D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"

[JamesonCourage]

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.

Do you think there's any difference in "I influenced the project's outcome" and "I controlled the project's outcome"? Because his statement -and meaning- seems incredibly clear to me. And if you don't think there's a difference, maybe that's the root cause of why I agree with him, and you disagree. As always, play what you like

 

[Guest 85555]

Do you think there's any difference in "I influenced the project's outcome" and "I controlled the project's outcome"? Because his statement -and meaning- seems incredibly clear to me. And if you don't think there's a difference, maybe that's the root cause of why I agree with him, and you disagree. As always, play what you like

i think it is very obvious these words mean two different things. It is quite difficult ti replace one with the other in a sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence. There may besome contexts where that will work, but most of the examples that come to mind don't.

 

[TwoSix]

I'd have no problem with someone saying, "I want a game to immerse me in the experience, so I don't play D&D". But, "I want a game to immerse me in the experience, so I refuse to play 4e because it breaks my immersion" seems very strange to me. How can 4e be so immersion breaking when every other edition have so many immersion breaking elements?

The only way I can think this is true is when people have internalized so much of the familiar systems that they no longer can distinguish between what's been internalized and what the games actually promote.

That's probably true, but there are reasons for that. For a lot of people, D&D isn't some game they're just trying out. They've been immersed in D&D culture for at least 25-30 years. I know there's a lot of D&D players who simply have no concept of roleplaying that isn't D&D. It's not wrong to say that they've internalized D&D tropes, but it also isn't pejorative. At least, no more than saying you don't want to celebrate Festivus because you've internalized Christmas.

 

[Guest 85555]

That's probably true, but there are reasons for that. For a lot of people, D&D isn't some game they're just trying out. They've been immersed in D&D culture for at least 25-30 years. I know there's a lot of D&D players who simply have no concept of roleplaying that isn't D&D. It's not wrong to say that they've internalized D&D tropes, but it also isn't pejorative. At least, no more than saying you don't want to celebrate Festivus because you've internalized Christmas.

It is pejorative because it suggests the person's opinion is less objective, and more flawed, than Hussar's on the subject. It basically dismisses the persons opinions as misunderstandings about what is really going on.

 

[pemerton]

"I influenced the outcome" and "I partly controlled the outcome" strike me as synonymous in typical contexts.

To be frank, I find the notion that it is inherently unimmersive to play a PC who non-magically imposes his/her will on others strikes me as bizarre. For instance, when a police officer, bouncer or security guard looks at you and signals that something is not to be done, or a certain place not to be entered, s/he imposes his/her will on you. There would be nothing inherently un-immersive about building such a PC with a "none may pass" power.

Am I really the only poster on this forum who has experienced this phenomenon in real life?

 

[Guest 85555]

"I influenced the outcome" and "I partly controlled the outcome" strike me as synonymous in typical contexts.

To be frank, I find the notion that it is inherently unimmersive to play a PC who non-magically imposes his/her will on others strikes me as bizarre. For instance, when a police officer, bouncer or security guard looks at you and signals that something is not to be done, or a certain place not to be entered, s/he imposes his/her will on you. There would be nothing inherently un-immersive about building such a PC with a "none may pass" power.

Am I really the only poster on this forum who has experienced this phenomenon in real life?

Because you are modifying control with partly (and even then I don't think they are entirely synonyous).

The immersion break for me comes in because the player literally controls the actions of the npc. I those real life situations, that isnt mind control or will that is someone choosing to do what they police officer or bouncer suggests with a glare because they want to avoid the consequences of being beat up or going to jail. It is a choice. And in the case of come and get it, I cant imagine what the cop can do once the fight does start to compel a combatant to move from one spot to another unless he is physically grabbing and moving the person. Now if you can process it fine, I dont dispute that you are kay with this mechanic. I just dont get why you cant accept some of us have issues with it around believability, and I dont understand why people just can't accept that some folks find 4E unimmersive (particularly among those who are questioning the importance of immersion in the first place). I mean if someone tells me they can't get into Savage Worlds because its too gamey, not immerssive for them, or too grid focused, I take them at their word and don't worry about it (even though I love SW). It just seems wierd to me that people are so bent on convincing people their experience with 4E isn't what they say/think it is.

 

[Imaro]

"I influenced the outcome" and "I partly controlled the outcome" strike me as synonymous in typical contexts.

To be frank, I find the notion that it is inherently unimmersive to play a PC who non-magically imposes his/her will on others strikes me as bizarre. For instance, when a police officer, bouncer or security guard looks at you and signals that something is not to be done, or a certain place not to be entered, s/he imposes his/her will on you. There would be nothing inherently un-immersive about building such a PC with a "none may pass" power.

Am I really the only poster on this forum who has experienced this phenomenon in real life?

Emphasis mine... ..."partly controlled would mean that there is still some aspect of the outcome that is under the purview of the DM. In the case of CaGi... that is not true, the player decides exactly where the NPC's/monsters move to... and thus the outcome.

I also feel you are till conflating two different issues causal power vs. being pulled out of actor stance... The police officer or whoever can signal for me not to enter a place... but he doesn't then control exactly where I move to or stand outside of that area (including my choosing to disregard his "you may not pass power" anyway). again, it's the difference between a fighter marking an enemy in 4e (where he is influencing the action taken but not controlling it) and CaGi where I get to control the exact movement of numerous characters that are not mine without a magical or physical justification for it.

Another example would be the Diplomacy skill in 3.5... while it can determine how an NPC feels towards you, it cannot dictate how the character acts within that broad category such as friendly, unfriendly, etc. The player doesn't get to dictate any of the NPC's specific actions , but he can ask the NPC to do things that the NPC is likely to do. As an extreme example... a NPC who is friendly won't commit suicide if the player wants him to... a badly wounded monster or NPC will still rush in suicide style if the player uses CaGi regardless of his circumstances, intelligence level, or anything else. There is a big difference between "controlling" an action and "influencing" an action.

 

[Cam Banks]

Thanks very much for the reply.

The OM gave me the impression that the main function of Resources is to grant bonus dice to subsequent actions. Whereas your reply here, plus some Transition scene descriptions in the Civil War book, give me the impression that spending a PP to accrue a Resource can be a bit more like (say) picking up a clue in Trail of Cthulhu. In the latter circumstance, would the player also get a bonus die if the clue became relevant in action resolution?

For instance, if a player spends a PP in a Transition scene to learn about a villain's weakness (say a Pscyh resource in "friendly conversation" with the villain's mentor), as well as the info that can then be exploited when the villain is confronted, should they get a bonus Resource die when resolving that confrontation?

The die is a game mechanic representation of a contact, tool, or piece of information that you've acquired in the Transition Scene. So, it's a good idea to give the players that piece of the fiction as well as the die that comes with it. In this way the information is a real thing, and it provides a benefit to the player hero later on.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Ahnehnois]

To be frank, I find the notion that it is inherently unimmersive to play a PC who non-magically imposes his/her will on others strikes me as bizarre. For instance, when a police officer, bouncer or security guard looks at you and signals that something is not to be done, or a certain place not to be entered, s/he imposes his/her will on you. There would be nothing inherently un-immersive about building such a PC with a "none may pass" power.

When the police officer/etc. does that, most people continue doing what they would have done anyway, either they continue not causing trouble or they continue doing whatever they were doing and a more substantive disagreement ensues. Even to the extent that such behavior does precede a change in action by the targets, it's mostly because it makes clear to the targets what the rules are and that someone is watching them; they make their own decisions about how to proceed using the new information.

But even that goes out the window in any adverse scenario. When two people are fighting each other, they rarely even hear what is going on around them, let alone do they react to it, let alone do they react in a way that reflects the speaker's intentions.

Am I really the only poster on this forum who has experienced this phenomenon in real life?

Where one person controlled another's behavior? Well, there are certain situations where that could be considered to take place. Certain types of relationships with large power differences (some parent/child interactions, some adult relationships, perhaps in military contexts or in professional environments with a culture of subservience; more of these types of things outside of Western culture), brainwashing (cults, for example), hypnosis and pharmacologically induced suggestibility, that sort of thing.

Have I ever seen a situation where one person simply said something to another person with whom no meaningful relationship or social structure existed, and the first person controlled the second's behavior? No. Control is not so much a function of the controller as it is of the controlled having been deprived of free will in some way. Which, in an rpg context would suggest that maybe some characters should have a weakness that allows them to be controlled, rather than a power which allows them to control others.

 

[Manbearcat]

Do you think there's any difference in "I influenced the project's outcome" and "I controlled the project's outcome"? Because his statement -and meaning- seems incredibly clear to me. And if you don't think there's a difference, maybe that's the root cause of why I agree with him, and you disagree. As always, play what you like

We seem to have some "conceptual dissonance" when it comes to the use of language as we're again on opposite ends of things Only this time, instead of fiat its the influenced vs control specrum.

I agree with pemerton here in the conceptualization of influenced as a spectra on the continuum of fully autonomous versus fully controlled. As your "influenced spectra" moves further toward the "fully controlled" end of the continuum, the weight of the influence (even though it may not be overt or physical imposition) becomes such that it drowns out the conscious aspects of personal autonomy that dictate behavior. The "imposition of will" is an enormous factor in this. There are a myriad of examples of this in real life but I'm going to stick to a few martial examples to try to illuminate the issue (and a real life anecdote that I don't know why I never considered before).

Consider these three dominant athletes of the last 25 years; Micheal Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer. What do they all have in common? Almost universally, their competition would wilt even before they got on the court/course and would specifically and inevitably wilt in the big moments. Yes, those three would raise their level of play but the wiliting of their opponents (and the surity of it ocurring before it even came into being) was a product of the imposition of will which, in their case, moved "influenced" much further along the continuum toward "fully controlled" without any physical imposition. The uniformity of opponents' wiliting shows that. Opposition and expert spectators would regularly comment on how the battle was won before it even began. That is "the imposition of will" that passively moves "influenced" along that continuum such that it manifests as a spectra infinitely closer to "fully controlled" than "fully autonomous" without their being any physical imposition.

My own personal anecdote which, amusingly, maps extraordinarily to CaGI (and I still don't know why I haven't considered it to date). I grew up in a "hard knocks" culture. If you were challenged, and you backed down, you were labelled with the P-word. Being labelled with the P-word has enormous consequences for that kind of culture. As such, you find yourself in physical conflict after physical conflict and it just becomes an institution. From the age of 7 through 20, I was in an enormous number of fights. It just came with the territory. If someone challenged/tested you, it was a borderline involuntary thing to accept it; and that was that. The last real scrape I can recall getting in was at a basketball court that I wasn't particularly fond of going to (the fight:ball ratio was horribly skewed toward the latter). I've always worked considerably hard at being a good sportsman and being honest. I'm the guy who will reflexively call a fall on myself if it occurs (for those who aren't aware of the dynamics, that is very rare). I don't like to win by way of cheating. So when I see people who do that, it infuriates me (and it really did back in the day). Three guys who were trouble (I had experience with them in the past) showed up. These guys are the worst kind. Unsurprisingly, I found myself covering the worst and most mouthy of the bunch. The game got more and more physical and he and I were going at it pretty good. All the while, I knew that if something happened, it wasn't going to be just he and I; his other two friends would absolutely jump me. I pride myself on being heady and pragmatic. However, thiings got really out of hand afterwhile and he got more and more mouthy and more and more gratuitously physical and literally trying to injure me. One one play I gave him what he had been giving me; I fouled him hard. I didn't mean to foul him that hard and I immediately apologized. Well, he wasn't in the mood for apologies, he was just looking for a fight (as he and the other two always were). Mid-apology, he takes the ball and two-hand chest passes it right into my face. At this moment, I still knew, still had it in my mind that the moment I engage here, its going to be 1 on 3. My blood boiled. He backed up and started goading me and calling me alll manner of names (but to be honest, I barely heard hiim at that point). Furious at all of it and knowing that I couldn't back down (fully aware that in short order I would have the other 2 on me), I sprinted at him, closing the 20-30 foot distance and tackled him. Almost immediately, to no great surprise, I took a shoed kick the back of my head from one of his friends and the three of us were going at it. So there I was, a heady, pragmatic guy (and at that point much more than I used to be as a kid), knowing full well that what I was doing was "tactically foolish", but I failed my Will save and did it nonetheless.

I guess because of all of those things above, things like CaGI not only don't bother me, they make sense; not only in real life but certainly in the heroic action/adventure genre.