Insight-Type Skills

[Catullus64]

I'm seeking a good way to articulate a feeling that's been growing in me across systems, and that's a strong dislike of skills/abilities that tell a player when an NPC is lying, or otherwise inform them about an NPC's mental or emotional state. In D&D 5e, it's called Insight. It used to be Sense Motive. Some non-D&D systems I've played have called it stuff like Scrutiny or Intuition. Whatever it is, I dislike its presence, and I especially dislike the expectations it creates in players.

I'm not one of those players/GMs who dislikes having any social interactions and roleplay be handled by a throw of the dice. Having players roll for things like Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation, etc. seldom bothers me. Those are more about success/failure of an attempted action, and you shouldn't have to be highly charismatic to play charismatic characters, just like nobody is required to deadlift to play strong people.

But I do think it's reasonable to make the same demands of everyone at the table with regards to paying attention to the situation and making decisions about what their character would think/feel about it. When players ask for Insight checks or their system equivalent, it feels like they're asking to have that responsibility waived. Even if they have enough tact not to directly call their own dice rolls, I can tell when they're fishing for one. They'll say something in the neighborhood of "Do I think he's lying?", usually with dice already in hand. For me, the GM who has spent a lot of time preparing the scenario for them to roleplay in, that stings. It might mean I've failed to engage them, and that's on me, but I do believe that the existence of such skills also conditions them not to trust an impression or belief that's not backed up with dice rolls. Either way, it's deflating, if not a little bit insulting.

In fairness to players who exhibit this kind of behavior, I don't think it's meant to antagonize or undercut. I can see it being a natural defensive response to antagonistic DMs who like to play 'gotcha' with double-crossing NPCs every alternate second. And a lot of games, as I've pointed out, have such a skill built in, making its use seem reasonable, especially if a character pays an opportunity cost to invest in such a skill. No doubt there are ways to have such a dice roll merely give more information rather than simply boiling down all the interesting drama, but that's usually not how it shakes out.

What are some peoples' experiences, good and bad, with this type of skill? Any systems that provide good cues about how to handle it? Any suggestions for helping players break the habit of expecting it?

[Jay R]

But I do think it's reasonable to make the same demands of everyone at the table with regards to paying attention to the situation and making decisions about what their character would think/feel about it. When players ask for Insight checks or their system equivalent, it feels like they're asking to have that responsibility waived.

Unless they do it every single time, It seems to me like the direct opposite. They have asked for a die roll specifically because they paid attention to the situation and mad a decision about what their character would think or feel about it.

[If they ask every time an NPC speaks, that's waiving the responsibility to decide -- but only by deciding to always consider it.]

I think a die roll is necessary whenever the PC would have knowledge that the player doesn't have. Since the PC saw the NPC's face and body language, and heard the tone of voice, and the player didn't, it seems justified a lot of the time.

But take my comments with a grain of salt. All of my players are very good about paying attention and drawing conclusions. I just don't have the problem that you are trying to solve.

[Vahnavoi]

There's a subtle different in formulation of the question which may explain why this particular skill rubs you the wrong way.

Insight-type skills are properly called information gathering; they're about deciding whether a character knows something. The correct way to invoke them is to ask, say, "do I know if this character is lying?".

Hence, when a player is (implicitly or explicitly) asking "do I think this character is lying?", they're subtly asking about the wrong thing. Whether a character is lying or not is (in theory) a settled fact of the world that the player (and the player's character) either knows about or not, what the player (and their character) thinks is a separate fact that is up to that player to decide.

Similarly, when a player is rolling for diplomacy, persuasion etc., what the (pseudo)random number generator models is uncertainty in the action itself. The question being asked is either "can I persuade (etc.) this character?" or "do I persuade this character?" and the roll is done because the answer is not a settled fact of the world, nor is it something that would be up to player to decide on their own.

These are distinctions you can explain to your players to weed out the faulty formulation and get them to ask about the right thing.

[Vorpal Glaive]

There are games that don't have Insight checks. Best advice is find and play those games.

[Satinavian]

What are some peoples' experiences, good and bad, with this type of skill? Any systems that provide good cues about how to handle it? Any suggestions for helping players break the habit of expecting it?I don't really share your issues with those abilities. They generally work fine.

How it is usually used :

roll is successfull :
- "He seems to be unsure"
- "She is hiding something"
- "He seems convinced of what he said"
- "She seems to be pretty angry"
- "He doesn't seem sincere"
- "She always gives party member X side glances but only ever adresses Y"
- "He obviously recognized the name you just used"
- "She seems to be irritated by the slightest breach of etiquette but seeks to hide it"

roll is not successfull :
- "You can't read the person"

If the system has fumble rules, that is where actually wrong imressions have their place.


Can it be used to detect truth/lies ? With successful rolls sure, especially if that is what the players want to know. But it doesn't really prescribe to the players what their characters think. Instead it provides additional contextual information about the stuff beyond the spoken word. What the players do with that is their decision. Even if someone is caught lying that doesn't actually reveal the truth.


Also while the skill can be invoked by a player in the way of particularly paying attention to the body language of someone at a certain occasion, it is usually invoked by the GM who believes the players might notice something specifically about their counterpart or not.

[King of Nowhere]

I'm not one of those players/GMs who dislikes having any social interactions and roleplay be handled by a throw of the dice. Having players roll for things like Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation, etc. seldom bothers me. Those are more about success/failure of an attempted action, and you shouldn't have to be highly charismatic to play charismatic characters, just like nobody is required to deadlift to play strong people.

But I do think it's reasonable to make the same demands of everyone at the table with regards to paying attention to the situation and making decisions about what their character would think/feel about it. When players ask for Insight checks or their system equivalent, it feels like they're asking to have that responsibility waived. Even if they have enough tact not to directly call their own dice rolls, I can tell when they're fishing for one. They'll say something in the neighborhood of "Do I think he's lying?", usually with dice already in hand. For me, the GM who has spent a lot of time preparing the scenario for them to roleplay in, that stings.

So, you agree that one should not have to be charismatic to play a charismatic character... but you want them to be good at reading people to play a character that's good at reading people?

Also, are you such a good actor that your players can tell when an npc lies just by how you act them?

I find your approach very biased. Just like " i roll persuasion" does not have to substitute all social interaction - and should not "waive responsibility" for coming up with good arguments - so the same applies to sense motive.
And, as others pointed out, reading body language clues is absolutely something reasonable for characters to do.
And yes, sometimes sense motive may prevent a betrayal, just like sometimes spot may prevent an ambush. By your same logic, a spot check to detect ambushes is a way to avoid paying attention to the description of the environment

[Vahnavoi]

Now, as for I handle information gathering, I involve minimum of random chance in it. There are no die rolls made by players when figuring out if someone's lying or what their motives - there might be die rolls made by a game master when the game master is procedurally generating new characters, but that's a relevantly different thing. (Once again: figuring out if someone knows a decised fact versus actually deciding new facts.)

Instead, investigation into such matters works by principle of Twenty Questions: the players have limited amount of questions they can ask and get a truthful answer to. If they ask the right questions, they can logically deduce what their exact situation is. If I want to make the deduction harder or easier for a particular character, that's done by giving the player less or more upfront information, which consequently makes the task harder or easier for the player.

The reason I do this is because deduction games are more interesting than dice games. So I don't turn into a dice game aspects of roleplaying that can be modeled by players actually doing that thing.

[Xervous]

I roll players’ insight and award them a number of meta level questions they can ask based on the difference between the roll and the target number. The catch is if the roll is below the TN I don’t have to answer truthfully.

The biggest unsettling detail with insight comes about from the players knowing the result of the die roll. Blind rolls lend more general credibility to the insightful characters and keep the die result from coloring the players’ knowledge of the grand information.

[Catullus64]

Now, as for I handle information gathering, I involve minimum of random chance in it. There are no die rolls made by players when figuring out if someone's lying or what their motives - there might be die rolls made by a game master when the game master is procedurally generating new characters, but that's a relevantly different thing. (Once again: figuring out if someone knows a decised fact versus actually deciding new facts.)

Instead, investigation into such matters works by principle of Twenty Questions: the players have limited amount of questions they can ask and get a truthful answer to. If they ask the right questions, they can logically deduce what their exact situation is. If I want to make the deduction harder or easier for a particular character, that's done by giving the player less or more upfront information, which consequently makes the task harder or easier for the player.

The reason I do this is because deduction games are more interesting than dice games. So I don't turn into a dice game aspects of roleplaying that can be modeled by players actually doing that thing.

That's a pretty neat way to handle it, at least for certain types of games. Might I ask how you determine the allowance of questions? Are players aware of how many they have? Do you do this across game systems?

[KorvinStarmast]

Now, as for I handle information gathering, I involve minimum of random chance in it. There are no die rolls made by players when figuring out if someone's lying or what their motives - there might be die rolls made by a game master when the game master is procedurally generating new characters, but that's a relevantly different thing. (Once again: figuring out if someone knows a decised fact versus actually deciding new facts.)

Instead, investigation into such matters works by principle of Twenty Questions: the players have limited amount of questions they can ask and get a truthful answer to. If they ask the right questions, they can logically deduce what their exact situation is. If I want to make the deduction harder or easier for a particular character, that's done by giving the player less or more upfront information, which consequently makes the task harder or easier for the player.

The reason I do this is because deduction games are more interesting than dice games. So I don't turn into a dice game aspects of roleplaying that can be modeled by players actually doing that thing. Good technique, I may borrow a few bits of this to add to my approach, which is similar.

I roll players’ insight and award them a number of meta level questions they can ask based on the difference between the roll and the target number. The catch is if the roll is below the TN I don’t have to answer truthfully. Interesting technique. Might try this out.

[glass]

I'm not one of those players/GMs who dislikes having any social interactions and roleplay be handled by a throw of the dice. Having players roll for things like Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation, etc. seldom bothers me. Those are more about success/failure of an attempted action, and you shouldn't have to be highly charismatic to play charismatic characters, just like nobody is required to deadlift to play strong people.On the one hand, if if you are making skill rolls for Deception, they need to be against something. But that something does not necessarily need to be another rolled skill, and in fact there are obvious advantages to its not being (in terms of meta-information communicated by the roll itself).

Would you object to the Insight/Sense Motive equivalent being a static defence, or is it just its being a rolled skill that you find disruptive? If it is the latter, then I myself in agreement (which surprises me, because when I first read the OP this morning I didn't think I agreed with it - funny what a bit of time to think can do).

Conversely, if your objection does include static defences, then I agree with King of Nowhere re not requiring a player to be good at reading people for the character to be. And I don't have that much faith in the GM's acting ability (especially if the GM is me).

[Psyren]

Okay, say it with me: Passive Checks

PCs being allowed to boost a skill like Insight is useful, because it lets them roleplay a character with a finely honed BS detector. That is a valid archetype to play, and we see it all over fiction - characters like Toph Beifong, Faramir, Thom Merrillin/Verin Mathwin, Monk (the detective, not the class) etc. But you don't need the players to roll that skill at all - I agree that rolling Insight makes avoiding metagaming nearly impossible. Instead, either roll it for them or simply use their passive score, then pass them a note.

[Xervous]

Interesting technique. Might try this out.

Depending on what sort of system you’re working with, you might want to set the question scaling to be faster above the TN, and slower below the TN. Characters heavily invested in insight are going to rarely touch the deeper false-answer values, so this is mostly for better concealing low rolls. Everyone is going to know the insightful character blew the TN out of the water if they get 3-4 questions. But if the barbarian had a 70/30 unfavorable split giving him 3 bogus questions would get players thinking he can’t have rolled that high so it must be an absolute dud of a roll.

[Catullus64]

On the one hand, if if you are making skill rolls for Deception, they need to be against something. But that something does not necessarily need to be another rolled skill, and in fact there are obvious advantages to its not being (in terms of meta-information communicated by the roll itself).

Would you object to the Insight/Sense Motive equivalent being a static defence, or is it just its being a rolled skill that you find disruptive? If it is the latter, then I myself in agreement (which surprises me, because when I first read the OP this morning I didn't think I agreed with it - funny what a bit of time to think can do).

Conversely, if your objection does include static defences, then I agree with King of Nowhere re not requiring a player to be good at reading people for the character to be. And I don't have that much faith in the GM's acting ability (especially if the GM is me).

The rolled skill part of it is what bothers me for the most part; the way which it seems to condition players to act feels fundamentally different from other active social checks.

I wouldn't object to, say, a GM-facing resolution mechanic in which dice rolls and skills are there to help guide how a GM plays a character in a scene, how many cues they give as to the character's mood or mental state. But that would be a pretty substantial reconfiguring of mechanical assumptions from most games with an Insight-type skill.

[Vahnavoi]

That's a pretty neat way to handle it, at least for certain types of games. Might I ask how you determine the allowance of questions? Are players aware of how many they have? Do you do this across game systems?

I primarily use this for old school D&D retroclones that have minimal or no generalized skill system. You can look at D&D itself for an example of how to determine allowance of questions: spells such as Divination are transparently based on Twenty Questions and give the caster their (caster) level's worth of questions. The difference to how I do it is that in my games, this isn't tied to a spell, it's just general information gathering ability. Another simple way is to give a player a number of questions equal to their character's Intelligence score. It's easy to invent new variations once you grok the basic principle and then pick the one most suited to how a game describes characters.

As for players being aware of their question limit, it's possible to play lt either way, but it changes the nature of the game. When players know their limit, they know to not waste questions, meaning they spend more time on deduction, discussion and action. If players don't know, we need to answer, what happens when they run out? My suggestion would be that the situation changes, obsoleting some or all information gained by prior questions. This means that even if players never figure out their exact limit, they will quickly learn that spending too much time gathering information can mean the situation escapes them, which can be leveraged for great deal of strategic depth.

However, before getting too wild with variants, I suggest playing basic Twenty Questions a few times as warm-up, especially if players are unfamiliar with that game or use of deductive logic in general.

[Atranen]

Okay, say it with me: Passive Checks

PCs being allowed to boost a skill like Insight is useful, because it lets them roleplay a character with a finely honed BS detector. That is a valid archetype to play, and we see it all over fiction - characters like Toph Beifong, Faramir, Thom Merrillin/Verin Mathwin, Monk (the detective, not the class) etc. But you don't need the players to roll that skill at all - I agree that rolling Insight makes avoiding metagaming nearly impossible. Instead, either roll it for them or simply use their passive score, then pass them a note.

This is my solution too. They can't use active insight on a conversation that just took place.

If they want to make an active insight roll, I make them have their character do something to prompt it. For example, if they're suspicious , they can come up with a specific question and have their character play close attention to the response. Then they get an active roll on that response.

[NichG]

I guess I sort of go the opposite way from the OP, kinda? My general philosophy about social mechanics is that the mechanics should act to augment the player's own social awareness rather than replace it - basically, the same way that part of the gameplay of combat is figuring out tactics and strategy and player skill does play a role there, I see figuring out what to offer NPCs in negotiations, how to manipulate them and to what end, etc as being the equivalent strategic and tactical decisions for which I want player skill to factor in. So what I want out of mechanics is to augment the player's abilities and ideally give a sort of set of training wheels that help them develop skill at the social encounters of the game without replacing the need or benefit of developing such skills. I don't care about how eloquent a player is when talking, nor do I want to model it with dice or skills. I'll assume that the PCs are eloquent enough to express what the player wants them to express - if they say 'I want to be polite' or 'I want to be insulting' or whatever - so its really about what the players choose to have their characters express and offer, not whether you stutter or um when telling me what that is.

So to that end, I tend to make even things like Deception and Persuasion and the like more about information gathering than about projecting force directly. I also lean into those rolls being called by the player, rather than called by the GM - but each roll should correspond to a specific 'move' that the skill allows a character to do, rather than having any sort of open-ended 'roll to not have to think about this' interpretations. Each time those active uses are called on in a given conversation, the DC goes up.

For example, a player could say 'I want to roll Deception to check if the guy I'm speaking to would buy that I'm a royal', as opposed to 'I roll Deception to convince this guy that I'm a royal'. Or 'I want to roll Deception to see if this thing I'm about to say contradicts anything this guy is aware of (including things I've already said) before saying it'. Or even with high DCs 'I want to roll Deception to cold read a name or situation that I need in order to sustain the lie'. Similarly, Diplomacy could be rolled to know in advance what someone would say in response to a sentence without having to speak it (or take back a sentence once spoken and the reaction has been seen), or to know how much a given person would value a given compromise in a negotiation, or to know if there are any contextual factors which constrain a negotiation and what they are (such as the presence of particular other parties observing, rules of decorum and protocol, etc). But you couldn't roll Diplomacy to 'see if you can get them to accept this deal', only to get information which gets you closer to the minimum offer that the NPC would actually accept.

So I'm happy to have something like Insight which would let you roll to know an NPC's emotional state, attitude towards another NPC or towards the party, etc. A skill that encourages players to gather specific kinds of social information in order to intentionally approach a social encounter with a strategy is just the kind of thing I like systems to have, because it helps turn the vague 'I have to socialize and I don't know what the DM thinks makes sense' into 'here are attributes that NPCs have in different situations which determine what those NPCs will or won't believe or accept, and if I know the attributes then I just have to solve the puzzle to figure out how to get what I want out of it'.

But something like 'I want to tell if that was a lie' (roll vs NPC's Deception) isn't how I run it. It'd be more like Vahnavoi's twenty-questions thing, where you could actively use Insight to gain a certain number of pieces of information about the other person like 'what is their emotional state?', 'what is their conversational goal?', etc, but each time you use it the difficulty goes up, and its not really intended to be a per-sentence kind of thing. You could use that to help you figure out if they're lying, sure, but it avoids the metagame information involved in seeing your dice roll and the awkward kind of 'oh, I failed the DC and the DM told me they seem to be telling the truth, that means they're lying'. If you fail the DC, you just don't get anymore questions.

[Reversefigure4]

The 20 Questions version is interesting. A more streamlined (but less interactive) version is just straight DCs.

DC 10: He seems evasive. He's hiding something.
DC 15: His eyes dart to the doorway. He's hiding something, but not from you, from other eavesdroppers.
DC 20: He's evasive, and you believe there are lies in his tale.
DC 25: He's lying when he says the goblins attacked first.
DC 30: He's lying when he says the goblins attacked first, but the lie is not of his making. He's repeating an untruth, and he seems very nervous about it. Someone has threatened him.

Passive Checks also work well to avoid metagaming, if that's a concern. You know automatically that the Barbarian gets an 11, the Rogue a 23, and the Wizard a 14. Give out information accordingly.

One problem I have with running Insight checks is trying not to put words into a PCs mouth or tell players how their characters are feeling. If the player tanks the roll, "He seems trustworthy" is putting thoughts into the characters head as to how to behave (worse yet is "You trust him"). I tend to default to "You receive no further information from the GM" as my failed Insight roll response. Your character skills have not helped you, at which point you the player may draw whatever conclusion you like. Maybe you trust a traitor. Maybe you distrust a loyal ally. Maybe you fail to notice the NPC is hitting on you and so can't react to it in the way your character might want. Then I mix up my acting - the GM plays the NPC as stuttering and refusing to make eye contact with players... but in fact, it's because he's socially awkward instead of lying. Insight will tell you the difference for a fact as a character, or you can guess as a player.

[gbaji]

My general approach is to be a bit vague with the information gained via these sorts of skills. I also tend to require the player actually state that they are using them to detect something (ie: the player suspects there might be something amiss, and is rolling to see if they actually picked something up that supports that).

What I'm not a huge fan of is an NPC says something to the PCs, and they accept it and move on, and the later discover that it was a complete lie, and respond with "but I have sense motive! Why didn't I detect it?".

Of course, the flip side is the players who say "I roll <whatever>" every single time I have an NPC say something. So that can absolutely backfire.

I just tend to approach these as being more of a general sense, and not actually some kind of magical lie detector. And at the absolute minimum, I roll these dice in secret for the players. They should have no clue whether they made or missed the roll, how well they made it, etc. And yeah, depending on system being used, if the skill allows for a really poor roll to give false information, I'll totally use that. So you "get the feeling he's holding something back and not being completely honest" could be a correct assessment, or it could be you totally reading the person wrong. Players have to learn to do some additional checking to confirm or dismiss those results. Which is not a bad thing at all IMO.



On the one hand, if if you are making skill rolls for Deception, they need to be against something. But that something does not necessarily need to be another rolled skill, and in fact there are obvious advantages to its not being (in terms of meta-information communicated by the roll itself).

That made me have an interesting thought. For players who insist that skills like inight or sense motive should be effectively a lie detector, do you present them with the opposite condition? So if an NPC uses a deception skill successfully on the PC, do you disallow the player from deciding on his own that the NPC is lying? Or, if the player actually decides, all on their own (or as a result of some investigation) to not trust the NPC, do you just say "Nope. You can't act against him, because you completely believe him, because he made a deception skill against you"?

More importantly, is the player happy if you rule that way? Assuming the answer is: No. Then that's your counter to "I can always detect a lie with insight". Um... No. If the player can refuse to fall for a deception skill used against them, then they can also fail to detect a lie when using insight or sense motive. It has to go in both directions. I kinda assume that these skills aren't just a magic method to see if someone is lying. They represent the ability to pick up when others effectively "slip up" a bit and reveal stuff they should not. In the same way that a PC who has made up his mind to not believe an NPCs lies, despite a successful deception roll, can do so, an NPC who is really determined to pull the wool over the PCs eyes, should be able to do so, most of the time, even if this skill is in use.

And I guess that's why I have some issue with skills like this. It's a skill that effectively forces control over another character in a way. The use of the skill itself somehow magically forces the NPC to develop a facial tic, or start sweating, or otherwise indicate he's lying to you. To me, that's a bit too much. Again. Keep the info really vague. Make it about a general feeling, and not even specifically about one thing that was said. And yeah, it should never be able to be used for single short statements: (I ask the guard if the princess is being held captive in the castle, and sense motive to determine if "no" is a lie). To me, this is more of a conversational thing. Over time, while engaged with someone, you can get a sense about them. It's always going to be a combination of little things over the course of some interaction that provides this information.

To me, that's the best way to handle these sorts of skills. Otherwise, they can really easily be abused (or at least become a crutch used instead of actual player choices and actions). That, or you make all your NPCs have skills that counter it, in which case your PCs have a skill that is never useful anyway. By making it a longer term information gathering thing, it encourages the PCs to do things in the game that count as actual investigation, and the better they do at that, the more clear and precise you make the result. Really restrict what they get if they spend minimal time/effort on it. But then you need to reward them if they actually do things that should net them more details.

[gatorized]

In the system I use, there isn't a specific ability or talent for this - the closest would be either perception, charm, covert, or streetwise, depending on the situation and the characters involved. However, there's a fairly cheap power called Lie Detection anyone can get, which is always on, affects everyone within close range, has no cost, and always works unless the target is somehow protected from it.

But it doesn't actually matter if the players know a given NPC is lying. It doesn't remove roleplay, it just changes it. Since I don't use quest givers and the players are free to make allies or enemies of anyone they choose, it can't break the game.

Remember, knowing someone is lying doesn't tell you anything about why they choseb to lie. And finding that out can be an entire adventure in itself.

[Satinavian]

My general approach is to be a bit vague with the information gained via these sorts of skills. I also tend to require the player actually state that they are using them to detect something (ie: the player suspects there might be something amiss, and is rolling to see if they actually picked something up that supports that).How is that different from having characters with a huge spot skill or equivalent walking into an ambush without any roll and then saying "but you didn't actively look for an ambush in that situation" ?
In a system where the GM generally calls for rolls that should stay the default. Especially for passive, always on perception abilities.

[Vahnavoi]

What I'm not a huge fan of is an NPC says something to the PCs, and they accept it and move on, and the later discover that it was a complete lie, and respond with "but I have sense motive! Why didn't I detect it?".

I note that this does not happen when using a method similar to mine. The closest equivalent, "why didn't we question veracity of this claim before?", is almost always succintly answered by "because you didn't have grounds to question it before". When spotting lies is a matter of deduction, it does away with the idea that a character can always tell when a person is lying when the lie is made, as opposed to when they encounter a contradiction exposing the lie.

In general, being able to detect lies on the spot without wealth of corroborating evidence is so implausible that it's best left to magic or other literary device, and should never be assumed to happen automatically. The answer to "but I have Zone of Truth, why didn't I spot a lie?" is, after all, straightforward "because you didn't actually cast it, you have to actively use your abilities for them to take effect".

(Don't nitpick the example. I know there are things that would screw with Zone of Truth even if it is, cast, that's besides the point.)

[ciopo]

As someone on the spectrum, I can tell you that my profiency with social cues are.... somewhere between 0 and an arbitrary negative number.

"insight" is invaluable to me, because no amount of "acting shifty" by the GM will actually register as shifty to me.

it takes very blunt/literal description for me to frame this or that NPC as being this or that. I.E. unless you plainly tell me "X looks shifty" I will not think of him as shifty.

Make of this feedback what you want :)

[Ionathus]

I do almost-exclusively 5e, with the occasional Monster Of The Week.

In 5e, I never treat Insight checks like mindreading or misinterpretation. Insight is treated as the ability to pick up on nonverbal and verbal cues, much like Perception is the ability to pick up on physical clues. The penalty for failing either one is the same -- no misinformation or telling the PC what they think; you just don't get the clue.

I always state very explicitly that my players are free to roleplay suspicion against someone even if they whiff on the Insight check. I've seen failing an Insight check get treated like the PC is required to drop their suspicion, and that's just silly; it's an opportunity to get extra clues, not a binary chance to accidentally trust an obvious murderer or something.

MotW is a bit more loosey-goosey and mindread-y because of the narrative-affecting mechanics, but I generally always work to provide concrete indicators of a given clue rather than just saying "you can read their mind and you know XYZ".


As someone on the spectrum, I can tell you that my profiency with social cues are.... somewhere between 0 and an arbitrary negative number.

"insight" is invaluable to me, because no amount of "acting shifty" by the GM will actually register as shifty to me.

it takes very blunt/literal description for me to frame this or that NPC as being this or that. I.E. unless you plainly tell me "X looks shifty" I will not think of him as shifty.

Make of this feedback what you want :)

A very good point. Social cues aren't always universal, and for me this conversation definitely falls into "your character would have picked up on XYZ, even if you as the player didn't" territory. We don't require a player to physically prove that they themselves are strong enough to move a boulder their PC is trying to move; it should be the same with social skills.

[Vahnavoi]

A very good point. Social cues aren't always universal, and for me this conversation definitely falls into "your character would have picked up on XYZ, even if you as the player didn't" territory. We don't require a player to physically prove that they themselves are strong enough to move a boulder their PC is trying to move; it should be the same with social skills.

Here we go again.

Characters are not independent entities; everything they do is modeled by a player doing something. The player always has to prove they meet minimum competence to play, at best you're replacing competence in one skill (social skills, lifting) with another (manipulation of small number and probability).

The reason to replace physical activity, such as moving a boulder, is because you're trying to hold a tabletop game, and physical activity would force you to leave it. If you were trying to hold a live-action game, modeling moving a boulder by actually moving something would be most natural, and if you want to do that with a person who can't move a real boulder, the simple solution is to use a fake boulder that is light enough for them to move.

There is no similar reason to replace social or intellectual activity is because you can do those at the tabletop just fine. A player needs these skills to engage in a multiplayer game in any case. The way to allow a player to punch up is to give them easier social or intellectual tasks to solve, the same principle as making the boulder out of styrofoam. Sure, you can use an Insight score for that, but the (pseudo)random component is a pointless diversion. The simplest way to model a character who knows more than a player, is for the person who does know to just tell that player. Boom, now the player knows and can proceed using their own reasoning. If the specific problem is that the player is on a spectrum and wants to play a character that is not, the best way to do that is to actually look at differences between autistic and allistic people to see what needs to be accounted for, and then just give the player all the information they'd otherwise miss.

[gbaji]

How is that different from having characters with a huge spot skill or equivalent walking into an ambush without any roll and then saying "but you didn't actively look for an ambush in that situation" ?
In a system where the GM generally calls for rolls that should stay the default. Especially for passive, always on perception abilities.

Well, you picked up on the one line I wrote that is a bit different out of context than in context. What I was really going for with that section of my post is that insight is about picking up clues during a longish social interaction, and is not a magic lie detector that goes off the instant someone says or does something with the intent to decieve the PC.

The difference between the use of insight and the use of spot in those cases, is that the first point the player is aware that there may be some reason to use spot to detect an ambush is when the GM starts the ambush encounter. Insight, on the other hand, is used while the PC is already engaged in another known activity (having a conversation/inteaction with an NPC). What I was talking about is that the player actually has the knowledge that they are in an encounter, and that this is an encounter where using their insight skill may assist them, and thus, I tend to have an expectation that the player will actively choose to use the skill.

I also require that players state they are using spot or search skills when they are inside a room and there are objects in the room they may find, if they use such skills. Same thinking applies. They know they are in an encounter/scene. They may wish to do something ("look for hidden/secret stuff"). They have the opportunity to declare that intention. So instead of me assuming that they are looking for stuff, I expect the player to tell me they are searching for stuff, if they want to actually find stuff that is hidden. Depends on game system too, since some have different skills for "spotting" versus "searching".

When and whether skills should be applied actively or passively, is an entire conversation of it's own. And yeah, it's not as easy or clean cut as that. But that's all I was talking about. Again. The main focus I was going for in my post was that insight is something that should provide information based on a reasonable amout of social interaction with someone, and not just a quick/instant thing. My actual sorta expecation/hope for the use of this kind of skill is a player actually stating something like "I'm going to go over and chat with the Duke's guards, while they are off duty in the bar, and see if I can pick up some useful information". In that situation, we can assume that the PC is (hopefuly casually) asking leading questions, and getting the NPCs to give responses that may provide additional clues. And I might tell the player "While you were talking, you noticed that every time the subject of the Duke's upcoming meeting with the visiting Baron came up, they seemed to act as though there's something going on there. You suspect that there may be some additional plans and they wont go well for the Baron".

So I'm not requiring them to tell me what they are looking for, but I do require that they have their characters engage in some sort of social interaction/conversation with the intent to "learn some information". And it's not like I'm literally hinging this off of them declaring exactly when they are using the insight skill. Telllng me that they are getting into said conversation (or dragging out one they are already in) with the intent to dig up info, is plenty sufficient. There does usually have to be some level of interaction though, and the ability of the PC to actuallly lead the conversation/interaction in some way in order to get useful information. I'm not going to allow someone to use insight during the King's speech to determine if he's lying about something in the speech, for example.


I've seen failing an Insight check get treated like the PC is required to drop their suspicion, and that's just silly; it's an opportunity to get extra clues, not a binary chance to accidentally trust an obvious murderer or something.

Yeah. I've seen it used that way too. Hence my caution about the use of such skills being some sort of absolute "this is what you think about the NPC" things. To me, the player should always be in control of their character (dominate type effects excepted of course).


I guess I would also add that these sorts of skills should really be used by the GM to help the players navigate the scenario. Sometimes, you put something in there, and you think it should be obvious to the players what their characters could do. You laid out the clues, and they should follow them. Well, sometimes that just doesn't work (what's obvious to the GM is not always so obvious to the players, that's just a normal thing). Skills like insight can help the GM give little prods to the players to point them in the right direction. But you do have to be careful that it doesn't become something the players just rely on to tell them what to do, so it's a bit of a balancing act.

[BRC]

I do almost-exclusively 5e, with the occasional Monster Of The Week.

In 5e, I never treat Insight checks like mindreading or misinterpretation. Insight is treated as the ability to pick up on nonverbal and verbal cues, much like Perception is the ability to pick up on physical clues. The penalty for failing either one is the same -- no misinformation or telling the PC what they think; you just don't get the clue.

I always state very explicitly that my players are free to roleplay suspicion against someone even if they whiff on the Insight check. I've seen failing an Insight check get treated like the PC is required to drop their suspicion, and that's just silly; it's an opportunity to get extra clues, not a binary chance to accidentally trust an obvious murderer or something.

I wouldn't say REQUIRED, but I do enjoy it when a player rolls a 1 on their insight, and, knowing that they just whiffed, decide to role-play trusting the NPC anyway.

I'd never say "Oh, you can't be suspicious of them, you failed insight", but I appreciate it when players choose to do that anyway.


That said, while sometimes insight is "Oh yeah, they're lying", I prefer to use it to give hints about what somebody ISN'T saying than as a pure lie detector. Like, sometimes, "Yes, they're lying", but I find that even that can always be presented in a more interesting way.


Example scenario

The PC's are camping at night, when two men and a woman stumble into the firelight shouting for help! All bear signs of injury, but the older man has an arrow sticking out of him and claims that they just escaped from a gang of bandits! He begs for the PCs to protect them and help rescue his family.

PC's roll insight checks.

You could say "The two uninjured people are bandits, they've forced the older man to help them with this ruse, and are hoping to catch you offguard when you turn to protect against the bandits 'Chasing them' "


But you could be more interesting

The Woman has a bandage wrapped around her left leg, but appears to be favoring it without any sign of pain.

After he finishes speaking, the older man glances backwards in fear. At first you think he's watching the woods for pursuers, but it becomes clear, he's watching his companions, seeing how they're reacting to what he just told you.


When he asks for help rescuing his family, his voice almost cracks in desperation.

as soon as they got into the camp, you spotted the younger man's eyes dart around, lingering in turn on each of your companions and their weapons.

The woman's coat is oddly heavy for this time of year, and moves as if weighted down by something hidden.

Despite the humid night and the fact that they've supposedly been sprinting through the woods, the young man doesn't appear to be sweating in the slightest, and his heavy breathing seems to slow when he thinks nobody is looking at him.


For extra fun, try to tie in the PC's experiences


[Sorceror] The younger man smells of ozone and smoke, as do you every time you cast lightning magic.

[Ranger] The arrow in the man's shoulder doesn't make sense if it was fired while he was fleeing. The angle is all wrong, it almost looks like it was pushed in by hand.

[Bard] The cadence of the older man's voice when he talks about escaping the bandit camp. It reminds you of somebody reading through a script, measuring out each word rather than speaking on instinct.

[Criminal Background] This whole scenario sounds a little too familiar. It's a common ploy for bandits to force a hostage to get people to drop their guard.


ect ect.

[Satinavian]

The difference between the use of insight and the use of spot in those cases, is that the first point the player is aware that there may be some reason to use spot to detect an ambush is when the GM starts the ambush encounter. Insight, on the other hand, is used while the PC is already engaged in another known activity (having a conversation/inteaction with an NPC). What I was talking about is that the player actually has the knowledge that they are in an encounter, and that this is an encounter where using their insight skill may assist them, and thus, I tend to have an expectation that the player will actively choose to use the skill.I don't see the difference. Both groups are already busy in another activity, whether talking or overland travel. And in the same way as spot is "always on" as you still look around when you travel a road, Insight is always on as you still take in nonverbal clues whenever you are in a conversation. I have even problem imagining what actively using insight is supposed to be : "I now look for body language which i always ignore in any other instance" ? Makes no sense.

The reason insight does not get rolled in every conversation even if the insight skill is always active is that you should not roll if the result is not interesting. So if the GM thinks the situation has something interesting to reveal via insight he calls for a roll. The only situation a player should ever ask for a roll if he thinks that the impression of an NPC is of interest when the GM does not. And of course there is no problem with revealing a detail a player would want to know more about that the GM has not alaborated on. Happens all the time.


The main focus I was going for in my post was that insight is something that should provide information based on a reasonable amout of social interaction with someone, and not just a quick/instant thing. My actual sorta expecation/hope for the use of this kind of skill is a player actually stating something like "I'm going to go over and chat with the Duke's guards, while they are off duty in the bar, and see if I can pick up some useful information". In that situation, we can assume that the PC is (hopefuly casually) asking leading questions, and getting the NPCs to give responses that may provide additional clues. And I might tell the player "While you were talking, you noticed that every time the subject of the Duke's upcoming meeting with the visiting Baron came up, they seemed to act as though there's something going on there. You suspect that there may be some additional plans and they wont go well for the Baron".I play several systems with an insight skill equivalent but the described is not a use case for insight in any of them. There are always other skills for "asking around", "gathering information" or "using leading questions". Insight/sense motive etc are purely observational and have nothing to do with directing the flow of a conversation. Or even actually talking yourself, it is totally fine to roll insight on an interaction of other people.


Yeah. I've seen it used that way too. Hence my caution about the use of such skills being some sort of absolute "this is what you think about the NPC" things. To me, the player should always be in control of their character (dominate type effects excepted of course).I and several others have mentioned an easy solution to that : failed insight means "no information". The same as all the other sensory skills. A failed spot/search/listen/whatever only means you missed something, not that you suddenly start to hallucinate.

[Pauly]

It depends a lot on the game and what the expectation is regarding what the character is supposed to figure out and what the player is expected to figure out.

I don't play D&D, but my recollction of the way D&D handles it is that the character is expected to handle detection via various insight roles.

In other genres such as Shadowrun or CoC the expectation generally is that it is up to the player to find deception through taking note of hints and discrepancies.

[Jakinbandw]

What are some peoples' experiences, good and bad, with this type of skill?

I'm playing a home brew system right now, and last night we ran into a monster pretending to be angelic. Amusingly, this didn't make us like it more, as the last angel we encountered had mind controlled a city, and killed us. One of my classes is the Wise Attribute, which has a specific ability that allows me to pick up when someone or something is presenting a false persona. It felt good to use that to find out that the angel wasn't benevolent. Then I spent a point of Effort (a currency that measures how much more your character can do at any given time, a bit like spell point in 5e) to learn a sentence about it's true personality. The GM told us that it was a monster that fed on chaos and despair, so we immediately entered combat with it. This also felt awesome. I was substantially weaker in the fight due to having spent a third of my Effort pool to learn that information, but it felt good to be on firm footing.

Now, I do want to point out that part of what made this work, was the adventure design principles behind the game. The GM didn't have any of their prep work wasted, and the monster wasn't the main point of the adventure, with the entire encounter existing as a stepping stone to other parts of the adventure. Part of what made it feel good was knowing that it wasn't disrupting the GMs prep. I got to be cool, have solid information, and it didn't even cause any problems for the adventure.

[Slipjig]

You can also use Insight for other things. But for the "Do I think he's lying", question, I generally run it as an opposed check against either the target Deception or a static DC of 15 (if the subject is telling the truth), with the DM rolling for the player in secret. And I consider it Deception if the speaker was trying to mislead, even if what they said was technically true (and thus wouldn't trip Zone of Truth). I might also adjust DC higher if they are trying to read someone from another culture, another race, or across a language barrier.

Success = "You think he's being deceptive" or "You sense no deception"
Fail by less than 10 = "You can't get a read"
Fail by more than 10 = "You think he's being deceptive" or "You sense no deception"

I think this is a reasonable skill for PCs to have. Socially aware people can read other people's mannerisms and body language for cues, but you can't do that with the DM, because the DM is ALWAYS making stuff up. And if you about your plot getting wrecked, just set it up so that the person they are talking to genuinely believes what they are saying, they are just misinformed.

[gbaji]

I don't see the difference. Both groups are already busy in another activity, whether talking or overland travel. And in the same way as spot is "always on" as you still look around when you travel a road, Insight is always on as you still take in nonverbal clues whenever you are in a conversation. I have even problem imagining what actively using insight is supposed to be : "I now look for body language which i always ignore in any other instance" ? Makes no sense.

There is a difference. When just walking around normally, there is no specific thing you are looking at. Thus, a spot skill to notice something you aren't specifically looking for, is always a passive action. It can't be anything else. You don't start out saying "there's a group of Orcs hiding in the bushes on the side of the road, roll your spot to determine if you notice them". You simply call for a spot roll (or more likely roll one yourself in secret in this situation). That's how a skill is used passively. The PC has no knowledge that there is something of interest to see, or even that, at any specific point in time, there might be something of interest to see. So the player can't just randomly, out of the blue state "at mile marker 5, I will use my spot skill to see if there are any Orcs hiding in the bushes", and no GM would ever expect that level of pre-recognition or action statement from the player.

This is different than using spot in a scene where you know there's at least a reason/location to look around. If the players are already aware of something around them, and therefore have the opportunity to declare whatever actions they are doing in response, I somewhat expect that they should declare those actions. While I'll still give them a chance to passively spot something of interest, I will tend to give them a bonus if they actually say "I'm looking around to see if there's <whatever> in the room", or "I'm going to pay attention to that guy running the thee card monty game, and see if I spot him cheating". You have an already defined scene described to the players, they then make choices as to what they do, where they focus their attention, etc.

I really do see an insight skill in a similar way to the latter application of the spot skill. I'm just not a huge fan of the idea that one can just casually detect deception without a fair degree of active concentration involved. Barring idiots who can't lie their way out of a wet paper bag, it's usually a lot harder to detect if someone is lying than most people think (doubly if you're taking cues from TV shows or films, where the actors absolutely exagerate things to make them obvious to the audience). And more importantly for a game pov, we are in a situation where the PCs are already roleplaying a scene/encounter in some way. They know they are talking to and interacting with an NPC, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that if they want to see if they can sense deception in that NPCs words, they should actually tell me they are choosing to use this skill to do so. And yeah, I'm also going to lean in the direction that this requires some degree of actual interaction and not just observation.

Having said that, depending on the specific game skill and description, I might allow a more passive use of this for getting a sense of some personality traits. It's far easier, for example, to detect that "this person is overbearing", or "this person seems like a self important snob", or "it's clear the Baron really dislikes the Duke", sort of things, than "this person seems to be acting deceptively". People tend to actually take effort, when lying, to conceal that fact. So unless you actually do something to try to trip them up in some way, it's unlikely you're going to pick that up just by listening to them talk. Body language and verbal patterns can absolutely allow you to pick up on other things though, even just via observation (and sometimes it's easier to do so via passive observation than active conversation in fact).


The reason insight does not get rolled in every conversation even if the insight skill is always active is that you should not roll if the result is not interesting. So if the GM thinks the situation has something interesting to reveal via insight he calls for a roll. The only situation a player should ever ask for a roll if he thinks that the impression of an NPC is of interest when the GM does not. And of course there is no problem with revealing a detail a player would want to know more about that the GM has not alaborated on. Happens all the time.

Hmmm... Not sure I agree with that though, because you are cluing the player in that there's something "interesting to reveal" by the very act of rolling an insight roll in the first place. I suppose I might do this for really obvious things that show up, where the roll is almost perfunctory anyway. But the idea that if the player is asking to roll the skill on their own, that this means that there isn't anything interesting to learn, because the GM would have already called for a roll if there was, seems kinda questionable. Unless I"m just misreading what you're trying to say here.

But if I am reading it correctly, then it's going to be pretty obvious to the players if they talk to 8 different NPCs about various things, and get various bits of information about some things going on, but then when they go talk to that one traveling bard hanging out at the local tavern, you call for an insight roll, that this bard maybe isn't telling them the whole story. Again though, maybe I misunderstood.


I play several systems with an insight skill equivalent but the described is not a use case for insight in any of them. There are always other skills for "asking around", "gathering information" or "using leading questions". Insight/sense motive etc are purely observational and have nothing to do with directing the flow of a conversation. Or even actually talking yourself, it is totally fine to roll insight on an interaction of other people.

Yeah. Different game systems use different sets of skills for information gathering. And certainly, some games may have other skills that match more closely than the more active stuff I'm talking about here. Um... But I would still then use (or require) those sorts of skills be used to determine things like "Is this person being truthful?" or "what is all the information this person knows about <whatever>". In those game systems, I'd restrict a more observational skill to the kind of personalitiy trait stuff I mentioned above. I'd still not have this skill act as a form of lie detector.

Doing so is also problematic from a game play perspective. Because inevitably, there will be times when NPCs will do or say things that are in some way concealing things from the PCs, and you will constantly have players saying "but I have a high insight skill, why didn't I detect this?". IME, this often results in either skills like this not being very useful at all, in which case the players don't spent points on them, or they are too useful and they put lots of points into them and expect them to alert them to any form of deception that may ever show up in course of the adventure. By requiring them to be more active use, you kinda meet in the middle of the roleplaying quesion of "does the player have to figure stuff out?", or "does the character do this?" Well, it's a bit of both. The player has to think to try to figure out if there is something to learn here, but the skill on the character sheet determines success at this thing.

This kinda mirrors how a lot of other "player vs character" things are divided. A player may not know how to swing a weapon well, but the character does, so we resolve that by rolling those skills. But the player still decides when the character swings that weapon, and who he swings it at, and even which weapon he chooses to use. I see this in a similar way. Again though, I'm not 100% opposed to more passive use of such things, but I'd be much more hesitant in terms of how much information should be gleaned that way.


I and several others have mentioned an easy solution to that : failed insight means "no information". The same as all the other sensory skills. A failed spot/search/listen/whatever only means you missed something, not that you suddenly start to hallucinate.

Yup. Agree 100% Just observing that I have seen people play this sort of thing as though the PC, having failed the insight must absolutely believe that whatever they were told they perceived about the NPC must be "the truth".

I do still have a bit of an issue with the terminology though. A failed spot doesn't mean that you missed something. It only means you didn't spot anything. There could very well have been nothing to see in the first place. As I pointed out previously, this is the danger posed when you only roll these skills when there is "something interesting" to see/learn/whatever.

But yes. In general I agree that a failed result should simply result in no infomation, and not certainty of the opposite. There's still a risk of metainfo though. If the PC succeeds at insight, do you tell them "you are certain that person is <whatever>?", because then, rolling insight and not telling them anything about the person, also provides information (that they failed the insight roll in this case). It can be a little bit tricky here. I think if you restrict this to an ability that allows you to "gain additional information beyond what was told to you directly", it can work well. But again, as a form of lie detector, it gets a bit questionable. Which yeah, goes back around to different game systems using skills like this in very different ways.

[Ionathus]

There is no similar reason to replace social or intellectual activity is because you can do those at the tabletop just fine.

[citation needed]

You say the reason to replace physical activity with a dice roll is because it's logistically inconvenient to actually go find (or make) a boulder to move. I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of why people play games: to do cool things that they don't get to do in real life. The player built a character who's good at certain things (lifting boulders, seducing kings, assassinating cabbage merchants): if you don't resolve those things via the dice, then their choices are pointless. You may as well just play longform improv -- with yourself as the sole arbiter of what's "good" improv and what's "bad."

As a DM, I use Charisma checks to keep myself honest. Because if I don't use Charisma checks, I start to favor players who appeal to my idea of what the "right" thing to say would be in each context. But my job as a DM isn't to decide the solution to every scenario - it's to set up interesting challenges and see what the players do, because that back-and-forth is what tells the story and makes it unique. That dynamic applies just as much to their social reactions as their physical reactions. Sure, I might give a lower DC to a player who targets the NPC's specific insecurities/priorities/interests. But I'd do the same for a player who uses context clues to approach a Strength-based or Intelligence-based challenge strategically. Ultimately, the dice still decide.

I have seen "well you got the gist right but didn't say it the way *I* wanted to hear it, so no, I won't allow a Persuasion check, you just fail, guess at my f***ing whims better next time" at tables before, and it sucks. I'm not interested in bullying shy people out of the hobby, intentionally or not.

EDIT: Just realized I didn't really hit on the original point here, which was about Insight checks. Which in my mind is even more egregious than OOC Charisma checks -- expecting your players to live or die by their own roleplaying/persuasive abilities is already misguided, but expecting your players to be not only good at reading people, but dependent on your ability to even give the nonverbal cues in the first place is a recipe for disaster.

[Satinavian]

Hmmm... Not sure I agree with that though, because you are cluing the player in that there's something "interesting to reveal" by the very act of rolling an insight roll in the first place. I suppose I might do this for really obvious things that show up, where the roll is almost perfunctory anyway. But the idea that if the player is asking to roll the skill on their own, that this means that there isn't anything interesting to learn, because the GM would have already called for a roll if there was, seems kinda questionable. Unless I"m just misreading what you're trying to say here.

But if I am reading it correctly, then it's going to be pretty obvious to the players if they talk to 8 different NPCs about various things, and get various bits of information about some things going on, but then when they go talk to that one traveling bard hanging out at the local tavern, you call for an insight roll, that this bard maybe isn't telling them the whole story. Again though, maybe I misunderstood.Yes, that is an issue with all sensory/perception type skills. Asking for a roll tells the players there might be something to perceive, an information the PCs don't have. And that could be used for metagaming.

There are a couple of solutions for this problem, but all of them are kinda awkward. So in my usual groups i just ignore it and trustt my players to not metagame here. Which works. If it would become an issue i might consider one of the many many solutions like passive perception, rolling in advance, unmotivated rolling to hide the important rolls(ok, probably not, that is a time waster) or others. But currently all of them are too much of a hassle for too little benefit.


But yes. In general I agree that a failed result should simply result in no infomation, and not certainty of the opposite. There's still a risk of metainfo though. If the PC succeeds at insight, do you tell them "you are certain that person is <whatever>?", because then, rolling insight and not telling them anything about the person, also provides information (that they failed the insight roll in this case). It can be a little bit tricky here. I think if you restrict this to an ability that allows you to "gain additional information beyond what was told to you directly", it can work well. But again, as a form of lie detector, it gets a bit questionable. Which yeah, goes back around to different game systems using skills like this in very different ways.And particularly for insight the metainformation is not much. I mean, if i only called for a roll for lies, one would know there is a lie. But i call for a roll for any kind of imho interesting information that can be gleaned via insight. It might be a lie. Or an omission or a half-truth. It might also be about other stuff like that the person is nervous or absent minded, might not care about the topic, tries to hide their ignorance, is increasingly annoyed by the ettiquette breaches of a particular PC or many other things. A failed roll doesn't really reveal much of importance if i don't tell what the roll was for.

But that argument obviously only holds for passive insight rolls called by the GM for whatever reason. If a player calls a roll to find out if someone lies, the roll will always be about detecting lies.

[Psyren]

And I consider it Deception if the speaker was trying to mislead, even if what they said was technically true (and thus wouldn't trip Zone of Truth).

I think this is an important point. Part of the reason casters are so far ahead of martials at many tables is that simple drawbacks to spell-based solutions, like this one, aren't adequately taken into account. Zone of Truth might be able to deal with outright lies, but technical truths like evasions and omissions can bypass it; Insight however has no such limitations baked in.

[Vahnavoi]

[citation needed]

You say the reason to replace physical activity with a dice roll is because it's logistically inconvenient to actually go find (or make) a boulder to move. I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of why people play games: to do cool things that they don't get to do in real life.

There no misunderstanding, the tired motive you ascribe to players is not a counterargument to what I'm saying. If the way you model talking to a king is rolling a die, you never, in fact, get to do the "cool thing" of talking to a king - you merely pretend the die roll you substituted for it counts. The same principle applies when lifting a styrofoam block instead of a boulder. The reason to pick one model over another relies on virtually everything else than this single motive you ascribe to playing: cost, availability, ease of use (etc.) as well as, importantly, how closely the substitution matches the things that makes the original "cool thing" cool.

Most importantly, you can nix any reference to "real world" from the motive. The root reason to play is to simply do "cool" things. So you're never excused of considering what, exactly, your players are capable of.


The player built a character who's good at certain things (lifting boulders, seducing kings, assassinating cabbage merchants): if you don't resolve those things via the dice, then their choices are pointless. You may as well just play longform improv -- with yourself as the sole arbiter of what's "good" improv and what's "bad."

Wrong from beginning to end - whether players build their characters at all, what it means for a character to be "good" at anything and how that is modeled varies by game. Spending points to modify output of a (pseudo)random number generator is far from the only type of choice that matters. Contrasting die rolling with "just play longform improv" obfuscates the fact that there are myriad of different methods to do improvized acting and myriad different ways to arbitrate what's "good" or "bad" that aren't rolling dice. I already explained how to do this with deduction earlier in the thread, what's your counterargument to that?


As a DM, I use Charisma checks to keep myself honest. Because if I don't use Charisma checks, I start to favor players who appeal to my idea of what the "right" thing to say would be in each context.

You kidding me? The only time dice serve honesty is when balanced dice are rolled for even odds. In a game like D&D, where a dungeon master picks the target number based on their scenario design and their subjective reasoning, or any other system where a game master has free reign on circumstance bonuses or anything of the sort, the game is always biased towards that the game master thinks is "right". At most, if strictly following a rule book, it's biased towards what the game designer thinks is "right".


But my job as a DM isn't to decide the solution to every scenario...

It literally is and your pick of resolution method is step one of doing so.
Dice alone don't decide anything. They are always reliant on some entity to interprete and choose to follow their results, every solution you get from a die roll is a result of you deciding the dice serve as solution for that thing. You are literally saying it isn't your job to do the thing you describe yourself as doing. Or how else I'm supposed to interprete this? That there's literally someone else who decides for you which game system to use and whether to use dice as the resolution method?


I have seen "well you got the gist right but didn't say it the way *I* wanted to hear it, so no, I won't allow a Persuasion check, you just fail, guess at my f***ing whims better next time" at tables before, and it sucks. I'm not interested in bullying shy people out of the hobby, intentionally or not.

Failure of imagination and strawman argument on your part. Engaging social abilities of a player doesn't equate to bullying shy people out. It apparently did not occur to you that if a player gets gist of something right by your own standards, that it would reasonably be grounds of a success, either full of partial. Have you never played a guessing game where the degree to which a player gets something right matters?


EDIT: Just realized I didn't really hit on the original point here, which was about Insight checks. Which in my mind is even more egregious than OOC Charisma checks -- expecting your players to live or die by their own roleplaying/persuasive abilities is already misguided, but expecting your players to be not only good at reading people, but dependent on your ability to even give the nonverbal cues in the first place is a recipe for disaster.

Your edit does not improve your argument because I already explained how to do this. But more importantly, you miss the blindingly obvious: any kind of roleplaying game always and already lives and dies by the game master's skill for description. Fixating on a game master's ability for describing nonverbal cues is a red herring. Why would depending on my ability to describe (including acting them out) nonverbal cues be a recipe of disaster more than relying on my ability to verbally describe what another person (the game characters) sees, hears, smells or touched? Those are skills too, you know. Several different skills in fact.

Continuing that thought, if I'm in a room, in person, with other people, why would I spend a lot of time verbally describing the body language or gestures if I can act them out and communicate the same amount of information better and faster? Why would I spend a lot of time verbally describing a room or complex object if I can show other people a picture of it? Why would I spend a lot of time verbally describing a piece of music if I can play, either by myself or from a device? So on and so forth.

Expecting other people to be good at anything doesn't enter into this. At most, if players are bad at the relevant abilities, they will fail more, barring further adjustments. But the whole point is that such adjustments can be made. I can exaggerate body language to make it easier to pick up, or leave it out to make interpreting my words harder; I can sharpen or blur a picture, remove colors from it or do a number of alter things to make it easier or harder to see what's in it; I can increase or decrease volume of music, blur the sound or do a number of other things to make it easier or harder to hear.

All these things are possible, not just to help a player, but also to directly model what their character perceives. The ability and understanding of how to do them also directly feeds into ability to verbally describe them if the nonverbal means are unavailable. And the kicker? Dice help not at all with any of this. At most, you're hoping that whoever made interpretation guidelines for what those die rolls mean in your game encoded all this information there. If not, you'd be better off reading almost any non-game source for how to describe them.

[Ionathus]

<snip>

Thanks for your response.

After reading your further thoughts on this, I think it's safe to say that we disagree so fundamentally about how TTRPGs function that it's not worth butting heads further.


Yes, that is an issue with all sensory/perception type skills. Asking for a roll tells the players there might be something to perceive, an information the PCs don't have. And that could be used for metagaming.

There are a couple of solutions for this problem, but all of them are kinda awkward. So in my usual groups i just ignore it and trustt my players to not metagame here. Which works. If it would become an issue i might consider one of the many many solutions like passive perception, rolling in advance, unmotivated rolling to hide the important rolls(ok, probably not, that is a time waster) or others. But currently all of them are too much of a hassle for too little benefit.

I struggle with this a lot, too. I don't like calling for a Perception check if there's nothing to find, but I also don't want Perception checks to consequently become an instant indicator that there is something to be found whenever I call for one.

One of my tactics has been to sometimes use time as a consequence: if players insist on searching an area with Perception but I know there's nothing to find there, I'll make their roll about whether it takes them 30 seconds to confirm there's nothing, or 10 minutes (or whatever amount of time is relevant to their current scenario). Obviously you don't want to take away player agency by telling them how long they decided to search for unless that's the dynamic of your table already and your players trust/expect you to make that determination in good faith and judgment. Another option could be "roll a Perception check, if you fail, then a quick scan of the room tells you that it would take X minutes to search the place thoroughly. Do you want to spend that time on a more complete search?" So then I'm not making any decisions for them, and they still feel the cost of failing the first check (or get excited about saving that time if they succeed).


And particularly for insight the metainformation is not much. I mean, if i only called for a roll for lies, one would know there is a lie. But i call for a roll for any kind of imho interesting information that can be gleaned via insight. It might be a lie. Or an omission or a half-truth. It might also be about other stuff like that the person is nervous or absent minded, might not care about the topic, tries to hide their ignorance, is increasingly annoyed by the ettiquette breaches of a particular PC or many other things. A failed roll doesn't really reveal much of importance if i don't tell what the roll was for.

But that argument obviously only holds for passive insight rolls called by the GM for whatever reason. If a player calls a roll to find out if someone lies, the roll will always be about detecting lies.

Emphasis mine -- I can't tell if you're saying this like it's a problem or a benefit. At my tables, that bolded dynamic is by design: if the players whiff on their social investigations with Insight and the like, the price is not knowing anything about the NPC's internal motives, including which motive they were even trying to guess at (unless the player specifically asked me "does he seem like he's lying" or "does she look stressed/in a rush?"). The penalty for a whiffed Insight-type check is usually so low compared to other whiffed checks (e.g. a whiffed Sleight of Hand or Intimidation check in 5e can rapidly turn a social encounter into a hostile one) that I don't worry too much about the "extra" penalty of not even getting any meta info.

Not really related to anything but just an idle thought along these lines: if I think my players are going to fixate on an NPC, I always try to give them at least 1 thing that they're preoccupied with or trying to hide. If the players suss that out with good persuasion or insight or another creative check, it'll hopefully give them some more context for the interaction, or clues to whatever situation they're embroiled in, or maybe even immediate leverage over that NPC. It makes the interactions a little more flexible and nuanced, and I find it improves the sense of complexity and player investment in the scene as well.

[gbaji]

And particularly for insight the metainformation is not much. I mean, if i only called for a roll for lies, one would know there is a lie. But i call for a roll for any kind of imho interesting information that can be gleaned via insight. It might be a lie. Or an omission or a half-truth. It might also be about other stuff like that the person is nervous or absent minded, might not care about the topic, tries to hide their ignorance, is increasingly annoyed by the ettiquette breaches of a particular PC or many other things. A failed roll doesn't really reveal much of importance if i don't tell what the roll was for.

Yeah. This is also why I tend to prefer to have these skills be about "gaining insight" (see what a did there?) into things in the world around the characters (specifically about the people in this case). I really prefer to use this less as a "lie detector" and more as a "motivation detector" (or even just sensing that someone may have some additional reasons for something than what they are telling you). And it shouldn't tell them what to do, just provide information that can help them make those decisions on their own.

Tools like these work best as a means for the players to gain some information which can inform their own decisions about their character's actions (and how those actions may fit in with whatever the NPCs are doing). It's really about trying to find a balance somewhere beteween "GM narrates the story to the players" and "Players doing random things they want to do". If the players know that the guy who hired them to clear the orcs out of this mine seemed to have some additional reasons for this beyond what he claimed when their characters took the job, this may clue them in to look for other things in the mine, and may then be an "ah hah!" moment for them when they find something other than orcs there.

As an aside to the argument going on here, I think that it's important that the players make the bulk of the decisions in terms of their characters actions, but that the characters skills help provide them with the tools to both take those actions and to make those decisions "informed" in the first place. Obviously, no player feels any sense of acomplishment if discovering the secret plot is purely about rolling a die to see if their character discovers the secret plot. But discovering that there is "something going on here", with some broad hints, allows the player to make additional decisions, which may lead to additional rolls and additional information, which may result in this kind of discovery. And that *is* very satisfying to the players.

Where that balance point actually lies is going to vary from game to game, and GM to GM, and table to table. I've played at tables where the players are practically chomping at the bit to learn things, investigate, and actively discover what's going on around them. I've also been at tables where everyone basically sits there while the GM tells them what's going on, waiting to be told to roll the dice when needed. There is no single one rule to follow for all cases IMO.

[Biggus]

So, you agree that one should not have to be charismatic to play a charismatic character... but you want them to be good at reading people to play a character that's good at reading people?



As someone on the spectrum, I can tell you that my profiency with social cues are.... somewhere between 0 and an arbitrary negative number.

"insight" is invaluable to me, because no amount of "acting shifty" by the GM will actually register as shifty to me.

it takes very blunt/literal description for me to frame this or that NPC as being this or that. I.E. unless you plainly tell me "X looks shifty" I will not think of him as shifty.

Make of this feedback what you want :)

I was going to say much the same. I am also autistic, and when I was younger I was TERRIBLE at reading people (I'm better now but still not very good). It seems very unfair to me to effectively ban me from playing a highly perceptive character because I'm not perceptive myself, just as much as not allowing me to play a strong character because I'm not strong myself.

[Pauly]

I was going to say much the same. I am also autistic, and when I was younger I was TERRIBLE at reading people (I'm better now but still not very good). It seems very unfair to me to effectively ban me from playing a highly perceptive character because I'm not perceptive myself, just as much as not allowing me to play a strong character because I'm not strong myself.

I think it more than reasonable to RP physical elements that the player doesn't have.

However my experience has been that on mental/social abilities most players find it difficult to RP a character that is very different to themselves. Oftentimes doing a cartoon parody of the score. Trying to RP highly intelligent characters is difficult for players who aren't highly intelligent. On the other hand it's slso difficult for high INT players to properly play a low INT character. They'll either be a INT 6. Barbarian who happens to be a tactical genius in combat, or do the proverbial put their pants on their head.

I'm not saying it is impossible, just extremely difficult because you don't have the mental furniture to know how how a character would actually behave.

One solution is to let the game handle it mechanically by means of a die roll. However that is roll playing not role playing.

[Reversefigure4]

However my experience has been that on mental/social abilities most players find it difficult to RP a character that is very different to themselves.

Difficult to flat-out impossible. Even a player who is well above the average player intelligence - say, a trained surgeon with multiple university degrees - isn't at the intelligence of 20 INT Wizard, a fairly common character (a 3.5 Dnd Wizard can reach this at 8th level with no particularly special effort). It's not too uncommon to have a 25 INT character. Your character is frequently not only smarter / wiser / better at reading people than the player is, but at a level so far above them the player could never reach it even with years of training.

You have to bridge the gap somehow, which is done with broad RP (my high-Int character uses lot of big words), and mechanical abilities (my high-Int character knows obscure facts about forgotten history, and is smart enough to bend the cosmos to his whim with his magical studies).

[gbaji]

I was going to say much the same. I am also autistic, and when I was younger I was TERRIBLE at reading people (I'm better now but still not very good). It seems very unfair to me to effectively ban me from playing a highly perceptive character because I'm not perceptive myself, just as much as not allowing me to play a strong character because I'm not strong myself.

I think that's a very valid point, and it's not just limited to folks on the scale somewhere either. The players are not physically receiving the same sensory input that their characters are. So even players who might themselves be great at picking up subtle body language clues and whatnot are never going to get that either, unless the GM actually provides that information somehow. And sure, the GM could act out the NPCs behavior, but let's face it, some GMs are much better at this than others also.

It's one of the reasons why I'm actually far more a fan of the GM describing to the players what is happening than trying to act it out, or draw a picture or whatever. Those latter things can help as additional tools, but ideally there should be sufficient verbal/written information to tell the players what they are seeing, hearing, smelling, sensing, whatever. And skills like this should be used to allow the GM to increase the deteail in those descriptions. I'm not a huge fan of GMs who act out the NPCs, and then expect the players to pick things up from that. There are just way too many variables involved (and yeah, a lot of reliance on the GM and players own skills) for that to be a great method on its own. And yeah, it helps out folks who have autism, since they are often much better at interpreting things presneted to them in a cognitive way than in a subjective/intepretive way.

And I also tend toward a "Player stated intent ==> GM returns rolls/response" method. I don't need the player to tell me what exact skills they are using at any given time, but I do expect them to tell me what they are trying to do/learn/whatever. I will then tell them what skills to roll (or roll them myself) and provide them with a result. I don't expect the players to make great leaps of intuition or logic, but I do expect them to at least think to go in a general direction. And frankly, since I'm the GM, and I'm running the scenarior, I already know what secrets there are to learn, and already know what kinds of actions or investigations will turn up what, so it's not terribly hard to interpret what the players are saying and proposing into reasonable actions/skills that may also help to point them in the correct direction of figuring things out.

Also helps that I tend to view my role as GM as "aiding in the cooperative storytelling" and not "antagonist to what the players want to do". I want them to figure out the evil plot (didn't write it for them *not* to figure thing out eventually). I just also want them to actually go through the game play actions of getting there. It's always a balance between just handing them the information they need (which is not fun at all for the players), and forcing the players to be crazy super geniouses to noodle things out (which is also not fun for the players). So skills like this are really useful, and provide a great excuse for the GM to provide the players with hints when they are stuck. But they should never just be a "you made a roll, so I'll just hand you the adventure notes".

[WilliamJoel333]

I use "insight" pretty regularly in my professional career. In the game, it is impossible for players to role-play their way through determining if someone is lying to them. They can get a sense if you are lying to them (you should never be by the way).

In my games (even with a natural 20 or a "hard success") I treat insight as a way to provide more detailed storytelling to the players. It is never guaranteed to give them the truth, but it should give them a bit of a spidey sense. Done that way, it can really enhance the game and help the players to focus in on important details.

Insight isn't a lie detector any more than the Bard's persuasion will allow him to talk the king into handing over his kingdom.