Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[soviet]

Why do D&D's 'mind control' powers being magical mean that they don't count?

 

[clearstream]

Why do D&D's 'mind control' powers being magical mean that they don't count?

The fundamental reason so far as I have been able to analyze (from some lengthy debates on the subject) amounts to constraints.

Magical effects such as spells include parameters such as valid targets, durations, specific consequences. While other forms of possible suasion are far more open-ended. There's probably some fantasy-universe metaphysical expectations mixed in there, too.

 

[Hussar]

It would be nice to have modular rules to allow for what @Fenris and @Aldarc described above within a D&D game.
The concept of focusing on the emotional state of the character through the combination of mechanics and roleplay appeals to me.

EDIT: I mean VtM came out eons ago and D&D has barely changed in terms of delving down the path of character development in mechanical terms.
All D&D has is Alignment and Bonds Ideals Flaws and Traits. That's hardly innovative given what is out there in the indie field.
Personal rant over.

While I agree, the odds of getting this from WotC are … slim.

Otoh, I imagine if we started casting a bit wider net into the home brew sea, we’d probably be able to find some decent examples.

 

[soviet]

The fundamental reason so far as I have been able to analyze (from some lengthy debates on the subject) amounts to constraints.

Magical effects such as spells include parameters such as valid targets, durations, specific consequences. While other forms of possible suasion are far more open-ended. There's probably some fantasy-universe metaphysical expectations mixed in there, too.

OK. I would say there's also an issue of framing in that case. Sorry to harp on about my game, but it talks a lot about stake setting and how that must be reasonable in context. So for example you couldn't make a diplomacy check against someone to just abandon their religion and switch to your side. That would be like throwing a tennis ball against a tank and expecting to do some damage - just not possible with the tools you have. What you might be able to do though, is put social pressure on someone to agree a policy change in favour of your religion (I dunno, allowing ceremonial daggers into the town hall for example) for fear of them looking obstructive, non-inclusive, etc.

Edit: which is to say, if these hypothetical people are running these unspecified story games to make players feel their characters have been unfairly mind controlled, they are probably 'doing it wrong'.

 

[clearstream]

OK. I would say there's also an issue of framing in that case. Sorry to harp on about my game, but it talks a lot about stake setting and how that must be reasonable in context. So for example you couldn't make a diplomacy check against someone to just abandon their religion and switch to your side. That would be like throwing a tennis ball against a tank and expecting to do some damage - just not possible with the tools you have. What you might be able to do though, is put social pressure on someone to agree a policy change in favour of your religion (I dunno, allowing ceremonial daggers into the town hall for example) for fear of them looking obstructive, non-inclusive, etc.

As an interesting aside, Diplomacy supplied a form of mind control in 3rd edition (dubbed by the community "diplomancy", hinting that it was grasped as being potentially as strong as magic) which although it was skill-based, arose from the bare mechanics (prior to player principles.)

It was more often employed as PC->NPC and NPC->NPC mind control, but the mechanical potential was there. To me, there are plain readings of the 5th edition rules that result in the social skills working the same way. I'd advise against our attempting to settle that here, though!

 

[pemerton]

So in 1977 a RPG was published in which PCs are subject to the morale rules exactly the same as NPCs. That game, of course, was Traveller.

A lot of articles were published about Traveller in the late 70s and 80s, in magazines like White Dwarf and Dragon. I don't recall any of them talking about the Traveller morale rules as "mind control".

 

[AnotherGuy]

D&D has so many ways (mostly spells) for players to lose agency over their chararcters while GMs have tons of agency, so players tend to be fiercly protective of what limited agency is afforded them over their characters.

Sure, later editions have toned that down somewhat with having to make saving throws every round, and once saved you're immune to the effect for 24 hours, but I get what you're saying. It still, I think, would be nice for those of us who want it, to have that option.

I'm not sure if the above mechanics would necessarily be a good fit for D&D and the sort of games that D&D often cultivates.

Is the consequence of death off the table in the other games? i.e. are there other more pressing failure states.
Because in D&D death is the primary and many time sole consequence by your std DM and perhaps this avenue I'm pursuing will not add another aspect to the game? Is that your reasoning?

More robust social mechanics? Sure. But there can be a fine line before anything involving social mechanics gets accused of being "mind control" mechanics in disguise.

I was thinking soft conditions. So currently in D&D we have:
Charmed - which covers lust, friendlier disposition, amicable, protective
Fear and Frightened - includes retreating from the threat
Mad Conditions
Inspired through Inspiration which is earned via a Long Rest

There is no mechanic for a character being distraught, having regret, crisis of faith, feeling anxious, frustrated or angry (unless you're including Rage)
What I liked about VtM there were Paths which had one roll against one's Conscience Virtue.
There were also Self-Control and Courage virtues which I suppose fall under the Wisdom saving throw in a D&D system.

One can argue there is a Honour system within the DMG, but it is half-baked, like many of the options included.
We have clerics and paladins with no true Faith stat. We have no real Loyalty system. There are no checks and balances if you don't want to use an oppressive GM-forced alignment system.

So for instance can a cleric suffer a crisis of faith? What is the effect of that mechanically?
Can a character who betrayed his party under the effect of a Vampire's charm feel guilt afterwards?
How long does it take for you to recover having lost a fellow companion? There is no mechanical weight given to any of these scenarios and more, which should be pretty common, I feel, in a game of D&D.
And yet VtM is a 30-year-old game that could cater for these RP situations.
Unless you're a decent roleplayer in D&D, everything is rather flat.

I'm not sure if I'm making much sense in all this rambling.

 

[pemerton]

@EzekielRaiden

This post is in response to your bakc-and-forth with @Lanefan.

As you may recall, here are the posts I made about the warehouse stakeout scenario in the context of AW:

The player declares "I try to identify gaps in the security schedule without getting caught or shot!" The GM replies "OK, you're loitering across the way from the warehouse, when a guard comes up to you and asks what your business is!" (That's a soft move, putting the PC in a spot.) The player replies "This seems like a charged situation - I read it" and makes the required throw. Suppose they get 7+, the GM has to answer one of the listed questions truthfully. Suppose the player asks "Where's my way in?" or perhaps "What's my enemy's true position?", well now the player probably has knowledge of a weak spot. But that doesn't mean it was authored by them. I mean, it could be - the GM could go "Ok, you've been staking this place out for a while now, what way in have you discovered?", but the GM's not obliged to do that. They could narrate their own thing.

And of course, once the situation's been read the GM is probably going to come back to the fact that there's a guard there asking the PC what their business is!

here's a different way the warehouse stake out (see post 566 upthread) could play out in Apocalypse World:

The player declares "I try to identify gaps in the security schedule without getting caught or shot!" The GM replies "OK, after a couple of days of staking the place out you can see that there's a gap around dinner time - those guards are creatures of habit! But it might be hard to sneak in then, as that's the same time the street is full of food and water vendors."

This would be offering an opportunity, but perhaps with a cost.

Which one of the two possibilities I've canvassed, and the countless others that can be imagined, is the better one depends on the mood of the table, what is going on in the rest of the fiction, what trajectories and expectations have been built up, etc. The GM's prep of fronts and threats might also help here, as it might have information about what the warehouse guards are inclined to do if subject to scrutiny.

So what sorts of things would contribute to the mood of the table, what is going on in the rest of the fiction, what trajectories and expectations have been built up, etc?

These might include questions from the GM to the player(s), consistent with what @Campbell posted upthread. These might also include previous bits of narration, especially previous soft moves made by the GM.

I'm not as familiar with the text of DW as I am with AW, but like the latter I believe the former relies on the key principle "If you do it, you do it." And a flipside of that is that a player is not obliged to do it. A player can deliberately declare an action that does not trigger a player-side move, and hence that leaves the GM free to make a move of their own (typically a soft move). Baker gives examples of exactly this in the AW rulebook, when he discusses an example of not going aggro (p 12), and when he contrasts Seduce/Manipulate with one character just asking another character for a favour (pp 198-9).

In AW, if a player tries to (eg) scout out a warehouse without being noticed by its guards, that would probably be Acting Under Fire, which would trigger a player-side move:

When you do something under fire, or dig in to endure fire, roll+cool. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7–9, you flinch, hesitate, or
stall: the MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice. . . .

On a 7–9, when it comes to the worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice, you’ll need to look at the circumstances and find something fun. It should be easy to find something; if there weren’t things to go wrong, nobody’d be rolling dice. It can include suffering harm or making another move. However, remember that a 7–9 is a hit, not a miss; whatever you offer should be fundamentally a success, not fundamentally a failure.​

If the player fails the roll, the GM can make as hard and direct a move as they like. Perhaps a guard notices the skulker and alerts the other guards, who all descend on the PC (putting the PC in a spot).

If the player makes the roll on a 7 to 9, perhaps the GM offers an opportunity with a cost - the only way you can get close without being seen is to hide behind the pile of burning tyres, and you'll take 1-harm (ap) from breathing in that acrid smoke for the couple of hours it'll take you to scope out the place.

However it unfolds, by choosing to do something under fire, the player has opened up a different suite of possibilities than by choosing not to trigger a move of their own. And in the latter case, they've deliberately left it open to the GM to make a move. Which was the example that I gave, in which it is not illegitimate for the GM to have a guard approach the PC and ask them what their business is.

I will add: this is a repeated source of frustration that I experience in discussing a variety of non-D&D-like RPGs. Posters such as @Lanefan, instead of saying (eg) "That's interesting that the GM gets to make that move with no roll being made - why is that? Is that an opportunity that the player has given to them" just assume that the GM enjoys D&D-like permissions to grant or withhold saving throws (or hide checks, etc) more or less at will, and posits "illegitimate" GMing.

There is no real attempt to take seriously that the game does not allocate authority in the same way that D&D and D&D-like games do.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why do D&D's 'mind control' powers being magical mean that they don't count?

I feel like I already answered that.

Magical effects in fiction often do these exact things. Nothing else in fiction forces one to do something with no choice in the matter like magic can. Thus magical effects are fundamentally different than other effects.

 

[soviet]

Sure, later editions have toned that down somewhat with having to make saving throws every round, and once saved you're immune to the effect for 24 hours, but I get what you're saying. It still, I think, would be nice for those of us who want it, to have that option.


Is the consequence of death off the table in the other games? i.e. are there other more pressing failure states.
Because in D&D death is the primary and many time sole consequence by your std DM and perhaps this avenue I'm pursuing will not add another aspect to the game? Is that your reasoning?


I was thinking soft conditions. So currently in D&D we have:
Charmed - which covers lust, friendlier disposition, amicable, protective
Fear and Frightened - includes retreating from the threat
Mad Conditions
Inspired through Inspiration which is earned via a Long Rest

There is no mechanic for a character being distraught, having regret, crisis of faith, feeling anxious, frustrated or angry (unless you're including Rage)
What I liked about VtM there were Paths which had one roll against one's Conscience Virtue.
There were also Self-Control and Courage virtues which I suppose fall under the Wisdom saving throw in a D&D system.

One can argue there is a Honour system within the DMG, but it is half-baked, like many of the options included.
We have clerics and paladins with no true Faith stat. We have no real Loyalty system. There are no checks and balances if you don't want to use an oppressive GM-forced alignment system.

So for instance can a cleric suffer a crisis of faith? What is the effect of that mechanically?
Can a character who betrayed his party under the effect of a Vampire's charm feel guilt afterwards?
How long does it take for you to recover having lost a fellow companion? There is no mechanical weight given to any of these scenarios and more, which should be pretty common, I feel, in a game of D&D.
And yet VtM is a 30-year-old game that could cater for these RP situations.
Unless you're a decent roleplayer in D&D, everything is rather flat.

I'm not sure if I'm making much sense in all this rambling.

That actually sounds really promising. It feels like it could tie in to inspiration somehow, either as an opportunity to gain it or potentially allow those players who just don't want to deal with the issue (or don't want it to have mechanical weight) to spend inspiration to cancel the condition.