NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Thomas Shey]

I might likewise find my character being seduced despite his best intentions interesting and fascinating character exploration. But I think it is fairly established at this point in the RPG community generally that this stuff should be hashed out at the start.

Though some things may be taken as a given enough people won't think to go over them. Routine low-detail violence is so endemic in the hobby most people won't even think to mention it'll occur in a session zero situation, but some elements relating to sex or torture will be more likely to come up. That's not perfect (someone who came in from the slice of RPGs that actually doesn't involve much violence might be very unpleasantly surprised) but its just not something even people trying to be thoughtful will think of because of the fish-don't-notice-water element.

 

[Umbran]

I think you might be confusing a problem at a table with the participants communicating what is enjoyable to them with a style of play and associated gaming artifacts and techniques.

And if, the dice, rules, and GM having spoken, the player said that result is NOT enjoyable?

I submit that a player should be allowed to reject sexual content in the moment, prior agreements or rules be damned. One should always have the right to withdraw consent. Ultimately, the player does get to choose.

There's nothing any more inherently wrong

This has nothing to do with anything being "inherently wrong". This is about personal and subjective experiences and needs.

with those mentioned by pemerton than there is a flaw with D&D's combat rules because they dictate that we gruesomely carve our enemies into bloody bits with very long sharp knives.

With respect, there is an implied false equivalence here - in our culture, broadly, there are large and distinct differences in how we view violent content and sexual content. They are not the same, so that handling them somewhat differently can be reasonable.

But, even if they were the same - in my games, if a player decides they do not want to gruesomely carve anyone into bloody bits that day, or to not be carved themselves, I'll do my best to figure something out. Heck, I'm currently running The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, a D&D adventure in which nobody needs to get carved up at all!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I've not said, nor implied, that inhabitation of character is impossible. I've repeatedly stated, including in this thread, that as a player it is my goal.

Then I do not understand your incredulity to my idea the players playing their characters would feel genuine emotions evoked by the fiction.

If I am going to inhabit my character being moved in some non-chosen way then I am not looking to have to choose that - which would be self-defeating!

I want the system itself to generate, concurrently in me as it does in my character, the response in question. Some of this comes from what the system tells me, where I can anticipate or follow along with that (much as how, eg, @TwoSix describes being immersed in D&D combat, I'm guessing because similarly he can anticipate and follow along with what the mechanics are dictating). What the system tells me is, in turn, shaped by what I know about how the system picks up on, and develops, the established fiction.

I want mechanics to generate surprising situations. I empathetically do not wan them to generate the character's reactions to those situations. I have my mental model of the character for those, and it indeed can sometimes produce surprising results. You really never know how you (or the character living in your head) reacts to surprising situations until you're put into the spot.

And I think you almost go it earlier, when you talked about the author feeling that the character must act certain way. It is super jarring when you have that feeling, but the mechanics say something else.

I am not disparaging your way. It obviously works for you. But a lot of people simply do not want to play that way, or indeed even cannot play that way. And ultimately your method does limit player agency. This again is not automatically a bad thing, games limit player agency in many ways for various purposes. My preferred method also limits player agency in some areas where in your method they would have more, like we saw with setting the stakes.

I think both these examples are also relevant to posts I've made upthread, about the significance of the player establishing stakes. There is no arbitrary NPC ready to stab Aedhros or Thurgon, no random necromancer trying to persuade them to take up a fetch-quest for the Red Ruby of Doom - the situations they are confronting speak directly to thematic and dramatic concerns that are elements of the characters themselves. And this is not some sort of coincidence - this is the GM following the principles set out pretty straightforwardly in the BW rulebook. Here's a post that sets out the core of those principles, from a thread a couple of months ago that you participated in:

Yeah, we've been over this many times. To me certain amount of such personal connection to the characters is good thing, but if everything that happens revolves around them that way, it starts to feel super contrived and artificial to me. Also, sometimes players find angles and meanings that resonate with their characters in things GM did not plan it.

 

[zakael19]

And ultimately your method does limit player agency.

Can you define for us what you perceive as "player agency" in general, or at least a brief discussion of what that term means to you?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Can you define for us what you perceive as "player agency" in general, or at least a brief discussion of what that term means to you?

It is player's ability to influence the content and direction of the play. And it can manifest in many different ways, and some forms of agency may erode agency in other areas. To reuse my olde example yet again, to give the player agency to decide who the murderer is in a murder mystery would destroy the player agency of genuinely solving a mystery. So instead of talking about whether a game has lot or player agency, it is usually more useful to discuss over what sort of things players have agency in the game, as that is where people's preferences often differ. (As we've seen in this very thread.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Though some things may be taken as a given enough people won't think to go over them. Routine low-detail violence is so endemic in the hobby most people won't even think to mention it'll occur in a session zero situation, but some elements relating to sex or torture will be more likely to come up. That's not perfect (someone who came in from the slice of RPGs that actually doesn't involve much violence might be very unpleasantly surprised) but its just not something even people trying to be thoughtful will think of because of the fish-don't-notice-water element.

And if, the dice, rules, and GM having spoken, the player said that result is NOT enjoyable?

I submit that a player should be allowed to reject sexual content in the moment, prior agreements or rules be damned. One should always have the right to withdraw consent. Ultimately, the player does get to choose.



This has nothing to do with anything being "inherently wrong". This is about personal and subjective experiences and needs.



With respect, there is an implied false equivalence here - in our culture, broadly, there are large and distinct differences in how we view violent content and sexual content. They are not the same, so that handling them somewhat differently can be reasonable.

But, even if they were the same - in my games, if a player decides they do not want to gruesomely carve anyone into bloody bits that day, or to not be carved themselves, I'll do my best to figure something out. Heck, I'm currently running The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, a D&D adventure in which nobody needs to get carved up at all!

Well, I am not entirely opposed to the point of view that typical RPGs treat extreme casual violence in a pretty light way. So sure, as @Thomas Shey says, it's likely to be glossed over. And, no doubt if any particular topics come up and someone asserts that's not fun for them, then we should deal with that. I just think the overall premise and genre/tone of a game should be established at the start, along with any obvious red lines.

In the case of the post I responded to it was in response to another post in which @pemerton presumably was referencing play that happened in a game of Pendragon, where these sorts of situations are pretty much expected. I'd note that there was no suggestion, one way or the other, as to what sort of details were being described at the table. My comparison to combat is intended to point out that, despite substantial mechanics and table time, melee combat is not customarily described in any detail either. If it were, most people would be utterly revolted.

Again, this may be a double standard, but that doesn't really change the point of my comment. This is not a game design issue, it's a table issue.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, I am not entirely opposed to the point of view that typical RPGs treat extreme casual violence in a pretty light way. So sure, as @Thomas Shey says, it's likely to be glossed over. And, no doubt if any particular topics come up and someone asserts that's not fun for them, then we should deal with that. I just think the overall premise and genre/tone of a game should be established at the start, along with any obvious red lines.

If nothing else, it should indicate if problem areas are going to keep coming up. If a campaign is heavily based on resisting and overcoming a slaver-empire, its probably a good idea to find out that's a heavy trigger for someone earlier rather than later, and if it turns out they find out it triggers them later in the campaign, working around it for them isn't practical; they probably should just bail on the campaign.

In the case of the post I responded to it was in response to another post in which @pemerton presumably was referencing play that happened in a game of Pendragon, where these sorts of situations are pretty much expected. I'd note that there was no suggestion, one way or the other, as to what sort of details were being described at the table. My comparison to combat is intended to point out that, despite substantial mechanics and table time, melee combat is not customarily described in any detail either. If it were, most people would be utterly revolted.

Yeah, most combat systems gloss over (quite deliberately I expect) the more gritty elements of what's going on. Even things like locational damage only occur in a limited subset of RPGs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If nothing else, it should indicate if problem areas are going to keep coming up. If a campaign is heavily based on resisting and overcoming a slaver-empire, its probably a good idea to find out that's a heavy trigger for someone earlier rather than later, and if it turns out they find out it triggers them later in the campaign, working around it for them isn't practical; they probably should just bail on the campaign.



Yeah, most combat systems gloss over (quite deliberately I expect) the more gritty elements of what's going on. Even things like locational damage only occur in a limited subset of RPGs.

Everyone has a threshold on gore. I generally have less issue listening to description, even it's pretty graphic, than seeing it on TV or film. Even then, you need to get near The Boyz for me to have a real problem with it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, I am not entirely opposed to the point of view that typical RPGs treat extreme casual violence in a pretty light way. So sure, as @Thomas Shey says, it's likely to be glossed over. And, no doubt if any particular topics come up and someone asserts that's not fun for them, then we should deal with that. I just think the overall premise and genre/tone of a game should be established at the start, along with any obvious red lines.

In the case of the post I responded to it was in response to another post in which @pemerton presumably was referencing play that happened in a game of Pendragon, where these sorts of situations are pretty much expected. I'd note that there was no suggestion, one way or the other, as to what sort of details were being described at the table. My comparison to combat is intended to point out that, despite substantial mechanics and table time, melee combat is not customarily described in any detail either. If it were, most people would be utterly revolted.

Again, this may be a double standard, but that doesn't really change the point of my comment. This is not a game design issue, it's a table issue.

I think it is a game design issue in a sense that some things are far more liable to cause issues than some others. And to me it is blindingly obvious that "incite lust" roll (or something similar) that compels a character to act accordingly is solidly in the "more likely" end of things.

 

[Umbran]

This is not a game design issue, it's a table issue.

Ah. But I wasn't discussing it as a "game design issue". In point of fact, my argument is/was that there are times when human sensibilities should take precedence over rules!

So, from my perspective, you are arguing against stuff that I didn't say.