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But we are not talking about the goals failing, we are talking about getting to set those goals in the first place.

Long term agency no, short term agency yes, but rarely. Like I said before, I am not fan of mind control magic, I often change such powers and spells to something else on the NPCs.

Yes. Major ick. Imagine a male GM using this sort of mechanic on a female PC of a female player.

Your example seems to be that the social rolls only rod the players of short term agency (whether we surrender now or not) not long term one? The former is also super bad. Whether to surrender or fight is an important choice with meaningful consequences, and one the players, not the dice, should...

How it is their choice? If the NPC social mechanics have teeth, then certainly the NPC can convince the PC to change their belief? And I understand that you're speaking of 'beliefs' as defined game concept, but I mean it in more general sense. To me there is pretty obvious implication that if...

Yeah, I'd hate this. Stuff like this definitely puts this game into my "never play" list.

They must present the NPC in such manner that they are appealing to the PC. And this has happened in my games several times. But what I would find jarring is a situation where the dice says that my character finds an NPC appealing whilst the GMs portrayal of them makes me feel my character...

They do in a sense that it is up to the GM to determine what sort of things the NPC can be convinced in the first place. It is perfectly fine for the GM to determine that the NPC is not going to budge on the issue regardless of what the PCs say.

But ultimately the complaints about "biological essentialism" etc only make sense if they are effectively seen as human ethnicities.

In that game however, it is the practice to invent consequences for everything.

You are not of course going to get the exact same experience as really being there. But that's the goal. We are trying to get close to it. I am not telling anyone what to do. I am telling you what works for me and what doesn't, and the reasons why I feel this way. If to you a NPC having a high...

Yes. I think sometimes not dying happens rather frequently in games which allow the possibility of death. Like at least in my games characters are alive overwhelming majority of the time. (Games of Vampire the Masquerade being an exception.)

They're always little dog people to me!

A lot of it can be directly portrayed and more can be described. And the GM has the power of framing, they have the knowledge about the characters and the players they can use to choose words and portrayals that have an impact. There is a lot which can be done to affect how the NPC is perceived...

Because the players invested character building resources for those skills, because it allows people to play characters that are more socially competent than them, and because they have players agency of which we care about. That being said, I am perfectly fine with games which do not have...

Yes. And the GM as the NPC needs to speak those words. And the player as the PC needs to be affected by them. I don't understand what is so hard to understand about this. NPCs affect the PCs in my game all the time, it just is via roleplaying, not via dice rolls.

I know that orcs are canonically green in D&D, and are grey instead but I don't like that. Grey just is a boring colour for them. On my setting Artra orcs are predominantly various shades of green, though ochre and teal are also quite common. Goblins can be green too, but they are somewhat less...

If the rules tell you what your character must think or do, then that feels like mind control to me. If it is actual mind control, then that seems appropriate. That being said, i don't like using mind control magic against PCs, and I often swap such enemy spells and abilities to something else...

Whilst I agree that rolls where there are significant drawback for failure are more interesting, and that I definitely want the players to engage with the fiction and be creative, I still do not agree with the proposed approach. Rolls that where the "cost" is simply not improving the situation...

I wouldn't. But this does not mean that my mental model and the mechanics will necessarily agree on case by case basis. We might have a situation where my mental model says that the character is scared, but the rules say they're not, or vice versa. The mental model I am talking about, is not...