NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Manbearcat]

your character isn't an alien to the setting, but the player behind that character functionally is and it behooves them to ask those kinds of questions of the GM before they declare their character's actions so they know what's what around the setting and don't do things an alien would.

I think what is happening above in your post is a bit of an accidental pivot. I think the accidental part of your pivot here is because you’ve kind of internalized the conflation and tradeoffs that I’m referring to so it might not even be apparent to you anymore?

The matter in question isn’t whether the in-setting character (sans player) is an actual alien to their own accumulated knowledge and experience of living in a place and having relationships.

The matter in question is whether the processes of play (in this case giving up ownership rights with repeated “hey GM, do I know <x>?” and then pantomiming the answers as if they were your own and/or acting upon the answers) generate a sense of alienation within a player who is trying to inhabit a character who has lived a life…in a place…with people…and has been afforded accumulated knowledge and experience accordingly...all of which they should have exclusive ownership over. It’s that (essential to immersionist priorities) character experience : player experience synthesis that is under the microscope here.

Now you might say “there is a trade-off that has to be made here to ensure (a) GM authorship and stewardship of setting.” You might say “there is a trade-off that has to be made here to ensure (b) the integrity of challenge-based priorities is maintained.”

I agree.

Those two bolded priorities are also fundamental to the bulk of Trad play and the collisions between all these bolded priorities and the gameplay processes meant to facilitate them have to be weighed. In the course of that, certain tradeoffs are made (such as a player giving up ownership rights over their accumulated knowledge and setting-lived-in-experience)…which is what I’m pointing at in the post you replied to and again in my first 3 x paragraphs here.

 

[Umbran]

I mean, I can just as easily be immersed in a novel, or movie, or TV show, and I have zero authorial agency there.

Yeah. That's why, broadly, I often think of "immersion" as the state in which you stop noticing the medium you're engaging with. When you are immersed in a novel, you stop noticing that you are turning pages, for example. That action still happens, but it doesn't enter into your experience.

This allows for the various things that folks think of as immersive for them, but noting the focus that is pretty similar across many.

 

[pemerton]

I always interpreted that to refer to one more remove: what is the creature's true intention in this conversation? Probably not "to be a liar".

Similar to goal and approach. Lying is the approach; what's the goal?

As per my post that you replied to, the goal is to deceive their interlocutor.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah. That's why, broadly, I often think of "immersion" as the state in which you stop noticing the medium you're engaging with. When you are immersed in a novel, you stop noticing that you are turning pages, for example. That action still happens, but it doesn't enter into your experience.

This allows for the various things that folks think of as immersive for them, but noting the focus that is pretty similar across many.

Yea, it's exactly like that. (The words on the page and the act of turning the pages all falling away is one I'm deeply familiar with.) And, comparatively, if I'm really in an immersed flow state, I can make a roll during a game and take in the result and use it without losing my sense of "being in character." It's a more challenging mental state to get to, for me, than acting as the character with no mechanics, but it feels more intense and worthwhile during play. (Again, IMX.)

 

[pemerton]

I am curious about that too. How do the players set stakes in these games, when they ostensibly aren't in control of things outside their PC? If I'm being threatened by some with a knife, I have no control over whether or not that person intends to inflict violence on me. Without that, how can the PC set the stakes?

How does it come about that the PC is threatened by someone with a knife?

Answer that question - in terms of processes of play - and you'll start to see how stakes are set, and by whom. You'll also see that different RPGs approach this differently.

In TB2e, being threatened by someone with a knife would typically be something narrated as a twist, in response to a failed test. So the player will have laid the ground for this to happen, via whatever action declaration they made that precipitated the test.

The parallel in an AW-derived game would be the interplay of soft and hard moves. TB2e is rather different from AW in the technical details of it procedures of play (and much closer to Burning Wheel, although also not identical); but there are some broad similarities in the way the GM is expected to respond to player cues.

 

[pemerton]

Interesting that you moved the context from social interaction to combat to make this point.

Why would surprise be any different across those contexts?

I mean, I get that in D&D and similar RPGs, the context makes a difference. But that is an artefact of the mechanics for those systems, not some inherent feature of the fiction itself.

 

[pemerton]

Well, it's a little boring to have such things just be a binary based on a single die roll. Discourages you from having any NPC ever lie if it's that easy to call them out. Same as dealing with a PC with crazy high passive Perception (and there's always one): now you essentially can't hide stuff because there's virtually no chance it won't be found. Both things harm realism IMO.

This seems like evidence of bad game design - or, at least, game design that doesn't serve your goals for play.

It's not an argument, though, about the meaning of the rules text, which seems pretty plain to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How does it come about that the PC is threatened by someone with a knife?

Answer that question - in terms of processes of play - and you'll start to see how stakes are set, and by whom. You'll also see that different RPGs approach this differently.

In TB2e, being threatened by someone with a knife would typically be something narrated as a twist, in response to a failed test. So the player will have laid the ground for this to happen, via whatever action declaration they made that precipitated the test.

The parallel in an AW-derived game would be the interplay of soft and hard moves. TB2e is rather different from AW in the technical details of it procedures of play (and much closer to Burning Wheel, although also not identical); but there are some broad similarities in the way the GM is expected to respond to player cues.

PC is walking down dark alley, on way to fun night in tavern. They turn corner, come across person who points knife and threatens harm to PC if valuables are not received.

How is the PC setting the stakes here?

 

[Micah Sweet]

This seems like evidence of bad game design - or, at least, game design that doesn't serve your goals for play.

It's not an argument, though, about the meaning of the rules text, which seems pretty plain to me.

No argument there.

 

[pemerton]

Since @Crimson Longinus seems to be fairly embedded in the Hickman Revolution-trad agenda of play, I would assume "properly" means with the player deciding on a character's action purely from their concept of the character's personality, with zero recourse to mechanics

This seems plausible.

Deciding on a character's action purely from one's concept of a character's personality, though, doesn't seem to me to have a great deal in common with immersion - as in, feeling what the character feels. I mean, if I know you well than I can intuit what you will do next in many situations - but that wouldn't meant that I'm immersed in being you!

And when the intuitions about what someone will do next are intuitions about a character whom I am authoring, it looks even more like a type of authorial/epistemic orientation - quite different from the inhabitation that I generally aspire to in my own RPGing (as a player, that is).