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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6874470" data-attributes="member: 42582">In the case of ZoT, if the player doesn't know what the character knows, but is obliged by the circumstances of the casting of the spell to narrate his/her PC stating that information, what happens?The game can't just grind to a halt. Some non-standard solution has to be found. [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s strikes me as superior in at least two obvious respects to the most salient alternative in which Eloelle gives a sincere answer, namely, that the GM narrates the actions of the PC: (i) the player doesn't have to forfeit narration of his/her PC's action and let someone else (the GM) do it; (ii) the player doesn't get the benefit of learning stuff that s/he doesn't actually know in order to then exploit that knowledge for gameplay purposes.Which of these is the case? I don't see that they can both be true.I think that the reason it makes no difference is because what is thwarting the evil cleric is the fact that s/he cast ZoT on the 5 INT PC. The narration around that fact isn't making any difference to the overall practical outcome (of course it changes the fiction, but that's not in dispute): instead of the evil cleric getting no useful information because the 5 INT PC has nothing useful to say (the standard, default interpretation of a 5 INT PC), the evil cleric gets no useful information because the player of the 5 INT PC is committed to a concept in which, in the fiction, the character has lots of potentially useful information but is precluded from actually stating or acting on that information in any fashion whatsoever, and has a powerful patron who even prevents divulging that information under ZoT, domination, etc.Changing the narration doesn't change what information the evil cleric gets. Hence it confers no benefit to the players. In the fiction, I guess Eloelle is better off than she would have been had her patron not protected her, but that is neither here nor there from the point of view of gameplay. If Eloelle had actually been built with (say) 16 INT, and hence at the table it was taken for granted that under ZoT she has to hand over her information (if giving a sincere answer), then the player of Eloelle would also have access to that information for a host of other purposes, and the she won't tell because her patron won't let her element of the fiction wouldn't even be present.</blockquote>

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