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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9344404" data-attributes="member: 42582">The claim that the consequences of people's actions are intrinsic to those actions is controversial - for instance, was the First World War and all that it brought with it, such as the collapse of Tsarist Russia, intrinsic to the action of shooting the Archduke in Sarajevo? Presumably Hegel answers yes, but that's a controversial position.The claim that the consequences of a characters actions are intrinsic to those actions also seems controversial. The character is imaginary, as are the consequences. And within the fiction presumably the metaphysics can be whatever we imagine: we can imagine a providential or even Hegelian world in which every outcomes is intrinsic to the action that led to it; or we can imagine a nihilistic or arbitrary world in which actions generate consequences that are the product of the interplay of external and uncontrollable forces.One thing characters can do is wonder what is going to happen to them when they do this thing in this situation. Another thing they can do is feel the threat of the situation they are in, and its possibility to blow up in their face at any moment. Asking for a Devil's Bargain seems to me like it increases the player's sense of these things, and hence their cognitive and emotional proximity to their character.Hence why I deny the claim that Devil's Bargain-type mechanics are, in general and necessarily, inimical to immersion.</blockquote>

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