Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6208880" data-attributes="member: 6681948">If we take the Planar Binding to be “character casting a wish”, then a Charm Person can allow casting of a Wish – all I need do is find someone capable of casting the Wish, and keep casting until he fails his save.  Based on some posters, this should be no problem as detecting spellcasting should be pretty unlikely and the target should not take offense anyway. How stupid would someone have to be to enter lobbying negotiations with the PM of Australia without finding out his political affiliations?  My view is that the “discover it in play” approach means the PC’s can never determine the lay of the land beforehand to plan a strategy that will best meet their needs. We don’t discover in play that a Red Dragon breathes Fire.  Why can we not learn beforehand the politics of the kingdom?  Why would we not enter this challenge having undertaken advance preparation, just as we would prepare in advance to hunt down that Dragon? This again opens the question “when is it set?”  If the players Gathered Information in town to establish the King was a just and noble ruler and his Chancellor a loyal servant, could this then be overridden in play (the populace are unaware of the true state of affairs) or does success in Gathering Info mean that the King is now locked as just and noble, and there can be no future surprises?  Can we later learn that the “baby” was a Shapeshifted creature and not a real baby, or is “real baby” now sufficiently established that we cannot override it?  Can my character make a skill roll to impose that the entire scene was merely a dream sequence resulting from excessive alcohol, spicy food and nerves about meeting the King tomorrow? To me, and I suspect several other posters, the last is not the case.  If my PC goes to visit the King and has no opportunity to make any determination of the King’s values, goals or political affiliations beforehand, I think that shows my character to be pretty foolish, and a very poor diplomat.  For me, that does not make the game better.  Again, it was about “both”.  It had two purposes, not just one.  One of those purposes was to prevent retribution.  The roll succeeded.  If “success is success – full stop” – then there should be no retribution.  A lot of the responses seem to be “the stakes were set at the outset”.  So if our stakes were “to befriend the King and support him”, are we locked in to go out and find him some more infants to sacrifice, or can further objectives be identified and pursued in the course of play?  It seems to me like the rogue has added the intent of preventing retribution.  Is the answer, then, “You can’t do anything to prevent retribution now as you are too busy securing the aid of the King”, or is it possible for the players to change, or add to, the aspects of the scene they are working to influence? The rogue succeeded.  If “success is success – full stop”, his intent should be realized. Your model suggests that success need not be “success – full stop”, but can further develop later in the story.  For myself, I am not offended if the bluff does not last forever, or if the leader dragon laughs at the rake’s gullibility.  But I am not asserting “success is success – full stop”.  Are you?  I think it was [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] who was, but I could be misrecalling.  Whoever it was has not weighed in on this issue.  Is “success is success – full stop” a hallmark of Indie gaming, or is it not?  Each proponent seems to have a different view as to what tenets are hallmarks essential to Indie gaming and which are not. We clearly disagree in this regard.  I would consider two characters with identical statistics and identical options available, which they can change at their discretion at any time (ie which spells they will prepare, rather than which spells they are even capable of casting) to be mechanically identical.  Let us assume they have the same spell load, but one chooses to cast Lightning Bolt and the other casts Confusion – does that also render them no longer identical mechanically?  Does one fighter rolling a 1 and the other a 20 differentiate them mechanically?  I think you are splitting hairs on the differentiation. If “asking politely” provides a +1 bonus to interrogation, and “torch to the groin” provides a +3 bonus, then “torch to the groin” is the best tactic.  It provides the greatest probability in success on the specific die roll to achieve the desired result.  My hard bitten mercenary will probably get out the flint and steel where a more kindhearted character would not (even if he is mechanically identical). It does not matter.  We are discussing tactics, not goals.  Whatever their goals, they require getting past these opponents.  That is the option they have either chosen of been forced into (possibly because diplomacy has failed).  The assumption that people will always take the best possible tactical approach is a false one in reality.  I prefer a game where personality is not required to be enforced with mechanics.  You clearly do not – hey, if sacrificing a bunch of babies is the best way to gain the Dragon’s trust and slip in to defeat him, I guess that’s what my Paladin would do, right?Your whole discussion of “PC versus player” leaves me scratching my head.  The PC’s have in-game goals within the setting.  How do they best achieve them?  Players have the goal of an exciting and fun game, in my experience.  They want to play their characters.  The PC may have goals which, if achieved, would frustrate the player.  [Imagine Ben Grimm’s player when the Thing is cured and becomes a normal human being once again…]I question that.  The fact you have indicated you first had to be “satisfied that it won't hurt the game for the wish to be granted” implies that, if you feel it would, then you would simply deny the granting of the wish at the outset.  This seems to be exactly the type of “mother may I” play [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has consistently expressed disgust for. I think this is another playstyle difference we will not resolve.  In my game, that foul mouthed warrior might offend the King with his approach, and both player and GM would accept this as part of playing the character.  I get the sense that, in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]’s world, the character must be able to persuade the King by being foul mouthed just as effectively as a diplomatic character would persuade him with courtly manners.  We should be framing only scenes where your Fighter can be most effective by being loud, ornery and foul-mouthed, and rewarding that play with bonuses and successes. So it seems.  I remain unclear at what point we have locked in elements of the setting, as outlined in my comments to Pemerton above.  To me, my Diplomat has been rendered an idiot, as he has not even taken the time to get a basic sense of the King’s principals and politics before lobbying for resources for our quest. Even knowing the King makes an effort to appear good and noble provides some leverage if we discover he is not.  Why would I walk in with no idea whatsoever of how the King is perceived?  And, if we have established that he is perceived as Good and Righteous through our previous efforts to gather information, are we now locked in that he is?  Again, “Success is success – full stop” or not? Absolutely - but not if “Success is success – full stop”.  I am getting the sense that this is not actually a precept of Indie games, but of one Indie gamer.  So is this now locked, or could we later discover that the Dream was not sent by Bahamut, but by a Witch (let us say a Wicth who serves Tiamat to maintain the theme) invoking a Dream spell?  In other words, if I can dream up an appropriate fictional positioning justification (just like “the King only pretends to be righteous – happens all the time in the real world), can I revise the fiction?  However, if this was a regular 4e campaign, what would likely have happened is: The above seems to assume any dispute can come only from players being unreasonable.  It seems to me that there could be very reasonable differences of opinion as to what constitutes going “too far afield with their authorship”.  So let me take you back to the Demon wish discussed above.  Do you have to conclude the Wish would be good (or “not bad”) for the game, or does a successful roll by the player mean his wish is granted precisely as he intended, because he has framing authority and “success is success – full stop”? So what if the player flat out states “While I think this should also be complementary to our goal of securing the aid of the Kingdom, it is as or more important to the Rogue that no retaliation be taken on the Kingdom or its people – not now, not ever”.  Can the player re-set the stakes?  Can he add complementary stakes?  Or is he restricted to the stakes he set based on the framing to date, and no in-play discovery can reshape his objectives until after he has resolved his first stated intention?  If the Drake retaliates on the kingdom, based on my intent stated above, there is a violation of my success.  I didn’t roll to Bluff the Chamberlain – I rolled to Bluff the Drake.  To me, the Drake realizing he has been duped and retaliating is a clear sign of an off-screen living, breathing world.  However, his retaliation means that my Bluff failed in its stated intent to prevent retaliation – I don’t see that as “success is success – full stop”. Again, are we playing High Fantasy or Real World Politics?  Either way, however, I would expect the PC’s to have some advance knowledge of whether they will be preaching to the choir, or dealing with the devil, before they go to court the King.  Perhaps they will be surprised and their initial investigations will be proven false.  But if the Kingdom is filled with slaves, brutally treated by their masters, I fail to see how the PC’s will expect they are walking into the court of a just and righteous King.  And I doubt that all the slaves were hidden away as they made their way to the Court to fool them into believing the King is a just and righteous ruler.  The PC’s might court a righteous ruler or a vile despot, but I would expect them to walk in with some expectation of which one they are dealing with.  Otherwise, they strike me as rather stupid.</blockquote>

Verification