Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9569749" data-attributes="member: 42582">Agreement!In the abstract, I think my answer is "yes" - but I'm trying to think of an actual play example.<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/npc-deception-persuasion-and-player-agency.709255/post-9556856" target="_blank">Upthread</a>, I posted some actual play excerpts that set out how one of the PCs had her Elfstone stolen from her by a NPC. In the fiction, that must have consisted of some sort of distraction or similar. At the table, the loss of the Elfstone was narrated as a consequence to a failed test - "When you get back to your mum's house, you notice that your Elfstone is missing" - and it wasn't until some time later (both in the fiction, and in the real world - four or five sessions later) that the truth of who had stolen it was revealed.Another example in the neighbourhood, that I think I also mentioned upthread, was when the PCs were being lured by a Troll Haunt into the Troll Fens, so that it could catch and eat them. This was resolved as a Trickery conflict. I (as GM, acting for the Troll) won; but the PCs earned a compromise, and so the Troll did lure them into the Fens but didn't catch them. Rather, they were lost.The last time there was something very close to sticking to a post happened, at least that I can remember, was in our Prince Valiant game (Sir Gerren, Sir Justin (the former's son) and Sir Morgath are PCs, in command of a warband; the other characters are all NPCs; I've snipped the prelude which explains how the PCs and some of their troops came to be in this friendly castle worried about an attack by a larger force of enemies):This wasn't quite a case of deception, but the actions of the NPCs prompted the players to make choices for their characters which left the friendly castle very poorly defended, without them properly realising what they had done until it was too late.If I have followed [USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER]'s posts correctly, the claim is that this is the only legitimate/genuine way to manipulate the players (and their PCs) into making bad choices, being deceived, etc. As you can see, I don't agree. Player decision-making and GM-narration have different work to do in a RPG, being triggered in different ways (and those ways differ from system to system) and relating differently to stakes, consequences, etc. But fictional facts about what the PCs do, how they are tricked or manipulated or deceived or whatever, can in my view occur as an element of either (that is, either GM narration or player decision-making) - subject of course to all the general rules and principles that govern both.</blockquote>

Verification