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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7603953" data-attributes="member: 42582">It would be interesting to see what you and others think of <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/460" target="_blank">&quot;the smelly chamberlain&quot;</a>.Suppose that the players play their PCs as keeping their distance from the chamberlain, opening windows when he enters the room, etc - because the players have decided that their PCs think the chamberlain smells - while the GM, exercising his/her power to describe the environment, insists that the chamberlain doesn't smell. Whose view prevails? What is true in the fiction - does the chamberlain smell? are the PCs hallucinating? can the GM insist that the PCs in fact don't think the chamberlain smells?The idea that each can have absolute authority over a domain - PC beliefs/feelings; the rest of the gameworld - with no possibility of contradiciton isn't tenable, in my view.To me, the player yielding in this fashion is not consistent with the idea that the player has total authority over what the PC thinks and feels.This seems straight out of the Gygaxian playbook. I don't think it suits a game in which the player wants to play a PC who is embedded in the gameworld rather than a relative stranger to it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7603953, member: 42582"] It would be interesting to see what you and others think of [url=http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/460]"the smelly chamberlain"[/url]. Suppose that the players play their PCs as keeping their distance from the chamberlain, opening windows when he enters the room, etc - because the players have decided that their PCs think the chamberlain smells - while the GM, exercising his/her power to describe the environment, insists that the chamberlain doesn't smell. Whose view prevails? What is true in the fiction - does the chamberlain smell? are the PCs hallucinating? can the GM insist that the PCs in fact [I]don't[/I] think the chamberlain smells? The idea that each can have absolute authority over a domain - PC beliefs/feelings; the rest of the gameworld - with no possibility of contradiciton isn't tenable, in my view. To me, the player yielding in this fashion is not consistent with the idea that the player has [i]total authority[/i] over what the PC thinks and feels. This seems straight out of the Gygaxian playbook. I don't think it suits a game in which the player wants to play a PC who is embedded in the gameworld rather than a relative stranger to it. [/QUOTE]

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