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Strill
2014-10-26, 08:41 PM
I like to discuss game design a lot, and one of the big things in game design is incentives. The game's rules should reward players for acting in a way that's enjoyable. For example, the RPG Paranoia rewards players for backstabbing one another, in order to create a comedy slapstick atmosphere. Often, however, the game's incentives encourage players to act in ways that aren't enjoyable, or to arbitrarily favor one choice over another. For example, using CHA as a dump-stat in D&D (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumpStat) because you can just let the Bard do all the talking, and CHA never comes up in any other situation, in stark contrast to most other stats.

In these cases, I like to discuss ways to equally incentivize each option. For example, incorporating CHA into saving throws, or allowing players to substitute CHA for other ability scores, or widening CHA's scope of influence so that it comes up in combat more often. However, I'm apparently incompetent at communication because whenever I bring up a discussion on equalizing incentives, I get people asking me things like "why do you hate CHA?", or "you must be a powergamer", or "CHA is useful too. You must be ignoring half the game".

I also frequently get people who flat-out deny the premise that incentives are relevant. They say that in-game power isn't even a reward, and that if a player is incentivised to seek out in-game power, that's their problem and not the game's.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. I want a game where each option represents an interesting choice from both a roleplaying, and a min-max perspective, and I'd like to spark a discussion on that. But whenever I try to discuss these concepts, I can't seem to explain the difference between wanting mechanically balanced options and hating one of the options.

What am I doing wrong?

jaydubs
2014-10-26, 10:51 PM
Perhaps instead of starting at "I want to introduce X incentive to address Y problem" start with "Would you agree that Y is a problem?" It could be they don't want you to introduce these incentives, because they don't think they're necessary.

The charisma issue, for example. In my game groups, we don't have a problem with everyone dumping charisma, because there's always multiple players that like interacting socially with NPCs. The ones that don't may be slightly better at non-social stuff, but that's okay, since they're getting less spotlight time in a significant portion of the game.


For example, using CHA as a dump-stat in D&D (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumpStat) because you can just let the Bard do all the talking, and CHA never comes up in any other situation, in stark contrast to most other stats.

In these cases, I like to discuss ways to equally incentivize each option. For example, incorporating CHA into saving throws, or allowing players to substitute CHA for other ability scores, or widening CHA's scope of influence so that it comes up in combat more often. However, I'm apparently incompetent at communication because whenever I bring up a discussion on equalizing incentives, I get people asking me things like "why do you hate CHA?", or "you must be a powergamer", or "CHA is useful too. You must be ignoring half the game".

To a certain degree, I agree with these comments. It sounds like you're focusing almost exclusively on charisma's effect on combat, and ignoring the social side of the game. Again, in my game groups, social interactions are at least a third of all game time. Often more than half. Saying you can just let the bard do all the talking, is like saying you can let the fighter (or wizard, or whatever) do all the killing.

Stubbazubba
2014-10-26, 11:48 PM
I like to discuss game design a lot, and one of the big things in game design is incentives. The game's rules should reward players for acting in a way that's enjoyable. For example, the RPG Paranoia rewards players for backstabbing one another, in order to create a comedy slapstick atmosphere. Often, however, the game's incentives encourage players to act in ways that aren't enjoyable, or to arbitrarily favor one choice over another. For example, using CHA as a dump-stat in D&D (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumpStat) because you can just let the Bard do all the talking, and CHA never comes up in any other situation, in stark contrast to most other stats.

In these cases, I like to discuss ways to equally incentivize each option. For example, incorporating CHA into saving throws, or allowing players to substitute CHA for other ability scores, or widening CHA's scope of influence so that it comes up in combat more often. However, I'm apparently incompetent at communication because whenever I bring up a discussion on equalizing incentives, I get people asking me things like "why do you hate CHA?", or "you must be a powergamer", or "CHA is useful too. You must be ignoring half the game".

I also frequently get people who flat-out deny the premise that incentives are relevant. They say that in-game power isn't even a reward, and that if a player is incentivised to seek out in-game power, that's their problem and not the game's.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. I want a game where each option represents an interesting choice from both a roleplaying, and a min-max perspective, and I'd like to spark a discussion on that. But whenever I try to discuss these concepts, I can't seem to explain the difference between wanting mechanically balanced options and hating one of the options.

What am I doing wrong?

If it makes you feel any better, I've encountered the same thing. There are people that militantly refuse to acknowledge that game rules inherently create incentives and disincentives, and that as a designer you must be aware of that and should use them to engineer the play experience you're going for. I'm not going to name any names but one controversial D&D 5e consultant comes to mind.

Part of it is you've just got to accept that people exist all across a spectrum of how they look at games. Some people just don't see the connection between rules minutiae and what happens in the game, and depending on your GM that might be justified to some extent. There are tables where the GM lets you try all kinds of things with your CHA or even requires everyone to use CHA at some point. Some people at these tables won't realize that what is happening is probably not actually in the rules. So they can't possibly understand what you're talking about. Some people don't have the correct framing to understand how char-op is not an aberration but an inherent result of having rules and choices. It's OK to just not talk to these people about this. They'll either have a sudden realization someday and understand, or they never will. Either way, when you want to talk rules balancing in the present, they have little to contribute. It's not you.

One thing you could try is to lay out your assumptions line upon line to begin the discussion. Like:

Assumption: Trap options (options that appear valuable on their face but are actually made irrelevant or even damaging based on non-obvious context) should be avoided to make games less frustrating

Assumption: CHA's use in combat or otherwise is generally a fraction of that of any other Ability Score despite being presented alongside them as an equal

Hypothesis: CHA is something of a trap option

Question: What do we do to make CHA as generally useful as the other Ability Scores?

The problem you get with this is that people will zero in on your assumptions. That could be legitimate, of course, because clearly if your assumptions are incorrect your conclusions will necessarily also be. But you can also try to restrict discussion to not-the-assumptions by saying so. Then feel free to ignore people who are merely objecting to your assumptions.


Again, in my game groups, social interactions are at least a third of all game time. Often more than half. Saying you can just let the bard do all the talking, is like saying you can let the fighter (or wizard, or whatever) do all the killing.

Not really. Even if social interaction takes up a lot of game time, there's usually no consequence to a party member simply not participating much, at least not to the point of having to make rolls. Whereas in combat if you don't contribute, you can still be killed and are more likely to be killed, and participating at all can only help. The stakes for spectators are just as high as they are for participants. In social interactions the stakes for spectators are rather low, and in fact you might make things worse by participating, depending on how your system handles failures. So you can and sometimes should let the Bard do the talking where you can't let the competent combatant do all the fighting.

Strill
2014-10-27, 12:16 AM
Not really. Even if social interaction takes up a lot of game time, there's usually no consequence to a party member simply not participating much, at least not to the point of having to make rolls. Whereas in combat if you don't contribute, you can still be killed and are more likely to be killed, and participating at all can only help. The stakes for spectators are just as high as they are for participants. In social interactions the stakes for spectators are rather low, and in fact you might make things worse by participating, depending on how your system handles failures. So you can and sometimes should let the Bard do the talking where you can't let the competent combatant do all the fighting.

Yeah. My ideal goal would be simply to make CHA impose personal consequences on characters who dump it. Combat is the most obvious way to impose personal consequences, so it gets a disproportionate amount of attention, but it's not the only possibility. I suppose the confusion with combat muddles the discussion.

However, your post makes me realize that it would probably be a better idea to structure CHA rolls differently, such that each character can always contribute.

jaydubs
2014-10-27, 12:33 AM
Even if social interaction takes up a lot of game time, there's usually no consequence to a party member simply not participating much...

It might not be a big consequence in terms of success or failure. But I find that at the end of the day, my sessions aren't about success or failure. They're about having enjoyable sessions. Sitting out and not doing anything for a significant portion of the game time doesn't sound enjoyable.


Whereas in combat if you don't contribute, you can still be killed and are more likely to be killed, and participating at all can only help. The stakes for spectators are just as high as they are for participants. In social interactions the stakes for spectators are rather low...

That just means your game places less emphasis on social interactions. It's entirely feasible to run games where social interactions are just as viable an answer to most problems as combat. I had a campaign where we had to recover an artifact from an intelligent hydra with class levels. By talking to it, and reasoning with its several heads (we simultaneously each talked to a different one), we avoided a combat encounter that probably would have resulted in one or several character deaths. Failing that social encounter would have had serious repercussions for non-participants.


...and in fact you might make things worse by participating, depending on how your system handles failures. So you can and sometimes should let the Bard do the talking where you can't let the competent combatant do all the fighting.

Sometimes true, but again it depends on how your DM is running the game. The bard can only be one place at a time, and he can only make one argument at a time without seeming dishonest. Whereas with a group, if the bard fails with argument A, a second character can try approach B.

Secondly, it's entirely feasible to let the competent combatants do all the fighting. There are constant threads about how some builds and classes can vastly outperform others. The only reason this doesn't fly, is that DMs either make players tone down those characters, or because they specifically design encounters to require the whole party.

And if a DM wants to make social interaction a more significant part of the game, he can apply those same principles to social interactions.

NichG
2014-10-27, 02:23 AM
Yeah. My ideal goal would be simply to make CHA impose personal consequences on characters who dump it. Combat is the most obvious way to impose personal consequences, so it gets a disproportionate amount of attention, but it's not the only possibility. I suppose the confusion with combat muddles the discussion.

Its also important to consider what kinds of choices you want players to make. For instance, if you motivate people to invest in things due to penalties for failing to do so, it tends to encourage a flat distribution of choices. Whereas, if you motivate people to invest in things due to advantages gained from doing so, it tends to encourage a spiky distribution of choices. In something like a stat system, flat distributions make everyone look the same, whereas spiky distributions make characters more distinctive.

So generally, in something like D&D I tend to think its always better to say 'here is what this gives you' rather than 'here is what failing to have this takes from you'. This is especially true since the low-end of stats is very strongly capped (you can't buy below 8 in PB, and races with penalties might get that down to a 6 at worse), but the high-end is intentionally open and scales with level (e.g. people with Lv20 characters with 30 in a stat are not uncommon)

So penalizing people for dump-statting is working against the grain of the system, since the system strongly encourages stat disparities in a bunch of ways. Instead, I'd do something along the lines of making it so that whenever characters arrive in a new town/city, they each automatically get to find a number of contacts equal to their Cha mod, where they can specify the type of contact. Or other things that let players with high charisma have additional abilities to proactively push the game in certain social directions.

Anyhow, the choice of Charisma as a disincentivized option is in particular is kind of ironic, because it actually is quite relevant in combat if you build for it. More so than any other stat, Charisma is the easiest thing to get X-stat-to-Y type bonuses. So pumping Charisma is the way to get the highest AC, saves, attack rolls, skill checks, and damage at mid-high op levels. Mostly because a bunch of designers independently decided that Charisma was insufficiently incentivized, and each independently made things which tried to incentivize it (so the result is overkill in the other direction, but only for people who know how to find those build options)

Strill
2014-10-27, 04:41 AM
That just means your game places less emphasis on social interactions. It's entirely feasible to run games where social interactions are just as viable an answer to most problems as combat. I had a campaign where we had to recover an artifact from an intelligent hydra with class levels. By talking to it, and reasoning with its several heads (we simultaneously each talked to a different one), we avoided a combat encounter that probably would have resulted in one or several character deaths. Failing that social encounter would have had serious repercussions for non-participants.
I think you're misunderstanding his point. He's not saying that social encounters are any more or less important. He's saying that they're not something the whole group can just jump in and contribute to like combat is.

In combat, participating is always better than not participating. Even if your character isn't optimized for combat, they can still sit back and shoot a crossbow to help the group. You can't go wrong. In social encounters, if a poorly optimized character participates, it might well ruin the whole thing. Characters participating become liabilities.

Stubbazubba
2014-10-27, 03:15 PM
It might not be a big consequence in terms of success or failure. But I find that at the end of the day, my sessions aren't about success or failure. They're about having enjoyable sessions.

"Enjoyable" is unfortunately highly subjective. Obviously that's the actual goal of all sessions, but when discussing theory, it's not a very useful referent.


Sitting out and not doing anything for a significant portion of the game time doesn't sound enjoyable.

You don't have to sit out and do nothing. I just said they don't participate in the rolling of the dice. You can still make side comments and explain stuff, you just don't actually try to affect the NPC. I've seen many games where players are happy to make small-talk with the NPC, but all the rolling is done by the people who are best equipped for it.


That just means your game places less emphasis on social interactions. It's entirely feasible to run games where social interactions are just as viable an answer to most problems as combat. I had a campaign where we had to recover an artifact from an intelligent hydra with class levels. By talking to it, and reasoning with its several heads (we simultaneously each talked to a different one), we avoided a combat encounter that probably would have resulted in one or several character deaths. Failing that social encounter would have had serious repercussions for non-participants.

This example certainly does not disprove my contention. First off, I never said that social interactions were not a viable answer to problems.

The difference between combat and social interaction can be summarized by looking at your example: if the party had fought the hydra, everyone could attack the hydra on their turn, and no matter how little damage they did, they were better off attacking than not attacking. And each little point of damage or effect would move the party undoubtedly closer to their goal of killing it. What's more, if a character decided not to attack on their turn and just stood by and watched, the hydra would have more time to inflict more damage on the party. So it's not just that failure/success will affect the non-participating characters, it's that not participating drastically changes both the odds of success and the cost of getting there. Participation vs. non-participation makes a big difference.

But in the social interaction, that's hardly true. Let's say the Bard has very good odds of success on CHA rolls, but most of the party are more likely to fail than succeed. First, let's say that we're not in a 4e Skill Challenge, so individual failures don't contribute to total party failure. Even if all we care about is how many successes you get, there's no restriction on the Bard making roll after roll, addressing each head in turn. Sure, there's no consequence for the other party members to try their luck, but since most of them will fail and not move us forward at all, and because the Bard can take as many CHA checks as he wants (there's no requirement that everyone act before the Bard can act again), the best option for the party is to just let the Bard talk to all five heads. Participating vs. non-participating makes only a practical difference: fewer rolls to success if you don't participate, but otherwise no real cost, because there's no cost to failure.

What if there is a cost to failure? This might be 4e-style accumulated successes vs. accumulated failures where any failure brings everyone closer to failure. It might also be just that until you accumulate enough successes, the hydra will either inflict some cost on you or on the situation, or that your degree of success is mitigated by failures. In that case you want to actively avoid participating, because your failure moves everyone closer to total or partial failure. But, unlike in combat, attrition doesn't help; the Bard can just make as many checks as is necessary and now that's still the best choice, just by an even greater margin. Now participating vs. non-participating makes a big difference, but in the opposite way you want; there's no cost to inaction, but potentially a high cost to action, so you don't act unless the game arbitrarily forces you to.

What you want to do is make a structure for social interaction that actually has the incentives of combat. The most basic way to do that is to give each NPC some kind of patience score, which is a number of rounds that it'll listen to you. Then, the task you want requires N successes in that number of rounds, and each PC can only make one argument/check per round. Failures don't hurt you, they just don't help, either. Now you have similar incentives to combat; even if your odds of success are low, there's no direct cost to failure, and the Bard's turns are actually limited, so action is incentivized over inaction; the optimal strategy is for everyone to try. That solves half the problem. However, there's still no incentive to care about CHA as much as the other stats. If the game required you to use social interaction to solve problems more often than it does (because right now if social fails you can always just resort to combat), then the stakes in those interactions would actually be high enough to make contributing to social important enough that it's worth investing in CHA for.


Sometimes true, but again it depends on how your DM is running the game. The bard can only be one place at a time, and he can only make one argument at a time without seeming dishonest. Whereas with a group, if the bard fails with argument A, a second character can try approach B.

Did the five hydra heads really have different opinions about how giving up the artifact would affect it?


Secondly, it's entirely feasible to let the competent combatants do all the fighting. There are constant threads about how some builds and classes can vastly outperform others. The only reason this doesn't fly, is that DMs either make players tone down those characters, or because they specifically design encounters to require the whole party.

This is a failing of the class rules and not, I assume, the intended outcome, though. The combat system, though, in its fundamental design, makes the incentives work out so that everyone participating is actually the optimal strategy. The individual tinkering of the DM is nice, but the fundamental design is what really makes it work that way. Choosing a landscape or certain monsters doesn't do that or other variables DMs actually control doesn't do that.


And if a DM wants to make social interaction a more significant part of the game, he can apply those same principles to social interactions.

Only by making up a whole new structure for social interaction as I did above. It's a systemic problem that the incentives favor inaction over action. That's not a result of the particular NPCs or particular scenarios, it's a result of the underlying rules structure.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-10-27, 03:21 PM
Ultimately, not everyone will listen. They have their own ideas of how games work, and some minds have closed to other alternative ways of looking at it. That's fine. The best way to convince them is to demonstrate it, and let them discover it themselves.

jaydubs
2014-10-27, 04:55 PM
Even if all we care about is how many successes you get, there's no restriction on the Bard making roll after roll, addressing each head in turn. Sure, there's no consequence for the other party members to try their luck, but since most of them will fail and not move us forward at all, and because the Bard can take as many CHA checks as he wants (there's no requirement that everyone act before the Bard can act again), the best option for the party is to just let the Bard talk to all five heads. Participating vs. non-participating makes only a practical difference: fewer rolls to success if you don't participate, but otherwise no real cost, because there's no cost to failure.

...

Did the five hydra heads really have different opinions about how giving up the artifact would affect it?

Just because there's no mechanical restriction on a bard making all the rolls, doesn't mean there's no practical restriction. Not being able to talk make multiple arguments at the same time. Not being able to be in multiple places at the same time. Not being able to take multiple positions at the same time, while remaining honest.

To go back to the hydra example, we ended up having different party members convince different heads that it was the most intelligent, and then having them argue over it. By showing that they couldn't even agree on such a simple matter, we pointed it they couldn't work together efficiently enough to be reliable guards for the artifact. A single character would have a lot of trouble doing that, due to entirely non-mechanical reasons.


What you want to do is make a structure for social interaction that actually has the incentives of combat. The most basic way to do that is to give each NPC some kind of patience score, which is a number of rounds that it'll listen to you. Then, the task you want requires N successes in that number of rounds, and each PC can only make one argument/check per round. Failures don't hurt you, they just don't help, either. Now you have similar incentives to combat; even if your odds of success are low, there's no direct cost to failure, and the Bard's turns are actually limited, so action is incentivized over inaction; the optimal strategy is for everyone to try. That solves half the problem. However, there's still no incentive to care about CHA as much as the other stats. If the game required you to use social interaction to solve problems more often than it does (because right now if social fails you can always just resort to combat), then the stakes in those interactions would actually be high enough to make contributing to social important enough that it's worth investing in CHA for.

...

Only by making up a whole new structure for social interaction as I did above. It's a systemic problem that the incentives favor inaction over action. That's not a result of the particular NPCs or particular scenarios, it's a result of the underlying rules structure.

That just sounds so restrictive. I don't want a strict, mechanical system of doing social interactions, because I prefer them to proceed more naturally.


However, there's still no incentive to care about CHA as much as the other stats. If the game required you to use social interaction to solve problems more often than it does (because right now if social fails you can always just resort to combat), then the stakes in those interactions would actually be high enough to make contributing to social important enough that it's worth investing in CHA for.

Now this part definitely comes down to how your DM is running the game. There is no mechanical rule that says "combat should always be a viable alternative." This just shows the games you're in place less emphasis on social aspects than the games I'm in. For example:

-Your goal is to gather information. There may be magical alternatives to social interaction, but you can't just fight your way to information.
-You are dealing with entities far more powerful than the party. Whether monsters, kings, gods, or something else, trying to fight will just get the party splatted.
-You're trying to gain allies against another enemy. Killing your potential allies gains you nothing.

These are all situations where you can't just resort to combat. And they're all situations that I've run into in actual games. Clearly your personal gaming experience is different from mine, since most of the people I play with don't like to dump charisma. Since it's gone off-topic long enough, I'm not going to say anymore about it.

To reiterate my original point, you need to make sure people agree with your basic assumptions before moving forward. Make sure what you perceive as a problem, they also perceive as a problem. Maybe the people you are talking to, like myself, don't. So they aren't receptive to your proposed incentives.

Stubbazubba
2014-10-28, 05:02 PM
Response to tangent:


Just because there's no mechanical restriction on a bard making all the rolls, doesn't mean there's no practical restriction. Not being able to talk make multiple arguments at the same time. Not being able to be in multiple places at the same time. Not being able to take multiple positions at the same time, while remaining honest.

To go back to the hydra example, we ended up having different party members convince different heads that it was the most intelligent, and then having them argue over it. By showing that they couldn't even agree on such a simple matter, we pointed it they couldn't work together efficiently enough to be reliable guards for the artifact. A single character would have a lot of trouble doing that, due to entirely non-mechanical reasons.

Well, yes, but needing to convince 5 different people of 5 different things all simultaneously is a bit of a contrived scenario, don't you think?


That just sounds so restrictive. I don't want a strict, mechanical system of doing social interactions, because I prefer them to proceed more naturally.

I actually agree, I prefer a more minimalist approach. But the whole premise of the idea was "how do we make social interaction worthwhile for everyone to participate in, and how do we make CHA just as desirable as, say, DEX, by the rules?" That is how. The natural, organic method is fine, but it means that in the vast majority of cases the Bard can just do all the talking and CHA is unnecessary for everyone else. Unless every diplomat in your game world is a 5-headed hydra, of course.


Now this part definitely comes down to how your DM is running the game. There is no mechanical rule that says "combat should always be a viable alternative." This just shows the games you're in place less emphasis on social aspects than the games I'm in. For example:

-Your goal is to gather information. There may be magical alternatives to social interaction, but you can't just fight your way to information.
-You are dealing with entities far more powerful than the party. Whether monsters, kings, gods, or something else, trying to fight will just get the party splatted.
-You're trying to gain allies against another enemy. Killing your potential allies gains you nothing.

These are all situations where you can't just resort to combat.

I beg to differ.

-You can totally hurt people until they give you information. That might have other consequences, but so does asking around the wrong parts of town in the first place, and the information may or may not be reliable, but it's better than the nothing you would have otherwise.
-What are you dealing with the powerful entities for, though? Most of the time, whatever you seek from them you can get by other means, notably violent or at least criminal means. King won't give you access to his ancestral burial chamber? Break in, the world needs it! God won't let you talk to the Patron Saint of World-Saving? Plane Shift in beyond the pearly gates and sneak around to find him. Powerful monster standing between you and the McGuffin? Go figure out some way to weaken it OR cause the dungeon to collapse in on it first, then finish it off and take the artifact. The open-ended nature of TTRPGs indicates that social interaction will almost never be your only path forward. If it is, I'd say there's a lack of creativity either on the DM's or the players' part.
-I admit I got tired of the "convince King B to help King A fight Mordor" plot a long time ago, but I'll give you that there's probably not another clear way to pick up an army. There are still other ways to reach the same goal (fend off the armies of Mordor), but they are more complicated.

My point is that my experience isn't different because social situations aren't thrown at me or that I just discard them and go straight to stabbing like a dirty powergamer. No, social is totally a viable option, and it does come up and it is emphasized, but when it fails, that is never game over because I will force my way around whatever obstacle just said "no." Either because the world is at stake and no arbitrary declaration will stop me or because my character's ambition is such that no arbitrary declaration will stop me, period. I love TTRPGs precisely because they allow me to be that determined, they don't really gate anything behind social interaction, not as a last resort.

valadil
2014-10-28, 07:24 PM
What am I doing wrong?

I think you're talking to the wrong group of people. People who play games don't necessarily like talking about games on an analytical or abstract level.

Sometimes I think forums give off an inaccurate impression of what talking about a game is like. For instance, I keep rereading the advice that you need to establish what a group's play style will be so that all the players will mesh with the game. It sounds great on paper (well, in HTML), but in practice when I ask what kind of game the players are looking for the answer has been "D&D". They haven't had the conversations around play styles and may not be aware that other groups even have a different style. In my experience, you're lucky to get one other player in a group who is able to talk about games in this way.

Anyway, I think you're talking about the game theory of a particular play style to players who don't participate in that play style or find game theory particularly interesting.

Geostationary
2014-10-28, 07:27 PM
I like to discuss game design a lot, and one of the big things in game design is incentives. The game's rules should reward players for acting in a way that's enjoyable. For example, the RPG Paranoia rewards players for backstabbing one another, in order to create a comedy slapstick atmosphere. Often, however, the game's incentives encourage players to act in ways that aren't enjoyable, or to arbitrarily favor one choice over another. For example, using CHA as a dump-stat in D&D (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumpStat) because you can just let the Bard do all the talking, and CHA never comes up in any other situation, in stark contrast to most other stats.

In these cases, I like to discuss ways to equally incentivize each option. For example, incorporating CHA into saving throws, or allowing players to substitute CHA for other ability scores, or widening CHA's scope of influence so that it comes up in combat more often. However, I'm apparently incompetent at communication because whenever I bring up a discussion on equalizing incentives, I get people asking me things like "why do you hate CHA?", or "you must be a powergamer", or "CHA is useful too. You must be ignoring half the game".

So part of why you may be having a problem is that there are three things going on here:
1. Things you want to incentivize
2. Things the game fiction/writing want to incentivize
3. The actual game system
It's important to note that 2&3 aren't the same thing; the game as presented by the writers may not be born out by the game as mechanics.

Further, what you want doesn't seem to be incentives per se, but rather game balance in the form of a variety of mechanically relevant options. The topic of charisma in D&D and similar games is additionally fraught in that people are often much more opinionated about mechanical support of social interactions than combat, and that in D&D social mechanics are very sparse (and compartmentalized, when you get down to it) as compared to combat mechanics such that, outside of specific CHA-focused builds, the system is generally working against you. People also have all sorts of internalized assumptions about social mechanics, so talking about them can be/is difficult.



I also frequently get people who flat-out deny the premise that incentives are relevant. They say that in-game power isn't even a reward, and that if a player is incentivised to seek out in-game power, that's their problem and not the game's.

Somewhat unrelated problems. Explicit incentives aren't necessary, but by their nature game systems will have incentives encoded within them in the form of more optimal choices (though in some systems the difference may be so small as to be irrelevant). In-game power as defined by a greater capacity to modify the game state and otherwise act within the game is always relevant though, hence why it's desirable to create some form of narrative balance between powers and capabilities. The nature of this power will vary from game to game and system to system, but it's very much there- however, it may not be all that relevant so long as it's mostly equal between players and at a level that everyone finds enjoyable. If the focus of the game is on fighting, and you're terrible at fighting, you won't be able to do as much to influence play and will likely have less fun; whereas if the focus is on interpersonal relationships and your character's emotional landscape, it may not matter so much that one player can shoot the sun from the sky while you can only kill large rats on a good day.



I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. I want a game where each option represents an interesting choice from both a roleplaying, and a min-max perspective, and I'd like to spark a discussion on that. But whenever I try to discuss these concepts, I can't seem to explain the difference between wanting mechanically balanced options and hating one of the options.

What am I doing wrong?

While part of it may be in how you're presenting it (I wouldn't know, having read all of like three of your posts), have you considered that maybe the people you're talking too aren't all that familiar with game design or how other games work? If people aren't familiar or aware of other game paradigms, it can be difficult to communicate ideas that fly in the face of say, d20's assumptions and quirks.