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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7611933" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, very literally I did not.   I said, "You have no phaser, and there is no Klingon in the environment."  I have said nothing about the characters beliefs or feelings or actions.  Everything I described is external to the character.It's not really up for me to decide that.  If the player tells me, "The character is delusional.", that's fine.   However, my first thought is likely to be something like, "This is an OOC joke.", and my second thought is likely to be something like, "I've not clearly communicated the shared fiction with the player, so that our understandings of the fictional positioning have diverged."   That second thought might instead be, "The player wasn't paying attention.", if the player has been on his phone or engaged in OOC table chatter.   While the case with the phaser and the Klingon is comical and exaggerated, far less exaggerated and less extreme versions of players offering up propositions based off poor understanding of the fictional positioning occur all the time.   Making sure the player is not operating under a false assumption is an important GM job.If the player tells me his character believes he has a phaser, then I'll work with that.   If on the other hand the player insists that the character has a phaser, I'm likely to become nearly as concerned as if the player insisted that they have a phaser.  Either way, the player has clearly lost it. The DM could but the DM shouldn't.   The player has purposed to shoot a Klingon with a phaser.  I will certainly not narrate anything like pointing a finger at someone or empty air and making a trilling sound.  If the player narrates that, then fine, but it's not my job to interpret the player character's actions to the degree I'm imposing anything on the character that the player hasn't proposed.   If after a discussion, we establish that the player understands that the character doesn't have a phaser, but that the character is delusional then I will ask the player what it is that the delusional character actually does that he believes is shooting something with a phaser.   It's not really my job to explain to the player that the character couldn't possibly know what a phaser or Klingon is, even if delusional.   Perhaps he's recovering from a mind blast from a being from beyond the Far Realms, which in my game is an infinite realm of uncreated things that the primal creator could have created but didn't, and so some fragment of unreality has tainted the player.   But even if a convenient explanation didn't exist, it's still not my job.But again, if the player believes that the player character really has a phaser and insists on it despite all my explanations, then chances are that player needs psychiatric care.  It's not something that has ever come up in 30 years of play, sometimes with some fairly dysfunctional teens and occasionally dysfunctional adults.     But again, why would I do that sort of interpretation?  It's my job to resolve the interaction with the environment caused by a proposition the player makes.  A proposition that a player makes that doesn't interact with the environment calls for no resolution.  It's not my job to interpret what the proposition is.  If I don't know exactly what the player intends, then I need to establish that first.  Regardless of whether the character thinks he's speaking English or speaking in tongues or whatever, the likely result of such babble is probably that the character will be treated as being drunk or insane.  I'm not interpreting what the character is doing, only what the NPCs are doing.   At some point, I should always be able to explain to the player why the result that happens is logical and fair (although sometimes to avoid releasing OOC information, that may not be for a long time after the session).   I can't do that, and it will be immediately obvious that it isn't, if the interpretation I put on an action was at odds with the player's intention.I agree with that.   What I'm trying to say is that the "interpretation" thing you keep bringing up isn't really part of the proposition->fortune->resolution cycle.   I can interrogate the player to try to figure out what exact action that they intend, and often should do that.   And I can force the player to phrase a proposition in a way that passes the games proposition filter, whether formal or informal.   But I can't and shouldn't be transforming the proposition to anything that might lie outside the player's intent.   Only after a valid and clear proposition is understood, do we start cranking handles and come up with a resolution.   To do anything else is to be a very dysfunctional sort of "Gotcha DM", that would cause even Nitro Ferguson to shake his head and declare that you've got some maturing to do.    Well, with caveats above, "Yes."   If a player purposes, "My character delusionally thinks he's Captain Kirk, and that a Klingon has entered the room.  He points his finger at the Chancellor of the Exchequer and makes a "Zap!" noice.", then that's a valid proposition that I can act on.   It might not be a very good one.   It might not be a very artistic one.  It might not be a very mature one.  But, heh, one man's art is another man's trash, and it's not my job to play the character.   Besides, in some games, for some characters, that proposition might even make sense.If I started one, I'd do it in a different thread.  I'm concerned that we've been too long off topic and are no longer advancing any discussion in a meaningful and useful manner.  In fact, I'd abandoned the thread until some fresh voices joined it.Yeah, "you can't do that because you're metagaming" is definitely an informal proposition filter I've seen employed at tables.  Heck, at one time - say before age 20 - I probably would have deployed it myself.  I do think that there is value in playing in character as much as possible, and would encourage players to adopt more mature stances toward their player character.   However, I've since decided that "You can't do that because you're metagaming!" is unworkable as a proposition filter and is ill-advised on several grounds:a) Sometimes metagaming is helpful to everyone's enjoyment and many sorts of metagaming are blessed by GMs.  As such, whether a particular metagamed action triggers the filter pretty much comes down to, "I don't like that.", and a GM shouldn't really be filtering PC actions to that degree.b) It's not actually possible for a player to not metagame, so a GM asking a player to not metagame is often asking the impossible of them.   And again, whether or not the GM accepts that a particular action is not metagaming often comes down to whether the GM thinks it's the right action, which eventually comes down to the GM playing the PC.c) Most of the time that a GM faults a player for metagaming, the GM is actually the one at fault for using some process of play that gave the player metagame information - including not just keeping his mouth shut when he should have.   By passing the responsibility to the player, the Gm is not adopting more mature methods of play and growing as a GM.d) There are always better approaches to dealing with any sort of metagaming that is having a negative impact on play.e) It's entirely possible that the GM deploying "You can't do that, it's metagaming." is actually the dysfunctional participant and the real motivation is that the GM wants total control over the game.</blockquote>

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