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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
A Question Of Agency?
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8150700" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>That's a sturdy analysis.</p><p></p><p>I think there are some players (I'm one) who would experience hard, permanent, mechanical limitations on what their characters feel as dissonant (please don't bring charm spells and the like into this), to the point of feeling as though they had less agency--no matter what other kinds of agency they were gaining elsewhere in the game's mechanics. I think it's reasonable that my feelings about that ... shape my approach to GMing.</p><p></p><p>I'll agree that there aren't mechanical means for a DM in 5E to make characters feel things (outside the usual charm-spell exceptions), but I've found that a skilled DM can get the <em>players</em> to feel things--and I've found that works just as well, without the dissonance I mentioned above.</p><p></p><p>I have played games where players could do those sorts of things, and I've run them. I have found that I ended up not liking them as much as a player--mainly because they came with mechanics that imposed emotional/mental states on my character, leading to that dissonance; and some of the victories I achieved by rewriting the world felt ... cheap--or as a GM--my reluctance to generate the dissonance in my players' minds that I find so unpleasant makes me not the right person to GM those games, and I find it easier to keep the world consistent when I only have to remember what I've figured out, not what others have added.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8150700, member: 7016699"] That's a sturdy analysis. I think there are some players (I'm one) who would experience hard, permanent, mechanical limitations on what their characters feel as dissonant (please don't bring charm spells and the like into this), to the point of feeling as though they had less agency--no matter what other kinds of agency they were gaining elsewhere in the game's mechanics. I think it's reasonable that my feelings about that ... shape my approach to GMing. I'll agree that there aren't mechanical means for a DM in 5E to make characters feel things (outside the usual charm-spell exceptions), but I've found that a skilled DM can get the [I]players[/I] to feel things--and I've found that works just as well, without the dissonance I mentioned above. I have played games where players could do those sorts of things, and I've run them. I have found that I ended up not liking them as much as a player--mainly because they came with mechanics that imposed emotional/mental states on my character, leading to that dissonance; and some of the victories I achieved by rewriting the world felt ... cheap--or as a GM--my reluctance to generate the dissonance in my players' minds that I find so unpleasant makes me not the right person to GM those games, and I find it easier to keep the world consistent when I only have to remember what I've figured out, not what others have added. [/QUOTE]
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