Because one of the two people involved seems to think it’s a possibility. I’d say the same if a player had an idea that the GM didn’t immediately agree was relevant.
If I ran into such an instance in play, my first step would be to try and get everyone on the same page.
I am usually more fine with fear, as it is easier for me to "force" to feel, but I actually (vaguely) remember one instance from some old game (I think it was some sort of White Wolf hack) where this caused serious disruption of immersion to me. I remember my character was this weird shunned goth kid who might have had some special powers, and then the GM described some sort of supernatural apparition (I have forgotten the details.) And for that moment my internal model of the character said very clearly that this character actually is not afraid of this, they are thrilled, exited and interested, and would approach the weird thing (with which they felt sudden kinship.) But there was some mechanics that said my character would be afraid instead and should hide or something. It ruined the cool moment and ruined my immersion for the rest of the session at least and permanently damaged my connection to the character.
Sure, I can understand that. I’ve had similar responses in the past to similar events in play.
I’m not denying this kind of thing can happen. What I disagree with is your insistence that, because of a couple of examples, this kind of play experience must always be so. That someone cannot be inhabiting their character if the dice become involved.
But you don't choose the full outcome. You choose your character's stance. You don't choose what the king does once you betray him, you don't choose how the other knights feel about it, you don't choose how the queen will feel in the long run etc.
I don’t think I said you did. The actions of NPCs haven’t been mentioned on this point. We’ve been talking about player control of their PC’s actions, and also their mental state. That’s the control I’m talking about.
But it is not. They choose the tactics, they choose what powers to use, how to move, all sort of things. If the outcome was just determined by a dice roll, there indeed would be no agency and it would be very hard to get invested in that.
Combat actions are largely determined by dice rolls. Yes… that’s not all. The players declare actions and may have resources at their disposal. How they go about things and what they do specifically can matter quite a bit.
But this is all true of social scenarios as well… but when we talk about them, you ignore all that in favor of saying it’s all a dice roll.
And again, I think it’s because in D&D many social interactions are determined by a single die roll. It’s a poor system to use as the basis for a discussion about such mechanics.
I want the players be making choices, hard ones preferably, and I want them to be immersed in their characters and feel the weight of those choices. I don't them to passively observe what the dice say the character feels or does.
And I don’t know how you would view a Knight with a weakness of giving into his baser, lustful urges choosing to go into a brothel (for information vital to his quest, let’s say) isn’t a player being immersed and won’t feel the weight of his decisions.
Like I don't know, I really have never found gambling appealing, especially if it is just random, but a lot of people are literally addicted to it. So this might be just some sort of psychological quirk. Some people probably can get highly invested in randomised fates, whereas for me to get invested requires me to be deciding things, to be actually making hard choices.
Then we do not disagree on how this sort of thing should be handled, so stop arguing with me about it!
Well, stop taking your particular quirk and applying it as if it must be so. Like, you keep saying that I don’t understand your view… but I think I do. It’s you who seems incapable of understanding anyone else’s view.
I’m not the one saying if you do X you can’t immerse or inhabit character or understand a mental model.
And in the process to ruin what is most important to me in the game. I mean I could, like I could throw the dice out of the window or intentionally pour my drink on the GM, but why would I?
Well I already provided a reason… the most common one in my experience… to go along with the group. Not sure why you edited that out.
To not have my character cause unnecessary complications for “the party”. Now, maybe you’d never do this. But I know I have, even when I wanted to do otherwise. And I know many other people who have. And you’ll see plenty of evidence on these boards that make it clear this is a widespread situation.
And again I think this is one of the reasons that D&D is a bad example to lean on, or that it muddies the waters. The roots of D&D are about risk mitigation. To maximize use of resources to reduce or eliminate risks as much as possible. And so that mindset became ingrained in the culture and has persisted, to one extent or another in both design and also in the expectations of participants, despite other changes in design and culture.
There are plenty of D&D players who would get mad at another player who unnecessarily brought complications onto the party in that way. Now… I’m not saying they’re right… it’s a clash in expectations of play. But this is why D&D is a poor way to examine such character based elements of play.
In other games, you’d gain XP for portraying your character’s beliefs or drives. And, ideally, your fellow players would enjoy it.
So it really matters what game you’re talking about, and why it does what it does. And ignoring the player input to all of that to classify it as “it’s all just a die roll” is inaccurate at best.
