I want the DM to present the situations and adjudicate the environment's reactions to my character's choices. I don't want to be making decisions for other characters or the environment itself save for those choices my character makes.
My point is that there is nothing inherent to CaGI at odds with this. The PC imposes his/her will on the situation. Then, when the NPCs' turns come around, the GM plays them.
CaGI does not require the player to play the NPCs.
If you want to stay as close to actor stance as possible a power like CaGi forces you to step out of it and into director/author stance because you are now controlling the actions that the affected PC/NPC/monsters are taking.
In the canonical narration of CaGI, the player does not control the actions of the NPCs: the PC does. By imposing his/her will on the situation.
this is an example of conditional fear (massive big dragon, that can eat you, flying over head). Read my post again and you will see I made room for this kind of thing. While it isn't my favorite mechanic in the world, something like dragon awe is different from say a mundane encounter power that causes the same effect. I can buy my character trembles at a dragon, but at Dirk the Mighty when he sneers once per encounter? Not so much.
Two things.
First, CaGI is a power that is used by players/PCs against NPCs/monsters. A player's character will not be targetted by CaGI in the default 4e game.
Second, the whole point of CaGI is that a 7th level fighter (one level short of Superhero in Gygax's terminology)
is as awe-inspring as a dragon. That's why s/he is able to impose her will on her enemies as CaGI allows.
So you've never had conflict arise between party members? I have and it didn't always end non-violently... just sayin.
So now the objection to CaGI is that it will break down in PvP play? Givent the 100 other ways that 4e will break down in PvP play, I don't see any special need to fasten on CaGI for that purpose.
As to your earlier posts, at post 326 upthread you said "The difference is that hit points, as a mechanic, do not force you to play from author stance. . . as opposed to our favorite whipping boy CaGi, where no matter what, you will decide where the DM's character's has in fact decided to move if you use the power . .. deciding and moving characters explicitely under the DM's control, is not the same as controlling (for all intents and purposes) a character resource/abiltiy you have." (ellisions mine).
I took that to be an argument that, as far as CaGI is concerned, it has inherent features that impede immersion. If your only claim is that some people can't immerse while using it, that is obviously true. But [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] (I think) once posted about a friend of his who couldn't play his mage unless rolling red dice for fireball and white dice for ice storm. No interesting generalisation can be drawn from those preferences to general properties or features of dice design and dice mechanics!