defining a truth in Mouse Guard, and it turned a campaign sideplot into the campaign capping fight... See, a PC was romantically involved with the Captain of Lockhaven's guard, and the second highest member of the Territories Mouse Guard... but they were fighting a lot of rebels. SO... they decided to use a Turn to exclude him. Best Guard Lore rolled for him to not be a rebel. Worst Guard lore rolled for him to be a traitor... He wound up a traitor... and C's character wound up in a duel to the death with her lover... the traitor. It was epic...

 

[KYRON45]

Some very interesting interpretations of TTRPGs going on here.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To be honest, I'm a bit worn out by this sort of commentary from people who have not played the RPG in question, and so have not experienced the actual phenomenology of play, and who seem to have giant blind-spots for the games they play.

In 5e D&D, for instance, all the following things are true:

*A player of a PC of midd-ish level (say 3 or higher) can have their PC face down an archer or crossbow-wielder knowing that a single shot cannot kill their PC. The PC cannot have that knowledge.​

​

*A player of a PC can know that their PC can move from <here> to <there> without being intercepted, without stumbling, etc, in virtue of their ability to read the squares on the battle-map. The PC cannot have this knowledge (they do not live in a stop-motion world, and they do not know that they never trip over on small bumps in the ground).​

​

*A player of a PC can know that their PC will never sneeze while casting a spell, or mispronounce the arcane words, etc. The character can't have this knowledge.​

​

*A player of a PC can know that their PC will never falter, panic, be smitten, smile at the simple beauty of a carving above a gate, etc unless they the player choose for this to happen to their PC. (Or unless their PC is ensorcelled.) The PC cannot have this knowledge, anymore than any human being can have knowledge of what their emotions will be and will cause them to do. The result of this is that the player of a PC can make tactical and operational decisions that pay no regard to morale and other emotions at all. The PC cannot make this decision.​

(I think there are other examples that might be given, too, but these are some of the main ones.)

If I posted that, therefore, 5e D&D "seems more like making decisions about mechanics which then produce a story about the character", I would receive pages of replies telling me why I'm wrong, full of special pleading about the abstraction of hit points and stop-motion combat resolution, etc.

Some of those are true (this first one genuinely bugs me sometimes,) others seem more like hair-splitting, or are weird edge cases. Besides, perhaps, your spell attack roll failing or the target succeeding at their save is actually your spell failing because you sneezed?

And as for the last case, this is misunderstanding how immersive roleplay works. (Perhaps because you don't do that?) Player "chooses" in the same way that you "choose" to be scared when watching a scary movie. It is not really a choice, rather the reaction if produced via the interaction of the GM's evocative descriptions and roleplaying the character.

Furthermore, almost all of these examples are from combat, which in D&D is the part where people switch to "tactics mode" and there is not that much roleplaying present (though there still of course will be some.) This is a reason why some people do not like this approach of handling combat, and I totally get it. So If your argument is that your whole game is like the combats of D&D in this regard, then I believe you, but it is actually supporting my point, not yours.

In the actual play of Torchbearer 2e, as I have experienced, it is 100% about roleplaying the character - making choices about what actions to declare, how to follow through, what the PC wants to risk, etc. The fact that the mechanical parameters unfold in different ways from 5e D&D doesn't change that.

Your examples give a different impression to me though. When you talk about this game, it always seem to be full of weird gamey restrictions that do not correspond to what sort of restrictions the characters would be in the setting. PCs cannot leave camps or towns alone, players can choose whether encounter will be a combat or negotiation irrespective of enemy attitude, they can choose whether the fight risks their life, they cannot escalate from failed negotiation to a fight etc...

Though to me it is probable that if all the participants are internalise the framework, it is somewhat less jarring, as they try to shape the fiction so that in conforms to this structure (similar things happen with D&D combat.) But it still very mechanics first, and to a person not familiar with the underlying structure, the limitations seem rather weird.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They can be great fun with the right group.
If you cringe at the thought, you're probably not one for the right group.

Many games with non-experience metacurrencies allow buying truths. Several (FFG Star Wars, Blood & Honor) allow a spend to "have remembered to bring" something, but it's an easily missed reference in FFG-SW.

A number of games allow rolls and/or spends to establish truths; Burning Wheel (and Burning Empires) you can use Lore skills to define truths on success; the GM sets the difficulty based upon how likely it feels. MG1e has lore skills you can roll; 2e doesn't... but they also don't count against the skill limit. But MG doesn't explicitly allow narrating things into truth...
Several FATE Flavors explicitly allow it; VSCA's Diaspora is the one most plain about it: Sensor rolls are "What do you think it is? ... Ok, that's a good difficulty" with difficulty set by likeliness or GM's sense of setting or ties to plot.

I used defining a truth in Mouse Guard, and it turned a campaign sideplot into the campaign capping fight... See, a PC was romantically involved with the Captain of Lockhaven's guard, and the second highest member of the Territories Mouse Guard... but they were fighting a lot of rebels. SO... they decided to use a Turn to exclude him. Best Guard Lore rolled for him to not be a rebel. Worst Guard lore rolled for him to be a traitor... He wound up a traitor... and C's character wound up in a duel to the death with her lover... the traitor. It was epic...

It is a perfectly fine approach, and I get it, and I don't hate it. But it is definitely not my favourite. But I'm still fine with playing that way sometimes. I just want the pretty significant difference being acknowledged, as sometimes in these discussions people try pretend that there really is no difference.

 

[pemerton]

(I think there are other examples that might be given, too, but these are some of the main ones.)

“Would I know <x>?”

Having to GM-vet information spanning from the innocuous to the exceptional before you fully orient to a situation or declare an action also seems a hair…habitation-opposed. Especially when a character is presumably not an alien to either their own accumulated knowledge or their lived-in setting!

Feels kinda “I can’t play a human being”-ey! But maybe that’s just me. Maybe you all actually do that sort of 3rd party vetting in your lived lives and I’m the anomaly!

"Would doing <x> be an <insert alignment descriptor here> action?"

"What is the attitude of my god/temple/religion to <whatever?>"

"If I do <this XP-earning or mileston-triggering stuff> and gain a level, I'll be able to <cast this spell, or do this other thing, that I can't currently do>."

"If I do what this NPC asks, I'll find the adventure. If I don't, I probably won't."

I still think there are further examples that could be given, but we're certainly picking up quite a few of the recurring ones!