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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7744079" data-attributes="member: 42582">Whereas I do care. If the discussion is just going round in circles, and seems to be getting no closer to agreement, I want to bring it to a resolution.When players can resolve conflicts between their PCs using the mechanics, the conflicts don't generally produce antagonism, at least in my experience.More generally - the argument against something I'm doing is that my players need to be protected from the consequences of their own RPGing? That's a new one!So reasonable compromises are good, but mechanically mediated ones are bad? Because they're not reasonable?In any event, I don't regard players arguing about the proper way forward as bad. When the stakes are high, and different PCs have differing goals, then there should be disagreement and debate. But it can be handy to have a way to resolve it that doesn't require any player to squib in the play of their PC. Mechanical resolution is one way to do that.Well, as  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says, that's part of the point. Bringing a high-CHA PC to the table sometimes enhances your ability to get your way. (In Traveller PC generation is highly random, but each player in our game runs 2 PCs. I think on at least one occasion one player has had PCs on different sides of the debate about what to do next.)Anyway, this goes back to my basic point: if the players agree, then there is no burden on their agency.You seem to be talking about one system: D&D.I think you're also misdescribing what is happening in the episodes of play I describe. The players are committed to the PCs going somewhere as a party (because they, the players, all want to be part of the action). But they disagree as to where (eg one group wants to make planetfall, the other wants to keep going; one group wants to follow a lead to the Abyss, another wants to follow a lead to the Underdark; etc). What is being resolved is which way to go. In the fiction, the PCs of the player(s) who lost the contest agree to go along with the others. That is not "determining decision-making for indefinite time periods". It's agreeing to one proposal.Why? Why is the players agreeing to a resolution mechanic that reflects what it is that their PCs bring to the debate unreasonable?I mean, you say that "it usually doesn't work". I'm here to tell you that, for me, it worked. Luke Crane reports that it worked for him too. I guess you're saying that it doesn't, or wouldn't, work for you, but why does that mean my group is doing something wrong?</blockquote>

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