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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8726844" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>For those debating why players are more hesitant to play in a game that allows social skills to be used on them to control their character as opposed to magic being used on them, I think it would really help your understanding to begin with the stance that the players have a rational reason and work from there.</p><p></p><p>I think it comes down to two things.</p><p></p><p>1) Players have reason to suspect that magical compulsion will be rare and exceptional, where as social compulsion would be ubiquitous. The thing about mundane skill is that it's generally a per round ability you can use any number of times per day and everyone can do it. So if skill based compulsion was a thing, they would be exposed to it repeatedly in a way that they wouldn't be with magical compulsion.</p><p>2) Players have every reason to believe that skill based compulsion would be less fair than magical compulsion. Magical compulsion generally depends on the ordinary standard system of magical resistance like "saving throws" which games work hard to balance and which is not heavily reliant on GM fiat. Skill based compulsion would depend on a games social system which is inherently hard to balance owing to the complexity of human social interaction and which therefore almost always has to rely very heavily on GM fiat. Players therefore have very good reason to believe that if social skill based compulsion applied to the PCs, that it would be extraordinarily easy for GMs to justify treating the player characters like puppets.</p><p></p><p>This is not an irrational position, nor is it an oversight in the rules that the social skill based compulsion doesn't apply to PCs.</p><p></p><p>Stepping back into an even broader overlook, this is actually a subset of the fact that we are always playing a character and we are not simulating a character. Yes, if the goal was to simulate the player character, we would have social skills apply equally to the player character and we wouldn't treat the player character as if they were different than non-player characters. Yes, if the goal was to simulate the player character we would always use the characters mental and social attributes in place of the players. But that approach that the goal is to simulate the character and that to be fair the social and mental attributes of the character always are used in place of the players leads to immediate incoherence.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8726844, member: 4937"] For those debating why players are more hesitant to play in a game that allows social skills to be used on them to control their character as opposed to magic being used on them, I think it would really help your understanding to begin with the stance that the players have a rational reason and work from there. I think it comes down to two things. 1) Players have reason to suspect that magical compulsion will be rare and exceptional, where as social compulsion would be ubiquitous. The thing about mundane skill is that it's generally a per round ability you can use any number of times per day and everyone can do it. So if skill based compulsion was a thing, they would be exposed to it repeatedly in a way that they wouldn't be with magical compulsion. 2) Players have every reason to believe that skill based compulsion would be less fair than magical compulsion. Magical compulsion generally depends on the ordinary standard system of magical resistance like "saving throws" which games work hard to balance and which is not heavily reliant on GM fiat. Skill based compulsion would depend on a games social system which is inherently hard to balance owing to the complexity of human social interaction and which therefore almost always has to rely very heavily on GM fiat. Players therefore have very good reason to believe that if social skill based compulsion applied to the PCs, that it would be extraordinarily easy for GMs to justify treating the player characters like puppets. This is not an irrational position, nor is it an oversight in the rules that the social skill based compulsion doesn't apply to PCs. Stepping back into an even broader overlook, this is actually a subset of the fact that we are always playing a character and we are not simulating a character. Yes, if the goal was to simulate the player character, we would have social skills apply equally to the player character and we wouldn't treat the player character as if they were different than non-player characters. Yes, if the goal was to simulate the player character we would always use the characters mental and social attributes in place of the players. But that approach that the goal is to simulate the character and that to be fair the social and mental attributes of the character always are used in place of the players leads to immediate incoherence. [/QUOTE]
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