I can't handle Gather Information. Please help!

[Jon_Dahl]

Last Sunday we had a session of D&D 3.5. I'm the DM. The PCs wanted some information about a possible dragon grave they had just discovered, so they went to the closest village and rolled a gather information check. It failed, so I said: "This village has only a few hundred peasants, maybe a bit more, so there's no tavern. You gave the peasants three gold pieces, but they don't know anything."
The player who made the roll: "What the...? I'm asking my money back! I intimidate them!" (rolls)
"You have successfully intimidated them and they pay you back."
"Ok, I will gather information again."
(So the same bunch of peasants listen to his question again and again, but they don't take his gold anymore. After almost a whole day of trying, the PC finally makes his check and gets the information he wanted. The peasants return back to work.)

Do you see any problems here?

[edwin1993]

gather information takes 8hours and he paid for the information then got upset cuz he didnt hear what he wanted and intimidated the people who tried to help him then pestered them till they got some information it could be false or lead to a trap.

[nedz]

Yeah, several issues.

He shouldn't have got his money back but he should have got some information in return - it just isn't going to be correct information.

The money you spend on GI is a cypher for buying people drinks, flowers etc. If the village had no means of supplying such services then I probably wouldn't have charged him - but he is being very cheap in asking for the money back.

Acting on a failed roll to then intimidate the villagers to get his money back is metagaming - as far as he knew they gave him what he asked for.

[Krazzman]

I hate to tell someone how to handle this but here is how I would've handled it.

Player rolls too low:
Well sucks for the group, but they just didn't ask the right person.
"You just spend 8 hours of asking seemingly random passersby in this small village, there is no tavern. You get the impression that you should ask someone specific in this town."
Then basically send them to the village elder and make it a Roleplay instead of Rollplay encounter. Maybe adding a phrase about them hearing about multiple red herrings they knew were false but the "citizen" believed they heard from a 3rd cousins brother in laws uncles fathers neighboor who maybe saw something.

And seconding the after the intimidation even an even lower roll would've resulted in a "go there and there" (basically the farthest point they know.

[ericgrau]

Action
A typical Gather Information check takes 1d4+1 hours.

Try Again
Yes, but it takes time for each check. Furthermore, you may draw attention to yourself if you repeatedly pursue a certain type of information.

Sure he can keep trying but it could take days.

The gold is spread among many people and he didn't realize he hit a dead end until long after. So if he wants to track down those that have it... make a gather information check. After the cheap PC gets his money back from a couple and keeps asking around the others might hear and go hide, making them harder to find. For just a few silvers each.

[BWR]

Correction: GI takes 1d4+1 hours, not 8.

Damn right I see a problem. that's video game thinking right there. Assuming things reset after you exit a conversation and can just retry the same conversation options until a random element goes your way.

It seems to me your mistake was letting the player reroll like that. What justification do you have for letting him continue on like that? Once the peasants were intimidated to return the money they should have coughed up the information as well. If they feel threatened enough to return the money there has to be a really pressing reason they would withhold the information. Whether they withhold the info or give it, at this point it is not a GI roll any more. Sure, the rules say you can reroll but it doesn't really make sense in the situation since the PC started using threats to steal money from people.
GI is the montage you see in various films and TV shows of the protagonists wandering around asking various nobodies about something. Once you have found an important NPC, the montage stops and you have a longer scene ensues. It's knowing the right person to ask, how to ask, how to ask the right questions. You can keep this up as long as you want but once you have failed or succeeded, it becomes another social roll to either follow up on a lead gotten of change your tactics to find information.

[Jon_Dahl]

Correction: GI takes 1d4+1 hours, not 8.

Damn right I see a problem. that's video game thinking right there. Assuming things reset after you exit a conversation and can just retry the same conversation options until a random element goes your way.

It seems to me your mistake was letting the player reroll like that. What justification do you have for letting him continue on like that? Once the peasants were intimidated to return the money they should have coughed up the information as well. If they feel threatened enough to return the money there has to be a really pressing reason they would withhold the information. Whether they withhold the info or give it, at this point it is not a GI roll any more. Sure, the rules say you can reroll but it doesn't really make sense in the situation since the PC started using threats to steal money from people.
GI is the montage you see in various films and TV shows of the protagonists wandering around asking various nobodies about something. Once you have found an important NPC, the montage stops and you have a longer scene ensues. It's knowing the right person to ask, how to ask, how to ask the right questions. You can keep this up as long as you want but once you have failed or succeeded, it becomes another social roll to either follow up on a lead gotten of change your tactics to find information.

I don't think you can automatically replace gather information with intimidation. The peasants who were present didn't have that information. Gather information was needed in order to get pieces of information, have people to talk with one another and then, after at least 2 hours, get the information glued together from various hints.

[Andezzar]

I don't think you can automatically replace gather information with intimidation. The peasants who were present didn't have that information. Gather information was needed in order to get pieces of information, have people to talk with one another and then, after at least 2 hours, get the information glued together from various hints.I totally agree. Gather information is just a quick way to simulate talking to lots of people and greasing their palms. Intimidate only works against one person. So the intimidated person will be friendly, but if he does not know anything, he can't tell anything useful. If the player lets his character intimidate each and every person in the tavern, give the player useless bits of information that he himself has to piece together to get an idea what to do next. Such tactics should also alert authorities. After all intimidate only works while the character is present and 1d6*10 minutes later. After that the intimidated persons become unfriendly or hostile.

[martixy]

I see a lot of problems and they end with the players, but they don't start with them.

I have this little theory over why this seems to happen, where almost always stems from a "disjunction" between the mechanics from the fantasy world. Like somehow rolling for a check removes you from the narrative frame of reference and inserts you into some purely formulaic world. Like the world is suddenly there to serve the mechanics instead the other way around. I couldn't begin to tell you why it happens, but the end result is practically always suspension shattering.

As BWR said - video-gamey. And a bad video game too.

First of all, you completely blindsided your player by forcing his character to take actions he never specified. How did you expect him to react?
Second, it's as if he's interacting to a single, faceless entity. Like he's pressing buttons on a badly designed arcade machine.
Click - Gather information on X
Click - Intimidate on X
Click - Gather information on X

And neither of you has any idea what X is.
It's the DM's job to know that, and to competently convey that to his players.

To illustrate with an example, here's what my train of thought would be in that situation:
It's just a random village of mostly uneducated peasants, there won't be much information the can gather, as no one would want to go near such an obviously dangerous place. Plus many simply wouldn't care unless it presented some problem for them. Maybe there's a hunter or two in the village that could provide some information. Or a local priest who's a little bit more educated, or the local marshal/authority figure, but not every second randomly encountered villager Joe.

"Well, there's no tavern in this village so you spend a few hours asking around random folk. They either don't know about this cave, or cannot provide more information past merely being aware of its existence. With many you get the distinct impression they expect something from you as well."

Several things are going on here:
1. Not forcing actions on the player's character, while still distinctly drawing attention to the idea of spending additional resources to improve their chances.
2. The check is NOT a done deal. It's not over once the players have rolled. It's not an atomic action, like Click, and done.
3. Everything within context. There are different people living there, and each have their own agendas. Even if they don't know anything useful, some villagers could think they do and see a bunch of wealthy adventurers passing though town as an opportunity to get a free drink or a buck on the side if they can.

[Jon_Dahl]

First of all, you completely blindsided your player by forcing his character to take actions he never specified. How did you expect him to react?


I strongly disagree. When you use a skill, such as GI, you get the Whole Package. It means paying a few gold pieces, doing lots of conversations with odd people in odd places, spending 2-5 hours and more. This all just HAPPENS. I don't ask the player anything about these things when he or she declares to use a skill. Stuff just happens after that. I'd find it extremely silly to ask "The rules say that it will take 3 hours to perform this skill, do you take that?"

[zergling.exe]

I strongly disagree. When you use a skill, such as GI, you get the Whole Package. It means paying a few gold pieces, doing lots of conversations with odd people in odd places, spending 2-5 hours and more. This all just HAPPENS. I don't ask the player anything about these things when he or she declares to use a skill. Stuff just happens after that. I'd find it extremely silly to ask "The rules say that it will take 3 hours to perform this skill, do you take that?"

The first time they use it you should probably go over time and monetary requirements with the player, as they may not know about them and could feel slighted if they don't get a heads up.

[Andezzar]

I strongly disagree. When you use a skill, such as GI, you get the Whole Package. It means paying a few gold pieces, doing lots of conversations with odd people in odd places, spending 2-5 hours and more. This all just HAPPENS. I don't ask the player anything about these things when he or she declares to use a skill. Stuff just happens after that. I'd find it extremely silly to ask "The rules say that it will take 3 hours to perform this skill, do you take that?"That's basically the problem with those broad skill checks when a specific answer is searched. I don't know what the result of the check was, but talking to villagers and buying them drinks throwing money at them would probably at least have pointed them into the direction of someone who might no more. Once you are no longer in a crowd gather information does not work anymore and they have to ask specific questions.

Also, if this "village" does not have a tavern or other communal gathering place, you should have informed the player that gather information is not applicable, his character actually has to go from door to door and talk to specific people. That couldn't take long since the "village" is so tiny.

[Gabrosin]

I don't think the sequence should ever be as simple as "I'd like to Gather Information", "Okay, roll the die".

The party needs to be specific about what information they're after, who they're going to ask, and how. In my games, it goes more like this:

Player: "Okay, we need to find out where this cave is. Let's Gather Information."
DM: "Sounds good, where are you going to go?"
Player: "Let's visit the local tavern."
DM: "No luck, there isn't one." (P.S. even the smallest towns almost certainly have a tavern or inn or someplace that folks gather.)
Player: "All right, then I'll go to the market and talk to some merchants."
DM: "Sure. You find yourself at the baker's stall. His name is Avros and he seems unreceptive to your questions."
Player: "I'm going to buy a couple loaves of bread from him, see if he'll open up more to a paying customer."
DM: "Okay, you're offered two loaves of bread at 1 sp each. The price seems a little high, but you suspect that haggling down to a fair price won't endear you to the merchant."
Player: "Sure, I'll just pay it."
DM: "Go ahead and roll your Gather Information check to see how persuasive you are in getting information from him."
Player: *rolls*
DM: *provides info based on check result*

All this takes a little more time than just a plain die roll, but it gives the player more agency and winds up being more memorable after the fact. When the players roll really well, they see the tangible effect that they have swayed this one specific person to tell them what they need to know. If they do poorly, the person can shut them down. In a scenario like this one, you can decide whether the players can try again with the same person (maybe by offering a larger incentive) or have to go try someone else.

[Jon_Dahl]

That's basically the problem with those broad skill checks when a specific answer is searched. I don't know what the result of the check was, but talking to villagers and buying them drinks throwing money at them would probably at least have pointed them into the direction of someone who might no more. Once you are no longer in a crowd gather information does not work anymore and they have to ask specific questions.

Also, if this "village" does not have a tavern or other communal gathering place, you should have informed the player that gather information is not applicable, his character actually has to go from door to door and talk to specific people. That couldn't take long since the "village" is so tiny.

I did inform them. They were fully aware this, I promise.

[Aleolus]

I actually wasn't aware that GI actually used gold, I've never had a DM enforce that with me. Personally, I would use that as an optional part and give a slight bonus if they chose to use it (like a +1 if they spent 1 gold, +2 if they spent 1d4+1, etc)

[Deophaun]

Problem is with the player.

He made a check. It failed. It happens.

Then he went and Intimidated an entire town. So, ten minutes to an hour later, now the town is unfriendly towards him. Prices have gone up, the inn doesn't want him. No one's going to tell him anything. Someone will gladly take his money to rip him off.

He'll likely get angry and use Intimidate again. So great, another hour and the town is hostile. Cue pitchforks and torches or some more subtle equivalent (e.g. alerting someone of interest about the jerk adventurers asking about a dragon grave).

[Jon_Dahl]

I don't think the sequence should ever be as simple as "I'd like to Gather Information", "Okay, roll the die".

The party needs to be specific about what information they're after, who they're going to ask, and how. In my games, it goes more like this:

Player: "Okay, we need to find out where this cave is. Let's Gather Information."
DM: "Sounds good, where are you going to go?"
Player: "Let's visit the local tavern."
DM: "No luck, there isn't one." (P.S. even the smallest towns almost certainly have a tavern or inn or someplace that folks gather.)
Player: "All right, then I'll go to the market and talk to some merchants."
DM: "Sure. You find yourself at the baker's stall. His name is Avros and he seems unreceptive to your questions."
Player: "I'm going to buy a couple loaves of bread from him, see if he'll open up more to a paying customer."
DM: "Okay, you're offered two loaves of bread at 1 sp each. The price seems a little high, but you suspect that haggling down to a fair price won't endear you to the merchant."
Player: "Sure, I'll just pay it."
DM: "Go ahead and roll your Gather Information check to see how persuasive you are in getting information from him."
Player: *rolls*
DM: *provides info based on check result*

All this takes a little more time than just a plain die roll, but it gives the player more agency and winds up being more memorable after the fact. When the players roll really well, they see the tangible effect that they have swayed this one specific person to tell them what they need to know. If they do poorly, the person can shut them down. In a scenario like this one, you can decide whether the players can try again with the same person (maybe by offering a larger incentive) or have to go try someone else.

This gets awfully boring when the players use GI over and over again, because they want to make that DC 20 roll, but they come close several times.... Several... The game will die with that stuff, really.

[nedz]

I normally use GI the other way around.

PCs, new in town, walk around and try to locate something unusual. I ask them to make a GI roll (no fee) to see if they can find what they are looking for.

PCs spend some time in bar trying to get some leads: GI roll (no fee).

Now whilst I could, and I do occasionally, role-play out the scenes normally I just cut past the roll. GI is there, for me, to speed things up so that the other players don't get bored already. I don't see it as a pro-active action but just a way of resolving role-play.

[Telonius]

Personally, for the "general news" part of the check, I write up around 30 rumors for each town the players will be in. I arrange them in numerical order (starting at 11); the lower the number, the less useful/true the rumor might be. If the player rolls a 20, they get rumors 11 through 20, and so on.

If the players want to follow up on a specific rumor (or find out something else altogether), they have to specify what they're looking for.

(EDIT: I just dug up an old list of rumors; it's in the spoiler).

11. There’s been a minor scandal as a lieutenant of the Town Guard was caught frequenting one of the Stoneways’ houses of ill repute.
12. Queen Elaine has been particularly grouchy lately – she even fired a servant for spilling some water!
13. Jason du Calion is keeping a bunch of pet monsters! The recent earthquake was caused by one of them.
14. My brother works at the palace. Nobody believes him, but he swears up and down that he saw a pair of ghosts appear out of nowhere, talk for awhile, then disappear again.
15. That red light district is a disgrace to the town. The only reason I can figure the Queen hasn’t closed it down is they have so much dirt on the royalty.
16. Princess Selene has been making inquiries about white dresses and feasts – could wedding bells be in the future for her and Lord Hector?
17. There’s a kind of suspicious-looking man named Finnegan with a table set up in the Town Square. Says he’s there to let people know about the “real religion, none of this derivative garbage.” We asked him what deity he was talking about, and he told us, “Deities? I’m talking about Vestiges. They were the powers, before the deities were ever around. Right now, I’m into Naberius… you’ve probably never heard of him.”
18. Gladys du Calion is the family’s black sheep. She’s been hanging around with gamblers and wasting her inheritance on frivolous things. That girl will come to a bad end…
19. The town’s Clerics have all been cursed! Not a one of them’s gotten sleep in a week, and some of them have started raving.
20. There was an explosion at the College of Divine Engineering just before the earthquake. They’re playing with fire, I tell you.
21. I usually don’t trust nobles, but Barnabas du Calion is the best of the lot – he’s donated half his yearly stipend to the poor.
22. There’s been a rash of drug overdoses turning up at the Healers. Some new drug called Agony. Probably from some underdark merchants.
23. The miners have been complaining. Seems there’s always some shipment of ore coming in from Henrietta du Calion’s operations, but nobody’s ever seen her hiring here. She must have a bunch of Constructs working – or maybe some kind of magic.
24. The three deans of the College of Divine Engineering have something huge planned – they’re keeping it very hush-hush though.

[NoldorForce]

The problem here is a disconnect on when to roll, and what to do with a roll. In general, whenever a roll comes up it should irrevocably alter the game state. Dungeon World manages this with the idea of "failing forward", i.e. that a failure moves the narrative along even and especially if it doesn't help the PCs' goals. Torchbearer (reportedly) manages this by only having you roll once for a given noncombat action. Either way, pass or fail the PCs shouldn't have had the chance to just roll again after their first Gather Information roll.

Note that I didn't say that a failed roll should do nothing. Perhaps the PCs would still get their information, but it would take up a bunch of time (your choice on how to handle such pressures) and require more money than normal. Perhaps the PCs fail to get information because someone else was looking for the same dragon graves and bribed the local populace to keep quiet. I'm sure there's something else you can think up as well, but the point remains that a failed roll should do something - just not what the PCs are hoping for. If you can't think of anything meaningful to implement on a failed roll, you may not need the PCs to roll in the first place. Instead, based on their relevant modifiers, they can auto-succeed at a particular level of competency. (This is in fact the whole point of taking 10, though the core books generally fail to actually say this.)

[Yahzi]

"Ok, I will gather information again."[/I]
There is obviously no information to be gathered. You can't just kick a peasant repeatedly until the name of the archmage pops up.

If the peasant does know, and doesn't tell, then no amount of re-rolls is going to change the reason the peasant didn't tell in the first place.


(So the same bunch of peasants listen to his question again and again, but they don't take his gold anymore. After almost a whole day of trying, the PC finally makes his check and gets the information he wanted. The peasants return back to work.)
So he robbed an entire day of labor from a bunch of peasants, and didn't even pay them for it? Either they were stringing him along for the lulz or their boss is gonna be mad at your player.

As others have said; this is not a video game. When your players interact with a peasant, you have to pretend to be the peasant. Their GI roll can mean lots of things; whether the peasant trusts them enough to tell them truth, or even if they know the truth in the first place. Maybe the peasant wants the gold but doesn't know the truth. Maybe the peasant wants to send them off to a trap so he can loot their bodies later, or set them against one of his own enemies (that village over the hill are all demon-worshipers!).

The point is for you, the DM, to imagine yourself in the shoes of the people your characters are interacting with.

[Gabrosin]

This gets awfully boring when the players use GI over and over again, because they want to make that DC 20 roll, but they come close several times.... Several... The game will die with that stuff, really.

It still takes a couple hours to make each check, and in my experience there's some level of time pressure with most D&D adventures. And the DM is under no obligation to give out information just because the group keeps trying. For all they know, the information they want simply isn't available, no matter the die roll.

But hey, you're the one who came here asking for help.

[Jon_Dahl]

It still takes a couple hours to make each check, and in my experience there's some level of time pressure with most D&D adventures. And the DM is under no obligation to give out information just because the group keeps trying. For all they know, the information they want simply isn't available, no matter the die roll.

But hey, you're the one who came here asking for help.

Usually, if they roll poorly in social interaction, I tell them that the NPCs were not convinced and the PCs stuttered, said something silly or they wasted their time talking with people who just wanted to troll them for some gold. In any case, they try again more often than not. It's because the PCs now that sometimes more effort is needed.

Even though I'm asking for help, it doesn't mean that you can offer me any old thing.

[Gabrosin]

Usually, if they roll poorly in social interaction, I tell them that the NPCs were not convinced and the PCs stuttered, said something silly or they wasted their time talking with people who just wanted to troll them for some gold. In any case, they try again more often than not. It's because the PCs now that sometimes more effort is needed.

Even though I'm asking for help, it doesn't mean that you can offer me any old thing.

Carry on with your terrible way of doing things then, where you let your players intimidate an entire town over a poor gather information attempt without any consequences. My players will actually have to, you know, role play if they want something, rather than just throw dice at it until they succeed.

[Arbane]

Carry on with your terrible way of doing things then, where you let your players intimidate an entire town over a poor gather information attempt without any consequences. My players will actually have to, you know, role play if they want something, rather than just throw dice at it until they succeed.

Haggling over bread prices is so thrilling, after all.

[Jon_Dahl]

Haggling over bread prices is so thrilling, after all.

Yes, I will try this. I'm convinced.

[Zaq]

Part of the problem is that GI was rolled here at all. You've surely heard of the principle that you should never call for a die roll unless both success and failure are interesting, right? That seems to me like that wasn't the case here. Like, at all.

Just to kind of go over that principle a little bit, the principle is intended both to discourage unnecessary extra rolls and to discourage single-solution scenarios. Let's say that you've got a stereotypical party in a stereotypical dungeon, and the Rogue is trying to open a locked door. If he succeeds, the party can advance; if not, they're stuck. Success and failure are not both interesting there. If the plot can only advance if the Rogue can open the door, then the Rogue needs to be able to open the damn door, or else it needs to be clear to the players that an alternate method of opening the door exists. (It doesn't need to be super obvious or super easy, but it needs to be clear enough that the players aren't just trying to guess what the GM is thinking, because that's not actually fun. The Rogue using Open Lock cannot be the only solution.) Also, if the Rogue fails one check to open the door, they'll likely just keep trying until they succeed (or until they get frustrated), which means extra die rolls. Now, yes, this is kind of exactly what the Take 20 rule is for, but Taking 20 is basically a logical extension of this principle. It isn't fun to have to keep rolling until the Rogue gets a high enough d20 to pop the lock, so Taking 20 basically just means that if it's physically possible for this character to succeed, they will, and if it's not possible, they won't. Same thing, though; success and failure aren't both interesting, so we Take 20 and just find out if a die roll can ever succeed or not.

Skills and rolls that have consequences for failure (usually in the form of not being allowed to retry) can cut off the "keep rolling until you succeed" problem, but they don't help the "success means the game continues, failure means the game stops" problem.

Getting back to Gather Info. If success means that you get the info you desire and failure means you're stuck without a lead, that's not interesting. And if success means that the peasants tell you everything they know (but not actually what you wanted) and failure means that you still don't get anywhere, that's not interesting either. If either of those were the case, there shouldn't have been an actual roll. In the first case, you should just let it succeed (because there's no Plan B), and in the second case, you should just have it fail (because success on the die roll wouldn't mean anything), no dice involved.

I mean, that's very emphatically not to say that everything in the game should be an automatic success or an automatic failure. Say we've got the first scenario (success = info, failure = no info); if it's clear that failure means they have to try something else, and there's at least one (ideally more than one) other thing that would be obvious to try, then both success and failure can be said to be interesting. Say you're investigating a rumor that a local noble is dealing with fiends. Maybe Plan A was trying to Gather Info about that, and if that didn't turn up enough info to move the story forward, Plan B would be to have the Rogue sneak into the castle and do some hands-on espionage. Then a die roll for GI makes perfect sense, because success moves the story forward and failure has the party start thinking about other ways to move the story forward. But if espionage would have been impractical and the party wouldn't have any other leads at all, then it wouldn't be interesting.

There isn't quite enough info to determine if success and failure would have both been interesting for the initial GI roll (though it's possible that failure wouldn't have been interesting, depending on the rest of the situation), but in the aftermath that followed, it doesn't sound like anything was handled well. If he was able to keep rolling GI over and over until he got the result he wanted, you should have just let him succeed in the first place without waiting until a d20 came up a certain way. The actual Take 20 rules are impractical for Gather Info (it's weird to declare a character spends 20 × [1d4 + 1] hours doing this), but the same idea applies: if you're going to let the player roll over and over until they get the result they want, don't make us sit and wait while the d20 bounces over and over, but just let it happen if it's in his power and make it fail if it's outside his reach. If you DON'T want him rolling over and over until he gets what he wants, then impose a consequence for failure (the locals get suspicious and stop talking to you, someone feeds you incorrect information, etc.) and don't just sit there while he keeps trying.

At the end of the day, something in the game needs to change with every die roll. Either you get what you want and move forward (change = plot moves forward), or you fail at a skill you can't retry in the current situation (change = that skill stops being an option and you must try something else), or something. And I'm not saying that all skills should just have you take 20; there are plenty of times when it's appropriate to allow exactly one check for something, maybe as a result of a time element. If a wolf is chasing you and you try to climb a tree to get away, it's absolutely appropriate to call a Climb check (change = you get up the tree or change = the wolf reaches you and gets a bite in before you can try again), even if you wouldn't call for a Climb check to climb the tree without the wolf (you'd just let it happen because we don't want to keep rolling until it works). Or maybe you're in a social situation where a failed check worsens your position even if it doesn't directly bar retrying (there's still a change there). But a change has to happen with each die roll, or else that die roll is inappropriate and should just be narrated over.

[nedz]

Haggling over bread prices is so thrilling, after all.Yes, I will try this. I'm convinced.

No no, it's Fish. It's the price of Fish you must haggle over - bread is so 4E.

[Darth Ultron]

I'm against all the gather information and knowledge skills myself. I see them as tools for the lazy casual gamer. Most often, assuming I'm running a game with good players, I will make the players role play getting any information. This often works out for more of a ''mini adventure'' for information. So you just need to set up places for this. So the town is not just full of useless, filler, zero level peasant dirt farmers....oh, look it has an old sage or retired wizard or old dwarf warrior or whatever.

Now, if your gaming with the other type of players....here is a simple trick: Lie. Whatever the roll, other then a ''1'', just tell them a tiny obvious, near useless scrap of information. It is down right amazing to tell the other player nothing, and watch them act like they discovered the answer to everything. A lot of the other type of players are just happy to use their skill and now ''know something''. Also note it does speed the game along if ''every random peasant'' knows something(aka nothing).

Though...you can have fun with Gather Information too. Remember the skill can only be used ''in the evening'' and can only be done ''in a city'' and ''drinks must be bought''. So the skill is useless in the afternoon, in a town that is dry(the no alcohol dry)...lol

[Jon_Dahl]

No no, it's Fish. It's the price of Fish you must haggle over - bread is so 4E.

Damn you for putting that song back into my head... At least I can return the favor and put it into your head too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbB3iGRHtqA

[Surpriser]

While certainly different views exist on how and when skills like Gather Information should be employed, one thing to keep in mind is that, in the end, it is your decision what to allow and what not.

From your post I get the feeling that you would like to discourage behaviour like you described. In that case, there are two things you can (and should) do:

Limit retries: If you have already decided that the PCs won't find the information there, then no amount of rolling will get it. Higher rolls simply make it clear that trying again is only a waste of time. If there actually is some more information to be had, give them a hint on how they could get to this information (possibly requiring investing more ressources).
Enforce consequences: That player tries intimidating a villager over a few gold pieces that he willingly gave away? Well, he gets the money back, but now everyone in the village will be unfriendly toward him and any further attempts at social interaction should get a hefty penalty. I would recommend stating the consequences clearly before the player rolls, so that it becomes their decision whether it is worth the few gold pieces.

[icefractal]

Carry on with your terrible way of doing things then, where you let your players intimidate an entire town over a poor gather information attempt without any consequences. My players will actually have to, you know, role play if they want something, rather than just throw dice at it until they succeed.

I'm against all the gather information and knowledge skills myself. I see them as tools for the lazy casual gamer.
You know what the problem with this approach is? The GM is a ****ty source of sensory bandwidth. Even the world's best and most descriptive GM is going to be providing several orders of magnitude less information than a PC that's walking around and looking at peoples' expressions and listening to little scraps of conversation and noticing body language would have. That's a whole separate issue from "the character is supposed to be a skilled negotiator, the player isn't" thing, btw; even if the player is willing and able to do everything themself, there's just not a way to adequately convey all the data they'd need to properly do so.

You can skip parts, of course. You can say there's always a retired sage that's the obvious one to ask, or take a general statement like "talk to people at the market" and summarize it as "talk to this specific baker (who is the one with the information)". Which is ... not actually the player solving anything, it's just giving an auto-success at the "who to talk to" part of the task. And then turning the second part of the task - talking to that person - into the entirety of it and saying that's what gathering information (or knowledge) is all about.

Which is ok, it's not badwrongfun, but it's not really "roleplaying instead of rollplaying", it's "morphing the task into something more suited to IC talking, and then doing that." Like if you said you could use LARP combat instead of dice for battles ... while playing at a kitchen table. And what you meant was that you were going to make grappling the deciding combat factor and resolve it with arm wrestling.

[nedz]

I'm against all the gather information and knowledge skills myself. I see them as tools for the lazy casual gamer. Most often, assuming I'm running a game with good players, I will make the players role play getting any information. This often works out for more of a ''mini adventure'' for information. So you just need to set up places for this. So the town is not just full of useless, filler, zero level peasant dirt farmers....oh, look it has an old sage or retired wizard or old dwarf warrior or whatever.

IDK, GI does have it's uses (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0189.html).