D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrogReaver]

The player's idea about their PC's action has causal potency, of course. This is how a game works: players make decisions about their "moves", and those decisions then yield consequences for the state of the game.

Wait, you are quibbling over, the players idea of an imaginary thing vs the imaginary thing being the cause? To me the word imaginary already means it’s the players idea. Player ideas are how players do imaginary things after all.

 

[FrogReaver]

@Enrahim

I view imaginary things and player ideas of imaginary things as the same exact thing. Do you? I think that’s been a major disconnect in conversations with @pemerton.

 

[pemerton]

No mate. A player has an ability to shape the fictional reality in a significant way that the character doesn't. These are different decision spaces. This is just a fact. You stringing here big words together in attempt to argue that red is blue.

Every RPG player has the ability to "shape the fictional reality" (= contribute to the authoring of a fiction).

As far as "decision space" is concerned, maybe you're using that in some jargonistic sense that I'm not familiar with? The decision I am talking about is the player's decision to have their PC read the runes. They believe, for good reasons, that it is possible that reading the runes will reveal the way out. Likewise the character believes, for good reasons, that it is possible that reading the runes will reveal the way out.

That's what the decision consists in, and it is the same (allowing for the fact that one is an actual decision made by the player of a game, and the other an imagined decision made by a Cunning Expert who is Lost in the Dungeon).

The player has knowledge, that the action declarations can shape the reality far beyond what is possible to the character.

There is no "shape reality". That is some projection of yours.

The player believes, for good reason - because familiar with the rules and mechanics of the game - that reading the runes may reveal a way out. The character believes, for good reason - because a Solitary Traveller and Cunning Expert who knows a thing or two about dungeons and strange runes - that the reading the runes may reveal a way out.

Thus when making decisions based on this knowledge, the player is not operating in the actor stance.

I only know one meaning of actor stance:

In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.​

The character knows and perceives that the runes might reveal a way out. And this is the basis on which the player makes their decision.

You seem to want to insist that the character does not have any such belief or knowledge. But that is not correct. They do.

 

[FrogReaver]

As I asked upthread, are you really incapable of cognitively grasping anyone's approach to RPGing other than your own?

IMO Everyone grasps what you are doing. They just explain it differently. That is its different conclusions on the same set of facts.

 

[pemerton]

None of which goes any distance toward explaining the rather odd "Read Language" ability 1e Thieves pick up around 4th level and that steadily improves thenceforth; which would seem to be the (relatively) closest analogy to the rune-deciphering example.

Gygax explains it in his DMG, p 20:

This ability assumes that the longuage is, in fact, one which the thief has encountered sometime in the past. . . . Even if able to read a language, the thief should be allowed only to get about that percentage of the meaning of what is written as his or her percentage ability to read the tongue in the first place. The rest they will hove to guess at. Languages which are relatively close to those known by the thief will not incur such a penalty.​

Those cunning thieves - they pay attention to all the runes and sigils and scraps of this and that that they encounter on their travels . . .

 

[FrogReaver]

Every RPG player has the ability to "shape the fictional reality" (= contribute to the authoring of a fiction).

yes the question is how, whether in character actions do so or via direct authoring.

As far as "decision space" is concerned, maybe you're using that in some jargonistic sense that I'm not familiar with? The decision I am talking about is the player's decision to have their PC read the runes. They believe, for good reasons, that it is possible that reading the runes will reveal the way out. Likewise the character believes, for good reasons, that it is possible that reading the runes will reveal the way out.

Your conclusion that the character has good reason to believe these runes reveal a way out is only true after the player has declared ‘my character reads these runes hoping they are a way out’. To me that is evidence of the opposite conclusion, that prior to stating that hope, there was no good reason to believe the runes reveal a way out.

That's what the decision consists in, and it is the same (allowing for the fact that one is an actual decision made by the player of a game, and the other an imagined decision made by a Cunning Expert who is Lost in the Dungeon).

Even if the decisions are similar in one respect doesn’t mean they are similar in all. That’s a common error I’ve seen reoccurring.

There is no "shape reality". That is some projection of yours.

No, it’s a conclusion about the same set of relevant facts that differs from yours.

The player believes, for good reason - because familiar with the rules and mechanics of the game - that reading the runes may reveal a way out. The character believes, for good reason - because a Solitary Traveller and Cunning Expert who knows a thing or two about dungeons and strange runes - that the reading the runes may reveal a way out.

Even if one accepts those premises (I don’t) that’s where the similarities end. The characters hope doesn’t cause the runes to be an exit. The players does and you just explained how.

The character knows and perceives that the runes might reveal a way out. And this is the basis on which the player makes their decision.

There is no basis for the character believing these runes reveal a way out, at least not before the player declares it so. The only basis for that belief is because the players does declares it to be true for the character.

You seem to want to insist that the character does not have any such belief or knowledge. But that is not correct. They do.

Not before the player the player just makes that up with no fictional basis. This isn’t extrapolation, it’s creation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@pemerton are you seriously claiming that the player decision of what their character hopes is not affected by the knowledge that the mechanics has the power to make that hope come true? Are you claiming that decision of who examines the runes first etc is not affected by the player knowledge that the mechanics have power to make that character's hope come true, and that the character's "skill level" impacts the odds of this and lessens the chances of a bad outcome?

 

[pemerton]

Which can't possibly be the case if I-as-player am able to affect the fiction beyond what my character can know about, as seems to be the case with the runes example.

Even as defined here, I have to think and as as my character would and therefore I don't get to author anything other than by the actions of my character; and my character can't act against Schroedinger's backdrop. Things have to be fixed in place before my character interacts - or reasonably can interact - with them. Narrating "there's runes here" isn't good enough unless you-as-GM already know what those runes are there for, otherwise it'll just feel like my character is constantly casting minor wishes all the time with some of them coming true now and then (i.e. when I succeed on the associated roll).

None of this is true.

Actor stance requires what it say: that the action is declared drawing on the mental states of the character, rather than for some other reason to which the player then retrofits the PC's mental states.

Here, the reason the action is declared is because the character knows they are lost in the dungeon and the character knows there are strange runes and the character cunningly judges that the runes might reveal a way out.

Actor stance play doesn't require GM pre-authorship of backstory. And your statements about your feelings may be autobiographical for you (though I'm not sure what actual play experience they are based on), but I can assure you that they don't generalise.

So what do you want us to call it when a player is trying, as far as reasonably possible, to think exactly as the character would think; completely eschewing the metagame and denying or ignoring any knowledge the character wouldn't have. To me, that's Actor stance (or maybe Method-Actor stance).

Well, I call that actor stance. It's what happened in this case.

this makes the runes more or less a puzzle to be solved. That's the point, because that's how they're going to appear to the characters in the fiction.

An Orc appears to the characters in the fiction as a physical threat. The players respond by doing a whole lot of calculations.

The action resolution system in MHRP also involves generating and manipulating random numbers.

 

[pemerton]

How is the epistemic state in terms of the posibility regarding the posibility of the runes revealing something positive that isn't a map? How is the epistemic state in terms of the posibility that trying to read would yield absolutely no result beyond the character not being able to read them?

I'm not sure where "map" is coming from. There's been ample discussion, upthread, of the many ways that runes might reveal a way out. Gandalf identified the Chamber of Mazarbul, and then was able to work out the way out. Without ever finding a map.

As for the other epistemic states, the player knows that something interesting will happen next, because they are playing a game. How that relates to the runes is - in MHRP - up to the GM to narrate.

As I posted upthread, the player - in choosing to look for a way out - chose not to try and find an answer to the riddles and omens to which the PCs were seeking answers. Maybe on a failure the runes reveal something about the riddles, and the PC suffers emotional stress as a response. Or maybe nothing happens, because I as GM choose not to spend any dice from the Doom Pool.

From my understanding of the way the game is described, and the players awareness of the process, they would recognise both of these as practically impossible.

As I've just demonstrated, you're mistaken.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton are you seriously claiming that the player decision of what their character hopes is not affected by the knowledge that the mechanics has the power to make that hope come true?

Why would it be?

Or to put it another way: why would the character assume things are not possible - unless the player is in author stance, trying to solve the GM's puzzle?