Players choose what their PCs do . . .

[Maxperson]

This is where a lot of conflict ton such issues arises - I've been working with my group for something like a decade. They trust me not to screw them over on a whim. Folks reading about my session on the message boards don't really know me from Adam, don't trust me, and worry that I might be screwing my players over on a whim.

Well, Adam IS the Antichrist. If they don't know you from Adam, that might be where the trust issues come in.

 

[Tony Vargas]

An immersion-oriented player is going to try his-her best to do exactly this, as that's the whole point of immersion: to perceive things as your PC would perceive them.

The PCs perceive exactly as the players & GM imagine they perceive, with the complication that they all need to be on the same page.

So, in one sense, perceiving as your character is easy (because their perceptions are under your conscious control), and, in another, impossible (because you can't un-know that).

TTRPGs - as opposed, say, to LARPs - present tremendous barriers to immersion by their very nature, overcoming them seems to be a rarefied, fleeting, and intensely personal thing.

Obviously. But that's just table knowledge.

So are the specifics of the system you're using.

No, but in theory they would have perceptions, knowledges and beliefs given that they are in theory sentient inhabitants of their setting;

Not on theory nor in fact, rather in our imaginations.

and those perceptions, knowledges and beliefs don't extend to seeing little tags on foreheads saying PC or NPC or BBEG or whatever.

Exactly. So, we don't (unless breaking the 4th wall) imagine that they're aware of their status within the game - even though you are necessarily aware of that status.

Put another way: imagine these characters are real people

That's redundant, they're necessarily imaginary people, by definition.

Now, is everything you just saw through all those characters' eyes consistent with itself no matter which set of eyes you happened to look through - whether it was a PC, an NPC, a commoner, a minion?

If that's how you imagined it, yes. If not, no.

If yes, then all is good

Then, if no, you gotta ask yourself: "Self, why did you imagine it that way?"

But, if every persons perceptions of a hypothetical world were aligned and formed an internally consistent world, it'd be a very unrealistic setting. (Which is fine, fantasy should get a free pass on realism.)

bar full of common working people who look ready to fight, and yep: there they go. Fists flying, bottles smashing, a good old-fashioned donnybrook - black eyes all round and maybe a few broken bones, but in the end nobody dies and the bartender has a big mess to clean up.

Ok, so the bartender sees that as y'know, Friday. We see it as establishing a little something about the setting & genre - violence in the setting is common, but not quite as dangerous or acrimonious as in reality.

This time, however, most of the people involved drop dead the first time they take a good hit from anything - including getting hit by the same guy that hit him last week - because one of the new people has a PC tag on its head and suddenly all these brawlers are panes of thin glass.

I'm sorry, are you saying they see the tag, but, otherwise, he's just another brawler? Or that he, like the bartender is just watching the show?

Also, why has the lethality of violence shifted? Even in the presence of rules that speed up combat like that, non-lethal attacks presumably remain non-lethal, no?

How in any way is this internally consistent?

It's not, nor is it consistent with the use of minion rules & the presence (or participation) of a PC that far above the level of the crowds regularly scheduled violence, that they need to be modeled as minions.

Rather, if the PC in question just watches the fight, nothing changes: it's narrated just like the one from last week.

Similarly, if he's incognito, and trying to stay that way, the resolution won't be a combat, he might make some checks (depending on the system) to conceal his prowess, just put in a good showing to fit in.

If he does wade in full-bore, though, things change. There's a regular whirlwind of destruction all of a sudden, the new guy is knocking the toughest regulars cold as fast as they can come at him.

What do the regulars do? Team up and all teach the new guy a lesson? Or are they too preoccupied with their personal grudges and squabbles?

If the former, the whole fight gets played through and either the PC leaves the regulars unconscious or just plain given up (or fights his way out ofbthe place), or they bear him down by weight of numbers.

If the latter, the rest of the fight is just a backdrop, only the patrons that actually emerge from it to take on the PC get resolved under the minion rubric, the rest is narrated (and it doesn't matter if some of those who do take him on may already have battered in the narration of that backdrop of a barfight or not - not needing to track such things is part of the point, it speeds up the combat and reduces the bookkeeping burden on the DM, if it's also a little more abstract, well, the system it's appended too is likely pretty abstract, already).

 

[Tony Vargas]

People understand the mechanics and there were probably saves or something involved. But when there isn't that comfortable buffer of mechanics to fall back on people treat the whole thing very differently, which I also find very interesting, since the difference in actual effect is minimal to nonexistent ...

You might also find there's resistance to adding mechanics to cover something of the sort, or even to applying existing mechanics.

For instance, if there's a mechanic to tell or detect lies, a player who invokes such a mechanic to confirm his suspicion an NPC is lying, and fails, may continue on the assumption of falsehood, because he failed.

Say you did all the rolling behind a screen, all the saves and whatever, and then just narrated the effect. I suspect you'd get a ton of push back about it that

Depends on the expectations and conventions of the group. Back in the day, rolling a lot of stuff behind the screen, or calling for rolls without explaining what they were until the result was known (a 20? Ouch, that can't be under your DEX! A 1? Ouch, failed that save!) was SOP.

There's something in there that's key to the RPG experience but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Good faith, maybe?

I didn't provide a crazy example, but to answer your question, it would be a valid reason and here's why. Sometimes people who have flaws can just overcome those urges. Now, if the player is doing it all the time and/or only at times when it would be detrimental to the PC/party, then he's abusing the system

Some systems are just open to abuse or limited in scope. At that point, it's a matter of trust.

OTOH, some systems cover stuff like that. For instance, if you decide to impose an RP limitation on your character on Hero, you get points back for defining it as a psychological limitation (which, ironically, is not technically a limitation, but a disadvantage). Depending on how many points you take, you may be able to make a check to overcome your issues and act rationally in spite if them. And, related mechanics can model outside influences, as well.

No, it's not flawed. It just requires that the player not play in bad faith.

Or, yes it is flawed, or just limited in scope, or running aground on expectations, but if you're all playing in good faith, you can still reach a reasonable resolution.

 

[pemerton]

4E Probably has the most because it essentially shed the distinction of “because magic” and just had all kinds of abilities that could inflict a status on a character, whether the source was arcane or martial or divine, etc. didn’t matter all that much. So 4E allowed for more examples by basically treating more actions the same as magic.

That second sentence has the potential to be controversial! I'd put it this way: the designers realised that the relationship between a certain sort of mechanical design, and the infiction category magic, is contingent and a matter of aesthetics.

So for a brief period D&D design caught up to Greg Stafford c 1989! (I'm referring there to Prince Valiant, of course - the most undeservedly neglected FRPG there is. I don't get the contrasting degree of widespread love for Pendragon.)

 

[pemerton]

Seriously? You don't see that it's dictating the response of warming the heart? That precludes greater and lesser responses that I might want to give for my PC.

Why?

I think you'll find that the answer to these two questions is the same!
[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and I are wondering what you envisage melting someone's heart as requiring or dictating.

 

[Maxperson]

Some systems are just open to abuse or limited in scope. At that point, it's a matter of trust.

All of them are. Trust is necessary with any game. I have yet to see a game where cheating can't happen.

OTOH, some systems cover stuff like that. For instance, if you decide to impose an RP limitation on your character on Hero, you get points back for defining it as a psychological limitation (which, ironically, is not technically a limitation, but a disadvantage). Depending on how many points you take, you may be able to make a check to overcome your issues and act rationally in spite if them. And, related mechanics can model outside influences, as well.

Which is fine. I'm all for rewards and other encouragement to engage in that sort of roleplay.

Or, yes it is flawed, or just limited in scope, or running aground on expectations, but if you're all playing in good faith, you can still reach a reasonable resolution.

If you're playing in good faith, it runs quite well and is not a flawed system. If you have someone who is playing in bad faith, the system still is not flawed. The person playing in bad faith is the flaw.

 

[Maxperson]

I think you'll find that the answer to these two questions is the same!

No. I'm talking about having the PC engage in an action(not the mechanical term related to combat), which has absolutely nothing to do with conditions. It was an absurd comment, as is your response here.

@hawkeyefan and I are wondering what you envisage melting someone's heart as requiring or dictating.

So you guys have been saying that if the DM says, "The woman winks at you and melts your heart," I can just say, "No she doesn't, it has no effect on me at all?" If that's the case, then I have no real objection. I just haven't seen any indication that the above is what you guys are saying. You should be more clear.

 

[Nagol]

I'm okay with that, but only as long as the DM is not playing my PC at all. The DM can never know my PC as well as I do, and I don't want the frustration of seeing him play my PC wrong time and time again, which is what will happen if he is allowed to play my PC.

The example being used is a good one. "The woman winks at you and melts your heart" has just dictated exactly how the PC responds to the wink.

I remember a Champions game I was a player in. My PC had the Physical Limitation: Can't read. Almost every session (until I stopped), the GM framed a scene with me reading a book or at the library helping another character research through texts etc. He could not remember that the PC simply could not participate in that way. And that was something not subtle nor general. Of course GMs will get stuff 'wrong' about PC motivations, preferences, and expectations especially since many of the ideas may never have been discussed at all.

 

[pemerton]

So you guys have been saying that if the DM says, "The woman winks at you and melts your heart," I can just say, "No she doesn't, it has no effect on me at all?"

No. We're asking you what action you think is required on your PC's part. At least I am. (And I'm pretty sure the same is true for [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION].)

My heart being melted isn't an action. It's an emotional state. What action do you think is required/dictated by that state?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I didn't provide a crazy example, but to answer your question, it would be a valid reason and here's why. Sometimes people who have flaws can just overcome those urges. Now, if the player is doing it all the time and/or only at times when it would be detrimental to the PC/party, then he's abusing the system and would need to be talked to after the game. If it's just once in a while, then it's fine.

Sorry, the highly specific example of having found out in play that 6 of her 7 husbands had vanished seemed a bit unlikely as a reason why the wink would not affect your character as opposed to something more routine like the character resisting the urge to give in to a pretty face. That’s all I meant.

The latter part of your comment is what I’m getting at. This kind of stuff absolutely falls to the group’s shared expectations for the game and the like. And it may go perfectly fine that way. I think it’s more likely with a longstanding hroup of players who’ve established trust, as [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] mentioned.

But, absent a group of players being together for years, such rules can replace that trust. They establish what can happen and when and how, and so in. They can provide a clear process for how such interactions are handled.

Again, this all depends on the game and the mechanics, and with 5E D&D it’s left up to the group pretty much entirely.

No, it's not flawed. It just requires that the player not play in bad faith.

Semantics. It’s a weak point meaning it’s subject to abuse through bad faith play. It’s the same thing.

Why?

Because you claimed that a Melted Heart dictated exactly what happened. But since the phrase “melted heart” is kind of vague, I figure I’d check the Condition descriptions to see the exact effects.