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Players choose what their PCs do . . .
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7634675" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I'll leave the fidelity claim to one side. But the second claim is an empirical one. I'd be curious to see if it's true. Personally I doubt it - I don't have experience with Exalted, but in my experience with other systems that provide various sorts of systematic support for engagement with PC motivations and emotions the range of characters played - when considered in proportion to the overall number played - tends to be increased, not narrowed.</p><p></p><p>Now I haven't yet read [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s post not far below, where I am guessing (maybe I'm wrong?) that he is going to press the issue with me about choice vs challenge.</p><p></p><p>But in this post I want to make clear that what I am talking about, in trying to convey my view as to how a character conception can be challenged in the absence of mechanics of the sort that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has described, is - at least to my eyes - nothing like what you (Frogreaver) describe here.</p><p></p><p>I'll put to one side the GM making a Persuasion roll and telling the player that result, as I don't see what that adds to the situation - mechanics work as mechanics, but I don't see what work they are meant to do as guidelines.</p><p></p><p>With that put to one side, what we have is simply the GM telling the player that a NPC wants such-and-such from the PC. I can't see any pressure there. Any tension. Any challenge.</p><p></p><p>The player can weigh pros and cons, try and calculate consequences, even decide non-rationally based on feeling if s/he likes, or a coin toss, what to do. But I can't see how this puts the least bit of pressure on the player's conception of his/her PC's character.</p><p></p><p>Your notion of "risk" here seems so narrow that it's hard to engage with from the persepctive of the sort of play I've been trying to articulate over my past several posts.</p><p></p><p>And the focus on "out-of-character" reasons is very strange. No one in this thread (as far as I can tell) is talking about the source of motivations that the player draws on. What's at issue is whether or not the character conception can be challenged. I don't see that it's possible in the approach you describe for the player to discover (as opposed to <em>decide</em>) that his/her PC is different from what s/he thought.</p><p></p><p>So you will never have moments of play that evoke such classic narratives as Lancelot discovering that he values his love for Guinevere over his loyalty to Arthur. Or Rick (in Casablanca) discovering something like the opposite.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7634675, member: 42582"] I'll leave the fidelity claim to one side. But the second claim is an empirical one. I'd be curious to see if it's true. Personally I doubt it - I don't have experience with Exalted, but in my experience with other systems that provide various sorts of systematic support for engagement with PC motivations and emotions the range of characters played - when considered in proportion to the overall number played - tends to be increased, not narrowed. Now I haven't yet read [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s post not far below, where I am guessing (maybe I'm wrong?) that he is going to press the issue with me about choice vs challenge. But in this post I want to make clear that what I am talking about, in trying to convey my view as to how a character conception can be challenged in the absence of mechanics of the sort that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has described, is - at least to my eyes - nothing like what you (Frogreaver) describe here. I'll put to one side the GM making a Persuasion roll and telling the player that result, as I don't see what that adds to the situation - mechanics work as mechanics, but I don't see what work they are meant to do as guidelines. With that put to one side, what we have is simply the GM telling the player that a NPC wants such-and-such from the PC. I can't see any pressure there. Any tension. Any challenge. The player can weigh pros and cons, try and calculate consequences, even decide non-rationally based on feeling if s/he likes, or a coin toss, what to do. But I can't see how this puts the least bit of pressure on the player's conception of his/her PC's character. Your notion of "risk" here seems so narrow that it's hard to engage with from the persepctive of the sort of play I've been trying to articulate over my past several posts. And the focus on "out-of-character" reasons is very strange. No one in this thread (as far as I can tell) is talking about the source of motivations that the player draws on. What's at issue is whether or not the character conception can be challenged. I don't see that it's possible in the approach you describe for the player to discover (as opposed to [I]decide[/I]) that his/her PC is different from what s/he thought. So you will never have moments of play that evoke such classic narratives as Lancelot discovering that he values his love for Guinevere over his loyalty to Arthur. Or Rick (in Casablanca) discovering something like the opposite. [/QUOTE]
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