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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7741747" data-attributes="member: 42582">The two sides of the <snippage> may not be unrelated.In this thread (and others, maybe?) you've talked about the importance of the player deciding what the PC thinks. I can't see how that matters, except as a particular instance of a more general phenomenon - the general phenomenon being preserving the player's conception of the PC.My views about preserving the player's conception of the PC are mixed - maybe confused, or at least in tension - because it is something that is quite important to me, but I also prefer RPGs where it is put under pressure. The resolution of the tension, for me, I think, is a practical thing: the player's conception shouldn't be yielding to that pressure accidentally or trivially, but only because of the players' deliberate choice to accept that pressure, by putting his/her PC to the test.A game where this happens only on occasion, at the moments of truth, is less draining/demanding, I think, than one where this is the norm: I would contrast 4e and, say, Burning Wheel in this respect. 4e gives the player a lot of devices to buffer against that sort of pressure and so preserve his/her conception of his/her PC. Because of the generally abstract nature of its resolution system, it also gives the GM a lot of scope to narrate outcomes in ways that tend to be less undermining of the players' conception of the character.An alternative take on this "tension", among the games I play regularly, is found in Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic RP: the conception of the PC is almost always potentially under pressure, but the whole context of play and the stakes of the game are sufficiently light-hearted that most of the time the dint to the players' conception of the PC will be amusing or a bit ironic (as befits a 4 colour comics RPG) rather than really deep or challenging to the player.In any event, the point of the above is this: if one is playing a RPG in which the players' conception of the PC is subject to challenge and even refutation, I don't see how it makes any difference if that challenge or refutation comes on the social side rather than (say) the physical side, or as a result of magic.</blockquote>

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