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Post by ayslyn on Dec 30, 2017 18:16:08 GMT -8
Personally, I don't see how asking a player what reminds them of home about a tavern takes away their agency. To me, taking away their agency is when you dictate their behavior. That, and what their characters feel. The one thing the player gets to control is their character. Telling them how their character feels takes away that control. The only time the GM gets to take control away from the player is if there is something special going on. Magic, Psionics, Chemicals.... You wanting a specific emotional reaction.... Nope. The best you can try to do is set up a scene, hoping that the player bites. I tried to set up a scene where an NPC sacrificed himself for a PC, hoping for a nice emotional reaction. The player didn't bite. No harm, no foul. I would be wrong to tell them how bad they feel for the NPC, how affected they are by that sacrifice. That reaction is solely the purview of the player.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2017 19:12:30 GMT -8
That, and what their characters feel. The one thing the player gets to control is their character. Telling them how their character feels takes away that control. The only time the GM gets to take control away from the player is if there is something special going on. Magic, Psionics, Chemicals.... You wanting a specific emotional reaction.... Nope. The best you can try to do is set up a scene, hoping that the player bites. I tried to set up a scene where an NPC sacrificed himself for a PC, hoping for a nice emotional reaction. The player didn't bite. No harm, no foul. I would be wrong to tell them how bad they feel for the NPC, how affected they are by that sacrifice. That reaction is solely the purview of the player. I've been in that situation, and I guess I took a different view of it. If the players didn't buy into the NPC I wanted them to the way I wanted to, to me, that was on me in some ways. I've been in or ran games where players attach to the strangest and most unexpected of NPCs - I'll give you an example: I had an L5R game where I had a Crab PC who was absolutely and unmovably anti-Crane. The party had rescued the Crane champion from the Lion, and the Lion had shattered the Crane's knees, meaning even with magical healing, he's not going to be able to lead an army from the field (in theory). That PC, and his player, took such a savage and ruthless revenge bloodbath out on those Lions, it was stunning to the players around the table. This was a player and PC who shouldn't have given two craps or should have been glad to see someone stick it to the Crane. I do totally see your point about hoping the players bite, and I wasn't there so I can't say why they didn't. The example that came to mind was in Avengers. We've had it established that only someone worthy can lift Mjolnir. We've seen Thor not be able to move it when he wasn't worthy. We have a scene where Vision is an unknown, presumably a WMD created by Ultron, who can easily wreck the Avengers. He casually picks up Mjolnir and hands it to Thor and they move on, knowing they can trust him. To me, that would be on par of either asking or just knowing your players and establishing "What can this player say or do to make you relax around them?" I had a discussion with one of my friends who will be in my next L5R game. If you're not familiar, there are some old techniques that really can essentially control a character, PC or NPC, or outright lie to them undetectably. How do you do that without taking player agency away when the mechanics specifically let you? It's not a game with saves. Our idea was that you ask the player, "What can person X say to you that will make you agree?" Because specifically in the rules, the Awareness stat (charisma and sixth sense) covers specifically 'reading' a person and selling them on what they want to hear. YMMV
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Post by chronovore on Dec 30, 2017 19:50:52 GMT -8
Personally, I don't see how asking a player what reminds them of home about a tavern takes away their agency. To me, taking away their agency is when you dictate their behavior. That, and what their characters feel. The one thing the player gets to control is their character. Telling them how their character feels takes away that control. The only time the GM gets to take control away from the player is if there is something special going on. Magic, Psionics, Chemicals.... You wanting a specific emotional reaction.... Nope. The best you can try to do is set up a scene, hoping that the player bites. I tried to set up a scene where an NPC sacrificed himself for a PC, hoping for a nice emotional reaction. The player didn't bite. No harm, no foul. I would be wrong to tell them how bad they feel for the NPC, how affected they are by that sacrifice. That reaction is solely the purview of the player. We just had a moment like that in our D&D game. The DM set up several branches the party could undertake. One was escorting an NPC in a town far to the south, and we'd just spent three in-game weeks traveling north to this city with a mess of other opportunities. When we opted to have our party do Basically Everything Else, the NPC followed us without being detected (DM may have rolled for this, maybe not) and was killed by giants. The DM clearly wanted us to feel bad that this forlorn NPC had fallen to a bad fate because we'd not filled his need — a need which was never described as immediate, nor were we ever aware of the NPC's decision to follow us. So we buried him, the cleric gave him a funeral, and we brought news back to town. As a party, we laughed at the dumbass decisions the guy had made, which upset the DM as being callous. But our ONLY fucking decision point was "escort mission back where we came from, or all this other interesting stuff?" So, yeah, not a fan of DM guilt trips, but thankfully the DM didn't tell us how our PCs felt about it.
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Post by ayslyn on Dec 30, 2017 21:04:15 GMT -8
I had a discussion with one of my friends who will be in my next L5R game. If you're not familiar, there are some old techniques that really can essentially control a character, PC or NPC, or outright lie to them undetectably. How do you do that without taking player agency away when the mechanics specifically let you? It's not a game with saves. Our idea was that you ask the player, "What can person X say to you that will make you agree?" Because specifically in the rules, the Awareness stat (charisma and sixth sense) covers specifically 'reading' a person and selling them on what they want to hear. YMMV Those are the outside influences that I mentioned. Your job as the GM is to tell the players, honestly, what the characters perceive. That's not the same as telling them the truth. If they are dealing with a traitor, thinking that he's their ally, you don't tell them that he's preparing to stab them in the back. You tell them, honestly, what they see. If they figure it out before he gets a chance, then good on them. If not, that's their problem. When you have a social skill that will tell an NPC what it would take to manipulate the character, that's vastly different than you as the GM manipulating the player. Characters manipulating characters is perfectly fine (makes the character a potential jerk, but....). Now, how much control you impose on them in those situations is entirely dependent on how much you can trust your players to be honest with their characters. For example, I was playing in the 5e introductory adventure, Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle. During the very last encounter, the villain mind controlled my character. My DM knew he could trust me to act accordingly, and left everything to me. I immediately stopped attacking him, and tried my best to kill my companions, while they did their best to murdalize him, to break his hold on me.... It was a blast. Though, in the interest of honesty, and full disclosure, on my first action after the MC hit, I did make the joke about rationalizing that the biggest threat to the villain was his lieutenant.... But I immediately shot our druid in the face instead. ^.^
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2017 6:03:58 GMT -8
Again, very good points, Ayslyn. I'm still not sure how smelling a familiar smell takes away agency. I will use a real life experience I have had. I grew up in Michigan a block from a Brunswick bowling ball and pin factory. There was a certain chemical smell some days - the best way I can explain it is a combination of cinnamon and hot plastic. I never would smell it in other parts of Michigan when I'd go there; it was always specific to the neighborhood I grew up in, and usually that specific part of town. I have experiences where I live now in East Tennessee where, for some reason, out of the clear blue, I will smell that specific smell. The part of town I live in is bordering towards suburbs - no manufacturing near by, no factories of that type or any type near me. But that specific smell is there, and always reminds me of home. And I know it's not just me because my mom will smell it too, and that Brunswick factory where my family worked, is that specific smell we both smell. I get where you're coming from, totally. I guess my mental disconnect is because I can't make my experience jibe with a sense of me losing control or agency over my actions. In my head, I don't get how having a memory leap unbidden into your mind is a loss of control. It's been a good conversation though
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Post by ayslyn on Dec 31, 2017 9:29:58 GMT -8
Again, very good points, Ayslyn. I'm still not sure how smelling a familiar smell takes away agency. It sounds like you might have misunderstood me. Saying that the character smells something familiar is fine. Telling them how that makes them feel is not. GOOD: GM: You smell something familiar as you walk into the tavern... What is it and how does it make you feel? Player: It's the heavy smell of pepper crusted boar, roasting over the fireplace. I fondly remember my father cooking the exact same thing after the hunt. BAD: GM: You smell something familiar as you walk into the tavern... You remember the smell and it invokes fond memories. Even if you as GM knew ahead of time about the pepper crusted boar story, you shouldn't assume that they still feel that way. Maybe last session, the character had to kill someone they knew was innocent, and as they did so they smelled that familiar smell.... Now, the player reasons, that scent is forever marred by that horrible act. Now, that scent disgusts them, or makes them feel conflicted.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2017 15:36:59 GMT -8
I agree with your good and bad examples. Again, maybe I'm lucky that my group will 97% of the time fall into the Good example. I didn't ever say the Bad Example, and I don't think you did. We were talking about the GM saying 'You walk into the tavern. There is a smell that reminds you of home. What is it and why?' Home can be a Good or a Bad thing for a character or a player. Maybe it's 'Ugh, I cannot stand that smell' A place's smell reminding you of home doesn't mean you're going to strip down to your skivvies and make yourself too comfortable.
And even in the Bad example, where is a character and player's agency being taken away? You're not dictating their actions. Literally in your example is you said you smell something familiar, and you like it. I know a lot of people who absolutely salivate over the smell of fresh baked bread, or fresh brewed coffee, but they don't go on leave of their senses and lose their control over it. I don't know anyone who smells a smell like home out in public and take their shoes off in Panera.
Again, I prefer your Good example, but my memory of your posts have been that even asking players to help fill in that detail of the smell, or why it's good or bad, is them doing your job for you as a GM.
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Post by ayslyn on Dec 31, 2017 19:21:58 GMT -8
You are removing their agency because you are telling them how their character feels. Actions and feelings are the purview of the player. Not the GM.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2017 21:53:01 GMT -8
I agree that actions and feelings are the purview of the character. We're not talking about Charm Person making the character treat the other as a sudden best friend. The example was talking about coming into a scene, the GM describing the scene and asking the player why the smell reminded them of home.
Watching it right now on Youtube. 17:34 in. "What about the tavern makes you feel at home?" or "What about the tavern makes you feel uneasy?" were the examples given, as well as "You enter the apartment. What do you see that tells you the man lives alone?" I went back so I could make sure I was not letting myself get far afield.
Again, I see where you're coming from. I expect that you are a good-to-great GM. There are better ways to approach this, I think, more in line possibly where I think you're coming from - if you've established the character is a legionnaire who had been through a hellish campaign in the steppes, stepping into a tavern with smells from that region... yes, you could leave it on the player to roleplay why they hate that smell or why they're distrustful of this type of tavern because it's beneath their character's station. I don't think it's bad to ask a player to add some color on their end, and add what they feel to it. Let them add their feelings. Again, I graduated with a senior class of 700. I had an entirely different experience than my kids' mom did with a class of like <200. I would describe and think of a classroom in entirely different terms than she would, coming from a large city versus her coming from a small mining town.
I think this generally just goes into gaming styles and GMing styles, in much the same way of 'need a perception check to find it' versus the 'you will always find whatever clue you need to move the story forward' styles.
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Post by weaselcreature on Jan 5, 2018 14:19:35 GMT -8
Catching up due to listening to 2 books of the Expanse...still 3 behind! Kimi, I'm pretty sure I have some Sisters of Battle mini's if you're interested in starting a force. I don't play 40k anymore, due to my WarMachine problem.
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bobcatt
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Preferred Game Systems: AD&D 1e, 2e, 5e, Top Secret/S.I., Classic Traveller
Currently Playing: nothing at all :-(
Currently Running: completely stalled doing 5e via Roll20
Favorite Species of Monkey: Barrel of
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Post by bobcatt on Jan 5, 2018 16:37:56 GMT -8
It could readily be argued that 'feelings' are not a conscious act on the part of a person. If you find yourself on a rolling ship deck in the midst of a storm (and you can't swim) you do not actively decide whether or not to feel nauseous or fearful of drowning. If a player walks into a busy slaughterhouse, as a GM I would not feel restricted from saying, "The smell is so bad it makes you want to hurl; roll a DC15 check to keep your lunch."
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Post by ayslyn on Jan 5, 2018 19:17:32 GMT -8
It could readily be argued that 'feelings' are not a conscious act on the part of a person. If you find yourself on a rolling ship deck in the midst of a storm (and you can't swim) you do not actively decide whether or not to feel nauseous or fearful of drowning. If a player walks into a busy slaughterhouse, as a GM I would not feel restricted from saying, "The smell is so bad it makes you want to hurl; roll a DC15 check to keep your lunch." That's a physical reaction, not an emotional one. My problem would be if you had said "The smell reminds you of the suffering of these animals and fills you with outrage."
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honken
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Post by honken on Jan 6, 2018 10:17:39 GMT -8
It was this show where they talked about The Imperial Encyclopedia for Megatraveller, right? Stu talked about how he had bought some book doing A-M or something for Classic. Well, the Megatraveller book is available as pdf on Drivethrough...
/Honken (Juz sayin')
PS. Oh, it is my first post too... I think...
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