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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9367822" data-attributes="member: 42582">Aren't they? I must have missed that memo.Upthread, I posted this:I've not changed my mind over the course of our conversation. My approach creates compelling FPRGing with knight errant tropes, crises of faith, and the like (and has done so for me since 1990). Whereas your approach seems focused on the GM telling the players what morality requires or permits of them. This is very telling, for a couple of reasons.First, it is not a lie. It is fiction. Authorship. Suppose that the GM makes something up about the Raven Queen, and then decides to narrate that as part of the fiction. That isn't more true, less of a LIE. The Raven Queen does not exist. We can make up whatever stories we like about her, using whatever methods we like. The method that I and my group use is roleplaying - with the rules of the game creating the constraints within which the fiction must fall. But nothing in the rules of 4e D&D says that the cause of a time-limit (as mandated by the rules) cannot be intercession by a god. Which is what it was, in our game.If I didn't want the "literary point" of my RPGing to be influenced by dice rolls, I wouldn't use them. In fact I probably wouldn't play RPGs - I would engage in solitary or cooperative story-writing.Second, you appear not to be able to tell the difference between (i) a fiction about a paladin's faith in his god, tested over many episodes in the fiction which have been dozens of sessions of play by the time of this particular event, and (ii) some nonsense about underpants. This reinforces my view that my method produces more compelling RPGing than yours.Fictions are not true. They are made up. My player made up a story about the workings of the providence of the Raven Queen. It created compelling fiction in the moment of play. It created something memorable to me, more than ten years later. And that story was just part of an unfolding story about that paladin's faith, conviction and quests.There is a certain irony in presenting a fiction - Watership Down - as evidence of how RPGing, an actual thing that actual people do, works.Here are two sentences:*At my table, had I as GM narrated the enemy Hexer attacking a different PC, and - following the roll of the dice etc - had I narrated that that PC turned into a frog, and then had nothing else done by any of the participants triggered a rule about the ending of that effect, I would have narrated the PC turning back at the rule-specified point in the turn cycle; *In the fiction of our 4e game, had another PC been turned to a frog by that hexer, they would have turned back after a short period of time.The first of these sentences is a true counterfactual about the real world.The second of these sentences is a counterfactual that has to be evaluated within the fiction. Is it true? I don't know. My players don't know. You certainly don't know!The fact that you treat the two sentences as equivalent, or close to, is what I mean why I say that you seem to be only to imagine one way of playing RPGs.All I can do is reiterate - the fact that it is random at the table does not mean that it is random in the fiction. This is a choice that you are making in your RPGing. It is not one that I make in mine.You are wrong about BW. I am not rolling a persuasion check. The test is not rolled on the Persuade skill. It is rolled on the Faith attribute. Success or failure tells me about the strength of my character's faith, and of the Lord of Battle's judgement on it.I don't. Fiction is replete with unworthy figures. FRPGing can be an example of this.You accuse me and my players of being deluded, but to me it seems the shoe is on the other foot. At the very least, you seem to be confused. To begin with, there is no factual reason as to why the paladin turned from a frog back to his proper form. Because it is a fiction. The reason can be whatever we author, consistent with the rules. At my table, the player of the paladin authored that the Raven Queen turned him back. Second, you seem to be supposing that a story about providence must itself be produced providentially. But that is obviously false - as is shown from the fact that we cannot infer, from the fact that JRRT wrote LotR, a story about providence, that JRRT was guided by providence in his writing. In case there is any uncertainty, I do not believe that my RPGing is ordained by providence. It would not be ordained by providence if the GM or players made something up without constraint. It is neither more nor less providential if the dice rolls and rules of the game are treated as constraints. And this is before we reflect on the fact that the Raven Queen is purely imaginary, and so cannot ordain anything at all!This does not mean that the story is not a story about providence, or a deconstruction. If, in the fiction, it turned out that the Raven Queen was rolling dice, then it would be different. Or if we were playing Over the Edge, which permits the PCs to discover that they are fictions, imagined by players of a RPG. But in my 4e game the Raven Queen does not roll dice, and there is no ironic or absurdist breaking of the fourth wall.All you are doing here is pointing out the difference between writing a story, and playing a RPG. I'm quite familiar with that difference.But the monks were just humans. Them having written a story about this or that does not show providence at work. They just made it all up! In RPGing, we also make things up, but using different methods from what the monks, or a contemporary novelist, uses.I've already noted that your method for RPGing seems to rely very heavily on one participant, the GM, dictating things to everyone else. You seem to think that the GM dictating without constraint what we are all to imagine the Raven Queen doing has some providential overtones that are lacking from a player saying what we are all to imagine the Raven Queen having done when the rules of the game open up a space for the player to do so. But I don't see it. GMs are not gods. They are human authors, no more or less than monks, JRRT, and RPG players.All these strong claims, with no evidence provided.I'm curious about what RPGs you have played other than pretty mainstream D&D.</blockquote>

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