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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9871189" data-attributes="member: 6785785">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. 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.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.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. 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. 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. 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.</blockquote>

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