Faults and RPG Sacrilege

[Fenris]

I ran SoE last night for my first time with first time players that hadn't read the rules. I've been RPGing since the '80s and most of my players also.

There was an encounter where Arven (Pre-gen Book 0) was in a desperate situation. The party was ambushed. Arwen was in "Bad" condition and the rest of the party was hurt too. She was attacked by two brigands, got hit and was brought to "Critical". The Player decides to "roll with the hit" drop to the ground and play dead.

As the point fighter, caught in a desperate situation where the rest of her companions, people she's known most of her life, were in great danger of being killed, I called for a Fault roll against her Passion. She overcame her Fault, fell, rolled and played dead.

After the game, the player approached me to discuss the rule. He believes that the one rule a GL/GM/DM should never violate in any RPG, unless there is cause (like Charmed), is to tell a player how to run their PC. In his mind, to do so, its sacrilegious. If he wants to roleplay his character differently than how her "Ways" or "Character Traits" would be interpreted by the GL then that's his business because it is his character not mine.

My question is not so much as to whether or not I used Faults in an appropriate situation as I think that is very subjective, but rather about a GL using it to "tell in her behalf the way her Character behaves" (book 1, p.234).

How do players react to their actions being overridden and their PC being controlled by the GL in your games?

Should the GL allow the PC to override the Fault roll, but then let the player know that it will impact the Character's Trauma, or the difficulty of the task they are trying to do or be awarded less experience points for a less than accurate portrayal of their PC?

[Ocule]

Long story short, you're both kind of right. You shouldn't make a habit of taking control of your player's characters much of any reason in terms of actions. I've been running this game frequently lately and i'm still yet to actually even use the faults. I see a couple uses for them, mostly using ways and faults that way are a way to enforce "play to your character" if a character tries to do something really out of place or something that would really be against the what is normal for a character. Book 1 advises using them sparingly and in times of high tension. That said I also kind of have trouble finding appropriate times to use them.

In your case I wouldn't have asked for a fault roll, simply would have asked for a performance roll. Have to make it convincing, unless the character was a knight or other honorable sort of profession then maybe a guilt roll. Passion i'd use it to make a character roll to see if they will do something irrational, that they kind of want to do but are trying to exercise restraint. Like a character finds out hes been betrayed by an important npc during the height of the arguement if the player hasn't taken on his own initiative to do something about it and has 5 combativeness, id have him make a passion roll to not attack them.

"Passion (Combativeness): this Fault manifests itself through fits of violence or anger, an excessive love or hatred, an irrational enthusiasm, an out-of-proportion pride, taking dangerous risks, etc. When someone or something irritates the PC, when it is related to something he strongly loves or hates, when he undergoes humiliation or comes to take risks, he will be tempted to react in an impulsive way if his Fault gets the better of him." -Book 1 Universe

So something that would have him doing something wildly impulsive. I usually let my players act this out on their own without my prompting. But if the hot head fighter is calmly trying to negotiate his way like a calm voice of reason, he would have to get passed his own passion to do so then you would call for that kind of roll.

[Pierstoval]

Ocule is right about "which roll do I ask the player to do", I have nothing more to say about this.

Should the GL allow the PC to override the Fault roll, but then let the player know that it will impact the Character's Trauma, or the difficulty of the task they are trying to do or be awarded less experience points for a less than accurate portrayal of their PC?

But for this question, I have an answer that quite fluctuates.

First: Shadows of Esteren uses a game system where you do not play a body (strength, dexterity, endurance...). You play a person. And in playing a person, rules are adapted to fit many points of the characters' personality. In this way, this is the precise reason why I am very flexible with these rules when running one-shot games in conventions for example. But once I have to run a campaign, I always ask players to create their characters (this is why I created a character generator four years ago).

But hence they can choose to play numbers and not personality, because even using my generator or the book only (the app uses the book's rules so they're basically the same), you have to deal with numbers, and the most importants are the Ways which can go from 1 to 5, meaning they can have a coefficient of five, which is considerable.

To solve this problem, I created a small generator (sorry this one's in French) that allows the player to answer questions about his character's personality, and all questions will offer him "points" to every Way, until he has all characteristics specified. (The first survey uses questions from The 4th Coming <3 )

I always wanted to have a good survey to create a character based on questions, and if you have ideas about this, it would be awesome.

So, let's stop diverge about the topic.

When the player has full liberty about creating his character based on personality, he/she's more likely to interpret the character in the proper way (no pun intended ).
BUT, as the border between player and character are very thin, it's possible for the player to fault about interpretation (pun ).
In this precise case, it means that the player wanted to "change" his character's personality for something more corresponding to him/herself.
And here, we have two possibilities :

1. Ask the player to respect the rules and to interpret the character based on the rules, but you take the risk that the player can be frustrated of "not being free" to play how he/she wants.
2. Allow the player to do it, even if it's wrong. But you can take this into account and do wrong things in your game leading

It's quite a debate, and I talk "in general", but actually this is more a specific case and should be taken differently per player.

[Fenris]

In your case I wouldn't have asked for a fault roll, simply would have asked for a performance roll...

So something that would have him doing something wildly impulsive. I usually let my players act this out on their own without my prompting. But if the hot head fighter is calmly trying to negotiate his way like a calm voice of reason, he would have to get passed his own passion to do so then you would call for that kind of roll.

I agree with you that a Performance roll was applicable. After the player made their Passion fault roll, I did make him make a Performance roll to make it convincing.

My rationale for making the player make a Fault roll was because of the similar reasoning you mentioned about a "hot head fighter" trying to calmly negotiate his way out of something. In my case, playing dead.

In retrospect, I wouldn't ask for a Fault roll in this situation again because I think the action could have been a strategic one, i.e., to get the fighters to move off her and then surprise them from behind as opposed to a mere "saving my ass" action. I would have given the fighters a bonus on their Perception opposed roll since this is something that runs a little contrary to Arven's Combativeness rating and she probably wouldn't have praticed this sort of skulduggery tactic very much.

To come back to the rules discussion, though I will be more conservative with the intepretation of the use of the word "sparingly" and limit the use to real story relevant or trully exceptional cases.

[Fenris]

I always wanted to have a good survey to create a character based on questions, and if you have ideas about this, it would be awesome...

When the player has full liberty about creating his character based on personality, he/she's more likely to interpret the character in the proper way (no pun intended ).
BUT, as the border between player and character are very thin, it's possible for the player to fault about interpretation (pun ).
In this precise case, it means that the player wanted to "change" his character's personality for something more corresponding to him/herself.
And here, we have two possibilities :

1. Ask the player to respect the rules and to interpret the character based on the rules, but you take the risk that the player can be frustrated of "not being free" to play how he/she wants.
2. Allow the player to do it, even if it's wrong. But you can take this into account and do wrong things in your game leading

It's quite a debate, and I talk "in general", but actually this is more a specific case and should be taken differently per player.

I like your idea about having a questionnaire that better illustrates the character's personality and actions under preassure or in particular situations.

I do agree with you about about "[asking] the player to respect the rules and to interpret the character based rules, "but I will do it less directly and will likely use the Fault rules more sparingly to avoid the player feeling like I'm taking control. Like I mentioned in my original post, my players are old timers, and hadn't read the rules. I think once they get more familiar with the concept that this game is very personality driven and that there is a specific mechanic for triggering extreme traits of their personality that the use of a Fault roll may be less necessary. But we shall see.

[Ocule]

Well to use it more frequently you start to violate the player's autonomy as a player, but in moderation it should be fine. However it is perfectly fine to ask a player to stay in character, that shouldn't violate player autonomy.

When the player has full liberty about creating his character based on personality, he/she's more likely to interpret the character in the proper way (no pun intended ).
BUT, as the border between player and character are very thin, it's possible for the player to fault about interpretation (pun ).
In this precise case, it means that the player wanted to "change" his character's personality for something more corresponding to him/herself.
And here, we have two possibilities :
1. Ask the player to respect the rules and to interpret the character based on the rules, but you take the risk that the player can be frustrated of "not being free" to play how he/she wants.
2. Allow the player to do it, even if it's wrong. But you can take this into account and do wrong things in your game leading

It sounds like less of a play by the rules thing and more like asking them to stay in character. I don't think that would be a problem unless its someone who just plays by numbers. I was thinking to have them pull double duty as social defenses, with a relations score inciting passion, guilt or influence seems only natural to use them in this way. Got any specific examples of when and how it was intended to use the fault rolls Pierstoval? Or is our impression of them correct?

[Deorman]

I strongly disagree with your player, The Ways are his contract towards you, he need to act accordingly to them, I warn every of my players when they do their creations : "You're free to choose your ways, but be prepare to face the consequences".

And by the way you don't control him since he can overcome the difficulty, it can make an even more intense roleplaying performance when a player knowingly go against his character's personality and interpret the inner struggle.

[Pierstoval]

Got any specific examples of when and how it was intended to use the fault rolls Pierstoval? Or is our impression of them correct?

Actually, and it is a personal choice, I don't roll many dice in my games, and neither my players, except in fights (and fights are lethal so they don't take much time ).
But if I had to use a Fault roll it'd be very specific for a character which has 1 or 5 in the associated Way, and if the player intends to do something that is totally the opposite of what the character would do, but it never happened to me except in conventions, where I don't use the Faults rule because I only play demos.

[Ocule]

Most rolls in games are done in combat. I've always been a little paranoid of not letting people who invested in non combat rolls feel like it was worth the skill investment for non combat domains like science, relations, etc

[Pierstoval]

I also take in account the value of the different skills. I often ask the players about their scores in different domains/disciplines in order to let either them or me interpret the situation the best possible way.
It's more like "I consider you roll an average dice, how much do you have in you *** domain?".

Actually, the dice score is almost replaced with their roleplay "quality", so actually it's better for me to act like this .