NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[zakael19]

So Blades in the Dark qualifies as narrativist, I assume? I've played 24 sessions, and there has been exactly one instance where a die roll defined emotional state of the character. So maybe we are doing it wrong, but I don't think so. I don't believe the player relinquishing control of such things is required for narrativism.

Are harms and traumas not the outcome of dice rolls? Are the former in particular not defining emotional state to a degree? Hell, I posed a L2 harm that was entirely emotional/mental as a Threat against one of my players in a FITD game - they rolled poorly and chose to accept it since they were maxing out on stress and wanted the goal. Deep Cuts really leans into this by suggesting the GM and players actively invoke trauma/harm to complicate situations!

Non-physical harm is one of the absolute joys of a system like FITD (and the various PBTAs that have shifted to a combination of mental/physical conditions as their harm mechanics) - the ability to say "hey, you're naughty word terrified because of this ghost" or "yeah, after that insult you're enraged" or whatever your game mechanics support - and then see if the player decides to resist that (and what happens & etc). Tied back to the fiction, to challenge the character's beliefs/instincts/goals/etc stuff on their sheet that they've written to define themselves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't disagree. I don't think I ever stated it was necessary. I stated that character is somewhat intersectional. Usually that manifests with another player/GM interpreting the fiction in a way that puts your character in a new light. Or maybe the GM tossing a consequence or bargain at you that redirects your play. As you say, it is possible for that to produce a situation where your character does something unintended.

In my BitD play my PC was never mechanically compelled, except for being stressed out of play. Still, at least 2 very distinct instances arose where attempting to play to my original concept was impossible unless I wanted to effectively end the game. A few others came up where I had to deal with situations that changed the character to some degree.

You mentioning a PC being "stressed out" made me wonder that sort of mechanic is viewed by those adamantly against PCs having less than 100% control over all their actions. In some games (Marvel Heroic is a good example) a PC can be functionally "downed" by mental or emotional stress, without being involved in a physical combat at all, much less being hit. How does that square?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Huh. I've read and re-read descriptions (mostly from @pemerton) of those, but if you're right then I guess I'm still not getting it.

In my mind it feels similar to "stances" in The One Ring's combat system: you declare what stance you are in (e.g. "Forward") and that choice did have an impact on outcomes, but it all very felt very...oh, I don't know...abstract. Board-gamey. Not like I'm in a battle.

Well, remember, you are in Story Now sorts of play where the fiction is not usually over supplied with established facts. When you execute a given tactic there's very likely to be room to give it a fictional interpretation. In fact that's often the point.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Well, remember, you are in Story Now sorts of play where the fiction is not usually over supplied with established facts. When you execute a given tactic there's very likely to be room to give it a fictional interpretation. In fact that's often the point.

Another distinction in combat systems I will make is the difference between maneuvering into a position where I get bonuses, perhaps flavored as “backstab” or “sneak attack” or “flanking”, versus games where I might roll well, earning damage bonuses, and then choose to narrate that as a backstab.

Is the latter an example of what you mean by “fiction now”?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You mentioning a PC being "stressed out" made me wonder that sort of mechanic is viewed by those adamantly against PCs having less than 100% control over all their actions. In some games (Marvel Heroic is a good example) a PC can be functionally "downed" by mental or emotional stress, without being involved in a physical combat at all, much less being hit. How does that square?

Yeah, BitD has both stress, and harm. Stress can be spent to perform certain extraordinary actions, or to mitigate harm. If you max your stress track, you get a permanent trauma. Four traumas retires your character. Harm OTOH is lethal if it accumulates to level 4, or if something very bad hits you with level 4 and you don't mitigate it.

It's a reasonably open-ended system, harm could be purely physical or maybe magical, etc. It also has a location, loosely speaking. So a level one harm to your arm might reduce your checks involving arm use by one die.

Trauma is assumed to be mental, but other FitD games might do different things with it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another distinction in combat systems I will make is the difference between maneuvering into a position where I get bonuses, perhaps flavored as “backstab” or “sneak attack” or “flanking”, versus games where I might roll well, earning damage bonuses, and then choose to narrate that as a backstab.

Is the latter an example of what you mean by “fiction now”?

Low myth and Story Now play rely on generating fiction on the fly, though once established it is binding. There may also be specific mechanical constraints depending on the game. But in a general sense these games start with fiction. So, in Dungeon World I describe sneaking up behind a guy and ganking him, or at least trying to. The corresponding Thief move is triggered, resolution proceeds. Honestly, it is not radical in form. Failure might produce various outcomes, that is either dictated by the move, or the GM decides.

 

[uzirath]

When I make a character, I also know some things that can't anger, scare, worry, etc. that PC. Not everything, but some things. An emotional resolution system robs me of that choice for my PC. If I made a PC who is unflappable in the face of X, as soon as X came up I would have to roll and there's a good chance he will be flapping in direct contradiction to his character.

I think there can be a middle path here. In GURPS, for example, you choose Advantages and Disadvantages that have mechanical impact. So if you want to be basically fearless, you can be Unfazeable. But if you still want to be afraid of snakes, you might have a Phobia, etc. For specific weaknesses, you can also decide the level of severity and you can modify this as your character develops. So, for example, I might start as a character with Bad Temper which I can resist on a roll of 9 or less. This means that when provoked, I usually lose my temper. In play, you can always choose to lose your temper. After some adventures, I can spend some earned XP to change the 9 to a 12. Now I have better control of my temper. I could even go up to 15 (nearly always resist). After that, you would buy off the disadvantage, or perhaps downgrade it to a minor quirk ("Crabby.")

I like the ability to define my character in broad strokes (setting the odds) but then let the dice dictate the specifics during tense situations.

A resolution system that can cause my PC to act that badly out of character is a bad one in my opinion. I wouldn't mind there being a resolution system for a game I play in so long as there is an override that I can use to just decide auto success or failure.

For this I've seen people use meta-currency like Fate Points or the like that allow you to override a bad roll. Fits into the resource management mini-game that many RPGs feature.

One issue I have when things are completely freeform is that players (including me) tend to lean into their character's flaws when the stakes are low. The characters become much more virtuous/efficient/optimal as the stakes go up. I like the idea of my character doing occasionally doing something sub-optimal when it really matters, not just during the tavern roleplaying scenes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But what about the many games that don’t differentiate all that much based on what kind of conflict or challenge the player is dealing with? How come many of those games all seem to work so well?

I already addressed that:

(not counting games which have super simple combat mechanics too)

If by “tactics” you mean what decisions did the player make to arrive at that situation… then it started with me asking what his character was doing. He responded that he was at the forge to hep his wife, who is the blacksmith. They’ve been having troubles because he’s often away from town for days or weeks at a time, leaving her to take care of their many children. So he was trying to mend that situation. We made a Charisma roll to see how it went, and he rolled poorly, so I added the complication of the wayward son hearing something he said and running off in anger. The player then decided that he too was angry… which for his character can be dangerous. A storm kicked up immediately and he ran after the boy.

So the condition was willingly initiated by the player in the first place?

He caught up to him so we decided what was most important was if he would be able to stop raging… a roll he had yet to succeed at. It uses Wisdom, one of his lowest stats.

So the situation was an accretion of prior player decisions and results of attempted actions. That’s why the agency argument doesn’t ring true… the player knew exactly how things got to this point and why.

I mean in a sense that he chose to rage in the first place. Which he presumably didn't need to do. Then again, if he can decide that, why cannot he also decide to end it?

So then the outcome… could he calm down and try and resolve the issues with his son? Or would he do something disastrous?

So sort of a sidenote. What you mean by disastrous? Are you running a game where a PC beating a child is a thing that can happens and whether it does is randomised? What are you implying here?

Letting him choose takes away the stakes. All the past events that led us to this moment… they can simply be ignored so he could choose the happy resolution.

This is the key I think… the player has not already decided everything about his character ahead of the events of play. He’s actively learning about his character THROUGH play. Is he the kind of guy who’d put his son in danger? We found out when the dice landed.

That’s how people work. We have ideas about who we are and what we’ll do. Some of those ideas may be stronger than others. We may be right about these things. We may be wrong. We cannot KNOW until we are in the moment and actually dealing with it.

It's not really how people work. People are capable of making choices. And I think this specific example with its implications of domestic violence is particularly fraught.

So no, I don't want to play a game where I am not capable of making such choices doer my character, and I don't want to play a game which implies that people are incapable of such choices, but are just driven my random impulses instead.

And to me drama and pathos is about making hard choices. If you outsource the choice to the dice, it is gone.

Your players don’t make lots of choices in social interactions?

They do. They definitely do. Because I don't use mechanics that rob them of those choices.

Sure it does.

Let’s say the character in my Stonetop game from the example above was instead chasing an enemy with the intention of attacking them. Is he robbed of agency because we don’t leave the outcome of the attack up to him, but rather to the dice?

I don’t think anyone here would describe it as such.

It’s about risk. It’s about the “unwelcome” results that Vince Baker talks about in bit that @Manbearcat posted. Combat is full of risk. Characters can die or lose and fail at their objectives and so on. It would lack risk if we instead left the outcome up to the players.

To obtain that same level of risk in a social or emotional way, there needs to be similar risk involved. Without that risk, as I said… you’re much more simply portraying character rather than exploring character.

You can have "risks" and "lose" in social situations many different ways* without having to randomise the character's personality and belies. And if you want to test the latter, then put them in a situations where there is no obvious "correct" answer, one where their different values and priorities are conflict. Then you still leave the choice to the player, you have an impactful test for the nature of the character. That will be far more compelling than whether they can roll high enough on the dice.

* (Though combats and social situations are fundamentally different and the latter is far more nuanced and rarely about "winning" or "losing.")

 

[Maxperson]

This feels like adversarial play vs what I would consider more collaborative. Like, in all the various games I have been a player in over the last few years there have always been points where another participant put a new/different interpretation on my character. Sure, I'm the one playing the character, I devised the characters personality and motives. At no point do I recall being absolutely dictated to, but in almost every case the game's mechanics, and fiction, brought who I was playing, their nature, to a head.

If it's adversarial, then the people arguing that to me should be told. I've said that those times that I do know, I should be able to decide.

 

[Maxperson]

That is fair. There is that element.


DMG Page 259
Most relatively mundane effects impose short-term madness, which lasts for just a few minutes.

Relatively mundane?! The examples are...

1) Contact Other Plane(magic)
2) Symbol spell(magic)
3) Diseases(physical affliction)
4) Poison(physical affliction)
5) Planar effects(psychic wind and howling winde of PandemoniumO

Most of those are blatantly supernatural, and the rest are physical afflictions which can cause madness, but those things would do so by altering chemical balance in the brain and the like.

There's no mundane purely mental effect on the list. So the things like the diseases and poisons would produce the short term effects, and the others long term.

If one can work around a friend's limitations for everyone to have fun, one generally does. And if one is willing to work with others for the better of the game, then it works.

Okay. That makes sense.

I have those types of players too at the table, who lean into their weaknesses. Both rewarding and challenging creatively for the DM.

Very.

We on the main roleplay scenes free-form, however the next 1-2 sessions will see much decision making via tactical downtime and a lot of exploration of the social pillar with relationships explored and tested in this final council meeting before the assault on Tiamat.
I've been looking over the characters' TIBFs and character goals, creatively thinking how they may be applied to earn these XPs and push individual storylines forward.
I want to use more than just Deception/Persuasion and Insight for this very intense social interaction that is to take place over days within fiction.
Sanity and Madness (short-term), coupled with others mechanics can elevate the game within the social pillar. It definitely doesn't come at the expense of the free-form play.

The GM/table can still handout Advantage on a roll for excellent roleplaying or reward a player in a different way. I'm not removing free-form exchange, I'm just looking to add another layer, have the dice perhaps push the story in directions we never imagined and make the so-called fluff of a character matter.

EDIT: I'm looking to explore possible mechanised emotional conditions of various levels during debate, discussion and argument and have the player leverage a character's fluff to earn XP (which is one of our levels of progression).

That's cool, but that much down time for decision making is too much for me.