Charming a PC

Have you ever had a PC be charmed, and it end up in good roleplay? Or has it always ended up in complaints about agency and railroading?

Should charm-like effects be reserved for use on NPCs?

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Honestly it's generally a dick move on the DM's part
But mostly cause the DM controls the PC, I would say if you had a player the DM trusted enough to be able to RP being charmed it would be okay, otherwise only if it's the player's fetish

>How to DM charm effects correctly
1. Don't tell the player they've been charmed
2. Present the NPC in question in a much better light than you would normally, as if everything they're saying is good and reasonable, possibly even act surprised if the player character questions this. Say the character looks sincere and innocent.
3.Disadvantage on all Insight/Perception/Investigation/whatever skill your game uses to determine when things are out of place.

There, BAM, no railroading, you're just presenting things in a way a charmed character would see them.

Depends on the party

this
i wouldn't mind being charmed this way if i would not know it.

Actually did something like this to one of my players once
>Rogue trying to sneak up and spy on evil wizard man
>Told her to roll a stealth check, followed by a widsom saving throw
>Told her she saw the wizard man sitting alone, smoking a pipe and reading.
>She left, dissappointed
>The wizard was actually meeting one of his apprentices for an important chat, they just noticed the rogue and cast modify memory on her to make her think he'd been alone the whole time.
Idk if it was the best way to do it, but it was certainly effective.

That is pretty smooth use of Memory stuff for GMing. Was it on the fly or did you plan to use Memory changing spells if they spied on them?

In our group it isn't a problem. The PC's screw over the NPC's or each other with charisma checks while the GM screws the PC's over with good roleplaying and/or tests. I never understood why players on Veeky Forums get so pissed when a GM uses the good charisma stats of his NPC's when it is appropriate.

it's because "muh player agency". They think that just because they're PCs, that the NPCs shouldn't be able to pull the same tricks that they can.

Just because they're an NPC doesn't mean they can't plan or call out targets in combat. Just because you're a PC doesn't mean they can't use mind-affecting spells against you.

I had it planned out a little in advance. I suspected they were going to spy on wizard man sooner or later, so I thought I'd make it interesting.
My only worry was if they tried something more inventive than creeping up and staring in the window, although luckily they did exactly that so it just boiled down to a single stealth and perception check which I could mix into the modify memory spell.

This is why you should always dispel magic on yourself at least once per day.

I remember this like it was yesterday...
>Running a relatively low magic campaign
>Party has finally reached the capital city: Silverrun, after months of journey through the treacherous mountain pass.
>They immediately split up to sell all their loot and peruse whatever rare magical items they can find, it being the capital city after all.
>The rogue gets into a bad situation pretty quickly after trying to steal a magical dagger from one of the 10 wizards which exist in the universe. And I warned him multiple times that this looked dangerous and risky.
>Wizard catches him and casts dominate person on the rogue. He asks the rogue to put out both his hands and then chops them both off, then asks the Rogue to leave the store and forget everything.
>The player goes absolutely berserk

As a DM, I once attempted to have an NPC drug a PCs drink in an attempt to steal their gold. But since the character was a female, it suddenly was a "rape" thing, and didn't go over well.


...I'd do it again.

Yeah rape is a trigger word that marks the end of rational conversation. It's basically like making analogies to Hitler in debates, it's all over at that point.

>Rape is a trigger word for a lot of people
>Yet Shit GM's keep using rape as a plot device
Is it because stories like GoT and Berserk used rape as a plot device within their story or are most people nowadays just being degenerate for the sake of pissing off SJW's?

and what exactly do you mean by plot device?

A plot device (or plot mechanism) is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward.
I don't think most people nowadays are being degenerate for the sake of pissing of SJWs. And saying there are shit GMs using rape as a plot device doesn't neccessarily mean they do so because there are stories with rape as a plot device. In those stories, at least in Berserk, rape is kind of like a grimdark plot device to show off power, create sympathy and character motivations. It could have been other things than rape, and god knows the political landscape was different back when Caska was first raped back in 1997, so it has nothing to do with SJWs, but for some reason he Miura chose rape, probably because he felt that would be the most effective way of conveying the hopelessness of the situation. It also ties in nicely with Caska becoming retarded, as you probably do when you get raped by a dark god. I think there's a weekly thread on /a/ discussing if it actually was rape too, because Caska might have been mind controlled during the act, but whatever. In Berserk it worked perfectly, and a good writer might be able to do the same quality wise.

It's more like prior to SJW shit the reactions were
>holy shit dude thats grimdark what the fuck
and now its
>hey man #notatmytable #triggerwarning shame shame shame shame

I mean, usually whenever rape is introduced, the villain is already a piece of work so the rape itself seems superfluous overall.

Like for example, Griffith ascended to godhand status by sacrificing everybody within the band of Hawks (sans Guts, Casca, and Rickert) in a horrific blood orgy that is still considered one of the most brutal scenes in manga history. If the intention was to show that Griffith/Femto was an evil SoB who deserves to get killed by Guts, killing all of Guts' friends in such a horrific way was already more than enough motivation.

That isn't to say that I feel as though Casca's rape didn't serve a purpose, but then again Berserk isn't dark for the sake of being edgy either.

Most writers/GM's nowadays aren't good at using rape with the gravitas it deserves, they merely use it to either establish their villains are especially evil or to establish that their setting "has high stakes" or something to that effect.

Caska's rape in Berserk was probably to personalize the rivalry (couldnt think of a better word) between Griffith and Guts. A sort of final nail in the coffin for making them eternal enemies. Sure Guts as already pretty fucked up in his mind, but it ties in so poetically with Guts too being raped as a little boy, powerless to defend himself and then broken inside, and then as he finally learns to be intimate with Caska, a sort of way out of the shit he has been through, she suffers the same fate.

There's really no way to disagree with this without opening up the can of worms that is the 'rape vs murder; which is worse?' debate

Although I would say most of the writers I've seen who cover rape did their job well enough. Never felt it was cheap or anything.

Do you think someone played the Gangrape game using the Berserk ascension scene?

For every "Berserk," there's at least half a dozen "Akame Ga Kill's" that use rape poorly. This also applies to campaigns as well.

It's a shame, but it's such a polarizing subject that unless you're confident in your ability to give it its proper weight and the players at the table are okay with it, you're just better off just not using it.

This is a bit silly. If in your campaign orcs are looting and pillaging the countryside, telling the PCs that they see an ork raping a village woman by the barn isn't really any more edgy or grim than any old war in real life. It's a problem when it crosses into magical realm and detailed descriptions, and player agency etc.

check em
I think it depends on who you're playing with and your style of GMing.
If you do it to be a dick, then what's the point? Same thing if you outright say "you're in love with so and so."
But I think this would be an awesome storyline if you play with a group of strong role players and subtly hint that the npc in question is slowly starting to fill the PC's thoughts.

At the same time though, showing a village razed to the ground with citizens brutalized throughout delivers the same results (Orcs are bad, m'kay?) while also giving players the ability to fill in the blanks as far as what might've happened during the raid.

Rather than showing an orc raping a village woman by the barn, you could have a situation where they see her running away from something moments before they see a few orcs giving chase, which could either give them the opportunity to save her or the opportunity to show the orc's brutality if the PC's decide to stand by and watch it happen.

There are plenty of ways to achieve the same effect without resorting to rape, it's just that hacks know that people tend to have a more visceral aversion towards rape so they throw it in just to get a rise out of people.

>fill in the blanks
its your job as a GM to fill the blanks, you shouldnt expect the players to do so. When players ask what they see you dont answer "you see whatever, typical fantasy shit". I agree it could be better to allow the players an opportunity to interfere with the situation, instead of them arriving too late, but
>just to get a rise out of people.
is something you have to do at some point, just because you have to keep the players attention. I'm not saying you should resort to edgy bullshit, but my entire point was that this is a pretty common thing to happen when people loot and pillage, and while there are plenty of ways to achieve the same effect that doesn't mean this way is bad

>its your job as a GM to fill the blanks, you shouldnt expect the players to do so.
I meant in the sense that the player's imagination will paint a more horrific story than anything that you could possibly describe. "You see a small village on the horizon with the remnants of a smoldering barn billowing out a thin column of smoke as several citizens lies on the ground as ashen corpses" is all the players really need to create the scene in their minds and inquiring into further detail could reveal things like "one corpse appears to be propped against the door of a home that has suffered severe fire damage" which will make the players ask things like "why was it propped? Why did it want to enter the burning building? Oh god, was somebody inside there?" etc. etc.
>is something you have to do at some point, just because you have to keep the players attention.
There are plenty of ways to get a player's attention besides anger. Also, I'm speaking in a general sense.

>besides anger
you are automatically assuming the players get angry for a non-graphical, plain description of a common unconsensual act during looting and pillaging? but why? That would be like throwing your remote at the tv because they said people got raped in villages in the medieval ages during wars on a history channel

I said "anger" in reference to "getting a rise out of people," which generally means that you're doing something in the hopes of getting a reaction out of someone, which will usually be anger.

Also, if the players aren't meant to feel anger towards the brutality that took place in this village, what sort of emotion were you hoping to inspire by "getting a rise" out of them? Disgust? Sadness? Fear? I'm just trying to figure out where you're coming from.

You're trying to get their attention by describing the scene in front of them, not emotionally manipulate them.

>4th ed game back when I was still trying to give it a chance.
>Party has me (psion), artificer, warden, wizard, bard, and most importantly, the ranger.
>I've already spent half the game using the standard psychic pose to represent when I'm communicating via telepathy so they're used to me doing silly stuff
>Ranger is constantly behaving like a spoiled princess, getting bailed out by the party
>text the gm about it, then craft a 'gift' for the ranger, sapphire necklace of sparkly expensiveness
>necklace is a telepathy focus that will let me target the ranger from anywhere on the same plane, while disguising the telepathy to sound like their own voice
>start poking at the ranger almost constantly, little things and advice in their head, lots of negging and similar
>Use mind control effects on the ranger in combat to 'help them out' with the occasional extra attack, get them used to the idea that being under my control is a good thing
>Party levels enough to get their prc-type things
>Pick thrallherd, take the Ranger as my thrall

It was a really fun bit of character development, and the Rangers player was all on board for it, eventually making a new character(druid) and poking fun at the Ranger in-game with them.

this so much

Okay, so if the goal is to get their attention, describing the village after its been razed to the ground while its citizen's bodies were laid out in ways that give subtle details into their final moments should already be enough to grab your player's attention.

Describing a young woman being chased by a horde of orcs brandishing clubs and 75 ft. away should already grab the player's attention as well.

If, for whatever reason, it isn't, then adding rape to the scenario isn't going to grab the player's attention any more effectively because at that point, it's a problem with either the way that you're describing the scene or a problem with the players just not being interested in whatever's happening within the campaign.

you are assuming your own conclusion bro

How so?

It usually depends on the player. It's good to know how much control they're all individually okay with relinquishing.

This article has some great advice.
theangrygm.com/ask-angry-stealing-agency/

There is nothing wrong with not wanting your PC to do shit you don't want him or her to do. It might not fit the group/GM's style though. Nothing wrong with that either, it's just a matter of conflicting preferences.

In my system/setting Humanoids can't be mind controlled but they can have their emotions and senses manipulated. You can fill someone with terror but you can't make them stab themselves in the chest. Monstrous creatures have no resistance to mind control, but said spells are very rare and exhausting to maintain. Characters who taint their souls with monstrous powers gain a % chance of mind control functioning on them, as well as other restrictions on what they can and can't do. With great power comes a loss of free will and one's control over their character.

For good RP? Yes but my group tends to be fairly about that sort of thing. Best time though was a female PC who got charmed by a satyr and since the spell makes the target Friendly, satyr got friendzoned for the duration, then had a pissed of inquisitor to deal with. Hell, she had even been considering the guy for a roll in the hay before it all went down.

>When you try to be charming and you end up in the friend zone anyways.
Damn...I was not expecting these feels today.

If he had just been charming he would have gotten laid. It was the mind rape that cost him. Failing the save took her from interested to "I wouldn't want to make things weird, you're such a good friend after all!"