This statement seems to strengthen my point that the DM can lead a player in the direction of creating background and shared history, etc. but most people who have never played before have no idea what to expect do not just create this stuff on their own... or else the venue wouldn't matter.
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The fact that you think encounters isn't a good model for how new players respond (yet the program has probably intorduced more new players to 4e than any one particular DM and his table style has) is kind of telling.
A venue can matter in all sorts of ways, can't it?
It seems to me there's a big difference between turning up to Encounters ("Here, take this sheet; you'll by playing this guy, and that person sitting there is going to run all us through an adventure") and turning up to a real campaign ("I'm starting a new Rolemaster campaign combining Kirosawa-style samurai with Green Snake-style celestial bureaucracy with Buddhist philosophy - do you want to join in?"). Nothing about the first thing implies that you would need a background for your PC - it's all prepackaged, and clearly so. Whereas in the second case - which is a simplified version of a true story! - the player didn't need to be told to make a background. He took it for granted that part of joining that sort of campaign with a samurai PC is having a family, a history, a daimyo to be loyal to, a childhood enemy, etc.
Encounters may well be more typical in numerical terms. And maybe most GMs run their home games like encounters too - "Here's the prepackaged scenario, you can make up some background for your PC if you like but it won't make any difference to what actually happens in play." I haven't done a survey. But I don't think it has anything to do with players being
new. It's about how the game is presented. If all new players begain with Burning Wheel, being run in the way described in the Character Burner and the Adventure Burner, it wouldn't occur to them that the GM might have sole authority over all backstory outside the PC's shoe size and hair colour!
The idea that the players' authority in the game is limited so strictly in relation to non-PC elements is in my view entirely system and experience dependent. It has no "innateness." What I'm interested in is when this became the default for D&D play, given that to the best of my knowledge no D&D rulebook actually states that the GM has this sort of authority. It's certainly never been universal: the book "What is Dungeons & Dragons", published by Puffin in the early 80s (Puffin is the children's imprint of the British publisher Penguin), in explaining character generation, had the players introducing broader background elements (like a rival magical college, in the case of the MU PC) as part of the process of creating a character backstory. And as both a GM and player I've always taken this to be the norm.
Perhaps, or maybe you influence the people you play with(like directing them to pick backgrounds and create part of the world, I know I do) so that your experiences aren't the usual?
As I said, I didn't make any such direction. The player I mentioned took it to be inherent to the task at hand - playing a samurai in fantasy Japan/China - that he contribute to the shared fiction by establishing his PC within it.
Hmm... so is it willy-nilly if a person disregards the amount of hit points he has and instead basis his actions on the decision the character he has created would make in that situation? As an example, Bill the Paladin is the type of character who will rush in to save innocents, regardless of his hit point total. Or Rick the rogue, regardless of how many hit points he has tries to avoid a fight at all costs, even if he's at full hit points. There's nothing willy-nilly about that behavior, but it's not based on hp totals... it's based on the traits of the character... and yes I have played with people who have made decisions like that, regardless of their current hp totals.
Sure. I didn't deny their existence. I said that in any group I've ever played in they would be regarded as problem players, or borderline ones at least. I mean, isn't that paladin a paradigm of what some call Lawful Stupid? And I've played in a game where it was the mage, rather than the rogue, who refused to get into fights - and the rest of the group worked out to play essentially without him, while he played what was in effect a parallel solo game with the GM.
To me, disregarding your hit point total is like playing a game with Fate Points or something similar but never spending the ones in your pool, on the grounds that your PC "isn't the lucky type". It's playing against rather than with the system, which strikes me as kind of pointless - why not find a different system that will let you play
with it?
If I put down and AoE or zone I do not ever get to decide what the characters under the control of the DM will do... I have indicated the zone that my character created without going into author stance
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You still have to step out of actor-stance and into author-stance in order to enact this power. At no point if I am deciding where the DM's characters move (without some type of domination or mind-control effect) can I approach that action from the headspace of my character.
These statements are conflating a logical state of affairs with a psychological one. Let me explain.
First, "stance" is not a
psychological state. It is a logical (or, if you prefer, a conceptual) category, used to describe decisions about the fiction.
Actor stance - deciding for your PC by reasoning from the PC's own ingame motivations and circumstance.
Author stance - deciding for your PC by reasoning from metagame considerations (eg "What would be witty now?") and then retconning a rationale into your PC's motivations.
Director stance - as part of the determination of your PC's action, specifying other salient elements of the gameworld. CaGI is clearly director stance.
Second, immersion is a psychological state. It is the state, roughly speaking, of experiencing the game - and especially the shared fiction that the game generates - from the perspective of your PC.
Third, it is sheer dogma that there is any simple or general correlation between psycholgoical states, including immersion, and the use of particular stances. I know this because I have experienced immersion, and have seen my players experience immersion, despite (in my own case) taking actions that involve author stance, and (in my players' cases) taking actions that involve director stance.
At least for some players (and I know some) it is utterly simple to approach Come and Get It from the headspace of the PC. The player, playing the PC, first notes that there are some nearby NPCs/monsters. The player, playing the PC, then thinks "I'd like those NPCs/monsters to be
here [a point or points adjacent to the PC] so I can whack them with my big stick!" The player then declares an action "I use Come and Get It" and proceeds to describe where the targets end up (perhaps by moving tokens on a map). The player, playing the PC, then thinks "Ha ha, I've got you!" and proceeds to resolve the hitting of the targets with the stick.
There is only one point at which the player has to cease acting in character, and that is where the action is declared (step 3 of my 4 steps in the previous paragraph). But declaring that action need be no more at odds with immersion than any other declaration of action and rolling of dice that has been going on in D&D since the game began. In particular, and as I noted in my previous post,
at no point is the player required to play the monster/NPC targets of CaGI. All the player has to do is play his/her PC, who wants them to move, and then effectuates that via whatever technique the players (and GM) take to be in the black box that is the forced movement of Come and Get It.
I can justify why the NPC's moved, but then I am in author-stance, I can ignore it, but the minute I move them I am no longer approaching the game from the viewpoint of my character
When you move the tokens, you are aproaching the game purely at the metagame level. This is no different from moving the tokens when performing a bull rush in 3E. It's no different from rolling a die. There are no dice or tokens in the fiction.
But within the fiction, the player need not justify why the NPC's moved, from within
their motivational states. S/he is not playing those NPCs. She is playing
her PC. Hence, as I said, the canoncial narration for Come and Get It is not "They decide to rush me. I gut them." It is "As they rush me, I gut them." The behaviour of the NPCs/monsters is purely adverbial to the PC's action of attacking them. The player describing their rushing of his/her PC is no different to the player describing how the sun glints on his/her sword as she brings it down to perform a cou-de-gras. It is purely adverbial, and there is nothing inherently immersion-breaking about that.
Your example fails because you still decide where they "rush" to and move them towards your character on the grid.
Yes. You decide this
playing your PC. You have imposed your will on your enemies. You wanted them there, and they moved there. That is not immersion breaking in and of itself. And if you are playing a certain sort of character, it can be significantly immersion enhancing!
Of course there are possible narrations of CaGI that are different from what I'm describing. Suppose you narrate "As my enemies suround me, they slip on banana peels left lying around by a stray monkey, and stumble and slide until they are adjacent to me." Not only is that director stance, but it is not from the headspace of the character. That would be at odds with immersion, I think. But that only reinforces the contrast with what I have said is the canonical narration, in which I, as my PC,
impose my weill on my enemies. That is from the headspace of my PC, regardless of the fact that it falls under the logical category of director stance.
Your confusing the issue... it's not about whether you have causal power or not, it is the fact that you are stepping into the author-stance when enacting it. It's the difference of a Fighter's mark, where the fighter is influencing the actions the DM must decide with the monster or NPC he is still controlling, and CaGI where the player is moving the NPC's and monsters exactly where he wants them to go with no physical way to force this exact movement upon them. Both are causal power.. but only one forces you to step into author stance.
There's no doubt that CaGI involves director stance. But that tells us nothing about its compatibility with immersion.
The banana peel narration breaks immersion because, as part of my narration, I bring into play causal factors not related to my PC (eg the stray monkey and its banana peels). But the canonical narration appeeals only to causal factors flowing from my PC - namely,
my imposing my will upon my enemies. And to me, that is why the causal issue is salient. There seems to be a strand of D&D tradition which takes the view that only magic-users can impose their wills upon their enemies; or, alternatively, if they allow social skills (Diplomacy, Bluf, Intimidate, etc), that the GM always has the final say on how that imposition of will is manifest.
That's a legitimate preference, of course, but it has no general connection to immersion (though in the case of members of that tradition it may do so). I, as my PC, can will my enemy to flee (Intimidate check), to surrender (Intimidate check), to collapse grovelling at my feet in tears (Intimidate check, perhaps with Bluff as an augment), to move to
this adjacent point and feel the wrath of my big stick (CaGI). The relationshp to immersion is not inherenently different in any of these cases.
Well in most games like that I've played... ASoIaF, Vampire, etc. It is binding to both players and DM's since the abilities can be used on either one... it also rarely (unless magic or powers are involved) gives the type of exact control that CaGi does.
That tells us something about the techniques of those game - in Edwards' language, they confine social resolution to fortune rather than karma. But that tells us nothing about immersion per se. In Rolemaster or HARP or Runequest, when I (playing a mage) conjure forth the power of the cosmos, I have to make a skill roll to impose my will upon it. In D&D, on the other hand, no roll is required (except in 3E in limited cases) - I always succeed in imposing my will. Karma vs fortune. They produce different play experiences, but neither is inherently more or less immersive.
Unlike magical compulsion, it may be the case that the targets of CaGI could have chosen otherwise; but this is not the domain of the player who uses the power. Whatever they could have done, they didn't. This is again the karma vs fortune issue. We know, in 3E and earlier editions, that it is possible to muck up the casting of a spell - spell disruption shows that. But only in 3E is this modelled, sometimes, via fortune. In AD&D it is karma - either the spell goes off (if the caster acts first or is missed) or it is disrupted (if the enemy hits). In 3E it is mixed karma and fortune - if the caster is not hit when the action is taken, and if there is no bad weather etc, the spell goes off; otherwise a skill roll is required.
Resolution via karma rather than fortune glosses away, in resolution, some possibilities that are obviously present in the fiction (eg a spell fizzling not because of an attack, or because of bad weather, but because the caster trips on slightly uneven ground). But this need not be an obstacle to immersion with CaGI anymore than it is with spell casting. A mage is such a good mage that, most of the time, no roll is required. A fighter is such a good fighter that, when s/he really tries to impose her will on her enemies, no roll is required.
I don't know who is arguing that people excercise no causal influence... but I will say that influence and control are not the same thing.
I don't understand this. The two words aren't strict synonyms, but dictionary.com renders "influence" as "the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others; the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others", and "control" turns up on its thesaurus's list of synonyms.
Of course Come and Get It doesn't involve total control. The target doesn't sign all their property away, for instance, nor lie down and lick the figher's feet. It is a warrior's move. But, canonically, it involves an imposition of will.
I know what it is to impose one's will. I do this to my children (with occasional success). I do this to my students (with greater success - for them there is more to be gained and less to be lost by complying). I do this to conference and symposium audiences. I am not and have never been a warrior, but I have watched fantasy and action movies, and read REH's Conan. I can imagine what it might be like to impose my will in such a situation. It doesn't break my immersion in real life! Why would it do so in a game?
