Aldarc
Legend
@Oofta and @Xetheral, I know that you have both bowed out of the conversation, but I have been thinking about your latest responses, and they've been kind of stuck in my brain. I've been mulling on them, and I hope you don't mind me addressing a few key points. I have moved quotes around a bit to group some similar ideas that pop up in both of your posts.
Where I take issue, however, is with the idea that keeps propping up here is the implication that these social/mental mechanics are about or needed to make either you or me feel anything. I think that misunderstands their purpose or function, and the analogy to other media doesn't quite hold up IMHO, but I don't really want to go down that rabbit hole. I don't think that is the underyling purpose of these mechanics or why people like me may enjoy them is about trying to make you (i.e., the participant) feel. These mechanics aren't needed for the player to feel anything nor do I think they are trying to make you feel. I would suggest that "making me feel" is not a helpful way of thinking about these discussed mechanics.
I think they help inform your roleplay of your character as a character in the fiction who can be affected by the game world, but I don't think that they are fundamentally about making you (i.e., the Player) feel anything. Does a "hit" in combat tell me that I am feeling pain or how my character feels about pain? Not really. It tells me about the state of the fiction. If my character is affected by fear, then it's not making me as the player feel fear, but I do discover that my character is feeling fear in this moment in the fiction. How does my character feel about it? Disappointed? Horrified and humiliated by their own fear? That's up for me to decide and roleplay. But as a player, am I afraid? Likely not. Did the game make @pemerton feel afraid when his character was frightened? I didn't get the impression that was the case. Is the game trying to make me feel anything? I don't think that it is.
My own feelings as a player are distinct from that of the PC's. My play goals as a player are distinct from the character's goals in the fiction. As a player, I may be quite exhilarated that my character is facing a challenge in the fiction that will test their mettle. My character may be extraordinarily anxious about the experience. In contrast, I may be excited by either their success or failure of this challenge by the character because it's naturally good to succeed, but the failure may push the fiction to interesting new places, which may be even more interesting for my character than if I had succeeded in full. But through this all, I am also gaining a better understanding of my character and constantly reevaluating who my character is and what drives them forward. I don't think that the game, however, is trying to make me feel anything here. I think it's there to help drive the fiction forward, create drama, and facilitate uncertainty in the states of the fiction, particularly as it relates to the characters.
TL;DR: the important takeaway from this conversation about these social/mental mechanics should NOT be that the game is trying to make you feel anything. I think that is a critical misunderstanding that fundamentally risks impairing your ability to understand and sympathize with those of us arguing in favor of these social/mental mechanics.
A pestering issue I have with this is the hidden implication that resides in this assertion: i.e., I don't care enough about who the characters are or do not deeply respect roleplaying enough, but if I truly did, then I could make it work for D&D. I will respect on good faith that you likely did not intend it to come across this way, and this reading may be a matter of me reading too much into it, but I do hope that you can see how this reading is possible in what you wrote. It's the implication that I or any of us could make it work - like it does at your table - if we truly cared enough to make it work regardless of system. It may not be what you intend, but that implication would not be the first time it was explicitly lobbed at some of us. So just marking that potential landmine with a flag and working around it.
Also, a lot of this makes this incredibly GM/table dependent. Just because the players/GM can care, doesn't mean that they will. Moreover, just because your games care deep enough for your roleplaying needs doesn't mean that it will do the same for mine. Maybe your respective tables do care about who the characters are, but also maybe if I sat at your table with your group I would be just as disappointed as when I'm playing with my friends who I otherwise enjoy playing with. It may also be that there is a difference in what is meant or understood about caring about the characters. Often in D&D, caring about who the characters are feels more like a call to "play-act roleplay to your heart's content" rather than play really being about the characters.
I have sat at many tables over my years of roleplaying D&D where participants have promised the sort of experience that cared about engaging my character (much like you do here) but ultimately failed to deliver. How many times should I tolerate this disappointment before getting to this regularly promised roleplaying experience on Candy Mountain that cares deeply about who the characters are?
In my personal experience, other games have facilitated that promise of caring about characters better and more consistently than D&D from table to table. (And other games don't care at all about that, because they are upfront about promising something else, which is why I also play those games. I also don't play D&D if I want a game that cares deeply about who the characters are. IMHO, that's not what it's really designed to facilitate.) In contrast, some games require that I and others constantly engage who the characters are in the fiction as a fluid and organic part of play.
Please don't take any of this to be heated or hostile towards either of you. The tone is more about my personal frustration regarding my experiences.
Because if there are mechanics for it, it would lessen the impact, potentially to nothing.
Ultimately the game telling me something wouldn't feel organic or "real". There's only so much a game, movie or novel can do for that.
But there's not really much more to say. If it works for you, great. I don't think either style is better or worse, I don't think a game can make me feel something I'm not going to and I think a lot of people just don't care. If it matters, if it's the type of campaign where it makes sense, reactions that I come up with will have more impact than ones determined by a game rule.
I can understand that for you, having social/mental mechanics in place would potentially lessen the impact of what you are feeling while roleplaying your character. I have no intention of invalidating your experiences there.It also doesn't mean that for me that a game system is going to make me "feel" anything.
Where I take issue, however, is with the idea that keeps propping up here is the implication that these social/mental mechanics are about or needed to make either you or me feel anything. I think that misunderstands their purpose or function, and the analogy to other media doesn't quite hold up IMHO, but I don't really want to go down that rabbit hole. I don't think that is the underyling purpose of these mechanics or why people like me may enjoy them is about trying to make you (i.e., the participant) feel. These mechanics aren't needed for the player to feel anything nor do I think they are trying to make you feel. I would suggest that "making me feel" is not a helpful way of thinking about these discussed mechanics.
I think they help inform your roleplay of your character as a character in the fiction who can be affected by the game world, but I don't think that they are fundamentally about making you (i.e., the Player) feel anything. Does a "hit" in combat tell me that I am feeling pain or how my character feels about pain? Not really. It tells me about the state of the fiction. If my character is affected by fear, then it's not making me as the player feel fear, but I do discover that my character is feeling fear in this moment in the fiction. How does my character feel about it? Disappointed? Horrified and humiliated by their own fear? That's up for me to decide and roleplay. But as a player, am I afraid? Likely not. Did the game make @pemerton feel afraid when his character was frightened? I didn't get the impression that was the case. Is the game trying to make me feel anything? I don't think that it is.
My own feelings as a player are distinct from that of the PC's. My play goals as a player are distinct from the character's goals in the fiction. As a player, I may be quite exhilarated that my character is facing a challenge in the fiction that will test their mettle. My character may be extraordinarily anxious about the experience. In contrast, I may be excited by either their success or failure of this challenge by the character because it's naturally good to succeed, but the failure may push the fiction to interesting new places, which may be even more interesting for my character than if I had succeeded in full. But through this all, I am also gaining a better understanding of my character and constantly reevaluating who my character is and what drives them forward. I don't think that the game, however, is trying to make me feel anything here. I think it's there to help drive the fiction forward, create drama, and facilitate uncertainty in the states of the fiction, particularly as it relates to the characters.
TL;DR: the important takeaway from this conversation about these social/mental mechanics should NOT be that the game is trying to make you feel anything. I think that is a critical misunderstanding that fundamentally risks impairing your ability to understand and sympathize with those of us arguing in favor of these social/mental mechanics.
@Aldarc , I agree that the game doesn't care. That doesn't mean that the players and the DM can't care. Some people see growth, some don't. Sometimes I see growth and change in my PCs, sometimes I don't.
Edit: Sorry, @Xetheral, but in the quote editing, the bottom quote got attributed to Oofta rather than you, and I'm too lazy to figure out how to fix it.These comments about what the game has to say or what the game cares about suggest to me that there may be a deeper philosophical difference at play in terms of how we approach RPGs. From my perspective, my group has our own "game". Our choice of system is simply a question of what ruleset would be most helpful for running our game. Our games deeply care about who the characters are, and we deeply respect roleplaying, regardless of which system we happen to be using. Accordingly, a system designed to make our game care about the characters isn't helpful to us, because our game already does so. And a system designed to make our game care about characters differently than it already does would be actively unhelpful because it would create tension between the mechanics and our game.
A pestering issue I have with this is the hidden implication that resides in this assertion: i.e., I don't care enough about who the characters are or do not deeply respect roleplaying enough, but if I truly did, then I could make it work for D&D. I will respect on good faith that you likely did not intend it to come across this way, and this reading may be a matter of me reading too much into it, but I do hope that you can see how this reading is possible in what you wrote. It's the implication that I or any of us could make it work - like it does at your table - if we truly cared enough to make it work regardless of system. It may not be what you intend, but that implication would not be the first time it was explicitly lobbed at some of us. So just marking that potential landmine with a flag and working around it.
Also, a lot of this makes this incredibly GM/table dependent. Just because the players/GM can care, doesn't mean that they will. Moreover, just because your games care deep enough for your roleplaying needs doesn't mean that it will do the same for mine. Maybe your respective tables do care about who the characters are, but also maybe if I sat at your table with your group I would be just as disappointed as when I'm playing with my friends who I otherwise enjoy playing with. It may also be that there is a difference in what is meant or understood about caring about the characters. Often in D&D, caring about who the characters are feels more like a call to "play-act roleplay to your heart's content" rather than play really being about the characters.
I have sat at many tables over my years of roleplaying D&D where participants have promised the sort of experience that cared about engaging my character (much like you do here) but ultimately failed to deliver. How many times should I tolerate this disappointment before getting to this regularly promised roleplaying experience on Candy Mountain that cares deeply about who the characters are?
In my personal experience, other games have facilitated that promise of caring about characters better and more consistently than D&D from table to table. (And other games don't care at all about that, because they are upfront about promising something else, which is why I also play those games. I also don't play D&D if I want a game that cares deeply about who the characters are. IMHO, that's not what it's really designed to facilitate.) In contrast, some games require that I and others constantly engage who the characters are in the fiction as a fluid and organic part of play.
Please don't take any of this to be heated or hostile towards either of you. The tone is more about my personal frustration regarding my experiences.
That's pretty accurate. However, I likewise often approach RPGs in terms of "what ruleset would be most helpful for running our game," but I think that also comes with understanding the strengths and limitations of each game. This usually means that I probably won't be running D&D if I want to emphasize the protagonism/characterization of the PCs or want play to be about who they are because the game is not particularly helpful in running/playing such a game.If I'm understanding correctly, @pemerton and @Aldarc, you see the choice of system as defining the game you are playing, and thus if the system has nothing to say about who the characters are, then the game doesn't either. That makes perfect sense, and makes it easier to understand where your preferences are coming from. It's just so different from how I approach RPGs at a conceptual level that I can see why it makes understanding each other's preferences (and even just communicating them) so difficult.
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