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Talakeal
2014-12-20, 04:38 PM
Something I have noticed in my group:

There are two camps of players.

One of whom does not want to RP dialogue or speak in character at all, or even come up with ideas for HOW they are going to approach a social situation, and instead want every conversation to boil down to "I roll Charisma."

The other group will not rely on mechanical edges at all when it comes to IC social interaction. Regardless of their character's social skills or abilities, they will always rely solely upon their own judgment. They will not even roll "sense motive" or the equivalent to try and judge their target's motivations.

As a result, both groups end up frustrated by dialogue challenges in my games because of the limitations they put on themselves. Group A cannot get a fair shake because I won't give them anything unless they tell me what they want. Likewise group B ends up frustrated because they can't figure out what the NPCs want.

As usual, they blame me for their frustrations, and I blame them. Is there anyway we can reach a compromise between the two styles or that I can make it slightly easier on them without completely compromising player agency in their IC and OOC decisions?

Does anyone else have this problem or hold this opinion themselves?

Red Fel
2014-12-20, 05:03 PM
Is there anyway we can reach a compromise between the two styles or that I can make it slightly easier on them without completely compromising player agency in their IC and OOC decisions?

Not easily. That's the short version.

It would be one thing if the divide were between players who want social scenes and players who want to bypass social scenes. Compromise is possible there. You can have shorter scenes, and the players who don't want to be as active can fade to a more background role.

But here, it sounds like the problem is that you have a group of players who don't want to use game mechanics. It sounds like they may roll dice in combat or when defusing a bomb, but as soon as it's face time, the dice and character sheets go away and it turns into pure freeform. I can kind of understand how that would worry other players.

And the first group doesn't even seem to be trying. It's not just a case of "We don't like social scenes," it's almost a case of "We don't know how social skills work." I can understand how that could be frustrating.

My advice would be, if you're willing, to turn social rolls into passive ones - that is, made by the DM. You keep a list of all of the PCs' social skill ranks, and when interacting with an NPC, you make the rolls. You can do it openly for the sake of transparency, which I would recommend, or just roll them behind the screen to quickly streamline the process.

You can ask the roll-oriented players, generally, how they want to do things - "Do you want to be aggressive or friendly?" "What do you want to know?" That sort of thing. You can then do a quick roll, and tell them whether they succeed. The play-oriented players can then play out their scenes as they like, and when they should be rolling things like Sense Motive or Bluff, you can simply do it for them, offering subtle cues (like "His eyes shift nervously as he speaks," or "As you tell your story, her eyebrows grow steadily higher") that tell them what they would figure out if they bothered to do their rolling.

I don't generally recommend this type of method, because as you mentioned, it compromises some player agency. But it seems clear that your players don't want that agency. The roll-oriented players simply want to roll their skill ranks and move on; they can't or won't think about what it is they're actually doing with those actions, so if you do it for them, play continues to move. The play-oriented players refuse to use the mechanics, inevitably hurting the party; if you do the rolling, which they should be doing anyway, you can tell them what they should have learned, and let them have their fun.

NichG
2014-12-20, 05:39 PM
I'm pretty much squarely in group #2. Generally speaking, if it comes down to 'okay, time to roll' I feel that its actually an indication that I failed at the real gameplay.

Here's something you might not have considered. If I ask to roll Sense Motive, basically I have to abide by what the dice say. If I ask to roll, it already means that I feel like there's something hinky with what the NPC is saying or doing. If the dice show a low result, that means I have to give up my suspicions. But out of character, if I can't immediately figure out what's wrong with the situation I'm free to continue keeping my eyes and ears open - I can keep evaluating things as the situation evolves.

So its natural to me to not want to roll, because rolling is inherently more limited than thinking. If I just use my own intuition, then I might believe the NPC one moment but suddenly disbelieve them when something clicks or occurs to me (or vice versa).

It's also nice that if I don't roll, I never have to worry about metagaming things like 'the die roll was low and the DM said that the guy seems on the level, so he probably is lying, so...'

So if you want to make a middle ground that I'd want to use, I think it has to address those points. It can't threaten to over-write the player's actual thinking and intuition. The default failure state for using an ability should be 'you don't gain anything new', not 'you lose something', or I'll just be content to not risk it and rely on my own mind and intuition instead.

Talakeal
2014-12-20, 06:14 PM
I'm pretty much squarely in group #2. Generally speaking, if it comes down to 'okay, time to roll' I feel that its actually an indication that I failed at the real gameplay.

Here's something you might not have considered. If I ask to roll Sense Motive, basically I have to abide by what the dice say. If I ask to roll, it already means that I feel like there's something hinky with what the NPC is saying or doing. If the dice show a low result, that means I have to give up my suspicions. But out of character, if I can't immediately figure out what's wrong with the situation I'm free to continue keeping my eyes and ears open - I can keep evaluating things as the situation evolves.

So its natural to me to not want to roll, because rolling is inherently more limited than thinking. If I just use my own intuition, then I might believe the NPC one moment but suddenly disbelieve them when something clicks or occurs to me (or vice versa).

It's also nice that if I don't roll, I never have to worry about metagaming things like 'the die roll was low and the DM said that the guy seems on the level, so he probably is lying, so...'

So if you want to make a middle ground that I'd want to use, I think it has to address those points. It can't threaten to over-write the player's actual thinking and intuition. The default failure state for using an ability should be 'you don't gain anything new', not 'you lose something', or I'll just be content to not risk it and rely on my own mind and intuition instead.


I am not sure what the D&D RAW is on Sense Motive, but in my game you would make the roll in an attempt to confirm or deny your suspicions. A failure would just mean that you are not certain one way or another, it in no way forces you to take on a wrong position.

The problem in my game usually arises when the players are simply unable to read an NPCs motivations or desires. For example in a negotiation the players reject an NPCs request and then get made because they can't think up anything else to offer them.

Tengu_temp
2014-12-20, 06:31 PM
It's impossible to placate both groups at once without turning your game into a parade of mediocrity. I'd rather focus on placating Group B, because it's closer to my own preferences. With that in mind:

Keep reminding Group B that they can roll social skills. Hell, roll for them from time to time, in the open, until they get the hint.

Tell Group A that they have to speak in character and can't just rely on rolls. If they're not interested in RP, why are they playing a roleplaying game?

Eisenheim
2014-12-20, 09:50 PM
What about roleplaying a conversation and then rolling to see whether someone is convinced by your argument or whether you think they're telling the truth, just like you describe the actions you wish to take in combat and then roll to see whether they succeed or fail. That's how most tables I have been at have run social interactions: as much or as little IC dialogue as the scene requires and then rolls for things that rolls are for.

NichG
2014-12-20, 10:40 PM
What about roleplaying a conversation and then rolling to see whether someone is convinced by your argument or whether you think they're telling the truth, just like you describe the actions you wish to take in combat and then roll to see whether they succeed or fail. That's how most tables I have been at have run social interactions: as much or as little IC dialogue as the scene requires and then rolls for things that rolls are for.

Here's the problem - in combat, I don't roll a check to see if I'm going to actually use an intelligent strategy this round, or if instead I'm going to spend it doing something ineffectual. Generally speaking, the player's mind is off limits as something that can or should be affected by die rolls. So a roll that tells the player what their character should believe is immediately getting into awkward territory. It makes it harder for the player to maintain immersion because now they have to not only emulate their character's persona, but also whatever arbitrary results the dice have asked them to include in their character's thought process. That's my problem with using it for something like 'do you think they're telling the truth?'. I would rather simply not gain any assistance from the mechanics at all and be left to decide that for myself, rather than have the mechanics tell me what to think about a given situation.

As far as 'are they convinced by your argument?', its a bit different, but if you want PC/NPC transparency then it boils down to the same problem - the dice tell the player whether they should treat something as a good argument, even if it makes no sense. If you don't care about PC/NPC transparency, you can still end up in a situation where a failure of skill on the PC's part just makes the NPC look irrational, which isn't really the intended result.

For example, if I have a character with very bad Diplomacy who goes up to a peasant with a potato in a town in which food can be purchased for coppers, and says 'if you give me that potato right now, you can have these 10 gold coins', and the roll results in 'the peasant is not convinced', then it just makes the peasant look like an idiot. It should hopefully be obvious that in such a situation, you really shouldn't have to roll because the outcome is a no-brainer. But, what if you extend that standard to more strenuous cases? What if now we're trying to convince the master of the local Thieves Guild to give us permission to steal something within his city, and we offer something that would be crazy to turn down (we just need to steal this one ceramic lawn gnome for a ritual to save the world, but since we're on your turf we'd like to offer as compensation for your trouble this blackmail information on every important figure in the local government, along with a 10000gp kicker)? Do you still decide 'not to roll, because its obvious'?

And if so, then how is it any different than the Group #2 playstyle where the entire point is to make an argument so convincing that the listener is left with no uncertainty at all as far as how to decide? Or do you roll (maybe with a +2 for 'nice idea!'), but risk the thiefmaster turning down a really lucrative opportunity because the person presenting it had a lisp and spoke in a confusing way? E.g. you have a situation where, depending on how you run it, its possible that a character becomes obligated to make a bad decision because the person presenting the options lacked skill. Which is pretty incoherent.

That's why I'd propose that social skills should strictly only let you do things that you otherwise couldn't. They should never prevent you from doing something that you could otherwise do. A social skill that gives you an instant bit of blackmail on the target from out of nowhere? Sure! A social skill that lets you impose mechanical penalties on someone by taunting them and inflicting emotional trauma? Sure! But no 'you must have this many skill ranks to play' sorts of things, please.

SiuiS
2014-12-20, 10:44 PM
Roll for Group B, force group A to suck it up.

mephnick
2014-12-20, 11:35 PM
Tell Group A that they have to speak in character and can't just rely on rolls. If they're not interested in RP, why are they playing a roleplaying game?

Speaking in character has nothing to do with role-playing. You're describing acting. Saying "I use my diplomacy skill to try and convince him of my point", is still role-playing.

Both groups have legitimate views.

Red Fel
2014-12-20, 11:41 PM
Speaking in character has nothing to do with role-playing. You're describing acting. Saying "I use my diplomacy skill to try and convince him of my point", is still role-playing.

Both groups have legitimate views.

Both groups have legitimate positions taken to borderline-absurd extremes.

Group A wants to boil social interactions down to a single roll with little or no regard for what it actually means. You need to at least say, "I want to roll Intimidate to get the truth out of him," or "I want to roll Bluff to convince them to believe my story," or something like that. Saying, "I just want to roll a single social check" is basically ignoring the mechanics because you don't want to do the scene. That's a bit more extreme than simply rolling the skill check and moving on.

Group B wants to bypass the skill checks completely and just play it out, to the point that a character with max ranks in every social skill can nonetheless miss something obvious or do something incredibly stupid, and not because of an unlucky roll. I'm not saying you need to use the mechanics; rather, I think mechanics can help to shore up any holes in your roleplay, and vice-versa. That's more extreme than saying that you want a greater emphasis on roleplay than mechanics.

Both have fair core positions. Both are being taken to extremes. And the further they are from the center, the harder it is to reach a level of compromise that satisfies either.

ElenionAncalima
2014-12-21, 10:26 AM
This why I like the Giant's diplomacy fix (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/jFppYwv7OUkegKhONNF.html)...

I require rolls, unless someone blows me away with their RP. However, I am a big fan of applying circumstance bonuses and penalties based on how well the person makes their case.

Eisenheim
2014-12-21, 10:40 AM
I really do think that the analogy to combat is importantly relevant here: in both cases rolls should be for things that cannot be determined without dice and roleplay for things that the dice don't speak to. Dice can't determine your tactical choices in combat (unless you build some kind of weirdly complex tactical table to randomly generate your actions each round)

Likewise, the dice can't make a convincing argument or direct the flow of a conversation. The rolls come into play when the roleplay leads to an actions or event where both success and failure are narratively appropriate and both results are interesting: otherwise don't roll.





For example, if I have a character with very bad Diplomacy who goes up to a peasant with a potato in a town in which food can be purchased for coppers, and says 'if you give me that potato right now, you can have these 10 gold coins', and the roll results in 'the peasant is not convinced', then it just makes the peasant look like an idiot. It should hopefully be obvious that in such a situation, you really shouldn't have to roll because the outcome is a no-brainer. But, what if you extend that standard to more strenuous cases? What if now we're trying to convince the master of the local Thieves Guild to give us permission to steal something within his city, and we offer something that would be crazy to turn down (we just need to steal this one ceramic lawn gnome for a ritual to save the world, but since we're on your turf we'd like to offer as compensation for your trouble this blackmail information on every important figure in the local government, along with a 10000gp kicker)? Do you still decide 'not to roll, because its obvious'?



I feel like the difference between these cases is largely covered by the question of narrative interest: failing to buy potatoes is boring, feuding with the master of the thieves guild might be fun, but that's a decision for the GM and group to make together. Though in the situation described above, given the obvious gap in power and stakes between the party and the thieves guild guy, I would question why the GM bothered with the scene at all.

The logical extension of the roll when both success and failure are interesting philosophy is to not waste game time on scenes that don't meet the same criterion. Why bother to play out negotiations unless the possibility of failure is both present and interesting fodder for the ongoing game?

Solaris
2014-12-21, 11:21 AM
Roll for Group B, force group A to suck it up.

Agreed. If you don't want to roleplay interactions, don't play the party face. Group A is the same sort of problem player who wants to play a wizard, but doesn't want to think about useful spells or do any of the research necessary for an effective wizard character. It just doesn't work like that.

NichG
2014-12-21, 11:27 AM
I feel like the difference between these cases is largely covered by the question of narrative interest: failing to buy potatoes is boring, feuding with the master of the thieves guild might be fun, but that's a decision for the GM and group to make together. Though in the situation described above, given the obvious gap in power and stakes between the party and the thieves guild guy, I would question why the GM bothered with the scene at all.

Well, the scenario was purely hypothetical, but if it helps, in my mind it was player-initiated not GM-initiated. Its the sort of thing that if I were playing a master negotiator/manipulator character I'd do even if the GM didn't prod me to do it, because it's a good excuse to make contact with someone who might be useful in the future, in a circumstance where I can request something minor from them that they're likely to grant. It's also something where I'm proactively avoiding future trouble or misunderstanding, and I'm making a gesture of obeisance to the person who presumably believes he's in charge. That means that in the future he's more likely to think of me as a potential ally rather than a competitor.

None of this would be anything I'd expect to be resolved as of that scene, incidentally. I wouldn't expect there to be something like '[roll] okay, your plan works and now he'll like you in the future'. Its more that now that the guy is fleshed out, its more likely he'll show up again in the future, and if he does then its just a fact now that we've had prior dealings.


The logical extension of the roll when both success and failure are interesting philosophy is to not waste game time on scenes that don't meet the same criterion. Why bother to play out negotiations unless the possibility of failure is both present and interesting fodder for the ongoing game?

Success vs. failure is only one way to look at the outcomes of a situation, and the more nuanced the situation the less of an appropriate way it is. For example, in the master thief negotiation, the fact that the negotiation goes through successfully might be completely certain, but its the things that are said surrounding the negotiation that pave the way for future interactions. The master thief agrees, but asks questions - now he knows the PC's responses to those questions. The PC can use that as an excuse to ask questions back, to selectively provide information to try to manipulate the master thief, even just to get on the guy's good side so that 3 games later he can go back and make use of that.

To go back to the combat analogy, if I move 30ft to a particular spot on the field, the interesting thing about that is 'I passed through these particular areas on the way', 'I'm now standing at a new location', etc. It's not 'did I succeed or fail at moving?'. It's a maneuver which is part of a bigger game, rather than a totally encapsulated thing in its own right.

PrincessCupcake
2014-12-21, 11:28 AM
Group A sounds almost like they might need some prompting. Start small (Are you being polite or aggressive? and so on.) Up the complexity of the questions, until you reach a plateau or they are starting to get the hang of it. At each stage, reward for them for pushing beyond their comfort zone with really interesting stuff.

For group B, Maybe calculating a passive Sense Motive, Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate score would be a good idea. (calculate as a Take 10) That way you have a number to work off of while they do their thing. NPCs would still roll Bluff/sense motive/etc. as appropriate, but the players don't have to. Let their approach dictate the DC of Diplomacy/Intimidate challenge, using rational metrics. Force player rolls only for magic being involved or something truly insane.

Eisenheim
2014-12-21, 12:12 PM
Success vs. failure is only one way to look at the outcomes of a situation, and the more nuanced the situation the less of an appropriate way it is. For example, in the master thief negotiation, the fact that the negotiation goes through successfully might be completely certain, but its the things that are said surrounding the negotiation that pave the way for future interactions. The master thief agrees, but asks questions - now he knows the PC's responses to those questions. The PC can use that as an excuse to ask questions back, to selectively provide information to try to manipulate the master thief, even just to get on the guy's good side so that 3 games later he can go back and make use of that.


But success versus failure IS the totality of what a given roll can produce, with a possible third option of tie depending on system. Framing the scene with the master thief purely in terms of permission, the only stake on the table is success of failure at obtaining that permission. With the new framing you've added, much more narrative interest appears in the scene, with the possibility for success of failure at developing the master thief as a future contact, at controlling what he learns about the PCs, etc.

Both sides have goals that can be met or failed, and the consequences of both as well as the costs incurred along the way seem like interesting fodder for roleplay.

I think my basic point is that a scene like that is almost certainly going to require both roleplaying, to properly set out the stakes and nuances of a complex social interaction, and rolling dice to see who gets what they want and how easily, and I think that any social scene worth including in the narrative have both of those elements.

Buying potatoes clearly doesn't, and absent any longer term goals or narrative involvement from the master thief, neither does negotiating with him.
Even with a master negotiator character initiation the conversation, if I as GM intended absolutely no future return to the city in question or use of the master thief NPC, I would handwave that conversation and jump right to a scene of more consequence. Zooming in on any interaction to the point where significant IC dialogue and/or dice rolling becomes involved is, for me, a level of focus reserved for the most important parts of the story that players and GM tell together. The less important scenes can be painted in broad strokes or left on the cutting room floor.

NichG
2014-12-21, 01:29 PM
But success versus failure IS the totality of what a given roll can produce, with a possible third option of tie depending on system. Framing the scene with the master thief purely in terms of permission, the only stake on the table is success of failure at obtaining that permission. With the new framing you've added, much more narrative interest appears in the scene, with the possibility for success of failure at developing the master thief as a future contact, at controlling what he learns about the PCs, etc.

I guess my point is, because success versus failure is the totality of what a given roll can produce, that says to me that rolls are a bad way to actually represent certain things. Or more precisely, a single roll or sequence of rolls isn't a good way to represent almost anything interesting.

Take combat - there's a lot of stuff in combat that isn't just 'succeed or fail the fight'. It's built out of smaller pieces, because it's actually quite complex and nuanced. Human social interaction is potentially even more complex and nuanced than combat, so when you try to build it out of a single pass/fail gate then it ends up feeling very poorly handled and trivialized.

That's why a lot of non-D&D systems experiment with other mechanics than rolling. Bidding systems, for example, tends to be more nuanced because instead of asking 'pass/fail' it asks 'how much will this cost?', and it can easily be expanded to having multiple simultaneous goals.


Even with a master negotiator character initiation the conversation, if I as GM intended absolutely no future return to the city in question or use of the master thief NPC, I would handwave that conversation and jump right to a scene of more consequence. Zooming in on any interaction to the point where significant IC dialogue and/or dice rolling becomes involved is, for me, a level of focus reserved for the most important parts of the story that players and GM tell together. The less important scenes can be painted in broad strokes or left on the cutting room floor.

This really rubs me the wrong way. It's basically saying that the only person who can decide what's important in the story is the GM, and everything has to be based on what the GM selects as the relevant elements. If I want to converse directly with the master thief because I have something in mind, then it seems really rude to basically say 'I don't think you can make this scene matter, so we're skipping it'. I could understand if e.g. I do it in a way which grabs the spotlight too often or tries to exclude the other players, because balancing that is part of the GM's job, but if the party goes along with the idea then why shoot it down in the metagame?

Eisenheim
2014-12-21, 01:40 PM
I certainly agree that D&D's system for social interactions lacks nuance. Most of what I'm saying comes from running and playing fate core, which models social conflicts identically to physical ones, just as much depth either way, which I find much more satisfying for games with a lot of social challenges.

In regards to skipping over something that the player is interested in but you as a GM have no plan for, it's really a give and take process, but, assuming you're not running a pure sandbox game, you can't pick up every hook the players throw out. If the quest goes to a city, the player brings up talking to the head of the thieves guild there, who you as GM have never mentioned, and you have a extended campaign plot with no reason for the players to ever return to this city, I don't think you're obliged to turn the master thief into a thing.

Clearly if the game will or might come back, it's reasonable to reward the player's initiative and let him make a contact that will be useful in the future, but things like this are only worth doing if they can have ongoing narrative weight. I, as a GM and a player, don't want to waste any time one scenes that don't contribute to the ongoing story as anything but a diversion.

SiuiS
2014-12-21, 02:15 PM
Speaking in character has nothing to do with role-playing. You're describing acting. Saying "I use my diplomacy skill to try and convince him of my point", is still role-playing.

Both groups have legitimate views.

Not correct. The group that says "I roll diplomacy to convince him" doesn't actually go into what he's trying to convince him of, or how, both of which are relevant. A minimum amount of acting is implicit in the game. They're failing to meet that minimum engagement.

If it was "I tell him I'll sweeten the pot if he plays along with my plan, diplomacy 27" that's different. That's not "I try to convince him, diplomacy 27". It includes what and how.

NichG
2014-12-21, 02:50 PM
In regards to skipping over something that the player is interested in but you as a GM have no plan for, it's really a give and take process, but, assuming you're not running a pure sandbox game, you can't pick up every hook the players throw out. If the quest goes to a city, the player brings up talking to the head of the thieves guild there, who you as GM have never mentioned, and you have a extended campaign plot with no reason for the players to ever return to this city, I don't think you're obliged to turn the master thief into a thing.

Certainly the DM can choose not to pick up the hook. That's fine, and I don't have a problem with that. But saying that the player can't even make the pitch seems dismissive to me.

Its sort of like if we go back to the combat analogy, one character is playing a rogue and the party is fighting undead. The DM shouldn't skip the rogue's turn just because they think that without sneak attack, the rogue isn't going to do enough damage to matter to the outcome. The rogue should get their chance to make themselves matter, or not, based on their own cleverness. Maybe they have a buff potion they can feed to another party member, or a clever plan involving oil and setting fire to things, or maybe they'll just plink away for 1d4 dagger damage, but its bad form to not let them actually try.

Similarly, if the party were doing a heist in a city and I said 'I want to contact the local thieves guild and make sure everything's amicable', I feel like the correct DM response is 'lets see where he's going with this' rather than 'it won't matter, skip it'. When the player is being proactive about that kind of thing, it's up to the player to make it matter - the DM doesn't have to do their work for them, but they should let them try.

Things you think weren't going to matter coming back and being relevant gives a lot of depth to a game. Maybe later on I'm going to say 'yeah, actually I'm a Hand of the Southwark Thieves Guild' to some other thief, and when he quizzes me on the details I can give accurate info because I bothered to speak with that thief master earlier on. But I don't need to know that ahead of time to make it worthwhile - as I play, I can assemble a deck of things that could matter, and then later on play the cards that will. But I have to be allowed to assemble the deck if I'm going to have cards to play later on.

mephnick
2014-12-21, 03:02 PM
Not correct. The group that says "I roll diplomacy to convince him" doesn't actually go into what he's trying to convince him of, or how, both of which are relevant. A minimum amount of acting is implicit in the game. They're failing to meet that minimum engagement.

That's obviously your opinion and not universal to all groups, nor is it a rule.

I prefer it your way, I'm just saying neither method is right or wrong.

goto124
2014-12-21, 08:48 PM
Certainly the DM can choose not to pick up the hook. That's fine, and I don't have a problem with that. But saying that the player can't even make the pitch seems dismissive to me.

When the player is being proactive about that kind of thing, it's up to the player to make it matter - the DM doesn't have to do their work for them, but they should let them try.

I can assemble a deck of things that could matter, and then later on play the cards that will. But I have to be allowed to assemble the deck if I'm going to have cards to play later on.

This sounds like it would require a LOT of the ability to spontaneously come up with plots as the players move along, since you wouldn't have planned for the player to speak to the head thief. That, or everytime the player goes off the plot you made, you make it a side-event that doesn't really affect the plot as a whole. It sounds rather like railroading, to be honest, but it's hard to tell a good story otherwise.

Does this mean that there has to be a trade-off between 'good storyline' and 'fun gameplay'?

SiuiS
2014-12-21, 10:08 PM
That's an interesting idea. That a story is only good if one person designs it beforehand and subjects others to it.

D&D is about emergent stories. The story is told after the fact and the fun is in it's creation, not execution. D&D is a bad system for that sort of play.

Eisenheim
2014-12-21, 11:32 PM
The important thing really is for everyone to agree about the kind of story they want to be a part of before the game begins, that minimizes the mismatch between player intentions and GM plans.

NichG
2014-12-22, 02:17 AM
This sounds like it would require a LOT of the ability to spontaneously come up with plots as the players move along, since you wouldn't have planned for the player to speak to the head thief. That, or everytime the player goes off the plot you made, you make it a side-event that doesn't really affect the plot as a whole. It sounds rather like railroading, to be honest, but it's hard to tell a good story otherwise.

Does this mean that there has to be a trade-off between 'good storyline' and 'fun gameplay'?

There doesn't have to be a trade-off. It's just a particular skill, something that can be learned and improved upon through practice. I consider it a mandatory skill for anyone who seriously wants to DM. You absolutely have to be able to improvise.

Scipio_77
2014-12-22, 05:10 AM
The second group should be punished XP-wise when they overplay or underplay their characters social skills. If they make conjenctures which are not fair it is also completely okay for the DM to intervene. This is no different than the DM intervening if the weak group wizard boldly states that he "breaks down the door", but letting it slide if the brawny barbarian states the same.

In terms of "game mechanics" I tend to presume players land average rolls when they are roleplaying in character. In situations where there is excitement or danger involved, rolls should be made to create excitement. It is, however, a good tip to somewhat randomly require rolls also in non-pressed situations so the players can't always know if they are in danger or not.

The first group should not be awarded bonus XP for good roleplaying, as they really aren't. It is, however, important that the DM gives them the chance to. My experience is that some players are a little shy, but I have never met a player who did not enjoy being "in character" when they first try it.

Talakeal
2014-12-22, 01:08 PM
The second group should be punished XP-wise when they overplay or underplay their characters social skills. If they make conjenctures which are not fair it is also completely okay for the DM to intervene. This is no different than the DM intervening if the weak group wizard boldly states that he "breaks down the door", but letting it slide if the brawny barbarian states the same.

In terms of "game mechanics" I tend to presume players land average rolls when they are roleplaying in character. In situations where there is excitement or danger involved, rolls should be made to create excitement. It is, however, a good tip to somewhat randomly require rolls also in non-pressed situations so the players can't always know if they are in danger or not.

The first group should not be awarded bonus XP for good roleplaying, as they really aren't. It is, however, important that the DM gives them the chance to. My experience is that some players are a little shy, but I have never met a player who did not enjoy being "in character" when they first try it.

I dont give out or take away XP on an individual basis, Rather I give the whole group XP for completing goals. I find doing it this way avoids a lot of hurt feelings and balance issues.
That being said, mostly group B is underperforming as they are all playing high charisma characters and are themselves fairly unsocial people in real life. Do you actually punish people for underplaying their characters abilities? Making a mistake and then having your character ding XP for it on top of the natural consequences seems like a bit of a harsh double whammy to me.

JeenLeen
2014-12-22, 01:14 PM
I haven't run into this problem per se, but I have run into similar issues. For me, I like the gameplay mechanics to reward good roleplaying. Take Exalted (2nd ed.) for example. In it, there are 'stunts', which are basically you describe what and how your character does something. Doing so gives you bonus dice (higher chance of success) and allows you to recover some resources. If someone just says "I attack him" or "I try to persuade him to let me in", then just roll and see what happens. It's dull, but it's not terrible. If necessary, prod them for what their basic argument is, but let it be minor. But if someone gives a cool description of combat, or a very convincing argument, bonus dice.

And I would agree that, in some of the circumstances where it's obvious (10 gold for a 1 copper apple, for example), no dice roll is needed.

On the other hand, the character's stats should matter. A player should not be able to just dump Charisma/Diplomacy/whatever because they are a good actor or good with rhetoric, and then count on their roleplaying to negate any dice rolls. That's unfair to the other players who put their points into social stuff. As it's been stated in the past on these forums, you shouldn't have to be a good actor or face to play a face.

Knaight
2014-12-22, 02:06 PM
But success versus failure IS the totality of what a given roll can produce, with a possible third option of tie depending on system. Framing the scene with the master thief purely in terms of permission, the only stake on the table is success of failure at obtaining that permission. With the new framing you've added, much more narrative interest appears in the scene, with the possibility for success of failure at developing the master thief as a future contact, at controlling what he learns about the PCs, etc.

That's not actually true for a number of systems. For instance, there are plenty which look more at the degree to which both parties get what they want, and what they sacrifice to get there.

As for the groups in the OP - there are two main solutions. One is to use a game where the social mechanics are actually engaging. Another is to go with the roll first option, wherein a specific order of actions is established.
1. Establish the general tenor of what is being rolled for - essentially, define the social tactic.
2. Roll the dice.
3. Group B then acts out their end. If they failed miserably, they deliberately sabotage their own efficacy. If they did well, then it might help to give them a bit of intuited information that lets them employ their strategy well.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-22, 02:43 PM
Myself and most of the other players I've known take what I consider the ideal middle ground: I describe at least in general terms what it is I'm trying to accomplish ("Convince them of [X]," "Find out what they know about [Y]," "Just schmooze and get on their good side for later") and then make the check. Sometimes I do have specific dialogue in mind in which case I act that out, but more often than not that's what the skill system is there to abstract in the first place.

mephnick
2014-12-22, 04:13 PM
Sometimes I do have specific dialogue in mind in which case I act that out, but more often than not that's what the skill system is there to abstract in the first place.

Exactly. Everything else in the game is fine as an abstraction, but I've got to use full in-character dialogue to use my charisma? How does that makes sense?

Lord Torath
2014-12-22, 05:25 PM
My advice would be, if you're willing, to turn social rolls into passive ones - that is, made by the DM. You keep a list of all of the PCs' social skill ranks, and when interacting with an NPC, you make the rolls. You can do it openly for the sake of transparency, which I would recommend, or just roll them behind the screen to quickly streamline the process.

You can ask the roll-oriented players, generally, how they want to do things - "Do you want to be aggressive or friendly?" "What do you want to know?" That sort of thing. You can then do a quick roll, and tell them whether they succeed. The play-oriented players can then play out their scenes as they like, and when they should be rolling things like Sense Motive or Bluff, you can simply do it for them, offering subtle cues (like "His eyes shift nervously as he speaks," or "As you tell your story, her eyebrows grow steadily higher") that tell them what they would figure out if they bothered to do their rolling.

I don't generally recommend this type of method, because as you mentioned, it compromises some player agency. But it seems clear that your players don't want that agency. The roll-oriented players simply want to roll their skill ranks and move on; they can't or won't think about what it is they're actually doing with those actions, so if you do it for them, play continues to move. The play-oriented players refuse to use the mechanics, inevitably hurting the party; if you do the rolling, which they should be doing anyway, you can tell them what they should have learned, and let them have their fun.I think this is the best advice I've seen here so far.

I am not sure what the D&D RAW is on Sense Motive, but in my game you would make the roll in an attempt to confirm or deny your suspicions. A failure would just mean that you are not certain one way or another, it in no way forces you to take on a wrong position.

The problem in my game usually arises when the players are simply unable to read an NPCs motivations or desires. For example in a negotiation the players reject an NPCs request and then get mad because they can't think up anything else to offer them.A DM-prompted Sense Motive roll could help here. <You catch him eying your fancy wagon hungrily> or <You get the idea that's he's only interested in how you can help him rise in the hierarchy of the Oompa Loompas>

Scipio_77
2014-12-22, 05:40 PM
I dont give out or take away XP on an individual basis, Rather I give the whole group XP for completing goals. I find doing it this way avoids a lot of hurt feelings and balance issues.
That being said, mostly group B is underperforming as they are all playing high charisma characters and are themselves fairly unsocial people in real life. Do you actually punish people for underplaying their characters abilities? Making a mistake and then having your character ding XP for it on top of the natural consequences seems like a bit of a harsh double whammy to me.

It was a bit hastily worded, it is more of a punishment in the sense that they are not rewarded.

Also it depends on the campaign, game and setting. If it is "smash orc / grab loot", then individual awards aren't really needed unless it is the unlikely scenario of accurately RPing a group of frenzied berserkers. If it is more "mature" game with a lot of emphasis on interaction, then I like to use individual rewards.

Scipio_77
2014-12-22, 05:43 PM
Exactly. Everything else in the game is fine as an abstraction, but I've got to use full in-character dialogue to use my charisma? How does that makes sense?

A moderate approach is usually best.. this means the DM/ST lets players slide rolls if they are RPing what their characters is good at well, or the players can combine RP with abstraction and declared rolls: "I smile my most charming smile at the gnomen merchant while I silently consider how to rip him off, I want to appraise his goods... roll?" or "since I'm a greedy bastard I go looking for gambling and people to con... can I roll to find a game and how I do in it?"

The point of more detailed interaction is usually to make the game more vibrant. Now it isn't for everyone or all groups, and that's fine.

NichG
2014-12-22, 06:39 PM
Exactly. Everything else in the game is fine as an abstraction, but I've got to use full in-character dialogue to use my charisma? How does that makes sense?

The game already has wildly varying levels of abstraction. Combat is much more highly detailed compared to the skill system, for example. In combat, you decide where to stand, how to act during each 6 second interval of the battle, divided into subintervals (move action, standard action, swift action), etc. On the other hand, skills are usually one-off single roll to pass or fail types of things.

The 'group 2' argument is basically, social interaction deserves to be as nuanced and detailed as combat, because it's as interesting/complex/important as combat is. The game system doesn't deliver on that promise. But fortunately, humans have a really great system for social interaction built into their heads, so we don't really need codified mechanics to make it work (though codified mechanics can certainly get in the way of it working). Whereas we don't really have the same for combat.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-22, 06:51 PM
But fortunately, humans have a really great system for social interaction built into their heads, so we don't really need codified mechanics to make it work

You do when your character is +30 better at working that system than you are.

NichG
2014-12-22, 07:05 PM
You do when your character is +30 better at working that system than you are.

Your character can only be '+30 better' if you make the system so that it uses mechanics to represent how good the character is at it. It's a chicken and the egg thing. If you don't insist that there must be mechanics, then you find that you no longer need to represent extremes that were only introduced because of a particular choice of mechanics. So from the group 2 point of view, it all works out fine if you just totally throw out the mechanics for it and use human interaction instead.

For the middle road, you have to somehow make the mechanics improve things without harming the human ability to evaluate and intuitively understand social complexities.

That is, a 'middle road' system might say something like 'if your character has X ability, then I will tell you one thing that the NPC is worried about before the conversation starts' or 'if your character has Y ability, then you can ask how I would respond to something you want to say without having to actually say it if you don't like the response' or 'if your character has Z ability, you can basically do the equivalent of cold-reading an entire room full of NPCs and pick out the ones that are nervous, hiding something, open to bribes, whatever'. The result is that the character can do things that would be literally impossible for the player to do with only their own abilities (because of the narrow information channel of what the DM chooses to describe), but the player must still make use of those benefits in a way that makes sense in order to actually make them valuable (just as the player of a spellcaster must themselves choose the appropriate spells to cast in a particular combat situation - just because you know Solid Fog doesn't mean that casting it randomly will help you any, you have to know when and how to correctly deploy it)

Sith_Happens
2014-12-22, 07:53 PM
Your character can only be '+30 better' if you make the system so that it uses mechanics to represent how good the character is at it. It's a chicken and the egg thing. If you don't insist that there must be mechanics, then you find that you no longer need to represent extremes that were only introduced because of a particular choice of mechanics. So from the group 2 point of view, it all works out fine if you just totally throw out the mechanics for it and use human interaction instead.

Except that then there's no way to play a character that's better at talky stuff then you are as a player, which is about as massive and fundamental a failure of game design as it gets.

Talakeal
2014-12-22, 08:09 PM
I think this is the best advice I've seen here so far.
A DM-prompted Sense Motive roll could help here. <You catch him eying your fancy wagon hungrily> or <You get the idea that's he's only interested in how you can help him rise in the hierarchy of the Oompa Loompas>

The problem is they won't break character to ASK me questions, and I lack the perception to guage when they want to know something unprompted.

NichG
2014-12-22, 08:50 PM
Except that then there's no way to play a character that's better at talky stuff then you are as a player, which is about as massive and fundamental a failure of game design as it gets.

Nah, that's actually quite common in other areas. Every game makes implicit choices about what belongs to the player and what belongs to the character. This is just a different choice than the type of game you prefer.

Again, there's the analogy to combat. In combat, abilities belong to the character but tactics and strategy belongs to the player. I don't roll an Int check to pick which spells I get to prepare when playing a Wizard, or to determine what spell I should use against an enemy, or to determine whether to charge in or hold my action. Those things have been chosen to belong to the player, and as a result the character's ability doesn't factor into it.

Personally, I like games which actually exercise my own skills. So it's very unsatisfying to me to have a big chunk of what I consider to be core gameplay replaced with 'roll a die and move on with it'. At the same time, I don't particularly care about the game trying to model any particular quantitative representation of ability, so it doesn't bother me at all that my spy master character is only as clever as I can be, and his enemies are only as clever as the DM can be. What matters is whether my spy master is clever relative to his enemies, and that's on me to provide as the player. If I fail to do that, then my character wasn't a spy master, just a wannabe spy master - but for me that creates the stakes that make it interesting.

For me it just isn't interesting to ask 'did I cheese the game mechanics sufficiently that I can be considered a competent spy master by the standards of this setting?', because that player skill has nothing at all to do with the feeling of being a spy master.

Now, obviously that's a matter of taste. I'm not going to assert that 'the game is wrong if it models social interact with a die roll' because that's a nonsensical, meaningless statement. The game can't be right or wrong in the absolute. It can only appeal or not appeal to particular tastes, or succeed/fail with respect to its design goals. If the design goals include appealing to players who enjoy treating the intricacies of social interaction as part of the gameplay, then replacing them all with die rolls or even just putting in a wall that prevents player ability from mattering is going to cause it to fail in those goals.

Coidzor
2014-12-22, 10:03 PM
Exactly. Everything else in the game is fine as an abstraction, but I've got to use full in-character dialogue to use my charisma? How does that makes sense?

There's that, and then there's the problem that if you're not built to be the face you should never open your mouth in social scenes or you'll hurt yourself and the rest of the group. :/

Which is just annoying, because who wants to sit with their thumb up their ass because the system doesn't allow good investment in basic talking skills to all character concepts and builds?

So how do you balance having everyone be able to talk during social scenes so you don't have to break out the ballgags with being able to actually use an abstract system of mechanics?

goto124
2014-12-22, 11:14 PM
"I smile my most charming smile at the gnomen merchant while I silently consider how to rip him off, I want to appraise his goods... roll?"

:sabine: I don't really have a thing for gnome goods...

Eisenheim
2014-12-22, 11:20 PM
So how do you balance having everyone be able to talk during social scenes so you don't have to break out the ballgags with being able to actually use an abstract system of mechanics?

Let everyone talk, break out the dice when they want to accomplish specific tasks. Everyone can raise points, then someone can say, roll diplomacy to convince the NPC of X, or sense motive to gauge his reactions to the group, or what have you. Let non-face characters roll to aid another in those situations, representing their contributions with no risk of harming the face's check.

goto124
2014-12-22, 11:42 PM
Let everyone talk, break out the dice when they want to accomplish specific tasks. Everyone can raise points, then someone can say, roll diplomacy to convince the NPC of X, or sense motive to gauge his reactions to the group, or what have you. Let non-face characters roll to aid another in those situations, representing their contributions with no risk of harming the face's check.

...examples please?

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-12-23, 03:25 AM
Roll the check, then roleplay the result.

I blogged on this topic last year. (http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/playing-roles.html)

Alex12
2014-12-23, 03:58 AM
I like having the social skills aspect be something I can roll for because I've got average or maybe a little below average social skills, and I'm the one in my group who's most inclined to try and talk things out when possible. I like playing the talky party-face diplomacy types (if for no other reason than the other people in my group tend not do care about that part, which means I'm not stepping on any toes and can meaningfully contribute.)
I typically try and describe in general terms what I'm trying to say, unless I've got a specific line or something I want to use.
As for circumstance bonuses for good roleplaying, I'd only do that if I were allowing circumstance bonuses to Str checks for doing push-ups, or to Dex checks for juggling or something IRL.

NichG
2014-12-23, 11:31 AM
I like having the social skills aspect be something I can roll for because I've got average or maybe a little below average social skills, and I'm the one in my group who's most inclined to try and talk things out when possible. I like playing the talky party-face diplomacy types (if for no other reason than the other people in my group tend not do care about that part, which means I'm not stepping on any toes and can meaningfully contribute.)

If you're the only one in your group who actually has ideas about how to talk to NPCs and resolve things through communication, why do you think you have average or below average social skills? That sounds actually like you're pretty on the ball with that.

Talakeal
2014-12-23, 12:46 PM
I like having the social skills aspect be something I can roll for because I've got average or maybe a little below average social skills, and I'm the one in my group who's most inclined to try and talk things out when possible. I like playing the talky party-face diplomacy types (if for no other reason than the other people in my group tend not do care about that part, which means I'm not stepping on any toes and can meaningfully contribute.)
I typically try and describe in general terms what I'm trying to say, unless I've got a specific line or something I want to use.
As for circumstance bonuses for good roleplaying, I'd only do that if I were allowing circumstance bonuses to Str checks for doing push-ups, or to Dex checks for juggling or something IRL.

I only care what you do, not how you do it. I don't care how eloquent you are, if your diplomacy boils down to "Give me everything you own and if you don't like it you can go **** yourself!" you will have a higher DC than someone who makes a rational argument with some give and take.

Likewise doing pushups is irrelevant to the difficulty, but if someone insists on banging their face into the wall into it falls over they will have a higher DC than if they take care to find a weak spot and get a running start.

I find it odd that people refuse to put any thought or effort into the social elements of the game. You never hear anyone complaining that they, for example, have actually pick and cast spells appropriate to the situation instead of just bypassing it with a "I roll spell-craft".


EDIT:

On second thought this applies to a lot more than just social interaction. For example traps, puzzles, and craft skills often have a conflict between people who want to RP it out (potentially bypassing the mechanics) and people who just want to roll for it negating any sort of player input or creativity. For example, my PC is a surgeon, but when I roll to treat a wound I rarely actually describe what I am doing because I as a person don't have the foggiest clue. I remember a much maligned essay a few years back talking about how this is the major divide between "Old School" and "New School" gaming.

SiuiS
2014-12-23, 05:21 PM
Except that then there's no way to play a character that's better at talky stuff then you are as a player, which is about as massive and fundamental a failure of game design as it gets.

Untrue. If the character is good at talking, the DM can keep that in mind. His actually was the crux of an issue I had in a play by post; I was short on time and asked the others to assume my full near-max social skills were in effect because of a passive perk. One player didn't want to and the DM told me months later he never played it as passive and only gave me a dice bonus. Game disintegrated.


The problem is they won't break character to ASK me questions, and I lack the perception to guage when they want to know something unprompted.

Give it anyway. If guy has X ranks give him info, if he has X+Y give him additional info. Be sure to give hooks. "You're not quite sure, but you get the feeling..." For him to ask about. Or if the other person is doing something, make the rolls yourself and change how you portray them. If they fail a bluff, make their lie obvious. Etc.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-23, 05:43 PM
If you're the only one in your group who actually has ideas about how to talk to NPCs and resolve things through communication, why do you think you have average or below average social skills? That sounds actually like you're pretty on the ball with that.

There's a difference between knowing that the best way to get what you want is through talking and knowing how to successfully do that talking. While I hate to play the ASD card, it's definitely the best example of what I mean by that; I do most of the idea-having in my current group but if you made me do my best impression of my own Bard during a social encounter I guarantee you I'd bomb it utterly.

Talakeal
2014-12-23, 05:58 PM
Give it anyway. If guy has X ranks give him info, if he has X+Y give him additional info. Be sure to give hooks. "You're not quite sure, but you get the feeling..." For him to ask about. Or if the other person is doing something, make the rolls yourself and change how you portray them. If they fail a bluff, make their lie obvious. Etc.

Hmmm. That could work, but as I said I am not the most perceptive person and most of the time I have no idea exactly what it is that the players are missing*. Also, at what point in the dialogue should I point these things out?

*: For example, in the last session I ran they were trying to get a neighboring kingdom to break an alliance with another country that is at war with the PCs nation. They talked to the ruler of the country, who was having a problem with domestic terrorism. He told the PCs that he couldn't risk war with an ally when they were already under terrorist threat, but if the PCs were to "deal with" the terrorist leaders he would have a lot more room to negotiate.
Now, in my mind this was a fairly straightforward "kill the bad guys" hook, but the PCs completely missed that and didn't realize the king wanted them dead.
Instead of biting, the players talked the king into giving into the terrorists demands so that the more moderate people would stop supporting the terrorists, leaving only the extremists. The PCs then wanted the king to make an alliance with them, and the kings response was "You have already talked me into giving up a large portion of my authority to placate terrorists and their sympathizers, and now you want MORE from me?" Which resulted in the PCs leaving. When I didn't give them experience for completing the mission (my rationale being they did not devote serious resources, time, risk, or effort in this scene and made no progress towards their goal of finding allies) then it devolved into an OOC explosion on their part which I think may have chased some potential new players from the group.

Solaris
2014-12-23, 06:12 PM
Hmmm. That could work, but as I said I am not the most perceptive person and most of the time I have no idea exactly what it is that the players are missing*. Also, at what point in the dialogue should I point these things out?

*: For example, in the last session I ran they were trying to get a neighboring kingdom to break an alliance with another country that is at war with the PCs nation. They talked to the ruler of the country, who was having a problem with domestic terrorism. He told the PCs that he couldn't risk war with an ally when they were already under terrorist threat, but if the PCs were to "deal with" the terrorist leaders he would have a lot more room to negotiate.
Now, in my mind this was a fairly straightforward "kill the bad guys" hook, but the PCs completely missed that and didn't realize the king wanted them dead.
Instead of biting, the players talked the king into giving into the terrorists demands so that the more moderate people would stop supporting the terrorists, leaving only the extremists. The PCs then wanted the king to make an alliance with them, and the kings response was "You have already talked me into giving up a large portion of my authority to placate terrorists and their sympathizers, and now you want MORE from me?" Which resulted in the PCs leaving. When I didn't give them experience for completing the mission (my rationale being they did not devote serious resources, time, risk, or effort in this scene and made no progress towards their goal of finding allies) then it devolved into an OOC explosion on their part which I think may have chased some potential new players from the group.

Two things leap to mind on this:
First is that it's cute they think moderates support terrorists to begin with.
Second is that you shorted 'em. They did devote time and effort in the scene, even if it wasn't towards the goal you picked for them.

As for where you should've pointed out the actual adventure hook? Right about where they started trying to negotiate with the king instead of killing the baddies. "The king refuses to discuss the rule of his nation with you pack of murderhobos, and dismisses you to go kill the terrorist leaders".

Talakeal
2014-12-23, 07:33 PM
Two things leap to mind on this:
First is that it's cute they think moderates support terrorists to begin with.
Second is that you gypped 'em. They did devote time and effort in the scene, even if it wasn't towards the goal you picked for them.

As for where you should've pointed out the actual adventure hook? Right about where they started trying to negotiate with the king instead of killing the baddies. "The king refuses to discuss the rule of his nation with you pack of murderhobos, and dismisses you to go kill the terrorist leaders".

They spent about 15 minutes talking and rolled a single diplomacy check. I am not sure if I would call that time and effort comparable to actually going on an adventure.

To use an analogy, are you telling me that if I spent 15 minutes telling the mysterious old man in the tavern why I don't want to explore the dungeon for him and convince him that he would be better off looking for magical macguffins in a different kingdom that I should get full XP for clearing the dungeon?

Second, they never let me in on their plans OOC. I had no idea that they planned to skip town until they did so, I assumed they were trying to negotiate some sort of long term solution or arrange a summit. And I certainly thought that once the king told them he had no interest in helping their cause further they would have switched tactics or tried more extreme measures. Sure, in hind sight I can see where the adventure went off the rails, but I had no idea what they were planning at the time.

As for moderates supporting terrorists, it depends on if people are legitimately being oppressed. A lot of abolitionists supported the Underground Railroad without actually taking part in it directly.


Also, in the future would you mind not throwing racial slurs at me? Thanks.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-23, 07:37 PM
As for moderates supporting terrorists, it depends on if people are legitimately being oppressed. A lot of abolitionists supported the Underground Railroad without actually taking part in it directly.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Underground Railroad was a terrorist faction rather than a network of benevolent people-smugglers, but I suppose the analogy still works.:smallconfused:

Knaight
2014-12-23, 07:45 PM
There's that, and then there's the problem that if you're not built to be the face you should never open your mouth in social scenes or you'll hurt yourself and the rest of the group. :/

This presupposes the existence of "the face", and fairly dramatic skill differences. Some games have that, particularly when there are fairly few social skills. In others, that's very much not the case. Who is best suited can change more between contexts, the general strategy of the conversation matters, so on and so forth.

D&D is getting assumed a lot here, and it has an exceptionally weak social system. A lot of the time the use is equivalent to trying to handle a combat by having everybody roll one Fight check and call it a day, there's a whopping three social skills in a system which is relatively fine grained in other ways, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, in lots of other games it generally works best to have multiple people contributing, and even when it doesn't who should talk varies. The person with advantages in social class and similar might be better suited to court intrigues, but if they're trying to befriend a manual laborer in a tavern after their work ends for the day, they might not be so well suited. Meanwhile, the person who is only allowed into higher social class functions as an attache might be better suited there.

Plus, D&D generally assumes a party, and the culture around the game strongly discourages splitting up. In plenty of others, splitting up to gather information is downright routine, which means that the person making the roll is the one person there.

NichG
2014-12-23, 07:55 PM
There's a difference between knowing that the best way to get what you want is through talking and knowing how to successfully do that talking. While I hate to play the ASD card, it's definitely the best example of what I mean by that; I do most of the idea-having in my current group but if you made me do my best impression of my own Bard during a social encounter I guarantee you I'd bomb it utterly.

I think however that people go into this with an erroneous assumption, and I'm trying to point it out.

It seems like many players assume "I can't speak without saying um all the time, so obviously if I try I'm going to fail". Then they use that as a justification to insist on 'just let me roll my ability' or 'if you require me to RP things, it puts me at an unfair disadvantage'. But that disadvantage is imagined, because the player themselves are the one putting undue value on a particular part of the RP. They're afraid it will matter, and so they don't want to try.

When DMs ask for the RP to matter, they're generally not asking for people to suddenly don Shakespearean garb and do their best hammy acting. They're asking for people to engage with the content of the situation in detail. If a player says something that makes logical sense given the situation, the NPCs, etc, then that's far more important than if they says something florid or use perfect diction in actually pronouncing their 'lines'.

If 'make what I say matter, not how I say it' is acceptable as the 'Moderate Approach', then I think that should be considered.

Talakeal
2014-12-23, 10:32 PM
I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Underground Railroad was a terrorist faction rather than a network of benevolent people-smugglers, but I suppose the analogy still works.:smallconfused:

I suppose that is a bit of a stretch, I was looking for an analogy that didn't involve modern politics.

To rephrase, if a group feels they are oppressed (rightly or wrongly) there are many members of that group who will look upon those that break laws to bring about change as freedom fighters rather than outlaws and will, at least tacitly, support their actions.

zinycor
2014-12-24, 12:01 AM
They spent about 15 minutes talking and rolled a single diplomacy check. I am not sure if I would call that time and effort comparable to actually going on an adventure.

To use an analogy, are you telling me that if I spent 15 minutes telling the mysterious old man in the tavern why I don't want to explore the dungeon for him and convince him that he would be better off looking for magical macguffins in a different kingdom that I should get full XP for clearing the dungeon?

nope, you should et full exp for completing the quest minus the dungeon experience, after all if that resolves the problem of the old man, that's all right.


edit:



For example, in the last session I ran they were trying to get a neighboring kingdom to break an alliance with another country that is at war with the PCs nation. They talked to the ruler of the country, who was having a problem with domestic terrorism. He told the PCs that he couldn't risk war with an ally when they were already under terrorist threat, but if the PCs were to "deal with" the terrorist leaders he would have a lot more room to negotiate.
Now, in my mind this was a fairly straightforward "kill the bad guys" hook, but the PCs completely missed that and didn't realize the king wanted them dead.
Instead of biting, the players talked the king into giving into the terrorists demands so that the more moderate people would stop supporting the terrorists, leaving only the extremists. The PCs then wanted the king to make an alliance with them, and the kings response was "You have already talked me into giving up a large portion of my authority to placate terrorists and their sympathizers, and now you want MORE from me?" Which resulted in the PCs leaving. When I didn't give them experience for completing the mission (my rationale being they did not devote serious resources, time, risk, or effort in this scene and made no progress towards their goal of finding allies) then it devolved into an OOC explosion on their part which I think may have chased some potential new players from the group.

on the matter of experience, why would you only give experience if they succeded? sometimes you can gain a lot of experience from losing, or avoiding the conflict, my guess is that if the players were engaged enough to go for a peacefull solution to the problems instead of go kill terrorist (as a standard mission would go) they should recieve a fair lot of experience, even if they failed at it. After all, they did devote a fair lot of risk in talking to a king into giving up his authority.

Alex12
2014-12-24, 01:44 AM
If you're the only one in your group who actually has ideas about how to talk to NPCs and resolve things through communication, why do you think you have average or below average social skills? That sounds actually like you're pretty on the ball with that.

Well, one member of the group is substantially below average at social skills and also tends to hyperfocus on being the sneaky stabby murderer, another finds it useful when other people do it but thinks it's boring and doesn't want to bother with it himself, and the last guy prefers to manipulate the environment and the situation, along with misdirection to manipulate NPCs. The last guy and I are the two that DM most often, so we don't step on each other's toes much.

And there's a difference between preferring to try and resolve things nonviolently and being good at it.

Talakeal
2014-12-24, 04:08 AM
nope, you should et full exp for completing the quest minus the dungeon experience, after all if that resolves the problem of the old man, that's all right.


They didn't resolve anything though. The kingdom is still allied with their enemies, and they did nothing to weaken their strength or significantly improve their lot in the world.

Could someone in your game (to use a D&D example) really level up to 20 in 1 session without leaving town simply by talking to every quest giver they can find for 10 minutes before turning them down?
Because that is essentially what they did here, they politely refused a quest giver and then wanted full XP for completing the quest after talking for 15 minutes and then making a single diplomacy roll that did not effect their own lives (or the world as a whole) in any noticeable way.


As for the second part, I give XP for completion of a mission, not success. If they give it their all but they lose then they still get XP. But if they refuse to go on the mission at all then no, I am not going to reward them because the only thing they have accomplished in or out of character is wasting the time I spent prepping for the session.

GloatingSwine
2014-12-24, 05:27 AM
Two things leap to mind on this:
First is that it's cute they think moderates support terrorists to begin with.
Second is that you gypped 'em. They did devote time and effort in the scene, even if it wasn't towards the goal you picked for them.

As for where you should've pointed out the actual adventure hook? Right about where they started trying to negotiate with the king instead of killing the baddies. "The king refuses to discuss the rule of his nation with you pack of murderhobos, and dismisses you to go kill the terrorist leaders".

I think here it's more a case of "have a realistic list of things on the table for negotiation". The outcome the players achieved should probably not have been on the table to begin with, (though maybe "the king focuses his armies on suppressing the terrorists and withdraws from the war without actually breaking his alliance" might have been)

hifidelity2
2014-12-24, 07:12 AM
In my group I have the same issue – some of the players are far more articulate than others – the die and the rules are there to help an introvert (Player) play an extrovert (PC)

To the introvert people I asked them what they are trying to achieve (fast talk past the guard) and then let them roll

To the extrovert people I let them do the roleplaying but modify it by the roll (in one game I had someone try and chat up a princess at a ball they had gate-crashed. The person playing the character is a smooth talker and likes social situations so I let him go to town with his spiel – at the end he rolled and seriously fumbled his savoir-fair but as he had roll-played so well I told him that it was going well until he tripped on a step and pulled her gown off when he grabbed the front of it trying not to fall over. The party were all thrown into the dungeon)

NichG
2014-12-24, 01:13 PM
Well, one member of the group is substantially below average at social skills and also tends to hyperfocus on being the sneaky stabby murderer, another finds it useful when other people do it but thinks it's boring and doesn't want to bother with it himself, and the last guy prefers to manipulate the environment and the situation, along with misdirection to manipulate NPCs. The last guy and I are the two that DM most often, so we don't step on each other's toes much.

And there's a difference between preferring to try and resolve things nonviolently and being good at it.

That sounds like you're above average for your group then. Someone who at least tries is already infinitely better at things than people who won't even do so.

Now, whether the DM presents challenges that have a reasonable difficulty to resolve this way is another question entirely. Any DM can end up making things too easy or too hard for their players by mistake.

Talakeal
2014-12-24, 04:00 PM
So it seems like people in this thread (including me) are just talking over other people about the XP issue. Let me restate it in more simple terms:

I give a lump sum of XP for the PCs completing an adventure. I don't care how they do it or whether or not they succeed, so long as they actually do it themselves and give it their best shot.

I find that giving XP per kill leads to ridiculous situations such as PCs picking fights with everything they encounter to farm XP.
If I give XP for dealing with encounters rather than combat, on the other hand, I find players asking for full combat XP in situations where combat isn't appropriate, for example begging a red dragon to spare their life and if they succeed wanting full XP for killing a CR 20 creature, kiting a monster they can't actually kill and then demanding full XP when it gets annoyed and leaves to do something else, or simply avoiding a monster and wanting full XP without putting themselves in the slightest danger or even needing to make a test.

In this particular case the PCs did not "resolve the adventure" in any sense of the word. They spent 10-15 minutes telling the quest giver why they weren't going to go on the mission and then made a single diplomacy check to convince him not to hire someone else. That's it. They did nothing to further their own goals in or out of character, expended zero resources, faced zero risks or challenges, and made zero tactical decisions, then left with the problem unresolved and expected me to give them full XP for what was supposed to be an entire evening worth of adventure.

NichG
2014-12-24, 04:34 PM
In this particular case the PCs did not "resolve the adventure" in any sense of the word. They spent 10-15 minutes telling the quest giver why they weren't going to go on the mission and then made a single diplomacy check to convince him not to hire someone else. That's it. They did nothing to further their own goals in or out of character, expended zero resources, faced zero risks or challenges, and made zero tactical decisions, then left with the problem unresolved and expected me to give them full XP for what was supposed to be an entire evening worth of adventure.

Given what happened, my advice would be to just do flat per-game XP, possibly weighted based on the real-time length of the game session if for whatever reason that varies a lot.

Talakeal
2014-12-24, 04:37 PM
Given what happened, my advice would be to just do flat per-game XP, possibly weighted based on the real-time length of the game session if for whatever reason that varies a lot.

I have tried that. The problem is that people don't have any motivation to do anything in the game in that case. They just sit around the table chatting about World of Warcraft for four hours without actually touching their dice, which is a problem for those of us who actually want to play.

Coidzor
2014-12-24, 05:34 PM
I have tried that. The problem is that people don't have any motivation to do anything in the game in that case. They just sit around the table chatting about World of Warcraft for four hours without actually touching their dice, which is a problem for those of us who actually want to play.

:smalleek: ... :smallconfused:

I have a simple solution for you.

You ask who the hell actually wants to play the damned game you got together to play in the first place and anyone who has to be lead by the nose to play can just leave and play WoW if that's all they're interested in.

Solaris
2014-12-24, 05:36 PM
They spent about 15 minutes talking and rolled a single diplomacy check. I am not sure if I would call that time and effort comparable to actually going on an adventure.

To use an analogy, are you telling me that if I spent 15 minutes telling the mysterious old man in the tavern why I don't want to explore the dungeon for him and convince him that he would be better off looking for magical macguffins in a different kingdom that I should get full XP for clearing the dungeon?

Second, they never let me in on their plans OOC. I had no idea that they planned to skip town until they did so, I assumed they were trying to negotiate some sort of long term solution or arrange a summit. And I certainly thought that once the king told them he had no interest in helping their cause further they would have switched tactics or tried more extreme measures. Sure, in hind sight I can see where the adventure went off the rails, but I had no idea what they were planning at the time.

Ahh, I see your point. I'd gotten the impression they spent the session doing that.
Nonetheless, accomplishing a goal is worth experience points - not the experience points of clearing the dungeon, but rather the experience points of the encounter they did have. You said that they talked the king into agreeing to their demands. Unless you've misspoken, that's a successful encounter that accomplishes their objective (even if it doesn't accomplish the mission). It doesn't involve any danger to them, which is why you'd be right to apply a -25% experience point penalty (if I'm not mistaken, that's what the DMG advises; you'd have to double-check if you don't care for my word on it), but they achieved a solution. Suboptimal and really stupid, sure, but a solution nonetheless.
"Instead of the piles of XP you'd have gotten if you'd tried to fix the problem instead of talking about it, you guys get... 100 experience divided among the lot of you, 'cause the king's only in the single digits as an EL. Don't spend it all in one place."


Also, in the future would you mind not throwing racial slurs at me? Thanks.

Which was the racial slur? I'll remove it.


I have tried that. The problem is that people don't have any motivation to do anything in the game in that case. They just sit around the table chatting about World of Warcraft for four hours without actually touching their dice, which is a problem for those of us who actually want to play.

Yeah, like Coidzor said... it sounds like your group might use a good head-straightening. Not kicking anybody out, just reminding them that you've put time and effort into this and if they want to talk about WoW, they can do that on their own time.

Talakeal
2014-12-24, 05:54 PM
Not their (the PCs) demands, rather the terrorists who the king wanted them to deal with. Basically, they talked the king into caving and wanted said king to reward them for doing so.


I was talking about "gypped"; for those who are unaware it is a slur against the Romani people based on the stereotype that they are all swindlers and conmen.


Also, its not that the group doesn't want to be there, its just that we are all (myself included) very easily distracted. Its not that we wanted to play WoW instead, its just that back when we were gaming heavily we were all serious raiders on different servers and someone would always make a reference to WoW in game, which would lead to a several hour long tangent where we all swapped WoW stories, and I had to make a serious effort to keeping us on track. Not such a problem anymore, but I still try and keep tangents to a minimum while at the table.

Knaight
2014-12-24, 05:54 PM
I have tried that. The problem is that people don't have any motivation to do anything in the game in that case. They just sit around the table chatting about World of Warcraft for four hours without actually touching their dice, which is a problem for those of us who actually want to play.

There's a solution. It's called players who want to play.

NichG
2014-12-24, 07:05 PM
If you're running the game and even you can't maintain interest relative to talking about WoW, your choice of XP reward scheme isn't going to fix that. It could be because your players are causing you burn out, or you have pacing issues with how your campaigns or structured, or whatever, but that root cause is what needs to be addressed before things improve. Otherwise you're basically bribing the players to be there doing something that it seems none of you actually feel motivated to do, so of course you're going to get people complaining and whining about things and so on.

Next game, try to pay close attention to what types of scenes people get distracted most easily during, and when during the game in general it happens. Do people have difficulty getting into game at the start? Does their attention flag halfway through? Is it always during the 'lets decide what we want to do next?' phase, or is it when the PCs get stuck trying to solve a particular problem, or is it during talky parts or combat parts or during descriptions or travel or what? Then take steps to change how those moments are handled.

For example, in my games players tended to get distracted during 'lets decide what we want to do next?' moments. What I found I needed to do was to use more time pressure. Make it so stuff just happens while the PCs are trying to decide what to do, such that it creates an obvious and immediate problem that they must solve to even survive, much less accomplish their goals. Players are sitting around doing nothing or just messing around in the tavern? Someone runs in with a message that their lodgings are on fire. Or assassins show up trying to kill them. Or a dragon flies overhead. The other thing I did was to make it so that the last half-hour of each game was specifically used for a discussion of what to do next time, and then the following session I reminded players of that or started things with the consequences of that choice of activity already in progress (e.g. at the end of last session they decide to go hunting down the god-shard of Sevron, so the beginning of the next session might have them en-route). I found that helped quite a bit, because it made it so if the discussions of what to do next started going long, people who weren't interested could just leave since it was at the end of game anyhow.

Solaris
2014-12-24, 11:18 PM
Not their (the PCs) demands, rather the terrorists who the king wanted them to deal with. Basically, they talked the king into caving and wanted said king to reward them for doing so.
Oh, they wanted the king to reward them, not just get experience points for a royal negotiation?
Yeah, screw that. I still think they should've gotten some (not a lot, but some) for negotiating with the king once they transformed him from a plot hook with a crown into an objective of their own, but their demands were unreasonable from the get, much less the demand for a reward.


I was talking about "gypped"; for those who are unaware it is a slur against the Romani people based on the stereotype that they are all swindlers and conmen.
Huh.
Well, now I changed it to say 'shorted' instead.


Also, its not that the group doesn't want to be there, its just that we are all (myself included) very easily distracted. Its not that we wanted to play WoW instead, its just that back when we were gaming heavily we were all serious raiders on different servers and someone would always make a reference to WoW in game, which would lead to a several hour long tangent where we all swapped WoW stories, and I had to make a serious effort to keeping us on track. Not such a problem anymore, but I still try and keep tangents to a minimum while at the table.

Kind of a tangent itself, but have you taken a look at the d20 Warcraft game? I loathe WoW myself (pay money to grind for endless hours, wheeee), but love the Warcraft RTS games, so the d20 version was something of a happy find for me. Your players might like it for a future campaign.


If you're running the game and even you can't maintain interest relative to talking about WoW, your choice of XP reward scheme isn't going to fix that. It could be because your players are causing you burn out, or you have pacing issues with how your campaigns or structured, or whatever, but that root cause is what needs to be addressed before things improve. Otherwise you're basically bribing the players to be there doing something that it seems none of you actually feel motivated to do, so of course you're going to get people complaining and whining about things and so on.

Actually, I got the impression that his choice of experience reward system did deal with the problem. If you have a group with a short attention span and a mutual love of something, it's entirely possible that you could do everything right and still have them launch into a tangent. I've had to ban Monty Python quotes at my tables because of it.

NichG
2014-12-24, 11:46 PM
Actually, I got the impression that his choice of experience reward system did deal with the problem. If you have a group with a short attention span and a mutual love of something, it's entirely possible that you could do everything right and still have them launch into a tangent. I've had to ban Monty Python quotes at my tables because of it.

My impression was that it exchanged one problem for another. It got them to do stuff, but then they basically proceeded to try to resolve things with as little gaming as possible in order to get at the tasty XP, and then complained about it when it didn't work.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-25, 01:55 PM
So it seems like people in this thread (including me) are just talking over other people about the XP issue. Let me restate it in more simple terms:

I give a lump sum of XP for the PCs completing an adventure. I don't care how they do it or whether or not they succeed, so long as they actually do it themselves and give it their best shot.

I find that giving XP per kill leads to ridiculous situations such as PCs picking fights with everything they encounter to farm XP.
If I give XP for dealing with encounters rather than combat, on the other hand, I find players asking for full combat XP in situations where combat isn't appropriate, for example begging a red dragon to spare their life and if they succeed wanting full XP for killing a CR 20 creature, kiting a monster they can't actually kill and then demanding full XP when it gets annoyed and leaves to do something else, or simply avoiding a monster and wanting full XP without putting themselves in the slightest danger or even needing to make a test.

In this particular case the PCs did not "resolve the adventure" in any sense of the word. They spent 10-15 minutes telling the quest giver why they weren't going to go on the mission and then made a single diplomacy check to convince him not to hire someone else. That's it. They did nothing to further their own goals in or out of character, expended zero resources, faced zero risks or challenges, and made zero tactical decisions, then left with the problem unresolved and expected me to give them full XP for what was supposed to be an entire evening worth of adventure.

This sounds perfectly reasonable as long as you'd told your players at some point that that was how it works.


I was talking about "gypped"; for those who are unaware it is a slur against the Romani people based on the stereotype that they are all swindlers and conmen.

That... is an incredible stretch. I don't doubt that that's how the word originated, but you're literally the first person I've ever seen or heard treat the association like it still exists.

Knaight
2014-12-25, 02:06 PM
That... is an incredible stretch. I don't doubt that that's how the word originated, but you're literally the first person I've ever seen or heard treat the association like it still exists.

I know plenty of people who treat the association like it still exists. Some are Roma, some are deliberately using the association (and often like using the word "Jewed" for the same purpose), some are just aware of it. It's a thing.

Friv
2014-12-25, 04:08 PM
That... is an incredible stretch. I don't doubt that that's how the word originated, but you're literally the first person I've ever seen or heard treat the association like it still exists.

Count me in as a second. That's precisely the origin, and it's still used that way in a lot of places, and a lot of people do take offense. It is not a good word to use, and given how easy it is not to use it, I recommend not.

Talakeal
2014-12-25, 04:38 PM
I know that most people do mean to use it as a slur or are unaware of the association, which is why I asked politely rather than reporting or getting mad. Might I suggest we change the topic before something bad happens?


Anyway, giving a lump sum of XP per adventure has worked well for me in the past. I have had numerous issues with rewarding (and especially with taking away) XP for good or bad RP or for killing monsters, or even for game time.* This is actually the first problem I have had with lump sums of XP per adventure.

The problem here was one of communication though, not an XP system. The players didn't realize what exactly was happening, and what either the NPC wanted them to do IC or what I was planning OOC. I didn't realize it until it was too late. I want to preserve player agency so I don't want to step in and force things, but (as I said in the OP) my players either don't want to talk in character or don't want to make checks to see if their character knows something their player doesn't.


Also, it isn't (usually) that people don't want to be there, we are all just very distractible people who don't get to hand out in a non gaming environment as a group very often. Heck, I enjoy gaming more than just about anything else in my life but even I am prone to going off on tangents at the table when something reminds me of a cool anecdote.


*: I remember one time playing D&D 3.5 when I had a single NPC using hit and run tactics against the PCs, attacking them and then disappearing to wear them down over the course of the dungeon. The players demanded that at the end of the night I give them full XP for "defeating" him each time he retreated, which I felt was a absolutely absurd. That was a nasty fight, and went a long way towards souring me on the XP for kills system entirely.

zinycor
2014-12-25, 06:32 PM
The problem here was one of communication though, not an XP system. The players didn't realize what exactly was happening, and what either the NPC wanted them to do IC or what I was planning OOC. I didn't realize it until it was too late. I want to preserve player agency so I don't want to step in and force things, but (as I said in the OP) my players either don't want to talk in character or don't want to make checks to see if their character knows something their player doesn't.



as you have stated the problem here, i don't really see how rolls would have helped at all in this case, you said that they didn't get thatthe king wanted the terrorist dead, and i don't see how a roll helps them to know that they misinterpreted what you said, specially since you said yourself that it was pretty obvious to you, probably the main problem there is that they didn't tell you right away what they understood, and you hadn't prepared for a "we don't feel like doing that quest" scenario, in which case you could have broken the 4th wall and tell them OOC that they do need to go kill the terrorist since that's what you have prepared.

Going back to the main topic, i think that treating social skills without doing any roll is kinda social larping (If that makes any sense) and i love that idea. Personally i also try to avoid making rolls in social situations, not because they aren't usefull, but because is more interesting that way.

Talakeal
2014-12-25, 11:23 PM
as you have stated the problem here, i don't really see how rolls would have helped at all in this case, you said that they didn't get thatthe king wanted the terrorist dead, and i don't see how a roll helps them to know that they misinterpreted what you said, specially since you said yourself that it was pretty obvious to you, probably the main problem there is that they didn't tell you right away what they understood, and you hadn't prepared for a "we don't feel like doing that quest" scenario, in which case you could have broken the 4th wall and tell them OOC that they do need to go kill the terrorist since that's what you have prepared.

Going back to the main topic, i think that treating social skills without doing any roll is kinda social larping (If that makes any sense) and i love that idea. Personally i also try to avoid making rolls in social situations, not because they aren't usefull, but because is more interesting that way.

They can not do a quest if they like, they just arent going to be rewarded for it.

Anyway, they told me later that they didnt understand what the king was asking and so they were grasping at straws. If they had just made a simple semse motive roll they could have found out directly.

Solaris
2014-12-26, 12:13 AM
... How can they misunderstand "Yo, we got these guys we need made dead, and you're just the disposable assets to do it!" Usually you gotta talk players out of killing things.

SiuiS
2014-12-26, 12:19 AM
That... is an incredible stretch. I don't doubt that that's how the word originated, but you're literally the first person I've ever seen or heard treat the association like it still exists.

You've just not been to the parts of the Internet what care, then. Gypsy itself is considered a slur, in much the same way Tom Sawyer was able to say n-word Jim and it was cool and then years later it wasn't. Another one that surprised me is to welsh on a bet; I always heard it as welch, but apparently it's just denigrating welsh folks.


Count me in as a second. That's precisely the origin, and it's still used that way in a lot of places, and a lot of people do take offense. It is not a good word to use, and given how easy it is not to use it, I recommend not.

It's a hard word to replace in your lexicon, actually, because you quickly find any way of conveying without unpacking and completely restructuring the sentence that would use the word gyp is just going to use a different similarly bad slur. It's difficult once you do have it in your common usage.


I know that most people do mean to use it as a slur or are unaware of the association, which is why I asked politely rather than reporting or getting mad. Might I suggest we change the topic before something bad happens?


Please don't do this. Spoilers are sufficient to keep the conversation pleasant, and the difference between learning of a bad habit and talking through it, versus learning of. A bad habit but not being able to say anything, just it's bad, stop doing it, stop talking about it, pretend it didn't happen but remember you're bad, is huge. Letting folks sort their brains civilly is A-OK by forum rules and gets permanent change if they come to your side of things.



Also, it isn't (usually) that people don't want to be there, we are all just very distractible people who don't get to hand out in a non gaming environment as a group very often. Heck, I enjoy gaming more than just about anything else in my life but even I am prone to going off on tangents at the table when something reminds me of a cool anecdote.


I remember one time playing D&D 3.5 when I had a single NPC using hit and run tactics against the PCs, attacking them and then disappearing to wear them down over the course of the dungeon. The players demanded that at the end of the night I give them full XP for "defeating" him each time he retreated, which I felt was a absolutely absurd. That was a nasty fight, and went a long way towards souring me on the XP for kills system entirely.

Man. I can sorta see that? But it's a weird case. If you had traps dump damage and eat their resources, they'd get the experience. But giving it for a guy who shows up and dissapears feels wrong.

goto124
2014-12-26, 12:39 AM
Man. I can sorta see that? But it's a weird case. If you had traps dump damage and eat their resources, they'd get the experience. But giving it for a guy who shows up and dissapears feels wrong.

Was the appear-disappear guy dumping damage and eating resources as well? That's what I thought from "attacking them and then disappearing to wear them down over the course of the dungeon". I understand why the players wanted the full XP- because by having him disappear constantly, the DM didn't even give them the chance to kill said guy. There are thematic reasons to have the same person to back out of fights all the time, but when you lose resources to that person and don't get any rewards for it for reasons outside your control, it feels rather unfair.


Anyway, they told me later that they didnt understand what the king was asking and so they were grasping at straws. If they had just made a simple semse motive roll they could have found out directly.

Just a suggestion: the king, having realised that the PCs didn't get him, goes straight to the point and says 'kill the bad guys please'?

NichG
2014-12-26, 01:36 AM
Was the appear-disappear guy dumping damage and eating resources as well? That's what I thought from "attacking them and then disappearing to wear them down over the course of the dungeon". I understand why the players wanted the full XP- because by having him disappear constantly, the DM didn't even give them the chance to kill said guy. There are thematic reasons to have the same person to back out of fights all the time, but when you lose resources to that person and don't get any rewards for it for reasons outside your control, it feels rather unfair.

The guy was using a legitimate tactic to wear down his enemies. It's not (well, hopefully) as if the guy's resources were also magically respawning every time he disappeared and re-appeared. This is pretty clearly a case of a single drawn-out encounter against a foe who is using guerilla tactics, which is being interleaved with the rest of the dungeon content.

Talakeal
2014-12-26, 02:27 AM
Just a suggestion: the king, having realised that the PCs didn't get him, goes straight to the point and says 'kill the bad guys please'?

Essentially because I didnt realize that was what was happening. I assumed the players were just going for some unconventional third option where everybody wins.

What I didnt realize is that they were totally missing the king's innuendo. Rather than coming right out and saying "I want you to kill the rebels, do so and I will help you in return", he said things like "Our nation is under seige by terrorists, and I cannot put strain on our military be breaking tried and true alliances right now, however if someone where to deal with these terrorists I might be in a better position to renegotiate alliances". The meeting was in public, and the king didnt want to look like the ruthless power hungry tyrant he is by simply stating he wanted death to those who disagreed.

I intended the adventure to go like this:

Players get the mission to break the alliance between the nation in question and their enemies.

Players meet with the ruler of said nation and get the mission to deal with the rebels.

Players meet with the rebels and learn that they have legitimate gripes and that the king is a true tyrant.

They might also discover that many of the rebels are motivated more by concern for their own social status rather than the wellbeing of the people and are. Using some pretty underhanded tactics.

At this point the players probably decide to side with the lesser of the two evils and either kill the rebels or help the rebels overthrow the king. At this point the winner will break the alliance with the enemy nation as a reward for the PCs.

If the players want to go for a more complete victory they can either arrange a meeting between the king and the rebel leader and force them to work out a legitimate compromise, or just kill them both and put someone who is either more rational (or merely a puppet of the PC's nation) on the throne. I had an NPC setup for just such an eventuality. This might actually result in the nation not only withdrawing from their alliance against the PCs enemies but switching sides and joining into the war on the PCs side.




The guy was using a legitimate tactic to wear down his enemies. It's not (well, hopefully) as if the guy's resources were also magically respawning every time he disappeared and re-appeared. This is pretty clearly a case of a single drawn-out encounter against a foe who is using guerilla tactics, which is being interleaved with the rest of the dungeon content.

No, he didnt recover his resources. And the party did eventually corner and kill him, and K gave them full XP for doing so, but they wanted full XP for each time they had encountered him as they considered his withdrawels to be defeats and therefore worthy of full XP.

SiuiS
2014-12-26, 03:27 AM
Was the appear-disappear guy dumping damage and eating resources as well? That's what I thought from "attacking them and then disappearing to wear them down over the course of the dungeon". I understand why the players wanted the full XP- because by having him disappear constantly, the DM didn't even give them the chance to kill said guy. There are thematic reasons to have the same person to back out of fights all the time, but when you lose resources to that person and don't get any rewards for it for reasons outside your control, it feels rather unfair.


The bad guy would hit them, they would fling spells, lose hp and he dissapears. Repeat several times.



The guy was using a legitimate tactic to wear down his enemies. It's not (well, hopefully) as if the guy's resources were also magically respawning every time he disappeared and re-appeared. This is pretty clearly a case of a single drawn-out encounter against a foe who is using guerilla tactics, which is being interleaved with the rest of the dungeon content.

Problem: the game system does not handle that like a valid tactic. You have two ways to represent that mechanically a without 3.5 sort of breaking down. Either A, it is one very long fight and the ECL is bumped up to account for it, or B, each instance of him appearing and fighting is basically a trap going off, fluffed as "the guy attacks again!". Either way, they players should indeed get more XP than his CR would suggest. It's just either all one huge lump, or once per 'trap'.

But no, his retreat was not a victory for the party. They did not overcome the challenge.

Urpriest
2014-12-26, 03:50 AM
Don't know if someone has mentioned this already, but as DM you should be rolling Sense Motive secretly. The PCs don't choose when to roll it, you just roll it for them behind the screen and tell them what info they get if the roll is good.

Solaris
2014-12-26, 03:51 AM
I'd say whether they got experience for each encounter with the guerrilla wizard would depend on whether or not they drove him away. If they made him run (as opposed to him falling back of his own accord), they should get experience points for defeating him (though probably reduced, as he's more likely to run away than a normal combatant). If not... well, they'll get experience points when they do defeat him.

NichG
2014-12-26, 04:04 AM
Problem: the game system does not handle that like a valid tactic. You have two ways to represent that mechanically a without 3.5 sort of breaking down. Either A, it is one very long fight and the ECL is bumped up to account for it or B, each instance of him appearing and fighting is basically a trap going off, fluffed as "the guy attacks again!". Either way, they players should indeed get more XP than his CR would suggest. It's just either all one huge lump, or once per 'trap'.

This doesn't follow. First of all, '3.5 sort of breaking down' is being very melodramatic for 'the PCs get less XP than you believe they should'. Of all the various things that can in fact make 3.5 break down, XP pacing is among the least of them due to the fact that the system's difficulty is pegged to XP totals. If anything, getting less XP makes characters more powerful in the long run because you outpace WBL. If you really want to worry about deviating from the assumptions of 3.5, you should reward XP per gold-piece equivalent of treasure found.

Secondly, there's really nothing in the system at all about making long fights have higher ECL. That's basically something you just made up out of whole cloth. Representing the guy as a trap is ridiculous IMO.

The challenge is to deal with an enemy character with finite, tracked resources. That character uses those resources in a way which anyone in the party could also do. The fact that other enemies have not used this tactic before doesn't really signify - if anything, that would be an argument that the party should have gotten less XP for previous encounters because their enemies had been 'dumbed down' compared to this guy.

But I think this whole point of view that 'XP is a reward for in-game things' is kind of problematic. It mixes in-character and out-of-character motivations far too much. The players become motivated to play their characters in a way to maximize their XP gain, even if those actions are nonsensical in-world. Sometimes the DM uses this as a carrot to get the players to behave a certain way, but it's playing with fire. When the players start making arguments about how much XP they should get, it's gone out of control and IMO everyone at the table has missed the core point of what XP represents at that moment:

XP is pacing. Gaining XP does not make you more powerful relative to your enemies, because your ECL goes up and therefore so do 'appropriate CRs'. It just changes the scale of the game.

Pacing should not be at the whim of lawyerly arguments about 'how much was that guy's CR' or 'does that count as two encounters?' or 'hey, we totally did the quest', nor should it really be at the whim of 'I would really like my players to pay attention' or 'I want to encourage my players to RP better' or whatever. Pacing should be something which moves the game forward at a rate which keeps things interesting for the players but also gives them time to adjust to new powers and abilities. That's far more important than whether a particular XP reward was fair or not, because the purpose of XP isn't to reward - that's just incidental - it's to control pacing.

SiuiS
2014-12-26, 08:56 PM
This doesn't follow. First of all, '3.5 sort of breaking down' is being very melodramatic for 'the PCs get less XP than you believe they should'.

You missed the very obvious "this niche situation does not and cannot map to any rule in the game", and a ruleset that utterly fails to account for somethig even with it's emergent rules properties, has broken down. There is no analogue for what this guy did in the game despite there being several analogues for what this guy did in the game. The game cannot compile him as a variable.



Secondly, there's really nothing in the system at all about making long fights have higher ECL. That's basically something you just made up out of whole cloth. Representing the guy as a trap is ridiculous IMO.

Forest and trees. "Long fight" is missing the point. Harder fight due to clever use of terrain (entire dungeon) is in the DMG, which is what a protracted engagement with an enemy who falls back and reduces the value of your resources is.

Traps are discreet encounters which can be seen coming, are activated, deplete party resources, and then go away. That maps to lightning strikes, forest fires, avalanches, days in 4e of overland travel that sap healing surges, and also ambush lightning raids.

I find it interesting you use a narrative argument for pacing. But don't recognize that the closest encounter analogue is a the encounter rules for traps.


The challenge is to deal with an enemy character with finite, tracked resources. That character uses those resources in a way which anyone in the party could also do. The fact that other enemies have not used this tactic before doesn't really signify - if anything, that would be an argument that the party should have gotten less XP for previous encounters because their enemies had been 'dumbed down' compared to this guy.

Or, and hear me out here, this may sound off the wall, or we could go by the default standard of one engagement being one encounter and recognize that this guy is above the bar rather than the entire rest of the game being below the bar.


But I think this whole point of view that 'XP is a reward for in-game things' is kind of problematic. It mixes in-character and out-of-character motivations far too much. The players become motivated to play their characters in a way to maximize their XP gain, even if those actions are nonsensical in-world.

Welcome to dungeons and dragons.



XP is pacing. Gaining XP does not make you more powerful relative to your enemies, because your ECL goes up and therefore so do 'appropriate CRs'. It just changes the scale of the game.

Yes and no. You've misapplied a game concept as a world concept; appropriate encounters will, as a number rubric, scale up. Any specific encounter will not necessarily remain 'appropriate' for your level. It's perfectly possible to level up enough that Duke Wellington is no longer a threat.

Coidzor
2014-12-26, 09:13 PM
The guy was using a legitimate tactic to wear down his enemies. It's not (well, hopefully) as if the guy's resources were also magically respawning every time he disappeared and re-appeared. This is pretty clearly a case of a single drawn-out encounter against a foe who is using guerilla tactics, which is being interleaved with the rest of the dungeon content.

That should still be figured in somewhere if the challenge is to get through the dungeon with this guy harassing them and making every other fight more difficult.

Not giving them anything for repeatedly challenging like that is as wrong as giving them full experience for killing the guy every time they survived him or forced him to withdraw. Unless he was actually being defeated each time and being saved by a contingency or something.

Killing a guy 6 times in a dungeon and only getting XP for the 6th time because his contingent teleport took effect and took him to someone to cast Revivify on him the first five times is definitely a less than orthodox move.

NichG
2014-12-26, 09:27 PM
You missed the very obvious "this niche situation does not and cannot map to any rule in the game", and a ruleset that utterly fails to account for somethig even with it's emergent rules properties, has broken down. There is no analogue for what this guy did in the game despite there being several analogues for what this guy did in the game. The game cannot compile him as a variable.

Forest and trees. "Long fight" is missing the point. Harder fight due to clever use of terrain (entire dungeon) is in the DMG, which is what a protracted engagement with an enemy who falls back and reduces the value of your resources is.

Traps are discreet encounters which can be seen coming, are activated, deplete party resources, and then go away. That maps to lightning strikes, forest fires, avalanches, days in 4e of overland travel that sap healing surges, and also ambush lightning raids.


If we're being a stickler for rules, the DMG also has two sections on things which modify the difficulty of encounters (one section for incidentals, one section for intentionals), and in both cases explicitly says that such modifiers should not change the CR for XP awards. The 'intentionals' section also explicitly mentions a number of terrain-related factors, things which are far more extreme than an enemy making smart decisions - you know, things like 'ambient conditions deal damage'. They even have 'enemy has guaranteed surprise' as one of these factors which does not change the CR for XP purposes.



I find it interesting you use a narrative argument for pacing. But don't recognize that the closest encounter analogue is a the encounter rules for traps.


It's not a narrative argument, it's a meta-game argument. They're not actually the same thing.

Players enjoy advancement. However, advancement that is too rapid leaves you without knowing how your character works (gamist), causes previous things to quickly become irrelevant in the story (narrative), and means that it's hard to establish a consistent relationship between your character and the world (simulationist). So there's a sweet spot - that's why you don't generally play one session at Lv1 and the next session suddenly you're Lv20.



Or, and hear me out here, this may sound off the wall, or we could go by the default standard of one engagement being one encounter and recognize that this guy is above the bar rather than the entire rest of the game being below the bar.


Or, y'know, we could not obsess about things that don't really matter and move on with actually playing the game (well, we can't, but the players in such a situation can).



Welcome to dungeons and dragons.


It's certainly not endemic to the game itself. D&D campaigns which don't have this problem are quite common.


Yes and no. You've misapplied a game concept as a world concept; appropriate encounters will, as a number rubric, scale up. Any specific encounter will not necessarily remain 'appropriate' for your level. It's perfectly possible to level up enough that Duke Wellington is no longer a threat.

'Duke Wellington' is only as relevant as the players and DM make him. If he becomes irrelevant through leveling, some other guy will show up who will be a threat. Or the game will be over. Leveling doesn't solve problems, it just spray paints the same problems in a new color.

goto124
2014-12-26, 09:59 PM
That should still be figured in somewhere if the challenge is to get through the dungeon with this guy harassing them and making every other fight more difficult.

Not giving them anything for repeatedly challenging like that is as wrong as giving them full experience for killing the guy every time they survived him or forced him to withdraw. Unless he was actually being defeated each time and being saved by a contingency or something.

Killing a guy 6 times in a dungeon and only getting XP for the 6th time because his contingent teleport took effect and took him to someone to cast Revivify on him the first five times is definitely a less than orthodox move.

You put it better than I did. The party should get at least some XP for every time they defeat the shady guy. They did put in the effort, after all.

SiuiS
2014-12-27, 03:40 AM
If we're being a stickler for rules, the DMG also has two sections on things which modify the difficulty of encounters (one section for incidentals, one section for intentionals), and in both cases explicitly says that such modifiers should not change the CR for XP awards. The 'intentionals' section also explicitly mentions a number of terrain-related factors, things which are far more extreme than an enemy making smart decisions - you know, things like 'ambient conditions deal damage'. They even have 'enemy has guaranteed surprise' as one of these factors which does not change the CR for XP purposes.


Serves me right for taking someone else's word. Increases ECL but not CR, yes?



It's not a narrative argument, it's a meta-game argument. They're not actually the same thing.

Fair enough.

From a metagame standpoint you're performing the exact same function a trap performs and for the same reasons. You're just using a creature instead of a mechanism (much like a routine of hitting summon or gate traps).



Or, y'know, we could not obsess about things that don't really matter and move on with actually playing the game (well, we can't, but the players in such a situation can).


It's the DM position's burden to handle this crap so players don't have to.



It's certainly not endemic to the game itself. D&D campaigns which don't have this problem are quite common.


It's hard coded into the rules. The fact that you're wise enough to see past it is cool, but like all RAW discussions we aren't discussing a reasonable ruleset, we're doing this weird Socratic dialogue wherein we accept the stupidest things as true and factual because book.


'Duke Wellington' is only as relevant as the players and DM make him. If he becomes irrelevant through leveling, some other guy will show up who will be a threat. Or the game will be over. Leveling doesn't solve problems, it just spray paints the same problems in a new color.

Yeah, but you quickly reach a point where if you follow that tack then why play? You'll be a dood who does a thing that's supposed to be important and countered by some other dood.

You have to accept that there's value attached to specifics in the fiction, or you may as well walk away now. We could argue the specifics but here the Socratic stupidity falls away. It's always group by group. The idea that the metagame works a certain way so advancement had no real value is an easily disproved one. The value is only ever subjective. Which means the value exists if the players want it.


You put it better than I did. The party should get at least some XP for every time they defeat the shady guy. They did put in the effort, after all.

Or at least boost his effective challenge. One bigger lump sum is fine.

NichG
2014-12-27, 05:13 AM
Serves me right for taking someone else's word. Increases ECL but not CR, yes?

Nope, no mention of ECL. I think this is just the usual D&D 3.5 contradicting itself. Put a table for modifying CR in one place, say 'don't modify CR' in another. The sections I'm thinking of are under the Adventure chapter.


It's hard coded into the rules. The fact that you're wise enough to see past it is cool, but like all RAW discussions we aren't discussing a reasonable ruleset, we're doing this weird Socratic dialogue wherein we accept the stupidest things as true and factual because book.

I suppose we could do that, but why? This is a 'DM asking for advice' thread rather than theorycraft, so I think its perfectly reasonable to discuss non-RAW alternatives that resolve these problems. That's basically the reason I suggested per-session XP a page or so back - Talakeal used XP as a carrot to get certain behaviors out of his players, but it ended up overshooting a bit and causing other problematic behaviors. The cause of that is related to this thing about mixing up different perspectives of 'what is XP for?'.



Yeah, but you quickly reach a point where if you follow that tack then why play? You'll be a dood who does a thing that's supposed to be important and countered by some other dood.

You have to accept that there's value attached to specifics in the fiction, or you may as well walk away now. We could argue the specifics but here the Socratic stupidity falls away. It's always group by group. The idea that the metagame works a certain way so advancement had no real value is an easily disproved one. The value is only ever subjective. Which means the value exists if the players want it.

The stance I'd take is, yes, illusions are important to the enjoyment of the game, but the DM should not share those illusions. So when I talk to DMs about DMing, I'm not going to pretend that the meta-game doesn't exist. For the DM, it has to. More importantly, the DM should be very careful about doing things that make those illusions get out of control. Players feeling like XP is a reward is useful. Players feeling like XP is the only reward of value is a problem.

As a player, I've got my own way of answering 'why play?' - which is for the actual experience of the play itself. More specifically I like to figure things out, and I like to experience novel ideas. It's good that I can't out-level the challenges of the world, because if I could then I know I'd be playing a game in which the only challenges left are the existential ones (e.g. 'I am god, anything that happens or does not happens by my will, do I decide to allow suffering to continue?' kinds of challenges). That can be fun occasionally, but it's draining. It also takes a particular kind of DM to run that well in D&D, and a group of players who are interested in actually going there. So most of the time, I'm happy that no matter how powerful my character gets, there's still going to be meaningful push-back from the world.

I'd think that most long-term players would have an answer for 'why play?' that goes deeper than 'so I can get XP' or 'so I can be more powerful than everyone else', though it'll be different than mine in a lot of cases.

SiuiS
2014-12-27, 08:55 PM
Nope, no mention of ECL. I think this is just the usual D&D 3.5 contradicting itself. Put a table for modifying CR in one place, say 'don't modify CR' in another. The sections I'm thinking of are under the Adventure chapter.


I haven't read the DMG cover to cover in a while, but I remember a discussion about Orc specifically. If the players ambush their sleeping camp versus fight them fair versus stuck between two cliffs with fortified Orc positions raining flaming barrels down on them, and the challenges posed in each situation and how the effective level of these challenges differ despite the numeric reward ostensibly being the same, use your judgement, etc.



I suppose we could do that, but why? This is a 'DM asking for advice' thread rather than theorycraft, so I think its perfectly reasonable to discuss non-RAW alternatives that resolve these problems.


The stance I'd take is, yes, illusions are important to the enjoyment of the game, but the DM should not share those illusions. ong-term players would have an answer for 'why play?' that goes deeper than 'so I can get XP' or 'so I can be more powerful than everyone else', though it'll be different than mine in a lot of cases.

These are both reasonable stances.

The Insanity
2014-12-27, 10:21 PM
If they're not interested in RP, why are they playing a roleplaying game?
For the game part, I'd imagine.

Jormengand
2014-12-28, 09:06 AM
For the game part, I'd imagine.

Or maybe they wan't to RP, but they're socially awkward and have difficulty doing so. They get fed up at being shut down all the time, and that's when they decide "Screw it, let's play WoW".

NichG
2014-12-28, 05:53 PM
Or maybe they wan't to RP, but they're socially awkward and have difficulty doing so. They get fed up at being shut down all the time, and that's when they decide "Screw it, let's play WoW".

The answer there is to not shut them down for being awkward, which is easily enough done. There's a big difference between:

"Good idea trying to blackmail the duke, but it didn't work this time because just seeing him stumbling home drunk with a woman who wasn't his wife isn't that big of a deal in this society, you needed something juicier. This particular society doesn't care that much about hedonism, but they're really specific and careful about inheritance law and bloodlines. Maybe if one of the duke's outings had resulted in a child then you'd have something more concrete to bargain with..."

and

"The duke laughs in your face after your ninth 'um' and kicks you out, saying, 'I wonder what that idiot wanted'. Man, you suck at this".

Hint: Don't do the latter one.

When success or failure has an element of DM judgement to it, it can help build trust and confidence if you explain why people failed, at least at first.

Talakeal
2014-12-28, 06:51 PM
The answer there is to not shut them down for being awkward, which is easily enough done. There's a big difference between:

"Good idea trying to blackmail the duke, but it didn't work this time because just seeing him stumbling home drunk with a woman who wasn't his wife isn't that big of a deal in this society, you needed something juicier. This particular society doesn't care that much about hedonism, but they're really specific and careful about inheritance law and bloodlines. Maybe if one of the duke's outings had resulted in a child then you'd have something more concrete to bargain with..."

and

"The duke laughs in your face after your ninth 'um' and kicks you out, saying, 'I wonder what that idiot wanted'. Man, you suck at this".

Hint: Don't do the latter one.

When success or failure has an element of DM judgement to it, it can help build trust and confidence if you explain why people failed, at least at first.

I imagine that he was referring to people who refuse to participate at all in social interaction scenes and then get frustrated when the game requires them to advance their goals. I hav met a lot of people, both online and in person, who claim to be so socially awkward that the mere thought of having an IC conversation, acted out or simply describes, causes them to shut down.

goto124
2014-12-28, 09:09 PM
I imagine that he was referring to people who refuse to participate at all in social interaction scenes and then get frustrated when the game requires them to advance their goals. I hav met a lot of people, both online and in person, who claim to be so socially awkward that the mere thought of having an IC conversation, acted out or simply describes, causes them to shut down.

It can be a real problem for these socially awkward people, even if they did exaggerate it somewhat. The very fact they they're in a RPG, means they do want some form of social engagement right? Perhaps they hope to pick up some social skills and connect with people through these games, since they have so much trouble in real life. Assuming you've talked to the player and confirmed the above is true (as opposed to really wanting to avoid social contact, in which it's probably best to stick to 1-player computer games), the GM and perhaps other players should help him to ease into the social parts of the game. Like NichG suggested:


The answer there is to not shut them down for being awkward, which is easily enough done. There's a big difference between:

[in-depth explanation of why it didn't work]

and

[NPC spits in PC's face with no reason given]

Hint: Don't do the latter one.

When success or failure has an element of DM judgement to it, it can help build trust and confidence if you explain why people failed, at least at first.

NichG
2014-12-28, 09:29 PM
I imagine that he was referring to people who refuse to participate at all in social interaction scenes and then get frustrated when the game requires them to advance their goals. I hav met a lot of people, both online and in person, who claim to be so socially awkward that the mere thought of having an IC conversation, acted out or simply describes, causes them to shut down.

A lot of that kind of hesitancy can come from bad experiences with DMs who, rather than simply explaining things, made the player feel dumb. What it comes down to is that there's a lot of players who are carrying some kind of baggage with them based on past experiences - 'my last group was full of power-gamers who ridiculed me for picking bad feats, and I felt useless, so I hate all optimization' or 'the DM insulted me and had my character thrown into a dungeon for not instantly understanding his version of medieval court manners despite having no introduction to the subject, so now I try to avoid opening my mouth in character' or things like that.

That's not a reason to stop trying with those people, but it does mean that you sometimes have to go beyond just taking their claims at their word. Lots of people get soured on things based on a small number of bad experiences, and then claim absolutely 'I just can't do this' - 'I just can't do math', etc. So if you want them to bridge that gap you have to create an environment which doesn't reinforce that belief. So e.g. if they succeed a lot when they roll, but fail whenever they just talk, they're going to conclude 'I can only succeed when I roll'. If you have them not roll, then you have to give feedback about what was done well and what was done poorly so they think at a level beyond just 'I suck at this'. Etc.

And it's also good to not generate that kind of bad experience in the first place with new players.

Jormengand
2014-12-28, 09:38 PM
I imagine that he was referring to people who refuse to participate at all in social interaction scenes and then get frustrated when the game requires them to advance their goals. I hav met a lot of people, both online and in person, who claim to be so socially awkward that the mere thought of having an IC conversation, acted out or simply describes, causes them to shut down.

See, the thing is, that unlike my ninja, I don't have a CHA of 16, so I shouldn't be expected to use my own CHA of about 6 when trying to roll diplomacy. Because my character is better than me at coming up with what to say, I need to be able to plan out what I want to say even if my character is actually trying to fast-talk his way out of a situation. The exact same way that you don't expect me to push past the DM every time I make a strength check or dodge a flying DMG every time I'm attacked. The same way that even if I can't speak elvish, my character can. Just because I'm not adept at, or even willing to do, something ("My monk jumps out of the third-floor window") doesn't mean my character can't. Why this suddenly doesn't apply to CHA is beyond me.

NichG
2014-12-28, 10:12 PM
See, the thing is, that unlike my ninja, I don't have a CHA of 16, so I shouldn't be expected to use my own CHA of about 6 when trying to roll diplomacy. Because my character is better than me at coming up with what to say, I need to be able to plan out what I want to say even if my character is actually trying to fast-talk his way out of a situation.

You can already do this. You're sitting at a table where six seconds of in-game time can take upwards of 30 minutes to resolve out-of-character. So maybe you spend 3 minutes thinking up 'what do I say to this guy?' but then when you speak in character no time has passed.

Solaris
2014-12-28, 11:28 PM
See, the thing is, that unlike my ninja, I don't have a CHA of 16, so I shouldn't be expected to use my own CHA of about 6 when trying to roll diplomacy. Because my character is better than me at coming up with what to say, I need to be able to plan out what I want to say even if my character is actually trying to fast-talk his way out of a situation. The exact same way that you don't expect me to push past the DM every time I make a strength check or dodge a flying DMG every time I'm attacked. The same way that even if I can't speak elvish, my character can. Just because I'm not adept at, or even willing to do, something ("My monk jumps out of the third-floor window") doesn't mean my character can't. Why this suddenly doesn't apply to CHA is beyond me.

Nor choose tactical options, nor select spells to use and how to use them?
You can't roll a skill check for either of those. The dice can't tell you where to drop a fireball, what spells to memorize, where to stand in combat, who to hit, or whether or not to try using a trip attempt or bull rush maneuver. Why should social skills be any different? Why should "I diplomance him" have any better results than "I hit him"? Sure, it might get the bare minimum if you roll them dice, but if you can't muster it up within yourself to sit there and think about a response, don't play a face, and definitely don't expect any more optimal results than the guy playing a straight fighter who picked Weapon Focus if you do.

Talakeal
2014-12-29, 12:03 AM
See, the thing is, that unlike my ninja, I don't have a CHA of 16, so I shouldn't be expected to use my own CHA of about 6 when trying to roll diplomacy. Because my character is better than me at coming up with what to say, I need to be able to plan out what I want to say even if my character is actually trying to fast-talk his way out of a situation. The exact same way that you don't expect me to push past the DM every time I make a strength check or dodge a flying DMG every time I'm attacked. The same way that even if I can't speak elvish, my character can. Just because I'm not adept at, or even willing to do, something ("My monk jumps out of the third-floor window") doesn't mean my character can't. Why this suddenly doesn't apply to CHA is beyond me.

I think it is a matter of saying what you are doing rather than doing it.

For example, to use your examples, you wouldn't simply say "I want the monster to be on the other side of the room now." You would actually use Bullrush or the like to push him there. Likewise you are describing your monk jumping out the third floor window, rather than merely stating "I want me monk to be outside now."

Likewise I don't expect you to act out or give me a word for word account of your conversation (although you can if you want), but I do want you to say something like "I appeal to the king's humanity and explain the horrible civilian casualties that will occur if he goes through with this attack," rather than "I roll diplomacy to get my way!".

Jormengand
2014-12-29, 08:42 PM
Why should "I diplomance him" have any better results than "I hit him"?

It... uh, shouldn't? When I hit him, I roll a die against his AC and see if I hit. When I diplomance him, I roll a die against the DC and see if I manage. I don't have to describe how I'm hitting him with a sword. I just have to say which of the mechanical options available to me I am using, on what target, and then making any decisions I need to make (such as power attack, or to what end I'm diplomancing). I need to say what I'm doing, I don't actually need to do it myself.

Solaris
2014-12-29, 09:41 PM
It... uh, shouldn't? When I hit him, I roll a die against his AC and see if I hit. When I diplomance him, I roll a die against the DC and see if I manage. I don't have to describe how I'm hitting him with a sword. I just have to say which of the mechanical options available to me I am using, on what target, and then making any decisions I need to make (such as power attack, or to what end I'm diplomancing). I need to say what I'm doing, I don't actually need to do it myself.

You missed the metaphor.
Diplomancing without any description beyond the most basic explanation of the end is like a regular attack in D&D - one of the most ineffectual and least-useful options to take. Sure, it can get the job done, a bit, kind of, but there's better ways to go about it and accomplish your ends.
Adding in some description and points to the discussion is like taking the options, such as Power Attack, a trip attempt, or something similar. It gets the job done better and more efficiently. You don't need to negotiate the points yourself, but you need to at least be able to state them.

Jormengand
2014-12-29, 10:21 PM
You missed the metaphor.
Diplomancing without any description beyond the most basic explanation of the end is like a regular attack in D&D - one of the most ineffectual and least-useful options to take. Sure, it can get the job done, a bit, kind of, but there's better ways to go about it and accomplish your ends.
Adding in some description and points to the discussion is like taking the options, such as Power Attack, a trip attempt, or something similar. It gets the job done better and more efficiently. You don't need to negotiate the points yourself, but you need to at least be able to state them.

But that's my point - I only have to say what I'm doing in mechanical terms, and I shouldn't be expected to do the action or describe it beyond that.

Jay R
2014-12-29, 10:43 PM
See, the thing is, that unlike my ninja, I don't have a CHA of 16, so I shouldn't be expected to use my own CHA of about 6 when trying to roll diplomacy. Because my character is better than me at coming up with what to say, I need to be able to plan out what I want to say even if my character is actually trying to fast-talk his way out of a situation. The exact same way that you don't expect me to push past the DM every time I make a strength check or dodge a flying DMG every time I'm attacked. The same way that even if I can't speak elvish, my character can. Just because I'm not adept at, or even willing to do, something ("My monk jumps out of the third-floor window") doesn't mean my character can't. Why this suddenly doesn't apply to CHA is beyond me.

It does apply to CHA, exactly as it applies to everything else. You can't make a STR check without telling me what you're using your strength to do. You don't just say, "My high strength character knows better than I do what to use his strength on. I roll to see if his strength can solve this situation." No, you have to say, "I make a STR check to see if I can roll that boulder over in front of the door."

You don't say, "My character knows better than I do which of her 4 languages will work here." You have to say, "She speaks in Elvish" - and you have to tell us what he says.

You have to tell us that the monk jumps out of the window, not just roll a DEX check for something, anything.

And for exactly the same reasons, you have to tell us what your character is trying to convince the duke to do, and what argument he uses, before you can make a Diplomacy check.

You don't have to have high charisma. But you do have to have the idea.

You: Roger ... er ... tries to convince the ... uh ... duke ... to ... um ... send a whatayacallit ... army, that's right, to defend the southern - no, wait, I mean the northern border.
DM: Why should he do that?
You. I roll a diplomacy check.
DM: Not yet. What reason do you have for convincing him to send an army?
You: Gee, I don't know.
DM: You have nothing to roll for.
YOu: (after a little thought) Oh, yeah, there's a town under siege that won't be able to send him taxes and food unless he saves them.
DM: OK, now you have given him a reason to consider it. Roll to see how well Roger expressed it, with no pluses or minuses.
You: Oh, yeah, his daughter is trapped in that town.
DM: Ah, that makes a big difference. +4 to the roll.

This is no different from not letting you roll for combat until you announce what weapon you've drawn, where you've moved, what maneuver you're attempting, and which opponent you're attacking.

Otherwise, your argument would work just as well for any player decision:
"My fighter knows more about combat than I do. He decides to attack somebody using some maneuver."
"My wizard knows more about spells than I do. He chooses the best spells to memorize."
"My rogue knows how to set up a sneak attack better than I do. He attempts a sneak attack on the enemy it would be best to attack."
"My cleric understands healing better than I do. He chooses the party member who needs healing the most."

No. Just no. You have to tell us what you are doing, to whom, in what way, before you can do it.

Jormengand
2014-12-29, 11:26 PM
It does apply to CHA, exactly as it applies to everything else. You can't make a STR check without telling me what you're using your strength to do. You don't just say, "My high strength character knows better than I do what to use his strength on. I roll to see if his strength can solve this situation." No, you have to say, "I make a STR check to see if I can roll that boulder over in front of the door."
You don't have to have high charisma. But you do have to have the idea.
Yes, I know.


You: Roger ... er ... tries to convince the ... uh ... duke ... to ... um ... send a whatayacallit ... army, that's right, to defend the southern - no, wait, I mean the northern border.
DM: Why should he do that?
You. I roll a diplomacy check.
DM: Not yet. What reason do you have for convincing him to send an army?
You: Gee, I don't know.
DM: You have nothing to roll for.
YOu: (after a little thought) Oh, yeah, there's a town under siege that won't be able to send him taxes and food unless he saves them.
DM: OK, now you have given him a reason to consider it. Roll to see how well Roger expressed it, with no pluses or minuses.
You: Oh, yeah, his daughter is trapped in that town.
DM: Ah, that makes a big difference. +4 to the roll.

What, so do I have to explain exactly how I swing my sword each time? No. I have to explain what I'm doing, not how I'm doing it in minute detail. I mean, if you give mechanical bonuses for describing how you're attacking someone, then that's fine (Badass has that as an actual part of the system, but of course D&D doesn't). But if you give mechanical bonuses for saying how you persuade someone but not for saying how you attack with your sword, then that's a bit silly.


Otherwise, your argument would work just as well for any player decision:
"My fighter knows more about combat than I do. He decides to attack somebody using some maneuver."
"My wizard knows more about spells than I do. He chooses the best spells to memorize."
"My rogue knows how to set up a sneak attack better than I do. He attempts a sneak attack on the enemy it would be best to attack."
"My cleric understands healing better than I do. He chooses the party member who needs healing the most."

More like "My truenamer knows more about truespeak than me, therefore he's going to say some words to cast Reversed Spell Rebirth on the rabbit." I don't actually need to be good at truespeak, the truenamer does. I don't need to know about whether or not I can sneak attack that pale-skinned creature over there that might be humanoid and might be undead, so my rogue rolls knowledge. I don't recognise that green flash, so my wizard might, so I roll spellcraft. I don't know what information I should bring up in this social situation, but my bard might, so I roll diplomacy.

NichG
2014-12-30, 04:55 AM
You: Oh, yeah, his daughter is trapped in that town.
DM: Ah, that makes a big difference. +4 to the roll.


Incidentally, this is the point where I'd just say 'you succeed, no roll required'. Given that information, the duke should want to intervene regardless of the specific arguments of outside parties. The duke's ability to put the pieces together should not be contingent on the skills possessed by the bearer of that information.

Knaight
2014-12-30, 07:53 AM
What, so do I have to explain exactly how I swing my sword each time? No. I have to explain what I'm doing, not how I'm doing it in minute detail. I mean, if you give mechanical bonuses for describing how you're attacking someone, then that's fine (Badass has that as an actual part of the system, but of course D&D doesn't). But if you give mechanical bonuses for saying how you persuade someone but not for saying how you attack with your sword, then that's a bit silly.


Who you're swinging it at and about where from are information you have to give in all but the most abstract of systems. Very few systems handle combat with something like a single fight check from everyone involved. Saying that you are rolling diplomacy with nothing else is more akin to that single fight check than an attack. The entire social encounter gets brushed away, replaced with 1 die roll.

Jormengand
2014-12-30, 10:25 AM
Who you're swinging it at and about where from are information you have to give in all but the most abstract of systems.

Yeah, but not the manner in which I swing my sword - again, I need to say who I diplomance and to what end, but I don't need to know how exactly my bard would do it any more than I need to be able to do karate, or even know anything about how it's performed, because my monk is trying to do it to whack people around the face.

Jay R
2014-12-30, 11:08 AM
What, so do I have to explain exactly how I swing my sword each time?

Count how many decisions you have to make in a single combat encounter - what weapon you draw, which square you move to, is it a trip or bullrush, which attack of opportunity do you take, do you drink a potion or use a special ability? Many of these decisions are made each round.

If you want your analogy to hold up, then each social encounter should have roughly the same number of decisions.


No. I have to explain what I'm doing, not how I'm doing it in minute detail.

You have to describe how it changes every six seconds.


I mean, if you give mechanical bonuses for describing how you're attacking someone, then that's fine (Badass has that as an actual part of the system, but of course D&D doesn't). But if you give mechanical bonuses for saying how you persuade someone but not for saying how you attack with your sword, then that's a bit silly.

It's not a question of mechanical advantages for telling me you're moving to a specific square and then using a guisarme to trip a particular orc. You can't roll at all until you give me that much detail. And yes, you get plusses for telling me how you attack with a sword: flanking, higher ground, choosing the opponent who's stunned or blinded, etc.

And until you tell me which character you're trying to persuade, what argument you're using and why it should influence her, you can't roll a diplomacy check.

In fact, the advantages are far greater in diplomacy checks than attacks. As NichG wrote above, if you have a good enough reason, you will succeed without a roll.


More like "My truenamer knows more about truespeak than me, therefore he's going to say some words to cast Reversed Spell Rebirth on the rabbit." I don't actually need to be good at truespeak, the truenamer does.

Fine. But not, "My truenamer decides the best truespeak to use in this situation." You had to specify the method (Reversed Spell Rebirth) and the target (rabbit).


I don't need to know about whether or not I can sneak attack that pale-skinned creature over there that might be humanoid and might be undead, so my rogue rolls knowledge. I don't recognise that green flash, so my wizard might, so I roll spellcraft. I don't know what information I should bring up in this social situation, but my bard might, so I roll diplomacy.

And the DM tells your rogue that it's a half-orc, and you decide how to use that knowledge. Your wizard tells you that it's a particular spell, and you decide how to use that knowledge.

And you can roll for knowledge in the social situation. Then I might tell you, "You've heard that this duke has a rivalry with the Earl of North Mudskunk, whose fiefdom is over the hill to the northeast." Then you decide how to use that information. After you tell me how you use it, and what your arguments will be, then you can roll for Diplomacy.

You cannot skip the combat encounter by saying, "My fighter plans how to fight. I roll for Fighting." and for the same reasons, you can't skip the social encounter by saying, "My bard plans how to talk. I roll for Diplomacy." You actually have to play through the game.

Jormengand
2014-12-30, 11:20 AM
Count how many decisions you have to make in a single combat encounter - what weapon you draw, which square you move to, is it a trip or bullrush, which attack of opportunity do you take, do you drink a potion or use a special ability? Many of these decisions are made each round.

Yes, and these are all mechanical decisions. Diplomacy, as written, requires only one mechanical decision: who are you talking to? If you want to play with a detailed "Social combat" system, that exists in Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay, PARAGON, and a few other systems, but not in D&D. You have to choose which options you're using, but not necessarily what that means. I need to choose power attack because that's a mechanical choice, but "Mention the king's daughter" isn't. Roll diplomacy to make the king friendly is.

(Incidentally, SIFRP/PARAGON having actual rules for social combat is fine, because each turn, you're choosing whether you're using Shout, Insult, or so forth, but you don't need to tell me what you're actually saying, just which one of the mechanical options you're using.)

Again: expecting me to know what to say in a social situation is similar to expecting me to know what to say in truespeak to cast RSR on the bunny: You need to know why you're saying it (Convince the king to help me, cast RSR on a rabbit, convince the troll to let me past, utter Conjunctive Gate to get a Solar Angel advanced to 40th level) but not how (I mention the king's daughter, I shout tha'gyeth'me'hai'lo'e'wi he'galdfe'kro fa we'ze be lanith at the bunny). Again, my fighter is going to stand on a hill and power attack, enough. You don't expect me to describe "My fighter arcs his greatsword down in a 30 degree from vertical cut" and then penalise me if that turns out to be a bad way to swing a sword.

mephnick
2014-12-30, 03:33 PM
If I say "I attack the orc.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book to attack the orc.

If I say "I use diplomacy on the king.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book under the skill "Diplomacy".

Diplomacy has simple mechanical rules that change someone's attitude on a result over a set DC. It is no more complex than hitting something. In fact, it is probably less complex.

According to the rules I don't have to tell the DM anything outside of "I use diplomacy on the king", because the mechanics and results of diplomacy are standard rules. I hit the DC, the king now goes from neutral to friendly. Ta Da! Amazing! Requiring anything further is pure house-rule.

Talakeal
2014-12-30, 03:59 PM
If I say "I attack the orc.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book to attack the orc.

If I say "I use diplomacy on the king.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book under the skill "Diplomacy".

Diplomacy has simple mechanical rules that change someone's attitude on a result over a set DC. It is no more complex than hitting something. In fact, it is probably less complex.

According to the rules I don't have to tell the DM anything outside of "I use diplomacy on the king", because the mechanics and results of diplomacy are standard rules. I hit the DC, the king now goes from neutral to friendly. Ta Da! Amazing! Requiring anything further is pure house-rule.

By RAW the diplomacy rules are just about the worst thing in the game. Also, this isn't necessarily a 3.5 specific, or even D&D specific, thread.

By RAW it also doesn't require you to do anything. If I was being extremely literal following the diplomacy rules I could, for example, turn people friendly from across the kingdom with no actual interaction whatever. I do not communicate, I do not speak or even understand their language, I don't even know who they are or what they want, let alone what I want from them! I merely spend 10 minutes "rolling diplomacy" and BAM instant attitude adjustment with no input on my part!

Also all diplomacy does by RAW is give you an advantage in negotiations or change the target's attitude. Nothing in there requires the NPC to help you in any way, let alone perform the actions you are requiring, and doing so would also fall under house rules.

Jay R
2014-12-30, 04:01 PM
Yes, and these are all mechanical decisions. Diplomacy, as written, requires only one mechanical decision: who are you talking to? If you want to play with a detailed "Social combat" system, that exists in Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay, PARAGON, and a few other systems, but not in D&D. You have to choose which options you're using, but not necessarily what that means. I need to choose power attack because that's a mechanical choice, but "Mention the king's daughter" isn't. Roll diplomacy to make the king friendly is.

In my game, as well as any game I've played in, you need to tell me any aspect of what you're doing that will affect the situation. You actually have to play the role.

I know that since the creation of the diplomacy skill in 3E, there have been D&D players who don't want to role-play in the role-playing game, and that's fine, if everyone in the game including the DM want to skip that part of the role-playing. But don't act like people who play the entire role are somehow doing it wrong.


Again: expecting me to know what to say in a social situation is similar to expecting me to know what to say in truespeak to cast RSR on the bunny:

The only problem with this statement is that it is in disagreement with how D&D has been played for from 1974 until the creation of the Diplomacy skill in 3E made it possible for people to believe that they could skip the role-playing part of the role-playing game. I have always been expected to know what kinds of things to say during social situations, and I've never been expected to know the verbal components of spells. These have never been the same, in any game of D&D I've played.


You need to know why you're saying it (Convince the king to help me, cast RSR on a rabbit, convince the troll to let me past, utter Conjunctive Gate to get a Solar Angel advanced to 40th level) but not how (I mention the king's daughter, I shout tha'gyeth'me'hai'lo'e'wi he'galdfe'kro fa we'ze be lanith at the bunny).

If you know that the king's daughter is in danger and don't mention it, yes, that certainly hurts your chances, just like not drawing the sword does. You don't have to write the speech, but you do have to use the information you have.


Again, my fighter is going to stand on a hill and power attack, enough. You don't expect me to describe "My fighter arcs his greatsword down in a 30 degree from vertical cut" and then penalise me if that turns out to be a bad way to swing a sword.

No, and similarly, I don't expect you to tell me how your character modulates his voice. But you do have to tell me what he's talking about. If you know what banners the raiders are flying, or how many refugees are fleeing to the castle, or what danger his daughter is in, and don't choose to use that information, then you didn't use that information.

Feel free to play the way you describe, if all the other players and DM want to play that way. But please recognize that this is a particular way to play the game, and won't be how it plays at all tables.

LokiRagnarok
2014-12-30, 07:43 PM
It would appear to me, having read the full thread, that the argument can be resolved by the ancient technique of compromise best worded as "whatever floats your boat".
If you want to play it one way, play it that way, otherwise don't play it that way.
I don't think we need to go to the "you are having fun wrong" stage.

Talakeal
2014-12-30, 08:35 PM
It would appear to me, having read the full thread, that the argument can be resolved by the ancient technique of compromise best worded as "whatever floats your boat".
If you want to play it one way, play it that way, otherwise don't play it that way.
I don't think we need to go to the "you are having fun wrong" stage.

The problem is that RPGs are team games. I am trying to find a compromise, but my group is split between players of two very different styles who wont budge an inch towards the middle.

Solaris
2014-12-30, 08:56 PM
If I say "I attack the orc.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book to attack the orc.

If I say "I use diplomacy on the king.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book under the skill "Diplomacy".

Diplomacy has simple mechanical rules that change someone's attitude on a result over a set DC. It is no more complex than hitting something. In fact, it is probably less complex.

According to the rules I don't have to tell the DM anything outside of "I use diplomacy on the king", because the mechanics and results of diplomacy are standard rules. I hit the DC, the king now goes from neutral to friendly. Ta Da! Amazing! Requiring anything further is pure house-rule.

It's a darn shame that dice roll can't tell him what you want, though.


The problem is that RPGs are team games. I am trying to find a compromise, but my group is split between players of two very different styles who wont budge an inch towards the middle.

Hopefully our nattering back and forth can help you come up with arguments to persuade them one way or the other - but barring that, pick the one you want to go with and tell the other group "tough nuggets". Sometimes, ya just gotta put your foot down.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-31, 01:08 AM
The problem is that RPGs are team games. I am trying to find a compromise, but my group is split between players of two very different styles who wont budge an inch towards the middle.

Have you tried making a Diplomacy check?

GloatingSwine
2014-12-31, 06:28 AM
If I say "I attack the orc.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book to attack the orc.

If I say "I use diplomacy on the king.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book under the skill "Diplomacy".

Diplomacy has simple mechanical rules that change someone's attitude on a result over a set DC. It is no more complex than hitting something. In fact, it is probably less complex.

According to the rules I don't have to tell the DM anything outside of "I use diplomacy on the king", because the mechanics and results of diplomacy are standard rules. I hit the DC, the king now goes from neutral to friendly. Ta Da! Amazing! Requiring anything further is pure house-rule.

On the other hand, if you don't tell the DM anything then you only get the basic result of the Diplomacy check. You used you diplomacy, the King now likes you more.

He won't do anything you want him to do because you didn't tell him what you wanted, but he really likes you now.

Jay R
2014-12-31, 01:38 PM
On the other hand, if you don't tell the DM anything then you only get the basic result of the Diplomacy check. You used you diplomacy, the King now likes you more.

He won't do anything you want him to do because you didn't tell him what you wanted, but he really likes you now.

Oh, well done.

Jormengand
2014-12-31, 01:45 PM
Have you tried making a Diplomacy check?

No, silly, that doesn't work. You need to tell the DM exactly what information you're using, and how you're using it. And you're not allowed to hit players with the DMG unless you can explain to the DM exactly how you're doing it.

Jay R
2014-12-31, 01:51 PM
Getting back to Talakeal’s problem: he has two groups of people with incompatible playstyles at the table – neither of them, as near as I can tell, the style that he writes scenarios for.

You need to think of them as people who don’t know the game, or at least this version of the game. For the second group, I offer one recommendation somebody made before – prompt them. Ask, “Do you want to make a Sense Motive check here?”

If you had players who didn’t understand the combat, you’d prompt them with, you can move some many squares and then attack. That means that you can choose to move up and attack this orc or that orc, but not the others.”

Similarly, the first group needs to be told that role-playing the encounter is a necessary part of building up to the Diplomacy check. Point out to them that they need to at least explain what they are trying to convince the NPC to do, and what argument they use to do so. Explain to them that these are not part of their own diplomacy skills – just figuring out what happens in the game – just as flanking somebody in combat by moving your figure isn’t using your own flanking or combat skills.

Finally, as much as possible, compromise with them. You need to find a way to have social encounters that everyone (including you) can enjoy, and everyone (including you) can be satisfied with. That will probably mean less direct role-play than you are used to, more direct role-play than the first group is used to, and more dice-rolling than the second group is used to.

SiuiS
2014-12-31, 02:22 PM
If I say "I attack the orc.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book to attack the orc.

If I say "I use diplomacy on the king.", we use the mechanical rules printed in the book under the skill "Diplomacy".

Diplomacy has simple mechanical rules that change someone's attitude on a result over a set DC. It is no more complex than hitting something. In fact, it is probably less complex.

According to the rules I don't have to tell the DM anything outside of "I use diplomacy on the king", because the mechanics and results of diplomacy are standard rules. I hit the DC, the king now goes from neutral to friendly. Ta Da! Amazing! Requiring anything further is pure house-rule.

No, it's not pure house rule. Rolling diplomacy does absolutely nothing for you. It doesn't convey a message. Even if it did convey a message, you have to tell the DM what the message your character conveyed to his NPC is.

If you roll diplomacy good, you are liked but still have two cola in what the hell is going on and what you want, because you a roll haven't done that. Communication skills require communication. All this argument about the sanctity of diplomacy and players don't have to try is like saying it's enough to hold down the button on your wallow talkie, you don't need to make noise for the device to transmit.


On the other hand, if you don't tell the DM anything then you only get the basic result of the Diplomacy check. You used you diplomacy, the King now likes you more.

He won't do anything you want him to do because you didn't tell him what you wanted, but he really likes you now.

Precisely. Strict by the book diplomacy!

Talakeal
2014-12-31, 03:23 PM
Getting back to Talakeal’s problem: he has two groups of people with incompatible playstyles at the table – neither of them, as near as I can tell, the style that he writes scenarios for.

You need to think of them as people who don’t know the game, or at least this version of the game. For the second group, I offer one recommendation somebody made before – prompt them. Ask, “Do you want to make a Sense Motive check here?”

If you had players who didn’t understand the combat, you’d prompt them with, you can move some many squares and then attack. That means that you can choose to move up and attack this orc or that orc, but not the others.”

Similarly, the first group needs to be told that role-playing the encounter is a necessary part of building up to the Diplomacy check. Point out to them that they need to at least explain what they are trying to convince the NPC to do, and what argument they use to do so. Explain to them that these are not part of their own diplomacy skills – just figuring out what happens in the game – just as flanking somebody in combat by moving your figure isn’t using your own flanking or combat skills.

Finally, as much as possible, compromise with them. You need to find a way to have social encounters that everyone (including you) can enjoy, and everyone (including you) can be satisfied with. That will probably mean less direct role-play than you are used to, more direct role-play than the first group is used to, and more dice-rolling than the second group is used to.

So I read the "quantum ogre" article series on the hack and slash blog. He seems to be saying something similar, that the Dm needs to explain everything to players so that they can know the consequences of their actions and what options are available so they can make infomed choices. To me this seems like it takes away player agency and seems somwhat patronizing, but it might be a good way to start. I think I will talk to my group about it.

Solaris
2014-12-31, 03:29 PM
So I read the "quantum ogre" article series on the hack and slash blog. He seems to be saying something similar, that the Dm needs to explain everything to players so that they can know the consequences of their actions and what options are available so they can make infomed choices. To me this seems like it takes away player agency and seems somwhat patronizing, but it might be a good way to start. I think I will talk to my group about it.

I think it's not patronizing if you remain open to suggestions - lay out what you think are the more reasonable options, but let 'em come up with alternatives.

Jay R
2014-12-31, 04:17 PM
So I read the "quantum ogre" article series on the hack and slash blog. He seems to be saying something similar, that the Dm needs to explain everything to players so that they can know the consequences of their actions and what options are available so they can make infomed choices. To me this seems like it takes away player agency and seems somwhat patronizing, but it might be a good way to start. I think I will talk to my group about it.

Well, clearly, one group doesn't realize that thinking through the encounter will help them when it's time to roll Diplomacy, and the other group doesn't know that additional information is available through Sense Motive, Knowledge, and other mechanical methods. Quite possibly they don't think of these things because of the way their old DMs ran the game. They need to learn your style.

To paraphrase an old legal maxim, "Any player knows the rules. A good player knows the exceptions. A great player knows the DM." It's not patronizing to give them a chance to learn the DM. You know from previous experience how frustrating it can be to play with a DM who makes assumptions you don't make.

I would recommend that you remind them ("what information do you have that might help convince the king" or "do you want to try Sense Motive"?) a few times.

If you still need to do it five games later, then you need to consider if they can play in your game. But first give them a reasonable chance to learn it.

Talakeal
2014-12-31, 05:02 PM
This touches on a related problem:

I come up with a scenario without meaning to think up solutions. However, I am an analytical person, and my mind inevitably goes over the scenario in my head coming up with possible outcomes and solutions.

When the game comes around my players are stumped and give up telling me I have put them in a no win situation.

I then defend myself by saying, "How about trying X, Y, or Z?" reciting possible outcomes I have thought up.

Then my players claim I have put them on a railroad with only one possible solution which they can't ever guess because they aren't mind readers.

I can't imagine that if I started prompting them to do things in social situations I wouldn't have similar results.

Jay R
2014-12-31, 05:16 PM
This touches on a related problem:

I come up with a scenario without meaning to think up solutions. However, I am an analytical person, and my mind inevitably goes over the scenario in my head coming up with possible outcomes and solutions.

This is the problem. As soon as you think of a solution, find a way to prevent it.

If you know one way to solve the problem, then the 999 other ways the players come up with won't work. But if you present them a problem for which you don't have an immediate solution, all 1,000 things the players come up with could work.


When the game comes around my players are stumped and give up telling me I have put them in a no win situation.

I then defend myself by saying, "How about trying X, Y, or Z?" reciting possible outcomes I have thought up.

Which reinforces in their minds that they have to find your idea. Never give them your solution. It can't help.

But I do recommend knowing what adventure they get thrown in if they fail in the current problem. I love having a situation which, if they cannot solve it, will throw them in the briar patch.


I can't imagine that if I started prompting them to do things in social situations I wouldn't have similar results.

If there's one way to convince the king, then it will. But if you just know who the king is, and can have him react to what they say, then they can come up with the successful approach.

Talakeal
2014-12-31, 05:30 PM
This is the problem. As soon as you think of a solution, find a way to prevent it.

If you know one way to solve the problem, then the 999 other ways the players come up with won't work. But if you present them a problem for which you don't have an immediate solution, all 1,000 things the players come up with could work.



Which reinforces in their minds that they have to find your idea. Never give them your solution. It can't help.

But I do recommend knowing what adventure they get thrown in if they fail in the current problem. I love having a situation which, if they cannot solve it, will throw them in the briar patch.



If there's one way to convince the king, then it will. But if you just know who the king is, and can have him react to what they say, then they can come up with the successful approach.


I think either you are misunderstanding me or vice versa, but it sounds like you are saying I should actively shoot down any scenario which I have thought out?

The problem isn't that I shoot down their plans, the problem is that they talk themselves out of making a plan and convince themselves the situation is hopeless*.

They say things like "This is impossible. We leave because there is nothing we can do here. I give up and go home. Well, so much for that stupid adventure. What the hell were you thinking putting us in a no win situation like this?"


*Or do something completely random and stupid without actually thinking of basic consequences and then get mad at me for playing out the situation with what I perceive to be the logical consequences. They love, for example, to use innocent civilians as bait and then throw a tantrum if the enemy actually takes the bait and leaves them responsible for getting someone killed.

NichG
2014-12-31, 06:51 PM
I think either you are misunderstanding me or vice versa, but it sounds like you are saying I should actively shoot down any scenario which I have thought out?

The problem isn't that I shoot down their plans, the problem is that they talk themselves out of making a plan and convince themselves the situation is hopeless*.

They say things like "This is impossible. We leave because there is nothing we can do here. I give up and go home. Well, so much for that stupid adventure. What the hell were you thinking putting us in a no win situation like this?"

*Or do something completely random and stupid without actually thinking of basic consequences and then get mad at me for playing out the situation with what I perceive to be the logical consequences. They love, for example, to use innocent civilians as bait and then throw a tantrum if the enemy actually takes the bait and leaves them responsible for getting someone killed.

It may just be that you're making things too hard for your players' current abilities. Or, more perniciously, that at one point you made things too hard for them and now they've convinced themselves that they basically can't deal with anything.

Try running a few absolutely trivial challenges for them and see if this is still true. Basically the equivalent of popcorn fights for social encounters. Give them opportunities to observe/spy on NPCs involved in their own social interactions, and allow it to serve two purposes: one, they see what kinds of things can be done without feeling like it's their agency you're messing with, and two it gives them ammunition against those NPCs later on. Give them a bunch of easy magic bullets to use at first like finding material evidence of NPC plots, that sort of thing.

Once you have found something which is easy enough that they don't even have to pause to think about what to do, you can start building the difficulty back up from there.

Urpriest
2014-12-31, 11:36 PM
I'll give my previous suggestion again: some checks you need to make secretly for your players, not because you're coddling them but because it's not appropriate for them to be making them actively anyway. If the players are in a social situation, it's your job to roll Sense Motive checks (whether they ask for them or not, since they're reactive) and then tell them what they discover, because if they roll they'll know how well they rolled. Same with Knowledge (which can include things like Nobility and Royalty and Local for socially useful stuff). Do that, and you'll find they'll be stumped a lot less often.

goto124
2015-01-01, 01:53 AM
I think either you are misunderstanding me or vice versa, but it sounds like you are saying I should actively shoot down any scenario which I have thought out?

The problem isn't that I shoot down their plans, the problem is that they talk themselves out of making a plan and convince themselves the situation is hopeless*.

They say things like "This is impossible. We leave because there is nothing we can do here. I give up and go home. Well, so much for that stupid adventure. What the hell were you thinking putting us in a no win situation like this?"


*Or do something completely random and stupid without actually thinking of basic consequences and then get mad at me for playing out the situation with what I perceive to be the logical consequences. They love, for example, to use innocent civilians as bait and then throw a tantrum if the enemy actually takes the bait and leaves them responsible for getting someone killed.

Could you give us some examples please? Perhaps it would explain the situation better.

Jay R
2015-01-01, 12:55 PM
I think either you are misunderstanding me or vice versa, but it sounds like you are saying I should actively shoot down any scenario which I have thought out?

Pretty much. Specifically, you should actively shoot down any scenario you've thought out to the point that your players can't find a solution.


The problem isn't that I shoot down their plans, the problem is that they talk themselves out of making a plan and convince themselves the situation is hopeless*.

OK, then any plan for that situation is beyond their current capabilities. It doesn't matter whether it's beyond the PC's mechanical abilities, the player's critical thinking abilities, or the player's current psychological state. It's still too hard a scenario for them.

Maybe these guys need a CR of three levels below their characters. I don't know. But the observed fact is this: the current scenarios are too hard for these players and characters.


They say things like "This is impossible. We leave because there is nothing we can do here. I give up and go home. Well, so much for that stupid adventure. What the hell were you thinking putting us in a no win situation like this?"

Then you aren't providing a game that they find fun. Adjust it so they will.


*Or do something completely random and stupid without actually thinking of basic consequences and then get mad at me for playing out the situation with what I perceive to be the logical consequences. They love, for example, to use innocent civilians as bait and then throw a tantrum if the enemy actually takes the bait and leaves them responsible for getting someone killed.

Then tell them clearly and unambiguously, outside of the game, that using innocent civilians as bait will cause unsolvable problems. Then, within the game, when they propose such a move, tell them in advance what their characters ought to know about the consequences of those actions in the society they live in and the players don't.

GloatingSwine
2015-01-01, 01:24 PM
OK, then any plan for that situation is beyond their current capabilities. It doesn't matter whether it's beyond the PC's mechanical abilities, the player's critical thinking abilities, or the player's current psychological state. It's still too hard a scenario for them.

Maybe these guys need a CR of three levels below their characters. I don't know. But the observed fact is this: the current scenarios are too hard for these players and characters.


It doesn't sound like CR is the issue.

It sounds like this is the issue:

http://i.imgur.com/pNCbLji.png


(Maybe they actually just need dungeon crawls forever if they can't do anything else)

Talakeal
2015-01-01, 03:36 PM
Pretty much. Specifically, you should actively shoot down any scenario you've thought out to the point that your players can't find a solution.



Ok, can I ask for a little clarification?

Are you saying that I should simply throw out any scenario that I have imagined how it could play out? I think this is going to leave my players very bored as they walk around in a randomly generated sandbox world with no plots or unique elements.

Are you saying I should shoot down any player plan which I have considered as a possible outcome? This is going to leave my players extremely frustrated as usually I have put WAY more thought into the game than they are and it is only once in a blue moon that they surprise me.

Or are you simply saying I should find a way to turn off my brain between the first inspiration for an encounter and actually playing it out? I don't think this is possible for me to do (and if you know a technique please let me know, it would help a lot in my life away from the game), but even if it is, won't that leave me unprepared and forced to improvise a lot of the game on the spot? In my experience I make my worst decisions off the cuff.

Or is it something else entirely?


OK, then any plan for that situation is beyond their current capabilities. It doesn't matter whether it's beyond the PC's mechanical abilities, the player's critical thinking abilities, or the player's current psychological state. It's still too hard a scenario for them.

Maybe these guys need a CR of three levels below their characters. I don't know. But the observed fact is this: the current scenarios are too hard for these players and characters.

Then you aren't providing a game that they find fun. Adjust it so they will.


The problem is really that they often give up after the first setback. No matter how easy I make the game it will still be a problem unless everything is auto pass to all solutions.

For example, I put a locked door in front of them. They go to have the rogue pick the lock, I tell them they need to roll a 5 or better. They roll a 2. At that point they decide the door is impossible and turn around and go home. They don't try and have the fighter bash the door down, they don't try and have the mage cast knock, they don't try and blow the door up, they don't try and tunnel through the wall next to the door, they don't try and find an alternate way. Their first attempt didn't work, and they get discouraged. If their party had a motto it would be "When then going gets tough, we go home!".

Like, to use the example from a few pages back, when their idea to convince the king to give in didn't solve their problems they simply left. They didn't try using stealth, treachery, or deceit. They didn't try attacking the king. They didn't try talking to the other side. They didn't try negotiating with a different tactic. They didn't bring in outside help. Nothing, they simply tried one approach and then left when it didn't solve all of their problems.


It doesn't sound like CR is the issue.

It sounds like this is the issue:

http://i.imgur.com/pNCbLji.png


(Maybe they actually just need dungeon crawls forever if they can't do anything else)

LOL, pretty close actually. Usually they try ONE thing though, then give up.

Even dungeon crawls don't help. They will try to decipher the "puzzle" that is actually just a random dungeon dressing, try and break down an adamant wall, bribe their way past a golem, or stab a ghost, and then when that doesn't work they leave the dungeon and go back to town.

Jay R
2015-01-01, 04:58 PM
Ok, can I ask for a little clarification?

Are you saying that I should simply throw out any scenario that I have imagined how it could play out? I think this is going to leave my players very bored as they walk around in a randomly generated sandbox world with no plots or unique elements.

Are you saying I should shoot down any player plan which I have considered as a possible outcome? This is going to leave my players extremely frustrated as usually I have put WAY more thought into the game than they are and it is only once in a blue moon that they surprise me.

Or are you simply saying I should find a way to turn off my brain between the first inspiration for an encounter and actually playing it out? I don't think this is possible for me to do (and if you know a technique please let me know, it would help a lot in my life away from the game), but even if it is, won't that leave me unprepared and forced to improvise a lot of the game on the spot? In my experience I make my worst decisions off the cuff.

Or is it something else entirely?

Something else entirely. I'm saying not to write all the easy solutions away. Write a scenario that these players can conquer.


The problem is really that they often give up after the first setback. No matter how easy I make the game it will still be a problem unless everything is auto pass to all solutions.

Do you suppose that they have played before with a DM for whom the most obvious thing to do was always correct, and they were really just meeting monsters, rolling dice until the monsters fell over, and then moving on to the next monsters?

If so, you need to talk to them, away from the game, and make it clear that your game actually involves thinking, and trying several things to see what works. And you need to find out it they are willing to play such a game. If not, cut your losses, and quit frustrating everyone by preparing a game that they will never play.


Like, to use the example from a few pages back, when their idea to convince the king to give in didn't solve their problems they simply left. They didn't try using stealth, treachery, or deceit. They didn't try attacking the king. They didn't try talking to the other side. They didn't try negotiating with a different tactic. They didn't bring in outside help. Nothing, they simply tried one approach and then left when it didn't solve all of their problems.

You have to decide whether this description is 100% literal, in which case they cannot play a real game at all, or if you are exaggerating, in which you need to decide how and in what way, and figure out what the real problem is.

At present, you are not running a game that they are playing. Focus on finding out, in conversation with them, if there is such a thing as a game you are willing to run and they are willing to play.

Talakeal
2015-01-01, 06:00 PM
Something else entirely. I'm saying not to write all the easy solutions away. Write a scenario that these players can conquer.



Do you suppose that they have played before with a DM for whom the most obvious thing to do was always correct, and they were really just meeting monsters, rolling dice until the monsters fell over, and then moving on to the next monsters?

If so, you need to talk to them, away from the game, and make it clear that your game actually involves thinking, and trying several things to see what works. And you need to find out it they are willing to play such a game. If not, cut your losses, and quit frustrating everyone by preparing a game that they will never play.



You have to decide whether this description is 100% literal, in which case they cannot play a real game at all, or if you are exaggerating, in which you need to decide how and in what way, and figure out what the real problem is.

At present, you are not running a game that they are playing. Focus on finding out, in conversation with them, if there is such a thing as a game you are willing to run and they are willing to play.

Ok, that makes a little more sense. I totally did not get that out of your initial statement.

In that situation they only tried one approach, not an exxageration afaik. Note, however This is not a constant problem, but it is a frequent one, usually happening at least once a session.

One of the most egregious examples I can think of is when the BBEG was performing a ritual that would enslave the entire world. The players broke into the villian's sanctum, and begged the villain to stop. When the villain did not give in they decided to go home and wait to see what happened. They could have easilly defeated the villain in combat (which is what I expected) but for so some reason they didnt. Nor did they try some creative or crazy plan. They simply tried a single line of dialogue, and when that didnt yield results went home.

Solaris
2015-01-01, 06:50 PM
One of the most egregious examples I can think of is when the BBEG was performing a ritual that would enslave the entire world. The players broke into the villian's sanctum, and begged the villain to stop. When the villain did not give in they decided to go home and wait to see what happened. They could have easilly defeated the villain in combat (which is what I expected) but for so some reason they didnt. Nor did they try some creative or crazy plan. They simply tried a single line of dialogue, and when that didnt yield results went home.

... Huh. I've heard of players not biting at plot hooks, but that's ridiculous.
Bunch of players not trying to killmaim the BBEG when handed the opportunity. Are you sure they didn't just utterly loathe the campaign world and wanted it all to suffer horribly?

Jay R
2015-01-01, 07:03 PM
Ok, that makes a little more sense. I totally did not get that out of your initial statement.

Yes, I keep modifying it as I get more information - which is what I suggest you do with your game.


In that situation they only tried one approach, not an exxageration afaik. Note, however This is not a constant problem, but it is a frequent one, usually happening at least once a session.

One of the most egregious examples I can think of is when the BBEG was performing a ritual that would enslave the entire world. The players broke into the villian's sanctum, and begged the villain to stop. When the villain did not give in they decided to go home and wait to see what happened. They could have easilly defeated the villain in combat (which is what I expected) but for so some reason they didnt. Nor did they try some creative or crazy plan. They simply tried a single line of dialogue, and when that didnt yield results went home.

Then there are two questions you need answers to:
1. Why do you want to run a game for them?
2. Why do they want to play in a game you run?

The crucial, inescapable fact is this. At present, you are not running a game that they are playing. Focus on finding out, in conversation with them, if there is such a thing as a game you are willing to run and they are willing to play.