Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8150646" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not engaging in criticism but analysis.When I play a CoC one-shot I'm not expecting to get to (i) decide what my PC wants and then (ii) act on that. I'm expecting to be either directly told what my PC wants (via a pre-gen) or to be presented with a scenario which makes it easy to ascribe wants to my PC that will mesh with the scenario (which is something [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] mentioned a page or two upthread).The fun of play is in performing my PC - characterisation and pantomime - while the GM describes what happens and narrates my descent into madness.Now let's consider the Curse of Strahd, accepting for the moment [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER]'s sketch of it upthread:It seems to me that, if a player decides that what his/her PC wants is to charter a company of mercenaries, that is probably not going to happen in this campaign. (See also [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s actual play observation upthread, about his PC background in a Curse of Strahd campaign.)When we say that this player is free to decide what his/her PC wants, what is the nature of that freedom? S/he can write it down on her PC sheet. She can grumble her way through the campaign, in character, about being trapped by the mists when she should be back on the Sword Coast (or wherever) leading her company of freebooters. But when the push comes to shove of actually playing the module, it seems that that stuff will not really matter. Similar to how the backstory and desires of PCs in the Giants modules don't really matter to most of the play of those adventures.I don't really see how a RPG could prevent a player from doing that sort of free-characterisation of his/her PC, and so if it is a manifestation of player agency at all it seems to be a component of a baseline.It could certainly be compatible with playing a total railroad.Hence why I don't really understand how it addresses the topic of this thread as raised by the OP.</blockquote>

Verification