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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6744994" data-attributes="member: 27160">It may very well not be, but some agendas for play treat the injection of self as desirable and intentional, rather than an unfortunate inevitability. This is one fault line along which styles of play divide, since you can't treat something as both desirable and undesirable at the same time.I don't think it's that cut and dried; you are playing an aspect of yourself, maybe, in control of a different body and sensory apparatus. Or a set of ideas you have toyed with and wish to adopt in order to explore more forcefully.Taking the case of the paladin, I may have no desire to be paladin-ly myself, but I have views on what being a paladin would involve - what the outlook and aspirations of a paladin should be. And I may wish to experiment with adopting those aspirations and that outlook in a "safe" environment.Other than that I don't think it necessarily amounts to "undermin(ing an)other player's characterisation", part of what Edwards is saying is that Nar play does involve just such a social contract. That's one of the features that makes it different from Sim or Gam aimed play. Deliberately putting difficult or "interesting" choices in the path of a character that relate to their stated beliefs is an expected part of Nar play, as I understand it.You have narrowed down on what I think amounts to a straw man, here. Dramatic need failing or the character betraying themselves, while possible, are very much the extreme end of what is expected to happen. More usually, the character's beliefs or aims tend to be modified, or to mutate. This is a commonplace of drama in general. The character's personality and credo might be expected to mature - to become more tempered by adversity.This might work better if described by example, and I realised recently that something similar has been happening in the 4E game I GM. It's not a great example, but it's a real one, and one I have seen first hand.One of the characters in the game is a paladin. I have not enforced any sort of "paladin's code" as GM, relying on the player wanting to play a paladin. At lower levels, the character was very clearly rote and/or dogma driven. The catch phrase - somewhat tongue in cheek - was formed "thinking lets doubt in!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As play has continued through 26 levels (so far), however, the characters beliefs have tempered and been modified by circumstances. The discovery that the fate of the souls of all who die is at stake has led him to back the wizard and engage in negotiations and even an uneasy alliance with agents of Vecna (and, arguably, with Vecna himself). Our paladin has learned, the hard way, the benefits of tolerance*. And yet, he is most certainly no less a paladin; he is pursuing a quest to prevent the souls of all who die from falling into the hands of a demon lord, and I can scarcely think of a more paladinly quest than that! Nevertheless, it's still fair to say that his whole outlook and "code" have been altered in the process.*: As an aside, some years ago I had a moment of clarity when Piers Benn pointed out, in a book I was reading, that "tolerance" in no sense implies "agreement". You don't tolerate what you agree with - that would be silly - you tolerate what you disagree with. And yet, tolerance is most assuredly a virtue. Our paladin has learned tolerance - and I think the players have learned something of it, too. It has not caused the betrayal of his paladin's code - it has become a part of it.I don't claim it's the only way to generate stories, and I agree that it's more art than science, but I merely point out that someone far more qualified to talk about stories than I recommends the technique. And, in my experience, it works surprisingly well.It seems obvious to me, because Sim tends to be poorly disposed to the situation being deliberately manipulated in order to present obstacles to the character. This is a technique for making a story, not for exploring an imagined world; the world warps in order to make the story happen. This tends to be anathema (for good, internally consistent reasons) for games not deliberately run to promote a Nar agenda.</blockquote>

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