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View Full Version : Which is the most valuable skill in RPGs?(The fine line between RPing and Metagaming)



CombatBunny
2015-05-08, 10:56 AM
My intuition tells me that the most valuable skill that a RPG player should have, is the ability to role-play a character, the second being maybe to have a good imagination.

But then I get puzzled because many GMs say that in RPGs you need to have good strategy, problem solving, oratory and some other skills not related directly to role-playing.

I find some incongruence here, because most RPG books and gamers tell you that RPGs are about being someone you could not normally be and experiencing things that in no other way you would be able to.

Then why most GMs ask you to use your own intelligence and social skills before making the appropriate roll for the appropriate situation?

Suppose I’m a dumb anti-social person in real life, but I want the wonder of experiencing to be an ultra-smart and charismatic person, would you find okay as GMs to let me resolve all of this situations with my character sheet’s (CS) stats? Would you let me roll to know all the answers to your puzzles? Can I roll to find out who the villain is or how does all the clues fit together? May I roll to know what is the better strategy to defeat a certain monster or to win a battle?

Some GMs state that on their table you have to use your own wits and oratory to come out of these situations, but in such case they are pushing us players to meta-game and put low scores in those areas. The problem is that then, when you get to an intelligent solution or give a great speech by your own means, the GM tells you that you are meta-gaming because you are not reflecting what’s written on your CS. Then I question “Are we going to use our PC skills or not? How and when?”

How do you handle PC skills VS Player skills in a fair bidirectional way? When do you use his sheet stats and when you don’t?

Townopolis
2015-05-08, 11:26 AM
I've never had anyone at my table who wasn't reasonably tactically apt and socially proficient, so how I would deal with someone who is falls into the realm of theory. Nevertheless:

When would I use the character's sheet stats? Always. Every single time. I would also expect the player to playact some of the conversation in a social scene, and players are expected to play tactically in combat. These things, how cogent and cunning the player is, will affect the roll; however, that is something I calibrate to each player. If a player is particularly inept in an area their character is apt in, I would use one or both of these options:

Allow the character to roll [mental stat] for DM clues and direction.
Allow other players to offer advice and guidance to this player, even when I would normally suppress table talk.


Those would be mostly applicable to combat tactics and highly cerebral endeavors, such as investigation. In social scenes, it's more a matter of knowing how persuasive the player can be and using that to determine how cogent their argument and how adroit their phrasing must be to favorably influence the dice--and it always comes down to the dice and the skills on the sheet. If the lawyer's Cha 8 dwarf flubs his untrained persuasion roll, it doesn't matter how persuasive the lawyer is, it's "I'm sorry, Chad, but Thonghur is nowhere near as glib as you."

By the same token, I would (in theory), only require the outline of a persuasive argument from someone with underdeveloped social skills to give them a bonus on the roll, and if they're playing a 20 Cha whatever specializing in diplomacy, I'd go ahead and extrapolate how that outline translates into the character talking circles around the NPCs.

Edit: on the larger topic of needing skills like "strategy, problem solving, and oratory," it depends on the group, IMO. Those are all things I want my players to invest mental effort into, so I try to provide tactical, strategic, and logical problems challenges appropriate to their level of ability. It's less about being good at the skills and more about engaging in the activity.

Flickerdart
2015-05-08, 11:36 AM
Role-Playing is an adjective. The noun is Game. A game presents you with certain rules for interacting with it, and is affected by the context in which it is played. GMs who ignore the rules in favour of free-form roleplaying (demanding that players say what they want their characters to say before being able to roll) are missing the noun and focusing on the adjective; in other words, they're doing it wrong.

However, "it" doesn't mean "having fun wrong." It means "playing the game wrong." This is not, in and of itself, a problem - the objective of a game is to have fun, so if everyone at the table is having fun by skipping the game part, it's fine to do so.

Note that no game has "have fun" as part of its rules. This is part of the context in which a game exists. In other words, if you are trying to maximize your fun with the game, you're already metagaming - engaging with the structure around the game rather than purely its rules. Metagaming isn't evil.

GMs who object to both the rules of playing the game, and meta-rules of playing games in general, might be better served with removing the "game" part of RPG and becoming a writer or actor.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-08, 02:12 PM
Are RPGs a place to experience being someone you are not? Yes and no, I'd say. Depends on what your group wants out of the game. People play differently, and that's the beauty of the genre.

As for myself, I am of the school that nudges as has been mentioned are appropriate. I've never really hadone players be upset about them, especially if the hints reflect their skills.

Am I being too presumptuous in assuming you have built a socially or tactically adroit character, only to have the DM ignore the stats? Because if so, I hear you, buddy. I have social aneixty. I sometimes stutter. I am terrible at comvat. So it bothers me when the DM does such without announcing it beforehand, making me feel as if I have a weak character because I invested in stats that don't matter anymore, and I can't play the character I had envisioned.

If this does plague you, have a talk with the DM. Many hat feeling or have been accused of controlling players, or might not realize how much hints would help you enjoy the game. Talking to them might help a lot in having them understand what you enjoy.

King of Casuals
2015-05-08, 02:20 PM
I personally think that people tend to overreact to metagaming a lot, as a lot of it can be justified with a little thing that something I like to call "common sense". Creating a character with combat effectiveness in mind can easily be justified by your character trying to figure out the most effective strategy for combat and training around that strategy. Asking people around you for advice on what you character should do can be explained with the idea that your character either carefully thinks about each course of action and picks the best one, or that he already knew what to do in character.

Keltest
2015-05-08, 02:22 PM
That depends entirely on what your objective as a group is. My group is largely concerned with murderhoboing, so a firm grasp of the mechanics and rules is significantly more valuable than RP skills. Even their alignments I largely handwave when they aren't mechanically related.

Pex
2015-05-08, 05:45 PM
Obligatory.

http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/2861636

mephnick
2015-05-08, 06:01 PM
The most valuable skill in RPGs is not being a ****.

Tvtyrant
2015-05-08, 06:01 PM
From a DMs perspective, I expect my players to actually make arguments and plans in RL, but I let dice rolls tell how well they work. If a player tries to sneak past the opponent as a chicken, it is up to their disguise and bluff roles to make it work. Likewise a terrible or wonderful speech to motivate people is only as good as the check that accompanies it.

icefractal
2015-05-09, 02:05 AM
Then why most GMs ask you to use your own intelligence and social skills before making the appropriate roll for the appropriate situation?Because some people find those things fun. There's not really a 'correct' place to draw the line between what gets played out and what's left to stats - it's a continuum, and both extremes are generally undesirable. So where the division is set for a particular group is just down to the preferences of those involved, though many games do have a default setting.

For example, talking to a guard, attempting to be let inside the Red Duke's tower uninvited.
One extreme: No stats apply at all. The player makes the speech, and that's what matters, down to how convincing their tone and body language was.
One step over: The player decides the wording (which matters), but their delivery is down to the character's stats.
Another step: The player decides the content of the speech, but not the exact wording; that's down to the stats.
And another: The player just decides that they're trying to be let inside the tower; the reasons they give and how good those are is all down to stats.
And another: The player sets the goal - in this case, finding out whether the Duke conducts necromantic experiments, as rumored. The method is abstracted, because really, the character would make a better (or worse, depending on stats) plan than the player would.
Still going: The player sets the high-level goal - getting rid of the Duke as a major power in Shantyport. The method they use to achieve that is abstracted, because again, it would be the character's skill at planning that matters.
One more: The player just sets the character's long term goals. The fact that pushing the Duke out of power is part of achieving those is again, down to the character instead of the player. At this level, the player is primarily a spectator after char-gen.

Now personally, I'm at #3 (The player decides the content of the speech, but not the exact wording; that's down to the stats) as a preference. Many people prefer a notch more or less. I haven't met anyone who prefers the extremes of the stat-driven end, but those are as valid a conclusion as any, in terms of being 'accurate'.

That said, the GM should always be up front about how they're doing things. If they're going to have social interaction be down to what the player says, for instance, they should say that at char-gen and not let people waste points on skills that won't be used.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-09, 10:35 AM
The most valuable skill in RPGs is not being a ****.

Seconded. This is, after all, a social game. The ability to get along with others should be pretty high on the list.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 10:52 AM
My intuition tells me that the most valuable skill that a RPG player should have, is the ability to role-play a character, the second being maybe to have a good imagination.

But then I get puzzled because many GMs say that in RPGs you need to have good strategy, problem solving, oratory and some other skills not related directly to role-playing.

The most valuable skill is, of course, that a player knows how to play the game. And that is knowing all the rules, role playing a character and being able to fiction at the game table.



I find some incongruence here, because most RPG books and gamers tell you that RPGs are about being someone you could not normally be and experiencing things that in no other way you would be able to.

The books...um...lie.



Then why most GMs ask you to use your own intelligence and social skills before making the appropriate roll for the appropriate situation?

A great many DM's do not like Roll Playing. If a player really wants to just roll play, they can play any video game. Role playing is about having fun interactions, not just watching dice roll.



How do you handle PC skills VS Player skills in a fair bidirectional way? When do you use his sheet stats and when you don’t?

It is rare for the non functioning social person to want to play a charismatic superstar. Just like real life they often just want to tag along in the back. And they know, much like everyone should, that rolling and pretending to be awesome and social is just pointless. If Ben is a poor social person, he won't have any fun being a 25 Charisma elf. His elf character will encounter some NPCs, he will roll some dice and get like a 100, and then NPCs will act like the elf character has an amazing personality.

By no stretch of the imagination is rolling in any way a substitute for a real experience(or even a real role play experience). Does Ben feel like an A list celebrity just as he rolled some dice? Does Ben feel like he did anything remotely social when he rolled the dice?

goto124
2015-05-09, 11:01 AM
The most valuable skill in RPGs is not being a [disruptive player].

That's pretty much the one skill anyone in any social situation needs to have.

YossarianLives
2015-05-09, 11:19 AM
snop
So what you're saying is players must possess the skills of their character? Do you expect the players of wizards to be expert loremasters who have memorized the rulebooks by heart?

I'm sorry but what you're saying is just wrong. I play RPGs and specifically Dungeons & Dragons so I can pretend to be someone very different from myself. It is called fantasy for a reason. Not everyone can be really smart and good at puzzles. Just because you aren't socially awkward doesn't mean you are an expert at persuasion. I get along with people IRL and have plenty of friends and people I'm in a positive relationship with but I'm terrible at lying and convincing people I'm right.

Why should somebody who is socially awkward and bad at figuring out puzzles be forced to play something they don't want to in a an RPG? Games are supposed to be fun!

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-09, 12:47 PM
It is rare for the non functioning social person to want to play a charismatic superstar. Just like real life they often just want to tag along in the back. And they know, much like everyone should, that rolling and pretending to be awesome and social is just pointless. If Ben is a poor social person, he won't have any fun being a 25 Charisma elf.

Hey guys, according to this, I'm a super-duper rare unicorn! Also, so are many people I meet! What are the odds?

More seriously, people probably want to play things they are not. I might want to play a charming PC, with the idea of getting out of trouble with a silver tongue. Sure I might need some help from the DM...More often then I'd like to admit, but it can still be fun even if the DM is giving nudges and hints. I can feel accomplished as much as swinging a sword without describing what squishy organ is getting impaled, as well as try to inject some flavor into the interaction or flair into the interaction even if I get the hints.

Alas, according to this mentality, I should stick to murderhoboing in pen and paper, and save the social interactions for the computer games.

(Is murderhobo hypentated, by the way?)

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 01:29 PM
So what you're saying is players must possess the skills of their character? Do you expect the players of wizards to be expert loremasters who have memorized the rulebooks by heart?

Bit of a leap to take my ''socially awkward people don't often want to roll play social superstars'' to ''players must have the skills their character does''.



I'm sorry but what you're saying is just wrong. I play RPGs and specifically Dungeons & Dragons so I can pretend to be someone very different from myself. It is called fantasy for a reason. Not everyone can be really smart and good at puzzles. Just because you aren't socially awkward doesn't mean you are an expert at persuasion. I get along with people IRL and have plenty of friends and people I'm in a positive relationship with but I'm terrible at lying and convincing people I'm right.

And most people would say they do also. Though there is a catch. Your not really playing someone very different from yourself, your just playing a different side of yourself and getting away with it. You can't have a fantasy in a RPG without roll playing or just going through the motions that it is fake and pointless.

To use your example, if you can't lie in real life, then your character can't lie in a RPG...unless you roll play(''my character gets a 100 on bluff, everyone believes my lie'') or you do it fake and pointless(Player-''My character tells them to look over there. DM-"They believe your character and look over there''). Note that in both examples the player is not really ling or even really role playing lying.




Why should somebody who is socially awkward and bad at figuring out puzzles be forced to play something they don't want to in a an RPG? Games are supposed to be fun!

They can play what they want, but very often playing falsely just is not fun. A not so smart person can falsely roll play a genius, and have the DM just tell them everything their character would have known and figured out(but that the player did not) but it's all built on a falsehood.



More seriously, people probably want to play things they are not. I might want to play a charming PC, with the idea of getting out of trouble with a silver tongue. Sure I might need some help from the DM...More often then I'd like to admit, but it can still be fun even if the DM is giving nudges and hints. I can feel accomplished as much as swinging a sword without describing what squishy organ is getting impaled, as well as try to inject some flavor into the interaction or flair into the interaction even if I get the hints.

It's not like ''rare'' means ''impossible'' or ''never''.

And if your fine playing with the ''nudges and hits'' and ''help from the DM'', then that is fine. Though a lot of socially awkward people see that as a falsehood. as they are not really playing that character....they are being helped to play that character. And sure, you can feel accomplished that your character was charming..with just a little help from the rules, rolls and DMs help...exactly like the real charming person feels who does the same thing with no help.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-09, 01:49 PM
Uh...It would probably been seen as getting help from the DM to do that, because that is precisely what is happening. I am getting help from the DM to play something I cannot in real life, just as we don't make the fighters swing swords or the rogues to actually lock pick. The rolls help, sure, because I sure as hell ain't charming. And if the DM favors the 8 charisma person with no diplomacy ranks, who is actually charming for their RL skill, then I walk from the table because that player is cheating in my book the same way that I would be cheating if I threw axes at the DM and demanded to have a boost to my roll. Well, not the same way as far as the police are involved, but good enough.

Also, what socially awkward people are you talking about? Because I am one, and I'm wondering what you base your statements of what most socially awkward people want. The socially awkward people I've seen act far differently then the ones you've seen, so I'd say that it would logically mean that socially awkward people can react in different ways and much like other groups, tend to resist generalizations.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 02:11 PM
Uh...It would probably been seen as getting help from the DM to do that, because that is precisely what is happening. I am getting help from the DM to play something I cannot in real life, just as we don't make the fighters swing swords or the rogues to actually lock pick. The rolls help, sure, because I sure as hell ain't charming. And if the DM favors the 8 charisma person with no diplomacy ranks, who is actually charming for their RL skill, then I walk from the table because that player is cheating in my book the same way that I would be cheating if I threw axes at the DM and demanded to have a boost to my roll. Well, not the same way as far as the police are involved, but good enough.

Mental and physical things are not equal. You can say no problem ''my character lifts up the boulder'' as it is a simply physical action. But to say ''my character sweet talks them into voting yes'' is a lot more vague and complex.



Also, what socially awkward people are you talking about? Because I am one, and I'm wondering what you base your statements of what most socially awkward people want. The socially awkward people I've seen act far differently then the ones you've seen, so I'd say that it would logically mean that socially awkward people can react in different ways and much like other groups, tend to resist generalizations.

Well, I don't know you.

Most(but not all) socially awkward people want the same things that all the other people want. Some socially awkward people make socially awkward characters. Some socially awkward people like to play whatever it happens to be that they like. And some socially awkward people do like to play the 180 from what they are really like. But a lot also don't like the 180 one as it is so false.

Cazero
2015-05-09, 02:51 PM
Mental and physical things are not equal. You can say no problem ''my character lifts up the boulder'' as it is a simply physical action. But to say ''my character sweet talks them into voting yes'' is a lot more vague and complex.

Most of roleplaying is about decision-making, wich undermines every mental stats by default. And instead of correcting that problem, you would aggravate it?

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 08:40 PM
Most of roleplaying is about decision-making, wich undermines every mental stats by default. And instead of correcting that problem, you would aggravate it?

Decision making does not fit into a mental stat. It is a little of a couple mental stats, and some not at all.

Cluedrew
2015-05-09, 08:59 PM
but it's all built on a falsehoodAlthough I agree with you... is that a bad thing? D&D has been called "magic elf game" for a reason, World of Darkness has impossible monsters crammed into every shadow, Shadowrun is about shamans and cyborgs committing crimes... I think we all know it's false, that's why we are here.

The balance between character ability and player ability is an interesting one. I don't believe there is a single correct position, although I do find it odd when social parts of games are often so heavily weighted towards the player compared to many other parts of games. That is odd, not incorrect.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 09:16 PM
Although I agree with you... is that a bad thing? D&D has been called "magic elf game" for a reason, World of Darkness has impossible monsters crammed into every shadow, Shadowrun is about shamans and cyborgs committing crimes... I think we all know it's false, that's why we are here.

The balance between character ability and player ability is an interesting one. I don't believe there is a single correct position, although I do find it odd when social parts of games are often so heavily weighted towards the player compared to many other parts of games. That is odd, not incorrect.

You seem to be mixing fantasy, imagination and falsehood. Yes, any RPG is full of fantasy and people using their imaginations.

The falsehood is much different. It's like when someone lets you win. Sure you still ''win'', but only as the other person let you win. You did not ''win'' for real. The same way winning by the other person having an accident is not a ''real'' win. The same way a high charisma character, but low charisma player, does not really ''do'' anything, but they are treated like a roackstar anyway.

erikun
2015-05-09, 09:33 PM
Different people play the game differently, even if we are talking about the same game. Different people and different groups have different priorities when they sit down at a table. As such, it's really difficult to claim one particular skill as the most valuable to everyone: good roleplaying skills might suit you well at roleplay-heavy tables, but might not get you much benefit at tables which prefer kick-in-the-door and tactical combat.

About the one skill I could see as universally useful for RPG players is the ability to talk to and work with other people at the table. After all, regardless of what kind of RPG you are playing, you are going to be playing with other people; being able to play with the other people without causing problems and with being able to deal with problems is key to getting everything to work smoothly.

Well, I suppose there are some single-player systems, but most people interested in those have probably moved on to playing video games.

talonhawk01
2015-05-09, 11:52 PM
It's like when someone lets you win. Sure you still ''win'', but only as the other person let you win. You did not ''win'' for real. The same way winning by the other person having an accident is not a ''real'' win. The same way a high charisma character, but low charisma player, does not really ''do'' anything, but they are treated like a roackstar anyway.

Some slight adjustments to show the error of your thoughts.

It's like when someone lets you win. Sure you still ''win'', but only as the other person let you win. You did not ''win'' for real. The same way winning by the other person having an accident is not a ''real'' win. The same way a high Strength character, but low Strength player, does not really ''do'' anything, but they are treated like a roackstar anyway for lifting a boulder/smashing monsters.

Yeah, it's the same thing, and it's bullcrap to penalize a low Charisma player for wanting to play a Bard or a low Intelligence player for wanting to play Wizard.

On the other hand, it'll be a lot of fun explaining to the 5' 100 lbs girl we play with that her giant barbarian with a twenty something strength can't lift a boulder since she struggles with the pickle jar sometimes. ...blue is sarcasm, right?

Hypername
2015-05-10, 03:41 AM
My two cents.
At one point at the game, that might come sooner or later, the characters are going to have ridiculous stats. You will have bards running around with 26 Cha, wizards with 30 Int, Clerics with 30 Wis, Barbarians and Fighters with over 9000 strength etc.
It is impossible for the players to even comprehend what those stats mean, let alone roleplay them. Considering most people have at the very most a 13 or 14 in ONE of their real life "stats" it's impossible to RP someone with 18.
If the DM/GM requires actively roleplaying what you say when you use skills like Diplomacy, Bluff, or Intimidate he is pretty much barring the vast majority of player from ever playing a face class. It is a ridiculous double standard. It is like asking the party barbarian to actually hit someone when he makes an attack roll, the party mage to actually cast the spells they use in game and the party monk to climb to the roof of the house every time he makes a climb check.
If we are required to make an actual speech each and every time we use e.g. a face skill, then there is no meaning to the stats. It's just free-form roleplaying, without the "game" aspect to it. It will also increase min-maxing and power gaming as the guy that dumped Cha to get his damage up can now become the party face as he is silver-tongued in real life. Requiring to role play his stats is actually an idea that doesn't work as explained above.
Of course it is fairly obvious that the game shouldn't only consist of silent rolling and no roleplay. The DM/GM shouldn't FORCE people to actually RP everything, but should allow the ones that want to. After all the game is there to have fun. Players have their ups and downs. There are times in real life that even the most charismatic and intelligent person can't roleplay properly because of actual problems in their personal life. What's going to happen then? "Your character becomes inexpicably retarded for today"?
I would also like to note that this is an issue only with face skills. And the reason for this is how the game measures the force of personality of the PC AKA their Charisma. Also they are the only skills that are possible to actually roleplay with your character's words. Many DMs/GMs misinterpret that.

goto124
2015-05-10, 06:51 AM
It is like asking the party barbarian to actually hit someone when he makes an attack roll, the party mage to actually cast the spells they use in game and the party monk to climb to the roof of the house every time he makes a climb check.

I'll let you guys know how the next game goes :smalltongue:

(It'll end up in the hospital, probably.)

Maglubiyet
2015-05-10, 07:10 AM
Yes, people who are socially awkward should never play high-CHA characters. Players should always have the skills they're purporting to emulate.

This is why I have installed trapdoors in my game room. If someone's PC fights a bear, for example, or needs to disarm a ticking time bomb, I just pull the appropriate lever and drop them into a room containing the in-game threat IRL. Prep work for game night is hell, but for roleplaying it's worth it.

BTW, I'm currently seeking new players. My last few groups thought they were fighters, but apparently it was all in their imagination.

Cluedrew
2015-05-10, 07:32 AM
You seem to be mixing fantasy, imagination and falsehood. [...] The same way a high charisma character, but low charisma player, does not really ''do'' anything, but they are treated like a roackstar anyway.This reminds me of a section of the railroading thread when we talked about the difference between illusion and disseat. It is a role-playing game, no one is actually "doing" anything except rolling dice (or whatever mechanics the game uses to resolve conflicts). Its not wrong to use player's social skills in the game, but if the low charisma wants to play a rockstar, there is nothing wrong with them saying "I make some comments before I start singing to get the crowd worked up" and the DM just having them roll for it.


On the other hand, it'll be a lot of fun explaining to the 5' 100 lbs girl we play with that her giant barbarian with a twenty something strength can't lift a boulder since she struggles with the pickle jar sometimes. ...blue is sarcasm, right?Oh this counter example, classic. Whenever someone says your real life charisma should reflect your character's I'm always tempted to challenge the GM to a fight so my character defeat the BBEG. (I never have, it would leave the other players out.)


Considering most people have at the very most a 13 or 14 in ONE of their real life "stats" it's impossible to RP someone with 18.Funny thing I know a guy with 18 charisma, he walks by someone and becomes friends with them. The thing is I have no idea how that happens even though I've seen it happen. So depending on the level of acting required for "RP" I agree with you there.

NichG
2015-05-10, 07:52 AM
For me, the central draw of RPGs is the ability to be in a position to interact with things in situations which are impossible, inadvisable, or unlikely in real life. Part of that might be exploring personalities or abilities that are different than your own, but its not the only part of that. Sometimes its just 'every time a character in a book makes a bargain with a devil they make an obviously dumb mistake - I want to try out my idea for beating the devil at their own game' or 'I can imagine all sorts of cool things to do with X ability, and I want to see how it works out' or even just 'I love the idea of living in a city that stands between story and reality, and I want to explore the consequences of that'.

So from that point of view, its of utmost importance to me that I actually be permitted to take the actions I want to explore. If a DM says 'no, your character is not smart enough to think of that', it's just code for me to never play a character with less than maximum intelligence with that particular DM. For me, I vastly prefer when everything on the character sheet specifies the character's tools, their abilities above and beyond, but not the way that they employ them. So a challenge for the player is just any situation that demands that I figure out how I want to employ those tools when the answer is not obvious. If the mechanics make the answer too obvious, either by being unbalanced or by having some kind of 'figure out what you should do' skill or stat which you're obligated to roll, then its not interesting because I don't get to see how my ideas play out (for better or worse).

Essentially, I want to see how the king responds to the contents of my proposal, to enact my own strategy for ambushing the orcs, and watch as my plan for the heist plays out (including adapting it when things inevitably turn out different). Because those things are how I interact with and experience the solidity and responsiveness of the fictional world.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-10, 09:12 AM
http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=27 I feel as if I have to point this out...

I think I disagree. What is the point of even having mental scores on the sheet and forcing people to pay for them if you ignore them? I think it is unfair to have some people pay for high stats in scores that don't end up mattering. Now, is this a great system?...Probably not for a lot of groups. I just don't think you give people a game where you buy up these stats without telling them that they won't matter before you sit down with the finished character.

NichG
2015-05-10, 09:25 AM
http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=27 I feel as if I have to point this out...

I think I disagree. What is the point of even having mental scores on the sheet and forcing people to pay for them if you ignore them? I think it is unfair to have some people pay for high stats in scores that don't end up mattering. Now, is this a great system?...Probably not for a lot of groups. I just don't think you give people a game where you buy up these stats without telling them that they won't matter before you sit down with the finished character.

Well, except that the stats do still matter - they just matter mechanically rather than as RP constraints. If I have a high Int score in D&D, that means I get more spells, higher save DCs, etc. Interpretation of Int and such to constrain character portrayal is something that is being added on top of the system. In any event, houserules and homebrew are a thing, so there's no reason to take a system flaw lying down. If it feels like people who invest in Int or Cha are getting shortchanged (which, mechanically, at least in D&D 3.5 they certainly aren't, since Cha is the king of X stat to Y and Int has a number of mechanical uses as well), there's nothing stopping a group from giving it additional mechanical effects or even stripping them from the system entirely.

Anyhow, system design aside, I'm simply saying 'this is the reason I play RPGs'. If that reason is taken away, it makes me less interested in participating in that game. Whatever philosophy people might place behind what the game 'should' be, that's a lot less relevant to me than the question of 'will I enjoy this?'. If something is philosophically airtight but really boring to play, then (for me), it fails as a game.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-10, 10:18 AM
Some slight adjustments to show the error of your thoughts.

It's like when someone lets you win. Sure you still ''win'', but only as the other person let you win. You did not ''win'' for real. The same way winning by the other person having an accident is not a ''real'' win. The same way a high Strength character, but low Strength player, does not really ''do'' anything, but they are treated like a roackstar anyway for lifting a boulder/smashing monsters.

Yeah, it's the same thing, and it's bullcrap to penalize a low Charisma player for wanting to play a Bard or a low Intelligence player for wanting to play Wizard.

Your mixing imaginary physical actions with imaginary mental ones and they are not equal. It is easy to say ''Tong lifts up a ton'', as you just say it, make the need roll(if any) and it happens. But the mental ones are not so easy.

Bob does not have a high intelligence, so if he plays a high intelligence character he only has two ways to do it: Use the game rules to simulate it(''DM I rolled a 100, tell me what my super smart character would know'') or just get help directly from the DM("Ok, Bob, your character knows the following things....). Note that in both cases that Bob is not playing a high intelligence character. He is just getting the benefits with no work. At no point is Bob doing anything ''high intelligence'' related, he is just getting the benefit as if he did do so. And that is the falsehood: Bob does nothing to get the high intelligence idea, but he gets the benefit. For some players this is just fine.

But my point is for some players this is not fine and the don't like the falsehood. When Bob just sits back, has the DM tell him all the ''smart stuff'' his character (but not Bob) would know, it just feels fake. Bob is not playing the character Zor the all knowing who can figure out complex things; Bob is playing Zor the DM's mouthpiece who just repeats what the DM told him to say.



Yes, people who are socially awkward should never play high-CHA characters. Players should always have the skills they're purporting to emulate.

Lets us all note that I never said the above statement, feel free to scroll up and check. I said most socially awkward players don't want to play socially amazing characters as it is too much of a falsehood. Some do. Many don't.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-10, 10:30 AM
But the problem is, how do you speak for most socially awkward people? I think it is more accurate to say that SOME socially awkward people don't like to be in the forefront, but I do not think you can speak for the majority of a group of people. Especially not one you don't seem to be a part of without some backing as to why you can make this statement.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-10, 10:47 AM
When Bob just sits back, has the DM tell him all the ''smart stuff'' his character (but not Bob) would know, it just feels fake. Bob is not playing the character Zor the all knowing who can figure out complex things; Bob is playing Zor the DM's mouthpiece who just repeats what the DM told him to say.

How is that any different than making a Lore (the Planes) roll or casting Detect Magic? The character finds out things that the player would have no way of knowing otherwise.

Hypername
2015-05-10, 10:49 AM
Funny thing I know a guy with 18 charisma, he walks by someone and becomes friends with them. The thing is I have no idea how that happens even though I've seen it happen. So depending on the level of acting required for "RP" I agree with you there.

That which you describe is a 12. An 18 would be the ruler of the world. He would simply ask all the world leaders to come meet him and they would come and give him total power over the planet.
18 Charisma as in strength of character and intimadating abilities is pretty much Sinestro.

On the point of mental stats.
We as players know out of character that werewolves are weak to silver, undead to positive energy, that you need to destroy the lich's phylactery to kill it. But a 7 intelligence Barbarian or Fighter, would never know that. Same with all face skills I might be the next Pericles, the most charismatic man in the universe. My Inquisitor ,who is pretty much a torturer and someone who hunts down heretics and is hostile towards anyone who doesn't believe in his god(s), isn't.
Real life competence should NEVER matter in game.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-10, 10:50 AM
But the problem is, how do you speak for most socially awkward people? I think it is more accurate to say that SOME socially awkward people don't like to be in the forefront, but I do not think you can speak for the majority of a group of people. Especially not one you don't seem to be a part of without some backing as to why you can make this statement.

Sorry, I don't fall for this type of trap.

But I'l provide all my hard evidence once you post all your hard evidence that I'm wrong. So, you see Professor Tiefling, this is just a casual chat site, not some hallowed halls of academia room. We don't need backing or proof or anything else. We can just say what we think or feel or want to say. You are free to disagree, ignore it, or post a reply. But you can't ask for hard evidence like your some representative of a peer review board.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-10, 11:03 AM
Then I propose the exact opposite. Many socially awkward people want to play high charisma characters, but require help. Many are frustrated when they cannot, despite making it clear on their sheets this is their intention and having wasted resources upon such. I do not think that myself and presumably the OP, and many I have seen are in the minority.

I also propose that your style of play is valid. Just not my tastes and would cause me to leave the table. I care more about the story and the characters the real life acting skills, but I could see how the performance aspect could be fun as well.

I also propose that the DM should make it clear what sort of game they are playing. If they wish to ignore stats and actions if such are established as parts of the game, and give bonuses to actions not listed in the rules, this really needs to be a part of the pre-game discussion.

It happened to me. I was a lot less mature then and it really felt like a slap in the face. I don't think that was the DM's intention, but a little communication would have solved a great deal and made the game fun for both parties or we could have the decision to put that energy elsewhere.

There's no wrong way to play, but communication is always good.

Cluedrew
2015-05-10, 12:45 PM
For me, the central draw of RPGs is [...] but its not the only part of that.I think this is important. There are different things different things different people want out of games. There are even different things the same person wants out of a game. Exactly what you are looking for in this game should decide exactly what the answer is. The answer to "Which is the most valuable skill in RPGs?" that is.


That which you describe is a 12. An 18 would be the ruler of the world.... That is a pretty extreme metric if we are talking about D&D stats. A base stat of 12 would translate into a +1 modifier which would mean +5% increased chance of success from the average. Of course how that actually translates into real life friendliness is debatable but I think it is higher than that.

Also going off of "roll 3d6 in order", one of the most restrictive stat systems, 1 in 216 have that much charisma which means there should be over a 40 million people (if I've done my math right) with that much charisma alive on earth right now. I now that's not how stats are generated in real life but no one in history has been capable of doing what you say they can do. Still if you are not trying to modal real life that's fine.

Milo v3
2015-05-10, 08:06 PM
Darth Ultron, do you only allow people to play martial characters? By mid-levels spellcasters generally have mental stats above what the player would have. These falsehoods are inevitable, and I'd say if it is such a big issue then games that possess mental statistics probably wouldn't be to their tastes.

CombatBunny
2015-05-10, 10:23 PM
Thank you all for your comments; you are putting the finger right on the wound, because that’s my main concern.

That’s what I find so hard to understand. Why many GMs make you give a good argument or solution before letting you roll. Each time the player tries to convince, outsmart, deduct, resolve, etc. Many GMs tend to say:

“You have to convince me first”; “You have to make a good speech”; “You have to bring a good argument”; “Think a little bit, the solution for this puzzle or riddle is very simple”.

Why? I even find unfair to state “If you make a good argument, you get a bonus in your roll”.

Then why don’t you bring a punching bag to the player with the strong character? And depending on how hard he punches he will get a bonus on his next attack, or count how much can a player hold his breath, to give him a bonus to his constitution roll.

Make me roll first, and depending on the result I may or may not role-play it, but it shouldn’t matter for the outcome. Is just the same you do in combat, you first roll, then you role-play the shouts, the swings of the sword and all the like.

I wouldn’t mind to roll for a puzzle, and have the GM give me a secret note with the answer or at least a good clue, then I could role-play that my PC is racking his brains and getting to the solution.

If the GM is not going to let me roll or is going to penalize me for giving an unsatisfactory argument, then I just hope that he doesn’t get surprised when I assign no points in my PC mental and social stats, and role-play him like this:

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/gremlins/images/8/88/Tumblr_m68qvxl9uS1qbgax2o1_1280.jpg

Darth Ultron
2015-05-10, 11:19 PM
How is that any different than making a Lore (the Planes) roll or casting Detect Magic? The character finds out things that the player would have no way of knowing otherwise.

Well a single check to ''remember'' something is not quite equal to ''the DM tells you what to do''. When the player rolls to know ''red dragons breathe fire'' they still have to act and put that information to good use somehow. When a player rolls to ''figure something out'', they just sit there as the DM tells them ''the red key opens the red door''.


That’s what I find so hard to understand. Why many GMs make you give a good argument or solution before letting you roll. Each time the player tries to convince, outsmart, deduct, resolve, etc. Many GMs tend to say:

“You have to convince me first”; “You have to make a good speech”; “You have to bring a good argument”; “Think a little bit, the solution for this puzzle or riddle is very simple”. Why? I even find unfair to state “If you make a good argument, you get a bonus in your roll”.


From the DM's side this is called ''getting the players to play the game''. It is so boring for players to roll through everything. It really makes the game pointless and no fun for the DM.

The Dm goes through the trouble of making a trap, encounter, location or mystery and all the players can do is look at the DM with blank looks on their faces and say ''DM tell us how to play''. It's horrible when the players don't even want to try.

Most DMs are just looking for even 1% of an effort and 1% caring a little about the game. If the player wants to sneak past a guard, the DM wants more then ''I rolled 100'', they want even a simple ''I grab some commoner clothing off a drying line and sneak past''.

Lurkmoar
2015-05-10, 11:30 PM
1. Willingness to learn.

2. Not be a raging jerk.

3. Excited to play, prompt to show up.

Optional: brings snacks and drinks.

Hypername
2015-05-11, 03:37 AM
... That is a pretty extreme metric if we are talking about D&D stats. A base stat of 12 would translate into a +1 modifier which would mean +5% increased chance of success from the average. Of course how that actually translates into real life friendliness is debatable but I think it is higher than that.

Also going off of "roll 3d6 in order", one of the most restrictive stat systems, 1 in 216 have that much charisma which means there should be over a 40 million people (if I've done my math right) with that much charisma alive on earth right now. I now that's not how stats are generated in real life but no one in history has been capable of doing what you say they can do. Still if you are not trying to modal real life that's fine.

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2 interesting read.

goto124
2015-05-11, 03:39 AM
Then why don’t you bring a punching bag to the player with the strong character? And depending on how hard he punches he will get a bonus on his next attack, or count how much can a player hold his breath, to give him a bonus to his constitution roll.

I imagine the player would use the DM as the punching bag at this point :smalltongue:

*PUNCH* 'How much damage was that?' *PUNCH* 'How about that one?' *SLAP*

NichG
2015-05-11, 04:40 AM
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2 interesting read.

D&D stats are, at the end of the day, just D&D stats. They don't hold the key to any underlying truth about reality. Comparing them to any real performance on any real task and expecting consistency is silly. I mean, this is a game which, even at 1st level, is able to produce a person capable of taking a gunshot straight to the eyeball (lets call that a crit, shall we?) every week and consistently surviving with no lasting harm.

The issue when you try to use this to prove things is, any system with inconsistent axioms is capable of proving any statement. So if you make a few sloppy assumptions, its as easy to prove that 'almost no one has higher than a 10 in any stat (through questionable comparisons to door Break DCs and mapping between stats as if they were equivalent)' as it is to prove that 'probably everyone here knows at least 3 people with 18 in at least one stat (through looking at the traditional 3d6-down-the-line demographic generation algorithms, which gives a ~1/36 chance of having at least one 18)'. If I made an argument about the gaps between 'natural ability' and 'skill' I could probably come up with a reasonable story about how even scores of 24-30 must be relatively common in order to explain people like Ramanujan (e.g. people with no training who, despite that, accomplish things that normally would require a dedicated career individual - so following the arguments of that article you'd have to make up +12 or so in skill point allocation, levels, and feats).

So, yes, you don't know anyone with an 18 in Int. But that's not because 18 Int is incredibly brilliant or rare or anything really - it's because real people don't have an 'Int stat'.

Hypername
2015-05-11, 05:30 AM
D&D stats are, at the end of the day, just D&D stats. They don't hold the key to any underlying truth about reality. Comparing them to any real performance on any real task and expecting consistency is silly. I mean, this is a game which, even at 1st level, is able to produce a person capable of taking a gunshot straight to the eyeball (lets call that a crit, shall we?) every week and consistently surviving with no lasting harm.

The issue when you try to use this to prove things is, any system with inconsistent axioms is capable of proving any statement. So if you make a few sloppy assumptions, its as easy to prove that 'almost no one has higher than a 10 in any stat (through questionable comparisons to door Break DCs and mapping between stats as if they were equivalent)' as it is to prove that 'probably everyone here knows at least 3 people with 18 in at least one stat (through looking at the traditional 3d6-down-the-line demographic generation algorithms, which gives a ~1/36 chance of having at least one 18)'. If I made an argument about the gaps between 'natural ability' and 'skill' I could probably come up with a reasonable story about how even scores of 24-30 must be relatively common in order to explain people like Ramanujan (e.g. people with no training who, despite that, accomplish things that normally would require a dedicated career individual - so following the arguments of that article you'd have to make up +12 or so in skill point allocation, levels, and feats).

So, yes, you don't know anyone with an 18 in Int. But that's not because 18 Int is incredibly brilliant or rare or anything really - it's because real people don't have an 'Int stat'.

And that's the truth indeed. Stats don't exist in real life, and someone who we could say has 18 Int also has a lot of Wis. The DnD stat allocation is there to make our lives easier as in real life brightness, strength,athleticism, tolerance, problem solving are abstract and non measurable ideas, that can be calculated only by comparing with other people.
So if we were to take someone like Heisenberg and compare him to an uneducated man, Heisenberg would look like his Int modifier was at least a +20. Stats are there to help us imagine our PC and I stand corrected. They are not applicable in real life. But I think I derailed the thread enough.

Back on topic, can we all just agree that if we are to have real life ability measure in game things will turn sour for many players?

Maglubiyet
2015-05-11, 05:48 AM
So, yes, you don't know anyone with an 18 in Int. But that's not because 18 Int is incredibly brilliant or rare or anything really - it's because real people don't have an 'Int stat'.

Absolutely correct.

Cluedrew
2015-05-11, 07:23 AM
So, yes, you don't know anyone with an 18 in Int. But that's not because 18 Int is incredibly brilliant or rare or anything really - it's because real people don't have an 'Int stat'.
Absolutely correct.True, the reason I use the phrase "has 18 [anything]" is not because they have an actual 18 but because they are an embodiment of an image people (or just me) get when we try think of what a high stat actually means. Take the charismatic, very good at making friends but I don't think that is actually a skill check (in D&D or real life), so if charismatic is not persuasive then a charisma stat of 8 is possible. Which is to say not only do stats not exist, they sometimes don't even simulate life very well.


Back on topic, can we all just agree that if we are to have real life ability measure in game things will turn sour for many players? Yeah probably. (I read the article you linked by the way.) Would rather go with "inspired by" then "modeled by" when it comes to real life. ... And I just realized this isn't Playing as Yourself (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?414395-Playing-as-yourself), the topics kind of overlap in this area.

Personally I usually prefer using character abilities over player abilities an role-playing games, but I can understand why people would want to chose the other. Perhaps it is not as important which one you do as it is to clarify that choice early on.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-11, 09:13 AM
From the DM's side this is called ''getting the players to play the game''. It is so boring for players to roll through everything. It really makes the game pointless and no fun for the DM.

This is a good point. If the DM does not find this fun, the DM should not do it. Except that it is clear that many players would also find this style unfun, so at the end of the day, so then there can be the problem of a style difference. The DM's fun, however, does not trump the player's.


The Dm goes through the trouble of making a trap, encounter, location or mystery and all the players can do is look at the DM with blank looks on their faces and say ''DM tell us how to play''. It's horrible when the players don't even want to try.

This I will admit, can be quite discouraging and I understand why some DMs might not like it. I as a DM don't really mind but it is a style thing and not all DMs are going to work with all players. I greatly suspect at this point it is safe to say that Darth Ultron represents an extreme in regards to DM style.


Most DMs are just looking for even 1% of an effort and 1% caring a little about the game. If the player wants to sneak past a guard, the DM wants more then ''I rolled 100'', they want even a simple ''I grab some commoner clothing off a drying line and sneak past''.

If I didn't give a crap about the game, I'd probably put 8 into every mental stat to reflect my own abilities and then go full murderhobo. I think it is immensely unfair to say that people incapable of being charming themselves don't care when we have actual problems doing such. It is this desire to interact in a way that we cannot fully do so ourselves that drives us. From my experience those who want to be charming or wise or smart in the setting tend to be the ones who like the setting the best. They want to be a part of it and influence and speak to the NPCs. They want to know about the NPCs. They want to know about the world itself.

And just because I get hints about the game, doesn't mean I don't put effort into a response or the character itself. Getting a hint does not mean that you respond with just the roll after all, and is somewhat unrelated to the point.

Also, I'd ask how socially awkward people...Interact with the setting if they are never in the spotlight? I'm actually somewhat curious on this point, and how the socially awkward people you have played with handle this part of the game.

goto124
2015-05-11, 09:21 AM
Most DMs are just looking for even 1% of an effort and 1% caring a little about the game. If the player wants to sneak past a guard, the DM wants more then ''I rolled 100'', they want even a simple ''I grab some commoner clothing off a drying line and sneak past''.

I shudder to think about why you have players who don't bother to give that single line.

Even socially awkward players are able to and will do it.


I greatly suspect at this point it is safe to say that Darth Ultron represents an extreme in regards to DM style.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-11, 11:45 AM
Most DMs are just looking for even 1% of an effort and 1% caring a little about the game. If the player wants to sneak past a guard, the DM wants more then ''I rolled 100'', they want even a simple ''I grab some commoner clothing off a drying line and sneak past''.


I shudder to think about why you have players who don't bother to give that single line.


I kind of like the idea.

DM: "An ancient stone staircase descends into the earth. An ominous sense of death and decay hangs over the area. Clearly you've arrived at the Crypt of the Tainted Spectre."

Player: "Okay, we loot the place. I rolled an 87."

DM: "The Crypt is not without its occupants, living and otherwise..."

Player: "Fine, we kill all the monsters. I got a 55. <sigh> And now you're probably going to say there are traps too or whatever. I rolled a 75 for that. Gosh this is taking forever."

DM: "Good enough. You each gain 4,750xp and you find 8 Potions of Barkskin, a Robe of Many Ears, and a +4 Dwarven Axe called the 'Hobgoblinator'..."

Flickerdart
2015-05-11, 01:12 PM
I kind of like the idea.

DM: "An ancient stone staircase descends into the earth. An ominous sense of death and decay hangs over the area. Clearly you've arrived at the Crypt of the Tainted Spectre."

Player: "Okay, we loot the place. I rolled an 87."

DM: "The Crypt is not without its occupants, living and otherwise..."

Player: "Fine, we kill all the monsters. I got a 55. <sigh> And now you're probably going to say there are traps too or whatever. I rolled a 75 for that. Gosh this is taking forever."

DM: "Good enough. You each gain 4,750xp and you find 8 Potions of Barkskin, a Robe of Many Ears, and a +4 Dwarven Axe called the 'Hobgoblinator'..."
It doesn't really take a lot of work to raise the level of abstraction on all rolls to how Craft or Profession checks get treated. "I roll a 33 on my Adventuring check." "You defeat *rolls* 20 hobgoblins and earn *rolls* 700 gold in jewels and artworks."

Cluedrew
2015-05-11, 04:46 PM
It doesn't really take a lot of work to raise the level of abstraction on all rolls to how Craft or Profession checks get treated. "I roll a 33 on my Adventuring check." "You defeat *rolls* 20 hobgoblins and earn *rolls* 700 gold in jewels and artworks."

Now I want to make a ironic role playing game were the focus is on non-adventuring things and the parts most games focus on are abstracted and simplified to the extreme.

Flickerdart
2015-05-11, 05:05 PM
Now I want to make a ironic role playing game were the focus is on non-adventuring things and the parts most games focus on are abstracted and simplified to the extreme.
You could call it Downtime - a game about what happens between adventures. You can play another game between sessions of Downtime, or just roll to see what would have happened if you had.

icefractal
2015-05-11, 08:21 PM
At one point, I was working on a game where kingdom building was the big thing, and your level of personal awesomeness was a just a single stat. So in that, "roll to deal with the demon cultists ... 37 ... you killed 3/4 of them, the rest disperse" would be a thing that could happen.

kyoryu
2015-05-11, 09:05 PM
From the DM's side this is called ''getting the players to play the game''. It is so boring for players to roll through everything. It really makes the game pointless and no fun for the DM.

The Dm goes through the trouble of making a trap, encounter, location or mystery and all the players can do is look at the DM with blank looks on their faces and say ''DM tell us how to play''. It's horrible when the players don't even want to try.

Most DMs are just looking for even 1% of an effort and 1% caring a little about the game. If the player wants to sneak past a guard, the DM wants more then ''I rolled 100'', they want even a simple ''I grab some commoner clothing off a drying line and sneak past''.

I usually see this behavior (and have been somewhat guilty of it) in very heavily railroaded games. At some point, when you realize your decisions don't matter, it's easy to just check out mentally.

goto124
2015-05-11, 09:22 PM
And in heavily railroaded games, there's no point wasting time trying to input your own actions when only the DM's ideas work anyway.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-11, 10:03 PM
I shudder to think about why you have players who don't bother to give that single line.

Even socially awkward players are able to and will do it.

There are a lot of roll players around.

Milo v3
2015-05-11, 10:12 PM
One of my players actually had ranks in Profession (Assassin) once and used it to just do "average" missions while waiting between proper adventures, I don't see any reason why players wouldn't be able to take Profession (Adventurer) :smalltongue:

goto124
2015-05-11, 10:25 PM
Your player was an assassin? :smalleek:

Milo v3
2015-05-11, 11:33 PM
Your player was an assassin? :smalleek:

Well you wouldn't want to anger an assassin by banning them from your game, would ya?

Flickerdart
2015-05-12, 09:17 AM
There are a lot of roll players around.
There is a Russian joke, which I translate for your convenience.
A man is watching the news when he sees his friend's street on the broadcast, and immediately calls him. "Ivan," he says, "they're saying on the news that there's a madman in your neighbourhood who's driving on the wrong side of the street!"
"A madman?" Ivan replies, "There are hundreds of them here!"

Jay R
2015-05-12, 02:21 PM
The most valuable skill in D&D, up through AD&D 2E, is imaginative intuition - the ability to come up with new ideas to address new situations.

The most valuable skill in D&D 3E+ is precision and memorization of the rules, giving the ability to optimize your effectiveness within the skills, feats and abilities presented there.

People who are good at imaginative intuition often mischaracterize 3E+ play as "just rolling dice". People who are good at precision and memorization of rules often mischaracterize oD&D, BECMI, and AD&D as "ignoring the stats".

MrZJunior
2015-05-12, 02:48 PM
I think the most valuable skill is the ability to have fun.

As to the issues of role playing vs roll playing, I personally much prefer role playing. I find the whole "roll to be convincing" thing very dull. However, my introduction to RPGs was through LARPing, so I am used to acting everything out. I find it very immersion breaking when I am asked to roll in a social situation.

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 01:50 PM
But the problem is, how do you speak for most socially awkward people? I think it is more accurate to say that SOME socially awkward people don't like to be in the forefront, but I do not think you can speak for the majority of a group of people. Especially not one you don't seem to be a part of without some backing as to why you can make this statement.As one of the most socially awkward people in the group - sometimes, it's better to not even try. Yeah, as much as I'd love to play a charming, effective face, it's not worth the strain on the group to force them to listen to me stutter, hiss, forget what I'm saying, pause, and stumble with everything I'm trying to do (Often with no clue about what's actually supposed to work).

Roleplaying games are primarily social games - social skills matter.

The Sword Fighting Guy's equivalent to the Charming Bard's "You need to say what you're trying to fast-talk" isn't "You need to demonstrate the sword technique you use" - it's "You need to describe the sword technique you use". And there are systems that reward that kind of flavor, flair, and description in combat and other technical stuff. (Exalted's Stunts come to mind, and a few other systems are similar)

Of course, social skills are a skill that can be learned, and as I've been getting more face-time D&D (Instead of RP-over-text-based-chat-clients), my own social skills have been improving.

Knaight
2015-05-14, 02:26 PM
You could call it Downtime - a game about what happens between adventures. You can play another game between sessions of Downtime, or just roll to see what would have happened if you had.
You could easily make that a serious game as well, just with a different focus than the fantasy-adventure subgenre of RPGs.


I usually see this behavior (and have been somewhat guilty of it) in very heavily railroaded games. At some point, when you realize your decisions don't matter, it's easy to just check out mentally.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you to find that Darth Ultron sees a lot of that behavior in that case.

Cluedrew
2015-05-14, 03:35 PM
You could easily make that a serious game as well, just with a different focus than the fantasy-adventure subgenre of RPGs.Well we flushed out "Builders & Tools: The game of fantasy construction projects" into a serious game idea on a different thread (I feel we did). I think if you wanted to you could turn Downtime into a serious game.

I also thing it might be a social game where role-playing is more important.


... describe ...
Then why doesn't "I put on a winning smile and come across as friendly as possible before offering him the deal" as a description for a social role. And that is a lot more than "I attack the goblin" which has always been the threshold in most combat situations when I have played.

Amphetryon
2015-05-14, 04:31 PM
As one of the most socially awkward people in the group - sometimes, it's better to not even try. Yeah, as much as I'd love to play a charming, effective face, it's not worth the strain on the group to force them to listen to me stutter, hiss, forget what I'm saying, pause, and stumble with everything I'm trying to do (Often with no clue about what's actually supposed to work).

Roleplaying games are primarily social games - social skills matter.

The Sword Fighting Guy's equivalent to the Charming Bard's "You need to say what you're trying to fast-talk" isn't "You need to demonstrate the sword technique you use" - it's "You need to describe the sword technique you use". And there are systems that reward that kind of flavor, flair, and description in combat and other technical stuff. (Exalted's Stunts come to mind, and a few other systems are similar)

Of course, social skills are a skill that can be learned, and as I've been getting more face-time D&D (Instead of RP-over-text-based-chat-clients), my own social skills have been improving.

Ah, so now Sword-Fighting Guy needs to know whether Bonetti's Defense is useful against Capo (not Capa) Ferro, and to recognize that Thibault is not useful if his opponent has studied his Agrippa?

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 04:38 PM
Ah, so now Sword-Fighting Guy needs to know whether Bonetti's Defense is useful against Capo (not Capa) Ferro, and to recognize that Thibault is not useful if his opponent has studied his Agrippa?In some systems - yes, yes he should. Or at least the guy who knows all that will have an advantage in combat.


Then why doesn't "I put on a winning smile and come across as friendly as possible before offering him the deal" as a description for a social role. And that is a lot more than "I attack the goblin" which has always been the threshold in most combat situations when I have played.Because the social rules for the game are broken, don't make sense, and are easily exploitable, and trying to codify them further than that often leads to all the fun being taken out of them.

Flickerdart
2015-05-14, 04:43 PM
The Sword Fighting Guy's equivalent to the Charming Bard's "You need to say what you're trying to fast-talk" isn't "You need to demonstrate the sword technique you use" - it's "You need to describe the sword technique you use".
No it isn't. In the case of the social skills, the GM becomes the judge of whether or not what you say works. But the GM, outside of very rare cases, doesn't have the swordfighting knowledge to judge that for the weapon.

draken50
2015-05-14, 04:59 PM
I would go with the ability to communicate with the GM and other players.

To steal from AngryDM, every player action has an Intent, and a mechanism by which they are trying to accomplish that intent. However as a GM you like to resolve those given particular scenarios it seems to me that the player being able to communicate what they want to try to do, and how they want to try to do it is key to adjudicating their actions.

Additionally, the players need to be able to communicate with each other, both in character and out of character so the game stays fun for everyone involved.

So a quieter player, or less charming player, isn't a problem as long as they can communicate well in those two regards.

Second to that is imagination, and the ability to try to envision things from their characters perspective to some degree.

Personally, I consider rules mastery/ game strategy to be one of the least important skills for the games I run. As long as I can clearly determine both the intent and mechanism of your actions, I can direct you to the rules/rolls that will apply, if any.

Amphetryon
2015-05-14, 05:18 PM
In some systems - yes, yes he should. Or at least the guy who knows all that will have an advantage in combat.

And they'd need to be able to describe them in sufficient detail that the others at the table all clearly understand the action intended, and all know that the actions are those named? So that, for the examples I gave, they'd all have to know that describing the action from the duel in The Princess Bride where all those techniques are named, in that sequence, would impose a penalty for being flat-out incorrect?

What RPGs (you said 'systems,' plural, so you must mean more than one) do you reference that require such a detailed and encyclopedic knowledge of real-world fighting techniques in order to gain this advantage?

icefractal
2015-05-14, 06:10 PM
What RPGs (you said 'systems,' plural, so you must mean more than one) do you reference that require such a detailed and encyclopedic knowledge of real-world fighting techniques in order to gain this advantage?I don't know about realistic focus but ... most games on the crunchier end have player skill involved in combat.

Let's take D&D 3E. You're playing a Warblade. The difference between someone who's read and understands the rules for maneuvers, AoOs, movement, power attack, trip, etc, and someone who doesn't is huge. Doesn't matter if the second character has a higher Int and has a background story of being a brilliant tactician, the first character is going to be vastly more effective and competent looking.

Now describing the angle your sword is swung at? Not so much. That's why personally, I prefer a similarly abstracted approach to social situations - you say the actual content of your attempt, but not the exact phrasing (unless you feel like doing so for fun). But note, neither one of those is something you can just do a single roll for:
"I combat the the dragon until it flees or dies" -> No.
"I persuade the dragon to join forces with us" -> No.

NichG
2015-05-14, 06:34 PM
And they'd need to be able to describe them in sufficient detail that the others at the table all clearly understand the action intended, and all know that the actions are those named? So that, for the examples I gave, they'd all have to know that describing the action from the duel in The Princess Bride where all those techniques are named, in that sequence, would impose a penalty for being flat-out incorrect?

What RPGs (you said 'systems,' plural, so you must mean more than one) do you reference that require such a detailed and encyclopedic knowledge of real-world fighting techniques in order to gain this advantage?

There's always implicit knowledge and implicit skills needed in any game. I don't know of a published game that does it, but I've certainly heard people discuss making systems that incorporate a lot of detail about fencing and (more importantly) why those details are the way they are. E.g. instead of just saying 'X technique beats Y' as a mechanic, the idea is to create a system where the game mechanics encode the underlying reason why it turns out that way in reality, and so you can re-derive real information about fencing from analysis of the mechanics.

That sounds very abstract and theoretical, but any game with grid-based positioning, the ability of things to block each-other, etc in principle calls upon (or permits the re-derivation of) a very large body of research about processes in 2D systems. Knowledge about, say, percolation theory or jamming can be turned into strategic insight and give a tangible in-game advantage. It doesn't just have to be encyclopedia knowledge of theory; intuition is important too. Someone who plays Go and has a good feel for how influence propagates could also obtain advantage due to their OOC experience and knowledge.

The important thing in any case is whether you can learn what you need from the game itself. So even if some other player could start with an advantage from some external knowledge or experience, it doesn't prevent someone else at the table from catching up by learning in-game. A game where you just need to know the database answer to do well (Trivial Pursuit - the RPG?) doesn't provide a way to do this, because in that example the knowledge involved in each challenge you face is de-correlated from the knowledge involved in every other challenge (until the questions repeat). But a game in which you have to repeatedly deal with similar challenges, even challenges involving OOC skills, does allow you to retain useful experience from one challenge to the next.

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 06:38 PM
Others are a bit more 'freeform' with their approach to combat - or combat can be shed for expedience with the skill system used instead (I'm really tempted to do this with a potential upcoming Ironclaw game). Shard explicitly states that the DM can give bonuses for particularly evocative or effective descriptions of attacks and defenses (Up to three extra dice). Of course, on the flipside, you can also get penalties for being particularly bone-headed.

Amphetryon
2015-05-14, 06:52 PM
I don't know about realistic focus but ... most games on the crunchier end have player skill involved in combat.

Let's take D&D 3E. You're playing a Warblade. The difference between someone who's read and understands the rules for maneuvers, AoOs, movement, power attack, trip, etc, and someone who doesn't is huge. Doesn't matter if the second character has a higher Int and has a background story of being a brilliant tactician, the first character is going to be vastly more effective and competent looking.

Now describing the angle your sword is swung at? Not so much. That's why personally, I prefer a similarly abstracted approach to social situations - you say the actual content of your attempt, but not the exact phrasing (unless you feel like doing so for fun). But note, neither one of those is something you can just do a single roll for:
"I combat the the dragon until it flees or dies" -> No.
"I persuade the dragon to join forces with us" -> No.

I'm not talking about knowing the rules of the game. I'm talking about having the real-world skill in whatever task you're trying to describe in order to 'roleplay' it to the level apparently preferred/suggested/required by some of the posters here. This preference/suggestion/requirement is most often seen when "social encounters" come up, where the fact that you know the plot, the Duke's weakness for redheads (and have a disguise to suit), and the target you need to hit on the dice is less important than whether you can personally give a speech that convinces the Duke/GM to give you command of the 12th cavalry for the next fortnight.

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 07:20 PM
I'm not talking about knowing the rules of the game. I'm talking about having the real-world skill in whatever task you're trying to describe in order to 'roleplay' it to the level apparently preferred/suggested/required by some of the posters here. This preference/suggestion/requirement is most often seen when "social encounters" come up, where the fact that you know the plot, the Duke's weakness for redheads (and have a disguise to suit), and the target you need to hit on the dice is less important than whether you can personally give a speech that convinces the Duke/GM to give you command of the 12th cavalry for the next fortnight.

I've seen a lot of chafing about rules that don't allow this sort of thing:
"What do you mean that I can only make an explosive that does 1d6 damage with my few ranks in chemistry? I can make a concoction that can blow up the entire city block in my backyard!"

"Alright, I climb up on the roof to try to hide, because people generally don't look up, then jump down on this dude, intending to stab him"
"Okay, well, according to the rules, you're not actually hidden because you never actually broke Line of Sight, you don't get any sneak attack damage because you're not a rogue, and... you and your foe take piddly-squat falling damage"

And don't get me started on grappling rules... Why can't I grab a guy, use him as a shield, then throw him into his partner to send them both over the ship's railing?

NichG
2015-05-14, 07:53 PM
I'm not talking about knowing the rules of the game. I'm talking about having the real-world skill in whatever task you're trying to describe in order to 'roleplay' it to the level apparently preferred/suggested/required by some of the posters here. This preference/suggestion/requirement is most often seen when "social encounters" come up, where the fact that you know the plot, the Duke's weakness for redheads (and have a disguise to suit), and the target you need to hit on the dice is less important than whether you can personally give a speech that convinces the Duke/GM to give you command of the 12th cavalry for the next fortnight.

If we talk about what comes up 'most often' in these discussions, usually you'd find quite a few people arguing that the players having to figure out that the Duke's weakness of redheads is appropriate to employ in order to get command of the 12th cavalry is 'requiring player social skill'. Its the problem of practicality versus philosophy. Philosophically, its easy to latch onto an overly general statement like 'character skill should matter, not player skill' and then that forces people to defend more and more extreme positions.

But really its just a continuum of possibilities with an optimum somewhere in the middle, and also an optimum which is dependent on the group of players you have. For some groups its fine if they have to be Shakespearean actors to succeed because, in fact, they are (or want to be) Shakespearean actors; or enjoy hamming it up; or whatever. For other groups, you'll get people who even have trouble with things like 'if you're going to blackmail the Duke about his secrets, don't do it by publically announcing them in front of his court' and want a higher level of abstraction to shift the focus of the game more towards the things they enjoy.

Cluedrew
2015-05-15, 07:44 PM
Because the social rules for the game are broken, don't make sense, and are easily exploitable, and trying to codify them further than that often leads to all the fun being taken out of them.Three questions:
What does this have to do with the level of description?
How so? Isn't the lack of codified factors one of D&D's biggest problems in social mechanics?
Assuming D&D 3.5 is "the game", what about in the general case?


No it isn't. In the case of the social skills, the GM becomes the judge of whether or not what you say works. But the GM, outside of very rare cases, doesn't have the swordfighting knowledge to judge that for the weapon.So are you saying that how combat is run is a compromise? Do to the lack of knowledge?


a continuum of possibilitiesCorrect, in the end play the game you, and your friends, want to play. Even if it is unpopular or other people don't like it.

Flickerdart
2015-05-16, 06:04 PM
So are you saying that how combat is run is a compromise? Do to the lack of knowledge?
No. Combat is an abstraction. Forcing people to negotiate out-of-game is not an abstraction.

Cluedrew
2015-05-16, 08:10 PM
No. Combat is an abstraction. Forcing people to negotiate out-of-game is not an abstraction.But you seemed to be tying it to the GM's knowledge of the subject. What does that have to do with the amount we abstract it? Please Elaborate on that.

Flickerdart
2015-05-16, 10:38 PM
But you seemed to be tying it to the GM's knowledge of the subject. What does that have to do with the amount we abstract it? Please Elaborate on that.
It's really very simple.

The GM is typically not a trained swordfighter, and neither is the PC. So neither of them is at all qualified to determine whether or not a particular description of an attack would be effective against a particular description of a defense, outside of very crude notions. Therefore, both sides understand that strict rules are necessary in order to resolve things in ways more meaningful than "nuh-huh, he totally ninja flips out of the way." These rules require a degree of abstraction. In my experience, systems (and circumstances such as freeform) that fail to adequately abstract this end up with purple prose winning the day simply because most GMs and players are also not literary critics, and more often comes across as better.

On the other hand, everybody is qualified to say "well, that sounds convincing" - or at least they think they are, since it's actually pretty tough to adopt the mindset of a fictional character in a fictional situation. This results in this idea of "forget the dice, just roleplay" and the removal of the abstraction. And then everything falls apart because you can no longer play someone you are not - roleplay, in other words.

NichG
2015-05-17, 12:58 AM
And then everything falls apart because you can no longer play someone you are not - roleplay, in other words.

Following you fine up till here. Where did 'actually pretty tough' become 'impossible'? Writers and actors manage to do this all the time without having specific strict rules that create abstractions. There's even some evidence that there's a specific organic basis in the brain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) for the ability to predict and emulate the behavior of someone who isn't you.

Pex
2015-05-17, 01:40 AM
Following you fine up till here. Where did 'actually pretty tough' become 'impossible'? Writers and actors manage to do this all the time without having specific strict rules that create abstractions. There's even some evidence that there's a specific organic basis in the brain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) for the ability to predict and emulate the behavior of someone who isn't you.

I think the point is a socially awkward player isn't a writer or actor and thus cannot come up with the words and/or convey an idea good enough to convince the DM of something in a scenario where you just roleplay social interaction instead of using a die roll game mechanic abstraction. Since he can't convince the DM in real world face to face he can never role play the socialite bedazzling those who listen to his character.

Having a mechanic abstraction for socialization allows the awkward player to play a character who isn't awkward, just like the scrawny player gets to play Jock Strongman bashing orcs in the face with a greatsword because there's a mechanic abstraction for combat and the player need not describe fighting thrusts in real life to the DM to convince him he hits the orc.

NichG
2015-05-17, 01:50 AM
I think the point is a socially awkward player isn't a writer or actor and thus cannot come up with the words and/or convey an idea good enough to convince the DM of something in a scenario where you just roleplay social interaction instead of using a die roll game mechanic abstraction. Since he can't convince the DM in real world face to face he can never role play the socialite bedazzling those who listen to his character.

Flickerdart's comment was about how it's difficult for the DM to judge accurately rather than how it's difficult for the player to play well though. I'm pretty sure he's making a different point here.

Cluedrew
2015-05-17, 06:55 AM
The GM is typically not a trained swordfighter, and neither is the PC.Hypothetically, what if there is a good deal of overlap between your role-playing group and the local fencing club? So everyone is trained in sport swordfighting and knows how live combat situations would work better than most movie directors.

Sorry if I'm going hard on this point, but I feel there is something significant here and I don't know what it is.

Amphetryon
2015-05-17, 08:06 AM
Hypothetically, what if there is a good deal of overlap between your role-playing group and the local fencing club? So everyone is trained in sport swordfighting and knows how live combat situations would work better than most movie directors.

Sorry if I'm going hard on this point, but I feel there is something significant here and I don't know what it is.

Then you're talking about an extremely specific, extremely niche situation for a particular group, wherein the actual combat rules of a given RPG are likely to be ignored or heavily modified in order to conform to the specific level of understanding commonly available to that particular table and (most likely) not available to the writers of the published RPG they've chosen to play. It's a situation that - if it does come up - bears little relation to the experience of the majority of gamers at the majority of TTRPG tables, and is therefore unlikely to be particularly instructive in providing insights as to how most such tables can, do, or even should resolve combat.

Hawkstar
2015-05-17, 08:16 AM
Then you're talking about an extremely specific, extremely niche situation for a particular group, wherein the actual combat rules of a given RPG are likely to be ignored or heavily modified in order to conform to the specific level of understanding commonly available to that particular table and (most likely) not available to the writers of the published RPG they've chosen to play. It's a situation that - if it does come up - bears little relation to the experience of the majority of gamers at the majority of TTRPG tables, and is therefore unlikely to be particularly instructive in providing insights as to how most such tables can, do, or even should resolve combat.
Except it IS effective in explaining why some people object to social rules. Everyone inherently knows how persuasion works - you're either convinced by what someone says, or you're not.

Amphetryon
2015-05-17, 08:24 AM
Except it IS effective in explaining why some people object to social rules. Everyone inherently knows how persuasion works - you're either convinced by what someone says, or you're not.

Except this isn't true, because some people are naturally better at persuading folks than others, as well as understanding how that persuasion is done. Ignoring the game rules forces people to default to their own abilities and level of understanding, just as ignoring the combat rules forces people to default to their own combat abilities and level of understanding of how actual fighting works. When everyone at the table is an amazing combatant, or an amazing communicator, then choosing to play that way doesn't penalize any of them. When their levels of expertise vary, then choosing to ignore the game rules in favor of their personal level of expertise forces people to 'roleplay' only the things they're actually good at, and actually bad at, rather than the Character they envision.

Jay R
2015-05-17, 10:10 AM
Hypothetically, what if there is a good deal of overlap between your role-playing group and the local fencing club? So everyone is trained in sport swordfighting and knows how live combat situations would work better than most movie directors.

Then you either use an abstraction system, or you pick up weapons and fight for your character.

I've fenced for over forty years. My games includes several people with twenty years or more of both fencing and historical combat, and we've read several of the period manuals. While we occasionally allow a variation in the rules because of it, Mike and I usually can't tell what's going to happen.

Suppose I say that my character stands in Di Grassi's stance and does a slope pass to the right, striking from Broad Ward while he is using Saviolo's double weapon parry to the right, followed by a compass pace to his left to strike the head with a mandritto.

Neither of us knows what will happen, because there's an infinite continuum of exactly where our points wind up within that set of moves. So we almost never attempt that level of description. We do change some rules based on reasonability, but mostly, we roll the dice.

By contrast, we simulate talking by talking. This is not the equivalent of discussing Fiore De Liberi's boar stance or Wallerstein's longsword strikes; it's the equivalent of picking up weapons and fighting.

Pex
2015-05-17, 01:36 PM
Flickerdart's comment was about how it's difficult for the DM to judge accurately rather than how it's difficult for the player to play well though. I'm pretty sure he's making a different point here.

It amounts to the same thing. The DM needs to be satisfied with a player's words to convince an NPC to do something. With no mechanic abstraction, the socially awkward player will always fail while "the cool kid" will always succeed. The awkward player can never play a bard, paladin, or face rogue because the DM doesn't like how the player presents himself. The cool kid can play an illiterate barbarian who grew up in the mountains and convince the town mayor to open the gates for his 1,000 populated tribe to come in for "safety" against marauding ogres, which don't exist because the player has this way with words and maybe he or she happens to be rather striking in looks.

NichG
2015-05-17, 07:40 PM
It amounts to the same thing. The DM needs to be satisfied with a player's words to convince an NPC to do something. With no mechanic abstraction, the socially awkward player will always fail while "the cool kid" will always succeed.

The argument you make does not apply to a group that is okay with different levels of social skill translating to different levels of success. For many of the people in this discussion, me included, that's explicitly okay and has already been addressed as a group-level choice as to how abstract the game should be and what skills they are comfortable with testing.

But the argument Flickerdart makes in principle still does apply to that case, because it asserts that even if you had socially skilled players make arguments that should work and a socially skilled DM who could assess those arguments fairly for their validity and effectiveness, once you add in the element of having to emulate a mindset that is different from the DM's then it will break down.

Jay R
2015-05-17, 09:29 PM
It amounts to the same thing. The DM needs to be satisfied with a player's words to convince an NPC to do something. With no mechanic abstraction, the socially awkward player will always fail while "the cool kid" will always succeed. The awkward player can never play a bard, paladin, or face rogue because the DM doesn't like how the player presents himself. The cool kid can play an illiterate barbarian who grew up in the mountains and convince the town mayor to open the gates for his 1,000 populated tribe to come in for "safety" against marauding ogres, which don't exist because the player has this way with words and maybe he or she happens to be rather striking in looks.

This is not my experience. I was always the socially awkward kid, and the awkward player, and the guy with the funny-sounding voice. But I am also intelligent and quick-minded. My experience is that I could always convince the DM about how my character would sway the crowd, but I could not actually sway a crowd myself.

Simulating higher charisma than I have has always been easy. Simulating higher wisdom is too, since I can announce that my character resists temptation much more easily than I can resist temptation. (I can also simulate battle skills well, because that is really making competent tactical decisions, and my Ph.D. is in game theory.)

The real problem for many people is that describing how to do any of these is relatively easy, using high intelligence. But it's much harder to try to simulate high intelligence using any other stat. I suspect that a high-IQ gamer can simulate high charisma better than a high-charisma gamer can, or high wisdom as easily as a high-wisdom gamer. (To be fair, I'm not prepared to admit the existence of a high-wisdom gamer. It's certainly not me.)

That's why original D&D appealed primarily to the extremely small high-IQ nerd demographic, while modern D&D has a much wider appeal. The high-IQ player had a huge advantage in the early games.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-17, 10:03 PM
It amounts to the same thing. The DM needs to be satisfied with a player's words to convince an NPC to do something. With no mechanic abstraction, the socially awkward player will always fail while "the cool kid" will always succeed.

I'm not sure the ''cool kid'' always succeeds. Lots of DM's just don't like the ''cool''. So when they do something ''cool'', the DM might respond with a bit more common sense like ''Um, the guard just shoots!''.

Cluedrew
2015-05-18, 06:59 AM
By contrast, we simulate talking by talking.And I guess that is what I am talking about, why resolve verbal conflict in a different way than sword fighting, stealth and item creation? The practical considerations aside it has always seemed to me to be a bit of a disjoint from the rest of the game. To be fair it is not the only one (in D&D), physical combat is resolved differently than other confrontations as well, but that is because D&D grew out of a tactics game.


my Ph.D. is in game theory.That's awesome.

Jay R
2015-05-18, 07:26 AM
And I guess that is what I am talking about, why resolve verbal conflict in a different way than sword fighting, stealth and item creation?

Because it's fun. And in the original version, because playing the role was considered an important part of the role-playing game.

And because even if you just pretend to talk instead of talking, you are talking to do so. Using talk to describe how your character is going to talk and then rolling the dice is akin to using a sword to manipulate the controls of a sword-fighting video game.


The practical considerations aside it has always seemed to me to be a bit of a disjoint from the rest of the game.

Agreed. That's a feature, not a bug. I can't really pick a lock, loot a corpse, or get poisoned in a trap, but I can really talk. For me, and many other old-school gamers, that's the most fun part.

The idea that the same mechanic should be used for everything is a relatively new feature, with no particular advantage except simplicity. The old idea was that a mechanic for simulating a specific action should be the best simulation, or the most fun. [It didn't always turn out the way, but that was the idea.]


To be fair it is not the only one (in D&D), physical combat is resolved differently than other confrontations as well, but that is because D&D grew out of a tactics game.

Agreed. And talking to simulate talking also grew out of the history of the game. Gygax and Arneson thought actually playing the role was the point of a role-playing game. [Note that they were both socially awkward but highly intelligent.]

NichG
2015-05-18, 07:33 AM
And I guess that is what I am talking about, why resolve verbal conflict in a different way than sword fighting, stealth and item creation? The practical considerations aside it has always seemed to me to be a bit of a disjoint from the rest of the game. To be fair it is not the only one (in D&D), physical combat is resolved differently than other confrontations as well, but that is because D&D grew out of a tactics game.

I think one question to ask which is being taken for granted is, why is talking to an NPC automatically considered a viable form of conflict requiring resolution?

Imagine a game where 'aggressive persuasion' is simply off the table entirely. No one can be persuaded of anything they don't already want to accept. Such a game would still be perfectly functional, and in fact many strongly mechanics-bound games have that structure. A highly mechanical PvP wargame doesn't really take as part of the gameplay convincing the other player to surrender. That doesn't mean you wouldn't have table banter in such a game. It could still be great fun to shout out insults at the enemy commander, or proclaim why they will be inevitably crushed by your forces.

But lets say your table has a culture of doing that, and it becomes a standard thing to do. Then over time, people might encourage the really good ones, or decide 'you know what, that pissed me off, I'm going to direct my forces at him'. And before you know it, you have a game where social interaction is de-facto important: emergent, not designed-in. And maybe, depending on people's tastes at the table, over time that emergent interaction becomes the fun thing for them.

Jay R
2015-05-18, 08:59 AM
I think one question to ask which is being taken for granted is, why is talking to an NPC automatically considered a viable form of conflict requiring resolution?

Because we have observed human behavior.

Changing people's minds with persuasion and more information is and always has been a major driver of human behavior.

I think because the mechanic used in modern D&D is an opposed roll, and because people often don't role-play the situation, some people have gotten the mistaken impression that what's going on is a conflict, rather than ordinary human interaction that might change somebody's mind.

Amphetryon
2015-05-18, 11:02 AM
Because we have observed human behavior.

Changing people's minds with persuasion and more information is and always has been a major driver of human behavior.

I think because the mechanic used in modern D&D is an opposed roll, and because people often don't role-play the situation, some people have gotten the mistaken impression that what's going on is a conflict, rather than ordinary human interaction that might change somebody's mind.

Personally, I call it 'conflict resolution' because that's how my mother - whose post-doctoral equivalent education is in Communications, not Game Theory - refers to ordinary human interaction when its intent is to change the mind of one or more of the participants in the conversation. Naturally, you're free to ignore that, or consider it an Appeal to Authority, or otherwise dismiss it as irrelevant as you see fit.

Jay R
2015-05-18, 11:33 AM
Personally, I call it 'conflict resolution' because that's how my mother - whose post-doctoral equivalent education is in Communications, not Game Theory - refers to ordinary human interaction when its intent is to change the mind of one or more of the participants in the conversation. Naturally, you're free to ignore that, or consider it an Appeal to Authority, or otherwise dismiss it as irrelevant as you see fit.

I don't dismiss it at all. It agrees with my main point completely, and in fact, it makes an even better answer to the poster who asked, "... why is talking to an NPC automatically considered a viable form of conflict requiring resolution"?

By the way, "appeal to authority" is a completely valid argument, recognized as such since at least the time of Aristotle. It is only a reason to dismiss an argument when dismissing cited source as an authority

NichG
2015-05-18, 11:45 AM
Because we have observed human behavior.

Changing people's minds with persuasion and more information is and always has been a major driver of human behavior.

I think because the mechanic used in modern D&D is an opposed roll, and because people often don't role-play the situation, some people have gotten the mistaken impression that what's going on is a conflict, rather than ordinary human interaction that might change somebody's mind.

Could you elaborate? It seems as though you're saying two opposite things here.

Cluedrew
2015-05-18, 11:53 AM
Because it's fun.That is a pretty solid argument in games.


I think one question to ask which is being taken for granted is, why is talking to an NPC automatically considered a viable form of conflict requiring resolution?Didn't mean to imply that. In fact the reason I said "verbal conflict" was to try and cut out the cases that don't fall into this group.

There are a lot of situations where reaching for dice doesn't make sense, character building moments and random banter for instance. However talking your way past a guard is as much "power" as sneaking past or fighting past. And a character's power, for reasons of balance and variety, should be tied to the character itself and not just the player. Some of it should be connected to the player it is a game.

NichG
2015-05-18, 12:04 PM
There are a lot of situations where reaching for dice doesn't make sense, character building moments and random banter for instance. However talking your way past a guard is as much "power" as sneaking past or fighting past. And a character's power, for reasons of balance and variety, should be tied to the character itself and not just the player. Some of it should be connected to the player it is a game.

What I meant to ask was, where was the choice made that 'talking past a guard' is something that a character should be able to do? Certainly there are examples from media where it happens, but at some point there was the idea of 'this is a game mechanic', which is non-obvious.

The way you go from that point determines a lot. For example, if the model of the world is that individuals are generally rational and competent except when there's a specific reason for them not to be, then 'I talk past the guard' in a high-security installation or evil overlord lair should just fail, period. There's a script, you aren't on it, so you get stabbed now. Or maybe there's a prop or something - a password, blackmail material against the particular guard, etc. If you have the prop, then you can convince the guard, but if you just say 'hey. hey. hey. c'mon.' really well, it doesn't matter.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you can make the assumption that people are fundamentally unstable rather than fundamentally stable, and that regardless of situation or scenario or anything there is always some honeyed word and tone of voice that can force a person to give way to it.

But there's an active genre/thematic choice to be made there, and in D&D it sort of just drifted one way and then the other over the history of the game.

Jay R
2015-05-18, 03:58 PM
What I meant to ask was, where was the choice made that 'talking past a guard' is something that a character should be able to do? Certainly there are examples from media where it happens, but at some point there was the idea of 'this is a game mechanic', which is non-obvious.

That conclusion follows naturally from your observation that it sometimes happens in literature (and in real life) and the game-design decision that a single universal mechanic should be applied universally, to all situations.

I don't support it, but I know where it comes from.

In an older game, the players would talk to the DM, as their characters would talk to the guard, and the DM knows if the guard is bribable, swayable, or not. The players can try offering him gold, or telling him that the town will be overrun by orcs if they don't get to the king in town, or put a knife to his throat, and the DM determines his reaction based on what they do, and what she knows about the character. If the guard can't be persuaded, then nothing they do will persuade him.

But if there is one mechanic that must always be applied, and sometimes he could be persuaded by a good speech, then the mechanic is always an option.

Knaight
2015-05-18, 04:07 PM
But if there is one mechanic that must always be applied, and sometimes he could be persuaded by a good speech, then the mechanic is always an option.

Not necessarily. Even the most unified mechanically systems routinely have areas set apart as impossible. There may be some standard roll and add mechanic with skills, that doesn't mean that "I flap my arms and fly away" is ever going to work. The guard may be susceptible to argument but not bribery, and any bribe rolls will fail automatically, where the difficulty could easily be based upon the general outline of the argument in question.

Jay R
2015-05-18, 05:13 PM
Not necessarily. Even the most unified mechanically systems routinely have areas set apart as impossible. There may be some standard roll and add mechanic with skills, that doesn't mean that "I flap my arms and fly away" is ever going to work. The guard may be susceptible to argument but not bribery, and any bribe rolls will fail automatically, where the difficulty could easily be based upon the general outline of the argument in question.

Yup. That would make sense.

But people who have been told that one mechanic applies to all situations can be forgiven if they tend to apply that mechanic to any situation.

Flickerdart
2015-05-19, 09:54 AM
If the guard can't be persuaded, then nothing they do will persuade him.
That's kind of a lame way to run things. A character who's good at persuading should have a decent go at getting the guard to yield. After all, every man has his price.

NichG
2015-05-19, 11:19 AM
That's kind of a lame way to run things. A character who's good at persuading should have a decent go at getting the guard to yield. After all, every man has his price.

This is the kind of assumption I'm talking about. Where does it come from? Is it just because of media, or something else? 'Every man has his price' doesn't mean that 'every man's price is the lint in your pocket and the right words'.

kyoryu
2015-05-19, 11:37 AM
That's kind of a lame way to run things. A character who's good at persuading should have a decent go at getting the guard to yield. After all, every man has his price.

Apocalypse World and a few of the other PbtA games introduce the concept of leverage - to get someone to do what you want, you have to have something that they want. What that will be will vary from individual to individual. And it certainly isn't guaranteed that the price for any particular action is something the PCs can come up with...

Amphetryon
2015-05-19, 11:53 AM
This is the kind of assumption I'm talking about. Where does it come from? Is it just because of media, or something else? 'Every man has his price' doesn't mean that 'every man's price is the lint in your pocket and the right words'.

I didn't see Flickerdart indicate that the protagonists/heroes/PCs were automatically penniless and without resources, contacts, or skills (beyond wordplay) that might be useful to sway the folks to whom they're talking. Could you highlight where he defined those parameters? Alternately, where does your assumption come from?

NichG
2015-05-19, 12:07 PM
I didn't see Flickerdart indicate that the protagonists/heroes/PCs were automatically penniless and without resources, contacts, or skills (beyond wordplay) that might be useful to sway the folks to whom they're talking. Could you highlight where he defined those parameters? Alternately, where does your assumption come from?



That's kind of a lame way to run things. A character who's good at persuading should have a decent go at getting the guard to yield. After all, every man has his price.


The thing in question is a sort of null hypothesis probe. There is a character who is trying to infiltrate a facility, and a guard of that facility. You have no other information. What do you think about the character's chances of talking their past the guard?

One way to read the situation is 'talking past guards is a thing that characters can and should be able to do'. Another way to read the situation is 'The guard's job is simple and well-defined. Without some additional concrete source of incentive, a character should not be able to persuade the guard to let them past.' In the second read, the important thing is the 'additional concrete source of incentive'. To bribe the guard, you need both money and a guard who needs money more than they need to not be discovered having taken a bribe. Working through the details of that in each case takes the game from the 'roll Diplomacy' model to the 'say specific things to specific NPCs' model.

You can go either way, but people often act as if the only possible choice is the first case (as Flickerdart did). That's the choice I want to inspect, because I think it goes to the heart of the 'roll Diplomacy' idea. At the core is the thought 'a character who is so awesome at persuasion that they can convince people of any nonsensical thing they wish is a valid type of character for this game/genre/etc'. If that's on a specific game-by-game basis, then it's a grounded thought. The system said 'you can do this' so its just 'yes, I recognize that I can do this'. But when it goes beyond specific systems and becomes a command 'all games must have this as a valid type of character' that it seems weird.

Why must that be the case?

Knaight
2015-05-19, 12:40 PM
Why must that be the case?

I suspect that it's mostly cultural, and not just in the local subculture. Just about every culture has a number of culture heroes which make their way through the world with the application of guile and trickery, successfully talking themselves out of a bunch of situations. Guards have a long literary history of being minor mooks in the way of the real heroes, from Robin Hood to Song Jian. Then there's the matter of how much respect people who stand outside and guard things are accorded today, which is generally not all that much. Security isn't a glamorous job, and the guards being talked past aren't exactly at the top of the security totem pole.

Flickerdart
2015-05-19, 02:19 PM
To bribe the guard, you need both money and a guard who needs money more than they need to not be discovered having taken a bribe. Working through the details of that in each case takes the game from the 'roll Diplomacy' model to the 'say specific things to specific NPCs' model.
"Roll Diplomacy" models the ability of a character to know what specific thing to say and how to say it. A game might not have that option, but then the roleplaying part of it is significantly diminished because you are unable to exercise an aspect of your character, and must replace it with an aspect of yourself.

Jay R
2015-05-19, 05:09 PM
That's kind of a lame way to run things. A character who's good at persuading should have a decent go at getting the guard to yield. After all, every man has his price.

Absolutely not.

A. Some guards are honest, and will do their job honestly, regardless of the attempted bribe.
B. Some guards expect to be caught, and will not give in.
C. Some guards know that they are being watched, and can't give in.
D. Some guards have been Dominated.
E. Some guards have already been paid their price, by the other side.
F. Some guards know that their captain is just inside the gate.
G. Some guards don't have the key to the gate they're guarding.

There are lots of reasons that a particular guard is not bribable. Use other skills and ideas, and find another way in.


"Roll Diplomacy" models the ability of a character to know what specific thing to say and how to say it. A game might not have that option, but then the roleplaying part of it is significantly diminished because you are unable to exercise an aspect of your character, and must replace it with an aspect of yourself.

Fascinating. You are claiming that the roleplaying part is diminished by actually playing the role.

That's clearly untrue. You can claim that the simulation accuracy is diminished, if you play the role in the conversation instead of just making a diplomacy roll, but not the roleplaying part.

But the same argument applies to working through combat step-by-step, using your cleverness and battle tactics, instead of a single roll to win or lose. The same argument applies to choosing what spell to cast yourself, instead of rolling to see if the wizard chooses the right one. The same argument applies to actually working your way through the quest, instead of rolling a single die to see if you make it through the haunted forest to the troll swamp, find the dungeon, work your way through many encounters, and find the hidden treasure.

Any decision in the game could be modeled with a die roll instead of you playing it out. But playing it out and making decisions is what a role-playing game is.

draken50
2015-05-19, 05:53 PM
I think the mindset that a player simply "rolls dimplomacy" and therefore bypasses the guard is a simplification of the mindset that may be involved.

Additionally, I would consider determining a characters primary motivations through communication to be a key aspect of "Diplomacy."

Now you have a guard, that perhaps can be motivated to break the trust given to him if the character is able to ply him with the proper leverage. Just money may not be enough but getting the guard to consider how it could benefit his sick kid in addition to it may be more worthwhile.

Here's the thing, there are players that aren't good at picking up such social cues, and DMs are not always good at displaying them/playing the role of the NPC well. As such a roll can allow a player to act as their more empathetic and personable character, as they are able to understand better what their character would.

See, I kind have this thing where I don't think that talking to a guard in character to try to persuade them is the be-all end-all definitive "roleplaying" moment, vs. attempting to think and act and talk in character in you know... like every other scene.

To clarify further, I have had a player "roll for diplomacy" as he couldn't figure out good ways to attempt to calm an angered party, and then have the whole table involved in an in-character argument that helped developed everyone involved immediately afterwards, and triggered by the resulting actions.

Or were they not roleplaying, because the argument wasn't based off of an immediate danger, and was something they elected to do without prompting?

Milo v3
2015-05-19, 06:53 PM
Question, since I'm not a good manipulator nor am I charming, but my current character has +14 on diplomacy checks and is the face of the group, how do I do play in your game without my character being useless?

NichG
2015-05-19, 07:08 PM
Question, since I'm not a good manipulator nor am I charming, but my current character has +14 on diplomacy checks and is the face of the group, how do I do play in your game without my character being useless?

Be able to do more things than having a good score on a single skill? I mean, what if I replaced 'diplomacy checks' with 'Craft: Stoneworking'. Would you still expect to be able to mechanically center a character around having a +14 in Craft: Stoneworking?

Thats the thing I'm getting at. There's an implicit assumption that 'face' is an archetype that should be viable as a central character role, on par with things like 'battlefield control' and the like. Maybe in some games it should, and is, and so in those games there's no conflict.

But if you're told 'in this game it just isn't a viable archetype', for some archetypes people will accept that and say 'oh, okay, thats fine then'. And for other archetypes people will say 'thats a shame, I really wanted to play one of those'. But sometimes people will say something that amounts to 'no, it must be viable, otherwise you're doing RPGs wrong'.

Its the third thing I'm trying to pick apart here. It's kind of a sacred cow.

Milo v3
2015-05-19, 07:12 PM
Be able to do more things than having a good score on a single skill? I mean, what if I replaced 'diplomacy checks' with 'Craft: Stoneworking'. Would you still expect to be able to mechanically center a character around having a +14 in Craft: Stoneworking?

No, but I would expect to be able to use my craft:stoneworking ranks. Which isn't being allowed with diplomacy for some reason.

draken50
2015-05-19, 07:20 PM
Question, since I'm not a good manipulator nor am I charming, but my current character has +14 on diplomacy checks and is the face of the group, how do I do play in your game without my character being useless?

In my game, the check is beneficial when the process would require way more time than I would like to to dedicate to role-playing, or if it was too character specific for the duration I would anticipate acting it all out.

Additionally, if you found yourself in a situation where you were attempting to mediate/compromise or attempt to calm a situation, you roll would dictate what overtures your character would attempt based off of their current knowledge and skillset. Ultimately, providing you with direction on how to play your character as more relate-able to those involved. It certainly would mean success in every situation, as some npcs are going to be more willing to talk than listen, and with some characters you may not be able to quickly discover the metaphorical lever and fulcrum with which to move their world.

Basically when asked for it you could roll and get some guidance from the GM(me) on good avenues to proceed with. If you aren't really able to take the ball from there, more and more of the specifics would be narrated at your comfort level.

Edit: I know this wasn't necessarily directed at me, but I figured, what the hey... I'm bored.

Hawkstar
2015-05-19, 07:24 PM
Be able to do more things than having a good score on a single skill? I mean, what if I replaced 'diplomacy checks' with 'Craft: Stoneworking'. Would you still expect to be able to mechanically center a character around having a +14 in Craft: Stoneworking?No, but assuming that character also probably has close to +14 in Bluff and Intimidate as well, I'd expect it to be as viable as mechanically centering a character around Stealth, Acrobatics, and Thieves' Tools. Why is a DEX-based build viable to center a character around, but a CHA-based one not? They're both equal stats with equal cost.

And if I did make a character with nothing but a +14 to Craft: Stoneworking, I'd expect that, when issues dealing with Stoneworking come up, that I'd be able to handle them.

goto124
2015-05-19, 08:42 PM
We're okay with skimping on details with Craft: Stoneworking. Bluff and diplomancy, not so much. Immersion and stuff.

NichG
2015-05-20, 12:48 AM
No, but assuming that character also probably has close to +14 in Bluff and Intimidate as well, I'd expect it to be as viable as mechanically centering a character around Stealth, Acrobatics, and Thieves' Tools. Why is a DEX-based build viable to center a character around, but a CHA-based one not? They're both equal stats with equal cost.

In D&D I can make a viable Cha-based character where what that stat does for me is it makes me hit more accurately and harder. Or push reality out of the way better when I cast spells. I'd say there's far more viable options for Cha than Dex in the system as it stands.

But anyhow, you want to have the Diplomacy investment matter, fine. What if you could do a Diplomacy roll to know 'what is this person's price?', but only that? It's a contract: if you provide the 'X' you get from the successful check regarding a certain action you want to induce, then they will perform that action without fail. But - you don't get to set or modify the price. If its 2000gp, and you have 500gp, then that's that. If its rulership of the orc kingdom, then that's what you have to provide. But you get to know, definitively, a particular price that would guarantee their cooperation if you could concretely provide it.

If that's not satisfying, then why?

Aside:

I believe that it's a serious issue if players internalize the message presented by one-roll-resolution systems that something like talking with someone is just a matter of bludgeoning them with word skill. If you actually believe that, it basically prevents you from figuring out how to do better - as seen in some of the posts about how 'the DM only gets convinced by the cool kid' and things like that. That belief, that somehow there's a magical pattern of intonation and word-choice that other people at the table possess but that is impossible for you, creates this perception that 'the Diplomancer' should be a viable, even a powerful, character - rather than just something nonsensical. It's a mindset that shuts down thought or attempt to actually understand things, because it presents the necessary skill as something out of reach (which it is, because it doesn't really exist).

I had a conversation with a player who had a bit of leverage he wanted to use against someone else. It was clear he was going to basically give away the leverage by threatening to use it and then give the NPC time to defend against it properly, but he felt that he should be able to intimidate the NPC into acting a certain way. So the way I explained it was to ask him to switch sides with me. 'Imagine yourself on the other side of this. I will play you and repeat your phrase verbatim. Now what do you, as a PC, do?'. He went from saying 'obviously this should convince them' to 'oh, well, nothing you threaten me with would convince me, because I'm stubborn and I never give in without a fight... oh, I see - maybe I shouldn't use a threat, but I should just use the leverage directly first.'

For people who believe that 'how you say it' matters more than 'what you say', I think its useful to imagine yourself as the NPC, hearing the DM say your argument back to you. If obviously you wouldn't do it because it would be stupid, you should assume that NPCs will react the same way; and instead ask yourself 'what would I, as a PC in this situation, need to gain to make this obvious loss worthwhile?'.

Flickerdart
2015-05-20, 09:17 AM
But the same argument applies to working through combat step-by-step, using your cleverness and battle tactics, instead of a single roll to win or lose. The same argument applies to choosing what spell to cast yourself, instead of rolling to see if the wizard chooses the right one. The same argument applies to actually working your way through the quest, instead of rolling a single die to see if you make it through the haunted forest to the troll swamp, find the dungeon, work your way through many encounters, and find the hidden treasure.

Any decision in the game could be modeled with a die roll instead of you playing it out. But playing it out and making decisions is what a role-playing game is.
No, no, no.

Any decision in the game could be modelled with mechanics. Combat is modelled with mechanics. Casting spells is modelled with mechanics. Finding hidden treasure is modelled with mechanics. The number of rolls is utterly inconsequential - the point is that there are rolls.

Saying "your Diplomacy means nothing unless you yourself can think of the right thing to say and how to say it in a convincing manner" is denying mechanical resolution of any kind.

Jay R
2015-05-20, 11:45 AM
Question, since I'm not a good manipulator nor am I charming, but my current character has +14 on diplomacy checks and is the face of the group, how do I do play in your game without my character being useless?

Learn to play the entire game, and that includes becoming better at speaking. The Diplomacy skill is great, and will come up a lot, but when trying to convince the king to attack a dragon, nothing replaces telling him the dragon has his daughter.

Having a high longsword skill is essential for a longsword fighter, but the player still needs to think during the battle. Discussions are the same.

Jay R
2015-05-20, 12:04 PM
No, no, no.

Any decision in the game could be modelled with mechanics. Combat is modelled with mechanics. Casting spells is modelled with mechanics. Finding hidden treasure is modelled with mechanics. The number of rolls is utterly inconsequential - the point is that there are rolls.

If you think that's the only kind of game, or even the only kind of D&D, you're just mistaken.

That is a description of D&D starting with third edition. Some people enjoy that kind of mechanical game, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But the description is simply false when applied to any earlier version, and some of us enjoy that kind of role-playing game. There's nothing wrong with that, either.

And even in 3E+, you must combine your mechanics with intelligent tactics. If the archer moves into melee range and is therefore hit, it's a player decision, not mechanics, that made it happen. If the diplomat is trying to convince the king to mobilize, but fails mention that there's an army already invading, then the player decision made the diplomacy roll fail.


Saying "your Diplomacy means nothing unless you yourself can think of the right thing to say and how to say it in a convincing manner" is denying mechanical resolution of any kind.

Why? Your base attack means nothing until you choose an opponent, an action, move to the right range, etc. If you attack an enemy immune to your sword, the attack roll is useless. Similarly, if you try to convince somebody who is immune to any argument you have right now, the Diplomacy roll is just as useless.

Besides, nobody has said that you must always think of the right thing to say. But sometimes it's essential. If the king's wife is held hostage, you will not convince him to act until you tell him you've already rescued her.

If the guard just saw a fellow guard hanged for letting somebody in, the you will not convince him to let you in.

And when that kind of situation exists, the players may not know about it.

Telonius
2015-05-20, 12:30 PM
I generally follow the mechanics, whether for high or for low. If a player does a really good (or remarkably poor) job of portraying the Bluff (or Diplomacy, or whatever), then that's what circumstance modifiers are for. I do take the players' natural skills into account when I assign those modifiers; it's really good (or remarkably poor) relative to what that person is capable of doing. I have no problem with a naturally un-charismatic and abrasive person playing a character that has a super-high charisma and max ranks in Diplomacy. And I have no problem with a smooth-talking player, playing an antisocial orc. This is a fantasy game, they can pretend they're whoever they want.

Not every Bluff or Diplomacy attempt is going to be successful. Bluff, in particular can only temporarily change what a target believes. It doesn't have any effect on other things that the target might already know. You might try to bluff your way past a guard by saying you're the Prince's third cousin. He might believe you are, but that doesn't change the fact that he has strict orders to bar the door to anybody. (He might profusely apologize then ask you to wait while his supervisor checks, for instance).

Cluedrew
2015-05-20, 06:11 PM
Saying "your Diplomacy means nothing unless you yourself can think of the right thing to say and how to say it in a convincing manner" is denying mechanical resolution of any kind.That is still actually a mechanic, just a different sort of mechanic. Your thinking of mechanics that are centered around character ability but mechanics centered around player ability are also valid. In fact outside of role-playing games they are pretty mainstay.

Finding the right balance between player and character is one of many design decisions in games that there is no real right answer. Different points have different advantages and disadvantages but not one is universally superior to another.

And personally, I think that balance is quite a different issue than "anything can work". Sometimes letting anything go is fun, usually when you are going for humor, but other times it is almost painful when a good role brakes reality. (No, I'm not talking about caster supremacy.)

draken50
2015-05-20, 07:37 PM
Frankly I've always believed bluff to be convincing the other person, that you truly believe whatever lie you are giving.

For instance, in poker, a bluff doesn't necessarily mean that you make the other person believe you have a good hand. You make them think that you believe you have a good hand.

So a character with a high bluff score can convince the guard that they believe that there's a stampede of purple elephants right behind them, but the guard lacking any other evidence of the accuracy of that statement is just going to think the character is nuts.

I'd see the high score absolutely applicable to a situation where the character is claiming that their forged documents are real and that if the guard detains them for too long trying to determine their authenticity he will end up in trouble with his superiors.

That being said I would still allow high bluff score to help feed a player who is bad at lying ideas he can use, but that wouldn't always guarantee success, high skill or not.

That interpretation has worked well for my players and has helped prevent the "reality altering powers" bluff is said to have.

Pex
2015-05-20, 10:32 PM
Having a mechanic for social skills and a guard who cannot be bribed are not mutually exclusive. It can very well be there's such a loyal or scared of his boss guard who will not let the PC enter a dwelling no matter what the PC/Player says. What the mechanic would allow is that the character is just that good at a social skill the guard won't be suspicious. He'll just kindly shoo the character away, not consider the attempt of entry as anything other than an honest mistake of ignorance on the part of the PC, and most likely not even tell his boss about the encounter. The player himself wouldn't have to give an elaborate speech of soothing words to the DM's satisfaction to achieve this. For the fun of the game the player could say something to give an idea of what his character says and does, but the DM doesn't need to find the player's real world acting to be worthy of an Academy Award to have the guard not take a hostile response including possibility of handing the PC over to his boss. The social skill roll takes care of that.

NichG
2015-05-21, 06:01 AM
but the DM doesn't need to find the player's real world acting to be worthy of an Academy Award to have the guard not take a hostile response

Even without the mechanic, why would the DM need to?

Hawkstar
2015-05-21, 07:48 AM
Even without the mechanic, why would the DM need to?
Because the DM takes on playing the role of the Guard, and the player takes on the role of the PC, and the ensuing conversation between the DM and player plays out the same as the conversation between the Guard and the PC.

Of course, in a game that uses such a resolution system, it's not a good idea to use a system with a "Charisma" stat or "Persuasion" skill, unless those provide modifiers for how to handle the mock-conversation.

Mechanics are nothing more than the way the game reacts to player action. A problem I have with a lot of "Rules Heavy" systems, especially those with 'mutable fluff' is that they sever the mechanical impact of a lot of the game. More rules-light/freeform systems have greater mechanical impact of statements.

In D&D a description of *insert big, fluffy description of a raging inferno engulfing a building* means "if the 5'x5' square of space that represents your character's location enters one of these squares marked as flaming, reduce Current HP by X." Or something along those lines. Likewise, a player's description of reacting to the blaze is pretty much reduced to "I move this ambiguous 5'x5' square of space to this square, and use my Action to make [These Squares] Not Remove X HP.

In a more freeform game, every phrase and idea conveyed in the description matters, as does every action described taken by the player.

NichG
2015-05-21, 08:14 AM
Because the DM takes on playing the role of the Guard, and the player takes on the role of the PC, and the ensuing conversation between the DM and player plays out the same as the conversation between the Guard and the PC.

I meant, why would the player need to act on par with an Academy Award? Why should we assume automatically that the task will be impossibly difficult unless we can use mechanics for it? Why not, say, trivially easy? Or somewhere in the huge middle between those extremes?

Maglubiyet
2015-05-21, 08:17 AM
A PC in one of my GURPS campaigns made heavy use of the Fast-Talk skill (similar to D&D's Bluff). The player, however, was no salesman. His attempts to roleplay his speeches were often hilarious by how bad they were. It was a source of much entertainment for the whole group, including the player. "So...don't you want to give me your sword?"

I always made him attempt to act it out, but whether it worked or not still came down to the skill roll.

Milo v3
2015-05-21, 08:48 AM
I meant, why would the player need to act on par with an Academy Award? Why should we assume automatically that the task will be impossibly difficult unless we can use mechanics for it? Why not, say, trivially easy? Or somewhere in the huge middle between those extremes?
Because convincing people to do stuff they wouldn't normally do can be really hard. Especially when you don't know how to be convincing.

Hawkstar
2015-05-21, 08:57 AM
Because convincing people to do stuff they wouldn't normally do can be really hard. Especially when you don't know how to be convincing.Of course, so can learning the combat mechanics of an RPG, especially for those who don't know how to learn the mechanics.

Roleplaying games are based around verbal communication. Learn to verbally communicate if you want to be good at them.

Cazero
2015-05-21, 09:09 AM
I meant, why would the player need to act on par with an Academy Award? Why should we assume automatically that the task will be impossibly difficult unless we can use mechanics for it? Why not, say, trivially easy? Or somewhere in the huge middle between those extremes?

Because a GM who says "your 57 ranks of diplomacy don't matter here" is likely to be of the "guess what I'm thinking" variety.
A character with 57 ranks in diplomacy is probably far better at arguing that his player is. The character should have no problem coming up with ideas about how to talk his way in, wether it is possible or not.

For example, bribery. Sometimes, you have players who don't even think about bribing their way in (it happened to me). They're simply not used to that kind of transactions. However, if the character is a streetwise rogue very good at reading people, he should be able to get the idea by himself and hazard an accurate guess of how much money he needs to put on the table for the guard to let him pass. Even if that amount is 'nope, you won't bribe your way in, find something else'.

And rolling dices is how we do everything else that our characters can but we can't. And we have skills that cover areas of expertise related to talking. Might as well use them to roll how well the characters are at getting ideas/expressing themselves in an appropriate manner.

Milo v3
2015-05-21, 09:12 AM
Of course, so can learning the combat mechanics of an RPG, especially for those who don't know how to learn the mechanics.

Roleplaying games are based around verbal communication. Learn to verbally communicate if you want to be good at them.

Mechanics are much much much easier than communication for most gamers I've played with (myself included). And it's not just communication anyway, it's convincing and manipulating people.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-21, 09:21 AM
Roleplaying games are based around verbal communication. Learn to verbally communicate if you want to be good at them.

How are you "good" at a RPG? What's the metric for that?

For me it's about imagination. The descriptions by the GM and players don't need to be perfect to create the seeds for an entertaining story. Dice rolls, crude maps, and numbers on character sheets are all just symbols that you translate into epic action in your mind -- why does verbal communication need to be held to a different standard?

Some campaigns I've been in have done post-game write-ups that flesh out the story. Reading them shows that at least one person interprets the conversation of a few people sitting around a suburban dining room table covered with dice, pencils, papers, sodas, and greasy pizza plates as more than the literal transcript. Imagination is the key here, not acting ability.

NichG
2015-05-21, 11:00 AM
Because convincing people to do stuff they wouldn't normally do can be really hard. Especially when you don't know how to be convincing.

What I'm getting at is that this attitude is self-reinforcing. You're saying that you simultaneously believe that you don't know how to be convincing, but that you also know exactly what the important aspects of being convincing are.

The analogy in D&D (3.5) combat would be something like someone playing a Ranger and saying: 'These combats are so unfair, the enemies get to hit me twice for every one time I get to hit them - once per round on their turn, then once per round when I use my bow and draw an AoO.' The problem is the disconnect: a bow isn't the right tool to use in melee, but the player believes that because they're playing a Ranger, they have to always use a bow in every circumstance.

If you convince yourself that the only difference between you and the person who successfully gets past the guard is their intonation, then you prime yourself to miss the actual thing they tried that was different than what you did. Perhaps that they realized that walking up to a guard in a high security area and trying to talk their way past was nonsensical, much like the Ranger standing right in melee range and taking shots with the bow. That's my point about asking 'why should this be possible in the first place?' - good execution will not make a bad plan work; the fault is in the bad plan, not the mumbling. If you can't answer why it should actually work, then you don't have a workable plan yet, and anyone will fail in that position.


Because a GM who says "your 57 ranks of diplomacy don't matter here" is likely to be of the "guess what I'm thinking" variety.
A character with 57 ranks in diplomacy is probably far better at arguing that his player is. The character should have no problem coming up with ideas about how to talk his way in, wether it is possible or not.

If you're playing with a 'guess what I'm thinking' variety, that means your guess is important, not your elocution.

Milo v3
2015-05-21, 11:33 AM
What I'm getting at is that this attitude is self-reinforcing. You're saying that you simultaneously believe that you don't know how to be convincing, but that you also know exactly what the important aspects of being convincing are.
What? I don't know what the important aspects are. That's the issue... :smallconfused:
I am horrible when it comes to communication (fortunately I do find text easier than vocal communication), if I try to convince someone that something is true or that convince them of something, I have no idea what the first step is, nor the second step, etc.


If you convince yourself that the only difference between you and the person who successfully gets past the guard is their intonation, then you prime yourself to miss the actual thing they tried that was different than what you did.
Why would it just be intonation? When I've seen it used, social mechanics can reword what your trying to do out-of-character into whatever your character would have said to get the result achieved by the check. As for missing the thing that was different, then that is what is happening to that socially awkward person for their whole life, they aren't just going to suddenly "get it" because "MAGIC".


Perhaps that they realized that walking up to a guard in a high security area and trying to talk their way past was nonsensical, much like the Ranger standing right in melee range and taking shots with the bow. That's my point about asking 'why should this be possible in the first place?' - good execution will not make a bad plan work; the fault is in the bad plan, not the mumbling. If you can't answer why it should actually work, then you don't have a workable plan yet, and anyone will fail in that position.
But it would work, based on the mechanics of the game. Why isn't it a good enough plan? Why is x nonsensical, if the game states x should work?

NichG
2015-05-21, 12:52 PM
What? I don't know what the important aspects are. That's the issue... :smallconfused:

You might be stepping in other posters' messes here. This particular side-chain came from the assertion that you had to be a good actor to have a hope of convincing the DM. Its logically inconsistent to assert that strongly and to simultaneously assert strongly 'I don't know what the important aspects are'. That was original Pex's assertion (and he hasn't said whether he believes he knows what the important aspects are).

In this thread, people have already said 'what matters is having a reasonable thing to offer, not how you offer it'. The thing that's odd to me is, if you're claiming that you don't know what the important aspects are, then why not take what they say at face value rather than claim 'no, that can't be it'?.



Why would it just be intonation? When I've seen it used, social mechanics can reword what your trying to do out-of-character into whatever your character would have said to get the result achieved by the check. As for missing the thing that was different, then that is what is happening to that socially awkward person for their whole life, they aren't just going to suddenly "get it" because "MAGIC".

No, odds are they're not just going to 'suddenly' get it. But it is something that can be learned gradually. Step one is to get past the 'I can't do this' assumption. Don't treat the situation like some alien thing that must be about impossible factors - instead, treat it like a logic problem. Ask 'would this convince me?', then 'if not, then what would convince me?'. Treat it as if it were text, if that's easier.


But it would work, based on the mechanics of the game. Why isn't it a good enough plan? Why is x nonsensical, if the game states x should work?

But why should the mechanics of the game support that? Why have AoOs? Why not have AoOs? Why have a grid, or not? In the bigger picture, these are design decisions that can go various ways. The statement 'D&D does X' may certainly be true, but people in this thread are arguing something broader: that if you have a game that doesn't do that X, it's impossible for people to play their characters.

Edit: Also, if the DM has already said 'I don't use the Diplomacy mechanics, you have to say your arguments, etc', then the bad plan does not actually work based on the mechanics of the game. The mechanics of the game in that situation no longer involve how Diplomacy works by RAW, and if you don't take that into account then that is also a guaranteed way to fail.

Flickerdart
2015-05-21, 05:21 PM
But why should the mechanics of the game support that?
That's not really the issue. Having a game where there is no Diplomacy skill or Charisma stat is fine. The problem is having those skills, investing in those skills, and then having that investment amount to nothing when the DM acts as if the skill and attribute didn't exist.

icefractal
2015-05-21, 05:58 PM
The mechanics of the game in that situation no longer involve how Diplomacy works by RAW, and if you don't take that into account then that is also a guaranteed way to fail.Since a lot of the posts have been sort of talking about 3.x D&D, or at least some game where +57 Diplomacy is a thing, I'll mention that the RAW for how Diplomacy works is different than how it's often talked about.

Diplomacy does two things, by the rules:
1) Change an NPCs attitude toward you in general.
2) "Gain the advantage" in a negotiation.

Notably, "convince someone to do [action]" is not on the list. "State your diplomatic goal and roll for it" is not even the right sequence of events. AFAICT, the sequence would be:
1) Roll Diplomacy before you even start talking.
2) Make your case, by actually (IRL) saying it.
3) DM decides the reaction to your statement, based off the NPC being hostile/unfriendly/indifferent/friendly/helpful as a result of your previous roll.

If you're able to talk to them long enough to make it a "negotiation" (not defined anywhere), then you could roll Diplomacy (opposed) to "gain the advantage", which is also not defined anywhere. So whether that means "get exactly what you want" or "you get a deal that most observers would consider favorable" or "you get a better deal than if you'd failed, but it may or may not be favorable overall" is something the rules don't say.

I'm not saying that's the best possible social mechanic, and if anyone's saying they'd rather play a game where you could roll to convince people, that's a valid preference. But complaints that DMs are ignoring the rules by making people talk are not accurate.

Milo v3
2015-05-21, 09:24 PM
You might be stepping in other posters' messes here. This particular side-chain came from the assertion that you had to be a good actor to have a hope of convincing the DM. Its logically inconsistent to assert that strongly and to simultaneously assert strongly 'I don't know what the important aspects are'. That was original Pex's assertion (and he hasn't said whether he believes he knows what the important aspects are).
I'd see Good Actor in this instance meaning "Someone who can act and convince people". Knowing that some people are better at something than you doesn't mean you know what those individuals do to be better at it than me... I severely doubt I could convince the GM, because I have difficultly in understanding how social situations work and how to communicate in most situations. I might eventually, but not now.


In this thread, people have already said 'what matters is having a reasonable thing to offer, not how you offer it'. The thing that's odd to me is, if you're claiming that you don't know what the important aspects are, then why not take what they say at face value rather than claim 'no, that can't be it'?.

No, odds are they're not just going to 'suddenly' get it. But it is something that can be learned gradually. Step one is to get past the 'I can't do this' assumption. Don't treat the situation like some alien thing that must be about impossible factors - instead, treat it like a logic problem. Ask 'would this convince me?', then 'if not, then what would convince me?'. Treat it as if it were text, if that's easier.

But I have no idea what to offer. I don't know. It's is something I am literally horrible at, and am trying to get better with. I have no freaking idea what other people want, let alone what would be something appropriate to offer in whatever situation my character is in.


But why should the mechanics of the game support that? Why have AoOs? Why not have AoOs? Why have a grid, or not? In the bigger picture, these are design decisions that can go various ways. The statement 'D&D does X' may certainly be true, but people in this thread are arguing something broader: that if you have a game that doesn't do that X, it's impossible for people to play their characters.
This isn't a part of the discussion though... This dicussion is about when there Is game mechanics for it present in the game (whether it's D&D or Window or Exalted or whatever), and then the GM decides that the player should roleplay out the check rather than using the mechanics in the game.

NichG
2015-05-21, 10:15 PM
That's not really the issue. Having a game where there is no Diplomacy skill or Charisma stat is fine. The problem is having those skills, investing in those skills, and then having that investment amount to nothing when the DM acts as if the skill and attribute didn't exist.

Sure, that's certainly an issue, but its pretty easily solved by the DM saying at the start of the game 'I don't use the mechanics for these skills' and the like.


I'd see Good Actor in this instance meaning "Someone who can act and convince people". Knowing that some people are better at something than you doesn't mean you know what those individuals do to be better at it than me... I severely doubt I could convince the GM, because I have difficultly in understanding how social situations work and how to communicate in most situations. I might eventually, but not now.

But I have no idea what to offer. I don't know. It's is something I am literally horrible at, and am trying to get better with. I have no freaking idea what other people want, let alone what would be something appropriate to offer in whatever situation my character is in.

Don't think of it as the class of problem of 'I need to persuade this person'. Think of it like a business transaction. You currently have 'my job as a guard and my life'. The person sneaking through the castle wants to trade you X in exchange for your job and your life. What 'X' would be worth it for you to make that trade if someone offered it to you?

The answer may be 'there is no such X'. And if that's the conclusion you reach, you should go with that. You should decide 'persuading the guard to just let us past is not a valid plan'. My suspicion is that what some people are doing is that they're taking as an assumption that there must absolutely be such an X, and then they assume that because they can't find it that they're categorically bad at it. Whereas its just a situation that no one could succeed in going at it so directly.

But in that case, if you realize that there may not actually be an X because what you're asking for is too big (the guard's life), you can change the circumstances to ask for something else. The key point of the problem is the 'and my life' part of that trade, so how do you make it so the guard absolutely won't die for letting you guys through (even in the case that you fail to assassinate the evil overlord or whatever)? Then its not a problem in convincing someone, its a problem in planning a way to protect someone. The 'convincing' part is then just saying what you came up with.

Milo v3
2015-05-21, 10:23 PM
Don't think of it as the class of problem of 'I need to persuade this person'. Think of it like a business transaction. You currently have 'my job as a guard and my life'. The person sneaking through the castle wants to trade you X in exchange for your job and your life. What 'X' would be worth it for you to make that trade if someone offered it to you?

The answer may be 'there is no such X'. And if that's the conclusion you reach, you should go with that. You should decide 'persuading the guard to just let us past is not a valid plan'. My suspicion is that what some people are doing is that they're taking as an assumption that there must absolutely be such an X, and then they assume that because they can't find it that they're categorically bad at it. Whereas its just a situation that no one could succeed in going at it so directly.

But in that case, if you realize that there may not actually be an X because what you're asking for is too big (the guard's life), you can change the circumstances to ask for something else. The key point of the problem is the 'and my life' part of that trade, so how do you make it so the guard absolutely won't die for letting you guys through (even in the case that you fail to assassinate the evil overlord or whatever)? Then its not a problem in convincing someone, its a problem in planning a way to protect someone. The 'convincing' part is then just saying what you came up with.

Problem is, with my current aptitude I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't understand why someone would not do their job unless someone they possess empathy towards is going to be harmed, to me it doesn't make sense. So, the only solution I would likely come up with would be to intimidate the person or attack someone they know. So, my character would end up being useless and those points spent on diplomacy and bluff are useless.

Hawkstar
2015-05-22, 07:24 AM
The way some people expect the Diplomacy skill to work in D&D makes me wonder what the Spellcraft DC is to create the Tippyverse.

And on that tangent here's a more Playground-accurate wording for Contact Other Plane, so less optimization-savvy players can get the same use out of it as more-skilled wizard players.
Contact Other Plane
Divination
Level: Sor/Wiz 5
Components: V
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Concentration
By contacting unfathomable powers beyond the material realm, you learn exactly what spells you will need for the day
If you cast this spell prior to spell memorization and preparation for the day, you may choose to leave your spell slots unfilled. At any point, you may use an appropriate unfilled spell slot to cast any spell within your spellbook at the time of preparation as though you had prepared it, including any metamagic effects.



The reasoning here being that, even if the player doesn't have the intelligence to ask the right questions to discern what spells he'll need, the INT 18+ wizard does.


Problem is, with my current aptitude I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't understand why someone would not do their job unless someone they possess empathy towards is going to be harmed, to me it doesn't make sense. So, the only solution I would likely come up with would be to intimidate the person or attack someone they know. So, my character would end up being useless and those points spent on diplomacy and bluff are useless.And all those levels and specializations toward Conjuration Optimization is useless to a Wizard player who spends every round firing his crossbow instead of casting spells because he barred Evocation and thus cannot cast Fireball.

Jay R
2015-05-22, 07:36 AM
Problem is, with my current aptitude I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't understand why someone would not do their job unless someone they possess empathy towards is going to be harmed, to me it doesn't make sense. So, the only solution I would likely come up with would be to intimidate the person or attack someone they know. So, my character would end up being useless and those points spent on diplomacy and bluff are useless.

Yup. If you never pick a specific target, move up to it, draw your sword, and tell me, "I attack that goblin," then your sword skill is useless. And if you never attempt a conversation with anybody, your diplomacy and bluff skills are useless. It's the same thing.

Using a diplomacy roll without initiating a conversation is like rolling to hit without choosing a target, or moving near enough, or drawing a weapon, or picking a specific action. It won't happen in my game.

For once thing, it's often the case that convincing the king to send out his army is DC 40 if you don't mention any specifics, DC 25 if you tell him the orcs are invading, and DC 5 if you show him you've rescued his daughter who was the orcs' hostage, and maybe an additional +15 if you tell him you're working for the Black Patriarch. You can't roll it without telling me specifically which of your secrets you are choosing to reveal.

I don't judge your acting skill, but I do have to know what choices you are making.

Of course, I prefer 2e, in which there is no diplomacy skill. As has been said several times in this thread, if you want to play a game of rolling dice instead of taking on the roll, great. Have fun with it. But it's not the only way to play, and many of us like to play old-style role-playing, in which many of the most fun moments are taking on the roll.

NichG
2015-05-22, 07:53 AM
Problem is, with my current aptitude I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't understand why someone would not do their job unless someone they possess empathy towards is going to be harmed, to me it doesn't make sense. So, the only solution I would likely come up with would be to intimidate the person or attack someone they know. So, my character would end up being useless and those points spent on diplomacy and bluff are useless.

The conclusion you come to - that this person would have no reason to not do their job - is not wrong! Realistically, in a situation with training and proper vetting of the guards, and sufficiently dire punishments for not doing your job, a person should not be able to simply say some sentence to the guard and get through when the guard has been specifically trained about that kind of thing. If their competency is being maintained by intimidation ('I will be killed if I don't do my job'), then yes, intimidation is a valid tactic for that situation.

So realizing that isn't your character being useless, it's your character being realistic about the situation. If you say 'guys, we're not going to be able to BS our way past the guard' then that actually is a useful contribution. It says that now the goal is to not encounter the guard in the first place (or to be willing to threaten or deploy lethal force). That also frees you up to thinking of alternative things like 'how do we draw the guard's attention away from where we'll be going through' and the like.

Milo v3
2015-05-22, 07:54 AM
To be honest, I don't really see much reason to continue this discussion, since my lack of social skills would mean I would not be allowed to play my favourite type of character, and you do not seem to be budging. If this was in person, only reasonable response to continue would just be that to say our playstyles wouldn't work and I'd leave the group.


So realizing that isn't your character being useless, it's your character being realistic about the situation. If you say 'guys, we're not going to be able to BS our way past the guard' then that actually is a useful contribution. It says that now the goal is to not encounter the guard in the first place (or to be willing to threaten or deploy lethal force). That also frees you up to thinking of alternative things like 'how do we draw the guard's attention away from where we'll be going through' and the like.


Except that removes the point of the skills from the game

Zombimode
2015-05-22, 08:59 AM
Except that removes the point of the skills from the game

Uhm, how? Does the existence of a creature with DR 40/adamantine remove the point of non-adamantine weapons?
Use the right tool for the right job!


In general I try to get a grip on the positions proposed in this thread.

On one side people argue that social encounters should play out like this:
GM: The entrance of the estate is guarded by some, well ... guards.
Player: I use my bluff skill to get past them.
DM: Sure, roll.

Then, some people seem to construct an opposing view under that the same situation should play out like this:
GM: The entrance of the estate is guarded by some, well ... guards.
Player: I use my bluff skill to get past them. *roll* My result is 28.
GM: Act it out!
Player: *stumbles*
GM: Because you stumbled, your bluff wasnt convincing.

But is this position actually proposed by anyone?

From what I've seen in this thread people on the other side of the argument would suggest something like this:
GM: The entrance of the estate is guarded by some, well ... guards.
Player: I try to pose as someone part of the retinue of Lord Fancypants whom I know has already passed the entrance.
GM: Thats a bluff, roll accordingly.

Which is markedly different from the first example, but in no way somehow makes the social skills useless. It's just a different level of abstraction.

goto124
2015-05-22, 09:09 AM
Come to think of it, when you come across a social situation in a campaign, even if your RL social skills are poor, you mostly likely have SOME idea of what you want and what to ask for. Heck, you could get some assistance from the players and GM.

And there's also the idea that high Cha and social skills means knowing what you need, not automatically bluffing your way to the desired outcome.

Cluedrew
2015-05-23, 08:49 PM
The general solution to this sort of problem is:

Practice
Ask for Help


Keep on trying (until you run out of cake) to play charismatic characters and if you are ever unsure what you should do to ask other people at the table for input.

Amphetryon
2015-05-23, 11:20 PM
The general solution to this sort of problem is:

Practice
Ask for Help


Keep on trying (until you run out of cake) to play charismatic characters and if you are ever unsure what you should do to ask other people at the table for input.

Keep on trying (until you run out of cake) to play dexterous characters and if you are ever hesitant about your actual juggling skills, ask other people for pointers. . . and to move the breakables from your vicinity.

NichG
2015-05-24, 12:48 AM
Keep on trying (until you run out of cake) to play dexterous characters and if you are ever hesitant about your actual juggling skills, ask other people for pointers. . . and to move the breakables from your vicinity.

I have a player who would absolutely love this RPG.

goto124
2015-05-24, 02:34 AM
What would be the social equivalent of 'move the breakables from your vicinity'?

Hawkstar
2015-05-24, 11:37 AM
Keep on trying (until you run out of cake) to play dexterous characters and if you are ever hesitant about your actual juggling skills, ask other people for pointers. . . and to move the breakables from your vicinity.
Eh... not necessarily juggling skills, but reaction time and manual dexterity are critical for playing dextrous characters in games that have dexterity-based controls(Such as a video game).

D&D is a social game played with social skills. The better you are with social skills, the better you can play social characters.
What would be the social equivalent of 'move the breakables from your vicinity'?

"Do it in front of a mirror/away from the overly judgemental"

Cluedrew
2015-05-24, 02:11 PM
In addition to Hawkstar's I would suggest that if you say something that makes other people go "No." then try again before having your character do that.

The out of time nature of turn based games. Sometimes people say you shouldn't do it and there are cases where you probably shouldn't but if you need the extra time to simulate what your character would do than use it.

Jay R
2015-05-25, 09:06 AM
Back in the seventies and eighties, when defending role-playing games against some of the attacks made on them, I would point out that they helped socially awkward people gain confidence in social situations. Of course, that was based on the older notion that people would actually play the roles.


What would be the social equivalent of 'move the breakables from your vicinity'?

Do it in a role-playing game instead of actually trying to get past real guards.

Knaight
2015-05-26, 09:05 AM
Back in the seventies and eighties, when defending role-playing games against some of the attacks made on them, I would point out that they helped socially awkward people gain confidence in social situations. Of course, that was based on the older notion that people would actually play the roles.

Playing the roles and saying the dialog are two entirely different things. One can play a role without actually specifying exact dialog, instead focusing on decision making. One can also use exact dialog without ever really getting into the role. I personally favor doing both, but they shouldn't be conflated.

As for RPGs helping socially awkward people gain confidence in social situations, even if they never say a word in character the game itself is a social situation which involves a lot of talking, it involves decision making, and it's pretty well suited towards building confidence.

NichG
2015-05-26, 10:09 AM
I think its the same tool, just at different levels of precision. The general idea of 'I have blackmail material on this guy's daughter, so I will now blackmail him' doesn't depend too much on exactly which words you use. But doing it in public such that only you and he know that the message has been received might well depend on that. Specific dialog is particularly useful when the particular thing you want to try to enact requires very precise and subtle control of words. If you want to, e.g., see where exactly in your sentence the other person reacts or use a phrase with a double meaning to say one thing to one person while saying something else to someone else who has a different context, then the exact dialogue is the level of precision required. But you won't always need that for every idea you have.

draken50
2015-05-26, 01:13 PM
Back in the seventies and eighties, when defending role-playing games against some of the attacks made on them, I would point out that they helped socially awkward people gain confidence in social situations. Of course, that was based on the older notion that people would actually play the roles.

You may consider that when learning complex skills people are often provided with more guidance and structure than simply being expected to attempt success over and over.

If I'm going to teach a student to spar, yes I can just keep punching them in the head until they learn to not have that happen, but many times that's going to frustrate someone to the point that learning is difficult. So instead they'll have time to practice the movements of different slips, guards or blocks. Then as their skill is developing complexity and challenge increases and develops along with them. Can someone learn from just constantly having punches thrown, sure... it just may not be the most efficient methodology, and many students will drop out all together if they aren't very motivated to improve in that setting.

I don't see why using the mechanics to help teach and develop your player social skills, as opposed to a purely "roleplaying" aspect is such an abhorrent practice to you. Players can often struggle to really work out their own characters motivations and emotions, and if they are constantly punished with failure due to to difficulties translating an npcs reactions/motivations through their perception based on the communication provided by yet another person, I don't see them as likely to continue playing that kind of character even if they keep playing.

Another thing that you might consider, is that not all GMs are equal, particularly in their confidence and ability to create a complex NPC in minds of their players that is accurate to their own vision of that NPC. Perhaps you are an amazing actor, able to replicate these fantasy characters with nuance, or perhaps you consider the levers by which the characters can be moved readily apparent in your portrayal. I can say that I do not share that level of confidence. I am not a particularly gifted actor, and some portrayals feel hollow to me in their presentation. Should I then punish a player who is not only learning to follow some social cues, but is having to get them from a poor actor who may not be portraying them well?

NichG
2015-05-26, 07:05 PM
You may consider that when learning complex skills people are often provided with more guidance and structure than simply being expected to attempt success over and over.

...

I don't see why using the mechanics to help teach and develop your player social skills, as opposed to a purely "roleplaying" aspect is such an abhorrent practice to you. Players can often struggle to really work out their own characters motivations and emotions, and if they are constantly punished with failure due to to difficulties translating an npcs reactions/motivations through their perception based on the communication provided by yet another person, I don't see them as likely to continue playing that kind of character even if they keep playing.

No one is suggesting that there shouldn't be guidance and structure to help people learn. Quite the opposite. But D&D-like mechanics are a terrible way to do that, because they don't support the player's social skills, they replace them.

From the GM seat, you have lots of ways to help support a player in learning a skill that they want to develop. 'Oh, this player is struggling, lets talk out the scenario out of character' or 'I'll give some feedback about what might or might not work before they try it' or even 'I'll intentionally steer them towards the easier challenges first'. It's not a mechanics thing, its a GMing thing: the equivalent of being able to deal with Tippyverse levels of optimization, but recognizing 'maybe I shouldn't bring that to the table for a first-time player'.


Another thing that you might consider, is that not all GMs are equal, particularly in their confidence and ability to create a complex NPC in minds of their players that is accurate to their own vision of that NPC. Perhaps you are an amazing actor, able to replicate these fantasy characters with nuance, or perhaps you consider the levers by which the characters can be moved readily apparent in your portrayal. I can say that I do not share that level of confidence. I am not a particularly gifted actor, and some portrayals feel hollow to me in their presentation. Should I then punish a player who is not only learning to follow some social cues, but is having to get them from a poor actor who may not be portraying them well?

This is the kind of thing that I'm most strongly objecting to here - assuming from the outset that the GM is going to be a bad GM and that you need the mechanics to protect yourself from that. That sort of assumption is unfounded, and leads to this sort of spiral of self-doubt scenario where people aren't even willing to try because they assume that they'll be smacked down for it.

I mean, how would you feel if I said 'well, not all players are equal, particularly in their ability to play their characters. Should I punish the other players by allowing them to experience your poor characterization, or wouldn't it be better for me to set up mechanics ahead of time that outline exactly how your PC should feel in each situation?'

The fair thing to do is to give someone the benefit of the doubt until you have evidence. If a GM portrays a character poorly and makes it too obtuse what they're about, then you can tell them that and ask them to do something about the situation - to be more clear, or to switch over to another way of doing things, or just by giving them feedback on specific NPCs they flubbed. But if you assume that all GMs will do poorly, you aren't giving them a chance to do well.

icefractal
2015-05-27, 12:21 AM
It should go without saying, but I think that the system should be truthful in how it handles social skills. Skills or stats that don't have an effect shouldn't exist, or should be free. Incidentally, I'd say that's true in early D&D, because if you do roll-in-order then any given stat is free. And likewise, if running a system a different way than written, the GM should be up-front about that and prepared to change costs as appropriate.

That said, you can still have mechanical support for convincing someone without making it ultimately come down to a die roll. For example, abilities like:
* Know what it would take to sway someone, either the magnitude or even the exact thing.
* After saying something that would be a blunder, have a chance to realize that and not actually have said it.
* By easing toward a subject, find out what the person's feelings on the subject are before committing to a position.

I don't know of any RPGs that have that as their system, but it would be an interesting way to go.

Hawkstar
2015-05-27, 08:12 AM
That said, you can still have mechanical support for convincing someone without making it ultimately come down to a die roll. For example, abilities like:
* Know what it would take to sway someone, either the magnitude or even the exact thing.
* After saying something that would be a blunder, have a chance to realize that and not actually have said it.
* By easing toward a subject, find out what the person's feelings on the subject are before committing to a position.


Can there be similar mechanics for making INT/Spellcraft checks so that a wizard knows what spell is best to favorably influence an encounter?
How about after casting a spell that would be ineffective/suboptimal, a chance to realize that and not actually cast it?
While initiating casting a spell, finding out a target's vulnerabilities/resistances to that effect are before committing to casting it?

NichG
2015-05-27, 08:24 AM
Can there be similar mechanics for making INT/Spellcraft checks so that a wizard knows what spell is best to favorably influence an encounter?
How about after casting a spell that would be ineffective/suboptimal, a chance to realize that and not actually cast it?
While initiating casting a spell, finding out a target's vulnerabilities/resistances to that effect are before committing to casting it?

Of course there could be. There's a huge design space of things that can work and make for interesting games. But not everything is for every game or every style of play or every group of players.

RPG rules are a tool to create a particular kind of experience that you want to craft. They're not dictated by philosophy, they're dictated by what you're trying to get done.

Pex
2015-05-27, 12:48 PM
This is the kind of thing that I'm most strongly objecting to here - assuming from the outset that the GM is going to be a bad GM and that you need the mechanics to protect yourself from that. That sort of assumption is unfounded, and leads to this sort of spiral of self-doubt scenario where people aren't even willing to try because they assume that they'll be smacked down for it.

I mean, how would you feel if I said 'well, not all players are equal, particularly in their ability to play their characters. Should I punish the other players by allowing them to experience your poor characterization, or wouldn't it be better for me to set up mechanics ahead of time that outline exactly how your PC should feel in each situation?'

The fair thing to do is to give someone the benefit of the doubt until you have evidence. If a GM portrays a character poorly and makes it too obtuse what they're about, then you can tell them that and ask them to do something about the situation - to be more clear, or to switch over to another way of doing things, or just by giving them feedback on specific NPCs they flubbed. But if you assume that all GMs will do poorly, you aren't giving them a chance to do well.

The counter argument is not to assume from the outset a player is a power gaming rollplaying munchkin because he wants to play a character who is very good at something and has the game mechanics to back it up. Not saying that's your claim, just giving the counter argument. Trust goes both ways.

icefractal
2015-05-27, 02:23 PM
Can there be similar mechanics for making INT/Spellcraft checks so that a wizard knows what spell is best to favorably influence an encounter?
How about after casting a spell that would be ineffective/suboptimal, a chance to realize that and not actually cast it?
While initiating casting a spell, finding out a target's vulnerabilities/resistances to that effect are before committing to casting it?Yes, in fact. I originally had the idea for this kind of player-supplementing abilities in a thread about puzzles/riddles. If you were making a game where the intent was that players solved things themselves whenever possible, but you still wanted the characters to have mental stats, then you could have a menu of abilities for each stats, giving perhaps one per point of bonus.

Some of these, I'm not sure whether they fall under Int or Wis, but for example:
* When buying supplies, set aside some amount of cash/weight. A certain number of times during the journey, declare you'd bought something that fits within those limits. Limited in how unusual it can be, possibly.
* Same thing with spell slots or other selectable abilities - leave a certain number open, be able to declare them retroactively.
* Consider a course of action. Works like augury, but only based on information that the PCs have learned (but the player may have forgotten).

NichG
2015-05-27, 08:00 PM
The counter argument is not to assume from the outset a player is a power gaming rollplaying munchkin because he wants to play a character who is very good at something and has the game mechanics to back it up. Not saying that's your claim, just giving the counter argument. Trust goes both ways.

For specificity, and to avoid the strawman, my claims are as follows:

- It isn't a given that 'being able to achieve a particular outcome through social means' is something that any particular game's mechanics will be designed to enable. A game is not automatically bad if it does not provide this, because there are different things people want from their gaming and not every game can or will suit everything that everyone could ever want.
-- Corollary: If you go into a game assuming the things work a certain way and are not receptive to information provided that directly informs you that they don't work that way (DM explaining style, house rules, lack of social mechanics, etc), then its your own fault when you find that your character doesn't live up to your expectations.

and as a point of order rather than a direct claim:

- There is an argumentative bias which is being used when describing how scenarios would play out, which is to assume that the alternative to 'there are mechanics for social interactions' can only be 'the DM focuses on enunciation', 'the DM is a hardass and won't let anything work', etc. However, its always possible to make anything seem terrible this way, so lines of reasoning based on this kind of argument are invalid.

Hawkstar
2015-05-28, 07:58 PM
The more I think on it, the more I dislike a lot of 'social skills' in RPG games, because they lead to the development of the role of the "Face" - which often becomes the only person in the party allowed to talk to NPCs, and, given the way the system math and resources work, enforces this "One face", and Social encounters end up with the Decker Problem.

I remember a bad experience I had in a game about a year ago due to conflict over the "Face" role - I was playing a Lawful Good Paladin (Redeemer archetype) who was naive, idealistic, and big on trying to talk when fighting wasn't an option (But was still optimized for combat.). There was also a True Neutral Bard in the party who was optimized for being a Diplomancer (And completely outclassed my character in it), and significantly more mercenary and cynical. There was a lot of OOC frustration between us, because I wanted to play my Paladin one way, and, due to all the resources invested in being a Face, the Bard felt that I was trying to overstep my role and take over her position despite being less optimized in the role, and I had problems with feeling sidelined when her superior Face Stats lead to her always take precedent over my character's goals and desires.

I'm going to have to figure out how to port 13th Age's background system into every other game to replace skills to try and mitigate the problem.

icefractal
2015-05-29, 01:58 PM
The more I think on it, the more I dislike a lot of 'social skills' in RPG games, because they lead to the development of the role of the "Face" - which often becomes the only person in the party allowed to talk to NPCs, and, given the way the system math and resources work, enforces this "One face", and Social encounters end up with the Decker Problem.Agreed. It's especially bad if you're the 'inferior face' - ie. a character who has significant social skills and originally intended to use them, but turns out to be slightly worse than another face character and so rarely ends up talking.

It can be tricky to solve. In single-author fiction, you often have "the face", who does all the talking, and for that matter "the tough guy" who does all the fighting. And that's fine, because there's only a single real person involved and the fictional characters don't get bored by standing on the sidelines when it isn't their schtick. RPGs, that doesn't usually work so well.

For combat, that's solved by "everyone has some ability to fight, and the more people on your side the better". For things like trap disarming or wilderness tracking, it's solved by making those take very little RL time to resolve. Social situations are the oddball where skimming past them in 30 seconds is unsatisfying, but having the entire party pile in to every conversation feels weird. Three ideas I can think of:
1) Some kind of per-session resource management, so it makes sense to not send in the same person every time.
2) There are no dedicated social skills; the skill used depends on the NPC. You'd use Warfare when talking to a soldier, or Appraise when talking to a merchant. So who's the best face varies from situation to situation.
3) There are no social skills at all, any character has the same chance to succeed when talking to someone.

NichG
2015-05-29, 08:20 PM
A big one is:

4) Don't cast social situations as success/failure type conflicts or as obstacles to defeat.

The 'face' role feels like it comes with the idea that socialization is something that either threatens/attacks the party and needs to be defended against, or that it's something where the party is attacking and needs to extract something socially against the will of the person/people they're socializing with.

Getting around that doesn't mean that social situations would have to be filler. For example, an injured group of scouts returns to a border town from exploring the empire's northern wastes and sets up in a local inn to recover from their wounds. They're willing to talk to people about what they found because it threatens the border (so you don't have to pry secrets out of them). But the specifics of the conversation - discussing what happened, making sure you have their information, discussing what the town should do next - are all important.

And they're something where everyone can and should participate as things occur to them either related to their interests or competencies.

goto124
2015-05-29, 09:49 PM
2) There are no dedicated social skills; the skill used depends on the NPC. You'd use Warfare when talking to a soldier, or Appraise when talking to a merchant. So who's the best face varies from situation to situation.
3) There are no social skills at all, any character has the same chance to succeed when talking to someone.

Some combination of the two. I've watched a campaign on these forums, and a lot of the social situations don't involve rolling for social skills about 80% of the time.

As NichG said, talking should not be like combat- most of it should be... well... talking. Are players really that bad at talking normally? Why in the world should every social scene turn into an encounter that's 'roll or fail'?

Why there's such thing as a 'party face', is due to having to 'pass' every social situation, as if it were combat. Remove the need to optimize social skills.

Cluedrew
2015-06-01, 08:06 PM
On social encounters being challenges I'd say both. That's both yes and no. Some social scenes are challenges (ex. talking passed a guard) but others are most defiantly are not (ex. buying drinks in the tavern).

I think trying to but every moment where two people are talking into the one of the groups, particularly in genes where a smooth talker or plant is a common archetype. If social ability has a mechanical effect then it makes sense that a character would have to trade something else for it. That being said there a lot of scenes where "success" isn't really a thing, character building moments and so on, so stats don't really have to effect anything their.

Personally, I agree that the idea of a single "face" is bad, but in real life having friends can make a big difference in a social situation. So I would actually say that is bad execution of the theme. An example is "good cop, bad cop" and its many variants, you can't do that with a single character and I think the barbarian would make a very good bad cop. As contradictory as that seems.

So some social scenes can be challenges (but not all) and multiple party members should be able to contribute. I realize I'm not actually talking about any particular system now but it seems like a good method to me. Feel free to disagree.

Flickerdart
2015-06-01, 08:11 PM
So I would actually say that is bad execution of the theme. An example is "good cop, bad cop" and its many variants, you can't do that with a single character and I think the barbarian would make a very good bad cop. As contradictory as that seems.
Barbarians are usually good at being scary, which is a social skill. Being very strong but not able to leverage your strength to frighten and intimidate your opponent is a thing.

Hawkstar
2015-06-01, 09:06 PM
Barbarians are usually good at being scary, which is a social skill. Being very strong but not able to leverage your strength to frighten and intimidate your opponent is a thing.

Even if they don't, they never have the skill points to scare (Especially in systems where Intimidate is tied to Bluff and/or Diplomacy). Star Wars Saga Edition is a big offender in this regard.

NichG
2015-06-01, 09:26 PM
Generally I prefer 'opportunity' to 'challenge' as my model for social interactions. A given social interaction is an opportunity to do many different things. There isn't a single set goal or success criterion, but its also not just filler or character development fodder. You can get information about people or from people, give them information to provoke an action or reaction from them, figuring out someone's reasoning or thought process, generally ingratiate yourself or establish your position, develop or deepen relationships, or just hang out and make small talk. Its deciding what to do rather than if you succeed or fail that is the key point.