When realistic gets too realistic

[Calthropstu]

Has anyone ever started making something in their game and just stepped back because it was just a bit too realistic?
Say a villians escape strategy, or a plan to destroy the world that you suddenly realise is all too feasible, or if someone actually tried something you put together a lot of people could get hurt?
I had a recent moment like this and decided to rewrite an entire setting based on this fact. I know some books and movies have been quashed because of similar issues, but does the gaming community at large have a responsibility to worry about stuff like this?

How would you guys handle this?

[OldTrees1]

Gaming, in general, is a private affair and thus can be concerned with not being squicky to the players without needing to worry about not being squicky to everyone.

Whatever you were making felt squicky to you, so you discarded it. That is the general reaction to circumstances like "uncomfortably too realistic" or other circumstances.

Some tables even implement a safeword system. One example is having a bowl in the middle of the table. If someone picks up the bowl then the scene ends without judgement.

[Vahnavoi]

"Too realistic" is vague on what the actual problem is.

Realism in games and art primarily means three things:

1) fidelity to reality: how close the model of the game world resembles the real world.
2) attention to detail.
3) presenting the subject matter as-it-is, without romanticism, vilification, symbolism, speculation or supernatural elements.

The primary issues of realism, per each point, are:

P1) Dissonant models of reality: the creator and audience do not agree on what the real world is like, ironically making a realistic work feel less real. For example: people who have never been around horses might be surprised that real horses don't make the sound of two coconuts clapping together when they walk.
P2) Excessive attention to detail slows down the creative process, or in the case of a game, the process of play. For example: keeping track of when characters have to go to the toilet would be realistic, but mostly take time from more interesting things.
P3) Realism directly clashes with speculative elements; it opens up realistic elements to unintended symbolic interpretation and vice versa. For example: if you try to realistically describe an invented minority, audience members may interprete that species as allegory of a real minority, regardless of whether it is.

Chances are the issues you want addressed are none of these.

Chances are you are asking of emotional distance or transference of information. Namely:

P4) you think a fictional situation too closely resembles a real situation that invoked traumatic emotional response in the audience. For example: your book called the Two Towers reminds people of WTC terror attacks.
P5) you are afraid the fictional situation is telling the audience something you shouldn't be telling. For example: you are concerned the blueprints of a bomb in your game would allow someone to build a real bomb.

So, specify which of these problems you are worried about, so that the correct solutions can be given.

---

OldTrees1:

Safewords exists to partially solve the problem of "how to prevent unnecessary harm in practices that inherently risk immediate harm". That's similar to just one of the above five problems and only in extreme cases.

Safewords do not exist to prevent or eliminate "squick" and using them (or any equivalent system) for that is dubious.

[Mastikator]

In the first session of my homebrew, after the very first combat this exact criticism was leveraged against me. "too realistic".

The players were on a transport ship, transporting extremely valuable cargo. They were hired specifically to ward off pirates.
Cue pirates, the pirates use a drone to deliver a message "surrender and live, if any one resists then we will kill everyone on board"
One of the players who specializes in the intimidation skill uses his skill. He successfully convinces the pirates of how dangerous he is. So when one of the pirates successfully sneaks on board he immediately empties the magazine of his submachine gun, doing a sneak attack on this player. This player isn't wearing any armor (I asked him if he wanted any armor during session 0, he said "no")
He is immediately downed, in critical condition and slowly dying.

It's of course very realistic that if you get a sneak attack in with a submachine gun and opts to empty the whole magazine on an unarmored person they're very unlikely to survive.


I changed it later, it's still "realistic" but toned down in favor of giving players second chances, to be merciful basically.

However if the BBEG wins then the game should be over. It's either the PCs or the BBEG. There should be a feasible way of stopping the BBEG but if they don't then the BBEG should win. And they lose.

[Vahnavoi]

@Mastikator: That's an example of players saying "too realistic" when they mean "too easy to lose".

You can solve such problems by decreasing realistic lethality of weapons, but you can also solve such problems by changing other parameters of the scenario while still adhering to realism.

[OldTrees1]

"Too realistic" is vague on what the actual problem is.

-snip-

So, specify which of these problems you are worried about, so that the correct solutions can be given.

---

OldTrees1:

Safewords exists to partially solve the problem of "how to prevent unnecessary harm in practices that inherently risk immediate harm". That's similar to just one of the above five problems and only in extreme cases.

Safewords do not exist to prevent or eliminate "squick" and using them (or any equivalent system) for that is dubious.

I agree that the phrase "too realistic" is too vague. I read into the example that the OP was talking about situations uncomfortable enough that someone would withdraw consent. Specifically they found these details made them that extremely uncomfortable while writing the setting. Unfortunately my vocabulary is a bit limited so I used "squick" to describe that.

Also I see safewords as existing to partially solve the problem of "how to establish trust in the ability to withdraw consent and exit without judgement" which itself is used as a tool to solve the problem you mention.

Consider someone with extreme arachnophobia, playing a campaign in the underdark. They face some driders and everything is fine, until it gets a bit too realistic and triggers their arachnophobia. They signal to everyone their distress and it gets resolved without judgement.

[Asmotherion]

I feel realism gives fantasy the thing that it lacks by itself to give a feeling of "it could happen to us" and immerse the players into the game. So, while I believe Lack of fantasy in a game can be a problem, I always prefear my fantasy combined with as much realism as possible.

[Vahnavoi]

@Oldtrees1:

"Squick" is a combination of two basic emotions: surprise and disgust. It then seques to fear or anger depending on temperament as it pertains to fight/flight/freeze response.

Mentally healthy people do not need special protections from these emotions in an engineered situation, any more than someone stepping in rollercoaster needs the ability to stop the ride because they are feeling scared.

A phobia is defined as excessive and irrational fear response. That is, when you are talking phobias, you are no longer talking about what's normal and necessary for mentally healthy people, and should specify that.

As far as practical matters go, safewords are neither particularly necessary nor good for dealing with phobias. They are not particularly necessary because typical process of play in a tabletop game does not prevent the phobic person from communicating their discomfort or leaving the situation via normal means. They are not particularly good because invocation of safewords can only reasonably be done when there's immediate risk, which in typical scenario means the trigger of the phobia is already being described or has been described and the phobic person has already been made anxious before they think of saying the safeword. The best way to deal with phobias is for a person to be open about them from the start of the play process.

[Pex]

In the first session of my homebrew, after the very first combat this exact criticism was leveraged against me. "too realistic".

The players were on a transport ship, transporting extremely valuable cargo. They were hired specifically to ward off pirates.
Cue pirates, the pirates use a drone to deliver a message "surrender and live, if any one resists then we will kill everyone on board"
One of the players who specializes in the intimidation skill uses his skill. He successfully convinces the pirates of how dangerous he is. So when one of the pirates successfully sneaks on board he immediately empties the magazine of his submachine gun, doing a sneak attack on this player. This player isn't wearing any armor (I asked him if he wanted any armor during session 0, he said "no")
He is immediately downed, in critical condition and slowly dying.

It's of course very realistic that if you get a sneak attack in with a submachine gun and opts to empty the whole magazine on an unarmored person they're very unlikely to survive.


I changed it later, it's still "realistic" but toned down in favor of giving players second chances, to be merciful basically.

However if the BBEG wins then the game should be over. It's either the PCs or the BBEG. There should be a feasible way of stopping the BBEG but if they don't then the BBEG should win. And they lose.


@Mastikator: That's an example of players saying "too realistic" when they mean "too easy to lose".

You can solve such problems by decreasing realistic lethality of weapons, but you can also solve such problems by changing other parameters of the scenario while still adhering to realism.

The objection is to Zap, you're dead, you don't play any more.

Don't explain the joke. It's a joke on how Stormtroopers in Star Wars always miss because it plays on realism. If they shot Han in the hangar bay, story over. If they shot Luke swinging over the chasm, story over. There's a reason why in D&D save or die spells no longer exist. It was learned it's not fun to have Zap, you're dead. There does need to be risk. Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap you're dead is fine. Zap you're inconvenienced is fine. It's still not fun for the player to be Zap you don't play this combat anymore, but it's better than no more play at all make a new character if you want. If there's a Remedy available to end the inconvenience or get to continue to play in the combat then it's all good. The loss of a turn or two becomes part of the fun of the game.

That's the strongest symptom of the realism problem. Realism bothers me when it gets in the way of the fun. Realism often gets in the way by the rules. It's why Fighters can't have Nice Things. They're bound by Guy At The Gym limitations, but magic can do anything. When a player wants to do something the rules don't specifically cover it can trigger a DM into thinking the player is trying to get away with something. I can grant sometimes that is the case or the player may not understand why something couldn't/shouldn't work; it's the DM knee-jerking 'No that's not realistic' I'm objecting to. A DM not always saying No is not the same thing as always saying Yes.

What's needed is not realism but verisimillitude. It doesn't matter what the real world says. Does it make sense for the game world? Yes, it makes sense you don't die from the pirate's first shot of the machine gun. It makes sense the raging barbarian can pick up the large boulder and throw it down the hill hitting the advancing orcs.

[Calthropstu]

"Too realistic" is vague on what the actual problem is.


I did that deliberately so a greater conversation could occur as I was curious what people would say.

My specific circumstances applied to a world wide calamity being planned by BBEG in a modern setting. It got far too real, and kind of unstoppable.

So I scrapped it and did something else. I ended up with exactly what I didn't want. A cliche plot that was predictable. But I kinda felt it best to scrap what I had written.

[Mastikator]

@Mastikator: That's an example of players saying "too realistic" when they mean "too easy to lose".

You can solve such problems by decreasing realistic lethality of weapons, but you can also solve such problems by changing other parameters of the scenario while still adhering to realism.

The criticism happened after the combat, by a different player, and only after I asked for criticism. (which I asked for because I wanted feedback on my homebrew system).

But it made me realize that if it's that easy for a player to die, then it's equally easy for the players do kill NPCs (the game is symmetric). Since then the players all decided that armor was important if you're putting yourself into situations where you might get shot. A thing I try to keep in mind is that realism is overrated and dumb, it should only be used in service of verisimilitude, which is awesome and vital. I slightly scaled down the lethality, increased the importance of tactics and counterplay. If the players still wanna play like idiots then that's their choice and I certainly won't pull back from killing PCs.

[Vahnavoi]

When or from who you received your feedback is not relevant to what I said. The point I'm making is that there's a both ways to rephrase the problem, and solutions to it, that completely skip arguments on the degree of realism.

As for realism being "dumb and overrated" or that it "should only be used in service of verisimilitude", I strongly disagree. Value of verisimilitude depends on what overall purpose of a work is and what the end-users base their ideas of truth on. F.ex.
, if you want your players to learn something about real horses, you do not rely on the coconut effect just because that's how your players expect horses walking around to sound like.

In general, before discussing value of realism, RPG hobbyists should actually learn more about what that term means in wider realm of art, instead of using wishy-washy colloquial definitions to complain about whatever their pet peeve is this morning.

[kyoryu]

I'd also like to point out that there's two reasonable ways of viewing realism:

1) Given an event A, the results of that event roughly correspond to the percentages that we'd see those results in real life.
2) Given an event A, the results of that event are plausible

For a lot (not all) of gaming, I prefer the second option.

[Vahnavoi]

Those two views only even apply when three conditions are met:

1) An event has more than one plausible result
2) The statistical distribution of those results is known
3) you are deciding between results randomly.

Given these conditions, there is a third reasonable view: only model results that fit in a reasonably-sized randomizer and nix extreme outliers to save time. Or, in different words, choose the level of accuracy that's efficient for what you're trying to do.

[Drogorn]

I did that deliberately so a greater conversation could occur as I was curious what people would say.

My specific circumstances applied to a world wide calamity being planned by BBEG in a modern setting. It got far too real, and kind of unstoppable.

So I scrapped it and did something else. I ended up with exactly what I didn't want. A cliche plot that was predictable. But I kinda felt it best to scrap what I had written.

It's difficult to give any meaningful advice when you haven't told us what you were originally planning.

[Talakeal]

The criticism happened after the combat, by a different player, and only after I asked for criticism. (which I asked for because I wanted feedback on my homebrew system).

But it made me realize that if it's that easy for a player to die, then it's equally easy for the players do kill NPCs (the game is symmetric). Since then the players all decided that armor was important if you're putting yourself into situations where you might get shot. A thing I try to keep in mind is that realism is overrated and dumb, it should only be used in service of verisimilitude, which is awesome and vital. I slightly scaled down the lethality, increased the importance of tactics and counterplay. If the players still wanna play like idiots then that's their choice and I certainly won't pull back from killing PCs.

My players have the opposite problem. They frequently ask for a deadlier system because they like one shotting enemies, but then get mad when they are one-shotted in turn.

[Calthropstu]

It's difficult to give any meaningful advice when you haven't told us what you were originally planning.

Yeah, that would be dumb.*

The reason I stopped and rewrote it was because IT SCARED THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ME. I was writing a plan for a villian that COULD ACTUALLY WORK. In a MODERN setting.

So no, I won't be posting specifics.

*Me posting specifics would be dumb. Not insulting you.

[Mastikator]

My players have the opposite problem. They frequently ask for a deadlier system because they like one shotting enemies, but then get mad when they are one-shotted in turn.

That's my problem, I don't want it to be a competition of "who wins initiative". The problem IMO isn't "not deadly enough" but "too deadly".

[Talakeal]

Yeah, that would be dumb.*

The reason I stopped and rewrote it was because IT SCARED THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ME. I was writing a plan for a villian that COULD ACTUALLY WORK. In a MODERN setting.

So no, I won't be posting specifics.

*Me posting specifics would be dumb. Not insulting you.

I am also curious for whatever you do feel like posting.

If its any consolation, you probably aren't the first person to think of something like this, and there are probably safeguards against it irl



For example, I work in water treatment, and we have done a lot of counter terrorism planning, but we have yet to think of a way terrorists could sabotage our operations that wouldn't be vastly less effective when compared to more traditional means of inflicting violence.

[Mechalich]

If its any consolation, you probably aren't the first person to think of something like this, and there are probably safeguards against it irl

Indeed, the world is not easily destroyed. Hypothetical world-ending plots usually rely on pretending existing safeguards do not exist, giving the villain unreasonable resources to work with, or positing a chain of casual dominos that are unlikely to actually fall in sequence.

Now, it's certainly possible to come up with fictional plots that are both plausible and very damaging (case in point, thriller novelist Tom Clancy predicted the possibility of a terrorist attack using a passenger airliner), but are highly unlikely to be country-ending never mind world ending.

Most apocalypse-level risks are both fairly well understood and have also been hypothesized in fiction extensively (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction). It is incredibly unlikely that any single person discovers some drastically new threat.

[Calthropstu]

Indeed, the world is not easily destroyed. Hypothetical world-ending plots usually rely on pretending existing safeguards do not exist, giving the villain unreasonable resources to work with, or positing a chain of casual dominos that are unlikely to actually fall in sequence.

Now, it's certainly possible to come up with fictional plots that are both plausible and very damaging (case in point, thriller novelist Tom Clancy predicted the possibility of a terrorist attack using a passenger airliner), but are highly unlikely to be country-ending never mind world ending.

Most apocalypse-level risks are both fairly well understood and have also been hypothesized in fiction extensively (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction). It is incredibly unlikely that any single person discovers some drastically new threat.

It involved something that could infinitely scale, wasn't difficult to mass produce, involved mostly easily obtainable resources and enabled small groups to take down much larger groups.

It couldn't "destroy the world." But it would threaten the security of every nation and every city everywhere. Which is almost the same thing.

[Mechalich]

It involved something that could infinitely scale, wasn't difficult to mass produce, involved mostly easily obtainable resources and enabled small groups to take down much larger groups.

It couldn't "destroy the world." But it would threaten the security of every nation and every city everywhere. Which is almost the same thing.

So the AK-47? Seriously, there's something like 72 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle) of those in circulation. And history has shown that the mass production of assault rifles threatened the security of every nation and every city in the world.

My guess, in terms of a technology that doesn't quite exist, is something like killer drones. That's theoretically plausible but actually rather difficult in practice. It's also not a new idea - the robot drone apocalypse goes at least as far back as Philip K. D!ck's Second Variety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety), published in, wait for it, 1953 (this story, like many of Philip K D!ck's, became a major movie, in this case 1995's Screamers).

Edit: seriously, **** gets censored? It's a name.

[Calthropstu]

So the AK-47? Seriously, there's something like 72 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle) of those in circulation. And history has shown that the mass production of assault rifles threatened the security of every nation and every city in the world.

My guess, in terms of a technology that doesn't quite exist, is something like killer drones. That's theoretically plausible but actually rather difficult in practice. It's also not a new idea - the robot drone apocalypse goes at least as far back as Philip K. D!ck's Second Variety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety), published in, wait for it, 1953 (this story, like many of Philip K D!ck's, became a major movie, in this case 1995's Screamers).

Edit: seriously, **** gets censored? It's a name.

I have given all I can without breaking forum rules and probably dozens of laws.

Killer drones was my fallback that I ended up writing.

[LibraryOgre]

Somewhat related: I had a Vampire: The Masquerade Story Teller who tended to get highly into things for a while, and model his gaming after them. One of those was firearms. He complete redid the Vampire system (which was a pretty standard "light pistol, heavy pistol" sort of system), to the point where we were having to pick our ammo by grain... i.e. we had to select a specific weight of bullet, the amount of powder, etc. To no one's surprise but his own, this greatly bogged down the game, since none of the rest of us had this knowledge, and my request to just buy some 9mm ammo was met with scorn.

[ecarden]

No, I have never been smarter than every rebel/terrorist/military group on the planet and come up with a way to destroy civilization.

If you have...well, I guess I'm glad you're keeping it to yourself, oh almighty super-genius. But I really, really doubt it. And frankly, if you're really smart enough to come up with a way to destroy civilization and are sane enough not to want to you probably wouldn't play 'come guess with me and marvel at my genius on an online forum.'

Sorry if this is mean, but frankly, trying to convince people of the existence of a non-existent existential threat which you thought up prepping an RPG is fairly mean as well.

[Calthropstu]

No, I have never been smarter than every rebel/terrorist/military group on the planet and come up with a way to destroy civilization.

If you have...well, I guess I'm glad you're keeping it to yourself, oh almighty super-genius. But I really, really doubt it. And frankly, if you're really smart enough to come up with a way to destroy civilization and are sane enough not to want to you probably wouldn't play 'come guess with me and marvel at my genius on an online forum.'

Sorry if this is mean, but frankly, trying to convince people of the existence of a non-existent existential threat which you thought up prepping an RPG is fairly mean as well.

Maybe I overreacted. Maybe I didn't. Not the purpose of this thread. I am not playing a guessing game. I am not trying to convince people of a threat. I have said all I will on it. The purpose of this thread is to ask if others have had realism strong enough to make them take a step back and say "let's not." Therw's many forms this could take. Rape and pillage of a town getting squicky, forced labor reaching descriptive heights, Genetic modification being fleshed out enough it makes people disturbed or, in my case, stumbling on something dangerous enough to scare me.

I don't have many mediums with which to discuss something like this. So I chose here. So please, in the future, try not to get insulting.

[Vahnavoi]

Yeah, that would be dumb.*

The reason I stopped and rewrote it was because IT SCARED THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ME. I was writing a plan for a villian that COULD ACTUALLY WORK. In a MODERN setting.

So no, I won't be posting specifics.

*Me posting specifics would be dumb. Not insulting you.

When you put it that way, your problem is solidly P5): you're worried about telling your players something you shouldn't.

Without knowing specifics of what you wrote, it's impossible to tell if your concerns are well-founded or not. I do agree that getting into the specifics would be dumb; independent of your players misusing them, putting, say, blueprints of a bomb in an anonymous public forum and asking "would this work?" is a great way to attract wrong kind of attention.

I by and large don't worry about this problem in my games. For contrast, my other hobbies include martial arts and hunting, which involve actually learning and teaching things you can use to injure and kill people and animals. By experience, I can tell this kind of information doesn't transfer well over medium of tabletop games - I can't get "too realistic" without turning a game into a live exercise. This isn't that happens by accident and consequently it isn't a thing I have to "walk back" with any frequency - I'd have to go out of my way to get there first.

[Telwar]

Ah, I remember a Shadowrun 2e game that had us closing airports on the East Coast in order to prevent an ambassador from coming in by a certain time. That was sometime in 2000.

And the GM or our Star Wars game, right at the point that the pandemic started, concluded that the best way for us to deal with the Eternal Empire was either a plague or ramming their homeworld using a Holdo maneuver, and decided he wanted something less apocalyptic for the next game.

[kyoryu]

Those two views only even apply when three conditions are met:

1) An event has more than one plausible result

Right. If there's only one plausible result, it happens. At least, in my mind. Others may (and often do!) disagree.


2) The statistical distribution of those results is known

Eh, I'll take "rough approximation that everyone is okay with". Often, people have wildly wrong impressions of what might happen, and so actual realism will seem less realistic than things matching their preconceptions.


3) you are deciding between results randomly.

For sure, though if you're not determining things randomly, you're pretty much, by definition, in my second category.


Given these conditions, there is a third reasonable view: only model results that fit in a reasonably-sized randomizer and nix extreme outliers to save time. Or, in different words, choose the level of accuracy that's efficient for what you're trying to do.

That's really still the 1st option, just maybe leaning heavily on the "roughly" bit. Life is complex - a d20 roll isn't going to capture every possible result.

Think of it this way - a dagger or sword blow can mess someone up. Badly. A few seconds of getting stabbed with a knife, or a single sword blow, will pretty much incapacitate you. And yet, that's not what happens in most games, so we can say that's not realistic. So we have two options for dealing with that:

1) Add the range of reasonable results to the system, so that a couple seconds of stabs/anything more than a minor cut with a sword will basically take someone out, and go with that. That's option #1.
2) Describe getting "attacked" with a sword/dagger in a way that doesn't take you out in a way that's realistic - glancing blows, barely dodging, etc.

Either of these can be seen as realistic, as they result in events happening that are realistic (even if sometimes improbable). The second may not be seen as realistic by some people as it excludes a number of possible, even likely results. That's a matter of taste.

[Talakeal]

Societies hate this one weird trick to overthrow civilization...

[Vahnavoi]

Eh, I'll take "rough approximation that everyone is okay with". Often, people have wildly wrong impressions of what might happen, and so actual realism will seem less realistic than things matching their preconceptions.

That's P1): dissonant models of reality. I described it myself in my first post.


For sure, though if you're not determining things randomly, you're pretty much, by definition, in my second category.

There's a difference between things that are plainly immediately possible and things that are merely plausible. When ditching random chance in favor of realist non-random mechanics, you begin dealing with the former instead of the latter. For example, if you put an encrypted message in a game for players to solve, them solving it is proof positive that it can be solved.


That's really still the 1st option, just maybe leaning heavily on the "roughly" bit. Life is complex - a d20 roll isn't going to capture every possible result.

The difference becomes very obvious when dealing with large numbers of variant outcomes. Different degrees of accuracy, AKA "roughness", are different options. Nothing useful is gained by saying they're still the same option.


Think of it this way - a dagger or sword blow can mess someone up. Badly. A few seconds of getting stabbed with a knife, or a single sword blow, will pretty much incapacitate you. And yet, that's not what happens in most games, so we can say that's not realistic. So we have two options for dealing with that:

I do not look at it this way, because it's not a very useful way to look. It's akin to looking at a bunch of romantic paintings and wondering "how can I paint over them to make them more realistic?"

When sincerely pursuing realism, there is no need to look at what happens in most games, because most games aren't interested in realism. You only need to look at reality - in this case, reality of weapon combat and ask how to turn it into a game. Once you do that, you'll see a lot more than two options.


Either of these can be seen as realistic, as they result in events happening that are realistic (even if sometimes improbable). The second may not be seen as realistic by some people as it excludes a number of possible, even likely results. That's a matter of taste.

What's a matter of taste is how much realism you want in your game design. What isn't a matter of taste is what is realism, because the very idea of realism is rooted in the concept of there being something external that can be described as-it-is. Nixing probable outcomes in favor of improbable ones is clearly non-realist, because it's a step away from describing something as-it-is in pursuit of some other goal.

[Willie the Duck]

Has anyone ever started making something in their game and just stepped back because it was just a bit too realistic?
Say a villians escape strategy, or a plan to destroy the world that you suddenly realise is all too feasible, or if someone actually tried something you put together a lot of people could get hurt?
I had a recent moment like this and decided to rewrite an entire setting based on this fact. I know some books and movies have been quashed because of similar issues, but does the gaming community at large have a responsibility to worry about stuff like this?

How would you guys handle this?

Sure. While running a game for teens I decided not to run any scenarios where characters are shown doing (NPCs or bad guys) or would succeed at the adventure quest by doing something like throwing metallic sodium in water, making thermite, or creating poison gas from household cleaners. That's the level I think the gaming community needs to think about such things.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sure. While running a game for teens I decided not to run any scenarios where characters are shown doing (NPCs or bad guys) or would succeed at the adventure quest by doing something like throwing metallic sodium in water, making thermite, or creating poison gas from household cleaners. That's the level I think the gaming community needs to think about such things.

When I ran games in a school setting, I was clear that any attempt to get involved with drugs beyond the very most notional would also involve the player getting into hilarious (but utterly humiliating) circumstances.

One player tried to buy drugs. He ended up buying the "special white powder" for an insane price. It was powdered sugar, which the dealers kept for the obvious plants/adventurers/country boys. When the cops arrested them later (for an unrelated crime), they found the baggie and simply mocked him.

Also, recently when I unveiled a bit of a PC's backstory[1] involving heavy abuse (both as a witness and as a victim) and memory modification, plus finding out that his dad thought (due to enemy action) that he was dead, I made sure to not go into any kind of detail. Because that was too abhorrent even for me.

[1] the player knowingly put his character's backstory in my hands. The character has amnesia. Intentionally-caused amnesia, it turns out, caused by experiments by one of the BBEG's lieutenants (before he became such).

[Vahnavoi]

@Willie the Duck: If you're thinking on that level, I'd note that the ability to make fire is just as simple to teach and just as dangerous. We regularly teach kids that in scouting and most of them don't go and set everything ablaze the moment they are unsupervised. So while I wouldn't suggest putting detailed instructions on how to make thermite (etc.) in publicly available adventure materials: if you can trust your players with matches, you can put this level of realism in a game without them suddenly turning into domestic terrorists.

[Segev]

In the first session of my homebrew, after the very first combat this exact criticism was leveraged against me. "too realistic".

The players were on a transport ship, transporting extremely valuable cargo. They were hired specifically to ward off pirates.
Cue pirates, the pirates use a drone to deliver a message "surrender and live, if any one resists then we will kill everyone on board"
One of the players who specializes in the intimidation skill uses his skill. He successfully convinces the pirates of how dangerous he is. So when one of the pirates successfully sneaks on board he immediately empties the magazine of his submachine gun, doing a sneak attack on this player. This player isn't wearing any armor (I asked him if he wanted any armor during session 0, he said "no")
He is immediately downed, in critical condition and slowly dying.

It's of course very realistic that if you get a sneak attack in with a submachine gun and opts to empty the whole magazine on an unarmored person they're very unlikely to survive.


I changed it later, it's still "realistic" but toned down in favor of giving players second chances, to be merciful basically.

However if the BBEG wins then the game should be over. It's either the PCs or the BBEG. There should be a feasible way of stopping the BBEG but if they don't then the BBEG should win. And they lose.


The criticism happened after the combat, by a different player, and only after I asked for criticism. (which I asked for because I wanted feedback on my homebrew system).

But it made me realize that if it's that easy for a player to die, then it's equally easy for the players do kill NPCs (the game is symmetric). Since then the players all decided that armor was important if you're putting yourself into situations where you might get shot. A thing I try to keep in mind is that realism is overrated and dumb, it should only be used in service of verisimilitude, which is awesome and vital. I slightly scaled down the lethality, increased the importance of tactics and counterplay. If the players still wanna play like idiots then that's their choice and I certainly won't pull back from killing PCs.
Interestingly, the criticism I would have given wasn't that the attack was too deadly, but that the Intimidation didn't work.

If I understand the scenario correctly, the PC successfully used Intimidation. Mechanically, his numeric result was a good enough one that he was deemed "scary." But the response was "realistic" in the sense that that just made him the high-priority target, without actually having the narrative impact that intimidation is meant to have. Potentially, it didn't have the realistic impact intimidation would, either. Intimidation isn't just "convince people you're dangerous." Intimidation is the skill to put trepidation into the hearts of those being intimidated. To make them hesitate, to make them uncomfortable with the idea of opposing you, or to make them outright scared of you.

Successful intimidation should have, to my mind, resulted in at least some of the pirates leaning towards seeking easier prey. It doesn't have to - and probably shouldn't - make the encounter go away, but it should result in hesitation as the captain has to rally his crew, result in fewer volunteers for the boarding action, and/or result in them changing their battle plan not just to take out the scary guy first, but around the idea that they might not be able to take him out. It should have created tactical advantage or other opportunities to exploit the hesitation and trepidation of the pirates, not merely painted a target on him.

Whether that's a criticism that the encounter was "too realistic" or that it wasn't realistically representing what intimidation is supposed to be is its own discussion, probably. :smalleek:

[kyoryu]

Interestingly, the criticism I would have given wasn't that the attack was too deadly, but that the Intimidation didn't work.

If I understand the scenario correctly, the PC successfully used Intimidation. Mechanically, his numeric result was a good enough one that he was deemed "scary." But the response was "realistic" in the sense that that just made him the high-priority target, without actually having the narrative impact that intimidation is meant to have. Potentially, it didn't have the realistic impact intimidation would, either. Intimidation isn't just "convince people you're dangerous." Intimidation is the skill to put trepidation into the hearts of those being intimidated. To make them hesitate, to make them uncomfortable with the idea of opposing you, or to make them outright scared of you.

Successful intimidation should have, to my mind, resulted in at least some of the pirates leaning towards seeking easier prey. It doesn't have to - and probably shouldn't - make the encounter go away, but it should result in hesitation as the captain has to rally his crew, result in fewer volunteers for the boarding action, and/or result in them changing their battle plan not just to take out the scary guy first, but around the idea that they might not be able to take him out. It should have created tactical advantage or other opportunities to exploit the hesitation and trepidation of the pirates, not merely painted a target on him.

Whether that's a criticism that the encounter was "too realistic" or that it wasn't realistically representing what intimidation is supposed to be is its own discussion, probably. :smalleek:

I see the failure as something different - a game process failure.

Normally for skill checks, I like to make sure I have two things - the desired result, and what the character is doing to achieve it. As a GM, I can then give the player feedback and what might happen on a success, what might happen on a failure, etc. As a general rule, I think that if you allow a roll (big if there!), then a success should give a character at least part of what they wanted.

Letting players roll knowing that, even if they succeed, they will not get what they want and may get the opposite of it is almost always a bad idea. Clarifying expectations and understandings is critical to games going smoothly. Of course, sometimes there's hidden information, and that's a separate subject, but in general I think it's best to avoid these misunderstandings.

I imagine this went something like this:

Player: "I intimidate them!" (thinking: 'if they're intimidated, they won't attack me')
GM: "Okay." ('if they're intimidated, they're the high priority target')
Player: "I succeed!" ('Yay, they'll go for others!')
GM: "They attack you." ('Cool, you succeeded, you're now tanking them like you wanted.')
Player: "WTF?" ('WTF?')

I'd rather see:

Player: "I glare at them menacingly, trying to get them to cringe away from me."
GM: "Well, they're hardened warriors with a lot of discipline... if they see you as the biggest threat, they're more likely to gang up on you."
Player: "Oh. Hrm. Okay, I don't do that."

OR

Player: "I glare at them menacingly, trying to get them to cringe away from me."
GM: "Oh, normally I'd think that doing that would make them attack you, but if you did some dangerous sword swings and stuff it'd probably make them reconsider."
Player: "Oh, cool, I'll do that."

You can have realism, and disallow unrealistic actions, just make sure everyone is on the same page about what is or is not realistic.

[Satinavian]

I once played in a game where the PCs were a small local part of organized crime. All of them quite typical and engaging in the typical stuff. The game worked mostly as expected, but after a couple of sessions we all noticed, that no one actually liked the characters. Not even their own ones. And that someone destroyed all the fun. So we did something different.

[LordCdrMilitant]

The objection is to Zap, you're dead, you don't play any more.

Don't explain the joke. It's a joke on how Stormtroopers in Star Wars always miss because it plays on realism. If they shot Han in the hangar bay, story over. If they shot Luke swinging over the chasm, story over. There's a reason why in D&D save or die spells no longer exist. It was learned it's not fun to have Zap, you're dead. There does need to be risk. Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap you're dead is fine. Zap you're inconvenienced is fine. It's still not fun for the player to be Zap you don't play this combat anymore, but it's better than no more play at all make a new character if you want. If there's a Remedy available to end the inconvenience or get to continue to play in the combat then it's all good. The loss of a turn or two becomes part of the fun of the game.

That's the strongest symptom of the realism problem. Realism bothers me when it gets in the way of the fun. Realism often gets in the way by the rules. It's why Fighters can't have Nice Things. They're bound by Guy At The Gym limitations, but magic can do anything. When a player wants to do something the rules don't specifically cover it can trigger a DM into thinking the player is trying to get away with something. I can grant sometimes that is the case or the player may not understand why something couldn't/shouldn't work; it's the DM knee-jerking 'No that's not realistic' I'm objecting to. A DM not always saying No is not the same thing as always saying Yes.

What's needed is not realism but verisimillitude. It doesn't matter what the real world says. Does it make sense for the game world? Yes, it makes sense you don't die from the pirate's first shot of the machine gun. It makes sense the raging barbarian can pick up the large boulder and throw it down the hill hitting the advancing orcs.

I would say this is very much a YMMV thing. I don't think there's anything wrong with being dropped from being filled with lead, or blown up by a mortar shell, etc, provided you can trace a continuous sequence of you decisions to lead to your death [read: you got blown up for a reason, not just randomly or unavoidably blown up].

I think the problem with the situation described is not that the player was blown up, but that the player did something that was logically sound, succeeded, and not only did the opposite of what they expect to happen happen [the pirates continued their attack with greater planning and determination], the situation got worse for them as a result of their success [dead without recourse].

The player's plan wasn't even bad. Real life modern pirates are often deterred by their target being armed or otherwise protected, so the players logic was sound and it's not a case of "didn't think this through".
It's not particularly more realistic for pirates to continue their attack than it is for them to discontinue their attack.





As for too realistic, a game is too realistic or non-realistic when players aren't having fun in accordance with what they came for. Players who came to run and gun and machinegun their way through mooks may not be having fun if the game centers around being pinned down behind a HESCO barrier by a truck with a machinegun, and vice versa.

[Mastikator]

Interestingly, the criticism I would have given wasn't that the attack was too deadly, but that the Intimidation didn't work.

If I understand the scenario correctly, the PC successfully used Intimidation. Mechanically, his numeric result was a good enough one that he was deemed "scary." But the response was "realistic" in the sense that that just made him the high-priority target, without actually having the narrative impact that intimidation is meant to have. Potentially, it didn't have the realistic impact intimidation would, either. Intimidation isn't just "convince people you're dangerous." Intimidation is the skill to put trepidation into the hearts of those being intimidated. To make them hesitate, to make them uncomfortable with the idea of opposing you, or to make them outright scared of you.

Successful intimidation should have, to my mind, resulted in at least some of the pirates leaning towards seeking easier prey. It doesn't have to - and probably shouldn't - make the encounter go away, but it should result in hesitation as the captain has to rally his crew, result in fewer volunteers for the boarding action, and/or result in them changing their battle plan not just to take out the scary guy first, but around the idea that they might not be able to take him out. It should have created tactical advantage or other opportunities to exploit the hesitation and trepidation of the pirates, not merely painted a target on him.

Whether that's a criticism that the encounter was "too realistic" or that it wasn't realistically representing what intimidation is supposed to be is its own discussion, probably. :smalleek:

In my game the intimidation skill isn't a Fear spell, it doesn't put a phantasm into the minds of your targets, it convinces people that you're dangerous and scary and how NPCs react to that perception is not up to the player. That is how I explained it to the player in session zero when he dumped all his skill points into intimidation :smallsigh:
My reasoning is that I don't want subterfuge to turn into this scenario (https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/10152005), same for persuasion and intimidation because it breaks immersion in my opinion, social skills aren't mind control.

Now I want to be clear: the intimidation skill did work, the pirates retreated almost immediately (2nd round) and it was in large part because the PC convinced the pirates that she was extremely dangerous.

In another scenario the same PC entered a bar filled with criminals and immediately tried to intimidate the whole bar crowd into giving answers about her lost friend. Rolled really high, and most of the patrons tried to flee/hide, but again- it's not a spell, the NPCs are free to react however they prefer and some of them opened fire on the PC. (this time the player was smart enough to wear armor)

[Segev]

In my game the intimidation skill isn't a Fear spell, it doesn't put a phantasm into the minds of your targets, it convinces people that you're dangerous and scary and how NPCs react to that perception is not up to the player. That is how I explained it to the player in session zero when he dumped all his skill points into intimidation :smallsigh:
My reasoning is that I don't want subterfuge to turn into this scenario (https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/10152005), same for persuasion and intimidation because it breaks immersion in my opinion, social skills aren't mind control.

Now I want to be clear: the intimidation skill did work, the pirates retreated almost immediately (2nd round) and it was in large part because the PC convinced the pirates that she was extremely dangerous.

In another scenario the same PC entered a bar filled with criminals and immediately tried to intimidate the whole bar crowd into giving answers about her lost friend. Rolled really high, and most of the patrons tried to flee/hide, but again- it's not a spell, the NPCs are free to react however they prefer and some of them opened fire on the PC. (this time the player was smart enough to wear armor)

At least you told him in advance, at chargen. I would have taken that as a warning not to waste points on intimidation. I got very tired in another game of a feature that made my character naturally terrifying if people recognized his true nature only ever being a downside. If I would have wanted them afraid and cowed, people would get super-hostile and make (impotent) threats and even attack with no apparent sense of self-preservation beyond "try to kill it rather an appease it or run away." If I wanted to talk, they'd all run and scream and refuse to listen.

If our party behaved that way with supers cary monsters, we'd have been slaughtered by the frustrated or angry creature. But because the GM knew that that wasn't how my PC would respond, the worst possible reaction to me being scary - for me and my goals - was always the one that came up.

And, of course, if I responded the way the NPC monsters would have to such behavior, I would be somehow in the wrong, too, as a player, not just as a monster living down to expectations. Of course we should be afraid of scary monsters and not hold their violence against them. But if I reacted similarly, it can only make matters worse.

In all, when NPCs are free to decide that player skills don't actually do anything but make matters worse for the PC if the PC succeeds at using them, I know better than to waste resources on those skills. I don't like being punished for using abilities successfully.

[Talakeal]

I had a similar reaction once.

I was captured by a bad guy, he told me if he felt threatened he would have me killed. I told him I wouldn't do that, people know where I am and will come looking for me if I don't come back, GM told me to roll intimidate, I succeeded, and the GM said "Ok. He feels threatened, he makes good on his word and shoots you in the head!".

[HappyDaze]

I've had games that wanted to get into calculations of how much characters had to pay in taxes and plots involving very mundane (but "realistic") political squabbles. I've also had a game that took one session for my character to get shot and five sessions of working through the recovery from that injury. This is the kind of realism that, IMO, kills my interest in games.

[Drogorn]

In my game the intimidation skill isn't a Fear spell, it doesn't put a phantasm into the minds of your targets, it convinces people that you're dangerous and scary and how NPCs react to that perception is not up to the player. That is how I explained it to the player in session zero when he dumped all his skill points into intimidation :smallsigh:
My reasoning is that I don't want subterfuge to turn into this scenario (https://www.goblinscomic.com/comic/10152005), same for persuasion and intimidation because it breaks immersion in my opinion, social skills aren't mind control.

Now I want to be clear: the intimidation skill did work, the pirates retreated almost immediately (2nd round) and it was in large part because the PC convinced the pirates that she was extremely dangerous.

In another scenario the same PC entered a bar filled with criminals and immediately tried to intimidate the whole bar crowd into giving answers about her lost friend. Rolled really high, and most of the patrons tried to flee/hide, but again- it's not a spell, the NPCs are free to react however they prefer and some of them opened fire on the PC. (this time the player was smart enough to wear armor)

Yeah, in your game I wouldn't bother with social skills at all. Shooty shooty bang bang is all that would be worth taking.

[Mastikator]

Yeah, in your game I wouldn't bother with social skills at all. Shooty shooty bang bang is all that would be worth taking.

The most powerful skill so far has been streetwise and investigation, followed by intimidation (the player was able to interrogate a smooth talking assassin down), then mechanics, medicine and pilot. But yeah if you think if you can't do this https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0767.html then deception is not worth taking then I don't know what to say to you.

[Segev]

The most powerful skill so far has been streetwise and investigation, followed by intimidation (the player was able to interrogate a smooth talking assassin down), then mechanics, medicine and pilot. But yeah if you think if you can't do this https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0767.html then deception is not worth taking then I don't know what to say to you.

It just seems, from your description of how you run your game, that there is a lot of middle ground between the way you seem to run intimidate and the comic you quoted. I prefer it somewhere in that middle ground, because the way yo described your own running of it makes it sound like it can only hurt you to succeed at it.

[Telok]

It just seems, from your description of how you run your game, that there is a lot of middle ground between the way you seem to run intimidate and the comic you quoted. I prefer it somewhere in that middle ground, because the way yo described your own running of it makes it sound like it can only hurt you to succeed at it.

I've seen "social skills" run two ways in games that have the skills (or whatever that particular game calls being good at talky stuff) but no real rules structure or effective guidance for them. First is a sort of narrative "pay to play" style, where because a character paid for the ability in some way they get to have narrative control over the outcome when the ability is successful. Second is a sort of deterministic "roll for pants" way, where there's a roll that determines something about the outcome but the player is basically rolling blind and nothing except a number on the character sheet has any observable effect.

Thing is, without decent rules or guidance from the game book you seem to get different people trying to play both styles at the same table. And it can be even more fun if one person expects a sort of degrees of success/failure when another is expecting pass/fail outcomes. The solution (when there aren't clear expectations set from the rules) is for everyone to sit down and hash out all the how/why/results/things the social rolls do for each "social skill".

[Mastikator]

It just seems, from your description of how you run your game, that there is a lot of middle ground between the way you seem to run intimidate and the comic you quoted. I prefer it somewhere in that middle ground, because the way yo described your own running of it makes it sound like it can only hurt you to succeed at it.

Doing stupid things hurt you, even if you roll well on doing the stupid thing.

The context:
The doctor PC had successfully used streetwise to find a seedy bar that was used as a front for criminal activities, the activities in question is looking for assassins for hire. He then entered and talked to the patrons looking for whoever is in charge (name drops Jacob, a name he got from a previous session), the PC is directed to this Jacob, who he discovers is a android (a robot who looks like a human, not a smartphone lol). He tells Jacob he's an assassin for hire and heard that target Jacob wants dead is still alive because Jacob hired an incompetent assassin. Jacob is convinced and installs a program on the PCs computer, then tells him to leave. As he leaves a message appears on the new program, which contains a picture, name and location of the target they want dead (who just so happens to be another PC- the bounty hunter).
The doctor and the bounty hunter stage a fake killing (using medicine and firearms skills) to make it seem like the bounty hunter is dead. (I have no idea where they're going with this BTW, but they're the players, I'm just the GM)
He then sends pictures of the "dead" bounty hunter to Jacob using the program, and finally dumps a fake body into the local compost.
The bounty hunter successfully sneaks into the airplane they have and hides there.

(the skills used here are streetwise, persuasion, subterfuge, medicine, firearms. 3/5 are social skills)

All the while this is happening
The mechanic PC and the intimidator PC are doing jobs for money (workshop and selling streetfood respectively). The Doctor and the Bounty Hunter both agree that since the intimidator can't lie and can't keep his mouth shut they'll just not tell him about this plot, instead tell him that the bounty hunter is missing.

The situation:
Now the intimidator finds the bar the doctor went to, he enters and blocks the exit and demands to see his Bounty Hunter friend.
The crowd (for the most part) having no idea what the intimidator is talking about just say so "we don't know who you're talking about, scram", I ask him for a perception check which he rolls really low, I tell him "you just see about 20 people minding their business" (hoping the player would understand that there's more pertinent information to notice). A higher roll would reveal that most of the patrons are armed with guns (and some sub-machine guns) and armored.
He then says he wants to roll for intimidation, "I scream at them: I'm not leaving here until you show me my friend!!!". I tell him that they're going to perceive this as a hostile act, he says that's what he's going for, he rolls really well this time on intimidation. They're all frightened by him, most of them being to flee, 6 of them decide to shoot first.
I tell him to roll for initiative, he rolls second lowest, five of the 6 bar patrons go before him. Two have sub machine guns, four have regular guns. The ones with sub machine guns empty their magazine, the ones with guns shoot and then start running. (this time he's wearing body armor so it doesn't kill him, also this time I've slightly lowered the lethality of guns)
On the intimidator's turn he pulls out his machine gun and spends the whole turn shooting, he hits 3 patrons and kill 2 immediately.

By round 4 one patron has escaped with his life, the other 5 are dead. The patrons who hid all lived.

When this combat ended it was about 21 o'clock on a Sunday so we called it a night. I think the intimidator wanted a fight in retrospect. That fight was completely pointless to the story, but a random encounter never killed anyone lmao.

I'm not exactly sure how it could've gone down differently. Should they beg for mercy? All 20 of them? He blocked the exit so they couldn't escape. The only good alternative I can think of is that they do nothing, wait for intimidator to either calm down, that wouldn't yield anything.

[Segev]

I've seen "social skills" run two ways in games that have the skills (or whatever that particular game calls being good at talky stuff) but no real rules structure or effective guidance for them. First is a sort of narrative "pay to play" style, where because a character paid for the ability in some way they get to have narrative control over the outcome when the ability is successful. Second is a sort of deterministic "roll for pants" way, where there's a roll that determines something about the outcome but the player is basically rolling blind and nothing except a number on the character sheet has any observable effect.

Thing is, without decent rules or guidance from the game book you seem to get different people trying to play both styles at the same table. And it can be even more fun if one person expects a sort of degrees of success/failure when another is expecting pass/fail outcomes. The solution (when there aren't clear expectations set from the rules) is for everyone to sit down and hash out all the how/why/results/things the social rolls do for each "social skill".My advice when running with somewhat rules-light social systems (which is how people often treat D&D, with varying degrees of fidelity to the actual rules) is to, as player, try to establish with the GM what it is you want the outcome to be, and the GM to check with the player what he expects the outcome of a successful check to be and why.

I think a lot of the dissatisfaction I have experienced and heard others express from in-game resolution of such things stems from the player thinking, for example, "If I threaten them successfully, they'll be walking on eggshells and eager to placate me," while the GM thinks, "Okay, they'll view you as dangerous and unhinged and try to run, hide, or fight for their lives."

In an RP bit, my sailor PC was offering his city guard girlfriend a place on the ship he's the bosun for. The DM had me roll persuasion, and I'm glad he and I had an OOC discussion of what my PC was trying to accomplish, because what my PC wanted to do was get across that it's a genuine offer and that he'd be happy to have her along, but that he won't be hurt if she turns it down, either, because he doesn't want to pressure her into doing something she doesn't want to. It turns out that she doesn't WANT to go to sea, as much as she likes being around him and wants him to come back to her. So, because we'd had this conversation about the sailor PC's intent, the successful persuasion roll got his intent across, got her to make her decision based on what she wanted rather than on what she thought he wanted, and had them have as pleasant a parting as a couple can when one's going away for a longish while.


Doing stupid things hurt you, even if you roll well on doing the stupid thing.

The context:
The doctor PC had successfully used streetwise to find a seedy bar that was used as a front for criminal activities, the activities in question is looking for assassins for hire. He then entered and talked to the patrons looking for whoever is in charge (name drops Jacob, a name he got from a previous session), the PC is directed to this Jacob, who he discovers is a android (a robot who looks like a human, not a smartphone lol). He tells Jacob he's an assassin for hire and heard that target Jacob wants dead is still alive because Jacob hired an incompetent assassin. Jacob is convinced and installs a program on the PCs computer, then tells him to leave. As he leaves a message appears on the new program, which contains a picture, name and location of the target they want dead (who just so happens to be another PC- the bounty hunter).
The doctor and the bounty hunter stage a fake killing (using medicine and firearms skills) to make it seem like the bounty hunter is dead. (I have no idea where they're going with this BTW, but they're the players, I'm just the GM)
He then sends pictures of the "dead" bounty hunter to Jacob using the program, and finally dumps a fake body into the local compost.
The bounty hunter successfully sneaks into the airplane they have and hides there.

(the skills used here are streetwise, persuasion, subterfuge, medicine, firearms. 3/5 are social skills)

All the while this is happening
The mechanic PC and the intimidator PC are doing jobs for money (workshop and selling streetfood respectively). The Doctor and the Bounty Hunter both agree that since the intimidator can't lie and can't keep his mouth shut they'll just not tell him about this plot, instead tell him that the bounty hunter is missing.

The situation:
Now the intimidator finds the bar the doctor went to, he enters and blocks the exit and demands to see his Bounty Hunter friend.
The crowd (for the most part) having no idea what the intimidator is talking about just say so "we don't know who you're talking about, scram", I ask him for a perception check which he rolls really low, I tell him "you just see about 20 people minding their business" (hoping the player would understand that there's more pertinent information to notice). A higher roll would reveal that most of the patrons are armed with guns (and some sub-machine guns) and armored.
He then says he wants to roll for intimidation, "I scream at them: I'm not leaving here until you show me my friend!!!". I tell him that they're going to perceive this as a hostile act, he says that's what he's going for, he rolls really well this time on intimidation. They're all frightened by him, most of them being to flee, 6 of them decide to shoot first.
I tell him to roll for initiative, he rolls second lowest, five of the 6 bar patrons go before him. Two have sub machine guns, four have regular guns. The ones with sub machine guns empty their magazine, the ones with guns shoot and then start running. (this time he's wearing body armor so it doesn't kill him, also this time I've slightly lowered the lethality of guns)
On the intimidator's turn he pulls out his machine gun and spends the whole turn shooting, he hits 3 patrons and kill 2 immediately.

By round 4 one patron has escaped with his life, the other 5 are dead. The patrons who hid all lived.

When this combat ended it was about 21 o'clock on a Sunday so we called it a night. I think the intimidator wanted a fight in retrospect. That fight was completely pointless to the story, but a random encounter never killed anyone lmao.

I'm not exactly sure how it could've gone down differently. Should they beg for mercy? All 20 of them? He blocked the exit so they couldn't escape. The only good alternative I can think of is that they do nothing, wait for intimidator to either calm down, that wouldn't yield anything.
In this case, I suspect (assuming the player was dissatisfied with the result) that the player heard, "They'll interpret that as a hostile act," to mean, "they will think he really means to harm them." Given that he's trying to scare them into submission, of course that's what he wants.

If I had been the GM, here, I would have asked, "What do you expect them to do if you succeed at this intimidation check?" in order to make sure I know what it is he thinks he's doing. If his expectation is wildly off from mine and I don't see how his action could lead to his desired result, I would tell him so, or at least warn him of possible alternatives based on the fact that a crowd of people may not react uniformly.

If I had been the player, I would have tried to express, when told, "They'll interpret that as a hostile act," that my hope was that they would be cowed by the threat of violence and be looking to prevent him from escalating further, preferably via attempting to placate him.

Of course, if you're right, and the player was looking for a fight, as the player in that case, I'd have said, "Great! I'm looking to provoke a fight with at least some of them while the others duck and cover," or something like that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My advice when running with somewhat rules-light social systems (which is how people often treat D&D, with varying degrees of fidelity to the actual rules) is to, as player, try to establish with the GM what it is you want the outcome to be, and the GM to check with the player what he expects the outcome of a successful check to be and why.


And not just social systems. All ability checks (to use the 5e term) need a few things established before the DM can even begin to fairly and usefully resolve them:
* Intent--what does the person triggering the check want to happen?
* Method--how is the person triggering the check attempting to cause this to happen in-universe? This generally involves some of the details, not just the name of the "skill" they want to use.
* Outcome/Risks--what will happen on a success? on a failure? This one can be partially hidden from the players, if there are indirect effects that they'd not be able to determine immediately. But generally there should be consensus between player and DM about what will happen. Whenever the risks are large, I try to ensure that the player has the chance to change their mind before they commit to that path.

[Mastikator]

In this case, I suspect (assuming the player was dissatisfied with the result) that the player heard, "They'll interpret that as a hostile act," to mean, "they will think he really means to harm them." Given that he's trying to scare them into submission, of course that's what he wants.

If I had been the GM, here, I would have asked, "What do you expect them to do if you succeed at this intimidation check?" in order to make sure I know what it is he thinks he's doing. If his expectation is wildly off from mine and I don't see how his action could lead to his desired result, I would tell him so, or at least warn him of possible alternatives based on the fact that a crowd of people may not react uniformly.

If I had been the player, I would have tried to express, when told, "They'll interpret that as a hostile act," that my hope was that they would be cowed by the threat of violence and be looking to prevent him from escalating further, preferably via attempting to placate him.

Of course, if you're right, and the player was looking for a fight, as the player in that case, I'd have said, "Great! I'm looking to provoke a fight with at least some of them while the others duck and cover," or something like that.

AFAIK the only time someone has been dissatisfied was with the lethality of firearms.

[kyoryu]

And not just social systems. All ability checks (to use the 5e term) need a few things established before the DM can even begin to fairly and usefully resolve them:
* Intent--what does the person triggering the check want to happen?
* Method--how is the person triggering the check attempting to cause this to happen in-universe? This generally involves some of the details, not just the name of the "skill" they want to use.
* Outcome/Risks--what will happen on a success? on a failure? This one can be partially hidden from the players, if there are indirect effects that they'd not be able to determine immediately. But generally there should be consensus between player and DM about what will happen. Whenever the risks are large, I try to ensure that the player has the chance to change their mind before they commit to that path.

Yes, all of this.

And while some of it can be hidden I think it's a good idea to err on the side of divulging as much to the players as possible.

Another good technique is, on a failure, to frame it in a way that the players get their choice of failure modes. "Okay, you've taken a while to pick the lock and are almost there. But... you hear guards coming. You're pretty sure you can finish picking it and get through the door, but the guards will definitely know you went through there. Or, you can go hide now and give up your progress, but you can probably remain hidden". In this case, you give the player the choice between "get through the door but lose stealth" and "don't get through the door but keep stealth".

[Calthropstu]

Yes, all of this.

And while some of it can be hidden I think it's a good idea to err on the side of divulging as much to the players as possible.

Another good technique is, on a failure, to frame it in a way that the players get their choice of failure modes. "Okay, you've taken a while to pick the lock and are almost there. But... you hear guards coming. You're pretty sure you can finish picking it and get through the door, but the guards will definitely know you went through there. Or, you can go hide now and give up your progress, but you can probably remain hidden". In this case, you give the player the choice between "get through the door but lose stealth" and "don't get through the door but keep stealth".

That is fine until you get to "I have no idea how to go about this, but my character should."

[kyoryu]

That is fine until you get to "I have no idea how to go about this, but my character should."

It depends on what level that's happening.

And it's always reasonable, I think, for the GM to give some ideas of what the character would know. I also don't worry too much about the "how" except to the extent that "how" has an impact outside of the resolution. What specific lockpicking technique you're using is mostly irrelevant... UNLESS it's changing the speed of unlocking, how likely it is to break picks, etc.

Can you give a specific example? (To be clear, that's not snark. It's a matter of wanting to make sure I understand what you're talking about)

[Calthropstu]

It depends on what level that's happening.

And it's always reasonable, I think, for the GM to give some ideas of what the character would know. I also don't worry too much about the "how" except to the extent that "how" has an impact outside of the resolution. What specific lockpicking technique you're using is mostly irrelevant... UNLESS it's changing the speed of unlocking, how likely it is to break picks, etc.

Can you give a specific example? (To be clear, that's not snark. It's a matter of wanting to make sure I understand what you're talking about)

Player: My character is a suave merchant and diplomat. I attempt to renegotiate the age old deal that is hampering everyone.

DM: How?

Player: Uhhhhhh...

[PhoenixPhyre]

Player: My character is a suave merchant and diplomat. I attempt to renegotiate the age old deal that is hampering everyone.

DM: How?

Player: Uhhhhhh...

For me, two considerations.

1) this is not something that should be done in a single check. Each (social) check represents an attempt to get one specific, discrete thing out of the other participant(s). So in this case, you'd need to present/develop a new deal; the check would determine how they react to it. So you'd have to build up your case by a lot of other little things, often discovered through research, other negotiations, spying on people, etc. Basic adventuring tasks that should have been completed by the time you reach the renegotiation stage.

2) Assuming #1 is out of the way, I'd accept "by showing people that both sides are losing out here and that no one is really gaining" as a suitable "how" for using Persuasion. As would I accept a (lying) version of the same for a Deception use. Or "by offering X in bribes" (Persuasion). Or "by (credibly) threatening to bring in an army of demons" for Intimidation. Or whatever. I just need the bare-bones approach. Because Noble McGooderson won't react very well to a bribe, but will react to sweet reason. While Corrupty McCorrupterson is only caring about how he, personally, will profit.

[icefractal]

I've sometimes seen "you succeeded too well and now it's a bad thing!" a few times, and I always found it pretty ridiculous. Being skilled at something means knowing the appropriate way to use it.

"You rolled too high on Profession (Surgeon), so you accidentally amputated all the patient's limbs!"
"You rolled too high on Hacking, so you accidentally wrote a virus which has shut down Google and the NSA! You're a wanted terrorist now!"
Sounds pretty stupid, right?

If the result of intimidating someone is that they're going to fight back even harder, that should be apparent to someone who's actually skilled at it, unless there's something funky going on like a Jekyll/Hyde split personality.
"As you start to pressure the gang members, you notice them tensing up, ready to fight. If you push any harder, combat is going to start - do you do so?"

In the second example, the player's objective is unclear, and starting a shootout may indeed have been the intended result. So IDK if there's even an issue there.

In the first example though, it seems like the skill was secretly useless without the PC (who is supposedly skilled at this kind of thing) recognizing that. The pirates' behavior confused me too:
1) They were intimidated, but not too intimidated to board the ship and go straight for the source of their fear.
2) But then they retreat? Why? They just took down the biggest threat (as far as they know); the rest should be comparatively easy.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've sometimes seen "you succeeded too well and now it's a bad thing!" a few times, and I always found it pretty ridiculous. Being skilled at something means knowing the appropriate way to use it.

"You rolled too high on Profession (Surgeon), so you accidentally amputated all the patient's limbs!"
"You rolled too high on Hacking, so you accidentally wrote a virus which has shut down Google and the NSA! You're a wanted terrorist now!"
Sounds pretty stupid, right?

If the result of intimidating someone is that they're going to fight back even harder, that should be apparent to someone who's actually skilled at it, unless there's something funky going on like a Jekyll/Hyde split personality.
"As you start to pressure the gang members, you notice them tensing up, ready to fight. If you push any harder, combat is going to start - do you do so?"

In the second example, the player's objective is unclear, and starting a shootout may indeed have been the intended result. So IDK if there's even an issue there.

In the first example though, it seems like the skill was secretly useless without the PC (who is supposedly skilled at this kind of thing) recognizing that. The pirates' behavior confused me too:
1) They were intimidated, but not too intimidated to board the ship and go straight for the source of their fear.
2) But then they retreat? Why? They just took down the biggest threat (as far as they know); the rest should be comparatively easy.

I agree with this. Especially the comments about "too high -> bad result" being both counter-intuitive and feeling deeply wrong.

I think the key is that DMs should negotiate with players, alerting them to things like "your character sees X, which implies Y. Do you pull the trigger/commit to that action?" and then let the player change their mind (or not). But at the point the action is committed to play, the player should know all the consequences that the character would (likely, erring on the side of more information IMO) know.

[kyoryu]

Player: My character is a suave merchant and diplomat. I attempt to renegotiate the age old deal that is hampering everyone.

DM: How?

Player: Uhhhhhh...

"Okay, you know that these are the things that they want, and their priorities. <if you know it> You know this is why they want those things. You'll need to come up with some kind of offer that can satisfy those things, or give them something that they'd want even more. What do you think you can offer them?"

If they have no clue of those things, it's almost easier. "The first thing to do is figure out what their priorities are, and why they want those things. If you can offer them something that will make the decision makers even happier, they might go along with something."

[icefractal]

Incidentally, something I use/allow when running, and I'm curious whether other people do/would - using Intimidate based on an external threat, while being on the same side as the person you're intimidating.

For example:
"Let us in, we have an important message for the general!"
"The fortress is in high-alert, no entry at night. Come back in five hours."
"Look, there are about three hundred demon-trolls headed toward you, less than three hours away. If the general doesn't get and act on our information very soon, everyone here is going to be dead by sunrise."

A successful intimidate there meaning that the guard is scared enough by what you've said that he lets you in immediately rather than spend time trying to confirm your story, or fetching a superior, or whatnot.

[MoiMagnus]

Incidentally, something I use/allow when running, and I'm curious whether other people do/would - using Intimidate based on an external threat, while being on the same side as the person you're intimidating.

For example:
"Let us in, we have an important message for the general!"
"The fortress is in high-alert, no entry at night. Come back in five hours."
"Look, there are about three hundred demon-trolls headed toward you, less than three hours away. If the general doesn't get and act on our information very soon, everyone here is going to be dead by sunrise."

A successful intimidate there meaning that the guard is scared enough by what you've said that he lets you in immediately rather than spend time trying to confirm your story, or fetching a superior, or whatnot.


I've grown to distaste the way Charisma skills are defined in D&D. As such, I tend to include in "Intimidation" everything related to "authority" or "presence", essentially anything related to "Don't think about it, don't question me, I'm right and you can't afford to be wrong!".

While I shift a lot of the "Intimidating negotiation" (where direct or indirect threats are just one kind of argument, together with tentative of corruptions and whatever) to Deception or Persuasion.

[Calthropstu]

So the AK-47? Seriously, there's something like 72 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle) of those in circulation. And history has shown that the mass production of assault rifles threatened the security of every nation and every city in the world.

My guess, in terms of a technology that doesn't quite exist, is something like killer drones. That's theoretically plausible but actually rather difficult in practice. It's also not a new idea - the robot drone apocalypse goes at least as far back as Philip K. D!ck's Second Variety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety), published in, wait for it, 1953 (this story, like many of Philip K D!ck's, became a major movie, in this case 1995's Screamers).

Edit: seriously, **** gets censored? It's a name.

Ummm. Just read a news article. Killer drones are no longer theoretical. They were apparently used in Belarus. Great Britian made one armed with a shotgun. Iran reportedly is making them. And the US disbanded a UN commission that attempted to halt their use and development.

So killer Drones are very much a thing.

The Mod Ogre: No warnings yet, but this would be a topic to shy away from.

[RandomPeasant]

Incidentally, something I use/allow when running, and I'm curious whether other people do/would - using Intimidate based on an external threat, while being on the same side as the person you're intimidating.

I probably would, but honestly my real answer is that D&D's social system needs to be stripped out and replaced. Because you start getting into edge cases where things aren't defined well. What if I'm lying about there being a threat? Do I roll Bluff as well? Bluff instead? If there's a threat the guard already knows about, and I'm trying to change how he's going to respond, that seems like it might be more Diplomacy than Intimidate. Playing by RAW, I think I'd end up just letting players roll any skill they can convince me is relevant, but while that works okay at the table, it has a lot of problems as a general rule.

[Frogreaver]

Player: My character is a suave merchant and diplomat. I attempt to renegotiate the age old deal that is hampering everyone.

DM: How?

Player: Uhhhhhh...

I'm sure it's not like you'd previously went in great depth about the exact details of the trade deal - and I'm also sure no one else at the table wants to hear about those details. So really, how the heck should the player know how to answer that question? Why not instead of asking him a question he cannot possibly answer and explaining the history and parameters of a trade deal that no one at the table wants to waste time getting in the nitty gritty details of - instead give the player a small menu of options he might try and let him pick the answer from that menu. Seriously, is meeting him in the middle too much to ask?

[Satinavian]

I'm sure it's not like you'd previously went in great depth about the exact details of the trade deal - and I'm also sure no one else at the table wants to hear about those details. So really, how the heck should the player know how to answer that question? Why not instead of asking him a question he cannot possibly answer and explaining the history and parameters of a trade deal that no one at the table wants to waste time getting in the nitty gritty details of - instead give the player a small menu of options he might try and let him pick the answer from that menu. Seriously, is meeting him in the middle too much to ask?
If a trade deal is established as "hampering everyone", there are probably already enough complaints from various sides about the treade deal on the table to work with.

If one PC is meant to be "a suave merchant and diplomat", quite a lot of GMs would include at least the occasional sideplot that is all about diplomacy and trade for that character to shine, but would not expect it to be done with "I roll once." That would similar to building a war campaign arc for the warlord-PC and that to be done with "I roll knowledge (warfare) or whatever equivalent the system gas once to win".

But seriously, usually stuff like that is for session zero. I have had my fair share of players outright stating "I like to play a character who is social but i as a player am not good at it and it is stressfull for me to play it out. I would like to just roll if it comes up." And when that is clear and agreed upfront, the group can work that way.

[KineticDiplomat]

I think the sneaky pirate with an SMG is a weird case of “pretending to be realistic, but actually not really realistic at all, producing the worst possible outcome”. You get that a lot when you try to mix dramatic tropes with one or two realistic elements.

Yep, being shot in the back of the head will kill you (or close enough). Sure, but somehow sneaky mcpirate manages to match speeds with a moving ship from his own smallcraft, board the ship “stealthy” even though every eye is going to be on his potential point of insertion, somehow identify from the back of a dude fifteen yards away “oh, that must be the one extra-badass they warned us about”, and then despite being at best a semi-trained sorta guy, controls the automatic fire of an entire magazine to hit with every round? And we’re pretending that body armor would have somehow lead to a different outcome despite the fact that you’d have massive blunt trauma through the plates/soft layer and that places like legs and arms would also be really bad considering we’re saying the dude was struck by 10-30 bullets?

The only “realistic” part of that is bullets are not good for your health. The rest is just the GM playing a usual fantasy game with a big screw you at the end. He didn’t play a “realistic” game at all, he just seized on an opportunity to put the boot in by only calling on reality when it suited him.

[Willie the Duck]

Ummm. Just read a news article. Killer drones are no longer theoretical. They were apparently used in Belarus. Great Britian made one armed with a shotgun. Iran reportedly is making them. And the US disbanded a UN commission that attempted to halt their use and development.
So killer Drones are very much a thing.
I will briefly point out that adding that ‘Ummm’ at the beginning of your post added nothing to the conversation except to make the discussion contentious where it absolutely did not need to be, and set you up as the ‘ackchyually’ guy. Do as much or as little with this information as you see fit.
Regardless, this does highlight a good point – the future is here. A lot of cyberpunk tropes moved from science fiction to reality while many of us weren’t looking. Random important one: it always seemed like a theoretical issue of ‘what happens when there’s implanted cyberware that one company has exclusive control over, and someone basically has to do whatever they want or else possibly have to have major invasive surgery to exchange it with another company’s product (if there even is a competitor)?’ Meanwhile, people with pacemakers and cochlear implants have had that issue for several decades now.

I probably would, but honestly my real answer is that D&D's social system needs to be stripped out and replaced. Because you start getting into edge cases where things aren't defined well. What if I'm lying about there being a threat? Do I roll Bluff as well? Bluff instead? If there's a threat the guard already knows about, and I'm trying to change how he's going to respond, that seems like it might be more Diplomacy than Intimidate. Playing by RAW, I think I'd end up just letting players roll any skill they can convince me is relevant, but while that works okay at the table, it has a lot of problems as a general rule.
Social mechanics have always been the bugaboo of RPGs. Not least of which because vaguely half of gamers dislike the idea of talking and convincing others to being a dice-able challenge (or at least mechanistic except in broad strokes), while the other half don’t agree on what system they want. I know there are one or two systems out there with social mechanics that people tend to deem relatively decent, but they are certainly the rarity.

The only “realistic” part of that is bullets are not good for your health. The rest is just the GM playing a usual fantasy game with a big screw you at the end. He didn’t play a “realistic” game at all, he just seized on an opportunity to put the boot in by only calling on reality when it suited him.
This seems to be a problem with the desire for ‘realism’ overall – it is always only sporadically implemented, and usually at a place that either a player or a GM would find satisfactory, but rarely both. Also often without regard to the impact on the other things valued in an RPG (narrative and gameplay being the usually mentioned facets, but undoubtedly more would be affected as well).

[Calthropstu]

I'm sure it's not like you'd previously went in great depth about the exact details of the trade deal - and I'm also sure no one else at the table wants to hear about those details. So really, how the heck should the player know how to answer that question? Why not instead of asking him a question he cannot possibly answer and explaining the history and parameters of a trade deal that no one at the table wants to waste time getting in the nitty gritty details of - instead give the player a small menu of options he might try and let him pick the answer from that menu. Seriously, is meeting him in the middle too much to ask?

An acceptable solution: Throw a few options, make a few rolls and done. That's the point I was making. The hypothetical player had no idea how to go about doing something that his character should be able to figure an avenue to do. Hence the whole "my character uses this skill to move forward" is a very valid thing. I mean, we don't expect a player to perform high kicks to demonstrate "I kick him in his head." So why should other skills work that way?

[Frogreaver]

An acceptable solution: Throw a few options, make a few rolls and done. That's the point I was making. The hypothetical player had no idea how to go about doing something that his character should be able to figure an avenue to do. Hence the whole "my character uses this skill to move forward" is a very valid thing. I mean, we don't expect a player to perform high kicks to demonstrate "I kick him in his head." So why should other skills work that way?

I think you ended up making the very opposite point than the one you intended to make.

That said, once the question of how he’s going about that has received an answer, even if from the menu of choices the dm provided, the action can then be resolved following the normal play loop.

That’s not the same as I’m just going to roll a die and find out if I’m successful.

*I also don’t think comparing such an action to a kick in combat is a very good comparison.

[PhoenixPhyre]

*I also don’t think comparing such an action to a kick in combat is a very good comparison.

Especially since how you resolve the situation is the thing with a huge range of possible consequences, and is the thing that will set the difficulty of the check. Resolve it by bribing people? By reasoned discussion with evidence? By insulting people? By ganging XYZ against W? It's like asking to resolve a small campaign arc with "I roll the skill and be done with it."

"I just want to roll and get it over with" fundamentally denies agency and railroads things, because the vision the DM has will have differences from what the player intended. Inevitably. At least unless such things are discussed openly. Which is what's being asked for here.

[Frogreaver]

Especially since how you resolve the situation is the thing with a huge range of possible consequences, and is the thing that will set the difficulty of the check. Resolve it by bribing people? By reasoned discussion with evidence? By insulting people? By ganging XYZ against W? It's like asking to resolve a small campaign arc with "I roll the skill and be done with it."

"I just want to roll and get it over with" fundamentally denies agency and railroads things, because the vision the DM has will have differences from what the player intended. Inevitably. At least unless such things are discussed openly. Which is what's being asked for here.

I think it’s more fundamental. Mechanics already define your skill at kicking and the opponents skill to resist being kicked. Hit and damage vs ac and what happens on a success and what happens in a failure.

There’s no similar mechanic specified to resolve your skill at negotiating trade agreements and the difficulty of negotiating this particular trade agreement. There’s also no explicit rules for what exactly success or failure looks like.

Instead Mechanically derived numbers can be assigned as a bonus and a dc can also be assigned. This assignment relies on fictional positioning and the dm to take that and determine what bonus to use and what dc to set (and that’s why describing how something is done is such a necessary component). It’s only after this translation of fictional positioning into bonus and dc that a skill check mechanically functions similarly to an attack roll. And even then the case of success or failure for the attack roll just means you hit or miss, but for a failed skill check there can be additional consequences other than just not achieving your goal and a success may not be to quite the degree you had expected.

I personally wouldn’t resolve the negotiation of a trade agreement with 1 check but I don’t think it’s wrong to do so. That part is just a matter of style.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think it’s more fundamental. Mechanics already define your skill at kicking and the opponents skill to resist being kicked. Hit and damage vs ac and what happens on a success and what happens in a failure.

There’s no similar mechanic specified to resolve your skill at negotiating trade agreements and the difficulty of negotiating this particular trade agreement. There’s also no explicit rules for what exactly success or failure looks like.

Instead Mechanically derived numbers can be assigned as a bonus and a dc can also be assigned. This assignment relies on fictional positioning and the dm to take that and determine what bonus to use and what dc to set (and that’s why describing how something is done is such a necessary component). It’s only after this translation of fictional positioning into bonus and dc that a skill check mechanically functions similarly to an attack roll. And even then the case of success or failure for the attack roll just means you hit or miss, but for a failed skill check there can be additional consequences other than just not achieving your goal and a success may not be to quite the degree you had expected.

I personally wouldn’t resolve the negotiation of a trade agreement with 1 check but I don’t think it’s wrong to do so. That part is just a matter of style.

But fictionally, "resolve the negotiation" is undefined unless you have at least some statement of what do you want and how you're going to get it. The DM doesn't have enough information to do so, and unless the system imposes massive constraints on what negotiations can involve (ie has a "resolve abstract negotiation" action), the system doesn't have any part in helping. Heck, you can't even decide what kind of check it would be. You're missing all the key parameters. You're saying "I want to resolve the mystery", without even saying any information about how you do so, and without reference to any facts you'll use. It's a clear "I want an I win the game button" request.

[icefractal]

Worse than "resolve the mystery" even, IMO. With that, there is at least a clear endpoint (all facts about the mystery are known and proved), even if the path to reach it is unclear.

With something like "resolve the negotiation", there are multiple different end-states that would all be called "success", depending on who you want to resolve it in favor of and what you're willing to offer.

Although on the other hand, that's assuming the GM actually did flesh out the dispute. If the entirety of the info available to the players is "the trade deal is contentious and unresolved", and they can't get anything more substantive, then "I roll to resolve it" is about as detailed as that merits.

[Calthropstu]

Worse than "resolve the mystery" even, IMO. With that, there is at least a clear endpoint (all facts about the mystery are known and proved), even if the path to reach it is unclear.

With something like "resolve the negotiation", there are multiple different end-states that would all be called "success", depending on who you want to resolve it in favor of and what you're willing to offer.

Although on the other hand, that's assuming the GM actually did flesh out the dispute. If the entirety of the info available to the players is "the trade deal is contentious and unresolved", and they can't get anything more substantive, then "I roll to resolve it" is about as detailed as that merits.

Exactly my point. Consider this scenario.

The party has arrived in Immareth, the dwarven stronghold in the mountains. Trade disputes threaten to disrupt food and goods to the PC's homeland. Immareth is a big part of that and acts as a choke point for both goods as well as invading armies. The PCs are unknown and don't exactly have a proper backing, but are hoping to make some kind of impact.

In this situation the previous "I want an I win button" comment would apply because it's quite integral to the story. BUT:

The PCs opt to prove themselves by settling numerous disputes within the stronghold without the use of violence as much as possible. Now, making a ton of peripheral non-combat encounters requires both massive writing by the gm, and possibly get into an area where a couple players can't figure out how to proceed.

None of these incidents will be integral to the overall plot, and the trade dispute itself may be a small event meant to direct the PCs to this general vicinity. If resolving the dispute is major, roleplaying everything out might be good. But if it's not, it simply vecomes a massive sidetrack.

So for both rwasons (characters not knowing how to proceed and ease of moving things along) I favor "Ok, you go to gather information. Make a roll.*result* You find a merchant suffering from a clause in the contract. You approach him and ask for his testimony. Diplomacy roll..."

Finally, after a few more such encounters: "You must use the following skills to resolve the trade dispute in a manner beneficial to all parties you have approached, plus your own country/faction/guild etc. First, linguistics to properly phrase the new treaty. Second, decipher script to notice any traps someone may or may not have placed into the treaty. Third, a profession: merchant roll to get the desired outcome, 4th a profession lawyer and a knowledge nobility to ensure it is enforcable on commoners and nobles alike and finally a diplomacy check to get everyone involved to sign."

Some GMs aren't skilled enough to pull such off, and some players feel requiring skills they don't personally have or control is unfair. But putting it all down to skill rolls is perfectly fine imo.

[RandomPeasant]

Especially since how you resolve the situation is the thing with a huge range of possible consequences, and is the thing that will set the difficulty of the check. Resolve it by bribing people? By reasoned discussion with evidence? By insulting people? By ganging XYZ against W? It's like asking to resolve a small campaign arc with "I roll the skill and be done with it."

Not really. It's proposing a different level of abstraction. You certainly could have a level of abstraction where there was a meaningful difference between "we bribe their negotiators into accepting unfair terms by exploiting the Principle/Agent Problem" and "we propose a deal that's equitable on paper but benefits us in the long run due to comparative advantage" and "we use our superior military force to make them capitulate". But you could also have a level of abstraction where the deal is simply "good for you" or "bad for you", and if you roll well enough on a social check, you get a "good for you" deal and if you roll poorly you get a "bad for you" deal.

One of the things that makes social systems so hard is that people tend to demand that they be much more detailed than the rest of the system. No one objects to the idea that "translate the language of the lost Thran civilization" or "bypass the traps in the ancient king's tomb" or "determine the holes in the ward scheme protecting the wizard's tower" could be resolved by a single die role, even though any of those could be things that take days, weeks, or months of skilled, detail-intensive labor in-setting. But if you propose the same thing for "convince two sides of a dispute to get along", people (tend to) lose their minds. In many cases, it would be okay if Social was just a skill you rolled like Disable Device or Arcana.


"I just want to roll and get it over with" fundamentally denies agency and railroads things, because the vision the DM has will have differences from what the player intended. Inevitably. At least unless such things are discussed openly. Which is what's being asked for here.

I disagree. "I just want to get it over with" is an expression of agency. Specifically, you are using your agency to ask for a game that involves less of this sort of encounter and more of other sorts of encounters. I mean, consider the opposite for a second: if you solve every challenge the DM puts in front of you with the tools he expects you to use, that seems like a pretty clear lack of agency to me.


But fictionally, "resolve the negotiation" is undefined unless you have at least some statement of what do you want and how you're going to get it.

That's just a question of level of abstraction. You don't know what you want to find when you declare that you are going to take the "research the BBEG" action, or the path you are going to follow when you take the "navigate the Black Forest" action. That doesn't mean you can't take those actions.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Not really. It's proposing a different level of abstraction. You certainly could have a level of abstraction where there was a meaningful difference between "we bribe their negotiators into accepting unfair terms by exploiting the Principle/Agent Problem" and "we propose a deal that's equitable on paper but benefits us in the long run due to comparative advantage" and "we use our superior military force to make them capitulate". But you could also have a level of abstraction where the deal is simply "good for you" or "bad for you", and if you roll well enough on a social check, you get a "good for you" deal and if you roll poorly you get a "bad for you" deal.

One of the things that makes social systems so hard is that people tend to demand that they be much more detailed than the rest of the system. No one objects to the idea that "translate the language of the lost Thran civilization" or "bypass the traps in the ancient king's tomb" or "determine the holes in the ward scheme protecting the wizard's tower" could be resolved by a single die role, even though any of those could be things that take days, weeks, or months of skilled, detail-intensive labor in-setting. But if you propose the same thing for "convince two sides of a dispute to get along", people (tend to) lose their minds. In many cases, it would be okay if Social was just a skill you rolled like Disable Device or Arcana.

I disagree. "I just want to get it over with" is an expression of agency. Specifically, you are using your agency to ask for a game that involves less of this sort of encounter and more of other sorts of encounters. I mean, consider the opposite for a second: if you solve every challenge the DM puts in front of you with the tools he expects you to use, that seems like a pretty clear lack of agency to me.

That's just a question of level of abstraction. You don't know what you want to find when you declare that you are going to take the "research the BBEG" action, or the path you are going to follow when you take the "navigate the Black Forest" action. That doesn't mean you can't take those actions.

At that point, why not just "I roll to win the game?" It's just another level of abstraction.

There's a natural abstraction level for every type of action. Some of which comes from the system--some systems are much more abstracted than others. Some focus more on situation resolution, where others focus on task resolution. In a task/action-resolution system, "I solve the dispute" isn't a valid (single) action, any more than "I slay the (uninjured) enemy". It presumes the conclusion. The issue is at what point does the DM have enough information to decide how to resolve the requested action/situation/task? That requires knowing

* What the desired outcome is
* What the (high level) approach is
* What are the complicating factors
* What are the consequences for both success and failure (or shades of these).

For most of the tasks you mention, most of those pieces are either
* obvious (you want to translate this document, you don't want the traps to go off)
* or way too abtruse/difficult to translate into player terms (any of the magical details as to approach, which require a level of detail far exceeding what any sane system will go into), and so they're part of the "random factors" of the resolution part

In either case, they don't need to be mentioned explicitly. Social things are different. Why? Mainly because the number of different ways things could play out strongly depends on the first two factors. Because people (think they) understand people, everyone knows that some approaches work better than others for different people. And some approaches have different costs. Seducing one side into being cooperative requires time and effort spent at that, while bribery costs gold. Threatening can backfire badly, while persuasion is nice...when it works. Some people don't listen to reason. Because we (generally) intuitively get that, we demand more fidelity than just "lol random".

And even then, I don't generally let players say "I disable the trap"--I generally don't design traps that that's even an option for. Because I find those to be an utter waste of everyone's time. Traps that they can jump over (if they detect it), but that then pose an issue later? Traps that they can wedge things in? Traps that they can trigger, then run through quickly before they reset? These have potential to be interesting. Traps that are just "did you detect it? Great. Roll Dexterity (Thieves Tools) and it goes away. Otherwise, take damage" are pointless.

And as to "give me less of this kind of encounter"...if you don't want social negotiations, why in the world did you make a character whose backstory is that they're an expert negotiator? Character builds are one of the main ways players talk to the DM about what they want. Building a social manipulator says "I want to engage at the social level." So then saying "well, really I just want to win all social events because I have a +99-bazillion to my check" seems rather deceptive to me.

And I don't care how they solve it, but in order to do anything, I need to know those factors. Because those set
* what do you roll
* how difficult is it
* what happens when you succeed or fail. IE the definition of success.

Without that information, I literally cannot decide how the request should be resolved. Neither the difficulty, the stakes, nor even what attribute/dice pool/whatever is involved are known. It's like asking "I want to know what the thing is" when "the thing" is completely undetermined. And then refusing to clarify. "What thing?" "I don't know, don't care, but my character knows things." "??????"

----------------
As I said before, I'd be totally willing to accept "I show them the evidence we gathered and explain how this deal is in all of our best interests" as an explanation for "how". Assuming they really have gathered the information (one way or another) And "I want everyone to agree to a fair deal that helps everyone" for "what". Or "I lock them in a room and bar the doors until they work out a deal." Or "I want <side X> to get the better of the deal." Anything that gives enough information to know how to resolve the check. Otherwise, they'll get what I think is the best approach and outcome. Which (usually is) very different from what they want. Or their character wants. And is pure and total railroading--their actions have no more meaning than the conversation choices in FFXIV[1].

[1] Which are heavily lampshaded in the conversation options themselves as not meaning anything--no matter what you pick, the conversation goes on as before (except in a very few specific instances, which are even called out as different in the UI).

[Frogreaver]

Not really. It's proposing a different level of abstraction. You certainly could have a level of abstraction where there was a meaningful difference between "we bribe their negotiators into accepting unfair terms by exploiting the Principle/Agent Problem" and "we propose a deal that's equitable on paper but benefits us in the long run due to comparative advantage" and "we use our superior military force to make them capitulate". But you could also have a level of abstraction where the deal is simply "good for you" or "bad for you", and if you roll well enough on a social check, you get a "good for you" deal and if you roll poorly you get a "bad for you" deal.

It's certainly a different level of abstraction. The more interesting question is whether it's an abjucatable abstraction. How does one determine what skill bonus and dc is required. How does one determine what success/failure looks like on the fly. I would say the can't answer any of those questions with the detail given. As such, this is a non-abjuctable abstraction.


One of the things that makes social systems so hard is that people tend to demand that they be much more detailed than the rest of the system. No one objects to the idea that "translate the language of the lost Thran civilization" or "bypass the traps in the ancient king's tomb" or "determine the holes in the ward scheme protecting the wizard's tower" could be resolved by a single die role, even though any of those could be things that take days, weeks, or months of skilled, detail-intensive labor in-setting. But if you propose the same thing for "convince two sides of a dispute to get along", people (tend to) lose their minds. In many cases, it would be okay if Social was just a skill you rolled like Disable Device or Arcana.

Let's look at your translation example. Is that abjuctable? Yes. Howso? There's 4 characteristics that must be met for something to be abjucatable.
1. The DC of the task given the players available translation resources.
2. What skill and stat makes sense for that task. Int - Investigation perhaps.
3. What success looks like. The language is translated.
4. What failure looks like. Unable to translate without additional resources (linguistic experts/more manuscripts/etc)


That's just a question of level of abstraction. You don't know what you want to find when you declare that you are going to take the "research the BBEG" action, or the path you are going to follow when you take the "navigate the Black Forest" action. That doesn't mean you can't take those actions.

Hopefully, the discussion on abjucatable abstractions helps.

[Duiker]

Social mechanics have always been the bugaboo of RPGs. Not least of which because vaguely half of gamers dislike the idea of talking and convincing others to being a dice-able challenge (or at least mechanistic except in broad strokes), while the other half donÂ’t agree on what system they want. I know there are one or two systems out there with social mechanics that people tend to deem relatively decent, but they are certainly the rarity.

Eh, that's the common belief, but I'd contend it's untrue. Social mechanics are generally unwanted except by a fairly small minority, and so those few have to struggle to get any system and are thus unsatisfied by what little they do get. Combat systems face mind-boggling amounts of variation, but no one ever complains that half of gamers can't agree on what they want. The problem is simply that most gamers don't really want a social mechanic, whether that's because dice-ability is squicky or because they're not interested in that dimension of play.

Calthropstu's example was of a "suave merchant and diplomat", and they expected such a person to be able to just waltz up and fix something. Yet no one says they have a "strong explorer and veteran" who just one-rolls a full dungeon away. Why not? Because everyone at the table wants to play the dungeon, but no one is expecting the deal renegotation to be fun or interesting. Calthropstu was barely able to even acknowledge that it might be a major plot point.

Like, you want a negotiation between a half-dozen factions? That's not actually hard to systematize: every faction has 3 points. They can put forward a number of demands, and assign each demand any of their available points. Basic point-buy system. Every faction has some N points of clout, based on how much the DM estimates their leverage on the negotiation. During the negotiation, every faction gets a turn to make a demand. Debate begins, and every faction decides if they agree or disagree. If they disagree, then they roll to strike the demand. DC determined by how many points the demand is worth. Every faction has the option here of spending as much of their clout as they want to boost their roll. If you want some kind of Duel of Wits system, you can stick it here. If a demand is in some way at cross-purposes with an already-agreed-upon demand, then any surplus from the previous debate gets thrown in as a bonus on disagreement. Debate ends when every demand has been put forward, and the end result of the negotiation is established.

That took me around 15 minutes to think up and write out. It's an incompetent bit of game design, and I'm sure someone with actual experience could do better, but the point is that it's easy to come up with a system. A DM usually has at least a week, during which they can do some research for ideas.

If social mechanics are something people actually want to play with, then they'll spend some time researching how they're done. Use Exalted's Intimacies to deliberately provide levers for other characters to mess with your character's beliefs. Use Chronicles of Darkness' Social Maneuvering to force someone into a position where they'll do what you want, even against their will. Use Cortex Prime's Relationships mod to make your dice rolls dependent on the significance of that relationship. Use Duel of Wits if you want a crunchy poker minigame to model the debate. Use FATE/HotB's invoke/compel tags to turn character traits into liabilities. Use L5R's Shuji if you want to have a bunch of social feats. Use The One Ring's Hope/Shadow to link morale with corruption. Use D&D's Intimidate or Persuasion skills if you just want a one-and-done success/failure so that you can just move on.

The social mechanics that exist out there are fine, if they're wanted. If you wanted to port them into D&D, it could almost certainly be done, though it may cost a lot of extra bookkeeping in some cases, and it depends a lot on what the table actually wants out of it.

A fairly simple system? Build a table of about two dozen generic "hooks", ways in which a character can be manipulated. When creating a character, pick three and flesh it out, so "Mercenary" becomes "can't turn down hard cash" or "always has a price". Then the players know they can suss out NPCs' hooks and the DM can make a call (or hide a roll) about whether or not an NPC can figure out a PC's. Is this Burning Wheel beliefs? CofD virtue/vice/aspiration? Exalted intimacies? Cortex distinctions? Pendragon passions? Whatever; don't care. Is it exploitable? Of course; it's a game system. Is it as mature as D&D5e? Of course not. But is it playable? Yes.

Point is. No. It's not hard to do social mechanics. It's hard to have a system that handles every possible nuance in every possible social situation, yes. But it's easy to identify which situations and nuances are interesting to the table and build a system around that. Test it live and see how it doesn't work and tweak it to fix that, same as you do with any other system. If you, and your table, want to.

That's the basic unit of progress for maturing a system.

[Mastikator]

I think the sneaky pirate with an SMG is a weird case of “pretending to be realistic, but actually not really realistic at all, producing the worst possible outcome”. You get that a lot when you try to mix dramatic tropes with one or two realistic elements.

Yep, being shot in the back of the head will kill you (or close enough). Sure, but somehow sneaky mcpirate manages to match speeds with a moving ship from his own smallcraft, board the ship “stealthy” even though every eye is going to be on his potential point of insertion, somehow identify from the back of a dude fifteen yards away “oh, that must be the one extra-badass they warned us about”, and then despite being at best a semi-trained sorta guy, controls the automatic fire of an entire magazine to hit with every round? And we’re pretending that body armor would have somehow lead to a different outcome despite the fact that you’d have massive blunt trauma through the plates/soft layer and that places like legs and arms would also be really bad considering we’re saying the dude was struck by 10-30 bullets?

The only “realistic” part of that is bullets are not good for your health. The rest is just the GM playing a usual fantasy game with a big screw you at the end. He didn’t play a “realistic” game at all, he just seized on an opportunity to put the boot in by only calling on reality when it suited him.

This is a weird and unfounded accusation. The pirates arrived on a submarine, they only became visible the moment they boarded. They used a drone to deliver the demand of "surrender or die". The drone rolled high on stealth, all the players rolled poorly (and only one of them even put any points at all into stealth).
Then the player responded with an intimidation roll (which the pirates interpret as a "no", and no it wasn't good enough to scare away the entire ship). Moments pass and again I tell the players to roll to detect stealth and again none of them beat the stealth (the player with stealth rolled poorly again). The one pirate that had managed to sneak on board the ship undetected opens fire on the big PC that responded with "no". And rolls really well (all dice rolls I rolled openly). The rules for all of this had been written down in detail before the game started and was given to the players in whole.
After the combat I asked the players for feedback and a different player (not the one who was fired upon) said it "might be too realistic", those are his exact words.

And again, I went over this with the player while he was making the character, I asked him about armor and he explicitly said no, I told him the many things you can use intimidation for and what the results are based on the dice. It would've required DM fiat or dice fudging to go down any other way.

And like I've said many times already, I and the other players consider this first session to be a major success. They were all happy and excited, the game goes on. We're playing this weekend. The bounty hunter player is always asking when we're playing next. The player who said it was more realistic said last week that the more he plays it the more he likes it, the mechanic player wants to build drones, they all have big plans for their character. I am excited. This is not a failure story.

[icefractal]

One of the things that makes social systems so hard is that people tend to demand that they be much more detailed than the rest of the system. No one objects to the idea that "translate the language of the lost Thran civilization" or "bypass the traps in the ancient king's tomb" or "determine the holes in the ward scheme protecting the wizard's tower" could be resolved by a single die role, even though any of those could be things that take days, weeks, or months of skilled, detail-intensive labor in-setting. But if you propose the same thing for "convince two sides of a dispute to get along", people (tend to) lose their minds. In many cases, it would be okay if Social was just a skill you rolled like Disable Device or Arcana.
More detailed than some skills? Yes.
More detailed than combat? Very no.

Let's take a look at three situations in D&D:
1) Deciphering the ancient manuscript to prove your claim to the local throne. Usually just a roll.
2) Using social maneuvering to replace the local ruler. For example, by convincing the local nobles that they should support your claim, and giving speeches to the public to stir up demand. Multiple rolls, and with methods/objectives for each.
3) Defeating the current ruler's soldiers and personal guard in battle, and seizing the throne by force. Probably hundreds of rolls, all said, plus tactics, maps, resources, etc. If played out by the normal rules, this would take the most play-time of the three and involve by far the most detailed and granular results.

Even in lighter systems, combat tends to have the most rules and the most detail, and there are relatively few where you could say something like "I'm going to go clear the demons out of that ruined fortress (rolling) ... that's a 17 for Combat, so they're gone, right?"

Social tends to be around the middle of the detail curve. Maybe too detailed for people who'd rather skip to the results, but OTOH maybe not detailed enough for those who want it to be the meat of the session. Abstracting it isn't unreasonable, but neither is playing it as detailed and reliant on player skill as combat is in 3.x, or anywhere in between - it's just a matter of preference.

For that matter, in D&D you can't "bypass the traps in the ancient king's tomb" with a single roll either, although in some systems you could.

[RandomPeasant]

There's a natural abstraction level for every type of action.

What's the "natural abstraction level" for combat, and why is it completely different in D&D and Munchausen?


* or way too abtruse/difficult to translate into player terms (any of the magical details as to approach, which require a level of detail far exceeding what any sane system will go into), and so they're part of the "random factors" of the resolution part

That seems like it would apply fairly exactly to "I win the negotiation" as an action declaration. I will grant you that you might not want the game to work that way (I wouldn't particularly either), but it is not a a priori unreasonable way for a game to work just because you personally don't like it, or think that it is dumb.


Because people (think they) understand people, everyone knows that some approaches work better than others for different people.

People think they understand fighting too, yet there are games that abstract combat to an extremely high degree. It's not wrong to say that there are people for whom an extremely abstract social system would not work. But there are manifestly also people for whom it would.


It's certainly a different level of abstraction. The more interesting question is whether it's an abjucatable abstraction. How does one determine what skill bonus and dc is required. How does one determine what success/failure looks like on the fly. I would say the can't answer any of those questions with the detail given. As such, this is a non-abjuctable abstraction.

Whether it's abjucatable depends on the DM, not the abstraction. Certainly, if you wrote the negotiation as an open-ended process, it's not something you can just "win". But if it's a negotiation "over X", where X is some outcome the PCs want, it's pretty clear what "winning" it would mean. And I think there's not really much difference between "I win the negotiation" and "I get them to do X" in terms of action declarations -- either one is trying to reduce things to the same level of abstraction.


More detailed than some skills? Yes.
More detailed than combat? Very no.

Let's take a look at three situations in D&D:
1) Deciphering the ancient manuscript to prove your claim to the local throne. Usually just a roll.
2) Using social maneuvering to replace the local ruler. For example, by convincing the local nobles that they should support your claim, and giving speeches to the public to stir up demand. Multiple rolls, and with methods/objectives for each.
3) Defeating the current ruler's soldiers and personal guard in battle, and seizing the throne by force. Probably hundreds of rolls, all said, plus tactics, maps, resources, etc. If played out by the normal rules, this would take the most play-time of the three and involve by far the most detailed and granular results.

Even in lighter systems, combat tends to have the most rules and the most detail, and there are relatively few where you could say something like "I'm going to go clear the demons out of that ruined fortress (rolling) ... that's a 17 for Combat, so they're gone, right?"

Social tends to be around the middle of the detail curve. Maybe too detailed for people who'd rather skip to the results, but OTOH maybe not detailed enough for those who want it to be the meat of the session. Abstracting it isn't unreasonable, but neither is playing it as detailed and reliant on player skill as combat is in 3.x, or anywhere in between - it's just a matter of preference.

For that matter, in D&D you can't "bypass the traps in the ancient king's tomb" with a single roll either, although in some systems you could.

I think I basically agree with you? My point is not so much that you couldn't have a more detailed system (you could, and I would say you probably should, though the real issue is that the existing social system is bad, not so much that it isn't detailed enough) as that you pretty obviously could have a system where "social" was just a one-roll thing you used to solve social situations.

[Willie the Duck]

Eh, that's the common belief, but I'd contend it's untrue. Social mechanics are generally unwanted except by a fairly small minority, and so those few have to struggle to get any system and are thus unsatisfied by what little they do get. Combat systems face mind-boggling amounts of variation, but no one ever complains that half of gamers can't agree on what they want. The problem is simply that most gamers don't really want a social mechanic, whether that's because dice-ability is squicky or because they're not interested in that dimension of play.


So, in other words, my first point?

[kyoryu]

For me, adjudicating any action requires a few things:

1) A goal. What you're trying to accomplish
2) A task. How you attempt to do this.
3) An understanding of the possible consequences, what can happen if it goes wrong, or what you might have to give up.

Note that "the mechanics used" isn't a thing listed.

In most combat systems, this is inherent in the system, and so doesn't need to be thought about (though I'd argue that in most cases, combat is better if you do think about these things on the combat level, particularly stakes).

In some physical cases, these can appear to be obvious, too, but I still think there's good thought to be had in terms of what happens (especially on failure cases). Sure, climbing a wall can result in falling, but it can result in lots of other things too.

So for social skills, "I social them" isn't really working for me. Like, i don't know what's happening to any degree of fidelity.

You don't have to give the speeches, but you do have to tell me the general tack you're taking to get what you want and why they should go along with you. I see this as being roughly on the same level as combat in most systems - yes, you have to figure out where you are and take flanking into account, but no you don't have to be able to swordfight yourself.

[Satinavian]

I have played enough games with roughly as much social rules as combat rules. Even ones more on the crunchy side of things. I is still the minority, but not super uncommon either.


But making good social rules is hard.

As with anything you want rules for you need to get a sense of possible outcomes, then rules for people to get the one they want. But where combat has a pretty limited set of possible outcomes (though more than 2), classifying possible outcomes for all social situation is considerably harder.

The next thing is motivation. An important part of social interaction is, that motivations are basically hidden. It is part of the process to reveal them (or not). People do lie, people don't trust, in negotiations people don't want to reveal their maximum price etc. Accounting for that in rules is far from easy, especially if you want to keep options that true motivations are never revealed.

The third thing is sides. Most system have some way of opposing rolls, maybe even some way of collaboration, but many social situations have people don't really work against each other or be allies. You often have actors with some common, some opposing interest, trying to find common ground and a personal benefit. Taking the same resolution mechanisms often is quite jarring.. It is for example easy for most systems to cover telling a lie. Opposed roll, liar vs lied to, better one wind. But telling the truth ? You can't properly do that with an opposed roll. The competence of both should make it easier, not harder.



So i haven't found a good social rule system that does not leave a lot of place to modify it for fitting to situation at hand.

[KineticDiplomat]

Re: ninja pirate. I think this is largely proving the point:

Pirates own a submarine beyond “drug hull sub”: Unrealistic.

Anything short of a large sub of the government variety having the speed to catch a freighter: unrealistic.

Said sub controlling a drone without being at antenna depth or possibly surfaced, with relevant effects on detection: unrealistic.

Sub not getting its pressure hull crushed on impact for “boarding” given the speeds involved: unrealistic

Option 2, swimming given the speeds involved (and not getting a back broken by the propulsion effect in the water): unrealistic

Climbing 20+ meters of wet steel siding to board with no one noticing if you used an assist: unrealistic

Option 2, somehow breaching at waterline without tipping a sensor in a eight figure ship: unrealistic

The one boarding pirate just happens to run into the big guy given a limited number of container rows and hallways, let alone hunts him fown: odds are pretty low.

Knowing that “that big guy over there must be the guy who said scary things on the feed we were somehow receiving” from the rear: maybe possible, but probably unrealistic.

Controlling an entire magazine of automatic fire so it all hits: technically possible, but really extraordinarily hard.

An entire magazine in the back kills you: REALISTIC

Pretending some body armor would have change that: unrealistic

———

From what I can see, the NPCs got to run amok with fantasy rule of cool, and reality was only invoked to kill a PC (with a bonus slap in the face of “well armor, duh” which would not have realistically changed the outcome)

[Mastikator]

I have no idea where you're getting these facts from, half of it incorrect. This is a science fiction setting not on Earth, the players started on the base of a space elevator. One of the players has a jetpack, two of them have power armor. Three of the PCs are aliens. All of that is unrealistic, but it's all extrapolated from real science.

{{scrubbed}}

[Leonard Robel]

Yeah, it's the reason I prefer ancient or futuristic fantasy, to avoid the gruesome realities of today. If something feels too dark, I usually just stretch elements away from reality until it feels OK, for instance maybe make the villain a monster instead of human, that makes it a lot more palatable.

[Sharur]

It involved something that could infinitely scale, wasn't difficult to mass produce, involved mostly easily obtainable resources and enabled small groups to take down much larger groups.

It couldn't "destroy the world." But it would threaten the security of every nation and every city everywhere. Which is almost the same thing.

So...guns? Bombs? A respiratory-system infecting virus that can hope from a bat to humans? Monetary Inflation and Stock Options?

[Calthropstu]

So...guns? Bombs? A respiratory-system infecting virus that can hope from a bat to humans? Monetary Inflation and Stock Options?

...
"I scared myself by creating something terrible that could possibly threaten world wide security while creating a villian. It scared me enough that I changed it to something else."

"Oh cool, post the method to an open internet forum that anyone can read. Sure, you might be dooming the world to massive bloodshed, get banned from the forum and probably arrested but I WANNA KNOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW"

I think that about sums up your post right?

[Segev]

...
"I scared myself by creating something terrible that could possibly threaten world wide security while creating a villian. It scared me enough that I changed it to something else."

"Oh cool, post the method to an open internet forum that anyone can read. Sure, you might be dooming the world to massive bloodshed, get banned from the forum and probably arrested but I WANNA KNOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW"

I think that about sums up your post right?

Clearly, this just means you're destined for supervillainy. :smallwink:

[Calthropstu]

Clearly, this just means you're destined for supervillainy. :smallwink:

Well, I DID once come up with an evil plan where our shadowrun group drove a sewage truck into a police blockade, blew the truck's load and then took down a telephone pole.

[Frogreaver]

...
"I scared myself by creating something terrible that could possibly threaten world wide security while creating a villian. It scared me enough that I changed it to something else."

"Oh cool, post the method to an open internet forum that anyone can read. Sure, you might be dooming the world to massive bloodshed, get banned from the forum and probably arrested but I WANNA KNOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW"

I think that about sums up your post right?

If you ask me, I think it should be against forum rules to post: "I've come up with this thing that I can't post any details about without breaking forum rules." But no one asked me :cool:

[Calthropstu]

If you ask me, I think it should be against forum rules to post: "I've come up with this thing that I can't post any details about without breaking forum rules." But no one asked me :cool:

Not exactly what I wrote. And not the purpose of this thread either. Yes, I made something in my game. Posting (thing) would violate forum rules, but this thread is not about (thing), it's about to what extent do we, as players and gms, have to not to not put stuff such as (thing) into our games.

[OldTrees1]

Not exactly what I wrote. And not the purpose of this thread either. Yes, I made something in my game. Posting (thing) would violate forum rules, but this thread is not about (thing), it's about to what extent do we, as players and gms, have to not to not put stuff such as (thing) into our games.

Are you uncomfortable putting (thing) into your game?
Would one of the players be uncomfortable encountering (thing) in the game?
Is (thing) an information hazard? Does the information hazard outweigh the benefit to the game?


There are many sufficient reasons to not put (thing) into a game.

[Kardwill]

I've sometimes seen "you succeeded too well and now it's a bad thing!" a few times, and I always found it pretty ridiculous. Being skilled at something means knowing the appropriate way to use it.

Yeah, that can be funny in a "let's make fun of Bob's character" way, but it's usually deeply unsatisfying and frustrating. Especially for Bob.
The age old classic :
"OK, I'll bash the helmet of the guard with my walking stick to stun him, so that we can flee the scene without a combat.
- Roll for Bash People
- No problem, I'm a pretty good martial artist with that walking stick. Critical success!
- so max damage X2, ignoring the armor. How much damage for your walking stick?
- Err, 1D6? But I just wanted to subdue him, and...
- So 12 damage. His brains splatter everywhere in the alley. You're a murdrerer, now.
- But..."

Things going horribly wrong (killing someone I wanted to subdue, blowing up the entire neighbourhood with my magic, getting shot by the people I was trying to bluff) should happen when I fail my roll, not when I critically succeed. :smallannoyed:

[Satinavian]

Yeah, that can be funny in a "let's make fun of Bob's character" way, but it's usually deeply unsatisfying and frustrating. Especially for Bob.
The age old classic :
"OK, I'll bash the helmet of the guard with my walking stick to stun him, so that we can flee the scene without a combat.
- Roll for Bash People
- No problem, I'm a pretty good martial artist with that walking stick. Critical success!
- so max damage X2, ignoring the armor. How much damage for your walking stick?
- Err, 1D6? But I just wanted to subdue him, and...
- So 12 damage. His brains splatter everywhere in the alley. You're a murdrerer, now.
- But..."

Things going horribly wrong (killing someone I wanted to subdue, blowing up the entire neighbourhood with my magic, getting shot by the people I was trying to bluff) should happen when I fail my roll, not when I critically succeed. :smallannoyed:
I strongly disagree with this example.

Trying to hurt someone enough to hinder them in a desired way but not too much to avoid real damage is hard and mistakes happen. In many systems there are special maneuvers for that one has to learn and which have other drawbacks. If one is forced to use a regular weapon, both doing too little and too much damage are real risks and using the regular combat system and its damage range for that is quite fine. When people attack they know the minimum and maximum damage they can inflict and usually are able to tweak that number by maneuvers or using the right weapon. That is decsision about risks and consequences and fine.

Crits in combat are not meant to simulate superior skill. They are meant to make combat less predictable and more risky.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, that can be funny in a "let's make fun of Bob's character" way, but it's usually deeply unsatisfying and frustrating. Especially for Bob.
The age old classic :
"OK, I'll bash the helmet of the guard with my walking stick to stun him, so that we can flee the scene without a combat.
- Roll for Bash People
- No problem, I'm a pretty good martial artist with that walking stick. Critical success!
- so max damage X2, ignoring the armor. How much damage for your walking stick?
- Err, 1D6? But I just wanted to subdue him, and...
- So 12 damage. His brains splatter everywhere in the alley. You're a murdrerer, now.
- But..."

Things going horribly wrong (killing someone I wanted to subdue, blowing up the entire neighbourhood with my magic, getting shot by the people I was trying to bluff) should happen when I fail my roll, not when I critically succeed. :smallannoyed:

Related to this: Star Wars D6 (2e R&E) had a rule that let you mitigate such successes... a character who causes enough damage to kill an opponent has the option of causing a serious, permanent injury instead. In addition, the target is set at a certain wound level.

[False God]

I've dialed back bad guys who got too "intense", that is this actions would likely push my players buttons(more commonly referred to as trigger) in a way that would be inappropriate for a friendly table game.

But I've never really been worried about people actually trying anything I put forward in game. First off: that's on them. Secondly: I like modern-set games, so the feeling of "This could be done IRL." is sort of necessary. At least up until the thugs transform into werewolves and the driver teleports the car over a broken bridge.

[Silly Name]

I play mostly fantasy or sci-fi games, so the likelihood of something happening in my games also being feasible in real life is pretty low, since it usually hinges on magic or some setting assumption that we just accept but shouldn't be possible.

That said, I've had to call a time-out a couple of times because my villains were getting a bit too intense. Which is funny because I'm the GM so I was the one actively creeping me out by playing too convincing of a bad guy, then processing what I just said/described and felt bad about myself. There are also some things I sometimes come across in a rule book that make me think "ugh, no" and make me take a break (anything explicitly involving children dying for some reason makes me terribly uncomfortable, for example).

[kyoryu]

I strongly disagree with this example.

Trying to hurt someone enough to hinder them in a desired way but not too much to avoid real damage is hard and mistakes happen.

Sure, but a critical success is not "making a mistake".

In this case, that's more appropriate for a critical failure.

[Mastikator]

Sure, but a critical success is not "making a mistake".

In this case, that's more appropriate for a critical failure.

In the scenario Bob implied he wanted to do non-lethal damage and stun the guard. In D&D 5e there are rules for that.

But I don't think we should conflate the mistake of *choosing to bash the guy on the head with the success of rolling really high. The GM should respect the players choices and their roll, in this case by making the damage big enough to make the guard unconscious but non-lethal enough to leave no lasting damage.


*Whether or not bashing a guys head with a stick is a mistake is a matter of opinion. Even if you succeed in the way that you wanted that choice may still have been sub optimal.

[Kardwill]

Sure, but a critical success is not "making a mistake".

In this case, that's more appropriate for a critical failure.

Yeah. There are a few exceptions (like "Ulrik's Fury" in Warhammer), but critical success chances are usually tied to the character's skill, and indicate you succeeded exceptionally well. Translating that into "you succeeded too well and are now screwed" feels like antagonistic GMing.

I would be totally okay if the GM reminded me that in this game, head trauma is serious stuff and told me I'll do normal damage. Or if he reminded me about the subduing rules. Or if he warned me that a big enough failure would result in serious injury to the guy I'm striking. That's a way to ensure that the player and the GM have the same "reading" of the situation, and the same expectation of verisimilitude. And accidental murder would be an excellent interpretation of a critical failure in this situation if the game's mood is right for this kind of story.

But agreeing with my plan and then hitting me hard with the unintended consequences of a critical success? I found that kind of things funny when I was younger, but nowadays that would lead to a Serious Talk (tm) with the GM about game expectations and playing style.

[Vahnavoi]

Sure, but a critical success is not "making a mistake".

In this case, that's more appropriate for a critical failure.

A far more important thing to grok is that a critical hit isn't the same as a critical success, and in a realistic or even a highly detailed non-realist system, you often aren't rolling for success and failure.

Describing roll results as "success", "critical success", "failure" and "critical failure" is typically feature of a highly abstracted system, often of the sort where you have one general type of roll (f.ex. d20 + mods versus a target number) that can cover any otherwise undefined action and to make it easy to remember the results are always interpreted in one form (f.ex. high roll good, low roll bad).

But, in a detailed system, you aren't rolling for success or failure. You are rolling for something specific, like in the example, hitting and damage. There is and should not be any automatic assumption that high hit and high damage are "success" - they are what they are and what actually counts or doesn't count as success is decided by the player. For example, if non-lethal force is desired, the way to model that is to manipulate the damage roll to ensure it doesn't go too high to be lethal - abandoning the notion "high roll good, low roll bad" and choosing your means appropriately, by for example picking a weapon that does less damage.

[Satinavian]

Sure, but a critical success is not "making a mistake".

In this case, that's more appropriate for a critical failure.
The example was a critical hit, not a critical success. As Vahnavoi said, those are usually quite distinct if you are not playing some rules light system.

A agree that a critical success should not have bad outcomes as being more skillfull musually means more control. But depending on the system, for combat and critical hits it us usually the other way around, crit chance and extra damage on crit are meant to make weapons/maneuvers unreliable on top of more dangerous.

That a more skillfull person should be better at taking someone out nonlethally is done via verious maneuvers doing nonlethal damage or knockout maneuvers or grappling maneuvers or whatever the system has. Often those are more difficult or less effective or need to be learned as price for the additional control.


Miscommunication should be avoided anyway of course. But the last few times "accidently killing/endangering someone by overdoing it" became an issue, no player was surprised and all were always aware of the risks.

[Kardwill]

Interesting discussion. I guess it's one of the reasons I don't play or GM detailed simulation RPGs (or, as I like to call them, "prescriptive games") as much as I did a few years ago : For me, ensuring that the stakes and consequences match the player's intent takes precedence over the "simulated reality" part of the game.

[Satinavian]

Those concerns are completely orthogonal.

I would even say detailed simulated RPGs make it easier to have those expectations match when people know the rules and their possible results.

If i play SR (where the rules usually do allow such accidental killing) and players discuss "If we are just tossing in a gas grenade someone might be left standing and sound alarm, but if we use a grenade and then a sniper rifle with rubber bullets on anyone lelft standing that might be too much, better idea anyone ?" then everyone has the same expectations because the rules are detailed enough to say, what happens.

[Mastikator]

Interesting discussion. I guess it's one of the reasons I don't play or GM detailed simulation RPGs (or, as I like to call them, "prescriptive games") as much as I did a few years ago : For me, ensuring that the stakes and consequences match the player's intent takes precedence over the "simulated reality" part of the game.

It's just a matter of communication though. Either asking the player what they're trying to achieve or telling them what it would achieve would both ensure that consequences match player intent.

[Vahnavoi]

That leaves out a fairly common situation:

Where it is not known and isn't meant to be known if a particular player action will result in what they intent.

For example, any situation where a player is mixing unknown or poorly known ingredients to whatever end. In a detailed system, player intent is frequently secondary concern to the player actually knowing and naming the correct ingredients. Not knowing means trial and error and taking notes.

[Telok]

If i play SR (where the rules usually do allow such accidental killing) and players discuss "If we are just tossing in a gas grenade someone might be left standing and sound alarm, but if we use a grenade and then a sniper rifle with rubber bullets on anyone lelft standing that might be too much, better idea anyone ?" then everyone has the same expectations because the rules are detailed enough to say, what happens.

Oh yeah, SR was good. My character handed the phys-ad a shock glove (yes the face-driver-mage-skills guy was the only one with non-lethal weapons, non-combat skills, and non-arms dealer contacts) so we could snag a ganger to interrogate. The phys-ad player went to roll all the dice. Both I and the DM said it might be too many dice. A one-hit-kill from a non-lethal weapon later and we needed to find another ganger to interrogate.

Re: D&D combat. That system doesn't do critical successes. You would expect a more skilled character to produce better results when attempting a task, but D&D doesn't do "quality of result" rolls. It does succeed/fail with high skills producing more successes, not better quality work. And character skill has no effect on "critical success", because it's a 1/20 chance every time for everyone your incompetent noob with an old rusty frying pan has the same "critical success" rate as a master swordsman with magical skill enhancements.

[Corsair14]

Played a Twilight 2000 game years ago, 90s I think, where the party was silently crossing a river on a moonless night with heavy rucksacks and full armor and gear, I don't think we had vehicles available to us at the time. Lead guy fails a fairly simple roll and falls over into deeper water. Weight of his gear holds him down and each time someone else walked over him they rolled to see if they noticed him underfoot and he rolled a con-type save to see if air was knocked out of him. He ended up drowning in the mud. No one knew he was missing until they got to the other side and rallied up. Most realistic rules system ever.