NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Oryzarius]

Like you suggest one way to do this sort of thing that the player is rewarded some way playing their flaws.... I'm still not a huge fan, I find such bribery unnecessary, but it is not offensive to me.

And here's where we get into the interaction of game mechanics and voluntary roleplaying.

Some players will never make a sub-optimal or dangerous choice. These are often the ones who view the game as a purely tactical exercise, with skirmishes connected by railroad tracks of narrative. But sometimes they're the ones for whom it's a power fantasy, in which their character must remain untouchable and invincible.

Some players will gleefully get into all kinds of trouble without any urging. The malevolent kind are those who protest "But that's what my character would do!" after some sort of chaos-monkey exploit which ruins the game for the entire party and requires ham-handed GM action to save the narrative. Other players are just theatrically engaged, and have a more healthy expectation of shared narrative with the other players.

And most folks probably lie on the middle of the spectrum. They see no reason to gratuitously make a choice that might negatively impact their PC's health, success, or reputation. But, in return for a small in-game recompense for their trouble, they might be willing to climb off a safe perch and allow a bit of grime on their narrative persona.

And that's only the player side of the issue, neglecting the frustrated-author narrative-railroading GM who already has the story plotted out in their head and are merely waiting to inflict it on their captive players. Which it sounds like we pretty much all agree is a generally bad idea.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, some very general statements were made about what was unacceptable in, by my reading, any RPG whatsoever without some sort of special dispensation. All I pointed out was that this is not universal, and by example extreme violence, which seems not to have been included in that, is really no less shocking, personal, or socially acceptable than romance, which is in fact a MUCH more common human experience!

Two things here:

1. I'm not sure I ever saw anyone suggest that really graphic violence is particularly acceptable by the majority of players without warning either. They may not have specifically mentioned it, but that doesn't say anything.

2. Romance /= sex. Thee are a lot more people who would be comfortable with some of the former elements in play than the latter.

I honestly don't think that, assuming you presented them both in a fairly non-graphic way, one is actually less likely to be accepted than the other. Honestly I think the prevalence of violence is a legacy of D&D's roots in wargames and the consequent association of game objectives with character depiction/RP by way of skilled play concepts.

I think you're probably wrong, but largely because of some general discomfort with being flirted with by someone that you aren't actually, well, interested in being flirted with. A lot of people are not good at separating that sort of thing from the one-step remove of a game (far as that goes, they aren't good at separating an angry vocal confrontation from a few past experiences). And at the other end, legacy or not, people throughout the hobby are used to violence both from the hobby's history and from its prevalence in adventure fiction, and the vast majority of RPGs (at least in the West) are rooted in adventure fiction. Whether these two facts are desirable has no relationship with them being true or not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To me, part of this discussion speaks to the weakness (note that I did not say "inadequacy"!) of D&D as a role-playing system.

In a game with a more nuanced character-creation system (like, say, GURPS, Hero, Savage Worlds, FATE, etc.), a player can take "disadvantages" or "flaws" or "troubles" in return for more resources to spend on "positive" abilities. If I design a character with the Lecherousness disadvantage, then that's pretty much an invitation to the GM that I'm willing for my character to both seduce and be seduced. If the character was created with an Addiction, then it's going to be harder to say "No" when an NPC interrupts plans with a suggestion for an appropriate party. True, D&D in recent editions certainly comes with a nod to "Ideals" and "Bonds" and "Flaws", but they're fairly vestigial in both attention and effect.

Players respond to incentives. If you've paid for some of your abilities by accepting a vulnerability, then it's not really a violation of player agency to have that vulnerability "called in" during play. (Obviously, if it starts happening in every encounter of every session, then it's gone too far.). If you know you'll lose experience points for not playing to your disadvantages, you're likely to more readily accept dramatic action that invokes them. And, if you really, really don't want to cede any character control, then simply don't take any disadvantages... but be aware that players who do take on such narrative "hooks" will be rewarded for offering more such opportunities for dramatic texture.

Yes, players shouldn't be "triggered" by unwanted or inappropriate intrusions on their character control. But there's a vast middle ground between a complete loss of player agency and a complete lack of challenges to it.

One of the benefits of disadvantage systems of that sort, in fact, is since the player has chosen the character's weak spots, they've signaled that they don't mind that being a thing to come up (and in better designed ones, how frequently).

 

[Bill Zebub]

Like you suggest one way to do this sort of thing that the player is rewarded some way playing their flaws, be it with XP inspiration, fate points etc. It is still their choice whether to do it, but there is an incentive. Many games do this, and to me it is far superior to the method where the character is compelled to behave in certain way. I'm still not a huge fan, I find such bribery unnecessary, but it is not offensive to me.

Yeah, I was thinking a similar thing.

I mean, if somebody wants to take lecherous as a flaw, and then doesn't want to actually play lecherous, especially in ways that make it actually be a weakness....why exactly are you gaming with this person?

I think it's fun to take a flaw and then lean into it, causing new problems that then have to be solved.

 

[TwoSix]

Being forced to act out of character shouldn't happen at all without magic(or the equivalent) mind control.

But half of us just spent the thread arguing the opposite.

 

[Maxperson]

But half of us just spent the thread arguing the opposite.

I've seen people arguing for it being out of their control, but I don't recall anyone arguing to be forced to act out of character.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me, part of this discussion speaks to the weakness (note that I did not say "inadequacy"!) of D&D as a role-playing system.

In a game with a more nuanced character-creation system (like, say, GURPS, Hero, Savage Worlds, FATE, etc.), a player can take "disadvantages" or "flaws" or "troubles" in return for more resources to spend on "positive" abilities. If I design a character with the Lecherousness disadvantage, then that's pretty much an invitation to the GM that I'm willing for my character to both seduce and be seduced. If the character was created with an Addiction, then it's going to be harder to say "No" when an NPC interrupts plans with a suggestion for an appropriate party. True, D&D in recent editions certainly comes with a nod to "Ideals" and "Bonds" and "Flaws", but they're fairly vestigial in both attention and effect.

Players respond to incentives. If you've paid for some of your abilities by accepting a vulnerability, then it's not really a violation of player agency to have that vulnerability "called in" during play. (Obviously, if it starts happening in every encounter of every session, then it's gone too far.). If you know you'll lose experience points for not playing to your disadvantages, you're likely to more readily accept dramatic action that invokes them. And, if you really, really don't want to cede any character control, then simply don't take any disadvantages... but be aware that players who do take on such narrative "hooks" will be rewarded for offering more such opportunities for dramatic texture.

Yes, players shouldn't be "triggered" by unwanted or inappropriate intrusions on their character control. But there's a vast middle ground between a complete loss of player agency and a complete lack of challenges to it.

Yeah, I mentioned this a while back. A ton of games have a system like this. They were particularly popular back in the 90s (or as I call it, the Golden Age of Content).

 

[pemerton]

Some players will never make a sub-optimal or dangerous choice. These are often the ones who view the game as a purely tactical exercise, with skirmishes connected by railroad tracks of narrative. But sometimes they're the ones for whom it's a power fantasy, in which their character must remain untouchable and invincible.

Some players will gleefully get into all kinds of trouble without any urging. The malevolent kind are those who protest "But that's what my character would do!" after some sort of chaos-monkey exploit which ruins the game for the entire party and requires ham-handed GM action to save the narrative. Other players are just theatrically engaged, and have a more healthy expectation of shared narrative with the other players.

I'm not sure why the notion is so prevalent that all these people should be playing together. They are clearly looking for different things out of the game.

(Of course, some people are capable of changing their play goal to reflect the game they're playing. It seems to be a quirk of RPGing that it's not taken for granted that participants will do this.)

 

[pemerton]

unless you're playing with folks who have never played any sort of game at all, they will likely expect that a successful roll leads to solid results (as opposed to suggestions), and the rules don't really contraduct that perspective.

I would expect even someone who has never played a RPG before to expect that a success will lead to a solid result. I mean, that's how games work in general, so why would anyone expect RPGs to be different?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure why the notion is so prevalent that all these people should be playing together. They are clearly looking for different things out of the game.

(Of course, some people are capable of changing their play goal to reflect the game they're playing. It seems to be a quirk of RPGing that it's not taken for granted that participants will do this.)

Because people get together to play a RPG based on reasons other a point-for-point shared preference in playstyle and rules?