Players characters evading direct questions

[gbaji]

Did they respond? The synopsis version says they relayed that the werewolves were bad, and the fae were good, so fight them. I haven't seem any response to the "What are they doing/what do you know about them/what are they planning?" question. If they engage in the conversation and say any of a number of things ("They're making monsters", "They're talking about attacking things", "They want to take over SF", and, of course, the trigger "They're talking about attacking someone in the woods") you get the back and forth that leads to the successful completion of the scene. This wasn't a "select the one and only one perfect foil to proceed", it was "try and be responsive".

There was no reason for the Players to guess at the importance of the actions, rather just have a conversation and share information. The players simply did not want to do so. That is the issue, not the nature of the successful completion of the scene. The players had the relevant information and were *directly* prompted to share it and chose not to. They didn't have to "think to provide" that information. They just had to regurgitate. Not a bad option for a game group that doesn't seem to go beyond basics in a social encounter. Now, 100% agree that once it was clear that answer wasn't coming, do more. Like I suggested, other conversations in the room addressing the existence of the secret fort, etc.

Yeah. And this was where I was angling this whole line of reasoning. It's not the the players "refused to respond". It's more that their "tier1 response" wasn't a direct regurgitation of the expected information required to move things along.

I absolutely agree that a back and forth conversation between the NPCs and the PCs was called for here, and likely could (should?) have resulted in them providing the information. But that requires that both sides of the conversation be engaged and involved. It's unclear to me how interested the players were in engaging in conversation (or what method that conversation took), so it's unclear where the breakdown occurred. I do suspect that at least part of this may loop back to the same "Talakeal is far more interested in IC RP dialoguing than his players are" issue. But I can't be certain of this, since there's been little to no actual quotes (and what little we've gotten seems unlikely to have literally been the only verbatim thing the players ever said during the scene).

So yeah. Something went wrong with that scene. But to me, if something goes that wrong in a game I'm running as GM, I assume the fault is mine and work to figure out how to fix things (or at least, avoid the same problem in the future). I can't change other people. I can change myself. It's honestly that simple.

Not the goal of the situation I pictured in my head (didn't you use your Mordar Brain Goggles?!?) but you're right...though if they had the rest of the info we'd be moving forward in my CoC story anyway. Edit the original to say "It's being asked after I discovered the glyph if I saw any strange symbols or marking when I was down on the Ocean Beach pier and saying nothing."

Sorry. My goggles got lost in the mail I think.

I was trying to change things slightly to more align with the OP scenario though. The idea is that there's a group you're trying to get to help you, but the bad guys you want them to help with are doing "evil things" in an area (and/or to people) that they don't care about. You have run across a clue which means one thing to you, but to that other group would indicate a threat to themselves or their interests (and thus give them a reason to help you). But because you don't know this fact, you may not think to share that bit of information with the group in the first place. So... not perfect.

But to equate to what you said, this would be like the Fae at the court asking "did the werewolves tell you that they are planning to attack Muir woods?". I mean, that's the closest equivalent to directly asking about "strange symbols or markings", right?

I'm not even suggesting that level of "lead the players" here. I'm going more in the direction of having the group tell the players "we're a group who is interested in all things occult. We specialize in old books written in dead languages, ancient myths, and strange symbols and glyphs". So you don't have them ask "have you seen a strange symbol", you just let the players know that this group might be interested in any strange symbols they might have run across (and may be able to tell them what those symbols mean, right?).

I'm pretty sure I've already suggested multiple variations of dialogue that could have been used in the OP scene to do the equivalent. You don't just keep asking questions of the PCs. You can also have your NPCs tell the PCs a bit about themselves which also serves as a hint/clue as well.

The stone-speak spell enables a social encounter where there otherwise wouldn't be one, it is still a social encounter. One that Brian made unnecessarily difficult with his belligerent approach.

Which, by your own admission, was a misunderstanding of the wording of the spell. He thought the spell allowed him to command the stone to speak. So he commanded it.

I'm still confused why this created a blockage. Brian says that. You correct him and say it doesn't allow him to command the stone, but only to ask the stone for information. I'm reasonably certain that the next words out of Brians mouth would have been "Ok. Then I ask the stone for the information". Done. Again. Unless you have some specific reason for this statue to lie or oppose Brian getting that information, why not just tell him the information at that point? Why drag things out?

Again though, this is kind of missing the forest for the trees. This is just one example of a recurring problem, that when the player's first approach doesn't work, they refuse to change approaches. And, your proposed solution of "therefore ensure the first solution always works, regardless of how little logical sense it makes or how bad the dice play out" is, imo, significantly worse than the problem.

I see a very different pattern to this recurring problem than you do. I see a pattern of you not wanting the players to "easily" solve any problem or overcome any obstacle (even if they've used the correct combination of spells and/or abilities which should have made it so), doubly so if you had a previous idea of how they should over come it, so you put in additional block points and/or make a point of not allowing their idea to succeed. Then, when your players refuse to play "guess the solution" with you, you dig in your heels, everyone gets upset, and you post on this forum about how unreasonable your players are being.

That's not to say that your players *aren't* being unreasonable. But you are guilty of the same thing IMO.

But again, this whole attitude seems kind of dismissive of the social pillar.

Not at all. I simply don't assume that the only way to do the social pillar is via IC RP dialogue. I can (and have) run my players though extremely convoluted and complex social interactions and problems, all without a single IC line of dialogue spoken. There is nothing at all "wrong" with using narration to play out social interaction in a TTRPG, nor is it innately "right" to play these out via IC dialogue. This is completely about what the players at your table are comfortable doing and frankly what they want to spend time doing. I have players who are more than capable of getting into character and roleplaying out dialogue. But it's quite often just not worth the time and effort to do this, so they don't, and I don't make them.

Let the players decide when/if they want to do this. Never force or require it. TTRPGers run the gamut from LARP to wargame in their approach. Let them play how they are comfortable playing.

Do you think anyone would advise me "Just skip combat. Its not worth risking a TPK over. When the PCs tell you they attack something, just cut to them looting its corpse. It takes ten seconds. Its not hard."

Again though, this is based on the assumption that "social" == "IC dialogue". I soundly reject that assumption. As I said in my previous post, claiming that if you aren't doing IC dialogue you are "refusing to engage in the social game at all" is a false statement.

Yeah, like I said, we have a fundamentally different approach to RPGs. I am much less "task oriented" than you.

In CRPG parlance, I am there for a sandbox, not a theme park.

But you aren't running a CRPG. You are running a TTRPG. The term "sandbox" means (arguably significantly) different things in those two mediums of play.

And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. What you are actually describing in the OP is not a sandbox game. It's a pretty darn bog standard "here's a threat, and here are the various things/steps you'll need to deal with it" adventure. You set up a "task oriented" adventure for your players to contend with. I think at least part of the problem here is that you are running a standard game, but want to pretend its a sandbox. The result is a game where the players must figure out clueA leads to actionB in order to succeed, but you are insisting on not telling them this "cause it's a sandbox and they can do anything they want".

For me, getting to talk in character and explore a fictional world is an end unto itself.

I would never deem a scene a failure just because it took some extra time or the players didn't walk away with the maximum possible benefit.

Again though. The moment you set up some sort of threat that the PCs have to contend with, you can't run the game this way. You're literally running a different game than the one you are actually playing. That's going to cause massive confusion and frustration for the players. They think "we need to solve this problem the GM has set before us" and you're like "there's no specific task to accomplish here, just hang out and talk, and if you don't get the info, that's just as valid an outcome". Um... No. You literally put super evil werewolves transforming people into evil minions in their freaking tenement building. You kinda have to expect that the players are absolutely going to see this as problem to be solved, and expect that the game is about doing just that. If you run a scene along the way, you must allow for their expecations that this will somehow "lead to a solution".

You seem to have a disconnect between the type of game you think you are playing and the one you are actually running. An actual sandbox is very very different than what you are doing.

They were invited to a party and they showed up at the time and place the invitation said to arrive.

They were just randomly invited to a party? Wait? And there are no rails here? So you did more or less just say "Here's the next scene" and then run it?

Let the players drive the car.

I am talking about when things don't go according to plan. A swerve. A betrayal. A twist. A surprise.

Except, apparently, there was no plan to begin with. You just moved them into a scene, and said "Ok. talk". How did you expect that to work? Again. If this was actually a sandbox, that would be fine. But this isn't. So it isn't.

How would you go about establishing the goal of such a scene beforehand without giving away the big reveal?

What "big reveal"?

The party is trying to deal with the werewolves in their building. That's presuambly their goal in every single thing they are doing here. It's already established. The only bit that you can help facilitate is making sure the players have a discussion/conversation about what exactly they are doing there and how they're going to go about trying to get help. And there are a number of ways to do this. At my table, the players will probably just do this on their own, hashing things out, looking about for possible sources of assistance, and then coming across the "let's tell the Fae about the planned attack by the werewolves" idea at some point in all of this, and then going to the party with that specific objective in mind.

At your table? I'd probably create a "friendly NPC" (maybe some old changeling in the building who the PCs know who helps provide them with useful information, since they are children afterall). If the children come to this NPC with the new info they just got, he tells them "well, I don't know if the Fae have any specific interests in Muir woods, but if anyone might, and would be interested in helping you, it would be one of them. There's a party tomorrow night. You should go and tell them about the planned attack. They may not help you, but you never know." And then we move on. We go to the scene, the players know that "the attack on Muir woods" is important and may get them help from the Fae, so they are already primed to do just that.

Leaving it out as just one in a list of things they "could do" in an otherwise seemingly unrelated social scene, but then expecting them to figure this out just seems needlessly obtuse. Your game already has a "plot" to it. Don't pretend it does not. There's a reason why they gained the information about the attack on Muir woods right before they "just happened" to go to a party at the Seelie Court. These were not really random unconnected events, but you are presenting them to the players as though they are. Why on earth be surprised that they don't make the connection between them, when you seem to have gone to great lengths to convince them that they are, in fact, unconnected.

Dont do that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having "linear" components to an adventure. "Get the key. Find the door. Open the door with the key." Done. Follow that sequence. "Get the info about the attack. Provide that info to the Fae. Get help". Done. Follow that sequence.

It's already in your adventure. Don't shy away from that, or pretend it isn't there. Own the heck out of it.

Perhaps. But I would say the "fluff" is going to be far more memorable in the long run. For example, you remember Tasselhoff because of his personality, not because of his Open Locks percentage or backstab damage multiplier.

I disagree. Everyone at my table remembers that one time when the hobbit randomly tossed a pebble into a well, waking up the demon within, which then came out and killed half the party (and has lead to a long standing rule that we don't allow hobbits to toss stones like ever). No one remembers what the hobbit said at the time.

By far the most memorable things in any game are the decision->action->outcome sequences that went either incredibly right, or hillariously/tragically wrong. No one really remembers the exact wording of the dialogue someone used 10 years ago. Ok. Everyone once in a while, there's a memorable bit of dialogue. But honestly, it's rarely GM to player interaction, but usually PC to PC stuff (or player to player) that is remembered. I still distinctly recall playing a game of Shadowrun, where we are waiting for the corp mercs to show up, the fog rolls in making it hard to see, and we're all asking "can anyone see anything?", and my cousin, playing his physical adept sniper, up on the roof of a building (quoting Terminator 2) says "I see everything".

But honestly? That's about it. I have heard like thousands of pages of long winded RP dialogue in my time, by players earnestly RPing their hearts out, and I remember pretty much zero of it. And the longer and more frequently this kind of dialogue is used in a game, the less memorable any of it becomes. It's just not an end point for me at all. I may even enjoy it at the time, but it's generally a means towards an end though. It's "fluff". I may be fun fluff, but it's fluff nonetheless.

I suspect for somewhere around 99% of TTRPG players, this is the overwhelming opinion. It's fun. It's an added layer to the game. But outside of very specific social dialogue focused games, it's not the objective. It's a means to the objective. It should never ever become a blocking point in a game though (and the mere fact that it *can* be a blocking point in a game means you are not playing a "social dialogue focused game", so this is somewhat axiomatic).

Like, do you think it should matter at all what approach I choose in a social situation? Like, if I choose to say, try and get the king to do me a favor by striking up a close rapport with him so that I can logically address each of his concerns vs. run in, drop my trousers, and tell him that he is a stupid jerk while waving my bare ass in his face?

Notice how you were able to present both of those options without a single line of dialogue? That's how you narrate a social scene. Yes. It's less colorful. And yes, it may be more fun to play it out via full dialogue. But sometimes, the players just aren't interested in that. And... the narration method does have the virtue of being much much faster. I tell you what's going on, you tell me what you do. Done.

Creating a character is not the same as having control over the character.

Uh.... With rare exceptions, yes, it does. In a RPG game, that is.

No player characters are present, therefore no player agency is violated.

Game objects that the PC has direct and explicit control over (via the description of the spell they cast). So it does not matter where their PC actually is. This is still a matter of player agency.

By your argument, the GM can erase or eliminate the effects of all PC actions, and as long a the PC isn't physically present, it doesn't affect player agnecy. So the PCs work really hard to obtain some objective in the game, and then when they leave the GM goes "nope! bad guys still win", and that's not a violation of player agency? I suspect that you'd get a heck of a lot of disagreement on that.

And in this case, the PC casts a spell that literally says they get to control the target creature. But you are arguing that once the creature is no longer physically in the same room as the PC, the player no longer has control of the creature, and the GM gets to decide what the creature does, and that's not a violation of player agency? Yeah. Not agreeing with that at all.

You are either drastically less trusting than Bob or drastically less tactically adept than Bob is.

This is absolutely how the spell is meant to be run, and Bob has used it to entirely beneficial effect dozens of times.

But it was only beneficial to Bob when and where you (the GM) decided to allow it to be beneficial to him. The moment you decided differently you made it absolutely clear that you, and not he, was in actual control of the illusion spell he cast. That's problematic IMO. Your intepretation of the spell basically means "the GM controls your illusion, and may choose to have it do what you want, or not... at their own whim".

What you call "trusting" is Bob having no choice but to give control over to you and then just kinda hope you don't screw him over. I'd much rather not put my players in that position. I provide them with consistent "rules" that are followed in the game. and one of them is "stuff that you do is under your control". When in doubt, the players decide what anything that is connected to a spell/ability/item in their possession does. The most I ever do is adjudicate the game mechanical effect of those decisions. So I would decide how the monster reacted to Bob's illusion (and of course arbitrate what things can and cannot affect an illusion in the first place), but I would *never* tell Bob "your illusion does <some thing you don't want it to do>". Ever.

I have played many RPGs with many groups over the years, and I can't recall this ever actually being an issue.

Except for the time when Bob's illusion didn't do what he wanted it to do, leading to an argument. Right? That situation would have been avoided if you'd just "told him what was going on, and let him decide how his illusion resopnded".

I mean, sure, sometimes players (mostly Bob) argue about a GM's ruling over how a specific spell or ability will play out at the table (as was the initial case being referenced) but that is not the same thing, and I don't think anyone is actually advocating in good faith for the players to take away referee duties from the GM to avoid arguments (not that this would avoid arguments mind you, it merely shifts the burden of whom is making the final call).

This is not a matter of the GM adjudicating game mechanics. This is a matter of "who is in control of this game object?". As a GM, you already control the vast majority of objects and people in a game. Let the players control as much stuff as they can reasonably justify being in control of. What is the harm?

It isn't your character though. Batman is your character. Robin is your character's sidekick. That is the whole point.

I already said that I have never played the game, and don't know how a "sidekick" works.

If Robin has never been under the control of Batman's player, then your scenario was not in good faith. We were talking about whether a character, who is under player control when in proximity to that player's character, should cease to be under their control when not. I argued that the character is either controlled by the player, or it is not. Period. Whether it's right next to their PC or not is irrelevant (Unless I suppose there are specific game rules for this, but as I said, I'm not familiar with that game).

And in the case of a dominated creature, the spell explicitly says that the character can receive basic information from/about the dominated creature and issue commands in response. So proximity is absolutely not a factor. The GM deciding to have the dominated creature encounter some situation not previously planned for by the caster, and then not telling the player about it, but just making their own decision, is flat out wrong.

I am pretty sure that when someone sits down to play a game, the default assumption is that everyone plays by the same rules.

While I agree that reasonable accommodations and compromises can and should be made, I am by no means obligated to let someone play at my table and ignore the rules which the rest of us have all agreed to play under.

And, likewise, no player is obligated to remain at a table where they do not agree to the rules.

Sure. But if your dogmatiic application of "the rules" (and lets be honest, this is not "rules" but "GM playstyle preference"), seems to create conflicts and problems in your game pretty darn frequently. So why not tone that stuff down a bit?

Do you actually enjoy having these conflicts with your players? If so, keep doing things the way you are doing them. If not, maybe consider some of these suggestions.

Again, this is a hypothetical you invented. Nobody at my table is unwilling to talk in character. Nor am I unwilling to allow a player to narrate their dialogue for me rather than act it out.

Except when Brian cast the stonespeak spell, and you required him to RP the dialogue, and when he refused, you made him make a skill roll. You mean, except for that time, right?

It's not a "hypothetical" when it's literally a case you posted from your own game.

What my players said is that social situations should be resolved by dice because it is unfair to people who play characters who are more charismatic than they are (and vice versa). And I agree.

I'm going to do a bit of speculation here (yeah, I know), and perhaps clue you in to something about human/player nature: When players tell you that they are willing to make a skill roll rather than RP dialogue? This is them telling you that they don't want to RP dialogue. They are literally willing to risk failing at something on a die roll rather than guarantee success if they just play the dialogue game you are asking them to play.

That's a big giant cluexfour that your players don't enjoy this and don't want to do it. So stop trying to force them to do it!

I can absolutely guarantee you that your players would much rather just narrate out their action and decision instead, but you are not allowing them to do that (not without having to make a skill roll anyway). So they fall back to "can I just roll a die instead?".

What I said is that the players need to give me the gist of what they said to the NPC and how they said it so that I can determine the NPC's reaction as well as set the difficulties for any dice rolls that might be involved.

And if they had engaged in active dialogue, would you have required them to make the die roll? Or would you have "judged" their RPing, and if it met your standards, you'd have allowed it to stand without a die roll required?

This is what I mean by "making them jump through hoops". You want them to play a specific way. They don't want to play that way. You reward them if they do, but punish them if they don't. And no. This is not about "rules". This is about your own personal preferences. Again, I'm speculating here, but based on numerous posts by you, I get the strong impression that your players really really don't want to do this, and you are doing everything you can to force them to anyway.

The players get some say in what game they are playing too. As the GM, you have control over a lot of things in a game, but you need to realize that you are not the only person at the table either.

Second, I can't think of a way to check to see if the players forgot something without also telling them "Hey, do this if you want to succeed!" which imo takes away player agency and removes any aspect of challenge or decision making.

Yes. I get that, perhaps at the time, you didn't think of a way to do this, but now, having been told various ways you could have handled this differently, which would have avoided the problem, I would hope you would respond with "that's great advice. I'll take that to heart the next time I run a similar scenario, and I've given my players a key clue, but they don't seem to be using it right when it would be of great use to them".


If there's a theme to my resposes here, it's that things are rarely "all or nothing". Most things in a game are a range of choices "in between". And in this case, there is a range of actions you can take as a GM between "keep quiet and just let the players keep failing" and "tell the players what they need to do". I've provided several examples of ways to do this which fall well in between those. I'm not going to repeat them, but you are free to read back through my previous responses. I even provided dialogue in several of them!

1: Give me the gist of the instructions your character is providing. Remember, in character you have about six seconds to come up with them, although I am not going to be a stickler about it. Then, trust me to run the NPC in good faith in accordance with those instructions. Do not expect semantic tricks or loopholes to work in either direction. Be willing to answer questions to clarify your intent if I am confused.

The bolded bit is the problem here. Also, it's hard to take your comment about "semantic tricks or loopholes" seriously when that's essentially what you used to argue Bob's illusion would cower when faced with a monster. I get that you don't see it that way, but I do, and I'm pretty darn sure Bob did as well.