my question to Pemerton is, is that sort of character roleplay what you mean when you say that players have greater narrative control?
Are you talking about this episode of play?
What had happened was that a cultists had hit the paladin of the Raven Queen with a Baleful Polymorph, turning the paladin into a frog until the end of the cultist's next turn. The players at the table didn't know how long this would last, although one (not the player of the paladin) was pretty confident that it wouldn't be that long, because the game doesn't have save-or-die.
Anyway, the end of the cultist's next turn duly came around, and I told the player of the paladin that he turned back to his normal form. He then took his turn, and made some threat or admonition against the cultist. The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."
There we have an example of a player taking narrative control on the back of an NPC's mechanic that the player knew nothing of until encountering it in the course of actual play. And at least for me, as a GM, that is the player of the paladin playing his role. And driving the story forward.
Assuming that you are, it shows a player playing his PC - in this case, a paladin.
It also shows the player establishing that, in the fiction, the paladin's god turned him back from frog to tiefling.
The point of the example, at the time it was posted, was to demonstrate a couple of things:
* It is possible to have RPGing where (i) the mechanics, and the way they work at the table, does not correspond in any straightforward fashion to (ii) the way that imaginary processes work in the fiction;
* RPGing of the sort described immediately above is not at odds with players inhabiting their PCs and playing via immersive, first person roleplay.
To elaborate on the first dot point: the rules of the game being played (4e D&D) specified (via the stat block for the NPC transmuter) that the baleful polymorph effect would end at the end of the NPC's next turn. That is a statement about
what the participants in the game are to do in the real world - that is, when the NPC's next turn clocks around, the game participants (led by the GM, given that as per the 4e PHB it is the GM's job to interpret and apply NPC/creature stat blocks) are all expected to agree that the effect has ended.
But the stat block does not say anything about
why, in the fiction, the effect ends. That is left an open question. In the episode of play that I described, it ended because
the Raven Queen turned her paladin back into his true form. And that bit of fiction was established by the player, as described in the quote above.
To elaborate on the second dot point: the player never left the perspective of his PC. He knew, as his PC, that he had been transformed into a frog, He knew, as his PC, that he had turned back to his true self - the real-world medium for establishing this in-character knowledge was my narration, as GM, that he had turned back. As his PC he understood his relationship to his god (the Raven Queen) and her power (over fate, sorcery, life-and-death, etc). And he knew that she had turned him back.
There are lots of RPGs that have various sorts of mechanics that allow the second dot point to be exemplified. The earliest example I know of is the Streetwise skill from Classic Traveller (1977). Here is the rule for the Streetwise skill (Book 1, p 15):
The referee should set the throw required to obtain any item specified by the players (for example, the name of an official willing to issue licenses without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+). DMs based on streetwise should be allowed at +1 per level. No expertise DM =-5.
The same page also states the fictional context that underpins this rule:
The individual [with Streetwise skill] is acquainted with the ways of local subcultures (which tend to be the same everywhere in human society), and thus is capable of dealing with strangers without alienating them. (This is not to be considered the same as alien contact, although the referee may so allow.)
Close-knit sub-cultures (such as some portions of the lower classes, and trade groups such as workers, the underworld, etc) generally reject contact with strangers or unknown elements. Streetwise expertise allows contact for the purposes of obtaining information, hiring persons, purchasing contraband or stolen goods, etc.
So a player does not have to leave their character to declare an action like "I go to the local starport workers' bar, to see if anyone there knows an official who will issue us an export licence for <such-and-such contraband goods." And then the GM resolves that by setting a difficulty and having the player make the throw. And if the throw succeeds, the GM will then narrate the PC meeting someone with the info, and play proceeds from there.
A weakness in the Traveller Streetwise sub-system is that it doesn't tell the GM what they should do if the player's throw
fails. More contemporary versions of this sort of sub-system (eg Circles in Burning Wheel and Torchbearer 2e; or the move in Apocalypse World (p 210 of the rulebook) for
When you go into a holding’s bustling market, looking for some particular thing to buy, and it’s not obvious whether you should be able to just like go buy one like that) don't have this gap.
