D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Bedrockgames]

No I’m saying that “plausible” is only from your perspective. And that the things you find plausible and the things you think will be fun at the table are more often than not the same.

Your choice has nothing to do with anything being actually plausible. The list of plausible in any given situation is very, very long. Your choice though will be guided by what you think is interesting to play out. IOW, plausible is pretty much synonymous with “plausible deniability “.

The thing is it isn’t this binary. So long as the GM is picking the most plausible outcome, even if they have narrowed it down to one or two and then gone with the one that is both fun and plausible, it isn’t a problem. You are trying to avoid doing things simply because they are fun, dramatic or cool for that moment.

But to my earlier point I think you are underestimating the popularity of wanting things to follow a kind of naturalism in this style. Now to be clear I don’t even cleave to this because I personally don’t find it fun, but I would say there is a sizeable portion of sandbox fans, perhaps even a majority who would be naturally suspicious of the fun option, and lean on the most plausible and naturalistic one. A lot of what drives this play is a sincere effort to avoid railroads, adventure paths and 90s style ‘storyteller’ play. So many people who talk about sandbox and in particular living world have staked out positions favoring very naturalistic campaigns because they are wary of things introduced by the Gm that have any sense of artifice to them (this is why I said for some even a mystery might be a bit out of place or rare, because the moment something like that begins you kind of know you are in an adventure)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

OK, I get that for physical actions like sneaking into a castle.

My question was around a character's thoughts. If my PC loses a Duel of Wits and is thus forced to agree with the viewpoint of the Duel's winner, how long does "let it ride" force me to stick to that position? Put another way, at what point (if any) am I allowed to start disagreeing with that position again?

I cannot comment on Duel of Wits, because I don't play the game it's from and know nothing about its best practices.

I cannot think of a roll in Dungeon World which would precisely correspond to this, so it's hard to just invent a description that would correspond to the question you're asking. But, at least in my experience with similar sorts of things...it's pretty much exactly what I already described, but with two possible tweaks.

First, from my very limited and possibly flawed understanding of the Duel of Wits stuff, one of the consequences might be a long-term realignment of the character. Think of it like a character in a novel or movie or TV show having a Long Dark Night of the Soul type moment after their nemesis delivers an argument against their core principles which the character cannot rebut. That character is going to be driven into some dark places, and it's unlikely that such an event would just suddenly and spontaneously go away, unless it was understood to be just a momentary "he got under my skin" moment or the like. For games of this style, facing situations like this (not specifically this very thing, but things of its general nature) are specifically part of the fun, so a character having to either (a) learn to live differently after accepting their enemy's argument, (b) figuring out a successful rebuttal, or (c) abandoning that specific goal/principle/drive/etc. and choosing (or promoting) something else in its place is a good time, even if it isn't a strictly desirable time--just as how (say) all the ways that things could go wrong on an invasion of an orc stronghold to steal all the loot they've taken from others is a good time in a classic early-D&D-style game, even if it isn't a strictly desirable time.

Second...this really isn't the kind of place where "let it ride" applies, so I'm kind of confused as to why you would ask the question. Like I don't really understand what is riding here. The person you quoted didn't use the phrase, and I'm not sure how it connects to anything that was being said, so...I can't really answer the question properly? Like the generic-and-kinda-useless answer would be "for the rest of the scene", meaning, like, whatever place-and-situation where you had to make the Duel of Wits roll in the first place, I presume.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Some people (at this point I would go so far as to say many people) prefer a game with a more flexible mechanical process and game loop than that espoused by many non-traditional games. You can complain about that more flexible process, or lament that more people aren't in favor of the processes you prefer, but it is no more useful than my complaints regarding the scope of WotC's influence on the hobby or my issues with their current iteration of the official game.

It's not a matter of flexible processes, Micah.

It's a matter of whether you can even talk about your processes at all. Multiple people in this thread have claimed that it is literally not possible for them to discuss their processes beyond terms so vague they communicate literally nothing.

That's not a "flexible process". It only just barely qualifies as "a process" at all.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Note the bolded bits. Even in 5.24, a perfectly normal lion isn't telling you what your character is thinking. It's roar is causing you to secrete norepinephrine and epinephrine, causing you to experience fear. Or possibly it causes an increase of blood created in the marrow, thus causing an imbalance in the humours and for the person to become frightened as a result. It depends on where your world is on the realistic-to-medieval scale.

But it doesn't change how or what you think.

Compare to the duel of wits. According to actual rules I've seen, if a player loses any dice during the argument, they must compromise on their terms, and if they lose, they must agree with the other person, even if only for a short time. In other words, the roll of the dice means that a person's thoughts changes, albeit by a small amount for a short time.

So your premise is quite wrong. No amount of roaring on the lion's behalf is going to make me think differently about something.

And in the BW example, one player was forcing another player to hesitate, because pemerton refused to say for nearly two weeks that this was taking place in a highly unusual two-player game where both players were also GMs.

(Actually, in doing more reading about the duel of wits, it seems like it's not designed to be used as an actual way to argue with someone--you can't use the duel to convince someone to mend your armor, which is what, IIRC, pemerton suggested. Instead, it's designed to be used like a debate where you convince a third person or an audience, who are NPCs. Which would also have been nice to know two weeks ago.)

Are you genuinely arguing that fear is not a mental state?

Like is this where we're really at, where "fear" isn't something a person thinks?

Because if we're genuinely claiming that "fear" has nothing whatsoever to do with thoughts, I'm not really sure it's possible for you and I to have a meaningful conversation. You are outright denying something that is objective fact. Fear does correspond to certain physiological states, yes. It also corresponds to certain thoughts.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm really only interested in analyzing from within the fictional frame, to use your term, when it comes to in-fiction causality.

That in-fiction causality is (ideally!) often what drives the play at the table, because the play at the table is (in theory) subservient to and affected by in-fiction events leading one to another.

Dismissively saying "it's all in our heads", as one poster (not you) does repeatedly, is redundant. Of course it's all in our heads! The point is that when engaged in play at the table we're acting and behaving based on those things going on in our heads - the "shared fiction" that we're imagining and (one hopes) immersed in - and thus to suggest the fiction has no real-world causality is bupkus.

On a micro level the fiction very often causes me-as-player to say what I say when I declare an action for my character or speak in his/her voice. On a macro level the continuation of the fiction is why we get together to play every week.

On the contrary, I think it's extraordinarily important to emphasize that these things are all in our heads.

Because the argument people keep making hinges on such things NOT being all in our heads. That these imaginings are somehow truly independent of the minds instantiating them. That they can somehow force certain behaviors upon us, behaviors we would never willingly undertake except for the objective, external inevitability. That's...pretty much literally the bedrock foundation of the argument that it's not the DM's choice to do A instead of B, the fictional world made them do A instead of B because of its (claimed) independent existence.

 

[pemerton]

Having a discussion includes how I would react to the rules and processes of the game to explain preferences. I was explaining why I wouldn't play the game, I was making no comment on what other people may enjoy. I don't see a point of telling others that the way they run their games doesn't work or that they're deluding themselves.

When I said that I find plate tectonics an odd concern for a fantasy world, I was likewise explaining how I reacted to that idea.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Are you genuinely arguing that fear is not a mental state?

I am not responding to the rest of the posts here, but just from personal experience I would say a lot of fear has a strong physical component, and when that physical element is easier to manage, it becomes easier to deal with. So I think it is all very interconnected. For example learning to regulate your breathing can be very useful here

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I made a decision about the fictional world before the player ever said what his chosen enemy was and I saw no reason to change it. Do you have a point you're trying to make? Anything at all that adds to the conversation?

Are you saying it doesn't add to the conversation?

Because the thing you're trying to argue is that you couldn't ever choose differently, for any reason, because the setting (somehow) makes you not choose differently.

But you could! You could choose differently. There are a million ways to do so. Plenty of them are all three of plausible, grounded (again, I dislike "realistic" and will not willingly use it myself), and impartial. For example, I find it unlikely that you have specified the precise populations and biospheres of every single continent on this world. I find it unlikely that you have expressly and completely forbidden any form of interplanar travel. I find it unlikely that you have totally forbidden the possibility of creating creatures through magic. I find it unlikely that you have spelled out the entirety of the world's history, such that there could never be an ancient, near-forgotten threat. I find it unlikely that you have totally excluded the possibility of other worlds. Etc.

And I find it supremely unlikely that, even if I was wrong about some of the above, I'd be wrong about all of the above simultaneously.

There are pathways through any of these (and many more besides) which would be all three of plausible, grounded, and impartial, given a modicum of effort on your part as DM. Hence, it cannot be plausibility, groundedness, or impartiality which (somehow) forces you to nix one idea over another. Instead, the causative factor seems to be quite clearly, "I don't want a world with orcs in it, so there aren't any orcs, and I will push players away from orc-related options as a result."

This, again, is what I mean when I talk about how the DM can do almost anything, and the alleged "restrictions" of plausibility, groundedness, and impartiality don't actually limit much of anything. Sure, they cut off the patently ridiculous or obviously biased, but beyond that, the world is your oyster. You can add to or remove nearly anything you like from it, provided you put in sufficient work--and the presence or absence of orcs just beyond the horizon is absolutely a thing that is under your control and which these alleged restrictions do not prevent.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not responding to the rest of the posts here, but just from personal experience I would say a lot of fear has a strong physical component, and when that physical element is easier to manage, it becomes easier to deal with. So I think it is all very interconnected. For example learning to regulate your breathing can be very useful here

Certainly.

But the claim, originally, was that the game cannot tell you what your character is thinking. Period. No complexity, no nuance (apart from the endlessly irritating "unless magic" exception), it was a hard line in the sand with D&D allegedly on one side and other games on another side, and very specifically used fear as an example.

I have shown this alleged line has both D&D and the other games located on the same side.

I am now being told that a mundane lion forcing the PC to feel fear somehow doesn't count, because forcing you to feel fear, allegedly, has absolutely zero influence whatsoever, zip-zero-nada, on any thoughts you have, at all.

This response is so ridiculous, I genuinely have to consider whether I am being trolled. Your response, at least, is far more measured--that fear involves both mental and physical elements, and that the mental ones can be easier to manage if the physical ones have been addressed. That I absolutely agree with, but I do so in part because it recognizes that part of fear is that it affects your thoughts. In other words, a game telling you your character is fearful specifically MUST mean that it is telling you, to at least some degree, what your character is thinking. Period.

Do you disagree? Do you claim that fear has absolutely no mental component, and is solely and exclusively a matter of physical body changes, nothing whatsoever involving thoughts or mental states?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wow. Way to ruin a joke.

I apologize if you found my jumping-off from your humor inappropriate. Can you truly blame me for using your reference, which cites a fictional place, as a way to talk about how that fictional place doesn't exist and thus cannot cause anything? The book can. It's caused quite a lot, I'd say--including the song, at least in part! But that's very different from claiming that Never-Never Land itself somehow "caused" Robin Williams to play a grown-up Peter in a delightful reimagining of the original premise.