NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think the dice generally just drop in and dictate out of the blue. Instead you develop situations/threats/consequences in the context of a coherent fiction. Dice might tell us that you pissed off the woman who made a pass at you and she's got it in for you now. Yep, you could have just gone along with the situation, but your darn loyalty had to get in way!

For what part of this did you need the dice for? There was choice, it was made, there are consequences.

 

[Bill Zebub]

For what part of this did you need the dice for? There was choice, it was made, there are consequences.

Shayyyyna.....dey bought da tickets. Dey knew wut dey wuz gettin' into. I say, let 'em crash.

 

[Manbearcat]

This is what Vincent Baker says on the matter and I happen to agree with him. It covers both angles here:

"As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's <snip>. No, what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject.

If you don't want that - and I believe you when you say you don't! - then live negotiation and honest collaboration are a) just as good as, and b) a lot more flexible and robust than, whatever formal rules you'd use otherwise.

Regarding actual rules-creation (and supporting system) rather than just freeform and vigorous creative agreement:

The challenge facing rpg designers is to create outcomes that every single person at the table would reject, yet are compelling enough that nobody actually does so. If your game isn't doing that, like I say it's interchangeable with the most rudimentary functional game design, and probably not as fun as good freeform."

---

Simply, when I run a game (no matter what that game is or if its agenda is Narrativism-based or Gamism-based/challenge-oriented), I want the system to have robust say that can dynamically aggress the situation-state, the characters, and the gamestate in ways that produces moments and outcomes which no one could have inferred before play. Not "stochastic madness" (let us call it), but enough dynamism lurking fairly relentlessly throughout the course of a session and throughout the course of a game's whole throughline that most every moment is fraught and vital with character & state-perturbing "oomph."

If you don't want that bolded above, then you're almost surely better off with freeform play or vigorous creative agreement most of the time.

The above seems like what some folks are saying either directly or indirectly. (i) They don't want the unwelcome of the type I want nor at the frequency nor magnitude that I want. (i) They want freeform play and/or vigorous creative agreement around one person's vision which wins out over all others' input (including system) around the internal workings of a PC.

Good thing we have different approaches to play, different systemization to suit our needs, and we don't have to game together!

 

[zakael19]

I want the system to have robust say that can dynamically aggress the situation-state, the characters, and the gamestate in ways that produces moments and outcomes which no one could have inferred before play.

This rules mediated (note: dice not required, as a number of the Baker's and other's games have shown) "do things progress in a straight line or a jagged one or entirely unexpected curves" is why most of us play TTRPGs imo. It's that cusp of "what's going to happen?" and then utterly unexpected result that delights us. If I always knew my character would do what I think it should, or my charms always work on the ladies, or I'm free to ignore risks &etc - the conversation can be punctuated with occasional delight and laughter and tense moments, but its so much less likely.

I dont think you need most of the rest of what Baker is talking about from then (he's changed a lot in how he conceives of interesting conversations from those early days) apart from this: "The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create."

That's why we roll if we're not certain if the lady you made a pass at is interested (and why AW and its descendants have specific moves to clarify the situation so you can shift the state around).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For what part of this did you need the dice for? There was choice, it was made, there are consequences.

Well, in my hypothetical play situation rolling a different result might indicate your character navigated the situation better, and didn't piss anyone off, etc. I mean, the player is going to probably have a good bit of input into what the fiction looks like and what could follow. Again, clear stakes, shared understanding of the fiction, and principled GMing. All stuff that's strongly stressed in narrativist play generally.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, in my hypothetical play situation rolling a different result might indicate your character navigated the situation better, and didn't piss anyone off, etc. I mean, the player is going to probably have a good bit of input into what the fiction looks like and what could follow. Again, clear stakes, shared understanding of the fiction, and principled GMing. All stuff that's strongly stressed in narrativist play generally.

But no one has opposed rolling to see whether the character manages to navigate the situation better or worse, but some are opposed rolling for the mental state of the character, for their choices, wants and beliefs.

 

[zakael19]

Well, in my hypothetical play situation rolling a different result might indicate your character navigated the situation better, and didn't piss anyone off, etc. I mean, the player is going to probably have a good bit of input into what the fiction looks like and what could follow. Again, clear stakes, shared understanding of the fiction, and principled GMing. All stuff that's strongly stressed in narrativist play generally.

OSR GMing stresses all that too, the one place it really falls down for me in social situations is hading all the adjudication off to the GM. I wish there was juuuust a little more scaffolding - turning to "role-play" as the preeminent outcome just doesn't model interactions well. Alas.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Simply, when I run a game (no matter what that game is or if its agenda is Narrativism-based or Gamism-based/challenge-oriented), I want the system to have robust say that can dynamically aggress the situation-state, the characters, and the gamestate in ways that produces moments and outcomes which no one could have inferred before play. Not "stochastic madness" (let us call it), but enough dynamism lurking fairly relentlessly throughout the course of a session and throughout the course of a game's whole throughline that most every moment is fraught and vital with character & state-perturbing "oomph."

If you don't want that bolded above, then you're almost surely better off with freeform play or vigorous creative agreement most of the time.

The above seems like what some folks are saying either directly or indirectly. (i) They don't want the unwelcome of the type I want nor at the frequency nor magnitude that I want. (i) They want freeform play and/or vigorous creative agreement around one person's vision which wins out over all others' input (including system) around the internal workings of a PC.

Good thing we have different approaches to play, different systemization to suit our needs, and we don't have to game together!

I want the rules to produce unwelcome and unexpected situations. But I don't wan the rules to tell us how the character reacts to those situations, and what choices they will make.

 

[Bill Zebub]

OSR GMing stresses all that too, the one place it really falls down for me in social situations is hading all the adjudication off to the GM. I wish there was juuuust a little more scaffolding - turning to "role-play" as the preeminent outcome just doesn't model interactions well. Alas.

These debates keep coming up, and I think really it always boils down to the same thing:

• The trade-offs in game design are particularly apparent in areas that involve internal mental states of characters
• The sweet spot of those trade-offs is entirely a matter of personal preference

 

[Thomas Shey]

The above seems like what some folks are saying either directly or indirectly. (i) They don't want the unwelcome of the type I want nor at the frequency nor magnitude that I want. (i) They want freeform play and/or vigorous creative agreement around one person's vision which wins out over all others' input (including system) around the internal workings of a PC.

I think the first part of this has an important qualification buried in it "of the type I want". People can, indeed, desire the system to produce "the unwelcome" and still not want certain kinds of unwelcome states. And the line can be fairly fine.